Return of the Tall Man by Clay Fisher

Author:Clay Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2018-12-19T18:41:25+00:00

17

Lost Sister

The woman, girl really—looking more seventeen than twenty-four—was an eyeful. Big Bat had not exaggerated her form but had neglected to mention her face. It was striking. Dark as Mexican saddle leather, angular, and beautifully drawn, with oblique eye-set and straight, full mouth, it was a face to both haunt a man’s memory and hold his heart still at first sight.

Ben could only look after his involuntary gasp of recognition. In turn, the captive studied each of the newcomers with her cornered-animal stare, searching to find among their number a friend. Big Bat she had seen before. She lingered on him only long enough to catch and seek into his snapping eyes. Go-deen she dismissed in passing as though she sensed he was not present in her account. Moving to Ben, her gaze hesitated. He felt the long, deep probe of her regard and stood tongue-tied under it. He wanted to speak out but could not. The girl appeared to wait for him a hopeful moment; then when he said nothing and made no sign, her glance dropped, shifted hesitantly to Lame John. There was an instant’s doubtful peering, then Ben saw the anxious, brilliantly blue eyes come alive. As they did, the tall Nez Percé youth stepped forward to stand in front of her.

For perhaps the drawing of three breaths, neither of them moved. Then Lame John reached and took her right hand in both his. Carrying it to his breast, he placed and pressed its palm over his heart. Then, stepping back, he signed to her in the Plains language.

“We are your friends; we have come to take you home.” He pointed to Ben. “This tall one is of your own people. He has come from your true father, who is still alive. Will you listen to his story? He wants to tell you who you are and why you must come back with us.”

The girl looked from him to Soledad Dominguin. Dominguin shrugged his consent. Big Bat, voice rumbling deep with feeling, added his encouragement. Ben, eyes unable to leave the wild-thing compellingness which marked each movement of her body, each expression of her slender face, made the signs which told her that Lame John spoke the truth. Even Frank Go-deen, that Milk River man of few words and no sentiments, as he saw it, offered to break his well-known rule of golden silence long enough to serve as interpreter in the matter of conveying the Tall Brother’s story of her true birth. Since he alone of those present spoke her Shoshoni tongue, it was the least he could do, and despite his dislike of long talking, he would be happy enough to do it for her, his lost white sister.

Hearing Go-deen speak in Shoshoni brought a second light to her averted face. Replying to Go-deen but staring straight at Ben, she murmured in a voice as guttural as any Wind River woman’s.

“My ears are uncovered; I will listen to the half-blood brother.”

Go-deen told the story with unusual astringency.

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