In the Moon When the Cherries are Ripe, Skye found Black Dog’s Cheyenne camped in a cottonwood bottom on Big Sandy Creek, enjoying the sweet harvest of late summer. He rode past buffalo hides staked to the earth to be fleshed, woven baskets burdened with hackberries, heaps of roots and wild onions, and racks where strips of buffalo were drying for future use as pemmican and jerky. The buffalo were thick, the berries ripe, and the People were happy.
When Skye and Victoria rode into the village along with Little Moon and Ouo, escorted by the ever-vigilant Dog Soldiers, women and children alike crowded about them, whispering furiously. Most of the men were off hunting. Little Moon cried out her greetings as she recognized childhood friends, kin, and Chief Black Dog himself, who stood waiting before his lodge as the visitors approached, lean, coppery, wearing only a plain loincloth.
Little Moon! This was news!
Even as these people welcomed the long-lost Little Moon with sharp cries, they studied the Arapaho boy, wondering about him. He came from an allied tribe, and their gazes were friendly. There were questions on their faces and Skye hoped to answer them all, despite the ever-present barriers of tongue.
These Cheyenne were friends of William Bent, and some would know a little English. But many more would understand Arapaho, and between them, Ouo and Little Moon could tell their stories. They dismounted from their weary horses under the watchful eyes of the Dog Soldiers, no friends of Skye or the Crow woman Victoria, but it didn’t much matter.
Black Dog made them welcome, and heard their stories, one by one, while the Cheyennes crowded close.
Even as Little Moon was speaking, her father appeared, and there was a long, choked moment as they stared at each other, and his troubled gaze surveyed her strange cloth clothing and bare feet. The father, whose name Skye remembered as Cloud Watcher, was a graying warrior, flanked by younger wives, who eyed Skye and Victoria with frank dislike. He wore a necklace of human fingers and the ensign of the Dog Soldiers, a quilled dog rope looped over his shoulder, the warrior society eternally hostile to all who were not of the People.
But that changed, even as Little Moon poured forth the story of her capture by the hated Utes, life in Santa Fe as a drudge for the chief of chiefs, release from captivity by Standing Alone and Skye and Victoria and a certain fat man. She spoke of all that happened afterward, including the trip to the mountain place were yellow metal was clawed from the earth, and the amazing, beautiful sacrifice of Standing Alone for the liberty and life of this Arapaho boy, Ouo, whose name Skye learned was Raven.
The villagers listened in hushed silence, and when they learned of Standing Alone’s self-chosen fate, they cried out in anguish. For now this little bronzed boy, standing uneasily before them, was vested with great medicine and sacredness by a woman of the People who had surrendered her freedom, indeed her life, for him.
Skye wished he could understand the tongue of these people, because some of what was unfolding eluded him. But
more and more, the chief, Black Dog, eyed him and Victoria, and when at last the stories were told and retold, he motioned them to be seated in a circle, and an honored boy presented the chief with a sacred pipe of this band. Black Dog ritually pointed the pipe stem to the sky, the earth, and the four winds: “Spirit above, smoke. Earth, smoke. East, West, North, South, smoke.” And they smoked quietly, each filling his lungs in turn. It was a peace offering and a bonding of them all.
Now a translator appeared, a youth who had tarried at Bent’s Fort, and he explained, in halting English, that these people would rejoice for four days the return of their young woman.
“She make be purified,” he said. “In a bower she be cleansed with smoke of sweetgrass, welcomed, and returned to lodge of her father. And much more happen, for the bravery and beauty of Standing Alone be honored. No greater woman ever live among our people.”
“I agree, mate. She will always live on in my mind, and in Victoria’s mind too.”
“She make a damn good Absaroka,” said Victoria, paying the ultimate homage.
“The Arapaho boy, he be gone into the lodge of his new father, Cloud-Watcher, and there he learn our ways. But in honor the wishes of Standing Alone, he be offered his liberty soon, few moons. But we hope he stay, and be a son, and replace the one who died.”
Grasshopper, whose name would never again be spoken here, but who was missed and grieved by everyone in the band.
Skye dug under his buckskins and pulled out the sacred bundle that Standing Alone had given him. Slowly he lifted it over his head, and handed it to Black Dog.
He turned to the translator. “Tell the chief that I am returning the sacred bundle of his people. I have done what I was required to do.”
Black Dog took it, nodded solemnly, and pressed a hand upon Skye’s shoulder.
“You carried its power; you have honored it,” the chief said.
The Cheyenne people stared at medicine bundle, which had inspired the man who wore it, and Skye sensed a gladness in them.
And so these people made Skye and Victoria welcome. They fattened Skye’s rawboned horses, housed Skye and Victoria in a small medicine lodge heaped with velvet-soft robes, served them the most succulent ribs of the buffalo cow, while the Cheyenne women swiftly sewed a complete fringed and quilled doeskin dress for Victoria, and a suit of skins for Skye, dyed across the chest and back in strong red and black colors, and added exquisitely quilled moccasins for them both. Skye at once put away his cloth clothes and wore the new ones, tying back his long hair with a yellow ribbon.
On the eve of the second day, Cloud-Watcher invited Skye and Victoria to his lodge, and there at twilight, before the whole band, he adopted Skye as his son and Victoria as his daughter, clasping a hand to the shoulder of each, thus paying great honor to them both. And Little Moon proclaimed them her brother and sister. Even the shy Arapaho boy, Ouo, Raven, had a gift for them: a little medicine bundle he made for each, which he hung on a thong over Victoria’s breast and the other over Skye’s. The crowd admired that, and patted the boy happily.
Victoria had sighed as the boy honored her, and Skye knew how much she would have liked a son of her own, but her womb had always been empty. Now, at last, she had a son in this boy, and she smiled at him, and pressed his hands between hers, and found in him that which she had always yearned to have.
Skye noted that several of the young Cheyenne boys were paying court to Little Moon, though most stayed away. It was plain that most of the boys wanted nothing to do with her;
she had in their eyes been somehow demeaned by her servitude among the Mexicans. But one youth in particular, who had a mind of his own and whose war honors included an eagle feather, was playing the flute outside her lodge, and Skye sensed that soon Cloud-Watcher would acquire a son-in-law, and Little Moon, a sweet sixteen, would begin her new life in joy, living freely within the traditions of her people.
On the fourth day Black Dog himself held a ceremonial feast, at which he made Skye and Victoria members of the tribe and of his people, with much oratory, strokes of vermilion on the cheek, and fragrant smoke of tobacco mixed with red willow bark. Victoria, of the Crows, endured this with dignity, setting aside her own passions to permit this great honor.
“Almost like Absaroka!” she exclaimed.
“For you both have brought one of ours to us, and you both helped our beloved Standing Alone to fulfil her life,” intoned the youthful translator. “And so you shall always be honored among us, and wherever the People gather, your names will be spoken of with respect.”
Skye thanked them simply. He was glad.
The next morning he and Victoria loaded up their burro with its pack, saddled their horses, and headed away, escorted for half a day by an honor guard of the Dog Soldiers.
But at last they rode alone, ever north, through the tall tan grasses bobbing in the breeze, toward the land of her people, the Crow.