If they could cut us off from the caves they would have our women, as well as our extra weapons, blankets, robes, and meat. Without them, survival would be a question.
Keokotah had had the same idea. We met undercover near the caves. “I think they go,” he whispered. “I think snow come.”
Glancing at the sky, I could see what he meant. During the last hour the sky had clouded over to a dull, flat gray.
Snow? This might be the time to leave. Falling snow would cover whatever tracks we would leave in the mud, and when they returned they would come upon only empty caves. No doubt they had hoped to surprise us, always a favorite Indian tactic, and as surprise had failed and their medicine seemed bad, they would most likely await another time. Finally we assumed that they had been wiped out by the Komantsi.
We had lost one man. He was a young warrior of the Natchee and he had been killed and scalped.
“Conejero no like,” Keokotah said. “Natchee strange Indian. There be much talk now. Who is Indian? Where he from? How many strange Indian?”
Itchakomi was waiting in her cave. Explaining took only a moment. She asked no questions, simply spoke a few quick words to the other women and then to her warriors. We had known this time was coming, so were prepared. Within minutes we were leaving the caves behind, yet not without reluctance. They had been warm shelters, and when does a man leave a place he has lived without some regret? For each time some part of him is left behind. So it was with us.
We took one last look around. If anyone was watching they would see the direction we took, but there was no help for it.
“You sad,” she said to me, her eyes searching mine.
I shrugged. “It was a good place. We were warm there.”
Keokotah led the way, the Natchee followed, then came Itchakomi, and I was last, a rear guard, if one was needed.
The trail we took was narrow, and the way was hard. Here and there were spots of ice and places where the bank had caved. We walked warily, and I trailed behind, pausing often to study the back trail and to see if we were followed.
It was growing cold again. Night was coming. Uneasily, I looked about. We must take shelter quickly. The air had changed. A chill finger touched my cheek, and then another.
Snow! It was beginning to snow.
Keokotah needed no word from me. He led our people into the trees and quickly they began building a shelter. There were large trees close together where interwoven tops provided some protection from the snow. With our hatchets and knives we cut notches in the trees and laid poles from one to another. While three of us did this, the others gathered branches to lay across the top and to put down upon the sides. Our house was about thirty feet long, but not straight. It followed the trees we had used, most of which were six or seven feet apart. By the time the roof was in place the snow was falling heavily.
We slanted the sides out, lean-to fashion, and thatched them with spruce branches and slabs of bark from fallen trees. With all of us working, it was little time until we had our shelter and had gathered wood for the fire. We had left a hole for the smoke and soon had a fire going and meat broiling.
The snow fell thick and fast, covering our tracks. An astute tracker, one wily enough to think of it, might still find our tracks frozen in the mud under the snow. Not all Indians were good trackers, although all could track and had spent much of their lives doing it.
When there was time to look about I saw how well Keokotah had chosen, for our shelter was well back in the trees in an unlikely place and well situated for defense. In just a short time we had made it snug, and once we were inside and had a fire going we were warm enough.
The snow continued to fall. We would not be easily found.
Itchakomi and I began talking again. She was forever curious about English women and how they behaved themselves, what clothes they wore, and what they did with themselves.
Pa had talked much of theaters. He had never cared much for bull or bear baiting, but loved the plays, and a man named Will Kempe was a great favorite. So I told her of the theaters and of the innyards used as theaters when companies were on tour. Speaking of such things kept her from asking questions of me, questions that disturbed me and left me uneasy and asking questions of myself.
Pa had talked much of the theaters, for the England in which he had grown up was much given to playgoing, and the players were well known to everyone.
“What of the women? Were there no women in the plays?”
“No, not in England. Pa said there was talk of women players in Italy, but not in England. Boys played the parts of women.”
She thought that was foolish, and when I thought on it, so did I, but that was the way it was.
She plied me with questions until I told her more than I knew, things Pa had told us, forgotten until her questions dredged them up. Memory holds much more than we suspect, I found, and began to wonder what else there was I had forgotten.
Outside the snow fell, and the others fell asleep, even Keokotah, who was curious in his own mind and wishful of knowing more of England.
“And did your father know the king?”
“My father? I should say not! Kings had nothing to do with yeomen and only a little, sometimes, with knights. That’s as I understand it, at least.”
“The Great Sun knows his people, knows every one,” she told me. “Does your king have a Ni’kwana?”
“Sort of. I guess he might be like the chancellor or an archbishop. I don’t know half enough about it.” I spoke irritably, for I did not like to discover that I knew less than I should.
“You speak of a king, but did you not tell me that a queen ruled in England?”
“Queen Elizabeth. My father approved of her, although it was little she would have cared for one man’s approval. However, as he says it she was a good queen.”
“Was?”
“We are gone from there, although my mother is there, and a brother and sister, but in any case Queen Elizabeth is gone. There is a king now.” I said it with some satisfaction. “King James is on the throne.”
“Will you go back?”
“I cannot go back. I have never been. Also, this is my land. I shall stay here.”
“I am glad.”
Here we were, getting down to personal things again. “We’d better sleep,” I suggested. “Tomorrow I must hunt again.”
She seemed in no way disposed to sleep, and said so, but I spread my robes close to the edge of the shelter.
Spring was going to be late this year no matter how soon it came. The cold and snow trapped a man, keeping him within the lodge and close to women. Not that I disliked women, far from it, but I was not ready to set up my own lodge or stay in one place. There was a wide land out there no man had seen, and as Pa had longed for his far blue mountains I was longing to walk these Shining Mountains to their utmost limits.
Itchakomi had said nothing lately of returning, although if she returned now she might become the Great Sun herself. I spoke of that, but she was quiet, and before she got around to speaking I was asleep, or pretending to be.
When morning came the mountains were gone, vanished under a cloak of snow, their towering black peaks lost in a whiteness that covered all. Scarcely a dark branch showed or an edge of rock. It was still, the only sound my moccasins pressing down the snow, crunching into the silence.
For a long moment I stood and looked out over the land, my breath a white cloud. Hunching my shoulders against the snow I looked carefully around. There were no enemies I could see, and no moving game, only the snow, the ice, and the cold. I broke off a heavy branch, the sound like a pistol shot, and then another, bringing them back to the hungry fire, waging its own desperate fight against the chill.
This was a land for me, these mountains, this forest, these silent streams, their voices stilled only for the time.
Keokotah came out and stood beside me. “Is good,” he said, “all this.”