Free Sisters of Grass by Theresa Kishkan Page A

there would be nearly a hundred in flight, though only about ten pairs nested on the marsh. They were beautiful birds, graceful in flight and attentive to their young. She couldn’t imagine hunting them, though her mother’s people must have done so. She wondered if they tasted like goose, which was delicious. In hunting season her father shot ducks and geese and returned home with strings of them hanging behind his saddle. She hated plucking them because they had to be singed, a disgusting job, but then Mother roasted some with stuffings of apples, dried serviceberries and onions and preserved a few in their own fat to flavour soups in winter.
    The terrain near Chapperon Lake was rocky, wooded with tall firs and aspens and, in the draws near water, slender willows and cottonwoods. The gelding was sure-footed, and Margaret was not paying much attention when suddenly he shied to the left, almost unseating her. Ahead, perhaps a hundred feet, she could see a little wisp of smoke rising from behind a low, brushy hill. A mounted rider gestured to a party of men to close ranks behind him. They all dismounted and stepped slowly into the brush. Realizing that she hadn’t been seen, Margaret slid down from her saddle and tied the gelding to a tree. She walked quietly towards the smoke, and when she could see the fire it came from, she slipped behind a tree. To her surprise, the men around the campfire were Mr. Edwards and his companions. One of the strangers asked them where they’d come from.
    â€œAcross the river,” George Edwards replied. He explained that they’d been prospecting, his voice calm and soft.
    The stranger said, “You answer the description of the train robbers we are hunting for, and I arrest you for that crime.”
    Margaret nearly cried out, “No, you’ve got it all wrong, that’s Mr. Edwards, we all know him, he plays the fiddle,” but something, a keen fear, made her return to her horse as Mr. Edwards replied, “Well, we don’t look much like train robbers, do we?” She quickly untied the gelding, jumped into the saddle and moved away as quietly as she could. All of a sudden there was shouting — “Look out boys, it’s all up” — and then gunshots, many of them, and a man screamed, “I’m shot!”
    Margaret pressed her heels into the gelding’s sides and urged him to gallop as fast as he could. Her heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t catch her breath, but she didn’t dare pull her horse up until she reckoned she was a mile or two away. When she finally let the gelding stop, he was lathered with sweat, and she was trembling so hard she had to dismount and sit down in the new grass to calm herself, not caring if it was wet with the day’s rain.
    Closing her eyes, she saw the strangers sneaking towards Mr. Edwards’s camp, heard the stern voice of the one who accused the three of being train robbers, Mr. Edwards’s calm, friendly reply. She heard the shots, echoes making it impossible to tell whether there’d been three shots or thirty, the scream, the shouting and chaos in the grove of trees. Her horse’s eyes had shown white when she’d mounted him, snapped at his rump with her glove so he took off in a scuffle of dust and mud, kicked him to a gallop. Unshod, his feet had pounded the ground without the ringing of metal shoe on rock. She opened her eyes again and got up to make sure he hadn’t chipped a hoof or injured an ankle. He was quiet, standing beside her while she felt his legs, lifting each foot to examine it; she heard his tail swish away the flies and felt his breath on the back of her neck as he turned to see what she was doing. She tried to figure out what she’d seen, what had happened to Mr. Edwards. Was it he who had screamed out that he was shot? Was there anyone she should tell? She wondered if she’d been seen by the strangers, but as no one had followed