People of the Fire(96)

"Okay, berdache Power. I can start to believe that/' Three Toes frowned, sucking loudly at his teeth before uttering the throaty rasp of a stellar's jay. The call echoed through the somber trees. A chickadee peeped in return.

Hungry Bull squinted up at the tiny patch of blue sky he could see straight overhead. "Yeah, I think Little Dancer has Power. I hear him at night while he's asleep. Dreams come on him. Not like normal people dream, but Power Dreams, and a lot of the time he wakes up . . . but he doesn't, you know? You can talk to him and he'll talk back, but he's not there, not with you in the shelter."

"I saw. Last night. You called to him and he answered that it was the fire. I looked, and the fire looked just fine. He had his eyes open, Hungry Bull. I could see that—but it was like he wasn't inside."

"You were awake when I asked him about it this morning? He just blinked at me, baffled."

"Yeah. That's enough to make my hair stand on end," Three Toes grumbled. "Makes Fun is getting a little spooked about it. Black Crow's told her to keep quiet, that it's a phase and Little Dancer will grow out of it."

"Come on, the snow's freezing my feet, standing still like this." And he wanted desperately to avoid the subject that had started to wear on all of them.

He took another step, following in the path of the elk that had climbed before them. The elk knew the best way to get to the top of the mountain. But then, where an elk thought the trail was easy and where a man did demonstrated two different realities.

"So we're going to snare an elk just like a rabbit?" Three Toes puffed and struggled up after Hungry Bull, continuing his peeping conversation with the chickadees. "Sounds real crazy.''

"Why?" Hungry Bull wondered. "You heard what Rattling Hooves said. All we—"

"I didn't get all of it. I'm still trying to make sense out of that slurred pronunciation they talk in."

"Does sound slurred, doesn't it?" Hungry Bull reached up with a mitten to scratch back of his ear. "But then they say we cluck like sage grouse when we talk."

"Sage grouse?" Three Toes exploded with a snort. "That'll be the day! We don't sound anything like sage grouse when we talk."

"They think so."

"And what about you? You and Rattling Hooves seem pretty blissful under the robes. You and she are going to stay together? What about this One Cast? Is he going to be trouble for you?"

Hungry Bull pulled himself over a deadfall where the elk had already knocked the snow off, dragging their bellies across. He reached back and offered Three Toes a hand.

"She says it won't be trouble. She says that among the Red Hand a woman can leave a man . . . just like that. I guess, though, that it's considered polite to do something for the old husband. Take him a couple fine robes, maybe some meat.

"But One Cast married her more or less because she needed a husband. At least that's what she tells me. One Cast likes his first wife best, a woman called Wet Rain. Rattling Hooves sure liked them both. Said they helped deceive Blood Bear when he tried to take Elk Charm. I guess that's reason enough to like them."

"Well, I can see that. Anyone who doesn't like Blood Bear is all right in my view." Three Toes paused to take a deep breath before adding, "But then I don't seem to be doing any too good with Dreamers or leaders these days."

"Don't worry about it. You're safe now. We can all start over, learn new things, and stay out of Heavy Beaver's way."

"And Blood Bear?"

"I don't think he'll bother us. Not with White Calf speaking for us."

"Um, I don't want to rain on your buffalo hunt, but she's not as young as I'd like her to be."

"Thinking about another wife?"

"Oh, stop. White Calf? A wife? I could think of bunches of better ways to commit suicide. Like sneaking up behind a mad buffalo and slapping its scrotum with a prickly-pear cactus. But what if she decides to take her soul to the Starweb sometime soon? What do we do then? Our Spirit Woman protection's gone and died on us."

"That's why we go visit the Red Hand in spring. We go as relatives to Rattling Hooves and Elk Charm and Two Smokes. We go and visit and trade and come back here. Rattling Hooves says that come spring, we'll have shooting star, balsam root, onions, sego lily, biscuit root, and all kinds of things growing up here. Then in late summer and fall there's serviceberry and currants and pine nuts and ruff-necked grouse and all kinds of good stuff. We might have to move a little to find the slopes with the best harvest—I guess that changes from year to year—but it won't be bad." "You like all that stuff? You like not eating buffalo?" Hungry Bull slapped his belly. "Put it like this. I've grown used to looking down and seeing my navel—maybe not so round as Black Crow's, but still, I haven't been hungry for a long long time. Not only that, but stuff like sego lily is sweet, wonderful. And baked biscuit root is like nothing else in the world. I could eat that—like you could buffalo backstrap—for the rest of my life."