Free Brave Warrior by Ann Hood

were flying overhead and pandemonium erupted.
    Maisie immediately understood.
    “They’re attacking us!” she shouted, ducking.
    Felix stood up, watching in disbelief as around him, bodies began to fall. He thought of the buffalo hunt yesterday, how the animals had dropped so quickly right in front of him. But these weren’t buffalo. These were the people of the tribe who had taken him and Maisie in.
    Maisie yanked him down to the ground.
    “Stay down,” she hissed.
    She began to crawl on her stomach toward one ofthe nearby tepees. Unsure what else to do, Felix did the same.
    By the time they reached the tepee, the shooting had stopped. In its place came the sounds of moans and screams. Maisie and Felix crawled inside the tepee and closed the flaps tight before breaking into frightened sobs.
    “Why would they attack like that?” Maisie finally managed to ask.
    But Felix couldn’t answer.
    “It was a massacre,” Maisie said. “No one had any weapons to fight back.”
    Felix put his arm around his sister. The two of them sat like that, afraid to go out, afraid of what they might see or who might be waiting.
    But in no time, the smell of smoke became so strong that Felix had to open the flap and look outside.
    The soldiers were still there.
    He watched as they rode through the village with torches, setting tepees on fire as they rode past them.
    They were heading toward where he and Maisie sat.
    Roughly, he grabbed his sister’s arm and pulledher out of the tepee, rolling away from it.
    They had hardly escaped before that tepee, too, ignited.
    By now, the entire village was ablaze. Maisie and Felix sat helplessly as all around them, everything burned.

    Neither of them could say how much time passed before a shadow fell over them. Maisie and Felix sat motionless, huddled together, each lost in their own thoughts about the horror that had unfolded before them. But both of them wondered if their friend Yellow Feather had been killed. The thought was too awful to say out loud.
    They looked up when the shadow appeared. A boy of fourteen or fifteen stood staring down at them. Although his skin was quite light and his hair almost dirty blond, they could tell he was Native American by his sharp features and clothing made from animal hides. He was not very tall, but he was muscular, and his light-brown eyes bore into them as he loomed above them.
    It took them a moment before they realized that Yellow Feather stood behind him, her cheeksstreaked with tears. She had a gash on her forehead and another at her temple.
    “Mad Bear,” Yellow Feather said, as if that explained everything.
    “Mad bear?” Felix repeated.
    “Soldier,” Yellow Feather said, nodding.
    Two more Native American boys joined them. They stared down angrily at Maisie and Felix.
    “My village,” one of them said, and he swept his arms wide. “Destroyed.”
    “Why?” Maisie cried.
    “Revenge,” the light-skinned one said. “Grattan defeated near Fort Laramie last year, and Mad Bear cannot forget.”
    He spit in the dirt before continuing.
    “Army stupid,” he said. “This camp did not have anything to do with Grattan. Those people long gone. But they kill ninety innocent Lakota today.”
    He shook his head.
    “To you,” he said, his eyes on Maisie and Felix, “we are all alike.”
    “No!” Felix said. “Not at all.”
    But the boy was already turning from them.
    One of the others spoke to him in quiet tones.Yellow Feather joined in to speak for the twins.
    Finally, reluctantly, he turned back to Maisie and Felix.
    “Little Thunder and Yellow Feather insist I take you along,” he said, without even a hint of warmth in his voice.
    “Thank you,” Felix said quickly.
    “I don’t like the white settlers,” he said evenly.
    “Uh-huh,” Felix said.
    “They don’t understand us,” he said.
    Felix tried to think of what to say, but the boy was climbing onto his horse already.
    “They call him Curly,” Yellow Feather said.
    Curly did