Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [47]
“That there is Ulysses, the fastest horse in all of Montana,” Corn Poe said, drawing a heavy glare from Beatrice. “What? He is!”
“You don’t say,” Mr. Hawkins continued, noticing Beatrice’s scowl. “I suppose it ain’t none of my business how y’all came by a horse like that, but it sure is good lookin’.”
Mr. Hawkins leaned forward and took a drink of cool stream water from a tin cup and spat in the fire. “You said y’all was Blackfeet? Piegan, eh? Niitsítapi—the original people. The real people.”
“That’s right,” Corn Poe said, with perhaps more to prove on the subject than Beatrice or Lionel.
“You know I was down there for a while. Back when I was with the army, Tenth Cavalry.” Mr. Hawkins threw another piece of wood on the fire. “Why, I’ve been told that it was you Blackfeet that first domesticated the horse. Called ’em ‘po-no-kahmita.’ You know what that means?”
“No, can’t say that I do,” Corn Poe answered for the group, careful to avert his eyes from Beatrice’s close and cautious glare.
“Y’all don’t speak it, eh? well, po-no-kah-mita is Blackfeet for ‘elk-dog.’ Big as an elk, but you’re able to work ’em, carrying loads, like dogs.”
Mr. Hawkins leaned back against his saddle and took a long draw on his pipe, his dark face streaked with dancing firelight.
“Yep, the Blackfeet are known as some of the greatest horsemen the plains have ever seen—that much is true.”
“Some?” Corn Poe spat, once again looking to Beatrice for support.
Ulysses and the Hawkinses’ horses appeared out of the darkness as though they had been listening all along.
“Nioomítaa …A great horse,” Mr. Hawkins concluded, looking up at the horses.
Lionel rolled over onto his side and studied Beatrice. She was the best horseman he had ever seen, and today he had seen that even she could get thrown off by the “elk-dog.” A jumpy elk-dog named Ulysses.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
COLD MORNING DEW • FISHING THE STREAM • RED BLOOD • STARFISH
LIONEL STARED up into an early-morning sky. Purple, yellow, orange, and gold all combined and stretched across the faint light from tree line to tree line. Lionel felt the weight of his grandfather’s buffalo robe over him and wondered how it had gotten there, as it hadn’t been around him when Mr. Hawkins was talking about the horses.
Lionel threw off the robe, even heavier now that it was wet with the morning dew. He sat up and looked over at Corn Poe and Junebug. They were still sleeping, wrapped now in the saddle blankets and some bedrolls that Lionel figured must have belonged to the Hawkinses. Beatrice and Mr. Hawkins were nowhere to be found.
He wandered over toward their crude outhouse, took care of his business, and then cut back across the meadow, past the garden and toward the stream. The meadow was also wet with the morning, and in a few short steps his bare feet and the bottom cuffs of his leggings were soaked. Lionel looked with pride at their little garden and saw that the black raven he had seen when they first arrived at the little lodge had returned and was sitting on the straw man’s shoulder, busily working on one of the pearl buttons of the ivory dress.
“Hello, again,” Lionel called, but the black bird ignored him, concentrating on his task at hand.
The raven pecked and pulled relentlessly until he had the shiny button in his beak; then looked at Lionel with a cold black eye and flew away, disappearing somewhere over the Great wood. Lionel continued on to the stream to see if the grizzly bear that he and his grandfather had seen fishing had been through during the last couple of days.
Lionel walked up the rise to the stream and found Beatrice standing waist deep in one of the pools, peering, with her arm half-cocked, into the swirling water. Mr. Hawkins was standing above her on the bank, tying off what looked like the back of a wicker chair, made from the rough whittled branches of slippery elm and pine boughs.
“Ya see, I’ll simply slip this on the downward side of the stream, and what do ya know?