"I know what you can do," said Kyle. With his eyes half closed, he ran his thumbs along the curve of the handle of the mug. "It's like I saved that knife and sheath for you and your nephew by buying it from that asshat that sold it to me. But I want you to tell me, now, how it came into your hands."
"Really?" asked Clayton, surprised. "You just want me to tell you a story?"
"Yes," said Kyle, nodding. "And then we'll open presents, and then I'll make pancakes. Buckwheat pancakes with real butter and maple syrup."
Kyle poured them both another cup of coffee, which, sweetened with sugar and softened by cream, tasted as good as any Clayton had ever had. Taking a swallow, he leaned back and reached into his mind to tell the tale that Uncle Bill had told him. And told Kyle how Uncle Bill's Great Grandad Pete, back in the 1880s, had run a general store in the frontier town of Farthing, Wyoming. And how, one fall, near the end of the Indian Troubles, which was what Grandad Pete always called them, he'd noticed an Indian woman walking up and down the wooden plank sidewalks as though in a daze.
She had a long face and dark brown eyes. Her moccasins were worn thin on the soles of her feet, and her leather dress, though of high-quality leather and beadwork, was ragged around the edges. Her hair, done in a long dark braid down her back, was coming undone. She had no coat, no rucksack with supplies. The only thing she carried with her was a round pouch she wore on a leather strap over her shoulder.
She seemed to have nowhere to go, and several of the townspeople were starting to stare at her and point. Grandad Pete, seeing the sheriff heading over from the jail, tugged on her fringed sleeve and gestured that she should come into the warmth of his store.
"Did this really happen?" asked Kyle.
"Shhhhh," said Clayton, putting his finger to his lips. "This is how I heard it from my Uncle Bill."
"Who's Uncle Bill?" asked Kyle, and it was quite clear he was very interested, for he leaned toward Clayton, his mouth slightly open, those blue eyes of his wide with expectation.
"He's my Uncle Bill," said Clayton. "On my dad's side, I think. Anyway, let me tell the story. Or do you not want to hear?"
"Oh, I want to, believe me," said Kyle. He settled back in his chair and let Clayton continue.
As the story had been told, Grandad Pete took the Indian woman to the back of his general store, where he had a smallstove and a table where he took his meals. He bade her to sit down and gave her some water to drink, and then he fed her a bread and butter sandwich.
As she ate it, she told him her name was Summer Cloud Woman, but that the whites called her Adeline. She offered to pay him for the meal, and reached into her round pouch, pulling out three pennies.
He cupped his hand around hers and told her to keep the money, as he was glad to show her kindness. As she put the pennies away, her hand shook. Grandad Pete saw she had sewing supplies in the pouch, a needle and thread, a small, curved knife, and a whole mess of Indian beads, some of which spilled on the table.
A long slender shape curled out of the bag, a length of beaded leather that Grandad Pete always assumed was being made as a replacement for the leather strap to her pouch. He never did find out, he always told Uncle Bill, what that strap of leather was for, but the beadwork on it was the most beautiful he'd ever seen.
Then and there he offered her a proposition, in which she could sleep in one of the empty rooms over the store, and in the daytime, she could sit at a small table in the window and do her beadwork. He'd buy some beads and sell them to her, and then she could earn money to pay her own way by selling her beadwork.
"It was in grandad's store," said Clayton, nodding. "That was where Adeline made this beaded sheath. It's been handed down from father to son, and then from uncle to nephew, ever since."
"How did she get there?" asked Kyle. "How did she end up in Farthing?"
"Well, according to Uncle Bill, Grandad Pete never asked her, and we never knew. Uncle Bill says she was half white, and that might have been why she wasn't with her own people with winter coming on."
"Oh, man," said Kyle. "Winters out here aren't tame; she wouldn't have made it."
"She might have," said Clayton. "The way Uncle Bill tells it, Grandad Pete thought she was very smart, always behaved in a businesslike way, determined to make her own way in the world, and not rely on Grandad Pete's charity. Uncle Bill says they were both quite comfortable living together in that general store."
"Were they lovers?" asked Kyle, smiling, as if at the thought of such an old west romance. "Was he sweet on her?"
"Not as far as I know," said Clayton. "The point is, the beaded sheath was originally made by a half-Native American woman from the Arapaho tribe. It's worth a lot of money, but I think the history it tells is worth a lot more."
Kyle got up with a quick shove to his chair, went out, and came back with the sheath in his hands. He laid it on the table, smoothing the fringes with his fingers. Then, sitting down, he traced the top of the sheath with some reverence.
"Look at this little bit," he said. "Why is the leather a different color all along the edges?"
"That's where Ricky took the leather of the original sheath and wove it like a ribbon beneath the lines of newer leather, all around the edges. That way, the old sheath is part of the new. The beads are all hers and the pattern is hers, but Ricky used new string and re-sewed them on in exactly the same way." Clayton traced the lines of faded leather, his finger only a tiny bit away from Kyle's finger. "This'll last another hundred years, if not more, it's that well made."
"It really is a bit of history," said Kyle, his voice soft, almost reverential. He looked up at Clayton. "I'd like to make history like this."
"Well, you can," said Clayton. "You have your plan, right?"
"I do," said Kyle. "Though it's more like a pipe dream than a plan, I think."
Kyle got up to take their mugs to the sink and rinsed out the crockery beneath the stream of water. As he prepped the pancake batter, doing mysterious extra things to it that would make it delicious, Clayton found that, in the bright warmth of the yellow and white kitchen, he was frowning.
