The Shoshoni Frog Man

The Lookout by Charles Marion Russell

Cassius pulled the reins hard, once for effect and again for habit. He never knew a horse that didn’t need a reminder now and again. The beast shook its head and looked back at the rider with a half white eye. Cassius didn’t see. He was surfing the illusive heat waves on the horizon. Satisfied, he turned a squinting eye to the only notable thing in sight, a thick saguaro erect like an anchor in the hot wind. He rode until it was close enough to make the horse nervous. Picking an arbitrary needle—it had to be arbitrary—he nudged the horse closer still. The thorn was gray black with a reddish point, somewhat smaller than its neighbors but otherwise unremarkable. Cassius studied the yellow node from which it protruded, noted the way the sun played on its long, sleek shaft. Closing his eyes, he reconstructed the thing in every detail. Then, looking again, he corrected his mind’s eye, refined the image, set it in stone, and closed his eyes again. He did this several times. Meanwhile, the horse nibbled on a tuft of dust covered grass that lay in the cactus’ shade. At last, Cassius opened his eyes and concluded the ritual by spitting on it. Mind and matter. This was his religion. This was the way he left his spirit in a place. Never before or since would that needle have so much attention, so much mental energy, borne down on it. He alone owned that needle. It was now as much a part of him as was his name and the memories of his mother singing him to sleep in his teepee. Yet it was more than that too. It stretched beyond him now. He had graced the needle with thought, immortalized it in the collective conscious of humanity. There, it would take its place besides the form of Plato’s horse and Yorick’s skull and the Arc of the Covenant. 

The horse felt the far off trampling of hooves on the ground and swung round dispassionately. Past the sea of yellow dust, a party of five held the horizon. They rode on tired horses, two black and three brown. The black stallion at the fore bore a long gun in a holster strapped to the saddle. The other men carried six shot revolvers at their hips or in their hands, some both at once. To a one, they made crude calculations, intuitions really, concerning the odds of hitting a man on horseback while riding horseback himself. Not good but not entirely bad either. Not when the target has $25,000 legal tender in stow. The universe has a queer way of counterbalancing such spasms of fate. A blessed crook like that has it coming. And he can’t complain when it does. That much luck—call it fortune or providence or whatever you like—acts as a magnet. Or like a line cast in chummed waters. Only the damn fish chummed up the waters with its own brazen guts. Cassius was unaware of all this, felt though it was in his bones. No, not his bones. His skin. It gave the sensation of being underwater, a weight pressing in on every side. Not uncomfortable but distinctly unnerving. The same feeling animals get when they’re hunted. The horse felt it even now. Cassius remounted it and spurred it to a comfortable gallop. If the riders didn’t see Cassius and his horse—the sheriff’s horse, actually—they certainly saw the trail of dust kicked up in his wake. 

And the hunt was on again. Beads of fallen sweat, rolled to little globs of sand, invisibly marked the winding trail of hunter and hunted. Over a ridge here. Across a brink there. Flank and crest, flank and crest. At last the open desert narrowed to a little outpost almost worthy to be called a town. Boasting a bank and a post office, it took the name of Station OR001. Optimistic numbering, Cassius thought. There were only 6 like stations in all of Oregon. Or, ogwa pe-on, River of the West, as it is rightly called in Shoshoni. The Shoshone tribe from which he was borne had called it that from the time of the great Moon Splash. But none of that mattered now. The White Man had spoken. This was Oregon.

Cassius saw a horse tied off outside the bank. Female and black with chestnut spots, it was as opposite his steed as he could have hoped. With surprising grace, he leapt from the one horse to the other and loosed the reins that held there. He rode it to the furthest corner of the town but no further. He first had to make it his own. He picked a hair on its neck, a black one on the rim of a brown spot. It was bent and wet with sweat from where the reins had been resting. He studied it, performing his ritual. Before his spit had dried, the two were back riding the unforgiving spine of the desert, headed North now. Cassius was a six hour’s ride from his tribe. He hoped the horse had been watered recently because there were no stops between here and there. If he killed the horse, so be it. His tribe would use it in the Indian way. Nothing would go to waste. Besides, its spirit would live on because of the ritual. It would be more alive than he or any other man. All spirit.

Looking back, he saw the sheriff’s party. They knew it was him on the new horse. He cursed in his native tongue. There was no way he could go back home until he was rid of these White men. He considered dropping the loot. It would be useless. They would simply keep coming. It was him they wanted, not the money. And when they got him—if they got him—they would carry him back to Fairpass, from where the money had come. Two or three miles out, they’d wrap a rope around his ankle and drag him the rest of the way. He’d be nice and tender for the hangman. The whole town’d come out to watch. The Injun Swing, they call it. And all the men would place bets on how many days it would take before his body would drop from his head. And all the children would repeat the sound it made for days, puffing their cheeks out and smacking both sides at once.

He saw a grove of black cottonwoods up ahead and made right for it. With his knife, he cut the reins from the horse, split them in half lengthwise, and tied the two ends together. Measuring three paces up two cottonwoods, he tied it taught. High enough for their necks and thin enough to be nearly invisible. Quickly, he stripped naked, stuffed his clothes full of twigs and cottonwood needles, and laid them on the sand ahead in the fashion of a man. They were only a hundred yards away when his likeness was complete. He hollered a child’s insult in his native tongue; a war cry would have been too good for these fools. It worked. They sped ahead, right where he needed them to.

The first man to pass, middle aged and wearing a sun-tanned cowboy hat, was too stout for his trap to work. He went right under. But, as luck would have it, the next three all rode shoulder to shoulder. They fell as gracefully as cows learning to walk. Unfortunately, the Sheriff was in back and saw the carnage in time to steer his horse afield of the two trees but losing his long gun in the process.

Cassius was on the three grounded men almost before they knew that they had fallen. He stabbed each man three times in the neck. That left the short rider and the Sheriff. They were circling back for him now, revolvers drawn. He hid behind a tree until they were close. A flurry bullets shook the trunk on which he leaned, but cottonwood is tough stuff and it held. When he heard the horse’s footfalls near, he leapt from the cover of one tree to another, in between hurling a knife at the stout rider. It struck him in the chest, and he fell.

Three more shots from the Sheriff. One just grazed Cassius’s shoulder. He smiled at the pain.

“Come out, ya dirty Injun devil!”

“No, thank you.” The White school taught him manners if nothing else.

“I’ll shoot ya if ya don’t.” The Sheriff waited. Nothing. “Ah, hell. I’ll shoot ya if ya do too. No use lyin’ to ya. Come out. Be a man.”

Cassius took a foldable fan from his pocket and opened it to a full spread. “Fine. But don’t shoot. A man ought to have the right to a few words with his killer before he dies.”

“Sure. I can see the reason in that.”

Cassius thrust the fan out from the tree.

Two shots rang out. Cassius smirked at the two holes in the fan. “You’re a good shot, Sheriff… but a bad liar.” He stepped lazily out from behind the tree.

Now it was the Sheriff’s turn to smile. He trained the revolver on Cassius’ head. Cassius looked down the barrel. Goosebumps tightened his skin from his matted hair to his moccasins. The world slowed to a crawl despite the pounding in his chest. This was it. His favorite part. Sometimes he wondered if he thieved and tussled and killed just for this. To feel the membrane between now and never thin to a whisper. 

Overtop the barrel, the man’s mustache twitched. “Neat trick. I’ll give you those last words now. If you can still speak ‘em,” he said, almost pitying the weedy Indian, his face catatonic. 

Cassius unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth. To the Sheriff’s amazement, all he did was raise his arms and bow as if preparing to walk off life’s great stage. Or perhaps to give a clearer shot of his upper story.

“Suit yerself.” A thin, impotent click was the only sound.

Cassius opened his eyes again. The Sheriff hadn’t counted. He had. “Bad luck, Sheriff.”

The mustached man realized his mistake too late. Cassius was on him before he even had a chance to pull back the hammer for a second try. The two of them kicked up a good deal of dust, but it was the Sheriff who found himself belly down on the saddle, hands and feet tied together under the horse, muttering curses all the way back to Cassius’ tribe. 

The blood sun was halfway hidden under the horizon as he strode into camp. The tall grass blew in waves before him, a man alone at sea. In the distance, a few dozen teepees stood in a scattered cluster a pace from one another, white sails against the deepening turquoise sky. Stars bespeckled the twilight to make a man on horseback almost dizzy. Cassius knew Awena’s tent by the uneven length of the pole branches protruding from the smoke flap. A thin, gray smoke streamed upward from her outskirt tent. Drawing nearer, he caught the scent of fish and frybread. He reined the horse to a stop before he got too close for the horse’s hooves to draw any unwanted attention.

“Now you just stay quiet until I get you before the council,” he warned the bundle behind him. The Sheriff didn’t answer. It was struggle enough just to keep the lights on with all the blood in his brain. His ribs felt like he wouldn’t breathe right for weeks. “Oh, and another thing. Best we don’t tell them you’re a Sheriff. Not yet anyway. Chief doesn’t know English, but Brother Kai will have questions. Best not look him in the eyes. Your name is Christopher, and I found you on the outskirts of camp. You came on an errand of the governor. The state of Oregon wants to apologize to the Shoshone people for the crime of—ha, I don’t know, pick something. Say you want to pay back the people for land theft. Yeah, that’ll work.”

The Sheriff perked up at that. “Tha hell we do!”

Cassius went on as if he had never spoken. “As a token of your remorse, you would like to give the Shoshone people—how much did you have in that bank?”

“$25,000,” he scowled. 

“Really? That much, huh? Not bad.” Cassius chuckled. “You’d like to give the Shoshone people $24,000,” he concluded.

“Yous people are dumber than tha Brits if ya think every officer in Oregon won’t be on yer ass like so many hound dogs on a bitch in heat.”

“How would they find out? Once the council is done questioning you, you’ll be on your way to Nevada with Mama Tika’s acorn bread in your belly and $1,000 in your pocket.” That shut him up good. “Any questions?”

“… Do I have to eat that Injun bread?”

“Yes.”

Cassius wanted to pay a visit to Awena before dropping his load at the Chief’s tent. Outside her teepee, he ran a hand across a thin, browning crease in the leather flap. It was easy to find. Many years ago he had spit on that crease. Ever since, it lived in his mind among the most precious of his relics. He didn’t pray—that privilege belonged to the White Man’s religion—but he did meditate. At least, that’s what his white schoolmasters told him it was. He didn’t have a name for it, really. He didn’t think words applied to spiritual things. What name could contain “God”, that great being who is Being itself? What word could capture a soul’s ascent to the Eternal? No, what he did was just what he did. The objects to which he did it knew what it was that he did, and that was enough. For the Saguaro cactus needle, he did it to glorify both it and him. Not so with the crease. For that—really, for her—he meant protection from all things under the Winds. And he didn’t need the saints or his ancestors either. All he needed was a few moments and some spit.

Cassius peeled back the flap quickly, just as he did as a boy. Then it was to scare her and maybe catch her dressing. Now it was to see her as nature saw her, to see her when no eyes were there to bias her instinctual movements. She wore a sandstone colored skirt, squatting over dried fish, her obsidian black hair tied up high and loose. For a split second, he saw the unadulterated composure of her hard, tan face, dewy over the steam of a Terra-cotta cauldron. Underneath, a bed of dying embers cast a soft glow across face and tent alike. For that split second, he knew her virgin form, her singular manner, as intimately as any married man might know his wife.

“You shouldn’t be here!” she scolded, though her wide eyes told a different story. She spoke in Shoshoni, but his mind translated the words to English before they even passed her lips.

“But I am,” he relied, all composure.

Her shoulders relax to sour acceptance. “Why, Yagwaza? After all these moons, why?”

“It’s Cassius now. You know that.”

“And you know that Shoshone names are not names but titles. You can change what people call you, but you cannot change who you are.”

“Just call me Cassius, okay?”

“Why?”

“Because my name is my title. I was born Yagwaza, “frog man.” I am frog, Awena. I belong to both worlds. White and Native. I am the bridge.”

She shook her head and wiped the mist from her face. “Ours is the only world there is. Outside, it is death. Tell me, frog. Is their world land or sea? I tell you it is sea for there I watch you drown. They speak of freedom but kill it in every wild thing and every Shoshoni child they see. They preach God but salt the very earth from which they claim to be made. They rape and kill and steal, Yagwaza.”

Cassius swallowed hard at her last word. Steal. Had he become like them and not known it? They steal land, he steals money. Is there really any difference? Yes. Yes, there was, he decided. Money can be made, land cannot. And money bears a face where nature has none. No nation, no tongue, no flag. But did it have religion, he wondered. He looked out her tent at the prairie’s darkening waves. Sill the pink and purple blush of dusk flooded the horizon. Above it, the moon hung like the Eye of God surrounded by a thousand thousand angels. Does nature have a religion? Nature is religion. But whose? The White Mans? The Indians? 

A grunt, clearly human and clearly vexed, came from outside the tent. Cassius remembered the Sheriff. Awena only narrowed her eyes, awaiting whatever outlandish explanation Cassius stewed up this time.

He laughed nervously. “That’s my new friend. His name is Christopher,” he began.

“Don’t bother, Yagwaza. I have no appetite for your lies. Did you steal more horses for us? Or kidnap a doctor again? No, I don’t want to know. Only tell me this.” She looked at him with an intensity that made him squirm. “Are you here to stay?”

He saw in her still chest and slack mouth a vulnerability that only women have the strength to carry. With all that time and dirt between them, she leaned on him still. He smoothed a perfectly fine pant leg. “No. Not to stay.” He meant to stop his ramblings but couldn’t. She, at least, deserved more. “One day I’ll come back, Awena.” Hopefully alive. Hopefully to marry you. 

She sighed sharply though her nose, and her back stiffened like a bison. She resumed scaling the fish that was more than a fish now. Her eyes bore into it like two arrowheads. “Goodbye, Yagwaza.”

He stared at her for a long while before leaving. 

There was no need to gather the council. They were already there, huddled around the bizarre sight of a uniformed White man hogtied to his own horse. Only the chief was absent. The human grunt he heard outside, it seemed, came from them poking him with an inquiring arrowhead. The Sheriff looked up at him with wide eyes, begging for intervention. 

“Behne!” The Shoshoni greeting still flowed off his tongue like water. “This is Christopher.” He smiled his best disarming smile.

A severe looking man with hair tied back spoke, “We have to talk, Yagwaza.”

“Don’t worry, Kai! I found him just outside—”

Another of the council cut him off. “Inside the Tent of Meeting. Here is not proper.”
The Tent of Meeting? This was nothing as official as that, he thought. He followed them inside the tent, twice the size of all the others and outfitted with proper sitting stools. A small fire of cedar wood lit the place. Wearily, Cassius took his seat. 

Kai glared at him, his bushy eyebrows set in a frown typically reserved for tribunal hearings. “Much has happened since you last left,” the broad shouldered Indian began in a tone that could carve a mountain. 

Cassius interrupted him as politely as he could. “Shouldn’t we wait until Chief arrives?”

“That’s just it, Cass.” It was his old, childhood friend, Ahusaka, who spoke now. Far from Kai’s scorn, Ahusaka actually seemed to be choking back tears. “The Chief. He was taken by the Wind one half moon ago.”

Cassius was silent. He had never lived through the passing of a Chief. He had heard of it, of course, but such a thing always seemed more like fable than anything that could happen in real life. How could a Chief die? “He lived long,” was all Cassius could think to say. It was true, too. No ages are kept in Shoshone tribes, but Chief had two grandchildren when Cassius was born, and by the White School’s reckoning, Cassius was 42 years old now.

“Indeed he did,” Kai picked up. “And he left us no successor.”

“What? Where did he leave the feather?” 

The men of the council all looked at each other. “It was under a rock,” Ahusaka answered.

“A rock?” Cassius almost shouted. 

“Yes. The rock was where your tent once was,” Kai said.

Kai’s anger made sense now; he had been dreaming of becoming Chief from the time he was sucking his mother’s nipple. Cassius could have laughed out loud if it they weren’t in the Tent of Meeting… and about the Chief’s death no less. Him, the new Chief? Why would the Chief give him the feather? Why leave the Tribe to him? He knew the Chief always had a liking for him, but this was absurd. He told them as much, probably in more words than was proper.

Another of the council spoke, a pruny man Cassius recognized as the Chief’s younger brother. “Be that as it may, Yagwaza, he clearly meant the office to pass to you. Do you accept the feather?”

All eyes were on him now. He had to decline, of course. There were so many reasons. Which did he start with? The fact that he lived on the Outside now? His plans to marry? His… well, his sordid history with the law?

Ahusaka, faithful as ever, stepped in to his rescue. “We understand if you need time to answer. You can sleep in the Tent of Meeting tonight,” he explained. “Kai will leave Owl’s Eye for you to burn in your sleep. When you wake, you can give us your answer.”

This surprised Cassius further yet. Owl’s Eye was an delicacy, an incense harvested only once ever 2 or 3 years on the blue moon. It was made special by the High Shaman from one sage plant only found on the summit of Inyan Kara in Wyoming’s Black Hills where the rain is said to fall like perfume. They say Owl’s Eye gives the man who breathes it in sleep the Wisdom of the Wind. He had heard of a far-away Chief who, using it, received in a dream the exact location of a Cherokee girl lost two days in the wilderness. He couldn’t fathom the cost of it. Probably as high as half the bag on the Sheriff’s horse. The Sheriff’s horse. Suddenly, he remembered that the man was still tied up out there and by Awena’s tent no less. It was unwise to leave any White man, especially this one, alone in a Shoshone camp for this long, even tied up. “Thank you. I will take the night. But first you must excuse me. I have to check on the White man.”

Kai stood up to bar the way. “Tell us about this ‘Christopher,’” he said, incredulity painted over every syllable. “Will you let us scalp this one?”

Cassius pushed past him, muttering something about “token of remorse” as he went. He was sprinting now. Something in the air was wrong. Or had the council’s outlandish offer simply shot his nerve? Weaving through the tents, he heard a commotion growing louder. 6 or 7 women were standing and pacing outside Awena’s tent, some looking down as they dry washed their hands, other searching the horizon. A patch of disturbed sand occupied the place where The Sheriff and his horse once were.

“What’s going on? Where’s the White man?” he asked. The reply that erupted from the women could have came from a henhouse with a coyote inside. “Woah, woah, one at a time!”

A stout woman with two, feathered braids broke through the others, speaking English now. “Crazy White man you brought here! Awena. I heard her squeal like wounded animal. I came and I saw and I saw the white man with the horse and her and they left. What you do? Why you do to bring crazy man?”

“Which way,” Cassius demanded. “Which way?”

No two fingers pointed in the same direction, but they averaged dead East. He knew Ahusaka’s family had a horse. He rode her through the prairies with Ahusaka before either of them knew how foals were made. The mare must be nearing her end now, but she would have to do without time to look for another. He found her tied to a lone stake in the ground outside the family tent. She hardly noticed him as he hastily cut her loose. Ahusaka’s mother came out just in time to shake a gnarled fist at the cloud of dust into which he disappeared.

He rode in a zig-zag pattern taught to him by an ambitious Sheriff department back in Buckville. Back then, their neat trick earned him a few weeks sharing a cell bunk with an equally ambitious crossdresser. Now, he hoped it would lead him to Awena. It took him a few passes, but at last he picked up their trail, a streak of torn ground easily seen even in the moonlight. For once, he was glad of the light it gave. Kicking the old horse to her breaking point, they crossed several miles of almost flat ground. The Wintermaker constellation over his right shoulder told him they were still headed East. My God, he’s taking her right to Devil’s Pass.

Maybe the one place Indians never settled, Devil’s Pass was a hive of nature’s favorite snares. It was home to miles of stony clay spires, all of which crumbled in the sun and turned to oil in the rain. Almost impossible to walk through, let alone ride. Its only habitants were scorpions and rattlers insidiously stationed along any path an animal might take, including the human animal. Worst of all, it was dry enough to belong on Mars. No lakes, rivers, or creeks. Not so much as a puddle to piss in. What the Sheriff thought to do there was beyond Cassius. Maybe it was a suicide mission. If so, Cassius was determined to see that’s all it was.

He had heard things about this Sheriff. Hooper was his Christian name, not Christopher. Even the crossdresser in Station OR003’s jail knew that, within his department, Hooper put a price on the heads of Indian women. A quarter dollar to any officer who caught one and whipped up a conviction that would place her in jail for the night. Word was he liked to visit these women there. He was old buddies with the jailkeep who might just leave for the outhouse around midnight. Might just forget the keys there too. For this, Cassius never actually intended the man to leave with $1,000. What for? Just so Hooper can up and leave to do the same in Nevada? No, the man would have had an arrow in his back before he made 10 paces. Cassius only needed him for the money transfer. He couldn’t have the tribe knowing it was stolen. It would ruin everything. He’d spent the better part of his adult life tying to convince the Indians that the White Man is good. And vice versa. Twenty horses stolen from one county here would be given to another county there. A gift from the Shoshoni people, he would tell them. Then, he go right ahead and rob that county’s bank and give it to his tribe or maybe some other. A gift from the White Man. 

See, not every White man was as predatory as Hooper. And not every Indian was as bloodthirsty as Kai. The problem was that whenever White met Brown, it was always damnable Hooper and bloodthirsty Kai. It was never gentle Awena meeting meek Rebecca, his old schoolmaster. Rebecca was the one to find him, half starved and crying dry tears in the desert. He was just a runaway orphan then. But she took him under her own roof and gave him a proper education, taught him to read and write and think. More than anything, though, she taught him to see the good in people. She said everyone was made in the image of God, including himself. Where most of his other teachers and classmates saw a savage Indian, she saw a force for peace. Little Moses, she called him, when she learned about his late night Robin Hooding. But then it was chickens and dimes. Now, years after her passing, he had the blood of 8 men on his orphan hands. Would she still look on him as her Little Moses? Maybe not, but there was still at least one of his people he had to free. And she was probably in the heart of Devil’s Pass at this very moment. 

As expected, the trail led him under the shadows of those treacherous spires, even more jagged than the stories told. The hoofprints he followed closed in distance, one to another, but he never slowed his friend’s mare. Finally, he would gain some ground on them, if he survived it. At times, he rode on what seemed like a razors edge of a cliff. At others, he had to strain the beast up and over boulders as big as a buffalo. Clearing a cactus-riddled ridge, he saw a pinprick of yellow-red light wink at him from the shoulder of a nearby butte. At its foot, the Sheriff’s horse, at that distance the size of a hare, nibbled at a shrub. Carefully, Cassius dismounted and tethered the horse to a small tree. She whinied in protest as he sulked off into the night.

Cassius felt the itch to immortalize something in his spit along the way. A million little opportunities to do so cried out to him between each step. It could have been a pebble or an ant or a root wart. But he pressed on, trying hard to focus on anything but what might be happening to Awena up there by the fire. He climbed like a cat stalking a bird, slow enough that even the smallest fleck of clay sent cascading the slope down under his foot started him. His heart throbbed in his ears as the fire came clearly into view. Neither the Sheriff or Awena could be seen, though. Eyes adjudged to the night had a hard time seeing anything with that fire. Holding his breath, he scanned the clearing. The rusted soil combined with the hue from the fire gave the plateau the appearance of a blood soaked stage. Something stirred at the far end of the beau’s flat. Cassius saw the silhouette of a man bending over a lump on the ground. Rage gripped him as he saw the lump squirm under his weight. Cassius took a knife from his belt and, biting its blade, crept on all fours toward the Sheriff. Awena was gagged or only half-unconscious because all that came from her were soft whimpers like pups in a sack. 

The Sheriff spoke as though through a mouth full of molasses. “Hush, hush, hush. I ain’t gonna hurt ya none. You and me gonna get along just fine, little injun. I said hush!” he snapped before returning to his saccharine whisper. “I’m gonna be real nice to ya. It’s not like that. If it were, I’ve got enough money here for ten whores every night till I die. But yous a special one, ain’t ya? You’re real pretty and quiet like. I want to do it proper.” Cassus watched him pet a strand of hair from her face. Her eyes caught his, but the Sheriff didn’t seem to notice. “You oughta be proud. Maybe the first ever injun to wed a White man. Whatcha think ‘bout that?” 

Cassius hid behind the fire now, watching them through the flicker of the flames. Behind him, his moccasined foot landed softly beside a flat rock tipped against exposed root. From inside the crevasse, a rattlesnake gave its warning. The hollow rattle, the sound of death itself, filled the cool air. The Sheriff spun round, his dark eyes found Cassius like two gun barrels. Cassius took the knife from his mouth, but he was too late. Hooper had Awena by the neck, both standing at the edge of the cliff. It was no less than twenty paces to the bottom. Death height. A line of dried blood ran from Awena’s forehead to her neckline, passing over her tremulous, wet eye.

“Don’t you get up!” Hooper let out a jackal’s laugh. “I bet ya wish that snake bit first and rattled later, huh? Now look whatcha got. Ya done grabbed the cat by the tail. So whatcha gonna do? Ya gonna get all cut up or drop the pussy and walk away?” 

It was only then that Cassius saw the glint of a knife in the Sheriff’s hand. “I’m not leaving without her,” he said, making to get up.

“Ah, ah, ah! Not so fast! You stay down. And throw yer knife over the edge. Good.” He pointing his own at Awena. “There’s a thousand ways to skin a cat. But there’s only one way to keep it alive. And that’s you walking back down that there cliff, riding back to yer dirty teepee, and forgetting this ever happened.” In the firelight, his smile looked more like a mangled frown.

“How about this instead? You take the money. All of it. And I take the girl. Like you said, with that money, you could have any woman here to the Atlantic, brown, white, or purple.” As Cassius spoke, he reached gingerly behind him. His hand found a long stick. “You can set up anywhere. You could build an empire and call yourself king. But she doesn’t want that life. She wants to live in her tent, make children, feed them acorn bread, sing songs to the moon and the sun, pray to her God.”

“Pray to God,” he mocked. “God is just a big man with a knife. Right now, that’s me. And I say she stays. Don’t worry, I’ll be a merciful God.” Awena craned away from his caress of her chin.

Eyes still on her, he never saw Cassius rise from the ground to swing the stick with all his might against the fire. A tornado of sparks and flaming sticks consumed the Sheriff and Awena. Staggering back, Hooper’s foot slipped off the edge of the cliff. With his free hand, he grabbed Awena’s arm, but Cassius was quick to grab her other. For a split second, all three balanced on on the precipice. Cassius swung the stick a second time. He felt the bones in the Sheriff’s arm crack. With a howl, he fell, knife flailing, to into the dark. A thud, and all was still. Cassius held Awena close, absorbing her sobs into his chest. 

“You came for me, Cassius. You came.” Her eyes flashed incredulously over his face, stony in the pale moonlight.

“Of course I came. I worked hard for that money.”

She let out a hard sob of a laugh, but he paid for the jest with a welt on his chest. “You are a fool, Cassius. A frog-brained fool of a man. But you have the heart of an Eagle.”

“Oh, I don’t know. There is nothing especially brave in cleaning up a mess you have made, especially when that mess spills on the one you love.”

Awena’s studied his face in the moonlight. He knew she was playing those last three words over in her head. He regretted saying them. A woman might get the wrong idea, and there is no honor in winning a woman in shock. But was she? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think Awena knew what shock was. When she was no taller than her father’s stirrups, he had watched her wrestle down a mink that had taken the head from one of their chickens. Snapped its neck and tried to feed it whole to the rest of the brood. That was her nature, a moralized ferality. 

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No.”

“Are you hungry?”

“And what if I was?” she laughed.

He looked around at the naked terrain. “You got me there, I suppose.”

“Cassius! You’re shoulder.”

“Ah, that’s old as the hills.” 

She pulled it back. The wound was weeping a clear fluid now, mottled black and purple all around. She ran a finger down the length of it. “I saw some willows on the way up. I will be back,” she declared. 

“The hell you will,” he replied. “I’ve done enough saving for one night.”

“It’s not far, I promise.”

“Don’t sweat it. I should have done this a long time ago. He took a half-burned stick from the fire and pulled back the shirt. Awena swatted it from his hands.

“Ay! You crazy fool! Men would sooner take their own foot than a hand from a woman. I’m going to get some bark. You sit here.”

“Agh, you never know when to quit. Fine, but I’m coming with you. I’d hate to see you break one of those pretty, little ankles.”

Her face soured, but she craved his company in that dark night too sorely to refuse. They crossed an old willow sooner than expected. Awena checked it for aphids with a long, gently sniff. Then she used Cassius’ knife to strip a good two inches of bark. Back at the campsite, she found a flat and a smooth  stone to grind the bark into a powder. 

“Crouch down,” she demanded. Gently, she sprinkled the powder onto the wound bed and wrapped it with a strip of her skirt. She paused after tying the knot. “The Chief has fallen asleep.”

“I know.”

“He left you the feather.”

“I know.”

“He thought you would lead the people well.”

“Yeah, well… What do you think?”

“I think it would be walking against the wind to not. ANd I think Kai will do it if you won’t.”

“Yes, but would I lead them well?”

“I think you have grown your horns too large for you to hold up your head. And sometimes I think you are too wild even to lead yourself. But I know that, as much as you try to hide it, you care for us as a mother cares for her young. If anything can tame you, it is that.”

Cassius said nothing. He walked back to the fire and put a few new sticks on the remaining embers there. He sat down and taking from the satchel the Sheriff’s pipe, lit it. He watched the sticks take flame before turning to Awena.

“The chief told me once a funny sort of thing. He said no one ever smelled a wildflower in a tornado’s wind.” Cassius paused, taking a long pull off the pipe before chuckling around its stem. “Well, I think about that a good deal. A good deal.”

She watched him eagerly, expecting more.

“Let’s go. The tribe will worry, not least your mother. And I’m too tired for all that.”

He walked her down the butte and lifted her on the horse. He led the horse by hand until they reached open prairie. Then they rode back at a comfortable, almost hypnotic gallop. He could feel her head resting on his back, and he heard her long hair waving in the wind.

After a long, silent journey, they arrived back at camp. The whole tribe was asleep, save for the night’s watch. It was Ahusaka that night. A friendly hail from Cassius let his old friend know all was well. Ahusaka took back his horse with a bow and allowed the two to pass into the camp. Cassius handed him the satchel of money with a wink.

Cassius carried her inside the tent and covered her with a blanket. Before returning to her side, he placed the Owl’s Eye on the still smoldering embers. The aroma enveloped the two of them, quelling both mind and heart. He felt the sweetness of it travel from his lungs into every limb. Muscle by muscle, Cassius and Awena melted into each other and into sleep.

When Cassius opened his eyes, the light of dawn was trickling from the smoke flaps onto Awena’s face, softened with sleep. His attention was drawn to the cut on her forehead. Her young, glowing skin had already begun the hard work of healing. It was nothing more than a pink canyon in a bronze desert. He closed his eyes and saw it still. The old and the new, the healed and the healing. He opened them again and shut them again. His soul feasted on it. When he was sure he made it wholly his own, he gave it a kiss. 

She opened her eyes and looked into his. It might have been her smile or his moisture still on her forehead or the Owl’s Eye or the God of Rebecca or all of it together. Whatever it was, it drew the words out of him, soft but certain, “I will stay, Awena.”