At first the Outcast took her for a Nez Perce, but as he studied her features and her hair and her dress, he changed his mind. She was a Flathead. His tribe had had few dealings with them, and those they had were always at the point of a lance or a knife. He guessed that she had seen at least fifty winters, but he never had been good at judging the age of women. This one was uncommonly attractive and possessed a grace and dignity that impressed him.
The Outcast wondered if the white man had bought her. That happened sometimes among other tribes. The Crows, he had heard, made a habit of it. But then the Crows had their minds in a whirl. It was said that women ruled their tribe, which had made the men of his own tribe laugh. It was also claimed that Crow men used the women in common and that the Crows took their women by stealing them, which made no sense. Why steal a woman if you were going to let other men have her? Maybe it wasn’t true. Rumors about other tribes were not always based on fact.
The white hair moved out of sight of the window, and the Outcast tensed, thinking he was coming outside. But no, the man reappeared holding something the Outcast had never seen before. He did not know what to make of it. It was square, and consisted of many white sheets with blacks marks on them. The white man opened it and then began talking in a loud voice, with much gesturing.
The woman rolled her eyes. She sat in a marvelous thing that rocked back and forth. She was using long metal needles to weave a garment. She said something that caused the old man’s cheeks to grow red.
Then both of them grinned.
The Outcast realized they were very much in love, these two. He remembered the time he had been in love, and was mad at himself.
He had seen enough.
The Outcast ducked down and left. Apparently there were only the two men and the two women in the entire valley. Whoever lived in the other lodges must be gone, or the lodges would be aglow with light.
The Outcast had gone a short way toward the trees when there was a tremendous splash in the lake. He looked, imagining it was a fish, but whatever it was had gone back under, leaving ripples.
Once on the pinto, the Outcast reined to the west. He would spend the night deep in the timber. He must get plenty of sleep. Although he had been banished from his tribe, he had not stopped being a warrior. He still counted coup.
And he had new enemies to slay.
Chapter Four
They came out of the heart of the darkness. There were seven of them—short, stocky warriors as different from other mountain and plains tribes as the night from the day.
Their buckskins were crude and lacked whangs. The sleeves flared from the elbows to the wrists, and on the right hip of each legging were three concentric circles painted in black. They carried ash bows and had quivers filled with arrows fletched with raven feathers. The hilts of their knives were carved from antlers, and the blades were iron.
Most remarkable of all were their faces: low foreheads, thick eyebrows, eyes like black pitch, jutting jaws, and scars. Scars in intricate patterns that covered every inch of skin on their face, deep scars that formed symbols. What they stood for, only the short men could say.
The men moved at night and laid up during the day. Less chance of being seen that way.
They were a secretive people. Bitter experience taught them the need for it. Once they lived far to the south along a great bay. Life had been good. They hunted and fished and ate the hearts of their enemies, as their forefathers had done for more winters than there were blades of grass.
Then a new tribe came. A large tribe in the thousands, compared to their paltry hundreds. The warriors rode on fleet, giant dogs, which the Tunkua later learned were called horses, and did not like having their hearts eaten. They made fierce war on the Tunkua, or Heart Eaters, as they called themselves, and it became apparent that unless the Heart Eaters fled, they would be wiped out.
Councils were held. They could not go south. There was nothing but water. They had canoes, but only a few, and they always stayed close to shore. They were not a seafaring people.
They could not go east. That way lay vast swamps and bayous infested with alligators and snakes.
The west did not appeal to them. The land was dry and hot, much of it desert, and claimed by a tribe they held in great dread, the Shis-Inday.
The only way, then, was for the Heart Eaters to go north. They packed their possessions on travois drawn by dogs, and in the dead of night left the land they loved, bound for the unknown. They crossed a near-endless prairie of waving grass. The plain did not suit them, so they turned to the northwest, and after countless sleeps came to towering mountains capped by snow.
The Heart Eaters marveled. They had never seen mountains so high. They explored and were amazed to discover that while a few tribes had laid claim to territory here and there, much of the mountains belonged to no one. They penetrated deep into the interior, deeper than anyone had ever gone, so deep that the valley they chose had never been trod by human feet. It became their new home. Here they would be safe.
Or so they thought.
Now, hiking briskly up a boulder-strewn slope, the lead warrior paused and looked back the way they had come. He could not see their valley or their village, but he looked anyway.
“You keep doing that,” remarked Splashes Blood, the warrior behind him. “What is it you look for, Skin Shredder?’
Skin Shredder was thinking of one of his wives and their new child, but he did not say that. “By the rising of the sun we will reach the pass.”
Splashes Blood grunted. “They say we cannot get through. They say the Bear People blocked the pass with rocks and dirt.”
“There will be another way.”
“I hope so. We both lost brothers. I lost Ghost Walker and you lost Stands on Moon.”
“The Bear People must be punished,” Skin Shredder declared. “Our brothers will look down from Mic-lan and be pleased with us for avenging them.” In their tongue, Mic-lan was Sky Land, where warriors went after they died. A place of beauty and plenty, with enough hearts to eat for all. “They will honor us with a feast when we join them.”
Splashes Blood had more on his mind. “It is said the Bear People have horses. It is said their women are almost as big as they are. It is said they have strange sticks that make a noise like thunder and can kill from far away. It is said they are—”
“Who says all this?” Skin Shredder cut him off.
“Spirit Walker spied on them before the pass was blocked. He saw many wonders.”
“Are you a child, to be impressed by dogs and size? We are Tunkua. We are the Heart Eaters. We will capture these Bear People and take them back to our village so that all may take part in eating their hearts. Their medicine will be ours.” That was the part Skin Shredder looked forward to the most, the eating and the power that would come from it.
“I would like to have one of their women.”
“Have as in eat or have as in the other?”
“The other.” Splashes Blood quickly added, “Before you say anything, yes, I know Tunkua are only to share their blankets with other Tunkua. But I have long wondered what it would be like to have a Bear Woman.”
“The Bear People are huge and ugly and smell. Were you to lie with one of their females, she would crush you between her legs.”