Big Djahn Staiklee of Krooguh, whose clan of birth usually ranged farther south, where the minuscule dart-horns were more common than this far north on the prairie, grinned through a sticky, blood-crusty light-brown beard. “I’m no mean bowman, as any here can attest, but I’m here to say that I’ve missed more than one of those lightning-sprung little antelopes. If the girl has the kind of eye-hand coordination that such a feat required, think what a maiden-archer she’ll make in a few more winters’ time.”
One after the other, the more important of the men solemnly praised the hunting prowess of Teenah Skaht. Then the animal was hung up, and opened, and the liver and heart given to the little girl to either eat on the spot or bear back to her family’s yurt. When she trotted out of sight, she was munching happily while dribbling blood down her chin and onto the bare chest of her nut-brown body.
The other children received such praise as their accomplishments merited, then were invited to watch the cleaning and skinning and butchering of the varied assortment of small game they had killed and fetched into camp, with the older ones being urged to help and thus learn more of the necessary skills of survival on the prairie.
While her body moved rhythmically at milling the wild grains, Bettylou Hanson thought of all the things she had learned in this last seven-day. She had always heard that the horse-nomads were a filthy people who never bathed deliberately and wore their clothes until they rotted off. What she had learned here was that they were all of them more cleanly than were most of her own people; where folk at the Abode of the Righteous washed face, hands and arms several times each day, they washed the rest of their bodies once or twice a month in good weather, far less frequently in cold weather. Horseclansfolk, on the other hand, seemed to make almost daily use of their commodious sweat yurt—steaming in the damp darkness, then emerging to rinse with sun-warmed water and going about their various tasks nude until sun and the ever-constant wind had dried their hair and skin, since they did not consider sight of a naked human body offensive or sinful as had the Righteous. Bettylou was beginning to become accustomed to the sight of naked women or girls, but she still could not help blushing and turning her gaze away at the naked boys or men.
Her mindspeak abilities—both in reception and sending—were manifesting themselves by veritable leaps and bounds through dint of practice and the patient tutelage of her mentors, Chief Milo Morai, Ehstrah, Gahbee, Ilsah and most of the other men, women and prairiecats with whom she came into contact. Everyone seemed to be more than happy to take or make the time to help a newly discovered mindspeaker to develop her inborn ability.
In addition to folks, cats and horses, Milo had told her that a really adept mindspeaker could enter the minds of and converse after a fashion with such diverse creatures as wolves, bears, members of the weasel clans, treecats and other wild felines, dogs, swine and even the occasional wild ruminant—domestic cattle and sheep being basically too unintelligent to do much real thinking, being ruled by instinct, mostly.
Milo had also averred that mindspeak ability ran in families, and, thinking on that, she thought she could puzzle out now a riddle that had perplexed her all her life, since first she had heard it—the tale of her mother’s granduncle, Zebediah the Pig Man.
They had said that Zeb Alfredson had been little older than Bettylou now was when the present Elder Claxton’s father had assigned him the task of herding the score or so adult and juvenile pigs that the Abode then owned. Sometime during the first year that he headed the detail of pigboys, a sow died in farrowing, and the only piglet that survived her did so because Zeb took him up and nursed him with pig milk he somehow obtained from other sows. This piglet grew into a vastly oversized boar, and Zeb announced that his name was Nimrod.
Zeb persuaded the Elder and the Patriarchs not to butcher Nimrod but to retain him as a stud boar. He also persuaded them to allow the swine to run free in the woods and outer pastures and fallow fields, rather than keeping them cooped up in the filthy, malodorous pens so much of the time, demonstrating his ability to ride out on a small mule and bring them all in at the end of each day. Since his method of handling the swine freed a half-dozen boys for more of the endless tasks of farming and stock-raising, Zeb quickly became a very popular young man with the Elder and the Patriarchs and there was even speculation that he might someday be a Patriarch himself.
Then, of a crisp autumn day, he rode out to fetch in the swine, but he did not ride alone, for bear tracks had been seen at several spots in the hinterlands. He rode along with one of his younger brothers, each of them armed with a rifle, a bear spear and a long, heavy-bladed knife. They rode not the familiar mules, but a brace of fine, tall hunting horses, less likely to become hysterically unmanageable at the sound or smell of a bear or other predator.
What happened after the two rode out of sight of the Abode of the Righteous, that long-ago day, no man knew for certain. The reports of two rifles were heard and some thought to hear human screams and bestial roarings, all muted with distance. The son and heir of the then Elder led a party of mounted men out at the gallop, but the woods were then more extensive and by the time they came across the proper clearing, it was all over.
Zeb Alfredson’s younger brother lay dead, throat torn out and lower face bitten off. Zeb himself had been terribly savaged by the bear and survived only bare minutes past his rescuers’ arrival. Both rifles had been fired, and Zeb’s spear was covered in blood from point to crossbar.
Of the huge silvertip bear, precious little remained other than a gashed and bloody hide full of torn flesh and splintered bones. Nor was the bear’s nemesis difficult to guess, for the clearing was full of agitated pigs, pigs of all ages and sexes and sizes, a few of them with hides scored by long, sharp claws, but all with bloody snouts and two of the boars with tatters of gory bearskin hanging from their tushes.
The men had gotten nothing meaningful out of Zeb; he was just too far gone in pain and loss of blood to make any sense. But it was said that just moments before the life left his battered body. Nimrod shouldered his four hundred pounds through the gathered group of men, stood looking down on Zeb’s torn, blood-streaked face, and, as the single, remaining eye began to glaze over, raised his snout and fearsome tushes skyward and voiced what could only have been called a howl, a sound such as none of the farmers had ever heard any swine make before or since.
The two bodies were borne back to the Abode of the Righteous, and it was not until morning that anyone thought to go out and bring in the herd of swine, and by then they all were gone. The hunters tracked the herd with hounds and did catch a few, but found that the only way to bring them back was to kill them. Nimrod was sighted on two occasions, but no one ever was able to get a clear shot at him—he seemed to know just what the rifles were and the capabilities and limitations of them. On another occasion, the hounds cornered him, but by the time the hunters arrived, the monstrous boar was long departed and the ground was littered with dead and dying hounds. At that point, the hunters gave up the pursuit.
“Could he have been a mindspeaker with the pigs, Chief Milo?” Bettylou asked after recounting the old tale. “He was my mother’s father’s brother, after all.”
Milo nodded. “He almost certainly was, Bettylou, judging on the basis of your tale. Swine are very intelligent, you know, much more so than dogs, for instance, and the boar Nimrod must have truly loved your ancestor to have been willing to lead his herd against a full-grown bear to protect him. You clearly come of good stock, girl. It pleases me that you’ll bear Horseclans children.”