Free Seed of Evil by David Thompson Page A

Utes, there might be more.

Chapter Fourteen
    Raven On The Ground was confused and more than a little worried.
    Chases Rabbits had told her that the whites wanted women to cook and sew and mend for them. In return, they would be allowed to have things from the trading post. She and her companions had been at the post living in the awful wood lodge for several days now and they’d hardly had to do anything. She kept asking Dryfus what they were to do. He would go to Geist, then come back and say that they should be patient and enjoy themselves, and all would be made clear soon. But there was nothing to do but talk and walk. They were tired of talking and had walked all over Mud Hollow without seeing anything worth their interest.
    That evening the women held a council.
    “I am for going back to our village,” Flute Girl announced.
    “I as well,” Lavender said. “We waste our time here. The whites sent for us but they don’t need us.”
    “They are puzzling people,” Spotted Fawn remarked.
    “They are as different from the Apsaalooke as dirt is from water,” Flute Girl said.
    “In the morning I will ask Dryfus one more time what it is the whites wish us to do,” Raven On The Ground said. “If they do not have work for us, we will leave.”
    “Maybe you should not go to him,” Lavender said.
    “He is the only one who knows sign.”
    “But he will just go to the one they call Geist, and Geist will say what he always says. Relax and enjoy ourselves.”
    “What else, then?” Raven On The Ground asked.
    “Go to the one they call Toad,” Lavender suggested. “He is their leader, is he not?”
    “Chases Rabbits did say that Toad is their chief, yes,” Raven On The Ground confirmed.
    “Yet not once has he to come to talk to us,” Spotted Fawn said. “He is not a polite host.”
    “He is white,” Flute Girl said.
    “Maybe he will give us work if we ask him face-to-face,” Lavender said.
    It was worth a try, they all decided. Raven On The Ground would speak for them, as she had been doing.
    So the next morning, shortly after the trading post opened and while there were yet few people, Raven On The Ground made sure her dress was clean and her hair was perfectly done in two braids. Then she went into the post to present herself to the white chief. Two of the others—Gratt and Berber, she believed their names to be—noticed her but went on about their business.
    Raven On The Ground looked for Geist and Dryfus but didn’t see them, which was good, as she had grown concerned about them. It was their eyes. Something she saw in them, something she could not quite define, bothered her. She did not see it all the time. Usually when they thought she wasn’t looking at them, she’d catch an unguarded expression, the kind of expression that hinted at a hunger which had nothing to do with food.
    Toad was behind the counter, as he nearly always was. She rarely saw him come out from behind it. The first day she had gone up to it to thank him for inviting them, and he had moved to the other end without saying a word to her. She had thought it terribly rude. But then she had reminded herself that he was a chief and she had not approached him through one of the whites under him, as she should.
    This time she would do it directly. She marched up to the counter and calmly stood with her hands folded, waiting.
    Toad had a fabulous stick in his hand that left black squiggly lines on flat white squares of paper bound together somehow. He glanced up and blinked as if he were surprised. “Good morning.”
    Raven On The Ground had heard those words before, from Grizzly Killer. She did not know what they meant, but she repeated them and went on smiling.
    Toad put down the fabulous stick. “I didn’t know any of you spoke English.”
    His sounds were alien to Raven On The Ground except for the last sound, “English.” She knew that it referred to the white tongue. She repeated it. “English.”
    “My God.” Toad looked