Raven opened her mouth to speak but Mouse was talking again.
“Without them, I would have died so many times. They have kept me alive, my husband and my son.”
Raven closed her mouth tight.
“I worry that if he learns what I have done to stay alive, he might not want me. But then I worry about hiding the truth from him. What would you do?”
Mouse looked up at Raven, waiting for her reply. Raven held her tongue as dread made her skin prickle.
“What?” asked Mouse.
“I...I am...” She pressed a hand over her mouth and tried to think what to say.
Mouse’s eyes narrowed and she closed in. “What do you know of my husband? Has he taken another wife?”
“No.”
“Then, why do you look so guilty?” Mouse grasped Raven’s shoulders and gave a little shake. Raven met her gaze. The scowl disappeared. She released Raven and stepped back, now protecting herself from the news by folding her arms before her.
Mouse’s eyes went wide and her face went chalky white as if she already knew. Her next words confirmed Raven’s fears. “What has happened to him?” Her fingers clawed into her hair, holding a fist at each temple. “To my husband. To my son.”
Mouse swayed as if the energy to shout had stolen the last of her strength. She placed a hand on the riverbank.
Raven sank down beside her and spoke in a rush, racing to finish as Mouse blinked up at her. She spoke of the raid and the victory and the losses. How her husband was killed in the raid of the Shallow Water tribe and her son in the icy water.
“I am sorry. They are both gone,” said Raven.
Tears streamed down Mouse’s face and then she threw herself to the ground, curling into a ball. Her cry of agony was terrible to hear.
Raven stayed with her, but she worried that they would be missed and that would make it harder to leave the camp. When Mouse had no more voice to cry she folded into Raven’s arms.
“I have no one now. My sister and mother walked the Way of Souls before me. They died in the spotted sickness winter, the same winter that took your mother from you. My mother-in-law hates me.”
“She’s still alive.”
“Moon Rise is a good swimmer. Why did she not save my son?”
“I do not know. I only remember hearing of your husband and son because I spoke to Moon Rise. She now has no son to hunt for her and must rely on the gifts of others.”
Mouse stood woodenly and began to walk up the bank.
“Where are you going?” asked Raven.
“To the woman’s lodge. Perhaps I will never come out.”
Raven stopped her with a hand. “I am still bringing you home.”
Mouse snorted. “I have no home.”
Raven watched her go and wondered if she had made a mistake. Should she have kept the deaths of Mouse’s family secret until they were safely back with the Crow?
But what if they never reached them? Didn’t Mouse have the right to mourn and pray for her husband and son? Was it her decision to keep the truth from a wife and mother?
Raven hurried back to Running Wolf’s tepee, hopeful that she might sit near the fire.
When Raven reached the lodge, she was received with sharp words from Ebbing Water, who snatched the basket back and sent her to the river to wash the blood from her body. The water stung but she managed. As she was leaving the river, she ran into a group of women who’d come at their customary time to wash. They shouted at her that she could not use this place and must bathe downriver so they did not get the stink of the Crow on them.
Raven hurried back to the tepee and found Running Wolf seated inside. His eyes followed her every movement as she returned to Ebbing Water.
“Can you not cover her?” he asked his mother.
“She must earn her clothing.”
“Cover her while she is inside, then.”
Ebbing Water gave Raven a blanket. The warm rough wool scratched her skin and made her cuts burn. But it took away the chill and soon she was not shivering. She smiled at Running Wolf, but before she could offer her thanks he rose and stalked out, leaving a half-finished bowl of stew beside him. She eyed his leavings eagerly as her stomach gave a loud gurgle. She’d had nothing to eat since Running Wolf gave her a strip of dried buffalo last night.
“He does not want you here,” said Ebbing Water. “So you will sleep outside.”
Ebbing Water turned back to the fire and Raven snatched up the bowl and left the tepee. Had Running Wolf left it intentionally for her?
She sat behind the tepee to gobble down her prize. She knew Ebbing Water would miss her bowl eventually, and placed it just under the base of the tepee, hidden between the outer wall and the inner hanging lining that served to keep out the cold.
In a short time, Ebbing Water left the lodge, closing the flap of hide that covered the circular entrance. Raven knew this was a sign that she didn’t welcome visitors or had gone away. Once she made sure she’d gone, Raven retrieved the bowl, wiped it clean and then placed it with Ebbing Water’s other cooking things.
Raven was going to leave again, but she spotted the rawhide parfleche box covered with brightly colored geometric patterns. Her grandmother kept pemmican in just such a box. Pemmican was portable and could keep her alive. The mixture of fat and pounded dried meat might even contain some dried Saskatoon berries or wax currents.
Such food was meant for traveling and for the long dark nights of the Deep Snow Moon when hunting was hard and game scarce. It might keep indefinitely, as long as it was kept dry and did not mold. But stealing would get her a beating or worse.
She weighed her options.
A weak, starving woman could not fight and she could not survive the winter. She crept forward, untied the soft leather bindings and then lifted the stiff rawhide lid.
Inside sat the pemmican, but they were unlike the long rolls that her grandmother fashioned. Ebbing Water’s food stores looked like flat skipping stones, the size of her fist. They lay one upon the other in no order. Raven wondered if she would know if there was some missing.
She quickly took five and rearranged the top layer to cover their absence. Then she continued out the opening only to find Running Wolf waiting for her. She was caught with the stolen food.
He grasped her arm and several of the pemmican rounds fell at her bare feet.
“So you ride and shoot and fight, and now I find you steal as smoothly as Weasel.”
Would he kill her? He could. Captives had died for less. Raven found it difficult to stand—her legs began to shake and sweat popped out upon her forehead.
She pressed her lips together to keep herself from begging for her life, although that was what she wanted to do.
“Would you slit a man’s throat with the same ease?” he asked.
When she did not answer he tugged her forward so that she fell against his broad chest and felt again the power of his body.
“Why did I ever take you?”
“I do not know.”
He gave her wrist a little shake. “I wish I had killed him.”
“Who?”
“Your war chief.”
Raven shuttered at the thought of her brother’s death earning this man one more eagle feather.
“I would rather have you earn the