Inheriting the Missing

Chapter 1: Yesterday's Gone-2

Simeon sat and stared at the ground, for what seemed a long time to Talon, and said nothing. Talon knew that his uncle held the pathway to tomorrow and that he needed to reason with what Talon had told him before he would say where it lay if he would.

After a while, Simeon picked up a little twig and dropped it into the fire pit. The fire was gone from the pit and it lay there unburned.

“I fear that what I am about to tell you will be as it is with this twig,” he said. “Soon enough, the women will come, and without looking, will set the little fire that we cook with and the tiny stick will go unnoticed into the smoke and drift away. Still, I will tell you. I cannot hide from you what is yours to know.

“I will not try to stop you from going because I see your heart and it is strong, but if you disturb the spirits and death comes here I will say in my own heart that I have brought it in my telling.

“Nevertheless, I too will die a man, for your words have made me understand that we must both challenge tomorrow and live or die as men. Perhaps you are right that all we have left is the memories of our past now long dead.”

For the next couple of hours, Simeon told Talon of where he should be able to find the people called the Nez Perce, who knew of the cabin. He drew a map, as well as he could, of the land to the west where he should look. He had been a long many days to the west, as a young man, but not as far as the place Talon would need to get to. Beyond there, he could only guess.

He told Talon that along his way he would find the white settlements, and not be well received. He would also find small towns that did not exist when he was last there, and many other things to be aware of.

He also told of the Black Foot people, who could be trusted to try to kill him if they got the chance. Then he told him of the amazing spotted horses of the Nez Perce. “That is how you will know them,” he said. “All the horses are very much the same. They are strong and fast and have light colored rumps with dark spots on them. Not like any other you have seen.”

Talon sat and listened. It was exciting to him, to see what lay ahead, and he was eager to start, but he knew that it would not be easy.

“It seems a long way,” said Talon. “If I try to walk there, the winter will find me long before I find this place.”

“Yes, it is long.” Simeon said, “But maybe I have a plan for that. Come here again, when the sun is red and setting. I will talk to a friend of ours. He will want to see you, now that you are leaving anyway.”

“I will come again,” said Talon. Talon sat on the edge of a small draw and watched the sun sink slowly into the west. Shadow fell on the westward side of the little valley and sun reflected red in the tops of the trees tall enough to reach it. A ground squirrel suddenly moved up the hill on the other side of the draw from Talon and retreated into its hole.

Night was soon to fall and Talon could hear all the familiar things he had heard from as far back as he could remember. Tiny frogs began to sing and crickets started their dance music.

It was the same as it had always been, but this time it seemed very different. This time seemed like the last time. It seemed like a farewell they were singing. The boy of yesterday was fading into the past, and the man to be would be in another place far away, and would never see or hear these things in this place again.

In one way, it saddened him. It seemed like all of his life had been about staying alive here, and being part of this place.

It was hard now to remember the days when he was young and all of life was a world to explore. The day had long passed since he had begun to feel as though he had discovered all there was to see here. The day he realized that, was the day he realized that this was a place of dying. What he remembered now was hard work and the constant fading away of his fathers who had come before him.

Red Cloud had been right. He had sued the White Man’s government in their own courts and had won.

You can win, thought Talon, but not here.

The older he got, the harder it had become to want this place, where all he knew was working other people’s horses and scratching the earth with his mother for whatever could be raised in the little patch of ground near her tipi.

Losing his mother had brought about another day now, and he knew he could never go back to any of the days before. Still, it seemed sad to turn his back and walk away.

The night would always be musical to him, and he knew he would miss some of the things that he had always known, but so it is with all the earth, he told himself.

A night hawk cried in the sky above him and it was what made him rise to leave. This was goodbye.

The sun had dropped to below the horizon and the sky was darkening when Talon reached the little ridge that his uncle had set his lodge on. It was hidden in the pine, along the edge of a small canyon rim where small cedar trees grew among large stone. If you didn’t know where to look for it, you would not find it easily. Talon had been there many times and knew the trail well.

A light wind was drifting through the trees, and it seemed good to be alive. Good to know that the morning would bring an entire life with it. No matter what that life might be, it would be far away from this place, where there seemed no life remained. Only the echoes of the past life, before the fire-water and sickness, came to his people.

He had no idea what his uncle was planning, but he knew his uncle, and he knew that if there was a way to help, his uncle would know how to do it.

When Talon entered the small clearing where his uncle’s lodge stood, he saw that there were six horses tied in the trees behind it. Two of them were friends of his.

His uncle had company. Any other time he would have turned and left. It was not good to intrude on another’s company, but this time he had been invited, and he was glad. He was eager to hear of his uncle’s plan.

Inside the lodge were voices of men talking and laughing. They all called out when they saw Talon as if a man, and not a boy, had entered the lodge. It felt good to Talon. It gave him confidence in himself to be treated like a man by the men he had always respected as his elders.

All of the men in the lodge were older men except for one, who was about Talon’s age. His name was Fred Follows The Horses. He was the son of Falling Water. Falling Water had a lot of horses and Talon had broke a few of them so that he could sell them. Selling horses had become difficult and grass was harder to find every year, it seemed.

Talon and Fred were friends, and whenever he was needed to help with the horses, Talon made sure to be there. He had learned many things working for Falling Water with Fred and had never asked for any pay. He knew that no one had much money and he liked the work. He liked the horses too, even the mean ones.

Talon had recognized one of the horses tied in the trees. It was a tall powerful gelding that Falling Water had castrated as a three-year-old. It was late in life to be cut, but the horses were gaining in number too fast and needed to be slowed. The horse had been a good stud and was now a proud cut, who still tried to ride the mares like he refused to recognize his new position in the way of things.

He was a long-legged horse and fast. He was painted but had normal brown eyes. Some of the paints had one glass eye. It made them look strange to Talon. He was glad this one didn’t. Talon liked him and had ridden him anytime he got the chance. The horse recognized Talon when he saw him. He tossed his head and snorted a little. It made Talon smile. Next to the big horse was another horse not quite as big, but stout. It was a mare with a blaze face and four matching stockings. Talon thought he knew her as well. If he was right, she was good to ride or pack.

Both horses had been mustangs in the first years of their life and were smart, good animals. Talon wondered who had ridden them in. The gelding had a homemade bit and head rig and there were blankets on him for a saddle. Now in the lodge, he wondered even more. Six horses were tied outside but only five men were in the lodge and one of them was his uncle.

“Talon,” Simeon called out. “Sit down. We have waited for you.”

Some of the men had been drinking a little, and Talon could smell it in the lodge. Talon waved respectfully at Falling Water and the other men and sat near the lodge door to listen.

“I have asked Falling Water here to talk of horses for you to ride for your long travel.”

Talon noticed that Simeon had not mentioned the Spirit house and thought it wise to avoid it himself. Falling Water was sitting next to Simeon.

“Where will you go?” asked Falling Water. “You are among us, and we will miss you if you go. I have talked a little with Simeon and I understand that you wish to prove yourself. It did not surprise me to learn that you have chosen to chase tomorrow.

“Fred also is feeling a little fire in his blood, and may follow you, but only if he knows where you went. It is hard to track the tiny spiders who drift on their out-stretched web on the wind. Even harder if he plans to take a herd of horses with him.”

All the men in the lodge laughed and drank a little more.

“Simeon tells me only that you will wander far away. Do you have a place in mind?”

Talon thought for a moment and was careful how he answered.

“Who can see tomorrow?” he said. “I plan to find a plan as I go.”

“Then you will send for me.” said Fred, and the lodge filled with laughter again.

It was a good time and everyone was happy. Talon had never sat among the older men before and he knew it would make leaving even harder. He also knew that this is how the drinking got its hold on men and made fools of them. He had never seen Falling Water or Fred drink before and they were far from drunk now, but that was now. Fire-water, Talon had observed, was a sly, cowardly enemy that slipped into the lodges unnoticed and brought death through the door with it.