People of the Fire(21)

Hungry Bull slid to a stop. "Lost you!" He cocked his head, sensitive ears tuned for the soft rustling. A meadowlark trilled, followed by a robin calling in crisp melody to greet Father Sun.

There! Bull jumped for the sound of scurrying feet. The thief had doubled back, making a wide circle as Bull crashed down on him. Again the mad scramble continued, the thief belying his broken leg as he slipped through the small spaces. Bull—condemned by size—had to pound through by dint of brute force.

As the thief shot across an open space, Bull launched himself again, slapping belly-down on the dust.

Roaring rage, Hungry Bull got a foot braced and lurched again, his grasping fingers slipping off the creature's back as he planted his other hand in a wicked patch of cactus. Bellowing from the sting and cursing the extraordinary luck of his wounded prey, Hungry Bull went momentarily berserk, diving headfirst into the thicket of sage, barely aware of the scratches it tore in his cheek.

Worming after the scrambling fugitive, he slapped at him, finally got a grip on his tail, and pulled. The captive clawed frantically at the loose dirt as Hungry Bull dragged him back.

"Got you!" he howled in victory.

Hungry Bull stood, grinning, his prey dangling by a brown-and-white tail, front legs outstretched, broken hind leg limp. Under the sleek buff-brown coat, lungs labored, whiskers trembling. The smooth white underbelly gleamed like snow in the sun, in contrast to pink-padded feet.

Bull lifted him up to stare into the frightened black eyes. "You ate the last of my jerky. What you didn't eat, you pissed and shit on. To make matters worse, you chewed the thong of my atlatl in two! It takes time to make an atlatl just so . . . get the right Spirit Power into it."

The whiskers continued to quiver, the beady eyes bright with terror and hurt.

"So what I'm going to do," Bull continued, "is get even. Tonight, we're going to eat you for dinner. Get you back for our jerky, huh?"

He winced at the sting of the cactus spikes in his flesh and grabbed the beast about the chest, ready to break its neck.

Undaunted, the scrambling captive sank long white teeth into the web of skin between Bull's thumb and forefinger. He howled in pain and surprise, slamming the creature to the ground. Again, Trickster Coyote made a fool of him, providing a soft tussock of grass for the thief to land in. Like a shot, it bolted into the sage.

Bull stared stupidly at his hand for a second, realized what had just happened, and thundered his anger as he crashed after his vanishing quarry.

The threads of the Starweb had begun to tighten. The Wolf Bundle had watched as the world changed. Part of it had cried out as the last of the mammoth died under the hunter s darts. The way of the Spirals permeated everything, reaching from the roots of the winter-dormant plants to the shining glitter of a fly s buzzing wings. How odd that the last mammoth had been an orphaned calf. When the Wise One Above created the universe, he made everything balance, pain and ecstasy, birth and rot, heat and cold.

Now the Circles were coming full again. Wolf Dreamer waited, watching from his Dream. Something new would be spun into the Starweb . . . or its new Dreamer might fail where Wolf Dreamer had succeeded. It did not matter. If this Circle of the Spiral would be famine, the next might be feast.





Chapter 5




As the morning sun threaded yellow beams into the canyons, Hungry Bull trotted along a deer trail that wound through the thick sage in the canyon bottom. As his legs pumped, he bit cactus spines one by one from the palm of his hand, spitting them away.

To either side, the eroded hillsides rose in gentle slopes dotted with sage and occasional bitter brush. This buffalo hunt had turned into another debacle. Occasional chips had been located—all of them years dry, beetle-riddled and gray white from sun bleaching. Where were the buffalo? As he trotted down the trail, a limp brown-and-white body dangled and jerked from his swelling right hand.

He could count off a finger for each day since he'd left Sage Root and camp and add another three toes to the list.

Never had the animals been so few, so far between. And if the faces of the People had looked gaunt when they left—

"Hey, you!" The cry hung on the still morning air.

Bull slowed to a stop, looking around warily as he tried to pin the location of the call. Cautiously he slipped his atlatl from where it hung on his belt. He pulled a long dart from the quiver over his back. Practiced fingers nocked the dart in the hooked end of his spear thrower. The atlatl added leverage, acting like an extension of his arm, allowing a man to catapult a dart three times as far as he could throw a spear by hand. He missed the chewed-away rawhide loops that had secured his fingers to the polished shaft.