“What do you wish to know?” Joe asked.

“Hawk told me that you were all to go onto a reservation, but a few tribal hotheads killed some whites and everyone took off,” I said. “This was a plan?”

He smiled at that. “Perhaps we can say that no one was much in favor of the reservation.”

“Was it a bad place?” I asked. I was so innocent still.

“Not really.”

“Then why?”

He was silent for a long time and I feared I had either offended him or asked a question so stupid that he was hard put, polite man that he was, to answer without making me feel like an idiot. “Do you ever get weary of being told what to do?” he asked me finally.

“All the time,” I said. “I’m a woman and I am always told what to do.”

“What happens?”

I saw where this was going. “I grumble but I knuckle under.”

“Then what?”

I had never answered a question like this, because no one had ever asked it. “I…I suppose I hope that I will meet a kind man someday who will marry me and treat me as though my opinion matters.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I will hope better things for my daughters,” I said firmly, even as I realized that was no answer at all. I gave Poker Joe a sidelong glance, hoping he wasn’t laughing at me. He wasn’t, and I knew I had a friend.

“What about you, Liz, the you of your universe?”

I didn’t know. I had nothing to say except, “The People want to have their own say in the matter, and guide their own destiny, don’t they?”

“We are looked upon as charges of the federal government and treated as children,” Joe said. “This order and those killings were the final burden.” His voice hardened. “And there was a treaty in 1855 that we signed, giving us so much land. Enough land for our horses. All gone now.”

“But why?” I know I was starting to sound like a three-year-old, and I am being generous here.

“The white men took it back.”

“That was definitely unsporting of them,” I said, indignant.

He smiled at that, patient with me. “We will meet the soldiers again. We are probably leaving the Department of the Columbia, General Howard commanding. We are heading into another department where another regiment of troopers, fresh troopers, will pick up our trail.” He looked back at Joseph, who watched us. “Knowing General Howard, he will keep following. Now we will travel north to Canada, the land of the Grandmother, which last year took in Sitting Bull and others from the Little Big Horn fight.” He raised his hands, frustrated. “There are only so many buffalo in Canada! I don’t know what will happen.”

“You have no allies here?” I asked.

“We will see when the young men return. For years we have traded with the Crow to the east. They know our hearts, but they also know the Bluecoats. Some are scouts.”