Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [26]
They walked back without speaking, Lionel wondering how Beatrice had missed the animals. He tried to remember the last time he had seen Beatrice fail at anything. Then Beatrice froze.
Lionel watched as her eyes went wide and swept the high trees.
“What is it?” Lionel whispered.
“There’s someone else in the woods.”
Lionel did not hear anything except for the wind in the tops of the trees, the distant murmur of the stream, and their own uneven breathing. Beatrice crept forward. Lionel closed his eyes and tried to lower the creaking groan of the swaying trees in his ears. He took a deep breath, and then he heard—or more, felt—something…someone behind him.
Lionel spun around, and there, standing not two paces away, was their grandfather.
Chapter Sixteen
GRANDFATHER’S BOW • NEWS FROM THE OUTPOST • SUPPLIES
THAT NIGHT the children feasted on fresh venison from the large buck that Grandpa said Beatrice’s missed shot had scared right toward him. The children did not hear their grandfather because he did not use a rifle to bring down the animal. Instead, he used a traditional bow and arrow that he had made based on what Napi the old Man had taught the Blackfeet a long time ago.
“It might just be my opinion,” their grandfather said as he turned the roasting meat, “but taking that buck’s life with a bow is more honorable than with a rifle. It shows a mutual respect ’cuz it’s more difficult. Gives them deers a fighting chance.”
He cut a piece and handed it to Lionel with a wink. “I’ll leave the rest of this with you, Beatrice. Least I could do, seeing you sent the deer my way.”
They ate the roasted venison and finished the last of the preserved stewed tomatoes that he had sent with Lionel and Beatrice when they had left his cabin on the river what now seemed like a lifetime ago. while they ate, their grandfather told them of his trip to the Boss Ribs’ and then to the outpost.
Grandpa had left his cabin shortly after they had and wandered with Corn Poe in a roundabout way back to the Boss Ribs’ place. He said that Corn Poe got a beating from his father for leaving, but Grandpa thought it was more for the work that didn’t get done around the place as opposed to the family truly missing the boy.
Lionel felt bad for Corn Poe, but Grandpa said that he was fine and a good boy, aside from talking a bit too much. From the Boss Ribs’, Grandpa rode his mule to the outpost to get news from the boarding school about the children’s and Ulysses’s disappearance.
The soldiers had questioned him when he arrived, and Grandpa told them that he had not known that the children were missing and was only at the school to visit them. The soldiers thought that this was a strange coincidence, but he acted as though he was mad at the priest, Brother Finn, and the captain for losing his only living kin. Grandpa told Lionel and Beatrice that he did not like to lie and prided himself that he hadn’t done so since he was a kid, but that under the circumstances he did not see that there was another option, and that there was something about it that he had rather enjoyed.
The government sent out several parties to try to recover the horse, Lionel, and Beatrice, but due to the rough weather, and against the persistent argument of Sergeant Jenkins, they had turned back. There was a disagreement among the military men as to whether the children, let alone the horse, had even survived the initial storms. They also doubted if a boy, let alone a little girl, could make it through the late-winter snow and up into the mountains. Unfortunately, they planned to resume the search after the thaw.
Grandpa also heard that after a visit out to the Boss Ribs’ place, and thanks to Corn Poe’s big mouth, the soldiers