Chapter 5: Revelations

“Whoa.” Adam reined in Pete. Roy, several paces behind, saw Adam looking down at a flattened bush. “Roy,” Adam said quietly. “Come look at this.”Roy dismounted and squeezed between his horse and the brambles that threatened to overgrow the narrow trail. They’d been riding downhill for about an hour since they’d passed Marie’s grave, following the recent trail-sign of a large horse, presumably Nightshade. Now they stood on a patch of ground that bore the marks of a horse’s fall and panicked flight: smashed briars, a flurry of hoof prints, broken twigs.

Adam reached out and drew a curly black hair from a thorny branch. He held it up to Roy. “Joe was here, all right.”

Roy knelt and studied the ground. Then he jerked back, startled, bumping into Adam’s leg and almost knocking him over. “Sorry,” he muttered. Spooked like a young’un, he chided himself as he lifted up the mangled body of a rattlesnake. The head was a crushed mess, but some of the diamonds were intact: graceful symmetrical patterns, gray on tan. The rattles—ten nested, hollow beads—were clustered in a tight, fitted row at the tip of the tail. They glistened in Roy’s hand, reflecting the light like wet pearls.

Adam shuddered. “So that’s why Nightshade threw him.”

“I’d say so.” Still crouching, he looked at the surrounding brush from his low vantage point. “There,” he said, pointing. The bushes were bent back, ever so slightly, pointing away from the trail and into the woods.

Adam knelt beside him. “I would have missed that,” he said, his voice heavy.

“That’s why we’re in pairs,” Roy said mildly.

“You think Joe wandered off that way?”

“Maybe. I don’t think so, though.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think he’d have left the path.”

Adam shook his head. “But the bushes. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does. If someone was carrying him.”

“But where would they be taking him?” Adam’s voice was rising. Roy watched him closely, thinking, You can’t have all the answers all at once, son. Maybe that’s how it works in books, but this here is life.

Adam stood and turned in a slow circle, as if expecting his brother to leap out from behind a tree, giggling and reveling in the joke he’d played. For a fairy-tale second, Roy could see it playing out that way. Then Adam’s voice broke as he said, “Where the hell is he?”

Roy stood and placed a hand on Adam’s arm. “We’ll find him, son.”

Adam shook Roy off and smacked his palm into the side of a tree. “I want him now!” he shouted.

Roy had seen this sort of thing before. A young man like Adam Cartwright was used to being in control. Adam had grown up too fast—he’d had to. Truth be told, he’d fathered his brothers for a while there, when Ben was so torn up with grief over Marie. Now one of those brothers was missing, and Adam couldn’t control what was happening…and he was very close to losing his grip on himself.

Roy took a step toward him, hoping he was about to say the right thing. “Boy, my next move’ll be to knock you silly. This ain’t helping your brother. Now you get ahold of yourself, and you do it now.”

Maybe it was the threat, but Roy didn’t think so. More likely, it was the use of the word “boy.” He watched Adam slowly come back to himself, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. When he opened his eyes, he didn’t meet Roy’s gaze. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“No need to be.”

Tying their horses, they moved into the woods on foot.

About a mile in, the faint trail-signs grew fainter. Finally they disappeared altogether. Adam’s eyes glittered again. “What did they do, just melt into thin air?”

Roy turned and went back to the last clear sign. It was a few hundred feet behind them, and pathetically small—just a bent branch that should have been straight. Roy licked his lips.

“Well?” Adam demanded, so close behind him that Roy could feel his breath on the back of his neck.

He turned to Adam and gave him a long, searching, sympathetic look. “The trail’s dead, son.”

Adam blinked. “What do you mean, dead?”

There was no other way to say it. “I mean it’s dead.” Roy surveyed the surrounding area. The undergrowth wasn’t so dense here, but there should still be something. Unless… “There’s only one kind of person this slick in the woods.”

“And that would be…”

“An Indian.”

He watched Adam stop breathing. “Is that good or bad?”

“Depends.”

Adam turned away, fists clenched. Roy was left to imagine the emotions that might be crossing his face: rage, terror, disbelief–take your pick. Without turning back around, Adam said tightly, “Quit with the riddles, Roy. Is it good, or is it bad?”

“I’ll be straight with you, Adam. There was an uprising a few weeks ago, south of here. A farmer shot a Paiute trespassing on his land, and the Indians retaliated. A whole bunch of people got killed on both sides, and the Army had to come in and settle it. You weren’t back from Boston yet, so you might not know.”

“Pa told me about it.”

“But I haven’t heard about it affecting relations up this way. And the Paiutes have always been friendly with your father.”

Adam turned back around. His fists were still clenched, but his eyes held a glimmer of hope. “Pa’s always respected the Paiutes. And he gave them six steers last month.”

“Sort of a peace offering.”

“Yeah.” He relaxed his hands. “So what do we do now?”

“We wait.”

The hope in Adam’s eyes flickered and died. “What?”

“We can’t find Joe. So we wait for the Indians to find us.”

Adam’s lips parted and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t we know where their villages are?”

“They move around, Adam. They have a regular winter site, but they don’t go there until first snow. Right now…” Roy spread his arms. “They could be anywhere.”

Adam’s eyes clouded with agony. It looked like there was just no room for anything else. He sat down—collapsed, really—on a fallen tree. “Anywhere. And we wait.” He looked at Roy, anger spent. “And just what makes you so certain they’ll come?”

Roy sat down beside him. “I’m not certain. But I’m hoping.”

“Hope.” His voice dripped bitterness. “What good is that?”

Roy gazed thoughtfully at the young man beside him. “Son,” he said slowly, “there’s just one thing required of you right now.” He waited until Adam had turned his head to look bleakly at him. “That’s courage.”

“Come on, Roy. Hope, courage. I don’t see—”

“If you’ll listen a minute, you will.” He took his time, calculating his next words carefully. “You love Joe, don’t you?”

“What kind of a fool question is that?”

“Well? Don’t you?”

“For God’s sake, Roy! Of course I do!”

“Of course you do,” Roy said evenly. “Adam, love and courage are the same in one respect: they both need hope for nourishment.” He chuckled at Adam’s stare. “Napoleon said that. Think you’re the only one who reads?”

Adam blinked, then he gave a strangled laugh. Roy nodded, relieved. He understood how close to a sob that laugh was, but it was still better than despair.

***

Joe sighed pathetically. He had never been so bored in his ten years. Toohoo’o and three other boys were playing some sort of dice game that was impossible to follow, and that dumb Indian girl kept pestering him, bringing him more food than even Hoss would have wanted. So far she’d brought him another bowl of kaibab stew, half a dozen flatbread circles, a basket of pinion nuts, two bowls of blackberries, and a carved dish of some sort of yellow vegetable with lumps in it that he didn’t want to think about.

Now she sat on a stump near him, gazing soulfully at him out of the tops of her eyes and looking down demurely whenever he glanced her way. He shifted uncomfortably. Hoss had told him he’d change his mind about girls soon, but this one wasn’t doing anything to change it.

He wished someone would take him home. He’d briefly considered just getting up and going, but even if he could have walked more than a few steps, he had no idea where he was. Frustrated, he picked up a stick and idly drew a line in the dirt.

A small brown hand covered his, and he looked into the face of the girl. Holding his hand under hers, she moved the stick, drawing a skinny human figure with short curly hair. She pointed at the drawing, then at Joe. “Tangwaci.”

He shook his head and pointed to his chest. “Kaibab,” he said, lowering his voice in an attempt to sound…well…manly.

She giggled. “Kaibab,” she agreed patiently, but then she said again, “Tangwaci.” She pointed to Toohoo’o and his friends, and then to an old man sitting outside one of the teepees, his lower lip almost touching his nose. “Tangwaci.”

Joe got it. Warily, he repeated, “Tangwaci. Boy…or man. Uh, male.” He tried to slip his hand from her grasp, but she tightened her grip. Moving the stick again, she added strokes to the short hair until it spilled over the figure’s shoulders, then drew two circles at chest level. Grinning, she pointed to herself. “Mamaci.”

Deciding this had gone far enough. Joe pulled his hand away. The girl looked so hurt, though, that he grabbed the stick from her and drew a horse. Its legs were too long, its ears looked like a rabbit’s, and its mane was a series of jagged vees, but it was recognizable as a horse. He hoped. Pointing to it, he raised his eyebrows in a question. The girl’s eyes flashed with pleasure.

“Booghoo.” He recognized it as one of the words Toohoo’o had said when he’d translated Joe’s question about Nightshade. Joe repeated the word and searched his mind for something else to draw.

In the next half hour, he learned the words for dog, bird, buffalo (although his buffalo looked more like a hunchbacked, earless dog), rabbit, fish, snake, and frog. They went from there to mountain, river, tree, and fire. Then she told him the words for various things around them: teepees, cooking pots, bowls. He pointed to the bear fur under his leg, and she said, “Padooah.” The wildcat skin stretched and drying on a teepee wall was “tunagwetsedu.” Before long he was having so much fun that he almost forgot she was a girl.

When the lesson slowed, he idly reached in his pocket and pulled out a small pouch. He opened it and spilled his treasured store of real glass marbles into his hand, rattling them around in his palm. They were mostly blues and greens, with one yellow and two brilliant reds. The colors caught the light, and she gasped.

The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by Toohoo’o and his friends. One of them reached out to touch the marbles, but Toohoo’o smacked the boy’s hand away. Toohoo’o looked at Joe, one finger stretched tentatively toward a sky-blue marble, his eyes eagerly questioning. Joe nodded permission, and Toohoo’o took the marble between his thumb and forefinger and held it to the light. A collective sigh went up.

Five minutes later, Joe had sketched a rough circle in the dirt and was showing the boys how to shoot. It took a little innovation, with one leg immobilized, but he managed it by lying on his side. The girl sat some distance away, watching wistfully. Later, Joe would regret his fickleness, but for now he had simply forgotten her.

He remembered her when her small brown foot, bare and perfectly shaped, slammed down in the center of the circle. Joe’s head whipped up, and his eyes met hers, which were somehow both wounded and scornful. She was holding the stick they had used for their drawings, and she flung it at him with deadly aim. It smacked him in the chest before he could react. The biggest boy leaped to his feet and grabbed her arms, shaking her roughly and shouting in rapid syllables.

“Hey!” Joe yelled. Pa’s instructions on proper behavior toward girls were so ingrained that he didn’t even think. He rolled toward the struggling pair, wrapped his arms around the boy’s legs, and yanked him off his feet. Then they were grappling and rolling together.

Joe had been in plenty of brawls with boys his age, and he’d rarely been beaten. But his splinted leg kept him from fighting his best, and soon the bigger boy was straddling him, pinning his arms to the ground as he bucked uselessly and the other boys shouted. Twisting his head and his body, he glimpsed the girl standing to the side, her hands over her mouth.

Then a strong hand grabbed the other boy’s arm and tossed him to the side like a fish too little to keep. The boy stumbled to the ground and sat there, rubbing his arm. The others grew silent, and Kinna’a reached down to take Joe’s hand and pull him up. Joe stood, balancing on his good leg and staring at the ground. Now I’ve done it, he thought bitterly. No Indian would want an adopted son who gets licked so easy. He raised his eyes and was surprised to see Kinna’a’s eyes shining with what could only be approval. Kinna’a spoke, and Joe looked over at Toohoo’o, who was smiling so broadly Joe could see his molars.

“Kinna’a say you have new name.”

“Again?” Joe’s head reeled. How often did these people change their names?

“Paddaki’e. Raccoon. Good fighter. Little but…but…”

“Fierce?” Baring his teeth to illustrate, Joe raised his hands and curled his fingers into claws.

Toohoo’s eyes gleamed. “Good word. Fierce.” He said the word several times under his breath, as if savoring its taste.

Joe sighed. Raccoon. He was moving up in the world…he reckoned. “Grizzly” was, no doubt, out of the question.