People of the Mist(141)

“Safe?” Sun Conch rushed around to stand before Panther. “He needed but to reach out to break your neckI”

“Oh, but had he done so, everything would have been in ruins for him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Then you don’t know the Weroansqua.” He veered around Sun Conch and kept walking. Sun Conch followed. “You don’t think she’d leave him alone with me, do you? No, no, my brave young woman. This was a carefully planned event. Copper Thunder told Hunting Hawk he was going to have it out with me, put me in my place as a demonstration of his authority. He hoped I would trip myself, say something that would condemn me as a witch or troublemaker. Grass Mat was never clever at these things, and he’s no brighter now that he calls himself Copper Thunder.”

Sun Conch opened her mouth, then closed it.

“The Weroansqua handled that particularly well, don’t you think?” Panther blinked as the snowflakes caught on his eyelashes.

“She did?”

“Oh, yes. Hunting Hawk is no one’s fool. She was there the whole time, hidden behind the mat divider, listening to the entire exchange. That’s why Copper Thunder couldn’t just kill me. It would look like he was trying to silence me, and that would have strengthened Hunting Hawk’s position. She’d use the knowledge like a club against him.”

Sun Conch took a deep breath, including a snowflake, and coughed. “You play dangerous games, Elder.”

“Yes, yes, but Sun Conch, I’m too old to live carefully.” Panther proceeded on his way. In his imagination, he was already picking at a warmly cooked fish.





Twenty-five




Nine Killer stopped before the door flap of Yellow Net’s long house and called, “It is your cousin, Nine Killer. Might I speak to you?”

“Come, War Chief,” Yellow Net called.

Nine Killer ducked through the doorway and stamped the snow from his moccasins. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. Pungent smoke filled his nostrils, along with the smells of cooking corn, boiling walnut milk, and roasting tuckahoe: the root of the arrow arum. To prepare tuckahoe properly, the roots needed a long roasting to leach the acids from the pulpy flesh.

With a warm smile, Yellow Net rose from her seat behind the main fire. “You are welcome to my house, War Chief. What can I do for my cousin today?”

Nine Killer walked across the matting and slicked snow water from his brow. “I had hoped to speak with Quick Fawn. Is your daughter here?”

Yellow Net studied him with suddenly guarded eyes. She started to say something, paused, then called out, “Quick Fawn? Would you come here?”

From beside the warming fire in the rear, Quick Fawn’s slender figure rose. A loop of cord hung from her long brown fingers—she had been playing the string game with her younger brothers and sisters. That game occupied most of the children when the weather was bad.

Nine Killer watched the girl approach, her hair swinging with each step. She wore a deerskin apron decorated in patterns of shell beads and knotted on the left hip. A fringed deerskin mantle was fastened over her left shoulder, leaving her budding right breast bare.

Quick Fawn’s face was a mask of apprehension. She lowered her dark eyes, and fumbled with the string, as if unsure what to do with it.

In all of his days as War Chief, Nine Killer had never had trouble with the girl. Rather, if anything, she seemed to avoid the behavioral snares that her peers often entangled themselves in. Nine Killer twitched his lips at Yellow Net, and tilted his head slightly. She read his meaning and left them alone, saying, “Quick Fawn, keep an eye on the food, please.”

Nine Killer seated himself on the matting, gesturing Quick Fawn down beside him. She sat cautiously, hands clasped around the string in her lap.

“It’s a good snow,” Nine Killer told her. “We were lucky to get our catch in before the storm hit. We filled a canoe with fish yesterday. I think your mother got some.”

“Yes, Elder. We ate several last night.” She sounded subdued.

Nine Killer sighed, “Do you know why I’m here?”

“About Red Knot?”

“Yes, cousin. I need your help.” He studied her, but she didn’t raise her eyes to look at him.

“You were with Red Knot that night. White Otter told me that she left the two of you alone.”

Quick Fawn nodded.

“Cousin, please, tell me what you did that night. What she told you. I need to hear everything, even if it doesn’t seem important. Any little detail might help.”

Quick Fawn hesitated, then said, “Elder, she’s dead. Does it make a difference?”