People of the Moon(180)
To her great surprise, he ran up to her, and hugged her with his strong arms.
“Let me go! We’ve got to run.”
“Sorry,” he told her with a smug smile. “But I’ve made a better deal.”
She struggled, confused, unable to understand. She was still beating at his confining arms as he plucked her off her feet, carrying her back toward the grinning warriors.
“I wish you would just run ahead,” Crow Woman complained as Wrapped Wrist led the way down the trail. “You needn’t fuss over me like a hen turkey over her chicks.”
Wrapped Wrist perched precariously on the slope to hold a low-hanging ponderosa branch to one side. Crow Woman hobbled past, leaning on the makeshift crutch he’d made.
“Good thing they didn’t whack both knees,” he said as the branch whipped back in place.
“Too bad Narrow-frame didn’t cut straight down the center,” she muttered. “If you had a split nose and four lips maybe you wouldn’t talk so much.”
Wrapped Wrist trotted around and ahead of her. They followed a game trail that wound down the side of the slope. Through gaps in the conifers, he could see the broad River of Souls Valley. It wouldn’t be long now before they broke out of the timber. The footing would be better, less chance that Crow Woman would turn her swollen knee.
She cried out as she stepped over a log and jammed her leg. “Bloody pus! Why does that have to hurt so?”
“Knees are funny that way.” He stepped around, taking her hand, helping her over the obstacle. Was it his imagination, or did she hold onto him for a moment longer than necessary?
He shot her a wary glance. Had to be his imagination. This was Crow Woman, after all. Even subdued by her run-in with the Red Shirts, he didn’t trust her to remain that way. What would it take? A sideways glance? A wrongly inflected word? And then she’d be her old prickly self again.
“What?” She’d realized he was thinking about her.
“Nothing.”
“Must be something.”
He kicked the remains of a rotten log out of the way, and held another branch. A red squirrel chattered above them, which set off the stellar jays. She was shooting him pensive looks. “Gods, am I really that bad?”
“Kind of like one of those macaws the Traders bring up from the distant south. Really pretty, but I like you with your claws tied and a string around your beak.”
He caught the slightest bit of smile at the corner of her lips. “Good.”
She continued hobbling down the trail. The slope was gentler here, and she made better time, slowing only to clamber over a deadfall.
“It’s just that we’ve lost so much time. First they made us backtrack, and took us off the main trail. Then this knee.” She shook her head. “My fault. All my fault.”
“Stop it.” He wanted to scratch his face where the makeshift stitches itched and burned.
“If I hadn’t been so bullheaded. Gods, I can be such a buffalo sometimes.”
“You do all right.”
She bit her lip and said nothing more.
Wrapped Wrist kicked a stone out of the trail and craned his neck. Yellow sunlight could be seen between the branches. Good, another couple of paces and they’d be out of the trees and into …
Wrapped Wrist raised his hand, stopping short. Yes, those were voices. He dropped to a crouch, trying to peer under the branches.
The timber below them gave way to scattered rabbitbrush, patches of sumac, and tall grass. In the bottom, the River of Souls coursed between willow-bounded banks. Several stands of cottonwoods clustered along the river.
He scuttled forward, taking a position behind one of the last pines. Leaning out from the trunk he could see them: red-shirted warriors. They seemed too well dressed. A line of them, perhaps thirty, were leading a small group of women and children. And there, on a pole litter, he could see a woman being borne along on six of the warriors’ shoulders. Worse, they were headed right down the valley. Given their route of travel, they would pass no more than fifty paces in front of him.
Wrapped Wrist eased back up the slope, motioning Crow Woman to get down. He took position behind yet another of the trees.
“Who are they?” Crow Woman whispered.
“Warriors.”
“Ours?”
“I don’t think so. They’ve got women and children.”
Crow Woman made a face as she crawled down beside him to peer through the screening branches of the pine. “I can’t see much.”
“Shhh! They’re coming this way.”
He felt his heart begin to pound and anxiously reached around for the war club he’d taken from one of the dead warriors. It had a good feel to it. He considered his options. He’d left his darts in the bodies of the dead. The one that had missed Narrow-frame had shattered on a stone. Now he cursed himself as a fool, but at the time the thought of pulling them out of human flesh had been too much for him.