“Tomorrow.”Yellow Petal glared up defiantly, as if daring them to contradict her.
The warriors traded looks, the thin one finally shrugging.
“We need talk to Spots.” Bandy Legs propped his hands on his hips. “Not in trouble. Just talk.”
Yellow Petal nodded. “I’ll tell him when I see him.”
“See you do,” came the hard reply.
As they turned to leave, the thin warrior reached out, pulling several slices of meat off the rack. He tucked them in the tail of his war shirt, then smiled insolently at Yellow Petal before they walked away side by side.
Spots took a deep breath, wondering when his body had gotten so hot. Nerve sweat slipped down the side of his face.
Yellow Petal stood, Baby still cradled, and walked over to the woodpile. With her free hand she picked up a length of wood and settled it onto the fire. Then, taking a couple of steps closer, she said, “Stay where you are.”
“You going to water me to see if I grow like the corn?”
“I wouldn’t like the harvest if you did.” She stepped over to the cradleboard and lifted it from the cottonwood branch. Baby had finally given up on the nipple. Yellow Petal raised her to her shoulder, bounced her enough to get a burp, and then laid the little girl on the grass beside the cradleboard.
“They’re crossing the stream, turning uphill,” she said. “My suspicion is that they’ll head up the trail toward the trees. When they get there, one of them will stay and watch.”
“Why?” Spots demanded. “What did I do? What do they want with me?”
“Information,” she said quietly as she wiped Baby’s bottom with leaves.
He gave that some thought. She had always been a little quicker than he about some things. He could spin a joke at a moment’s notice, but she seemed to have a better grasp of real things.
“Ripple’s vision?” he asked.
“Do you know of anyone else that a god has appeared to with stories about how to destroy the First People?”
“But how did they hear about that?”
“The First People have ears everywhere.”
“So, what am I going to do?”
“Stay right there and don’t move.” She tucked Baby back into the cradleboard, lowering the flap so that the sun didn’t shine in the little girl’s face. “Gods, it just goes to show you, Spots.”
“What does?”
“That you’d do anything to worm your way out of having to water the corn.”
Through the stalks, he watched as she stepped down to the water’s edge and scooped the brown ceramic jar full. Raising it to her shoulder she strode up the bank and then into the cornfield, the jar held high.
“Hey, I was going to tell you—”
She poured the first jarful right onto the back of his head.
Leather Hand fingered the beautiful pot as he sat beside the fire and stared up at the star-washed night sky. Firelight cast a yellow ring around the juniper and piñon just back from the small spring.
Ages of wind and water had hollowed out this little niche in the sandstone and exposed the underlying shale formation. Water trickled in a mossy seep at the base of the sandstone. People had camped here since the emergence. Bits of fire-cracked rock, charcoal stains, and the refuse of old camps lay strewn about.
Tracker had found the pot here, lying on its side in the rocks up from the sedge-filled spring. He had been waiting when Leather Hand had led his squad of warriors out of the breaks and to this small secluded hollow beneath the gray caprock.
Leather Hand studied Tracker. He was of the Deep Canyon folk, short, thick of body, with a round, somewhat squat face. He wore a breechcloth belted with leather, a ceramic canteen dangling from a strap over his shoulder. His collar-length black hair was contained by a red cloth headband and hung straight, covering his ears and framing his face. He hunkered at the edge of the firelight now, limp hands dangling over his knees, eyes like hard obsidian pebbles as he watched Leather Hand inspect the pot.
Leather Hand turned the vessel slowly. Thin-walled, light as a feather, it was white, painted with black lines in the design of the Red Lacewing Clan. He knew the workmanship. Only the finest of potters were allowed to make ceramic vessels for the First People. He tapped a thumbnail against the thin wall, hearing it ring, the sound almost musical.
“The one stolen from the dead Priest?” Turquoise Fox asked. He sat across the fire, inspecting his arrows one after another, ensuring the fletching was straight on the cane shafts and that each finely chipped stone war point was tight in its bindings.
Lifting the pot to his nostrils, Leather Hand sniffed, catching the faintest odor of stew. “They certainly licked it clean.”