It was then that Tall One remembered with his own seeing the great, incomprehensible litter of rotting carcasses that stretched mile after endless mile across the rolling prairie now far above him. Those great piles of bones and skulls where gathered the carrion eaters always brought a great pain to him—this dying of something without its chance to regenerate. Up there on the buffalo ground, the grasshoppers and locusts and other winged ones had descended from the pale autumn skies to seize dominion over the tall, withered grasses. Fewer of the shaggy beasts now to graze upon that land.
Those white hide men. Come to take without returning something in the great cycle of life.
His first father had been a white man. Yet for a reason he could not name, Tall One sensed that the man in some unspoken way understood that mystical circle of life. If for no other reason than his father always turned the soil, Tall One believed that his first father did indeed understand that he must return something back to the soil for what he had taken from it. So it was the man had turned over the warm, fertile ground, and with it turned under the stalks and roots, the stems and leaves, all of it to nourish once more the dark loam as it lay under the white breast of winter, where it would once more await the call of spring’s awakening.
At the edge of the creek he knelt, bent forward, and leaned far out over the water by supporting himself on his elbows. There he drank of the cold water, then drew back and wiped his mouth. Staring down at his rippling reflection. Something about it—the eyes, maybe the nose. Tall One gathered his long hair in one hand and pulled it behind his neck. Staring, studying that reflection intently. Uncanny, how it made him think of his father.
No, his first father.
Sensing now the teasing recollection, the dim memory of so many people telling a boy how much he favored his pa.
Memories were dim, had for the most part remained very dim over the years—until he really studied his reflection in the smooth surface of that stream. Would now the man have hair touched with the iron of many winters? Or like his second father—Bridge—would his first father have only a touch of gray at the temples?
And how many wrinkles would he have? Would the seams carve themselves deeply into his face, like the faces of the old ones in this camp in the canyon?
What of his hands—those hands that had brought calves and piglets and foals into the world, those hands that had struck out as he corrected his children, hands that had also caressed his sons and daughter with his crude, unsteady love. Would those hands now be gnarled and deformed as he had seen the hands of the old warriors become? Or would they still be strong and sure, unshaken as he took the reins of a team and moved them toward the field in need of planting?
Hands that would remain forever young with the elixir of a young boy’s dream.
Try as he might, even staring down at this wavering reflection in the cold stream, Tall One could not make himself believe this was a true picture of his father. The man would surely be much, much older now. After all, Tall One was himself.
Suddenly a cautious part of him reminded Tall One that it likely did not matter. Something mocked him—saying the man who had been his first father no longer existed. He had not come home from that war he marched off to fight, leaving his family behind. And even if in the realm of slim possibilities that man did survive the war… in the end his first father had simply ceased to exist.
No more did that life on that farm mean anything to him. It was something too remote, too foreign, too long ago to matter anymore. And those dimly focused people from his memories, the people who had shared his long-ago days and nights, the fights and the loving, the laughter and the tears—they too had simply ceased to exist in this new world of the Antelope People. That is, every one of those memory people except his brother, Antelope.
Antelope had always been, and always would be, Tall One’s brother.
It was that single handhold gripping something lasting and eternal that allowed Tall One to feel secure.
Over the seasons of wandering from camp to camp, from stream to stream, hunting and raiding, sleeping and eating in an endless cycle of nomadic wanderings, the boy had eventually grown accustomed to this life of change. Still, coming to accept it was nowhere like feeling secure. The way he had sensed a rock-steady security of day after day, season after season on that farm his family carved out of a valley so far, far away now. Secure in knowing what was expected of him by those he loved. Secure in knowing what to expect out of the turning of the seasons shared with those who loved him.
As much as the boy in him had reveled in the life of these nomads, the young man in him came to yearn every bit as much for something solid and lasting. To count on the rains of spring and the sun in summer, the chill of autumn’s harvest and the season of rest given a farmer come winter’s short days. If only …
It could not be! His life had changed irrevocably. The silly chores of a white man scratching at the earth no longer made any real sense to him. He was a warrior now—
Angrily Tall One plunged his hand into the cold stream; all the way to the muddy bottom he stirred savagely, his fury bringing the once-placid surface to a froth. Doing so, he churned the reflection as quickly as he dispatched all those memories recalled over all those seasons.
He would not allow himself to miss the life he had lived back then. For he never would live it again—
Turning at the distant sound, Tall One felt the sense of being out of place. If not he, then some thing.
A sound sullying the stillness of this morning. Low, rumbling, rolling downstream between the high canyon walls. Perhaps a warrior’s gun. Hunting—
The next crack in the pristine morning raised the hair on his neck. Another gunshot. And a third.
Then as Tall One rose on the muddy bank of the stream, there came a flurry of gunfire from upstream where the Kiowa and Cheyenne had camped. The medicine of those old Kiowa shamans had guaranteed this would be a sanctuary for them all—safe from attack by the pony soldiers.
Behind him the Kwahadi camp came to life. Men sprang from their lodges, pulling on clothing. Women began to drag sleepy children from the lodges, everyone clutching something important beneath an arm as they scurried downstream like a covey of frightened quail, away from the shooting. Into the noise and confusion Tall One raced, dodging little ones and old ones with big, frightened eyes, hurling himself around lodges and favored war ponies. Bridge stood outside the lodge, buckling on a belt shiny with cartridges.
“Your weapons—inside!”
Tall One plunged past him, finding the interior in disarray. He was alone. The rest of the family already gone in those first moments of gunfire up-canyon. From the dewcloth liner the young man tore free his medicine bag, which he draped over his left shoulder, then pulled down the wolf-skin quiver that rattled, heavy with arrows, and his short cherry wood bow. He dived through the doorway as Bridge turned to him.
“Take this, Tall One!” he ordered, shoving an old pistol into the young warrior’s hand.
“It is loaded?”
“Yes,” the old warrior said.
“I … I never shot this before—”
“It does not matter. You will learn how to shoot it well before the sun rises to midsky,” he replied sternly, his eyes narrowing on the youth. “Fight well this day, Tall One. And remember: you are Kwahadi!”
Bridge whirled, setting off.
Tall One called out. “Four Spirits Woman? She and the children?”
Bridge turned, his face grim in determination. “I have sent them on downstream with the others. Into the rocks to hide.”