Great Dusk-Owl turned his cavernous being toward the casket and graves and addressed them. He drew himself up; even his chin tilted up so that he had to look down at the mourners when he spoke. “What is our great departed chief, Little Beard, saying to these dead men right this minute? Little Beard is saying this: ‘Cowards!’”

The members of the little group stepped closer to one another, either against the wind which blew across the Genesee or against the shock of Great Dusk-Owl’s words.

But there were more words. “Cowards!” he said to the signs and remains of the dead. “You were afraid to face the normal hurts of this life. It is true that the whites brought spirits and encouraged drink; it is true that this was an insult. In truth, you were part white. But you embraced the insult. You put a snake in your path. You set a cougar to devour your own venison so that you would end up starving. You tortured your relatives and friends—a thing that is of the greatest disgrace to you and so to all of us.”

Great Dusk-Owl ran at the casket and the graves, flapping his arms as if he were trying to scatter crows.

“Jogo,” he shouted. “Go! Get out of here! Better that in your cowardice you are gone. Better that you had eaten muskrat root when you were young than end the way you did.” He flapped his arms once more, turned from the graves, faced the group, drew himself up again, and folded his arms.

THREE days after the funeral one of Mary’s white tenants who had become a good friend was helping her back a load of hay into the barn.

Richard was silent until Mary said, “Is there something wrong?”

“Good God,” he said.

Mary looked up at him. “What is the matter?”

“Great Dusk-Owl. Holy God.”

“What do you mean?”

“His sermon.”

“You mean his words at the funeral?”

“Harsh. Harsh, hard things to say on such an occasion.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I think so. And in front of you, the men’s mother. What could he have been thinking of?”

“I think I know what he was thinking of.”

“You do? It’s beyond me. What, then?”

“I think I know what he was thinking because— it was what I was thinking. And I had told him my thoughts.”

“What?”

“I had told him my mind.”

“You told him what to say!”

I had told Great Dusk-Owl my mind. Perhaps those things were in accord with his own thinking.

RICHARD fell silent again for a time, and then he spoke. “Maybe they couldn’t help the way they ended.”

To this Mary said nothing.

He turned back to what he had been doing, lifting a bundle of hay from the cart, before he said, “Someone wants to write down the story of your life.”

“What?”

“Someone wants to write down the story of your life.” Finally his eyes met hers.