Chapter 26

Even though Catla and Keeta seemed to have everything in hand I walked over for a talk. I saw Keeta's Marlin was propped against a nearby tree. She'd had it in her hands when I rode up.

"Will you two be ok for the rest of the day?"

"If any others come to bother us I intend to start shooting sooner. Some of it was poor thinking on my part since Keeta warned me we'd have trouble out of the one I killed. I should have shot him with the first cross word and I won't make the same mistake again.

"I think we should go ahead and kill all the men here and take the women and children back with us. I would go ahead and start except I'm afraid we'd overload you in the furs.

"You could probably deal with four to six more mates without problem, but I'm not sure you can take care of more than forty of us," Catla said, and then gave me a wicked grin.

"I have more faith in you. I think you can do justice to this whole camp, even if you might have to only fuck half of us each night," Keeta said, and grinned herself.

"Let's at least give the men another chance or two. We were very lucky the one you killed had no mate."

"I would have thought very much less of Goondoe if any of these had mates. None of the dead ones were worth a mate. We might be able to show the two who are left what being a man is about, but I'm not sure," Catla said, and she said it loudly enough for them to hear her.

"I guess I'll go back to the horses now," I said, and left.

When I reached the scene of the training I was surprised to see it still going on. Shayta and Nanita were giving Goondoe's men directions and they were not giving my mates any backtalk. In fact they seemed to be doing well.

They'd only had the four horses to work with and by now the snubbing posts were empty and most of the men were watching four of them work.

After talking with Shayta and Nanita I borrowed their lariats and picked two of the watchers to try their hand at roping. The first two couldn't get the hang of it, so I rotated through the other four and found two who seemed at least able to make a throw-loop.

It turned out they learned fast and when I sent them into the pen for more students they did well enough at catching. The others could at least catch onto helping handle the captured horses after they'd been roped. We put two more on snubbing trees and broke for lunch.

We'd intended to eat pemmican for lunch again, but I decided my bunch would go back to camp and make sure everyone there was doing ok. I told the men we were training to go eat and not worry about coming back until they saw me heading out.

Catla and Keeta were already warming up some lunch when we made it back and more was put on for us. It beat hell out of pemmican too. We all had a long explanation and talk after we ate and no one thought we should leave since things seemed to be more settled now.

After our pow-wow broke up we all went back to what we were doing. My bunch didn't get far before we saw our students heading back and when we started work again I could tell all our trainees were paying a hell of a lot more attention. A few of them even looked scared to make a mistake. Maybe they had a right to be.

The horse catching even went better since those who'd been leading horses around were now with the rest trying to capture more students. Once we had the post occupied I let class out for the day and my crew headed back for our campsite.

Everyone was home once we made it, and there were still several women from Goondoe's camp working at braiding. I saw the two remaining helpers were still working their asses off over by the smokehouse too, but Keeta and Catla seemed to be done for the day.

"Have any of you noticed a change of attitude?" I asked my group.

"Yes, but I don't wonder why. Goondoe has been to every hut and it wasn't for pleasant visits, especially to the men. In fact he killed another one who argued back with him and I saw the dead man's mate and daughter moving into Goondoe's hut this afternoon," Keeta said.

"Did you hear the reason?" I asked.

"No, but I can guess it. The man he killed was the father of the girl who'd been promised to the man Catla killed. The talk among the women is Goondoe intends to give the girl to you for another mate.

"The father objected and Goondoe sent him to argue with the worms. It seems he is much less likely to listen to discussion from other men after this morning," Keeta said.

"What of the girl though. How will she like being traded away?"

"I can only guess, but women in our camps never have a choice and they would never complain. My guess is she will be thrilled to become the mate of a camp leader. I know her mother was excited to be moving into Goondoe's hut.

"You are not absolutely bound to take her if she is offered, but it will not be pleasant for her if you don't. Besides, she had no wish to be the mate of the man Goondoe gave her too and I don't even think he wanted to do it. The whole thing was her father's way of gaining favor with the one Catla killed," Keeta said.

"Can't you go talk to her and make sure she's all right with it?" I asked, hoping I wasn't whining.

"What do you expect her to say Jack? She probably doesn't even know of it herself yet and there is no point in making her nervous ahead of time. She will not cause trouble if they send her to live with you, and she will have no chance of any life nearly as good as you can give her.