In the Season of the Sun (11 page)

Jacob was home. Alive and home and Lone Walker was happy, for he had been plagued by terrible dreams and dire premonitions. He saw Jacob stalked by a lobo wolf and tried to warn his son of the danger, but he was too late—too late as the wolf leapt through a curtain of mist …

The dream was fresh in Lone Walker's mind; it haunted him even now. But he calmed his fears with reason. Jacob was home now. And safe. Perhaps I will walk in the dream again, Lone Walker thought. And discover the meaning. For it is not what I feared. And my heart is glad.

He watched the smoke spiral lazily upward to dissipate against gray-white battlements of clouds. And he began to sing.

“All-Father, thank you.

This is my heart

Who has traveled to the high country

Even to the backbone of the world.

This is my spirit

Who has traveled to the plains where runs

The Buffalo, as many as the stars.

This is my self

Who has walked the forest,

Trailed the deer, snared the sleek otter.

This is my son

Who has returned with food and stories

To warm us during the Hard-Faced Moon.”

The tendrils drifted toward the heavens until a gust of wind tore the diaphanous strands of medicine smoke and stirred the embers of the fire. Lone Walker smothered the awakening flames with a blanket, then stood and took up the rifle at his side. It was time he came down from the mountain and greeted his son. He smiled, remembering Jacob's first weeks in the village.

The boys had teased and baited him unmercifully. But he had endured and gave as good as he took and eventually won the respect and admiration of his peers, not to mention the elders of the village.

The sun stood at high noon, poised between a break in the clouds high above the village. The sun-washed lodges bordered the north bank of Medicine Lake. Hills sweeping up to barren broken-backed ridges formed three sides of the glacier-sculpted canyon whose sole apparent means of entrance was through the opening to the south. The glacial ice had not only carved the canyon but left an area roughly three hundred yards in diameter covered with cold clear water. Chunks of transparent, blue-tinged ice floated on the surface for much of the year. The lake was shallow, never more than waist deep on a man, and constantly replenished by both spring rains and melting snow.

The sunlight dimmed as clouds, seemingly with a life of their own, swept forward to surround and eventually obscure the sun. The lake below changed from gold to dull brass, then changed again to polished steel patched with albescent patterns of clouds as the waters reflected the sky back upon itself.

Lone Walker started down the path that led to his own tepee on the lakeshore. The conical hide walls bore the spirit signs of bison and elk and horse. There were pictographs of mountains, forests, and the Great Water he had seen long ago when as a young man his spirit quest had taken him beyond the mountains of the setting sun to what the white men called the Pacific Ocean.

Lone Walker paused, enjoying a moment's reverie, recalling triumphs and tragedies of the past, of friends and enemies living and dead. Lost in his thoughts, he failed to hear the approaching horseman. Jacob called out to his father and continued at a gallop up the grassy slope.

“Has my father grown deaf in my absence?” Jacob called. “I have twice spoken your name. Lucky for you I am no Kootenai.” The young man dismounted and pulled his blanket from the stallion's back. He whacked the animal on the rump and the stallion trotted off to join the other animals grazing on the slope. Lone Walker, alerted at last, watched his adopted son come toward him.

“Lucky for you I do not mistake you for a Kootenai and string my lance with your yellow hair.” Lone Walker grinned and grabbed Jacob by a straw-colored braid and gave a sharp tug. He stepped back and studied Jacob's features.

“You look tired, my son.”

“From taking the game from my traps, from skinning the carcasses and drying the meat.”

“Was there ever a hunter like you?” the spirit singer replied.

“And I had to be ever on my guard. Many a night I was certain we were being watched and I dare not sleep.” Jacob hooked his thumbs in the beaded belt circling his waist. A bowie knife was sheathed on his left side; a tomahawk was thrust through the belt on his right. His rifle had been left outside his father's tepee along with the pack animals. Jacob started to tell of his encounter with the girl, then changed his mind. Maybe later, he decided.

“Did you see any sign of Crow or Kootenai?” Lone Walker asked, observing the mouth of Medicine Lake Canyon. Two braves keeping watch on the slopes to either side of the south pass were prepared to alert the village should any strangers approach in number.

“I saw no enemies,” Jacob answered, choosing his words carefully so as not to speak a lie to his father. Once again he resisted the urge to tell of the wolf woman he had chased. Yet even thinking of her, hearing in his mind her soft sweet laugh, picturing her fine, delicate features, set his pulse racing.

“What is it, Jacob?” Lone Walker said, his gaze both wise and gentle. He could sense a change in his son. Something had happened on the hunt. He seemed more pensive, more reflective, than tired.

“Nothing. I am hungry for my mother's cooking.” Jacob clapped his father on the shoulder and started back the way he had come, retracing his own tracks in the soft earth.

Lone Walker hesitated, considered pressing the matter. A shrewd smile slowly lit his features. Maybe he should personally welcome Otter Tail and Yellow Eagle and hear what they had to say about the hunt. He had a feeling he'd learn more from them than from his suddenly recalcitrant son.

12

N
ight took on its purple cloak, like velvet hung with an occasional star, while in the valley below, the twinkling campfires cast shadows on the coppery-colored walls of the tepees. A restive stillness spread throughout the village of the Medicine Lake Blackfeet, a sense of tranquillity and peace permeated the lodges clustered along the shoreline.

Jacob stood at the shore and stared out across the dark cold waters into the very heart of night. He wasn't alone in his vigil. Sparrow Woman stood beside him. She was small and delicately made, almost fragile in appearance, a false first impression, for she was as resolute of spirit as any man. And as for courage, none in the camp could boast of greater bravery. She had fought alongside her husband on more than one occasion to defend her family and lodge. Her silver-dusted black hair was gathered in two thick braids that framed her coppery features. Her eyes were brown as earth, her smile as warm as summer, her cheerful nature as welcome as a rain shower on a stifling afternoon.

“Where are your thoughts walking?” she asked, drawing close to her adopted son.

“Down a long trail.”

“What do you see?”

Jacob inhaled deeply, catching the scent of pine and sage, of earth and smoke, the aroma of cherry bark tea and meat boiled with dried currants,
pomme blanche
roots, and corn, a meal fit for a successful young hunter and one that awaited him within Sparrow Woman's lodge.

“I see myself filling my belly with your good food till I burst,” Jacob replied, hugging the woman.

“Kyi-a,”
Sparrow Woman scoffed, shoving him away in mock protest. “Your words are pretty as the flowers in the time of the New Grass Moon. Pretty but nothing to lean against.”

“Perhaps I was also seeing a young boy, eleven winters past, brought to Ever Shadow and Medicine Lake and given a home to live in and a mother to love as much as the mother who bore him.”

Sparrow Woman's eyes grew misty and she was grateful for the darkness that concealed her emotions and helped her to maintain her dignity. But she was of a sentimental nature and Jacob always knew how to make her cry.

“My husband brought a gift from the sun.”

Jacob hugged her, then turned his attention toward the village. After so many years, he knew the name of every woman, man, and child, recognized every sight and smell the canyon had to offer. The hurts of the past had paled with maturity. As a boy he had tumbled and fought and clambered his way up the pecking order until he won the respect and admiration of his peers. He had proved his worth and made this land of Ever Shadow his home and the Blackfeet of Medicine Lake his people. And he had been content.

Until now.

Until the first glimpse of a mysterious young woman had roused in him such discontent. He wanted to see her again. Yet how could he find her? The backbone of the world was a vast and lonely place. Where to begin? A man might ride those battlements forever and never spy another living soul.

A clamor of barking dogs rose from the far side of this village of sixty-two lodges. Jacob guessed from the direction of the noise that the dogs must be those of Standing Elk. The elderly head of the Bowstring Clan kept several scruffy mongrels around his tepee in an effort to ward off his daughter's suitors. Red Moon was of marriageable age and had blossomed into a buxom little beauty and attracted the attention of many of the young men. Both of Standing Elk's wives had been killed in an avalanche a year earlier and the duties of caring for the lodge, of root gathering, cultivating, and tanning had fallen to Red Moon. For this reason, Standing Elk was loath to part with his daughter.

“One day soon Standing Elk will have to take a wife.” Jacob chuckled.

“If a wife will take him,” Sparrow Woman countered. “And put up with his bad temper.”

“He will have to mend his ways or one day some clever young buck may lure those dogs away with a bait of fresh meat and return for Red Moon.”

Sparrow Woman looked aside at her son and teased him. “Perhaps a young man clever as my own Jacob Sun Gift.”

Jacob blushed. Red Moon herself had let it be known she was especially enamored with Jacob Sun Gift and hoped he would brave her father's wrath to call her out to stand in his blanket. She was comely enough, but Jacob had never felt particularly drawn to the girl. Perhaps she was too willing or he was too much the coward, Jacob pondered, then shrugged.

“Everyone is trying to trick me into taking a wife,” he sighed. “Even my mother. Have I grown so tall there is no place for me in your lodge?”

“Saa-vaa!”
Sparrow Woman exclaimed, slapping at the fringed sleeve of his buckskin shirt. “What nonsense you speak.” She looked up from the lake and saw Lone Walker standing by the entrance to their tepee. “I see your father. Come and eat, and we will speak no more of your taking a wife.”

“At least until tomorrow.” Jacob grinned, knowing that when his mother and her friends went gathering roots, matchmaking was always a source of conversation.

“Tomorrow,” Sparrow Woman lightly agreed. He knew her too well. Did any woman of the Medicine Lake band ever have such a son? She paused, letting Jacob get a pace ahead of her. He was taller than any of the other braves and though his skin was burned dark, his hair was fair and shone bone white in the feeble moonlight. No, she answered her own question. None had such a son.

Jacob Sun Gift leaned back against his willow-rod backrest and groaned in satisfaction, rubbing the palm of his hand across his stomach. Sparrow Woman, across from him, added another piece of wood to the fire and reached into a parfleche, a rawhide box, and pulled out some sage and dried cedar. She lit them in the fire. Between the fire and Lone Walker's bed was a cleared space of earth, square shaped like an altar. She placed the sage and cedar onto the altar space. A choice morsel of boiled meat had been left on the altar at the beginning of the meal. Sparrow Woman now took this and dropped the offering into the fire.

Once the incense ritual had been completed, Lone Walker brought forth his medicine pipe and filled it with a mixture of tobacco and cherry bark and touched an ember to the bowl. A few seconds later he exhaled a fragrant cloud of tobacco smoke and passed the pipe to Jacob Sun Gift.

Jacob touched the stem to his lips and puffed a moment, enjoying the taste after a hearty meal. The pipe was both pleasure and unspoken prayer. Tendrils of smoke from altar, pipe, and cookfire entwined to drift upward through the vented panel overhead where the poles were joined together. Prayer smoke swept upward on a night wind to the Above Ones, to the All-Father himself.

Jacob Sun Gift returned the pipe to his father, who smoked in silence, staring at the flames and waiting for his son to tell him of the buffalo and counting coup and the stranger they had encountered. Jacob sensed Lone Walker's expectation. It was customary after the homecoming meal for the one who had returned to speak of his travels. It was the way of the Buffalo Horn band and the Cut Willow people farther to the south, and here in the high country the Medicine Lake band too. Among all the Blackfeet ranging the wild country, there existed a common etiquette, a conciliatory tradition that formed a bond between the bands or villages.

Jacob shattered tradition and began not with a tale but a question.

“Is there a Blackfoot village somewhere along the backbone of the world?”

Lone Walker appeared more than surprised by the question, he seemed alarmed.

“No one lives on the backbone of the world,” Sparrow Woman interjected, too hurriedly, Jacob noted. “Our people hunt there, as do the Kootenai and even the Crow and Cheyenne. But no village can exist in such a place. Too little food and the Cold Maker brings terrible snows and bitter winds.” As she concluded, Lone Walker nodded sagely in accord. Jacob, glancing from one to the other, was suspicious of them both. He stood and stretched. The beadwork on his fringed buckskin shirt glowed in the firelight. Sparrow Woman had traded several fox pelts to a white trader down on the Marias for a box of gaily colored beads. Both her husband's and her adopted son's clothes were the recipients of her artistry and adorned with diamond-design lengths of black, red, and white beadwork.

Lone Walker stood and faced his son. He gestured toward the entrance flap of the tepee. “Walk with me, my son,” he said. The young man shrugged and stepped outside.