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By Root 780 0

but the Buckendorfs surged in and caught them both fast in their big hay-pitching arms. The men hoisted Mooshum and the boy out into the light. One held the boy by the nape of his neck. When he saw the horror and the shame on Asiginak’s face, Mooshum knew that Holy Track regretted showing himself. But he stood his ground and made the sign of the cross over and over until the white men pinned his hands behind his back. They tied his wrists together and threw the boy along with Mooshum and Asiginak into the bed of their wagon. Father Severine cried something out in Latin and bolted to life. He clawed at the sides of the wagon and tottered awkwardly beside them. He blurted crazily useless threats and conflicted blessings as they rattled down the hill. Soon, his croaking died away. Asiginak hunched over at first, staring at his feet, and would not speak. At last, in a voice filled with anguish, he said to Holy Track. “I never knew you were hiding in there. My words were not for you to hear.”

Holy Track glared, angry at his uncle for a moment, then he shrugged and pretended that he didn’t care.

Wild plum trees were blooming in the scrub. Willow had leafed out narrow and green, and the sloughs glittered in the early light. The question of a tree and a place arose among the chimookamanag. However, they were diverted by two others who appeared dragging Cuthbert behind a horse. They pulled him slowly, so they could hang him, too. Cuthbert looked like a big caterpillar coated with gray dust. They cut him out of his ropes and hoisted him into the wagon. He lay still, blinking up at the others.

“Ah,” said Cuthbert after a little while, from his bloody face, “they have rubbed off the worst of my nose. It is a pity to die now that I am handsome.”

“You’re still ugly, my brother,” said Asiginak.

“Then I won’t be such a loss to the women,” said Cuthbert. “It is a comfort.”

The wagon jostled them along in a friendly way. As they crossed the boundary into the fields and roads off the reservation, a farmer or two stood in his field, stilled and planted, and watched the slow procession of men, horses, dogs, wagon, and trussed Indians, pass by.

The Baby

MOOSHUM LOOKED OVER at his daughters, who had begun arguing away at the end of the yard. He swigged precisely at his medicine. Suddenly, Mama and Geraldine quit talking and frowned up at the sky. They walked over to the clothesline, but before they had even plucked off one clothespin, they resumed arguing. Instead of taking in the rest of the wash, the two looked over at us to make sure that we weren’t listening. When they saw us watching, they swished their skirts and strode swiftly around to the front of the house. We turned back to Mooshum. He told us other things he knew. How the little brother of a woman named Electa Hoag—well, he wasn’t little, exactly, at seventeen—had run away in the night just after the murder, taking two of her newly baked loaves, his shoes, a woolen jacket, and an extra pair of overalls. Her husband Oric’s cap was also missing from the hook by the door. Oric had gone off so quickly, summoned by Colonel Benton Lungsford and the sheriff, that he’d forgotten to wonder where he’d put the cap. Electa might have said something about Tobek running off when the men came back from the farm, not long after. She might have said something, but she was too surprised by the baby Oric held up there on the horse. She was too distracted by it, and then absorbed when he leaned over the saddle and transferred it into her arms. Instead of screaming, the baby just gave her a calm and trusting look, a direct look, like it was all grown up now but still caught in the tiny body. Oh, it screamed later, she told Mooshum, it turned into a baby again. That was once the men had rustled up some food for themselves and gone and she was alone cleaning it and trying to feed it. After she knew about the murders, Electa decided that she would tell Oric that he must have taken the cap with him and lost it, laid it down in shock somewhere on the farm. Knowing what had happened, she decided that