But when she had seen the head of the Wichita chief stored in that jar, she had to believe the very worst of her father.
Candy stepped outside with Two Eagles, gasping when she saw the thick layer of locusts on the ground, some dead, some alive and crawling above a heap of their own kind.
Slowly people emerged from their tepees, stunned speechless by the sight.
Candy winced when she stepped farther outside beside Two Eagles, each step crunching locusts beneath their moccasins.
One by one, people came together in the center of the village to discuss what had happened, as Two Eagles, Candy, and several warriors hurried to the corrals to check the condition of their horses.
Candy clung to Two Eagles’s arm as she stepped up to the corral with him. The horses were now contentedly munching the locusts as though feed had fallen from the sky.
The horses were not harmed, their hides too thick to be hurt by the insects.
Two Eagles stroked his midnight-black stallion’s sleek mane, then turned back to Candy. “My people have much to do now,” he said decisively. “We must be sure to gather up all of the dead locusts and rid ourselves of them, or the stench will soon be all but deadly.”
He went to the center of the village, where everyone still stood.
“We must work tirelessly until the insects are gone from our village,” Two Eagles announced. He looked past the tepees to the river, then in another direction, where their crops had just been removed from the communal garden.
“We will take them to our empty garden, pile them up, and burn them,” he said. “Let us begin now. We should not stop until all are removed.”
Everyone joined in the work, scraping up the locusts and placing them in baskets.
Candy worked as hard as anyone, laughing when Shadow romped and chased an occasional locust that had escaped the fire.
As the sun climbed high in the sky, Candy’s back ached fiercely, but she still stayed with the others, glad to be able to see the ground again in the village; soon the hard work would be over.
She stopped for a moment when she saw Two Eagles gazing off in the direction of Proud Wind’s village. She knew that he was wondering whether Proud Wind and his people had brought in their harvest before the locusts arrived.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Nymph of the downward smile
and sidelong glance,
In what diviner moments of the day
art thou most lovely?
—John Keats
Candy was exhausted from cleaning up the piles of dead locusts. She stood with the others as they watched the terrible things go up in smoke in the middle of what had not long ago been a garden filled with ripe corn.
Even the sentries had been drawn from their posts to help clean up the debris.
Candy gazed at Two Eagles as he stepped beside her. “I’m so glad that’s over,” she murmured, wiping a bead of perspiration from her brow. “But the stench. It’s horrible.”
“The wi
nd is changing,” Two Eagles said, wiping a smudge of black soot from her cheek. “The smell of death will soon go in the opposite direction.”
Candy reached up and brushed some soot from his skin, then turned with him as they heard the sound of a horse and wagon approaching the village.
Worry filled Two Eagles. “It must be whites, for no Indians travel by wagon,” he said tightly.
He waved at his warriors, bringing them quickly into a circle around him. He instructed them to take the women and children and stay inside their lodges. They were only to come out if they saw a threat. In that case, they were to come out in full force, carrying firearms.
He then rushed back to Candy. He led her quickly to their tepee, closing the flap behind them.