The Lawman didn’t flinch. “Allow the woman to go.” He spoke, the tone of his voice controlled. “Let us solve this matter.”
The Osage man didn’t respond, but I glimpsed comprehension in his expression. His posture was assured, shoulders pressed backward, an ease in the muscles of his hand as he gripped the pistol. His black hair was in a topknot, beadwork interwoven within the strands, sides shorn below the temples. One finger tremored, and I feared he’d shoot.
Two of the Osage had waistcoats and trousers beneath their cloaks and black cowboy hats settled over their long braids. Another wore traditional Osage clothing, a hair pipe breastplate visible below his blanket.
A turquoise lizard scuttled across a rock—I jolted. His yellow collar flamed before he disappeared into wavyleaf thistle. The Lawman hadn’t moved, not even a suggestion of emotion across his face. The wind hesitated for a fraction of a second.
And then the tall Osage flicked his fingers, motioning for the Lawman to turn. The Lawman pivoted, palms skyward, and the Osage shoved the barrel in the middle of his slicker. To me, he gestured eastward with a riding whip, the braided leather snapping. I wouldn’t resist—I’d trespassed. I didn’t know where he was taking us, or why, but I hoped I survived this night.
The Osage strode into the thicket beneath the outstretched bough of a gilded cottonwood, his ivory bone pistol pressed against the Lawman’s back. I followed, disappearing through woodland and into the mystery of night.
We arrived at their camp at sundown, a cluster of canvas lodges along a wooded river, spirals of ghost-white smoke lifting to the heavens. Beneath a bank of blackjacks, the tall Osage spoke his first word to us. “Stay.”
He gestured for another to guard us, then stalked away. An Osage man in a tweed vest pulled out his pistol.
I lowered to the dirt, muscles weary, joints stiff. Beyond, a bonfire scratched at the navy sky, and a man played a rhythm on kettle drums, his chest tattooed with symbols and lines, a stack of four diamonds arrowing downward. The Lawman stood beside me, gripping his weapon belt. His shoulders knotted, his gaze roaming our surroundings—plotting. I feared he’d do something drastic. We had broken Osage laws. I supposed they’d be fair, but I didn’t know what sort of punishment would meet my trespass.
I plopped onto my back, kicked wide my legs, and stared up at the stars striking between the branches. My palm throbbed, as it rested on a pile of damp leaves. The heavy drumbeat resounded, the pulsesettling somewhere between my blood and bones; then a draught of wind passed across the night and hauled the deep sound away.
Folks always said I’d wind up jailed or slain or something else outrageous if I ran off to homestead. And they’d been right—I was an all-overish calamity, a danger to everyone. I rocked my shoulders in the dirt, annoyed by a rock beneath my spine. When I’d cut my palm, I’d hollered at the Lawman, signaling our presence to the Osage. My unruly passions and lack of control once again brought destruction upon someone else. If the Wild Bunch had caught us instead, this night surely would’ve devolved into a shoot-out. I felt shame with who I was, about my inability to moderate. Color swelled along the edge of my vision, an array of bright tones in the darkness. A man approached, the bells on his legs clattering and the garters tied below his knees smoldering like fire. I stood and wiped my skirt.
“I want you to know this thing,” the man said. “Trespassers steal our horses and bother our women.” He tucked his blanket cloak under his arm, his bearing undaunted. “Have you stolen our horses?”
“No,” I said. “I thought I hunted on Wild Bunch territory, not Osage.”
The moment stretched and bowed. My skin felt sweaty, as if coated in smoke and clay. There was a racket beyond, a baseball clattering into the thicket. “One moment,” he said and went to grab the ball.
The Lawman flicked his gaze to the left. I squinted into shadow. Two iron spiders, with their three legs, were stacked beside a stump. He wanted to grab frying pans? And we’d what, fight off the Osage with hollowware? Why wouldn’t he just use his six-shooter? But we shouldn’t attempt an escape. We were just mixed up in some misunderstanding or other about horses. Perhaps they’d drag us uphill to their agency and toss us in their jail for the night. But—there was no version in which I would fight these people.
I shook my head at the Lawman. A vein contracted on his jaw—but he didn’t vault across the copse for the frying pans. The long trill of a nighthawk patterned across the silence; a shiver raced down my arms.
The Osage man dipped his hands within the blackberry bramble, pulled out the brown leather ball. I scraped my bootheels across the dirt, feeling this land of the Osage, these rolling hills and sweeping valleys. Niabi said that the Osage had been coerced from their home to a new land without their memories. Their children forced into white schools and clothing and language, yanked away from their culture and tugged onto the white man’s road. I was forever indebted to the rush—my life began again when I’d saddled up Cricket and raced into the unknown. As a woman, I’d found safe harbor. I’d come to cherish my meadow as the dearest friend. To lose my land would demolish me. I couldn’t imagine how the Natives must feel, if they’d lived on a parcel of earth for not a few months but a millennium—and then their home was taken.
I hadn’t honored what little sanctuary they had. I’d trespassed.
The Osage elder strode back and sat on a stump. He crossed his arms, his forearms sharply muscled. “We are the Children of the Middle Waters,” he said, “and my name is Wa-ah-zho.”
He shared that he was one of the little old men, and chief of the Dwellers in the Upland Forest band. He seemed perhaps just thirty, but I’d heard that many of the warriors of the older generations had died in famine, war, and other atrocities.
“My name is Minnie,” I shared. “My homestead’s a forty-minute ride westward.”
The Lawman muttered under his breath. “He’searned your alias?”
“Hush.” I tucked a loosened edge of linen back into my bandage. “I am sorry that I entered your land, for any harm that I caused.”
Crinkles pinched beside Wa-ah-zho’s eyes as he gauged the Lawman. Firelight gleamed on the red fabric woven into his two long braids. “And you, cowboy?”
The Lawman hadn’t stolen their horses, had he? It didn’t seem like something he’d do. But, of course, I didn’t know him.
“I did not steal from you,” the Lawman said.
They measured each other. After a moment Wa-ah-zho pressed his shoulders back, hands resting on his knees. He had made a decision—one that ended with us, at the least, hauled to jail.
“I have friendship with an Osage woman,” I blurted. “Niabi? Is she here?”
“Niabi?” Wa-ah-zho’s brow furrowed. He drew his blanket together, the honey and red beadwork design arrowing toward the earth like lightning.
I wasn’t sure where I’d stepped wrong, but it seemed I’d made another error. “She’s about my age, early twenties. Long black hair. Lots of energy.”
