"Haven't had much luck, huh?" She shook her head, hawking to spit onto the cobbles. "Well, I've seen buffalo sign. One bunch, nervous and spooky. That was up above the hogbacks." She pointed over her shoulder.
"That's not that far. Only a half day's walk." He paused. "You came from there? That's getting too close to the An-it'ah."
"They leave me alone. Where's your hunting camp?"
He pointed back to the east.
"Hmm. And the People are south? 4 * She rubbed her chin. "Tell you what. You go get your friends. Meet me at Monster Bone Springs tonight."
"Monster Bone . . . Why there? I mean, that's a Power place where the Hero Twins came and killed the Monsters and ate them. You mean, you ..." Words failed as he backed a step.
"Hah!" She snorted, dry humor curling her lips. "So the stories go, huh? Hero Twins? Men killed the Monsters. Just like we kill buffalo." She paused, looking sadly at the rocky ground before her. "Oh, I don't know why it bothers me. Changing . . . everything's changing, turning, making itself into something different."
Hungry Bull waited, nervous. "We're told not to go there. That spirits like the Trickster will take our soul."
She pinned his eyes with hers. "Indeed? And I suppose that same lunatic tells you to look up women's skirts? Who tells you such things?"
Wincing at her taunting, he told her, "Heavy Beaver, he Dreams—"
"I remember him as nothing more than a sullen kid. What happened? He get touched by more than bad humor?"
"He's a powerful—"
"Maybe. Or he's fooled everyone into thinking he is. I'll wait and see. Usually you can see Power in a child. See it in their eyes, the way they move. Where's Horn Core?"
"Dead."
She gave him a steely look, lips pinching. "When?"
"Maybe three years now. No one knows why. He broke his leg and it grew together ... but it never stopped hurting. Then it swelled up, poisoned from the inside, like happens sometimes. Heavy Beaver said it was because Horn Core called on bad spirits. And that's why Buffalo Above is punishing us . . . keeping Rain Man away. Horn Core never had the right Power to keep him—"
"Dung and flies, boy! Horn Core was a Dreamer in the old sense of the Power. Heavy Beaver? He's like a child who would hunt buffalo with twigs."
"No! I mean, never say things like that. Heavy Beaver will Sing a Curse over you . . . make the evil ghosts come and—"
"That tapeworm? Curse me?*' She cackled happily again. "That'll be the day!" Then she paused, another thought striking her. "I see . . . it's all starting to make sense now. Curious how the Power of the Dreaming works. Curious ..." She lost her line of thought, eyes going vacant as she stared out into space, seeing something far beyond Hungry Bull and the sun-washed ridge top.
"Who are you? I've seen you before someplace."
"Huh?" She started, vision focusing again. "I told you, they called me—"
"Who are you now?"
She smiled wistfully at him, raising an eyebrow to recrease the wrinkles in her forehead. "Met you in your lodge one night. Sage Root had just lost a child. Boy child as I recall. I needed a mother, a healthy woman with milk to give. No wonder you don't remember. That night, you were pretty upset. You hardly noticed me."
Breath caught in his throat. "White Calf I They said you-"
"Rose into the sky on a whirlwind." She grunted. "I know. Unlike ravens who chatter all the time about important things, men like to carry on with a lot of nonsense."
He gaped.
"The boy's doing all right?"
He nodded, still undone, remembering that night, remembering the grief in Sage Root's eyes as she cuddled her dead child. Then, out of the dark, came Horn Core and the old woman, a bundle wrapped in her arms. A gift, she'd said. A child given by the Spirits for one taken.
His concern then hadn't been for old women out of the night, but for Sage Root. So he'd taken his dead son from her arms, replacing it with the living. Awed, he'd watched as Sage Root's breast accepted the child. And when he'd turned back, White Calf had gone. No one could find her in camp that next day.
Before he left to start his own band, Elk Whistle told him about White Calf and the wounded berdache. She'd found Elk Whistle out hunting in these same hills, taking him to Monster Bone Springs, where the child and the wounded berdache had been.
Horn Core had filled in more details, talking of White Calf's Power, of how she lived high in the Buffalo Mountains, making magic. Other than that, little was known of her, at least, little that people would talk about.
She smacked her lips, shaking her head. "Enough of this. What I need you to do is get on to your hunting camp. Pick up your friends and I'll meet you at Monster Bone Springs. I'll have your packrat stewed by the time you get there. Then we can all hear the exploits of your hunt."