Chapter One

Moon When the Cherries are Ripe, Full (August)
Four Years After the Cloud Fell (AD 1890)
Along the Red Paint River
Alliance Territory

Speaks While Leaving stood before the Council chiefs and waited for their stunned silence to break. It was her father, One Bear, who first recovered.

“What do you mean, ‘No’?” he asked.

“I mean no,” she answered. “I will not tell the Council of my vision.”

This time her pronouncement was met with angry, disapproving murmurs. Chiefs spoke without regard for manners or propriety, and voices around the lodge increased in urgency and volume. The summer wind freshened and the dusty smell of dry grass swirled past the raised lodgeskins. The people sitting outside the lodge, hopeful for word about the new vision from Speaks While Leaving, began to stir as the story of what was transpiring crept toward them.

“She refuses?”

“She cannot!”

Inside, “She insults us,” a chief said.

“She insults the entire Council!”

Tempers grew hot around her, knife blades glowing in the flame of her insolence, but from the tail of her eye Speaks While Leaving saw the one chief who remained cold as stone.

Storm Arriving–her husband until just a few days past–only stared at her. Back straight, fists on cross-legged knees, his rage was a focused heat in his eyes. The sharp edge of his disregard cut her heart, her soul, but his anger had nothing to do with her most recent vision or her refusal to share its content. No, her former husband’s disapproval had begun months before, when they found themselves at odds about the future of the People.

She needed to be honest with herself: her marriage to Storm Arriving could have survived that schism if she had stayed at home with the People. But she had not. She had left, traveling across the Salt Waters to the kingdom of the Iron Shirts, widening the rift between them. When their infant daughter died of the red fever during the homeward voyage, it was the killing blow. Last night Storm Arriving struck the dance drum and threw away the stick–and with it his marriage. It had been a surprise to many, but not to her. She knew it was just the last breath of their union succumbing to a long illness.

Her actions now could do nothing to deepen Storm Arriving’s disregard for her, but they would affect the Council’s opinion of her.

All her adult life, Speaks While Leaving had been visited by nevé-stanevóo’o, the four Sacred Persons, guardians of the corners of the world, who brought her visions of the future, visions filled with advice and guidance for the People.

Dutifully, she had always described these visions to her elders. But four days ago she had been given another vision, and the power of it had been immense, shaking the earth, rattling rocks in the river bed, panicking the whistler herds, and waking people all across the mile-wide encampment of the People. It was a vision unlike any she had ever experienced, in both its clarity and its urgency, and it was perfectly clear that it was not to be treated like anything she had experienced before.

Her father stood to assert control over the growing tumult of the Council. He held out his hands to demand quiet. Slowly, the chiefs complied. When order had been restored, he turned to his daughter.

“You have never refused to speak of your visions to the Council,” One Bear said.

“No,” she admitted. “I have not.”

“Does this vision deal with the future of the People?”

“Yes,” she said simply.

“Is it important that we hear this vision?”

“Yes,” she said again. “Very important.”

His voice rumbled with the constrained agitation that only a father of a recalcitrant, embarrassing child can feel. “Then why do you refuse to share it with us? This latest vision of yours…the ground trembled when the spirit powers visited you! That has never happened before. And yet it is this, the most powerful vision that you refuse to share? Why?”

Speaks While Leaving frowned. “You are not ready to hear it,” she said.

Again the lodge was filled with a hubbub of disbelief and affront. One Bear struggled to remind the gathered chiefs of their manners.

Stands Tall in Timber, Keeper of the Sacred Arrows, rose to stand at One Bear’s side, and together their silent example brought the meeting back to order.

“Speaks While Leaving,” One Bear said. “You have made your position plain. You believe that you know better than the collected wisdom of the Council. During your lifetime, I have known you to be stubborn, headstrong, and full of argument, but this is an arrogance I have never seen, even in you.” He paused to give weight to his disapprobation. “Tell me, Daughter: when will the Great Council, with its grey heads and its many years of experience, when will this body of elders be worthy enough to hear of this vision?”

His rebuke hurt, but it was not unexpected, and she maintained her equanimity in the face of it. As arrogant as she had been–for she could not disagree with her father’s assessment–she knew that handling this vision called for even more. She steeled herself for what she had to say.

“First, Father, answer me this,” she said, looking around her. “Where are the chiefs from the Inviters, our greatest ally? I do not see them here.” She saw her father’s gaze narrow and his jaw jut forward as it did when he was holding his temper in check.

“And from the Cloud People, where are their chiefs? And the Little Star People? The Sage People? The Cut-Hair? Are we an alliance without any allies?”

She turned full circle and looked at the chiefs around her. Summer was the gathering time for the ten bands of the People; a time of plenty, of hunting, of story circles, and of sweetheart dances. But this summer there had been strife, and as Speaks While Leaving looked around the lodge, she saw many more were missing than just their allies.

“Where are the chiefs of the Hair Rope Band, my father? And the Flexed Leg Band? This is not the Great Council of the Alliance. This is not the Council of the Forty-Four chiefs of the People.” She turned to make her argument to them all. “This is the Council of Those who Agree with One Bear.”

“Daughter!”

“You have had your say, Father. Now I will have mine.” She gestured to the empty places around the lodge. “Our Alliance is fractured. The Council is fractured. The People are fractured. Who should we follow? Should we follow men like him?” she asked, pointing to Storm Arriving. “Men who believe only in the rule of bullet and arrow, who want only to spill vé’hó’e blood? Or should we follow men like you, Father? Men who believe that piety and sacrifice alone will bring forth the changes we desperately need? You two–my father and my husband–you have not been able to agree on anything for moons. Do you think that today you will be able to agree on the meaning of my vision? Do you think you speak for all those who are absent?”

She turned as she spoke, addressing the body and no longer just her father. “The Council is split. We have no leader. The two factions are tearing us apart. You agree on nothing, and nothing gets done. When the day comes that both sides are willing to hear a voice other than their own, then you will be worthy of hearing from me!”

From his place among the war chiefs, Storm Arriving’s voice cut through the silence, a growl made through clenched teeth.

“Just what do you think you are, I wonder.”

She stared straight at him, affronting him, insulting him in front of the entire Council.

“I am the woman who was mother to your child,” she said in a flat, even tone. “I am the woman who was your wife. I am the woman who you once loved, and the woman who loves you still, despite my pain. I deserve respect from you, but I think you have forgotten how to respect anyone, yourself most of all.”

She glared at him until her resolve began to waver, then turned and walked past the chiefs to the doorflap. She stepped out of the lodge and into the throng of people who crowded outside. They gazed at her with that mixture of wide-eyed wonder and reluctant fear that had dogged her all her adult life. But with that fearful wonderment, she saw also a yearning, an earnest hunger for answers to their questions.

What will happen to us?

Who should we fear?

Who are our friends?

What should we do?

To her, the vision cleared the fog that shrouded the possible paths of their future, but the choice went against wisdom, against tradition, against her own judgment. The Council, split by interpretations of her previous vision, would surely splinter under the content of this one. And the people around her? They would be more lost than ever.

The breeze tugged at the ends of her short hair, brutally cut in grief after her daughter’s death–was it only two moons since that awful day? Her grief was so fresh in her heart that, selfishly, she refused to cause others even more by giving them answers that would not soothe. She walked through the crowd and locked the secret of their salvation in her breast, praying that the time to reveal it would come soon.

***

George was nervous.

It wasn’t your standard, everyday, giddy-laugh-and-get-on-with-it type of nervous, no. This was an entirely different breed of nervous. This was a gut-flipping, hand-rattling type of nervous that came night on to panic.

The blood sang in George’s ears and his throat was tight and dry. He swallowed against the knot and glanced over at the two friends who had volunteered to help him through this ordeal, but the dour expressions they wore only accentuated his own misery. He took a deep breath of fresh evening air and let it out, slowly, through taut lips. He shook his head.

“Aw, Hell,” he said, putting some brass in his backbone. “This is silly. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Whistling Elk squinted into the distance, pondering the question. “He could throw the gifts back in your face, I suppose.”

“Whip you down to the river,” Limps said, his voice as somber as his features.

Whistling Elk nodded. “Yes. He could whip you down to the river, and then drag you through the camp, shouting to everyone how you took his sister to wife without his permission–“

“Against his word,” Limps added.

“Thank you,” George interrupted, stopping them. “Thank you, both of you. To be honest, I didn’t really want to hear what the worst could be.”

Limps frowned. “Next time, do not ask.”

George chuckled, more to manufacture some nerve than out of any good humor. “After all, the worst would be if he killed me outright, eh?” He laughed again and regarded his friends.

“It is possible,” Whistling Elk said reluctantly. “I heard that he was very angry after the Council…”

Limps stopped him with a gesture and studied George’s features for a moment. “He does not want an answer to that question, either,” he told Whistling Elk.

“Oh, for shit’s sake,” George said, switching to English as he always did when a good curse was required. Sweat started to trickle down the nape of his neck, despite the cool evening breeze.

The sun of the late summer’s day was setting and the roiling clouds wore clothes of rose-pink and salmon-red, glowing brightly against the deep blue sky. Musky smoke drifted in the air as evening meals were prepared over fires of dried buffalo chips.

George’s lodge stood nearby. A thin line of smoke drifted upward through the hole in the top and from inside came the quiet tune that Mouse Road–now George’s wife–sang to herself as she went about her evening chores.

Outside, the three men stopped dawdling and prepared for their own chore. Each man had an item for the coming ritual.

At Whistling Elk’s feet was a bundled pair of buffalo robes, each pelt thick with wintertime hair. Next to Limps, a stake was stuck in the ground and tied to it was a pair of whistlers–the large, lizard-like beasts that the People rode instead of the slower, less hardy horses that the Spaniards had brought to the New World. And, in George’s trembling hands was a parfleche of folded rawhide painted with long diamonds and triangles in blue and white; inside the packet was a piece of red Trader’s cloth, and swaddled inside that were four black feathers from the tail of a mountain eagle.

These items–the robes, the whistlers, and the eagle feathers–comprised the bride-price George would offer to Storm Arriving, Mouse Road’s brother. It was not a rich price, but George was not rich in things valued by the People.

In the four years since he had come to live among them, George hadn’t had time or opportunity to amass any personal wealth; not by Cheyenne standards, not by anyone’s. His work first as a translator, then as liaison, and finally as an advocate for the People, had kept him travelling the world–to Washington, to Alta California, to Cuba, even to the royal courts of Spain–all in service to the Cheyenne Alliance in their struggle against the vé’hó’e, the men of the White Nations. During those years, the charity of his neighbors and friends had relieved him from the day-to-day struggle that was part of Cheyenne life. But it had also made it unnecessary for him to hunt the buffalo, breed the whistlers, or capture the eagles that would have provided him with the wealth to manage a respectable bride-price.

And so it was with these meager gifts, some of which were gifts themselves, that George readied himself to cross the camp of the gathered bands, find Storm Arriving, and offer them as a price for an extraordinary woman.

To George, it seemed neither right to offer any price, nor proper to offer so little. Mouse Road was both un-buyable and priceless. In truth, the fact that such a ritual was even called for still amazed him; it was very far beyond any future he’d ever imagined for himself.

George and Mouse Road’s courtship had occurred without their intention; it had grown with each furtive look and every trivial favor they had traded over the years. Their love had come upon them unsuspected, like the sun breaking through a clouded sky. George had been particularly unprepared, as his love for her had put him at odds with Storm Arriving, who when asked had denied George permission to stand as suitor to his younger sister. George had tried to honor the edict, but last summer, during the shipboard voyage home from Spain’s royal court, the young couple’s love strengthened and they realized that, according to the customs of the People, they had effectively eloped.

Unconventional was not the word George would have used to describe their romance. Unconventional was a word best suited to a widow who remarried too soon, or a man who took a bride ten years his senior. No, their romance was beyond unconventional; it was beyond all the established norms of his upbringing, and yet, it did not seem improper. In fact, as he listened to his wife’s quiet humming, as he thought of her strength, her devotion, her clear-eyed view of the world and her powerful love for him, being married to Mouse Road seemed the most proper thing in the world.

And so he tucked his concerns away: this marriage might have come from the far side of convention, but it was well away from any taint of impropriety. He was satisfied, and glad of it. A smile crept over his lips, though, as he imagined his father’s reaction to his new daughter-in-law. How would President Custer greet Mouse Road when she was presented on his son’s arm?

The smile faded. Such a meeting would never happen, and George had a more immediate task before him.

Among the People there were many rules and customs. An elopement could be accepted if, after the fact, the husband brought the bride’s family the price he should have offered beforehand. But, in bringing such paltry gifts to a brother who had explicitly denied the husband permission, well, George realized that Whistling Elk was wrong. Having his gifts thrown back in his face was probably the best of all likely outcomes, not the worst.

“Come,” George said. “I’ve put this off for too long.”

“Work grows no easier for waiting,” Limps agreed.

Whistling Elk picked up the heavy roll of buffalo robes and hoisted them across his back. Limps untied the leader ropes that tethered the two whistlers. George, with his small parcel and its feathers, turned and spoke to his wife inside the lodge.

“Mouse Road,” he said. “We are going.”

Her humming continued.

“Mouse Road? Did you hear me? We are going.”

Her quiet song neither stopped nor faltered.

“She ignores you,” Limps said, patting George’s shoulder.

“She is nervous, too,” Whistling Elk said.

George understood. Storm Arriving’s response would affect her as well, and more deeply than it could possibly affect him. He squared his shoulders and, with nods of readiness from the others, turned toward the center of camp.

The whistlers grumbled. A drake and a hen, they were a nesting pair, and more valuable for the fact, but nesting pairs had strong bonds and the drake flashed patches of color across his chameleon skin to show his displeasure at being moved so late in the day–dusk was when he preferred to see his mate settled in for the night, not a time for setting out on a journey. George smelled the cinnamon scent from the drake’s skin and heard his notes of warning reverberate through the bony crest that curved back from the top of his head. Limps spoke a few calming words to soothe the animal, and the drake faded his display, his complaints quieting to a throaty flutter as he consented to being led away into the gloaming.

The gentle sounds of evening embraced them. In their lodges, families gathered in conversation and laughter. The prairie grass beyond the camp was alive with the music of sleepy songbirds and the shimmer of early crickets. A breeze brought the whisper of distant trees and the sound of water rushing along the rocks of the Red Paint River. The dusty air smelled of sun-dried grass, but the quickening of autumn promised a morning dew.

George considered his two friends as they walked.

Limps was a broad-shouldered man of mature years and rough-hewn features. In the twilight, his loose hair was a dark mass that shrouded his face. Only the ruddy glint of sunset in his eyes proved him to be substance and not made of shadow. To strangers, George had never known him to say a word, and even among friends he spoke little. But George had learned that when he did speak, his words had been carefully considered. Together, the two of them had seen births and deaths, war and peace, and George considered the older man a loyal and dependable friend.

On George’s other side was Whistling Elk, and a man more different than Limps was hard to imagine. Whistling Elk was what the People called a Man Becoming Woman; a human possessed of both male and female spirits. In the culture of George’s birth, a man like Whistling Elk would have been ostracized, an outcast; five years ago, George himself would have shunned such a creature. But here among the People, Whistling Elk was accepted, even revered for his dual nature.

Though male in body, in all outward manners Whistling Elk was a woman. He dressed as a woman of the People, his hair was braided and twisted into an elaborate topknot. His gestures were feminine, his voice high and lilting, and he was gentle in touch and word. A talented healer, he was also a cherished storyteller who could tie one story to the next until the evening fires were all burned out. But in one aspect, this unusual man was absolutely identical to Limps: he was a fearless and experienced soldier with many coups and victories to his name.

Together, the three of them also shared something else: a growing concern for their friend, Storm Arriving.

They walked slowly between the lodges of the Tree People band, the band of Mouse Road’s family. On any other day, George would have described their pace as leisurely, but on this occasion he knew they were dallying. Limps was silent–not surprisingly–but so was Whistling Elk, which was a behavior unheard of in the loquacious storyteller. Their minds were all set on the man they were heading to meet.

George’s relationship with Storm Arriving had been a marvel of extremes. They met as harsh enemies, each viewing the other as an uncivilized, incorrigible savage. But during George’s time with the People–first as a captive and then by choice–they both learned the falseness of their prejudice. George had regarded Storm Arriving as kin long before his marriage to Mouse Road made them brothers. But kinfolk argue, and brothers fight, and in the last year their friendship had been strained.

Storm Arriving’s refusal of George’s suit for Mouse Road had been the first difficulty. The assassination of their revered chief, Three Trees Together, by a white man’s bullet had been the second. The old man’s death not only fractured the unity of the Council, but it also affected George and Storm Arriving in very different ways.

For George, the death of Three Trees Together had been a blow that sent him reeling into a pit of self-loathing and despair, whereas for Storm Arriving, it had been the fuel that fired him to an incandescent rage and hatred of the vé’hó’e. Both men were transformed by the event, but in divergent directions, and their disharmony increased.

Now, as George paced his way from the edge of camp toward its center, his heart traversed a darkened path toward unknown perils. His destination: a lodge at the middle of the People’s encampment–the common lodge for soldiers of the Kit Fox society where Storm Arriving had been living since his divorce and his rejection of family and friends. But the distance felt much greater than what was described by the land over which he walked. To George, it felt a world away.

What reception would he receive from this man, a man he once knew nearly as well as himself but who now was almost as alien as he’d been on the day of their first encounter? And how would he react to that reception?

Their slow, silent passage drew undesired attention. Everyone knew the turbulent story of Storm Arriving and Speaks While Leaving and their long now-together-now-apart relationship. They also knew the story of Mouse Road and One Who Flies, as George was known among the People. The intertwined tales of these two couples–two sisters by marriage and two brothers in arms–had been told and retold around a thousand lodgefires, fodder for entertainment on cool summer nights and snowbound winter days. To many, tonight was just another part in the long saga that had been playing out for years–many years longer than George’s time among them, in fact. As George, Whistling Elk, and Limps made their way through the camp, they accrued a following of the curious, young and old; people wanted to be there when this new chapter was tied to the tales that had already been told.

Brave stars peeked out over the massive heads of the Sacred Mountains. George watched the stars wink as the three men, with their whispering crowd of shadows, walked into the camp’s circular heart. All around them, family lodges glowed like lanterns beneath the purpling sky, and before them stood the large lodges of the Council, the soldier societies, and the holiest of the People’s artifacts: the Sacred Arrows and the Sacred Buffalo Hat. Unlike those of nearby families, these larger lodges were dark. It was late summer, and the season of hunting, of gatherings, of celebration, and of war was coming to an end. The People were starting to turn their attention to the serious business of surviving the prairie’s harsh winter.

But one lodge was lit. The Kit Fox lodge glimmered with a thin, lonely light. As he approached, George could see the dark circle of the open interior; in its center, a small round patch of glowing embers. Seated cross-legged before it was Storm Arriving, his face a crescent moon of wavering firelight, his body half in light, half in deep shadow. He stared into the coals.

The whistlers, hoping they had finished walking for the night, crouched down near the staking post and made themselves comfortable. Whistling Elk unshouldered his burden and put the bundle of robes on the ground.

Go ahead, Whistling Elk signed to George. Talk to him.

George knew that Storm Arriving was aware of their coming. The approach of three men and two unhappy whistlers could hardly have gone unnoticed in the quiet camp, even without the entourage of onlookers. George was also sure that Storm Arriving knew exactly who stood outside, and why. The soldier’s studied disregard of them spoke with sharp eloquence.

“Storm Arriving,” George said softly.

Silence.

“Storm Arriving,” he said, a bit louder. “I would like to speak with you.”

Silence. George looked at Whistling Elk.

Again, Whistling Elk signed.

George cleared his throat. “Storm Arriving, please. I would like to speak with you.”

Storm Arriving continued to stare into the coals.

Whistling Elk sighed theatrically. “He’s going to be stubborn,” he said, loudly enough to be heard by the group of followers. A few chuckles peppered the circle around the lodge entrance. “I think we should change his name to Eats Rocks for Supper.”

More laughter rolled through the gathering.

What are you doing? George asked him in signs.

Whistling Elk mimed prodding the nearby whistlers with a stick. “But it puzzles me,” he went on. “He has been in there for days and nights, all alone. He talks to no one. I would think that a man who divorced his wife at a public dance would be glad to be rid of her. But not this one.” He turned to speak directly to the people who had tagged along. “Not Eats Rocks for Supper. No. He just sulks.”

George could see smiles through the twilight, and heard the change in tone as Whistling Elk turned to goad his target.

“And he sulks for good reason. Here is a man with much–a voice often heard in Council, the highest regard of his brother soldiers, a loving and respected wife. True, he lost his daughter to the red fever, but who here has not lost a young babe or sibling to illness? Is that reason enough to turn your back on your friends? No,” he said, echoing the murmurs of the crowd. “No, that is the time when friends can be of the greatest help. But what does Eats Rocks for Supper do? He sulks. He feels sorry for himself, day and night, night and day. I feel sorry for him as well, and you should too! For he is probably the sorriest–“

“Enough.”

Storm Arriving stood in the opening to the lodge.

“Ah, you do speak,” Whistling Elk said. “Good.” He nodded to George and took a step backward.

“I need to speak with you,” George said.

Storm Arriving stared at him, impassive, unaffected.

“We have nothing to say.

“You are wrong,” George said. “We have a great deal to say.”

“Then say it,” Storm Arriving responded. “But do not expect me to listen.” He began to walk past them but George put a hand on his chest to stop him. Storm Arriving looked down at the hand in disbelief, shocked at the affront.

George and Storm Arriving were of a similar height, but Storm Arriving was by far the more powerful man. George’s gentle, academic upbringing among the elite of the White Nations, his youth spent in light farmwork and his early manhood spent in heavy bookwork could not compete with the world that had formed Storm Arriving.

Decades of riding whistlers and hunting buffalo had given Storm Arriving a muscular torso. Hard work and quick fighting had made his legs and arms strong and agile. Long winters had inured him to the privations of his tribe’s nomadic life, stripping him of every ounce of fat, hardening every soft line.

His dress was common to warriors of the People: long, fringed deerskin leggings; a breechclout of red cloth; a tunic of elkhide, decorated with shells and beads in geometric patterns. The right side of his head was shaved clean to showcase the seven silver rings that hung all around the pierced fringe of his ear, and the rest of his hair was pulled back into a single braid, tied at the nape with red leather and two eagle feathers. His dark skin was like teak, and when his black eyes looked up from George’s hand, they flashed with anger.

If he wanted to, he could have thrashed George in the time it took to draw a single breath, and they both knew it.

George had a choice, a choice he’d been considering during the long walk to this place, and he knew it would mark their relationship forever. His mind whirled, considering once more all the possibilities, judging the ramifications, gauging each possible outcome. Humor, anger, passivity, command; these choices and others he discarded. Storm Arriving had changed in the last year. His tireless campaigns against the U.S. Army had wiped away everything kind and friendly from his soul. As George met this new man’s gaze, he saw nothing but the soldier, the strategist, the ruthless victor of terrible encounters. If George was to have the barest chance of being heard, if he was to have a hope of penetrating the bitter armor that Storm Arriving now wore around his heart, there was only one path.

“I come to you humbly and with great respect,” he began, allowing his voice to reach the gathered crowd. “I come to apologize for having disobeyed your directions, and for eloping with your sister against your wishes. I come also to bring these gifts, and beg you to accept them as a bride-price.”

“Gifts,” Storm Arriving said. “Insults. I should throw them back in your face.”

“How funny,” Whistling Elk interjected. “That’s just what I told him you would…do.” The glares of both men stopped further remark from the storyteller.

George opened his hands before him in supplication. “I know that these gifts are insufficient, but they are all the wealth I have. I know that you are too respectful of me to ignore my request to consider them.”

Storm Arriving growled and pushed past, but George reached out again to stop him.

In a blurred heartbeat, Storm Arriving grabbed George’s arm, yanked him sideways across his leg, and dumped him on the ground. He slammed a knee into George’s chest and cocked his fist before a shout from Whistling Elk halted his blow. Storm Arriving was not breathing hard; George was not sure he was breathing at all.

“Yes,” George said, as calmly as he could with a man kneeling on his ribs. “You are too respectful. We have been too much to each other for you to ignore this request. I know that you will do the honorable thing and give these gifts full and proper consideration.”

The
cold hard gaze lost none of its razor edge as Storm Arriving looked at the robes, the whistlers, and at the parfleche that lay in the dirt a few feet away.

“What is in that?” he asked.

“Eagle feathers,” George managed to say.

“How many?”

“Four,” George said.

“A sacred number,” Whistling Elk said quietly.

Storm Arriving shot the storyteller another glare and Whistling Elk turned away as if two men grappling in the dirt was a regular occurrence.

“Who gave you these feathers?” he said, and then suddenly grunted. The pressure on George’s ribs relented and Storm Arriving was lifted up.

Limps had grabbed Storm Arriving by the scruff of his tunic. He hauled him to his feet and then struck him backhanded across the chest. Storm Arriving stared at his Kit Fox brother, dumbfounded.

“One Who Flies caught the eagle himself,” Limps rumbled. “He asked me how. I told him how. I watched him build his blind. I saw him lay the bait. From afar, I watched. He waited. Two days, without food or water, and from the sky above the eagle watched him, too, judging him. On the third day, the eagle saw that One Who Flies was worthy, and that his sacrifice would be honored. He came down, and he gave One Who Flies a chance to take his life.”

Storm Arriving, George, Whistling Elk, everyone gathered was stunned. It was more than anyone had ever heard Limps say at one time. Limps, his eyes flinty with anger, struck Storm Arriving again across the chest and pointed at George.

“He did not beat at the great bird as a boy might. He took the eagle’s wounds like a man. Talon and beak tore him as he fought for the proper hold. And he killed the bird well. One thrust of his knife.” He turned to the gathered crowd. “One thrust.” And then to Storm Arriving again.

“He caught the eagle. He chose the finest of the feathers. He chose their number. For you.” He took a step away, then turned. “For you.” Then he folded his heavy arms across his chest and appeared as if he would never utter another word.

The shock of Limps, speaking in sentences, wore off slowly, but Whistling Elk brought them all back to reality with a gentle cough.

Storm Arriving looked around at the assemblage. He looked at the gifts again, then at the men who brought them, and George thought he glimpsed a flash of embarrassment cross the soldier’s face.

“Leave the gifts,” he said. “I will consider them.” Then he stalked away, his long strides taking him into the evening gloom.

Whistling Elk walked over and extended a hand to George.

“That,” he said as he helped George to his feet, “could not have gone better. Very well done! And you!” He turned to Limps and took him by the shoulders. “You told a story!” His voice was filled with amazement and pride.

Limps’ grin shone in the gathering dark.

“So,” George said, brushing himself off. “What happens now?”

“Now?” Whistling Elk said. “Nothing. We are done.”

“What? But…but he didn’t accept the gifts. He just said he would consider them.”

Whistling Elk patted George on the back. “It is the same. No one returns such gifts afterward. It is his way of expressing his displeasure. In the morning, he will still have them, and thus accept them.”

George looked around. Everywhere he looked, he saw a smile. What Whistling Elk described was true.

“Then, we are done?”

“We are done,” Whistling Elk said. “Shall we go tell your wife?”

End of Chapter One