The day was warm by the time they’d caught enough for supper. While she watched, he pulled off his shirt and boots then waded into the water to wash his shirt and body.
He knew she’d have to remove the blanket to wash even though that one filthy, ragged blanket was her armor. As long as she held it around her, she had a buffer against the world.
That night, in the light of the campfire, he shaved with his hunting knife, then combed his hair. He offered her the comb.
She tried, but her hair was too matted.
“I guess you’ll just have to cut it off.” He laughed, thinking that her hair looked like a tumbleweed packed with mud.
She gave up after several tries and handed back the comb.
That night, when she moved to his side, he reached across the foot of grass separating them and took her thin hand in his. “Good night, Millie,” he whispered.
“Good night, James,” she answered in a voice that sounded as though she hadn’t used it in years.
“Your mind’s not gone.” He smiled. “Whatever you had to go through didn’t drive you insane. When you come out of this dark place you’re in, I’ll be waiting to help. Just remember, they didn’t break you. You’re not mad.”
* * *
THE NEXT AFTERNOON when James returned to camp, he changed his mind.
Millie sat by the fire, his hunting knife in her hand, her scalp bleeding from a dozen tiny nicks. Almost all of her muddy hair was piled in front of her.
Looking up with those huge eyes, he saw her sorrow. She’d done what he’d suggested. She’d cut off her hair. He wasn’t sure if she thought his words were an order. If she did, this mess was all his fault.
Kneeling beside her, he took the knife from her fist, then walked to the creek and wet his two clean bandannas.
Still sitting by the fire, she didn’t look up when he came near her. She’d gone back to that place inside herself where she must have gone every time she’d been hurt. That safe place where nothing registered, nothing mattered.
“Millie,” he started, “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to clean the cuts so they don’t get infected.”
She didn’t move as he carefully cleaned the blood and dirt away from her head. Then, as if he were shaving, he scraped the last few tufts of hair from her scalp.
When he walked to the creek for water to fill the coffeepot, he thought he heard her crying, but he couldn’t be sure. The whole night seemed to whisper sorrow from the lone coyote’s call to the wind whining through the trees.
Without making any effort to talk, he untied the rabbits he’d killed for supper. As he skinned them and roasted them, he was surprised to see her begin to work with the furs, stretching them out on stick frames.
He ate alone, watching her, wondering where she’d gone in her mind as her hands worked.
An hour later she moved toward the roasted rabbit he’d left on their one plate and began to eat like an animal who feared someone would snatch the food away at any moment. The thought occurred to him that maybe, in the tribe, she’d never been allowed to eat until the work was done.
Before he turned in for the night, he built the fire a bit higher, worried that she’d be cold. But, as she had every night, she waited until she thought he was asleep and curled up beside him. She may only be six inches away, he thought, but it might as well be an ocean between them.
He thought of reaching out to touch her hand, but guessed she’d pull away. Silently, he promised he’d keep her safe. Maybe she had family? Maybe one of the missions would take her in.
Silently, James swore he’d not leave her until the fear in her huge eyes was gone.
EVERY NIGHT MILLIE watched the canyon man who called himself James. He never yelled at her or hit her. And he never stopped talking no matter how hard she tried to show him that she wasn’t listening. Days passed, the last of the cottonwood leaves fell, the wind howled of winter at night and still he talked.
She couldn’t stop observing his every move. He took the time to show her things. He taught her each detail as if one day he’d leave her alone and she’d have to know how to survive on her own. Fishing, cooking, washing. All the while, he talked and each day she understood more of what he said.
Three nights after she’d cut her hair, he presented her with a hat made of rabbit skins. A week later he tried to make her moccasins out of more hides. As soon as he left camp the next day, she finished the job with much more skill. For the first time since she’d outgrown her boots, she had new shoes. Fur-lined. Warm. A perfect fit. Over the years she’d made many, but they’d always been taken away.
Canyon Man was a good provider. Millie hadn’t gone hungry since he’d traded for her, but hunting wasn’t the reason he was going out each morning. James was looking for something.
As the days passed she took on more of the cooking, finding that she liked being alone all day and didn’t mind his company at night. She wasn’t sure what she was to him. If a Comanche had traded for her, she might have been a slave for his wife or mother, but James had no wife or mother, and he never treated her like a slave. She thought that maybe she was his wife, but he never touched her. Besides, a man like him could find a better wife than her.
The moon made its second cycle over the big, empty sky and Millie felt her mind calm. Her favorite time was at night when he’d lie on his back and point out the stars. He’d sometimes say that his father had known many of their names and that someday he’d know them all.
Each week she watched James wash in the creek but she never joined him. The habit seemed strange, but she remembered years ago being clean. She’d washed in a house with a fire, warming the air even in winter. Slowly the memory of her mother, her father, her little brother, drifted into her mind and for the first time in years, she let them settle there for a while. Another time. Another world. Her world once.
One warm morning, after James had left, she took his soap and went to the water. Slowly she removed her blanket and stepped out of the bloodstained shift she’d worn for years. She remembered she’d had a dress once, until it had fallen off, piece by piece. Then she’d had a petticoat and shift. Now she only had a shift.
As she walked into the cold water, she almost ran back to the shore, but a bath was long overdue. There was no reason for the mud anymore. No one would try to touch her now.
Slowly, one limb at a time, she washed. Her body was so thin. A girl’s body, she thought, not a woman’s. She’d started her bleeding three maybe four years ago. The mark of a woman. Two months later the flow did not come back. That winter had been hard. Food was short and she was always the last one in the tribe to eat. The bleeding that made her a woman had never returned.
As she scrubbed off the dirt, she realized she was no longer the last to eat. James always ate with her, and he cut each portion in two as if they were equal.
Cleaning her inch-long hair with the terrible-smelling soap, she decided she could not put on the shift again, so she walked back to the campsite nude and cut a hole in a blanket James had tried to cover her with several times. Poking her head through the hole, she tied her waist with a rope and pulled on her moccasins.
When he returned, she would have a stew of meat and a potato cooking.
Whirling, Millie felt grand. She was clean and dressed in clothes no one else had tossed away. She couldn’t wait for James to see her. Her name was no longer Mud Woman.
An hour later she watched James climb off his horse downstream from her. He studied her, shaded his eyes as if to make sure what