The Eden Hunter by Skip Horack Read Free Book Online Page A

highwaymen. The light rain washed the very last of the clay dust from his thick hair, and steam rose from the ground. Little Horn offered him a place on his horse but he declined. His thighs were still sore and blistered from the bareback night ride of the previous week and so he swore off horses, preferred instead to follow on foot, tracking the unshod stallions alone through the damp and dripping forest.
    Several times while trailing the redsticks he considered turning around and trying to escape them. Twice he backtracked for a near mile before again changing his mind. Were he his younger self, were this a forest he knew as well as the one he had been stolen from, he thought he might have had the courage to break away from them. As it was he did not. These redsticks were not white men. If he ran he was certain that they would find him and so he kept on.
     
    HE WAS ANXIOUS for more real practice with the longrifle, and so when he came upon a wild cow wallowing in the muddy path he crept to within a few downwind paces of the big speckled beast and then shot it in the head. The cow sighed as it rolled over in the mud. He drew his knife and cut loose one of the backstraps, a thick length of meat that reminded him of a python.
    It was dark by the time he reached the camp. The redsticks had built a fire and were waiting for him. He washed the backstrap in a creek that ran nearby, and Little Horn walked over from the fire. “It was you who shot?” he asked.
    “It was,” said Kau.

    “A cow?”
    “Yes.”
    “I thought you lost our trail.” Little Horn tapped at the creek with the toe of his moccasin. “Or that maybe you decided to leave us.”
    Kau dried his hands on his breechcloth and then began cutting the wet backstrap into steaks. “You do not need to worry,” he said. “I will not run.”
    A smile played across Little Horn’s scar-slick face. In the firelight Kau saw Blood Girl and Morning Star spread out on horse blankets. They were watching him as well. Kau brought the meat to the fire and saw that the girl had a bare and glistening leg draped over that of the prophet. Morning Star put a finger to his open mouth and she laughed. “He wants you to cut his teeth,” said Blood Girl. “Can you do that?”
    “Why?”
    “He says that we have things to learn from you.”
    Morning Star pushed her leg away and sat up on his blanket. Blood Girl clapped her small hands.
    “Now?” asked Kau.
    “Yes,” said Blood Girl. “Now.”
    He hesitated but then removed a scavenged arrowhead from a saddlebag, that and one of Benjamin’s oval sling-stones. “Hold him,” he said to the redsticks. “He will want to kill me.” He looked into Morning Star’s black eyes as he said this. Nothing. The prophet lay back and allowed Little Horn to pin his massive arms to the ground, and then Blood Girl slid a hand under his breechcloth, distracting him. Kau held a stick out sideways, and Morning Star
bit down onto it with straight teeth that were stained the color of honey. The big man’s brown skin was smooth and unscarred, and Kau straddled his wide chest, holding the deer-point in one hand, the river stone in the other. Morning Star shut his eyes as the tip of the arrowhead came to rest on the edge of an incisor, and Kau began tapping at the base of the arrowhead with the stone. Blood Girl grunted behind him, and flakes of enamel fell away as the front six teeth of the prophet were sculpted.
    It was slow work, work that he had not done in many years. Morning Star’s gums were cut here and there from mishits, but still he did not cry out or even open his eyes. Occasionally the prophet would turn his head to spit blood and bits of tooth and flint and stick, and before long a paste had formed in the dirt beside them. Kau finished with the final canine and rose up, then Morning Star pulled the stick from his mouth and ran his tongue across his cut teeth. Blood Girl passed him a cracked hand mirror that had been stolen from the