Free Comanche Dawn by Mike Blakely

tree several times to make sure it was dead, then raised it above his head.
    â€œAaa-hey!” he shouted, mimicking the cry of a warrior claiming the first stroke on a fallen enemy. Whip and Trotter scrambled and pushed each other to get at the carcass, Trotter finally touching it with a slap of his palm.
    â€œAaa-hey!” Trotter wailed, his voice somewhat higher than Shadow’s.
    As only two strokes could be claimed on a fallen foe, Whip hissed at his friends as if to make fun of them, though he had tried as hard as they to claim the honors. “It is only a rabbit!” he said. “My elder sister could count a battle stroke on a rabbit!”
    â€œLet us go and show it to her then,” Trotter said, for he had seen Whip’s elder sister, and considered her as pretty as any girl the Burnt Meat People had to offer.
    Whip’s mood brightened. “My sister has her own lodge now, at the far end of the camp. We can run through the whole camp with our rabbit and make her cook it for us!”
    By the time they neared the lodges, they had contrived the device of tossing the rabbit to one another through the air. At the edge of the camp, they avoided the tripods of lances holding the sacred buffalo-hide war shields off the ground, protected by rawhide covers. They dodged fires and darting dogs, flinging the rabbit all the way over the short, four-pole lodges of the poorer horseless warriors. They shouted as they swerved among fires and scaffolds stretching deer hides in the sun.
    Spying a group of girls walking through the village, Shadow motioned with his head for Whip to run around the opposite side of them so he could fling the dead rabbit over their heads, thinking this would impress them. Trotter saw the strategy quickly and took up a third position flanking the girls, who were still so engrossed in conversation that they hadn’t taken much notice of the boys.
    When the carcass sailed over them, one of the Corn People girls ducked, shrieking her amusement, while the others giggled at the boys, who continued to throw the rabbit over their heads. Shadow saw that there were two girls of the Corn People in this group, and three girls he knew from his own band. Ignoring the familiar girls, he stole glimpses of the two others between his athletic capers with the dead rabbit.
    One of them seemed a year or two older than the rest, and older than Shadow himself. She was attractive merely because she was nearer to maturity and exotic to Shadow, hailing as she did from another band of True Humans.
    But when Shadow caught the eyes of the second Corn People girl, he was so taken by her that the rabbit hit him in the face, causing all of the girls to laugh uncontrollably. Pretending to have let this happen on purpose, he quickly grabbed the rabbit and tossed it back to Whip.
    â€œYou see that I am a Foolish One!” he said, looking at the girl who had distracted him so. “The Foolish Ones are the bravest of warriors among all the True Humans!”
    The girl was his age or younger, and prettier than any girl he could have imagined. She smirked at his boast, but said nothing.
    The older Corn People girl stepped boldly up to Shadow. “If you are so brave,” she said, “you will give that rabbit to Teal’s father, and prove that you are not afraid to mount her in your lodge!”
    The girls shrieked with scandalous laughter, except for Teal herself, who gasped and struck the older girl with a sunshade she carried.
    â€œ Pookai! ” she said. “Hush, Slope Child! You are wilder than wild!”
    Whip held the rabbit at his side in dumb disbelief of Slope Child’s candor, but Trotter only laughed, for he knew Slope Child and her ways.
    Shadow flung aside a morsel of embarrassed surprise and framed a reply. “One dead rabbit?” he said to Slope Child. “Her father would laugh at me. I will wait until I have ten horses to present to Teal’s father!”
    This