Petah spoke up. “We are missing folks, Benjamin. Some were caught out when the cloud came. Some are dead. It may take days before we know if others are safe or not.
“Eeee, this is terrible,” White Elk frowned. “I was told this was coming. I should have warned you.”
“Rest your mind, old man,” Petah said. “We need to stop talking and get some sleep. We must get going early. There are people to tend to.”
“If people are hurt, how come you came to find me, Petah?” asked the elder quietly. “Why aren’t you helping your mother?”
“Mother is at the North Piegan village. I don’t think she can get back.”
White Elk shook his head in frustration.
“We made everyone as comfortable as we could, old man,” Petah assured him. “We did what we could for them, but they need you in the village to help get through this. Without you, they will not get well.”
A cabin timber, under great strain, cracked along its grain with the sound of a gunshot. The noise startled everyone awake. Colorless light filtered into the cabin. Dawn had already overtaken them. White Elk walked out to the porch while the others stirred. Dust infested every surface and tall mounds of ash pocked the soils wherever it could sift in from above. In places there were several feet of the material, even on the roof of the building. White Elk called out for everyone to hurry and get out of the camp. He was afraid the roof might collapse.
The small band of Blackfoot scanned the environment. Along the Otatso, the land undulated where ash covered tree trunks and filled in the hollows between the downed timbers. The world looked as if a heavy gray snowstorm had coated the country. The ash continued to fall, cutting off visibility altogether at three-dozen yards. The planet lay muffled beneath a cloak of powdered volcanic glass. There were no forest noises, no birdcalls, no woodpecker drumming, not one scolding from a squirrel.
The four left the little structure for the village. The larger man broke trail over the trees, trying his best to push the ash away a bit as he went so the others would have less trouble. White Elk hobbled at the back of the pack, finding it difficult to climb over scores of blowdowns. Everyone coughed constantly and fell often, but they made fairly good time as they helped one another clear hurdles.
As the trail approached clearings near the village, it skirted a low butte-like projection in the earth. On the other side of it, the Blackfoot had built their community building. The decision to build it below the thirty-foot rock face proved fortuitous. The cooling pyroclastic blast of the day before had almost run its course when it reached the Blackfoot village. Much of the remaining energy in the cloud dissipated as the waning forces took down the forest and damaged homes and outbuildings. A few miles farther to the north and the volcanic storm exhausted itself.
The blast cloud swept around both sides of the rock formation, sparing the community center, a cluster of homes and a community store. Homes beyond the protective shield were heavily damaged and, as everywhere else, all the trees had been toppled. In the dry prairie pastures east of the village, livestock in the open had been killed or badly injured by hot, high velocity winds carrying debris of every description in its teeth.
The ash fall spared nothing. As White Elk and the little band reached the community center, the gritty mineral snow lay two feet on the ground and there was no sign that it would slacken any time soon. White Elk eyed the community center. It possessed a steep metal roof designed to shed heavy snows. The ash sloughed off as it fell from the sky. The building would be safe. Faces were pressed to all the windows, peering out at the four. White Elk waved, then mounted the steps to the building and went inside.
As the elder entered, a sea of humanity heaved toward him, many calling out, their words jumbled together. Hands reached out to him and adults pulled at his clothing to whisk him into the modest community center hall. As he entered the room, which doubled at times as an auditorium, cafeteria, small basketball court and meeting room, he could see that many families had brought blankets and supplies and had huddled in the room overnight. Some were in anguish, tears staining cheeks. People coughed in every corner.
The agony of his joints and his weariness had to be shunted aside. He would minister to the stunned citizenry. Raising his hands above his head, he called out: “Will you please bring everyone into the hall. I need you all here. If anyone is at their homes, bring them here. You go ahead now.”
While the gathering crowd waited for community members to herd others to the building, White Elk sought council. He needed information. What did people know? How many people were lost in the community and in the adjacent reservation on the Canadian side of the border? What had happened elsewhere in Montana, in the West, in Alberta? Did anyone know when the ash would stop falling? Could they get out? What was the condition of the roads?
A trusted council member, Samuel Feathers, in a rawhide vest and Stetson, offered the elder what he could.
“There is little to tell you, White Elk. We have lost communications with the outside. Radio disappeared yesterday; we can’t get broadcasts now. We were able to pick up satellite television for a time, but that is gone. Phones are dead.”
“You must know something. Petah told me that the ash is coming from the Yellowstone country. There has been an explosion. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Feathers nodded, “we were able to pick up the TV news. There was talk of a volcano in Wyoming; they think it was at Yellowstone. It was very big. The cities of Denver, Cheyenne and Salt Lake; they have been badly affected. But we don’t know more. We haven’t gotten any news since nightfall.”
“What about the people here. How bad is it here?”
“It’s hard to say. People are out looking for missing loved ones, those that were not at home when the big cloud came over. Children had left school. Some were playing outside, you know. There are a dozen children missing and some badly hurt by burns, branches and flying debris. I’d say seventy percent of us are accounted for here on the west side. We don’t know the fate of the eastern and northern villages. We have a dozen confirmed dead, including children.”
Many Blackfoot filled the hall. White Elk came forward onto the tiny stage at the south end of the room and raised his hands high. He asked for everyone to quiet down and be still. He scanned the many faces, many a brow furrowed with worry.
“Good people, I am more than a little happy to see you. I’m glad you are all here. A terrible thing has befallen us. But we must not dwell on what has happened. I want us to think about what we will do tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. We need to take action. We must help our neighbors, and we must see to it that the injured have care.
“Now I must tell you something you could not know, but what my mother told me less than a week ago. I went to Livingstone on the Yellowstone River to see her. She is in the 100th year of her age. Mother told me about this very day, this tragedy we now suffer. She said it would happen. She told me that the mountains would rise up to heaven and the valley of the Yellowstone would turn over. Those are her words as she said them to me. My mother warned me that I must come back to you and tell you to prepare for the future. She said for us to go back to the old ways, to revive the old ways, or we will not survive.”
The crowd rumbled with banter. White Elk raised a hand high again to quiet down the many.
“We do not know what is to come. We don’t know when this dry gray rain will stop falling. We don’t know if another terrible cloud will descend upon us. But we do know that there are many of us and we are strong. We have many hands, many skills. We will go to work right away. So today, starting right now, I want you all to come forward and tell us what needs to be done. Is your house damaged? Is your child hurt or missing? Have you lost a loved one? How much food do you have in your larder? Do you have water? Do you need medicine? How much livestock have we lost? Bring your information here as soon as you can.