Nan Ryan by Written in the Stars

Author:Written in the Stars [Stars, Written in the]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-10-23T04:15:22+00:00

Chapter 25

They walked together under the rising sun of the new day, Golden Star and her grandson. Starkeeper respectfully adjusted his customary longstrided steps to the slow, short ones of his aged grandmother. Solicitously he held her arm, steadying her, but she was the one to choose their destination.

Stifling a yawn, the tall, sleepy man carefully hid his irritation at being awakened so early. The intrusion had been no surprise. He had expected as much.

At daybreak Starkeeper had come instantly awake when Golden Star softly called his name from just outside the closed flap of his canvas tipi. Agilely he had rolled up from his soft bed, hurriedly dressed, and come out to meet her.

“We will walk together, Grandson,” Golden Star said as the first gray light of dawn delineated the eastern horizon.

Starkeeper nodded and took her arm, knowing what was in store for him, dreading it: a probing interrogation followed by a scathing lecture.

The pair made their sure, unhurried way to a spot on the river where they’d spent many golden hours together when Starkeeper was a child. It was a place of eye-pleasing beauty, and at this early-morning hour a mist rose from the placid waters. A few wild irises and sturdy cattails still graced the grassy banks. From somewhere nearby a sweet-voiced western mockingbird greeted the brand-new day. Golden Star and her grandson stood silent in the peaceful glade, she nostalgic, he impatient.

When she spoke, Golden Star said, “I remember the first summer we came here to this place. So long ago. When you were only eight—yesterday.”

Starkeeper said nothing. He exhaled when finally she took his hand and pointed, indicating where she wished to sit. With his help she was finally settled comfortably on the ground, her brittle back resting against a smooth rise of rock which was decorated with crude carvings made by a small boy with his first hunting knife. Starkeeper dropped to the ground before her.

With no preamble, Golden Star said, “Who is this pale beauty? Why have you brought her here? What have you done, Grandson?”

Starkeeper’s dark eyes squarely met the shrewdly alert ones of his aged inquisitor. He told Golden Star most of what had happened, omitting the fact that he had been beaten with an ax handle. Like any proud Shoshoni male, Starkeeper had, from the time he was a boy, instinctively concealed from others his personal hurts and disappointments.

So, leaving out the bodily injury done him, he started with the hot day he was prospecting alone in the Colorado mountains and saw the mountain lion being needlessly beaten. He concluded with last night, when he and his beautiful captive had ridden into Wind River.

The old Indian woman listened carefully, by turns nodding, frowning, gritting her teeth, and shaking her head in anger and despair. But when she spoke, it was not to offer sympathy to the grandson who had been trapped and chained by the white man.

“Starkeeper”—she addressed him with narrowed black eyes—“I am ashamed of you as I have never been before.

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