Chapter 17
They reached the camp of the Crazy Horse people during the late afternoon of the following day.
For many hours before they had actually come upon the camp, Skylar had felt as if there were the slightest change in the breeze, as if the trees could see.
Sloan assured her that they had been watched for a long while.
Before they actually reached the camp, a warrior rode up to their party.
He frightened Skylar because at first, to her, he looked just like the men in the Crow war party.
Hawk seemed impatient that she could not see the differences in paint and manner of the Crow and Sioux, but Sloan assured her that men who had ridden with cavalry for years did not always learn the fine distinctions between many of the Plains tribes.
It seemed to Skylar that there were hundreds of tipis, lodges as Hawk called them, stretched out along the river. There would be hundreds of Sioux here. Indians. More than she had seen in all her life. She didn’t want Hawk to know that she was afraid of his people.
But she was.
The warrior who had ridden out to meet them was his cousin, Willow’s brother, Ice Raven.
As they entered the camp, children gathered around them, scampering beside the horses, laughing all the while.
Women, working by their tipis, cooking over fires, sewing hides, paused, looking up with the same avid curiosity.
Men and women called out. Hawk, Sloan, and Willow responded.
They stopped before a large tipi in the center of the camp.
Hawk dismounted from Tor. Willow and Sloan followed suit, greeting the tall, straight man with long, iron-gray hair who stood there.
He was old, Skylar thought. Very old, yet he appeared to be in good health.
He was proud and dignified, captivating in his stance.
Hawk, Willow, and Sloan all greeted him the same way, taking his lower arms as he grasped theirs in return.
Children, women, and some of the braves gathered around behind them.
Hawk called out to some of the older boys, and they came over and took the cattle and ponies from their party.
Skylar suddenly felt the old man’s eyes on her.
She returned his gaze, at a loss for what to do.
But by then, Hawk was beside her, lifting her from Nutmeg, speaking to the elderly man as he did so. He nodded gravely, watching her, then indicating the flap opening to the tipi. For the moment, Hawk’s arm was around Skylar’s waist. She hoped he would stay with her for a while.
“I have to go. You must stay with my grandfather while I’m gone.”
“That’s your grandfather?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“He’s—fierce.”
“He won’t hurt you.”
“I didn’t say he would. I just…I don’t speak any Sioux. Do you have to go now?”
Hawk laughed. “Now you’re suddenly eager for my company?”
She flushed. “I—”
“You don’t need to be afraid.”
“I’m not.”
“You’ll do fine.”
Hawk’s grandfather stepped aside, and Hawk ushered Skylar into the tipi.
He wasn’t going to come in with her, she realized.
He was determined to leave her to her own resources with his fierce-looking grandfather remaining at the entrance to the tipi.
She straightened, still afraid despite herself.
She was startled at first by the size of the tipi.
Then she was further alarmed to realize that there were people inside it.
Indians.
An old woman with white hair sat near the center of the tipi.
She sat not cross-legged but with her limbs folded beneath her.
She sewed fine turquoise embroidery into bleached-white buckskin.
It would be a beautiful garment, Skylar thought.
A robe of some sort or perhaps a dress like the ones most of the women were wearing.
The old woman looked up at her. She nodded as if she had expected Skylar and was not alarmed or even disturbed by her presence.
Besides the old woman, there were children in the tipi.
There was a girl of perhaps eleven or twelve, a boy of maybe eight, and four very little children—one a baby in a cradle board, two toddlers, one a bit bigger.
She wasn’t even sure of the gender of the little ones, but as she stood there, the twelve-year-old girl offered a tentative smile, and the little ones, except for the babe in the cradle board, started coming toward her.
The girl’s smile encouraged her. She ducked down, ready to greet the children.
They literally crawled on top of her. She laughed, falling back on the ground.
One of the toddlers laughed with delight then as well, and the others joined in.
She plucked up the erring fellow who had toppled her, setting him down at her side.
The girl came to her then, smiling tentatively again, and speaking in her own language but making a drinking motion Skylar couldn’t fail to understand.
“Water, yes, please,” Skylar said.
Hawk’s grandfather entered the tipi. He watched her, his eyes dark and fathomless, his face deeply lined by time and the elements.
She drank the water offered to her from a gourd and thanked the girl and then Hawk’s grandfather.
One of the babies found a tortoiseshell comb in her skirt pocket.
She drew her eyes from those grave ones of the old brave and showed the child what the comb did, laughing as she drew it through the babe’s dark hair, then offered it to the little one.
The child watched her with enormous, almond-shaped dark eyes.
Beautiful eyes, in a face filled with wonder.
Skylar bit her lower lip suddenly, remembering accounts she had heard of Indian babes being killed when the soldiers had triumphed over the bands.
It had seemed so distant then, so real now. The children were beautiful.
No one had a right to slaughter innocents.
Cherubs like these. Little ones who smiled, laughed, gurgled, reached out to be touched, expected love.
She shivered suddenly. She looked up at the old Indian brave.
And as he looked down at her, she felt that he knew what she was thinking.
She couldn’t talk to him. She didn’t know a word of his language.
But he seemed to understand her thoughts.
He smiled, and somehow, they communicated.
And she wasn’t so afraid.
The old woman spoke very quietly to the man. He shrugged, then looked at Skylar again.
“Deer Woman would ask if you are you hungry if she could. She does not speak your language and so cannot.”
“No, I’m—” She broke off, startled. Hawk’s grandfather spoke English quite well. Regaining her composure, she wondered if it would be rude not to accept something to eat. “Perhaps, I’m a little hungry. Only if it is no problem…”
Her voice trailed as he turned back to the white-haired woman.
She rose, setting her work aside, and left the tipi.
She returned with a bowl filled with meat in a thick juice.
Skylar thanked her and tasted the meat, hoping that she would find it good and that she wouldn’t embarrass herself further by choking it down—or worse, being sick.
The food was delicious. She arranged her legs beneath her the same way she had seen the white-haired woman do as she ate, aware that the children continued to play with her comb as she did so.
Hawk’s grandfather sat before his fire, gazing at her.
“Your feet are hurt,” he said.
“Just a little sore.”
“Deer Woman has salve for them.”
Skylar straightened her legs so Deer Woman could reach her feet. As the woman gently tended to them, Hawk’s grandfather continued to speak to her.
“You came from the East?”
“Yes.”
“Married to Hawk?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I—I met Hawk’s father there.”
The old warrior nodded as if her explanation made perfect sense to him when no one else had ever really understood it. “David found you for Hawk.”
“I—yes,” she said simply.
The old man smiled.
“What do you think of us?”
The blunt question threw her. “I…I don’t know yet. I have just come here. I know so little and I’m trying to learn so fast. I think the children are beautiful.”
“Good. I am their great-grandfather. Four of the children belong to Pretty Bird, Hawk’s cousin, sister to Blade, Ice Raven, and Willow. Two belong to their brother Red Fox, who died in battle.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. So what do you think of us?”
“I think…I think that I still have a great deal to learn. I know that Sioux must be brave, strong, generous, and wise. I hope that you’ll be—generous with me. I—” She broke off again. “What do you think of me?” she asked him.
He was a great deal like his grandson—noncommittal. “I have much to learn,” he said.
She smiled, lowering her lashes, nodding and accepting his words.
“What do you want me to think of you?” he asked.
“I—I want you to like me,” she admitted.
“Because of Hawk?”
She looked at him, hesitated, then nodded.
He smiled and told her, “My English is good. My grandson and my son-in-law taught me to speak English. I do not share the fact that I speak it often.”
“I will never tell anyone,” Skylar promised.
He nodded sagely, then shook his old head as if in disgust. “I’m glad that you wish to learn.
The whites, they are so quick to judge us.
They think of us all as one out here on the plains.
They talk of us being savages. You cannot imagine the things that have been done.
” He lifted a hand, indicating the slim, immaculate white-haired woman with her neatly tied braids.
“Deer Woman lived among our allies, the Northern Cheyenne. They are a people who call themselves the Human Beings, a fine people.”
She smiled. “Naturally, they are a fine people. They are your allies.”