Free Walker of Time by Helen Hughes Vick Page B

home until our chief returns from his pilgrimage to the sacred mountain.” Great Owl leaned on his staff for support. He looked tired, but his voice was strong. He gazed down into Walker’s eyes. “When Lone Eagle returns, all that must be done will be done.”
    Lone Eagle . . . Lone Eagle . . . death
 . . . The haunting feeling swept through Walker’s body. His knees swayed under him. His heart felt as if it had stopped.

11
    The water was warm, but it soothed Walker’s parched throat. He lowered the cup, made from a dried gourd. The fist-size, smooth gourd was still half full, and he was still thirsty. He knew that each precious drop of water had been carried up the steep canyon from the stream of water at the bottom. For as long as he could remember, he had hauled heavy water jugs up the high mesa to his home each day. He knew well the price paid in sweat for even such a small amount of water.
    Walker passed the half-full gourd to Tag, who was sitting crossed-legged next him. In two large, noisy gulps, Tag drained the remaining water. Flute Maiden moved forward with a reddish-orange ceramic water jug and refilled the cup. With a smile, Tag guzzled down the second cup of water. Of course, Tag had never carried water any further than from the kitchen sink, Walker realized, watching the bahana drain the cup for a third time.
Here it will be different
.
    Walker looked around Great Owl’s mud-and-rock home. They sat a foot or so from the doorway on woven yucca mats in a semicircle facing the center of the home. The room was about fifteen feet long and eight feet deep. Even with a small cooking fire burning in the back of the room next to the limestone wall, the air was cool and dry. Smoke from the fire curled up the back wall, drifted along the rock ceiling and out the three air holes made in the stone wall above the T-shaped door.
    Flute Maiden’s and White Badger’s older sister, Morning Flower, knelt by the smoky fire. Her intelligent eyes darted from her cooking to the men as she stirred something in a medium-sized gray pot. She was about twenty and looked a lot like Flute Maiden. Unlike her sister, Morning Flower seemed extremely shy. Walker wondered if this was because she was self-conscious about her body being swollen huge with pregnancy. Or was she just naturally withdrawn and timid? She did not live here with her father, Great Owl, but next door in her own home with her husband. Where was her husband? Walker wondered with a sudden uneasiness.
    Morning Flower’s young son, Small Cub, sat close to her. He was a friendly four-year-old with straight bangs and long blue-black hair that framed his quick-to-smile, square face. He wore nothing but a leather thong around his neck. A small white shell hung from the narrow thong. His large, curious, black eyes stared at them, his mouth shaped in a half-moon smile.
    Walker studied the cooking area. Three fat, knee-high, plain ceramic jars of different shapes lined the back corner of the cooking pit. Each jar had a thin sheet of leather tied around its large opening. He guessed that at least one ofthese containers stored dried corn that would be ground into cornmeal for cooking. The other jars might hold such things as pinyon nuts, acorns, walnuts, and pumpkin or squash seeds. Or perhaps they contained dried foods such as beans, prickly pear fruit, or yucca banana fruit. Walker knew that whatever was in the storage containers depended on what had been successfully grown or gathered from nature. These three jars would hold only enough food to feed Great Owl’s family for a few weeks at the most. They must have other food storage nearby, Walker surmised. From all that he had seen of the canyon so far, he doubted very much that the ancient ones’ storage rooms contained enough food for the coming winter.
    Three white, tightly woven yucca baskets with bold black designs stood in front of the large pots.