Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [36]
Ulysses was doing a good job of keeping the rest of the children back, but Lionel was having trouble hanging on to the reins, the big horse pulling him from the tree and dragging him sideways with his sporadic leaping kicks. Lionel wrapped the leather strap around his hand and held the horse as best he could. Ulysses jumped again, and Lionel lost his footing but somehow managed to hold on.
“Come on now, easy, boy. Calm down, you’re gonna be all right.”
Lionel looked up and saw a boy slowly moving toward Ulysses, his voice just a notch above a whisper.
“Remember me? Sure ya do. You’re gonna be all right. There’s nothin’ for a big old horse like you to be scared of….”
It was Corn Poe, Corn Poe Boss Ribs. Lionel wasn’t sure who was more surprised to see the boy—Beatrice, Ulysses, or himself, but he noticed that Corn Poe’s soothing voice was having an effect on the horse.
Lionel tucked the bear claws into his shirt and got to his feet to help Corn Poe bring the big horse around. Corn Poe looked different. His skin was tan with summer, and his hair had indeed grown out. True to his promise, tattered feathers and tiny strips of flannel were knotted in his hair; his clothes were dirty and torn to shreds.
“Corn Poe?” Beatrice said, with her knife still at Barney’s throat.
“You know them?” Barney responded, having given up his struggle.
“Sure,” said Corn Poe. “That there’s Lionel and this is Beatrice.”
“Beatrice?” Barney stammered, looking at her clearly for the first time. “You’re a girl? But you’re the same sonuvagun that broke my leg.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
RENEGADES • CORN POE’S METAMORPHOSIS • OLD MAN STEALS FROM THE SUN
BEATRICE EVENTUALLY let Barney up and Corn Poe did his best to calm things, introducing his two friends to this newly formed band of renegades. The children walked back to their camp as Corn Poe told them of news from the outpost and how he came to be in the woods with Barney and the other Heart Butte students. Beatrice helped two of the smaller children onto Ulysses’s back and then led the horse by the reins. Barney walked at their side.
After the soldiers questioned Corn Poe in the Boss Ribs’ valley, he took another beating from his father and decided that enough was enough. He stole one of his father’s horses with the intention of joining Beatrice and Lionel in the mountains. That was over two weeks ago, and now the horse was dead.
Corn Poe ate what he could of the horse, but besides that, he’d had little in the way of food. He survived the journey to the edge of the woods by raiding the small gardens and chicken coops that he found along the way. He wandered in the Great wood for three days before he found this band from Heart Butte.
“There weren’t much news from the fort, exceptin’ that they started to send out search parties again and that the one that calls himself Jenkins claims he’s gonna kill you,” Corn Poe concluded, pointing at Beatrice.
Barney punctuated this grim announcement by staring at Beatrice. Beatrice seemed to be unaffected, but the whole exchange weighed heavily on Lionel’s mind.
Lionel walked along among this ragtag group, eventually wondering out loud, “How did the rest of you end up out here?”
“They wouldn’t let us from the Heart Butte School go to the Fourth of July horse races and Powwow. They think that we’re makin’ good progress at not bein’ heathen and didn’t want us to get wrongly influenced by the old folks, so we run away and come out here on our own accord.”
They continued walking until the thick canopy overhead began to thin. There, the wood opened into a clearing, and in the midst of it stood a small hovel covered in army blankets and animal skins. There was also the remnant of a large fire. A cold-water creek ran through the far side of the trees.
“We’re having our own Pow-wow,” Barney went on. “I know we’ll catch hell when we get back, but it’s worth it. I’m tired of them telling us what we can and can’t do.”
They entered the small camp, and a couple of children set