Free Sidewinder by Jory Sherman Page B

the low-lying valleys. The jays circled the encampment, squawking and chattering, while the squirrels and chipmunks ventured forth, sipping water from the leaves, gnawing on pine nuts.
    Brad cocked one eye open, focused on the smoke hole. He saw a paling sky, heard movement a few feet away. He opened the other eye and looked down at Felicity. She was still sound asleep, her lips parted invitingly, her face serene. He looked across the shelter and saw Gray Owl holding a mouse by the tail. He dropped it into a basket, and Brad heard the whirring sound of a rattlesnake. There was a swishing sound in the basket, a tiny squeak, and then the rattles were still.
    Wading Crow was nowhere in sight.
    Julio was still asleep, his pistol on his chest, both hands clutching it as if it were a child’s stuffed toy. Brad smiled. Julio might never get over his fear and mistrust of Indians. Brad wondered what Gray Owl and Wading Crow thought of the Mexican and his obvious fear that he would be scalped in his sleep or his throat would be cut open like a sliced melon.
    Brad slid from under the blanket, very carefully, so he would not disturb Felicity. He stepped over to Gray Owl and talked to him in sign, asking him where Wading Crow was. He had learned some of the sign from an old Lakota drover in Denver who helped him drive his first herd up to Oro City and into the mountains where he had bought his ranch.
    Gray Owl cupped a hand to his ear and pointed to a direction outside the shelter. Brad nodded that he understood, and walked outside and into the dripping pine trees. He heard the noises more distinctly now and walked toward them.
    Wading Crow was putting fresh lashes on a large travois he had resurrected from the forest floor, two long poles, stripped of bark, tied securely together at one end, leaving a large, wide V between their loose ends.
    “What are you doing?” Brad asked.
    “Seven suns, we go.”
    “Do you and Gray Owl pull that travvy by yourselves all through the mountains to your village?”
    “Make smoke. Friends come. Bring horses.”
    “Smoke signals?”
    Wading Crow pointed through the trees.
    “Big hill. Make fire. Green wood. Make smoke. Village see. Bring horses. Bring braves. Pull travois. Take snakes to village.”
    “I understand,” Brad said. “You were going to make me a map.”
    “Wading Crow make map,” he said, and leaned the tied end of the travois against the trunk of a tall pine tree.
    Brad wondered if he was going to use an animal skin to draw the map, the underside of a rabbit skin or a patch of deerskin, perhaps. Instead, Wading Crow walked over to a dry spot beneath a tree, scuffed away the pine needles until he had a patch of bare earth about two or three feet in circumference. He drew his knife from its scabbard. He cut a small branch from beneath a spruce tree, skinned it down to a bare stick. He sharpened one end to a point. Then he knelt down before the bare patch and, with the pointed end of the stick, drew a crude map. For their present position, he drew an inverted V . Then he drew a line and on either side he inscribed landmarks, ridges, passes. At the other end he drew a number of inverted V s to represent the Arapaho village.
    “Three sleeps walk. Six sleeps drive cattle.”
    “Six days,” Brad murmured. “Just follow the valleys and low ridges.”
    Walking Crow nodded. “No big mountain on trail.”
    “You want me to remember all this? I thought you were going to give me a map I could hold in my hand.”
    “Secret village. No map in hand. Only here.” He tapped a finger to his temple, indicating that Brad should memorize the map.
    “You don’t want people, white men, to know where your village is?”
    “No. White man take red man to camp. Big camp. Make red man slave.”
    “A reservation?”
    “Big camp. No game. No fish. Bad place.”
    Brad knew that a number of Indian tribes had been moved to so-called reservations, given a house, a hoe, and maybe a mule. Trouble was