Free Bounty Hunter (9781101611975) by Bill Yenne Page A

such confidence, that she was in the wrong place.
    On the other hand, the old man was right, an interpreter
could
prove useful—not only in accomplishing the old man’s purpose, but in accomplishing Cole’s as well. It was just a pity, he felt, that there were so few men in the camp that the chief had to send his young niece.
    â€œWhen will the other men be back from their buffalo hunt?”
    â€œBefore the snow,” she said, looking to the north and speaking without her previous assurance.
    â€œYour uncle is named after the white buffalo?” Cole said, making conversation after a mile or so of riding in silence.
    â€œYes, a calf was born when he was born.”
    â€œYou didn’t tell be the meaning of
your
name,” he said.
    â€œ
Inis’kim
is the ‘Medicine Stone,’” she said. “‘Medicine
Buffalo
Stone.’”
    â€œThat sounds important.”
    â€œMy mother found one when I was in her belly,” she explained. “It is the stone which sings. It is the stone bringing good luck. Long ago, in the winter that the
iiníí
 . . . the buffalo went away, a woman found the first stone in a cottonwood tree when she went to a stream to get water for cooking. The
Inis’kim
sang to her and told her to take it home to her lodge. It said that buffalo will return and hearts will be glad.”
    â€œDid it work?”
    â€œShe taught the
Inis’kim
song to her husband and the elders. They knew that it was powerful. They sang. They prayed. The buffalo
came
.”
    â€œDoes your mother still have it?”
    â€œMy mother has gone . . . Absaroka raiders. My father too.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that,” Cole said meekly, knowing that he had touched a nerve.
    â€œThat’s when I went to the mission school,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek.
    Cole made another innocuous comment about the weather and the approach of winter, and afterward, they rode on without talking.

Chapter 8

    T HE WISTFUL GIRL WITH THE TEAR ON HER CHEEK REASSERTED herself at the camp that night. When the Siksikáwa men, each a head taller than she, insisted that water be fetched for cooking, an argument ensued. It ended with Ikutsikakatósi taking the basket to the stream.
    Bladen Cole found this greatly amusing.
    â€œWe’d better build this fire good so we don’t get a visit from a grizzly tonight,” Cole said, shoving some cottonwood sticks into the fire.
    â€œYes . . . you are right,” Natoya agreed. “It is a dangerous animal . . . and a powerful animal in many ways.”
    â€œThat’s for sure,” Cole agreed.
    â€œAnd he is a very powerful animal with
nátosini
 . . . um . . . how to you say . . . medicine?”
    â€œSupernatural power?”
    â€œYes . . . supernatural power,
nátosini
.”
    â€œSo the grizzly is sacred to the Siksikáwa?” Cole asked.
    â€œIn the way that everything in the world is sacred,” Natoya explained. “In the way that the black robes thought we ‘worshipped’ trees and badgers.”
    Poking a stick to turn a piece of cottonwood in the fire, she continued her recollections of the missionaries.
    â€œThere was
one
black robe who understood . . . but mostly they did not, and we laughed at them behind their backs. That is not very polite, I know . . . but we were children . . .”
    â€œI think it’s funny,” Cole chuckled, imagining a bevy of Blackfeet girls giggling about the inability of the missionaries to understand the people they were teaching.
    â€œOf all the
kiááyo
, all the bears, the
apóhkiááyo
 . . . you call him ‘grizzly,’ is feared and respected above all,” Natoya continued.
    â€œSo that makes him
sacred
?”
    â€œI do not have the
Naapi’powahsin
 . . . the