Читать книгу Shaman's Dream: The Modoc War - Lu Boone's Mattson - Страница 8

Compotwas Doctor knew the knowing would precede him. He could ride the wind, and still, when he arrived at the Yainax Station commissary on the Klamath Reservation, the word would already be there, waiting for him. It would be in Ivan’s mouth.

He must not see Ivan.

Or Ivan’s brother. Especially his brother: Oliver, the leader once, now teacher.

As always, Oliver would have the word about Compotwas Doctor’s doing of the old, forbidden way of his people. Not for nothing the young bucks called this Oliver ‘Blaiwas La`qi’ -- ‘Golden Eagle Chief.’ His eyes could see.

Compotwas Doctor would have to hide the horse from the gaze of Oliver’s golden eyes, too. Or let it go.

Could be his own medicine had failed because of those brothers. He could see their medicine was other, sent to bring him down. And with him, the other shamans.

The old headsman, too. It was Oliver who did that. Compotwas Doctor’s mouth still tasted the bitterness of the day he had witnessed it, and heard the end of time in the roar of Oliver’s big laughter:

Oliver’s hands were huge. Hanging at the ends of the arms he draped along the corral’s top rail. That big day two years ago, the hands had seemed at rest and easy, sure of how to do things. They could lay hold of an axe handle so it looked like a twig or gather in a Klamath man toward his bosom as if the man were child. The hair grew golden on the backs of the hands, and on the arms it thickened, pouring up out of his shirt collar. Hair overflowed his face, young as it was, half hiding the wide, determined mouth -- like Ivan’s.

They knew to call him ‘Captain,’ though he was the youngest of them all. From a distance Compotwas Doctor had seen how the young bucks pressed in around him and listened when he told them how to clear a field of sod, turn the dark earth and plant it. How to ditch, or wright a wheel. The young Klamaths were proud in the face of the Modocs and Snakes. Oliver taught them; he did not teach the others. “You’ll be my proof,” he said to the young Klamaths. The old Klamath men hung back, listless, and as soon as Oliver was out of sight, they sifted away into the trees. Left the row unfinished, until he came and found them, prodded them back into the clearing again.

“Dang you,” he said. “This ain’t no sabbath!”