Chapter 2: Wild Indians

The Family

I have a bad feeling about this, Miranda whispered in Ramie’s mind as they went about their business the next day. Jason didn’t want to be there when you opened the box last night. He’s been holding something back. Maybe hiding something.

“Yeah, but don’t push him. Kyle and Jason have their own demons, sweetheart. Knowing our little brother and sister were growing up in an Indian village must be hard on them. Like us remembering being kidnapped,” Ramie sighed. She finished feeding the stabled horses. With the number of pleasure riders who now boarded their horses at LK Stables, they were building another horse barn and Kyle had gone to check the day’s progress on the construction. The new barn would house the breeding and foaling facility so the old barn would be strictly boarding.

All day, Ramie fought the desire to simply run to the box and read the rest—or, alternatively, to burn it all so she wouldn’t have to find out. But she had a business to run. She had to go to the bank to make the monthly deposits. She had to pay the loans for building and expanding the ranch. She needed to ride out on the northern trail where one of the boarders had reported a tree down across the trail. Work had to be done. Laying the cat to rest had to wait.

Kyle joined Ramie on the way back to the ranch house for dinner and took her hand. They walked quietly. Aubrey met them at the door with a kiss. After they’d scrubbed up they each cuddled a baby and then sat down to a dinner of liver and onions.

“It just floors me,” Cole said. “How can they live with their consciousness split between two times? It defies the laws of physics.”

“Pa, what part of time travel doesn’t defy the laws of physics?” Aubrey asked sweetly. They were all thinking the same thing, but Cole had a definite soft spot for the mother of his grandchildren.

“Well, sweetie, when it was just me traveling, and as much as I can tell the same was true of Phile and Geneive and Joe Teini, everything was one-way. We could go back in time. We affected the present by leaving treasure where we could find it in the future. We got plenty tangled up in the lives we led in that other world, but we didn’t communicate with our present self while we were back in the past,” Cole said. “When we were gone from here, our bodies more or less kept up appearances, but memories of those times were muted and dreamlike. Sometimes it appeared we were sick, like you were after the wolf attack, Ramie. And when our hosts died, that was it.”

“Except you were trapped there for a long time, just like I was,” Ramie said. “Then you went back. Twice. You went when Arthur Alexander summoned you and he gave you his body. You took me with you to meet my great great great grandmother. But for Kyle and me, our hosts communicated with us just like we do with them now. We worked as partners.”

“Still, I never would have guessed that you could bring your hosts with you into our present. And Miranda and Jason, we love you and welcome you here,” Cole added. “I never mean to be disrespectful to our grandparents.”

“We’ve only ever known you as Pa,” Miranda said through Ramie’s voice. “I wish I could connect all those dots, but we’re no older than Ramie and Kyle.”

“I love learning from your experience, though,” Mary Beth said. “Your pie dough is the best ever.”

“Excuse me,” Ashley said. “The love-fest is nice, but back to the subject at hand. I think you just captured the difference, Cole. You had Kyle Redtail as a host. Geneive had Caitlin. Ramie had Miranda and Kyle had Jason. When you were there, two consciousnesses inhabited the body and one took control. Ramie and Miranda talked about it and were companions. You just jerked control away from Kyle and made him sit quietly. But the difference is that Caitlin and Phile aren’t inhabiting someone else’s body. They’ve never once mentioned a host.”

They sat quietly at the table as what Ashley said sank in. If it was true, Caitlin and Phile were the same people in both timeframes. They didn’t have hosts. They each had two bodies.

They finished their meal and cleaned up. Ramie and Aubrey got the children bathed and ready for bed. Theresa cuddled up in Kyle’s lap again while Aubrey nursed Katherine. Mary Beth and Ashley curled together in Cole’s lap as Ramie extracted the pages from the box and began reading again.

Phile: The People

I have to write about growing up Cheyenne and how we found out that was what we were. Yelloweye had provided a powerful wise woman in our village to teach us, but he found someone to teach us in now-time as well.

There are certain things you never think about. Like earth. The name of our planet is Earth. We call the dirt on the ground ‘earth’. Earth isn’t a name for a planet. It’s the same as calling it ‘world’. We name the things that are other than us. Mars and Venus. They aren’t Earth.

We knew we weren’t Crow or Lakota. They were other than us. We wouldn’t even have looked for a name if we didn’t exist in both times. We were the People. They were Pawnee. Those others were whiteman. We didn’t need to name ourselves.

It was the same with Phile and me. People in the tribe called us like they called all the kids. Little boy and little girl. Or now, they often called us Hestȧhkeho, Twins. When we became adults, the Great Spirit, or perhaps Yelloweye, would give us a name because we were other to him.

Merv Longsteer caught us. We always loved that shop. It smelled like leather. We’d saved up all our birthday money and planned to get ourselves good knives. Among the people we learned how to use a knife before we were six summers. Of course, our knives weren’t steel. The whole knife was made of elk bone. The handle was wrapped with rawhide and the blade shaped down to be sort of sharp. It’s a lot easier to make a point than an edge, but points aren’t good for slicing meat.

We got carried away in his shop and it was one of those occasions that we were talking the same both lives. In before-time, we were holding our knives in front of us while in now-time, we were looking at the knives in the case and talking about them.

“Those knives are good for skinning,” Merv said as he leaned over the counter to talk to us. We were surprised, but also kind of flattered that the old medicine man would talk to us children.

“We need something like this so we can learn how to use it to make something like this,” I said pointing at a longer blade. He nodded.

“What will you make it out of?”

“The first one is bone. But it’s hard to get it real sharp. I want to make the next one out of flint or obsidian. I’m learning to identify the right stones,” Phile said. He was enthusiastic. Merv nodded again.

“Don’t use your bone knife to try to chip the obsidian,” he said. He pulled the two short knives we’d been looking at out and took them out his back door. We followed. He bent down and picked up a couple stones. “First, you can make a better edge on your bone knife by using one of these stones to scrape along it.” He demonstrated the proper way to scrape the stone against the steel blades, always going the same direction. “Now when you get a piece of obsidian or flint, you need to chip it by striking it lightly with a harder stone.” He demonstrated again. “Many of our ancestors became experts at chipping the flint to a fine edge. But you can use the sanding stone to hone it even finer. Do that and your arrowheads and your knife will pierce the hide quickly and smoothly.”

Phile and I looked at each other. When Merv said ‘arrowheads’ the word clicked in our minds. Mo’xȯhtse—the Cheyenne word for arrowhead. I caught my breath and looked at Merv. All this time, we’d been speaking to him in the Cheyenne language.

“Listen to your teachers,” Merv said, changing to English. “They are teaching you well. When you share these tricks with them, show them respectfully and not as though you are better than they are. Your spirit walks among the Cheyenne people. When you need more help, come and visit with me.”

We thanked him and paid for our purchases. Pa examined what we’d bought and decided it was best not to tell the moms that we were running around with sharp knives. He swore that if we hurt anyone with our knives he’d use them to take the skin off our backs. We sort of believed him.

We tried not to speak Cheyenne in now-time again, but sometimes we got mixed up. Merv was the only person who didn’t think we were just making up gibberish.

In two more years of now-time, we’d aged five years in before-time. We were eleven-year-old wild Indians in now-time, doing all kinds of crazy stuff. We were trying to assimilate seven years of learning in two years. In before-time we were ten.

And in before-time, the learning was intense. The village wise woman and the elders were all teaching us. And they seemed to do it with a sense of fear—sort of like they were afraid they’d forget to teach us something vital. We soaked it all up the best we could and might not have had as much trouble except that Yelloweye was teaching us in both before-time and now-time. You all thought we were out chasing the horses when we were running along riding in their heads as they raced around the pasture.

Yelloweye explained that he couldn’t open us to our gift of joining minds with other animals until we had joined our minds across time, but it was important for the children we were in before-time to grow up being recognized from infancy as touched by the owl. He taught us about natural order and that some animals were meant to be food and to supply other needs for the People. We also learned about animals who were outside our food chain and would dine on us, given the opportunity.

We could summon animals for our use, including rabbits, squirrels, some birds, and even deer, elk, and buffalo. But when we summoned them to their deaths, we needed to respect their sacrifice, be mercifully quick in our kills, and take part in the animal’s ... the best word we ever came up with was Karma. We did this by immediately eating the liver and letting the animal become one with our lives. After all, they sacrificed themselves for our nourishment.

Caitlin: Soldiers

We’re trying to split up the writing, but Phile gets too emotional to write about this part, so he’s working on the story of the wolves.

Among the animals that would dine on us, at least figuratively, were ho’evȯtse, whiteman. They didn’t care about food. They wanted the land to be theirs. We knew in now-time what whiteman would eventually do to the land. Farming and raising animals were understandable. But the men with rifles would kill hundreds of buffalo and leave them to rot on the prairie. Carrion birds flocked behind the white hunters who just rode on.

We were scavengers as well. When the white riders passed, we would rush to the killing field with a travois and bring a buffalo carcass or two back to the village. We would not hunt after the white killers had been through. Some in our village would not eat the meat of the buffalo killed by bullets.

We never knew our fathers. They had gone to fight the blue suits before we were born and never returned. Like the buffalo, they were left on the prairie and scavengers took their bodies. So even when we were very small, we set snares and scavenged buffalo for our mother so we would not starve or freeze in winter.

In our tenth summer, Phile and I each killed a whitetail deer. We paused over the dead bodies and thanked our brothers for giving us the food we would need and their fine skins for our clothes. We opened their bodies with our short bone knives and ate the livers fresh and warm from their guts.

We were triumphant as we loaded the carcasses on our travois and headed back to our village. The hunting men of the village had gone farther to seek prey, but we were able to call our food to us and returned long before the men would be back.

That was the last time we were ever happy. Yelloweye was sitting on our tipi.

“Children, go to the flagpole in the center of camp and stand with your mother,” Tsévéhonevėstse Elder said. He was an old man, but he was our leader. We carried a flag of the United States with our village that was given to us by a soldier when they wrote a paper that would keep us safe. “Soldiers are coming and we must show them that we are peaceful people who abide by our word.”

We stood with our mother, excited but a little frightened, too.

And the soldiers came.

We were just standing there waiting to greet them and they came over the hill with their horses galloping toward us and their long guns belching death all around us. They drew their short guns and kept firing as they closed in on us. We stared in the eyes of a yellow-haired ho’evȯtse charging with his gun pointed at us.

“Run, children, run!” Mother cried pushing us to obey. Death stared at us and we turned to run as Mother crumpled to the ground. Our mother! Our mother was dead!

We ran. At the edge of the village where Grandfather had met us, our horses and the fresh deer stood waiting. We cut the travois loose from them and leapt to their backs to ride away. Screams. Smoke from the guns. Terrified people running away. Soldiers knocking them down with their horses. Our village was gone. Our mother was dead. And we fled. We rode our ponies as far into the mountains as they could take us before we rested. And then we collapsed together and wept.

This did not happen while we slept in now-time. Phile and I were out near the woodlot where the old cabin was and the fireplace still stands. We were celebrating having killed our first deer. We considered catching a rabbit and roasting it, but Moms would have had a fit if they knew we started a fire in the woods. We were excited about the soldiers coming to our village in the past and stood in front of the fireplace as if we were among them.

But just as Yelloweye—our friend—sat on our tipi, he sat beside us on the old chimney.

We saw it all as we stood there and when we ran in before-time, we ran in now-time as well. We caught our horses and rode toward the mountain. We rode in panic. We rode hard, our horses understanding the urgency. We had always managed to keep some separation between the two halves of our lives, but we lost it that day. We rode and wept with our other selves, unable to differentiate which of us was which. We rode until it was dark and we were far up in the mountains.

It took us two days to separate our present selves from our past selves. We had horses with no bridles or even a lead rope. Yet they stayed near to us and came when we called them. We snared a rabbit and cooked it over a fire that we started ourselves. We had no weapons or tools other than the knives we always carried. Our before-time selves had their bows and arrows that had been left slung over their horses. In now-time, we didn’t even have that. We began working to make ourselves bows and cut straight saplings to cure for arrows.

At night, we held each other for warmth.

That is where Yelloweye found us. We’d seen him with us in before-time and at the ranch in now-time. For the first time, we were frightened of him. He was, indeed, the harbinger of death. Our mommy was dead. Maybe our whole village. We’d seen them ride the People down and kill them.

I sorrow for you, my children.

He called us his children.

“I wish you could have learned this lesson another way,” he said. No. He didn’t say anything. He never said anything. We just got this wave of sadness from him. This is what will happen to the ho’e, the land. The ho’evȯtse will kill all that is before him.

“What do they want, Yelloweye? Why do they do this?” Phile asked.

They wish ho’e-momóonáotaovóho, dominion, to rule over all. They wish the earth and all the creatures to bow down to them and yield their treasures, whether they will or no.

“What must we do?” I asked.

You must learn and survive. You must be who you are and talk to your brothers and sisters of the earth. The day will come when only you stand between destruction of the land and its survival.

Pa laced our butts with his belt when we got home. We’d been gone three days and one of the riders from the upper pasture found us and took us to camp. The next day Pa showed up at the trailhead with a trailer and loaded our horses. He wasn’t going to even let us ride down to the ranch.

When he’d laid one across each of our butts, he sank down on his knees and hugged us and cried.

“We thought we’d lost you,” he said. “We’d never be the same without you. Don’t ever scare us like that again. You can’t possibly understand how much your moms and I love you.”

I think that was the first time I did understand.

Phile: Wolves

Life didn’t get any easier. I mean this life, here in now-time. It wasn’t easy in before-time, either. This gets so damned complicated. We were alone and isolated in before-time. In now-time, we isolated ourselves and were even more antisocial than we’d been.

We went wild. I know we’d been difficult ever since we first met Yelloweye. But more and more of our life in the present was in sync with the past. And we couldn’t be in sync while we were around other people. When excuses failed to work, we just made it so nobody wanted to be around us.

It was easy to hate everybody.

In the wintertime, we had to go to school. Oh, we learned stuff. Sixth grade was better than our other school, mostly because we got to go to Laramie and rode the bus with Kyle and Ramie. They never said much, but we knew they were always on the lookout for us.

“Move, dweeb. I wanna sit by your sister.” Daniel Watson from the Bar Double-D was two years older than us. We’d had three years with him out of Centennial Elementary School and forgot what an asshat he was. I didn’t want him anywhere near Caitlin and she told me in before-time that she didn’t want to be near him.

“No.”

“Don’t ever tell me no, you little turd. I’ll put your head through the back window,” he said.

“Maybe you’d like to try putting my head through the back window,” Kyle said. Kyle was only fifteen, but he was already six feet tall. He’d be real tall and thin like Pa. I didn’t think I’d ever be that tall. I was used to thinking of myself among the People. Kyle had Daniel by the back of his neck. I thought the kid was going to swing at Kyle, but he just shrugged.