Peacemaker by Lindsay Buroker Read Free Book Online Page B

made?”
    “ Yes,” Cedar
said.
    Kali knew him well enough to hear the hint
of disappointment in his voice. What had he expected? That a
ten-year-old kid would know something about talismans of power?
    “ That’s very good,” Cedar
said.
    Kali glanced over to see what the boy was
showing him. Some sort of block of carved wood. Cedar caught her
eye and crooked a finger.
    “ We should get going,”
Kali said, though she came over to check on the youth’s handiwork.
She froze when he held up a carving of an elk, a seven-point bull
elk. Though the entire figurine was no larger than her hand, she
could count each individual tine on the antlers. They even appeared
fuzzy, like the real thing. “That’s beautiful,” she
breathed.
    Tadzi twitched a shoulder. “I can do
scrimshaw, too, but ivory’s hard to get. That time with the honey,
I was hoping to trade for better tools. It didn’t happen. I got
stung a bunch, on top of breaking my hip.”
    Kali could certainly understand going to any
lengths in pursuit of one’s passions. “Don’t get discouraged. You
do real fine work.”
    She caught a strange expression on Cedar’s
face.
    “ What?” she
asked.
    “ Just wondering if I
should be jealous of a ten-year-old boy,” he said.
    “ Why? ” Tadzi stared up at him—he only came up to Kali’s shoulder,
so he had to tilt his head way back to look Cedar in the
eyes.
    “ Because she’s more
impressed by your carving than by my skirmishing skills, even
though I navigated heaps of pirates fighting harder than Kilkenny
Cats, retrieved that surly fellow’s gold, cut the belt that held up
the captain’s pants, and escaped the mob by leaping over the
railing from forty feet in the air.”
    Tadzi turned his
incredulous stare onto Kali. “You are? ”
    Kali shrugged. “I get to see him do stuff
like that all the time. Though—” she nodded at Cedar, “—you didn’t
mention the part about the captain’s pants.”
    “ They fell clear to his
ankles and hobbled him like a horse,” Cedar said.
    “ Nice. Tadzi, are you from
Moosehide?”
    “ Yes, ma’am.”
    “ How did you learn such
good English?” When Kali had been a girl, it hadn’t been spoken at
all amongst the tribe, and only a couple of men who negotiated with
traders and trappers knew any at all.
    “ I’ve been working at it
real hard,” Tadzi said. “I talk to any white people I can. Someday,
I want to…” He chomped down on his lip and eyed the ground. “I
shouldn’t say.”
    Maybe he was someone like Kali had been,
someone who always knew he would leave someday. “Can you take us
there? Introduce us to the medicine man?”
    Tadzi brightened. “Can we
ride there on that ?” He nearly threw his shoulder out of joint in his eagerness
to point at the SAB. “I saw its smoke, and that’s what made me come
down here. I bet riding it is a hog-killin’ time.”
    “ There’s not room for
three,” Cedar said.
    Kali gave him a frank look.
    “ Oh.”
    “ You’re tough,” she said.
“You ran through that whole dog-sled course beside me.”
    Cedar patted the boy on the shoulder. “Looks
like I’ve another reason to be jealous of you.”

Part V
     
    Moosehide lay on a flat stretch of land next
to the river, with a tall, craggy ridge guarding it from behind.
The fog had finally cleared, and a dozen canoes and fishing boats
floated in front of the camp, several with nets stretched between
them. Square moss houses squatted alongside the shoreline, and
those people who weren’t fishing worked out in front of them,
drying and cleaning the catch.
    A few ornery nerves
tangled in Kali’s belly as her little group approached the camp.
Would anyone remember her? Would anyone care that she had returned?
She sniffed. Not that she cared if they cared.
    “ Are they likely to be a
problem?” Cedar pointed at a trio of men lurking in the trees to
the side of the trail. He was running alongside the SAB while Kali
drove and Tadzi hung on.
    “ No,” Tadzi