Free Devil Moon by David Thompson

baby in a cradleboard. I care for you and want only the best for you.”
    “Did Father send you to talk to me about her?” Dega asked.
    “I am here on my own,” Tihi admitted. Her husband would be upset if he knew. She had broached the subject with him and he had made it plain that he did not want her to interfere. But she couldn’t stand by and say nothing. Too much was at stake.
    “I should think you would be happy if Evelyn and I become close,” Dega said. “I could do worse than pick her as my wife.”
    There it was, out in the open where Tihi wanted it. Now she must be extra careful. “You are young yet to think of that.”
    “I have seen almost nineteen summers.”
    “Evelyn has seen only sixteen.”
    “So?” Dega said. “You took Father as your husband when you were that age. And Evelyn tells methat among her people many take husbands and wives when they are as young as she and I are.”
    “Among her people,” Tihi repeated. He had unwittingly given her the opening she wanted.
    “Why do you say it like that?”
    “She is white and you are not.”
    “So?” Dega said again. “Nate King is married to Winona, a Shoshone. Shakespeare McNair is married to Blue Water Woman, a Flathead. Zach King is half and half, and he has a white wife. What difference does it make that Evelyn looks white and I do not?”
    Tihi chose her next words with great care. She didn’t want him angry with her. He must think she shared his fondness for Evelyn, even if she didn’t. “When two hearts are in love, only their love matters.”
    “That is how I feel, too.”
    “But there is more than just your hearts involved, my son. She is white. You are Nansusequa.” Tihi paused. “Need I mention that our family is all that is left of our people? That the rest of our people were wiped out by whites who sought our land for themselves?”
    “I was there, Mother,” Dega said bitterly. “It was the most terrible day of my life. I do not understand why Manitoa deserted us.”
    To the Nansusequa, Manitoa was the source of all that was. Their other name for it meant That Which Was In All Things. They revered the Manitoa above all else. Because of that reverence, for untold generations they had striven to live in harmony with all that was around them, and by doing so, be close to That Which Was In All Things. For untold generations they were a peaceful people devoted to one anotherand their customs. Then, in one brief burst of brutal violence, all that they were and all that they believed had been nearly wiped out by greedy whites.
    Only their family escaped. The five of them were the last of their kind, the very last of the Nansusequas.
    “Did Manitoa desert us or did we desert Manitoa?” Tihi responded. She’d had a hard time reconciling the tragedy herself. She could still hear the screams and see warriors and women she had known all her life having their brains blown out or their bodies skewered on sharp blades. “But it is not That Which Is In All Things that I have come to talk about.”
    “Then what?”
    “Our responsibility to those we lost.”
    Dega scratched his handsome head in puzzlement. “I am confused,” he confessed.
    “As the last of our kind, we owe it to those who fell to live as Nansusequa should.”
    “We do that,” Dega said.
    “We wear Nansusequa clothes and live in a Nansusequa lodge,” Tihi said. “But what about in here?” She touched her head. “Or in here?” She touched her bosom over her heart.
    “We are Nansusequa through and through, as the whites would say,” Dega declared.
    “Are we?” Tihi paused for effect, then said, “A Nansusequa does not give his heart to an outsider. Nansusequas only marry Nansusequas.” There. She had said it.
    Dega stared at her for the longest while, his face impossible to read. Finally he said, “I cannot believe what I am hearing.”
    “Why not?”
    “You are saying that you do not want me to feel for Evelyn as I do. You are saying that you do