I tried to be rational about the whole situation, but he had caught me in my own backlash of a surge of loneliness and I melted into tears. He quit fooling with the twigs and put his arms around me. Mindful of people nearby, I cried as quietly as I could. I told him how frightened I was and how lonely, as he let me cry all over him.

I finally blew my nose on the hem of my skirt – Miss Sumner, what would you do if your only handkerchief was still in Yellowstone Park? – and sat up straight.

He released me. “Liz, you have strong wyakim.”

“Wyakim?” I asked. I rose to my knees and started picking the leaves and brush out of Hawk’s hair. I couldn’t have explained what just happened, but something had changed. He made no objection.

“Guardian spirit. One who watches.”

I thought about the Crow army scout in the canyon. I suppose he could have killed me and Catherine, scalped us both and called it a well-rounded day. But that didn’t happen. Wyakim. I doubt my Episcopalian priest would have been impressed, but I was.

“I don’t believe in things like that,” I told him, belying my own thoughts.

“Do you believe in God and Jesus and the…the wyakim that no one sees?” he asked.

I hesitated, my fingers in his hair. I believed in the Holy Trinity, One and Inseparable, on McDermott Street, but out here I wasn’t so certain. If there was a God, no matter in how many pieces he found himself, he certainly wasn’t smiling on the Nimiipuu. And weren’t they his creations, too? This was too much theology for me on an empty stomach.

“I thought I did,” I answered slowly, “but now I am not so certain.”

He took my hands from his hair, squeezed them and released them. “You need more faith.”

How strange to hear that coming from a warpainted man. He must have gone to church in Vancouver with his father. Maybe he went with Catherine. I realized how little I knew about this person who had saved my life only this afternoon. I wanted to ask so many questions, but nothing came out except, “I am so tired.”

“You and all of us,” he said. “Look away.”

I did as he said, knowing he was removing his loincloth and crawling under the buffalo robe. For a moment that luckily passed – should I even write this, if my children are going to read it? Oh, why not. – I didn’t want to look away. I did, though, then looked back before I moved to my side of the shelter, the safe side. “Hawk, is your wyakim Kaya?”

“Yes. Hawk. I had an earlier name, a Christian one from my father. I haven’t used it since my vigil when kaya swooped down and carried me to another peak.”