The only sound within the small one-room cabin was that of the burning kindling as it crackled beneath the cast-iron stewpot set amid the flames. The Kid stared at the face of the beautiful young female as the firelight danced around the cabin’s almost bare interior. He imagined that she had to be about twenty years of age but Colorado could not be certain. The tattered dress she wore seemed far too small for her, as if she had outgrown it long ago. He could tell that she had added bits to it over the years to try and fend off the damp forest climate, but what was left of the original garment still showed.
It was worn and ragged, and hardly a hint of its original colour remained, but it could still be made out by a keen well-trained eye.
This was no forest woman. This was someone who had been disowned by her own people and left to die in this forest, he thought.
Somehow, she had survived.
He glanced at his sleeve. The ice-cold river had washed most of the blood off it. She had sewn up his ripped flesh and the buckskin shirt-sleeve after bathing the wound with medicinal moss.
He had seen the Sioux use the same moss to heal cuts many times during his youth.
Colorado wondered how she knew of the healing properties of such things. How long had she been abandoned in this forest valley? She certainly was no Indian.
Again he thought of what her name might be. There were no clues to be seen within the four walls of the cabin. No hint of her identity.
Was she like him? With no real name at all?
She sat on a two-foot-high chopping-block watching him as he rested in the only soft chair. He cupped a bowl of aromatic broth in his large hands and sipped at it slowly. It was good and he could feel its purity warming his innards. It had been a long time since he had tasted such a simple broth made with the plants, herbs and game of the forests. His strength was returning with every drop. A well-fed fire glowed in the stone hearth as its flames licked around the side of the blackened stewpot.
‘This is good,’ he said. She smiled and nodded. Her hair flowed freely over her shoulders. It was surprisingly clean for someone who lived in this harsh landscape. In fact, he noticed that there was not one spot of dirt on her. He assumed, by her appearance, that she used the river to bathe in far more often than most.
Again, the Kid studied the cabin carefully. It had one window. There was no glass in its frame, only a wooden shutter keeping the night chill out of the log construction. There was little inside the small cabin apart from a pile of kindling and some larger logs drying near the fire. A few dried fish hung on hooks in the smoke of the fire.
Whoever this quiet female was, Colorado knew that she was alone and had barely anything to her name. Yet she was willing to share what little she had with him.
Colorado finished his tasty broth and rested the cup on his knee. He then looked at his left hand and flexed the fingers.
Whatever magic she had used in the simple recipe, the pain had gone. His blue eyes looked across at her face.
‘Who are you?’ the Kid asked her again. ‘Tell me, what’s your name?’
She tilted her head but still did not answer. There was a look on her face that seemed to tell the large man that she either did not hear him or could not understand his simple question. He knew that many people who were isolated from their own kind could forget how to talk.
Was this the case with this beautiful girl? Could she have forgotten how to talk. Or perhaps she had never learned. Colorado leaned forward and placed his cup on top of the small table before her. She immediately jumped to her feet and used the hem of her ragged dress to lift the lid off the pot and refill the cup. Then she handed the cup back to her guest and returned the lid to the steaming pot.
She pointed to her own mouth and then the cup. She was using sign language to talk to him.
‘You sure are a strange one,’ the Kid said. He felt the warmth of the broth heating up the palms of his hands as its aroma filled his nostrils. ‘I’m starting to think that maybe you can’t hear a word I’m saying.’
She pointed to her ears and then nodded. She was telling him that she could hear.
‘You ain’t deaf?’
She shook her head again.
‘Not deaf,’ Colorado said as he sipped the broth. ‘Can you speak?’
She pointed to her mouth and then shook her head.
Colorado knew then that she was mute. He wondered whether that was why she was here alone in the forest. Had she been abandoned simply because she could not talk?
He knew that the Sioux always took care of anyone who was different. But he had heard tales that many white folks were not as generous. Many tended to cast their disabled offspring out as if they had been cursed by the Devil. Could this handsome female be a victim of that sort of ignorance, he wondered?
‘So you can’t speak?’ he asked her through the rising steam of the broth.
She gave a half-smile, then pointed to her mouth again and shook her head. The flickering flames of the fire danced on the tears in her eyes before she lowered her head.
Colorado swallowed hard and nodded.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’
He placed the cup on the table. Carefully he got to his feet and moved closer to the fire. He rested a hand on the stone fireplace. He looked down at her shining brown hair and knew that he was right.
She was an outcast.
Probably she had been discarded by one of the families back in Silver Springs when they discovered that she could not talk. He had been brought up to know that the Great Spirit loved all his children equally. It had come as a shock to him when he first realized that some of the so-called white Christians he had met since leaving his own people were capable of branding even children with being cursed. Some misguided souls even thought that being left-handed was an evil omen. He had heard people describe themselves as God-fearing. Colorado wondered what sort of god made people afraid of it. Even after so many years drifting amongst these people, he still could not understand them.
‘I reckon I ought to give you a name,’ he said.
Colorado watched her raise her head from her hands and look up at him. She was smiling again.
‘Maybe I could call you Little Dove?’
She nodded.
‘You like that, huh? I’m glad. I once knew another beautiful girl called that. That was a long time ago in another forest.’
Her small hand reached out and touched his.
‘Did those folks in Silver Springs throw you out because you can’t talk?’ Colorado asked.
Again she nodded.
‘I can understand them shooting at me because I might have been an outlaw, but to turn on a child don’t make no sense.’ The Kid sighed.
Little Dove shrugged. There was no anger or hatred in her beautiful soul. She accepted her life because she knew no other.
The Colorado Kid was not so forgiving. He clenched both his fists as a rage rose up inside him. He moved to the window and stared through the gaps in the warped wooden shutter. He sighed heavily.
‘And they call my people savages, Little Dove!’