Hawk slept, but I lay there with my hands behind my head. Blue Mountain Woman came out of the night. She knelt by her sleeping son and touched his head as gently as if he were a newborn. She pulled the robe higher around his bare shoulders and touched his cheek.

She did the same thing to me. I reached up and patted her arm. Mother might have flinched if I ever did that to her, but not Blue Mountain Woman. She smiled, then put her finger to my lips.

I knew I was safe with this family, no matter what the U.S. government threw at us. I can only blame that foolish thought on the longing of an almost-woman, Miss Elizabeth Ann Everett of Omaha, Nebraska. Somewhere, though, in that part of my heart that yearned, I knew I had another name. I didn’t know how to find it.

Chapter Thirteen

In the morning, I stuck my head out from under the buffalo robe to steady rain. I pulled it back under again, not because I hate rain, but because the partially burned canvas of the shelter had no waterproof qualities.

This was no day to hit the road, in my opinion. I was stiff as a poker from sleeping on rocks and a clump of rabbit brush. I hadn’t even noticed them last night when I flopped down, exhausted, but there they were in the morning, grown to the size of boulders and a Christmas tree.

I protested when Blue Mountain Woman shook me awake, but since she refused to stop prodding, I got up. The ground all around me had turned to mud. When I took a stop, I promptly fell down.

A word about Montana mud is in order here. It’s the closest thing in nature to concrete. Walking in the gumbo is nearly impossible, as you soon perceive that you are getting both taller and heavier with every step.

It was cold, thick rain, the kind that turns to snow. I was soaked through in no time. The prospect of getting either warm or dry that day looked extremely bleak. I complained about the weather to Blue Mountain Woman, who favored me with an indulgent smile, the kind you use to humor toddlers.

“You talk talk about what you cannot change,” she reminded me. (Dear reader, she said “talk talk” to emphasize whiners, of which I appeared to be the chief offender. If it was “cry cry,” I knew it was time to dry up.)

I guess I did talk talk. She was correct. What good did it do to jaw about it? I might have looked skeptical – who knows – because she continued.

“This is time of rain. It rains. Mother earth is still our mother. This is our circle.”

“Don’t you get tired of riding in rain?” I persisted.

“If no rain, I mourn,” she said firmly, in that motherly tone I recognized in coming years when I urged my children to eat that spinach because it was good for them. I decided not to complain complain about the weather anymore.