People of the Masks(135)

She nodded, and looked back toward Blue Raven.

Only Jumping Badger remained standing over the dead body. He held his torch high, and yelled, “You criminal! You dirty traitor! You did this on purpose!”

He drew his foot back, and began kicking Blue Raven—in the belly, the legs, the face.

Then, in a fit of laughter, he threw the torch down, and drew his knife from his belt sheath. The gray blade glinted as he gripped Blue Raven by the hair, and lowered the blade to his throat.

“No!” Elk Ivory shouted, and a dozen voices joined hers as warriors leaped to their feet.

Acorn stood with his breast heaving. “For the sake of our ancestors, Jumping Badger! Blue Raven’s head is not a trophy! He was the Headman of our clan!”

Voices rumbled assent, and Jumping Badger lowered his knife, kicked Blue Raven in the mouth, and tramped away.

Elk Ivory’s gaze shifted to Little Wren.

The girl had stopped crying. She knelt, her bound hands clenched to fists, watching Jumping Badger with blazing eyes.





Spotted Frog grabbed Cornhusk’s shoulder to steady himself while he wheezed. “Blessed—gods—is this the camp? Tell me we’re stopping. I can’t believe—we stayed on the trail—well past dark!”

“This is it,” Cornhusk said, and gestured to the clearing where a fire burned, surrounded by the packs of nineteen warriors.

Each man had been assigned nightly duties. Four gathered wood, four set up camp, digging fire pits and laying out cooking tools. Six hunted or fished, four kept guard, and one man tended to Spotted Frog’s numerous needs. The “tender,” named Flying Skeleton, stood three hands taller than Cornhusk and had a lean feral face with slitted light brown eyes.

Cornhusk wasn’t sure he liked the man. But he loved Silent Crow Clan’s organization. He’d never seen anything like it.

By the time they reached camp each night, less than a finger of time after the lead warriors, most of the work was done. Spotted Frog’s people built the fires, caught the food, prepared the food, cleaned the pots. It made evenings very pleasant.

“Come along, Spotted Frog,” Cornhusk said, and gripped the clan patron’s fat right arm. Flying Skeleton took his left.

Spotted Frog’s meaty legs wobbled as they helped him into the clearing and set him down atop one of the five logs that had been drawn up around the fire pit. Flames crackled, sending up coils of blue smoke, and pots already hung over the coals, heating.

Guards stood at the northern and southern ends of camp, but the other warriors hiked through the trees, finishing their tasks.

“I had no—idea—the trails would be—this muddy!” Spotted Frog fanned his bloated face with his hand. Sweat drenched his smoked moose-hide shirt and beaded his nose and forehead.

“Well,” Cornhusk said as he slipped off his pack and let it fall to the ground at the base of the log. “This moon is unpredictable. Hot one day, ice storms the next.”

Flying Skeleton slipped out of his pack, and knelt before Spotted Frog, saying, “Let me put on your dry moccasins, Patron.”

“Oh, yes, please.” Spotted Frog held out his right mud-caked moccasin.

Flying Skeleton unlaced and removed it, then reached into the pack for a dry one—lined with buffalo fur—and slipped it on Spotted Frog’s foot.

Spotted Frog held out the left foot, and Cornhusk watched the process repeated.

He had to admit, it made him a little nauseous. He stayed away from his wife as much as possible precisely because he hated being “mothered.” Women never treated a man like a man. They all seemed to think men were children in extremely large bodies.

He pulled his buffalo-bladder water bag from his pack and took a long drink, while he watched Spotted Frog from the corner of his eye.

The patron sighed when Flying Skeleton finished tying his moccasins.

“Do you wish me to comb out your hair now?” Flying Skeleton asked, scowling at Spotted Frog’s tangled braids. “Or would a cup of tea be more to your liking?”

“Why don’t you bring me a cup of tea, and I’ll drink it while you comb my hair.”

“Yes, Patron.”

Flying Skeleton pulled a cup from the pack, and went to the large cone-shaped pot tucked into the coals at the edge of the flames.

Cornhusk pulled out his own cup and followed Flying Skeleton. After Flying Skeleton had dipped Spotted Frog’s cup full, and started back toward the log, Cornhusk peered into the soot-coated pot. The delicious fragrances of dried strawberries and pumpkin blossoms rose. He dipped his cup full, and looked around the camp. What an excellent location! He couldn’t have done better himself. Twenty paces away, to his right, a small creek flowed down the hillside, burbling through a crust of ice. In a rough oval around the meadow, maples and oaks grew to unusual heights, towering above them. Acorns scattered the ground. Around them, the heart-shaped tracks of deer dimpled the old leaves and mud.