“Think of your fame, you mean,” Double Walker said. “You are the one who wants to count more coup than any Blackfoot who ever lived.”
“I make no secret of that. We are warriors. Warriors kill. The more we kill, the greater we are. I will be the greatest one day. Our children and our grand-children and our grandchildren’s children will sing songs about me.”
“Here he goes again,” Small Otter said.
Black Elk held up a hand. “Enough. If Mad Wolf wants to kill Grizzly Killer, I wish him success. My interest is the girl, Golden Hair. But Mad Wolf and I cannot kill the white Shoshone or steal the white girl alone. Are you with us? Are we together in this?”
Double Walker shook his war club. “I am with you.”
“Good.”
Small Otter scowled. “We have been friends since we were little. We have grown together. We have hunted and played and gone on the war path together. So yes, I am with you. But I want it known I do not think we are doing right. I have a bad feeling.”
“You always have bad feelings,” Mad Wolf said.
Black Elk slung his bow across his back. “Then we are agreed. We must hurry. The whites are making for a pass high up that will take them to the other side of the mountains. But I know another way. A faster way. We can get to the other side ahead of them and catch them unprepared.”
Hurriedly they mounted. With Black Elk in the lead, they rode south along the edge of the forest until they came to a game trail pockmarked by elk and deer tracks. It led up a long slope to a wall of rock well below the summit. The wall had a break in it, a break barely wide enough for a horse, but it brought them to the other side of the mountain well before the whites could hope to make it through the high pass.
Drawing rein, the four Blackfeet surveyed the maze of peaks and shadowed valleys. All was deathly still, even the wind. Not so much as the chirp of a bird reached their ears.
“I do not like this country,” Small Otter said.
“There must be much game,” Double Walker remarked.
“And plenty of ghosts.”
Mad Wolf rolled his eyes. “Not that again.”
“Only a fool is not afraid of ghosts. You know as well as I do that they like forest and rivers. Look below us. What do you see? Forests, and in the distance a river.”
“I see smoke,” Double Walker said, and pointed.
Rising out of a shadowed valley below were gray tendrils that writhed and coiled like snakes. The valley was thick with timber and dark with gloom thanks to sheer red cliffs that hemmed it on three sides. One of the cliffs had been split long ago by a mighty cataclysm.
“A village?” Small Otter wondered.
“Not enough smoke,” was Black Elk’s opinion. “It is a campfire.”
“We should go see,” Mad Wolf proposed.
The game trail wound down into the dark valley. They were just entering the dense forest when Double Walker thrust out a muscular arm. “Look there!”
A dead cow elk lay on her back, her legs wide, her belly ripped open. Ropy loops of intestine and other organs had spilled out, along with a flood of blood, now dry.
“Dead five or six sleeps, at least,” Small Otter guessed.
Black Elk leaned down as low as he could to examine the cow elk. “I have never seen a kill like this. See these bite marks? Where something has chewed meat off the rib bone? What animal bites like that?”
None of them could say. They rode on, their bows strung and shafts notched. The stillness of the forest was unnatural, the quiet absolute. The dense ranks of trees could hide a multitude of enemies.
“There are ghosts here, I tell you,” Small Otter whispered.
A stream gurgled to their right, but they couldn’t see it. Once Black Elk thought he glimpsed a flicker of movement. He didn’t like this place, but he didn’t tell the others. Mad Wolf and Double Walker would tease him as they teased Small Otter about ghosts.
The smell of smoke grew stronger even as the cliffs seemed to grow higher. When they looked straight up, all they saw were the cliffs and a small patch of blue sky.
“Let us leave this place,” Small Otter declared.
Black Elk gave him a sharp glance. As he did, once again he thought he glimpsed movement in the heavy undergrowth. He strained his eyes but saw nothing.
The trail curved, and a clearing appeared. But it wasn’t the clearing that caused Black Elk to draw rein in amazement. It was what stood on the other side of the clearing.
Mad Wolf, Double Walker and Small Otter came to a stop to the right and left of him. Their expressions mirrored the same astonishment.
“This cannot be,” Double Walker whispered.
“I would ask you to hit me to wake me, but I know I am already awake,” Small Otter said.
Mad Wolf made a stabbing gesture. “Are the whites everywhere now? It is one of their wooden lodges.”
Black Elk thought he understood. “This is where Grizzly Killer and the others are coming. They must have friends in that lodge.”
“We should kill them and wait in ambush,” Mad Wolf advised. “Grizzly Killer will ride up and—” He suddenly stopped, his eyebrows arching toward his hair. “Do you hear what I hear?”
From the structure came loud, merry singing. Not good singing, either, but the kind that set the ears on edge.
“It is a woman,” Black Elk said.
“She has the voice of a frog,” was Mad Wolf’s opinion.
At a gesture from Black Elk, they dismounted. Each tied his horse to a tree. Then, bows at the ready, they advanced in a skirmish line, spreading out as they went. They were within a stone’s throw when the singing suddenly stopped.
Black Elk halted and the others followed his example. He had seen such dwellings before. Unlike the buffalo-hide lodges of his people, which had flaps for entering and leaving, the lodges of the whites had rectangles of wood that swung out and in. He remembered that the entrances were usually in the middle of the front wall, and sure enough, he saw a rectangle of wood in this wall. He also saw a square opening to one side, covered by a red cloth. Even as he set eyes on it, the red cloth parted and a pale face peered out at them. A female face.
“She has seen us!” Mad Wolf cried.
Black Elk braced for an outcry, for a shriek of warning that would bring armed white men rushing from the lodge. But the woman didn’t cry out. She didn’t scream. She did the last thing Black Elk expected her to do: she smiled at them. Then the red cloth closed.
“That was strange,” Small Otter whispered.
“She showed no fear,” Double Walker said.
Black Elk sighted down his arrow at the square with the red cloth. He was sure that was where the white men would show themselves. But to his surprise, the flat wood in the center of the front wall opened and out stepped the white woman. She showed all her teeth, and held what appeared to be long needles and part of a blanket.
Instantly, all four of them trained their bows on her.
“Why is she smiling?” Small Otter wondered.
“She is ugly,” Double Walker said. “If she was not wearing clothes, I would take her for a buffalo.”
To their utter bewilderment, the woman began to sing.
Black Elk glanced at his friends. It was plain they shared his perplexity. “Be careful,” he cautioned. “This might be a trick.”
The white woman smiled and sang and was not afraid, not even when Mad Wolf took a step toward her and made as if to shoot an arrow into her belly. “I will spare our ears.”
“Wait,” Small Otter said uneasily. “I do not like this. What if her head is in a whirl?”