Savage Tempest

He gestured a hand toward them. “Go, time is wasting,” he said tightly. “We must hurry to leave this place, where our hearts will remain behind us. But your souls will soon be at peace when you see where your new home will be established. I have seen. I know. It is nothing less than a paradise.”

This made the women’s eyes light up. If their beloved young chief said their new home would be a paradise, they believed him. They knew him to be truthful in all things. They trusted him in all things.

“Children,” High Hawk said, his voice carrying to the ears of the young ones, who seemed stunned by what was happening, their eyes revealing their confusion. “Go into the garden and fields and make certain there is no stray corn left there, nor any remains of the recently harvested crops. We want to leave nothing there for the soldiers.”

What he said next caused the women to stop almost in mid-step and turn to look at him once again with shock in their eyes.

“You women, burn the caches of corn and vegetables that you cannot take with you so that no white man or soldier can profit from your hard work,” he said firmly.

Joylynn was as stunned by his order as the women.

She recalled the hard work of making the caches and then filling them with corn.

As each moment passed, the truth of what was happening seemed to cut more deeply into the hearts of these wonderful people.

She tried to put from her mind the sadness of it, the heartache. Instead, she hurried with Blanket Woman toward the older woman’s personal cache pit.

“We must first take food to sustain us through the winter, and carefully choose the seeds we take with us for our future crops,” Blanket Woman said. “For corn, we must select the very best from the braided strings. We need five braided strings of soft white and thirty ears of yellow, and ten ears of gummy corn.”

Blanket Woman huffed and puffed as she hurried onward, explaining what they must take in order to have everything that would be needed for their new homes, and in their new gardens.

“Joylynn, while selecting corn with me, choose only good, full, plump ears,” Blanket Woman said. “And take only kernels in the center of the cob, rejecting the large at one end and the small at the other. In shelling the seed corn, remove the kernels from the cob with your thumb. Since seed corn can be kept for two years, all families reserve enough for two crops. So shall we today.”

They hurried to where the cache pit had been hidden. Joylynn tried to remember all the instructions as she helped uncover the pit.

She smiled over her shoulder at a young brave who brought a horse with a travois dragging behind it. The travois would carry the food that was taken from Blanket Woman’s personal cache pit today.

Blanket Woman thanked him, and he began helping dig through the twigs and leaves that had been lain on top of the cache pit, to conceal it from anyone who might happen along.

When the cache pit was open, Joylynn worked tirelessly alongside the young brave and Blanket Woman, marveling at the old woman’s stamina as she continued to take the stored vegetables and fruit from her cache pit. She loaded it all on the travois in bags.

Clo

thes, blankets, lodge coverings and other belongings had already been loaded on another travois and on the packhorse’s backs. They were ready for the long climb ahead.

Joylynn turned and gazed at the mountain that was their destination. A sense of dread filled her soul, for she knew that some of the passes would be narrow and steep. Could the packhorses make the dangerous climb? Could all the people, some of whom were frail with age?

Those people would travel by way of travois, too, as would Sleeping Wolf, since he was not able to ride, or even walk for any amount of time.

Blanket Woman hugged the boy who was helping them and thanked him in the language of the Pawnee.

He smiled and ran to help others.

“We have chosen the most excellent of seeds to start our new crops,” Blanket Woman said, groaning as she placed a hand at the small of her back. “And we have enough packed to sustain us until the new crops can be harvested next year.”

Blanket Woman turned to Joylynn. Her eyes wavered as she gazed at the younger woman. “Thank you for helping,” she said, her voice breaking. “I am beginning to understand why my son loves you. Although you were born into the white world, your heart beats with the feelings of us Pawnee. My son High Hawk is a very astute man. He saw in you what I stubbornly would not allow myself to see.”

“That’s because you and your people have been given cause not to trust anyone whose skin is white,” Joylynn said. She was ready to hug this woman who was admitting things Joylynn knew were hard for her to say. The moment Blanket Woman had first seen Joylynn, there had been hatred etched in her eyes.

But now? Joylynn saw something very different. She saw kindness. Joylynn hoped that in time Blanket Woman would love her as she would have loved a daughter.

Finally everyone was ready to leave. Before their departure, Two Stars said a prayer aloud to Tirawahut, asking for a safe journey.

Other prayers were said by various people, and High Hawk’s voice joined them, reaching for the heavens.

Tears came to Joylynn’s eyes at the injustice of it all. Like so many Indians before them, the Wolf band was being forced to leave their home, taking with them their cherished memories of the time when no white people walked on Indian soil. They would have to leave behind the life they had loved, with only the faint hope that they could reestablish it where they were going.

And they set out with the possibility that even their new home might be invaded eventually by the evil of white men who would not leave them in peace.