Rose Eagle by Joseph Bruchac Read Free Book Online Page A

had always been the first to get up before the sun. But it was not so the next day. To my surprise, when Phil showed up the next morning, I was still asleep. I was wakened by my friend, Jumping Mouse, who had spent the night asleep next to me on my pillow. I felt her cool little paws pulling at my hair and heard her voice chirping in my right ear before I realized that someone was at the door of our lodge and my Aunt Mary was talking to him.
    â€œPoor dear,” Aunt Mary was saying, “she was more tired than she let on. That’s just how my Rose is. She’ll push herself till she drops and never admit she needs to take care of herself.”
    â€œI understand,” Phil said in that soft, deep voice of his.
    I felt my cheeks burning.
    â€œAunt Mary,” I called out. And regretted that I had done so because I could hear how strained my voice sounded.
    The talking outside the tipi stopped abruptly. My aunt stuck her head in through the door.
    â€œRose, honey,” she said in a calm, perfectly controlled voice, “Phil Tall Bear is here, and I’ve got your breakfast ready.”
    Even though I don’t recall tasting it, I know that breakfast was a good one. Not the Dehy-Y-rations that we’d mostly be eating during our journey, but real food. Corn bread with a stew of beans and squash and deer meat sausage and porridge sweetened with honey. Our gardens had taken hold that spring and our summer harvests were already starting, along with the nearly inexhaustible mountain of Dehy-Y-rations that filled the huge storehouse at the back of Big Cave, there would be plenty of other food preserved and dried in the old-fashioned Lakota way to take us through the winter.
    And as I thought of that, I wondered where I would be that winter. Back in Big Cave or just a pile of dry bones out on the prairie? My heart started to race again.
    â€œGood-good-good,” Jumping Mouse chirped in my ear from her perch on my shoulder. I broke off a piece of corn bread and held it up to her. She took it, sat back, and began to eat, turning it in her paws.
    â€œThat is so sweet!” Phil said, pointing with his lips at Jumping Mouse. “Will your friend be traveling with us?”
    I pretended I didn’t hear him as I shoved a piece of cornbread into my mouth, and he didn’t ask again.
    * * *
    It was a beautiful late summer day when we set out. I now had a sort of holster for the sawed-off shotgun, and it hung at my waist from a heavy belt. It was balanced on the other side by a long knife in a leather sheath.
    Aunt Mary’s favorite knife. She’d made it herself years ago from a long file, ground it to razor sharpness, and then fastened a carefully shaped piece of elk antler on for a handle.
    â€œGood for cutting meat . . . or whatever,” she said as she gave it to me.
    A bandolier of shotgun shells hung over my shoulder, and there were more shells in one of the three packs I carried. I wore a black formfitting top, the kind that athletes used to wear under their uniforms back when there were organized sports. It was made of material that was almost impossible to cut or tear, and it washed easily. I was worried that it made my muscles too obvious and that it was too tight across my chest, but Aunt Mary had nodded when I put it on.
    â€œGood choice, Rose,” she said. “You look . . . good.” Then she handed me a second top, a green one, to put into the pack that held my few other clothes, as well as a brush and a comb and some extra ties for my long hair, which was the only part of me that I would ever think of as actually being beautiful.
    I also wore a vest over the top, with pockets in it to stash things, and that did cover up things some.
    The jeans I wore were also pretty tight, being of that same tough, stretchy stuff that had been made in some now undoubtedly defunct factory in Mexico. Black, of course. As were the nearly indestructible