The hunter couldn’t read, but he had a copy of A Tale of Two Cities in his dugout on the Marias River. Duncan spent all winter reading to the man. As soon as he finished the book, he was told to begin again. “I can tell you I got mighty tired of Sydney Carton and his ‘It is a far, far better thing I do,’ speech the tenth time around,” he declared. We all went off in great gusts of laughter, even Mother, and Duncan grinned.

“Along about the time grass starts to grow, I slipped out the only window while that old coot was sleeping off a drunk,” Duncan said, when we stopped laughing. “I left the book though, sunk in a pail of molasses.”

“Did you find Sitting Bull?” I asked, when I could speak without laughing.

“Nothing easier, really. He was about one hundred miles north of the border. White Bird and his clan were there, too. Still are, some of them.”

He was silent then, staring out the window, if there had been a window where he looked. That long stare has never left him, even in good times. I was familiar with Indian pauses, so said nothing, but Phil, less informed then, rushed into the breech when the silence went on too long to suit him.

“How was it?” he asked.

“How was what? Oh. Sitting Bull.” He shrugged. “We lived and breathed for two years. Didn’t eat much.”

That was obvious to me. Duncan has never been anything but lean, and it’s taken him twenty-five years to develop even a small overhang on his waist. “Personally, I think Sitting Bull will leave Canada this summer. It’s just a guess, but his people have been slipping back across the border for several years.” (He was right. Sitting Bull surrendered at Fort Buford, Dakota Territory, on July 19, about three months after this kitchen conversation.)

“And The People?” I asked.

“Some of us left Canada, too.”

As the sun moved lower and our cook gave us the evil eye because it was past time to start supper, Hawk described the journey back to Lapwai Reservation in Idaho Territory, the rivers crossed, traveling by night and sleeping by day to avoid detection by watching soldiers, and confrontations with other tribes. “We made it finally,” he said simply. “Most of us. I have said enough about the journey.”

And he had. I never heard any more about it from him.

They had to hide out at Lapwai, too. “We weren’t the first to return,” he said. “Everyone from Canada who was found at Lapwai was sent to Indian Territory.” His chuckle that time held no humor. “The People call it Eeikish Pah, the Hot Place.”

“That’s no place for your tribe,” Father said. He had joined us not long into the story.

“No, it isn’t,” Hawk agreed, “but I am going there now.”