With Tom’s help, Hawk tied the two sacks of flour on the extra horse, one sack on each side, to balance the load. Then the smaller sacks were tied on, some on the packhorse and some on Rascal’s saddle. Hawk stepped up into the saddle and nodded politely to Dinah Belle, then told Bodine, “Pleasure to do business with you,” wheeled his horse, and rode out of the yard.

“Come back to see us,” Dinah Belle suddenly called out as he rode away, for no reason she could explain.

Bodine looked at his wife and exclaimed, “Now, ain’t that somethin’?” He unconsciously took Hawk’s money out of his pocket and stared at it, as if it might not be real.

Totally confused, Tom looked first at one face and then the other, searching for some explanation. When none was offered, he asked anxiously, “Am I goin’ loco? What just happened here? I thought he was the one who . . .”

That was as far as he got before Bodine interrupted him. “Yeah, he’s the one, all right, but I don’t know. Maybe he ain’t.” He looked at his wife and said, “Didn’t none of us get a good look at who was doin’ the shootin’ when Trip Dawson got killed.”

“And you remember,” Dinah Belle reminded him again, “Hawk was the one that kept that Blackfoot Injun from scalpin’ you when they was in here four years ago.”

* * *

Wounded Bear’s eyes opened slowly. Something had awakened him. He looked over at his wife, sleeping peacefully, so he knew it was much too early to get up. He lay back and closed his eyes again, hoping to go back to sleep, but then he heard it again, and he realized it sounded like the snuffling of a horse as it grazes. Concerned then that it might be a raccoon or a possum trying to get into the tipi, he roused himself up from his blanket. “What is it?” his wife asked, when she awoke to find him getting up.

“Go back to sleep,” Wounded Bear said. “A varmint is trying to get in the tipi.” He picked up a hand ax and went outside. When he did not return, and she heard no sound from him, his wife got out of her blanket and went outside to find him standing beside a horse. He turned when he heard her come out behind him. “It is the Hawk,” he said softly with a voice trembling with reverence, then he stepped aside so she could see the horse, loaded down with supplies. “This is the horse that was missing. Hawk has sent it home.”

* * *