Homecoming

He nudged the girl to draw her attention. She jumped when his elbow connected with her arm and turned wide, startled eyes his way.

Their gazes locked. Wariness and suspicion crackled between them, nearly as visible as lightning.

“Help her down, Joe.” Hattie seemed anxious to get the girl inside.

He climbed down and offered his hand. When the girl ignored him and climbed down unaided, he felt a tug of relief deep in his gut. Without knowing why, he was thankful for not having to touch her.

Hattie came around the wagon, gently took the girl by the arm. The hound, asleep on the porch, must have sensed movement, for he roused himself and got up to greet them. He was a few yards away when he got a whiff of the newcomer, whimpered and ran around to the back of the house.

The mutt had been worthless before the raid—which was how he got his name—but since then, he’d been deaf as a post and blind in one eye.

Hattie looked to Joe. “What’s got into him, I wonder?”

“Caught the scent of Comanche.” He purposely avoided looking at the girl.

“After you unhitch the wagon, would you set some water on to boil for me, Joe? I want to get her cleaned up first thing.”

Her words brought him up short. Practical and efficient, his mother would naturally want to jump right in and scrub the girl down. That meant extra work for her. Not to mention extra work for him that he didn’t need.

“What if she doesn’t want to bathe?” He looked the girl over from head to toe, taking in her matted hair, her bloody clothes.

Hattie gave him a look he knew all too well. She wasn’t going to budge or argue. She lowered her voice but lifted her chin. Her eyes were shadowed with remembrance.

“She’ll be willing to shed these bloody things. She won’t want to be reminded of what happened to her yesterday. And she will bathe.”

Joe noted the girl’s rigid stance and squared shoulders. Her posture would do a queen proud. Perhaps his mother was wrong. Maybe the girl wore her bloodstained clothes proudly, like a badge of honor.

“The horses and water can wait,” he said. “I’m going inside with you.” He wasn’t ready to walk away and leave his mother alone with her charge yet.

The girl had her back to him and was staring at the house. He tried to see it through her eyes—the two low structures connected by a single roof that covered the dogtrot between the kitchen building and the main house. Constructed of hand-hewn logs, the cracks chinked with sticks and clay, the buildings hugged the earth and blended into the landscape.

Stick-and-clay chimneys extended from the roofline in both the kitchen and main buildings. The clapboard roof still showed signs of smoke damage in one or two places where it had started to catch fire during the Comanche raid. Spots that were low enough for Joe to have been able to extinguish the fire before it took hold.

Hattie held on to the girl’s elbow, leaning closer until their heads were nearly together.

“Come on, honey,” she said. “I’m going to have you cleaned up in no time.”

“She’s not a child, Ma.”

“I know that, but I want her to understand that I don’t intend to hurt her.”

He followed them inside, but Hattie paused just inside the door and sighed.

“You can’t set aside your work to watch her every minute, son. You’ve already lost a good half a day. I can hold my own against one skinny little gal.”

He ignored her comment and lingered until Hattie handed the girl a glass of water and encouraged her to drink. His mother bustled out onto the back porch where she kept the tin bathtub and dragged it to the back door. When he saw what she was doing, Joe carried it the rest of the way into the kitchen while the girl ignored them both and stared out the open door as if she were there alone.

Hattie left for a moment and came back with an armload of folded towels.

“It’s gonna be impossible to get this child bathed without that hot water,” she told him. “Look at her, Joe. She’s dead tired. She’s too exhausted to try anything. Go on now. Fetch me some hot water.”

He shot a glance in the girl’s direction. She was, indeed, practically weaving on her feet.

“’Sides,” Hattie started in again, “we’re miles from anywhere. You’ll track her down in no time if she takes off. She knows that as sure as you do.”

He got himself some water, drank it and hesitated by the door. What if the girl was feigning exhaustion? Waiting for just the right minute to overpower his mother and run?

But Hattie was right. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

Hattie planted her hands on her hips. “Either you go get the water or I’ll do it…and leave you to get her undressed.”

Without another word, he turned on his heel and stalked out.

They argue over me.

Eyes-of-the-Sky knew it not only by the hardness in the man’s voice, but the coldness in his eyes that gave his anger away.

Whatever the woman just said had shamed him in some way. Shamed him so that he walked away without looking at either of them again.

After he left, the older woman laughed softly and shook her head. The words that followed her laughter were as unintelligible as all white man’s words were to Eyes-of-the-Sky.

She was led into a smaller room lined with wooden boards filled with stored food. Through gestures and gibberish, the woman soon convinced her to take off her garments.

Eyes-of-the-Sky fought to keep her hands from trembling as she touched the front of the once soft doeskin now stiff with the blood of little Strong Teeth.

The woman knelt before her, touched her knee and then her ankle, urging her to lift her foot, then she gently slipped each of her beaded moccasins off for her.

The simple gesture was so gentle and unexpected that it inspired tears—tears that Eyes-of-the-Sky refused to let fall.

Though the woman seemed kind enough, Eyes-of-the-Sky dared not show weakness. The white woman’s tenderness was surely some kind of trick meant to lull her into complacency.

Though Eyes-of-the-Sky refused to remove her garments, the woman soon made it clear she was to undress or they would stand there facing each other in the close confines of the little room forever. Wary and wondering where the man had gone to, Eyes-of-the-Sky looked around.

With words and more gestures, the woman let her know the man was gone. Then the woman covered her eyes with her hands and said something that sounded like “Hewonlook.”

Finally, as Eyes-of-the-Sky slipped off her clothing, the woman quickly drew a huge striped blanket around her, covering her from shoulders to knees.

Eyes-of-the-Sky heard the sound of the man’s heavy footsteps coming and going outside the door. Suddenly, the woman stopped talking, gathered the soiled doeskin dress and moccasins, and stepped out, quickly shutting her inside the small room full of supplies.

With her ear pressed to the door, she heard the man and woman whispering together and wondered what they were planning. Her heart raced with fear for she had no idea what to expect. She knew nothing of their ways.

When they brought her here, trapped between them on the high seat of the rolling wagon, they’d bounced along in a way that made her already warring stomach even more upset.

She was shamed because she wasn’t strong enough to fight them. She no longer had the will or the stamina. But her strength would recover. She was determined to escape, to go back to her people. To return.

To what?

The question came to her from the darkness in her heart. Go back to what? When the Blue Coats had led her away from the encampment, she’d seen only death and destruction. She’d heard the cries of the wounded and the ensuing gunshots that stilled their cries. The silence was more deafening than the screams.