“Can I be of service, Trader?” she asked coyly, raising an eyebrow.
“Oh, Matron, yes. I have come with news.” He tore his gaze from her bedroom entrance, centering it on the bit of bare floor between his dusty feet. She noticed that he wore yucca sandals with plaited cords at the toe and heel.
“Don’t tell me it’s that the Blessed Webworm has returned to Flowing Waters Town.”
He looked confused, then said, “He has?”
“The period of mourning for the Blessed Featherstone is officially over. We can smile again. The signal went up from Smoking Mirror Butte yesterday.”
“Oh … good.” Now he stared at her breasts, his lips making the smallest of puckering movements.
“Did you just come for my company, Trader?” She flashed him a smile, glancing sidelong from the beads she’d lined onto the tiny cactus thorn.
“Your company is always a joy, Matron, but no. There is news.” He seemed to hesitate.
She pinched the beads between thumb and forefinger, running the cactus thorn back and forth through their holes. “News among the First Moon People?”
“Yes. I just heard it last night.”
“You seem reluctant to speak.”
His gaze was fixed on the cactus spine as it slid smoothly in and out of the beads. “It wouldn’t be good if anyone associated me with this—”
“Of course not. I never want anyone to know what you tell me.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s important, but you always told me that if anything concerning the First People came up, I should tell you.”
“Then, tell, Trader.”
“Well, it seems that some hunter has had a vision.”
The thorn went still in her hand. “A vision? Of what sort?”
Nine
Bulrush had traveled with Uncle Sage and two of their neighbors to this place four days’ walk north of Saltbush Farmstead. They had passed along little-used trails by night, slept in thickets and patches of trees during the day. Now Bulrush found himself in a dense grove of darkened juniper at the edge of the rimrock just below Tall Piñon Town.
The night was dark, the moon in its first quarter, and low on the horizon. Bulrush, Uncle Sage, one of the neighbors named Made Clay, and Two Stone, Uncle’s cousin, crouched in the darkness and stared at the cluster of buildings on the mesa top. They looked like oversized squares dropped here and there in an irregular pattern. The beaten ground around the settlement appeared pale against the darker mosaic of wilted cornfields. The drought had wreaked its havoc here in the Deep Canyon highlands, too.
“The dogs might be a problem,” Uncle said. “But then, people come and go from this place all the time.”
Bulrush reached down and grasped the straps of his burden basket. “Which one is the warehouse?”
“That one.” Made Clay pointed to the great house on the northwestern corner of the U-shaped complex of buildings. A story taller than the others, it was the largest of the structures in Tall Piñon Town. “The problem is that we’ve got to work silently. The Blessed Sun’s warriors live there, along with the Priests.”
“Didn’t you say they were all gone?” Uncle reminded.
“War Chief Leather Hand is supposed to have taken most of the warriors to Windflower Village for the reconsecration of the great kiva. There should only be a few Priests, if anybody, guarding the storerooms.”
“What if they hear us?” Bulrush asked. A slow fear had lain hold of his heart. That he had to do this for his family didn’t make it any less terrifying.
Two Stone touched the war club hanging on his belt. “We silence whoever comes to investigate.”
“What if it’s one of the First People?” Tension made Uncle’s voice shrill.
“What if it is?” Two Stone shrugged. “Look, the important thing is to get out with the food. Once we’re off the mesa, we head straight east on the main road. We skirt around the head of the canyons. After we’re a day’s walk from here, no one will ever be able to pick out our trail. We’re just another party of Traders, maybe headed home after the rededication of the great kiva over in Lanceleaf Village. Or we stopped to visit family along the River of Sorrow, and they gave us this food. No one will be able to prove it was us who stole from the First People’s warehouse.”
Uncle added, “We’re not the only ones watching our families starve. If it gets out that someone stole from them, others will try it. Maybe they’ll get all the blame.”
Bulrush just nodded, wishing that worry would stop chewing at his guts.
It started out well enough. Granted, they were all weak, their bellies gaunted into knots under their ribs; but they walked carefully up the trail between two of the Tall Piñon clan villages, past the round wall of the great kiva, and up to the First People’s great house. Grit scraped on the bottom of their yucca-fiber sandals as they climbed the stone steps to the first level. The night was silent but for the faint sigh of wind and the distant hooo-hooo of an owl.