Utterly defeated, I bowed my head. By now, Methuselah had calmed himself and edged away from the rim. Someone helped me back into the saddle. I watched the older woman give the bereft and bloody mother a hand up behind her, and we continued a journey suddenly and everlastingly more terrible than anything I could have imagined.

When we reached the bottom of the canyon and the trail widened, Joseph rode back slowly. He spoke a few words to the mother riding double. Then he rode back to me.

He said nothing. He looked at all the bewilderment, anger and shock on my face, shook his head and touched my hand. That was all he did, but it was enough. I looked into his face, and saw my expression mirrored in his own eyes.

As I think of it now, the death of the little fellow changed something else in me. I no longer saw the people as Indians who all looked alike. I saw them as mothers, fathers, children and babies. I saw a mother who had lost her baby in a terrible accident. And over there was a young wife, quite pregnant, who kept looking back down the trail. Was her husband one of the decoy party? She worried for him; I could tell. And there was Blue Mountain Woman with her kind eyes on me. They were individuals; they were The People.

In silence we backtracked at least twice over the trail we followed. At one place, the youngsters and old ones milled the horse herd around until God Almighty himself couldn’t have picked our tracks among all the hoofprints.

I couldn’t tell you where we camped that night; it didn’t matter. No one put up shelters. No one started cooking fires. We ate our morsels cold, then rolled up in blankets and buffalo robes. The decoy was somewhere, if they were even still alive.

There was no gentle talk, no friendly exchanges, only silence. I was a long time getting to sleep, even though I could smell exhaustion in my very pores. That awful night, I knew beyond any doubt that I had turned the last page in my childhood. What lay ahead was a blank space. I grew up that afternoon.

Chapter Ten

What can I tell you of the next few days? After the misery of a silent night, we gathered ourselves together as one, even me, and rode on. I saw The People in a new light, noting how many of them had short hair.

I know I broke with tradition that next morning when I left the line of march and rode to the front beside Poker Joe. He didn’t seem surprised at my impulsive action, which put the heart back in me. I needed to know more, and he knew it.

“I know I am out of place, Joe, but tell me something about the last month,” I ordered. It was no half-hearted suggestion.

“Ride with me,” he said, after a few words with Joseph, who obligingly fell back a little, after a good look at Methuselah, who was amounting to even less than usual.