A Sweetness to the Soul by Jane Kirkpatrick Read Free Book Online Page B

Pauline. I wanted Mama happy, so she wouldn’t change her mind about letting Papa teach me how to shoot.
    Papa saw Rachel stick her tongue out at me when I chose Pauline. He didn’t say anything, just smiled and patted her head when she weaseled her way around his leg. Mama told her she had to help with the wash and look after Loyal and then Rachel really scowled at me. I didn’t care. I took a piece of deer tallow, dipped it in some molasses, grabbed a length of rawhide, filled the water bag from the rain barrel and Pauline and I headed out. Hound lapped water from a mud hole and loped after us. I didn’t even feel the heat of Rachel’s eyes on my back as we left.
    Pauline was especially good. I watched her faded blue bonnet bob up and down in the tall grasses. Later, she sat in the dirt, picked purple phlox and chattered while I was free to pull weeds and dream.
    Toward noon, I finished and should have gone home with Pauline. Instead, I rested a bit. Hound sprawled in the grass and even Pauline had curled up sucking on her tallow. I tied the rawhide to it and then to her toe so if she slept with it in her mouth, her foot would jerk the tallow out.
    I dreamed of eagles swooping down, dogs barking. A spider crossed my face and I batted at it and felt moisture. Dogs barked louder and suddenly, I woke.
    My heart pounded so loudly I thought that Hound could hear it. He stood, barked his deep, warning bark as I reached for the loose flesh behind his neck to push myself away from the horse that stood so close to me I could see the hairs in its nostrils. It snorted. A feather was knotted in the horse’s forelock. I couldn’t see its rider.
    I couldn’t see Pauline, either, and my heart raced, half hoping she was nowhere near; the other half praying she was.
    The rider had a deep, canyon voice which I heard when he said
“Chchuu txanati!”
Then he said, in English: “Still!” I noticed other sounds I’d heard, sounds of voices, stopped. “She awake,” he said and several pairs of painted pony legs came abreast of him and formed a half-circle around me.
    “Where’s my sister?” I demanded, standing. I hoped my voice was louder than my heartbeat and held more courage than I felt.
    The canyon-voice rider backed his horse up. I could see him then but his face was still silhouetted against the noon sun. Long strands of straight black hair hung on either side of his head and flowed onto his shirtless chest. His legs on either side of his pony were bare above moccasins.
    He raised his hand and a woman on a horse next to him slid off, her dun buckskin dress sliding up her thighs as she descended. She walked under her horse’s neck and reached behind the canyon-voice man and gently pulled something from the seat behind him.
    It was precious Pauline!
    Settled on the ground, Pauline took her time reaching me. Purple dirt smeared around her mouth. She had the good sense to be still.
    “Nana,”
the canyon-voice man said nodding once toward Pauline. I wasn’t sure what it meant but I said thank you and pushed her behind me. Hound had calmed down and in fact had gone sniffing past the ring of riders toward skinny-tailed dogs scrounging behind the circle.
    A paper-thin woman, wearing faded calico cinched at the waist by a wide, beaded belt, scowled at me. I felt terrible that I’d fallen asleep and left Pauline alone, and it seemed the woman knew of my guilt, made her eyes memorize my thoughtless person.
    I’d had some contact with natives, mostly in Dalles City where their blanketed bodies sometimes walked the streets. Papa traded beef with them once or twice. A reservation just a few miles away from us had actually been formed with all kinds of pomp and circumstance four years before. The Indian agent had gathered several bands together including Wascos and Warm Springs or Sahaptin-speaking people and some Indians who had lived along the big river, the Columbia. Later, Paiute people came too. Perhaps the government agents