People of the Moon(36)
“It was old White Eye.”
That didn’t make sense. Bad Cast grimaced, rubbed a knuckle in his eye, and said, “What? You mean the old shaman?”
“That’s him.” Wrapped Wrist’s tone didn’t leave much doubt.
“Why? What have you done this time? Wait. Don’t tell me. He has a daughter, and you just happened to get caught polishing your stick inside her?”
“No! Nothing like that.”
“All right, what did you two do?” Soft Cloth demanded, first looking at Bad Cast, then twisting her head to squint up at Wrapped Wrist where he hung like a vulture.
“It’s not us … I mean me or Bad Cast. It’s Ripple.”
“Ripple?” Bad Cast reached out and pulled the deerhide so that it covered Soft Cloth’s enchanting body. “What’s Ripple done?”
“He had a vision,” Wrapped Wrist said dully.
Soft Cloth shook her hair back. “This story he’s telling about Cold Bringing Woman? About being able to destroy the First People? Is that what White Eye wants to know about?”
“It seems that he already knows.”
“So?” she pressed.
“He believes.”
Bad Cast winced. “And he wants us to … what?”
“Take Ripple to the Mountain Witch.”
“Absolutely not!” Soft Cloth cried, bolting upright.
Bad Cast made an appeasing gesture, saying, “Wait. Let’s think this thing through.”
“There’s nothing to think through,” she insisted. “You’re not going near any witch. If Wrapped Wrist and Ripple got themselves into this mess, they can get themselves out of it.”
He could see no give in her hard eyes, or in the set of her mouth. He shot an apologetic look up and shrugged.
Wrapped Wrist’s expression had gone grim. “You don’t have any choice, friend. White Eye named you specifically. He wants you to carry messages from the Mountain Witch’s camp.”
“Why me?” Bad Cast cried, sensing Soft Cloth’s building rage.
“He said that no one would suspect you.” Wrapped Wrist pulled back from the smoke hole, standing as he called down, “I’ll meet you at high sun at Ripple’s.You’ll need a little time to pack.”
“Wait!” Bad Cast cried, stumbling up from the bedding. But Wrapped Wrist was already gone. The baby was crying, having been wakened.
From the hot glare in Soft Cloth’s eyes, there would be no languid lovemaking this morning.
Eleven
Leather Hand considered his personal empire as he climbed out of the last canyon and onto the ridgeline that would finally take him to Tall Piñon Town.
His domain embraced a landscape of high mountains rising above sandstone, limestone, and shale plateaus. Spruce and fir forests on the slopes of the Spirit Mountains ceded to piñon-juniper woodlands patched with ponderosa, edged by oak, serviceberry, and currant brush on the plateaus. It in turn gave way to scrub oak, sage, rabbitbrush, chamisa, and four-wing saltbush in the canyons and drainages. Finally to the southwest lay desert where the rabbitbrush and greasewood grew sparse, clinging to dunes and sand shadows. Alternating with dirt and rock, a few clump grasses held sway, waiting for the occasional spring, monsoon, or fall rain. In places the open basins consisted of clay, scabbed here and there with calluses of saltbush or the few spears of sickly grass.
It was a land of color, ranging from bloodred sandstone formations to yellow clay and sand, or, in places, gray silt and black shale. The darker greens of juniper and piñon clashed with a brighter verdure of cottonwood, ash, and willow in the stream bottoms.
Above it all was the sky—a vast dome of the most impossible blue, ever in contrast with stone, soil, leaf, or flower. Color was everywhere, and this more than anything else perpetually left him feeling humbled.
He had grown up in Fourth Night House, one of the Straight Path Nation’s great houses far to the southeast, where the land’s only color was a dull yellow leached from the soil and eroding sandstone. Even the sky there had a pale hue, more brassy with a perpetual haze.
His family, First People of the Red Lacewing Clan, had lived in the compact two-story multiroom great house. Their settlement consisted of three extended families who shared a patchwork of gravel-mulched farm plots. While his mother had been the Matron his father’s duty to the Blessed Sun had been to protect and maintain the turquoise trail that led to the mines in the foothills east of the Great River.
On the day young Leather Hand had first traveled westward and entered Straight Path Canyon, he had been awed by the tall buff sandstone walls that contrasted to the pristine white of the great houses. It was as if color had finally burst into his life. Now, as he led his party up out of Deep Canyon, he swore he would never live without it.