The Storm Testament III by Lee Nelson

Author:Lee Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cedar Fort Publishing & Media
Published: 2008-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

The bear was dead when Sam, Leather Belly, and Flaming Bear Chaser found it the next morning. After crashing through the dense underbrush in the creek bottom, it had started to climb the hill on the other side; then, changing its mind, it had returned to the creek bottom further up the draw, where it had wallowed in the mud to soothe the seared skin around its face and neck. Apparently Sam's first arrow had penetrated a lung before the bear swept it away. The running had probably pumped the lung full of blood, causing the bear to drown in its own blood, Sam figured.

Upon finding the bear, Leather Belly took Sam's knife and waded into the mud, where she began cutting away the claws and several of the longest fangs. When Sam suggested she get some of the meat too, remembering how the bear had mutilated their deer carcass the night before, she gave him a look of disgust.

“Bear meat no good, not clean,” she said as she waded to dry land, her muddy hands heaped with claws and fangs.

They walked over to the stream—to a sunny, grassy spot where they could sit with their feet in the water—and while Sam washed the mud and blood from the claws and fangs, Leather Belly rinsed off her hands and legs. Flaming Bear Chaser splashed back and forth in the shallow water, trying to catch the tiny wild trout.

The night had been long and tiring, and finding the morning sunshine warm and relaxing, Sam and Leather Belly stretched out on the green grass, soaking up the sunshine and watching two white puffy clouds move slowly across the deep blue mountain sky.

“Why do they call you Leather Belly?” asked Sam without looking at her.

“When little,” she began in her broken English, “Father gave leather belt. Big gold buttons on it. Wore it everywhere. They call me Leather Belly.”

“What were you called before that?” asked Sam.

“Huh?”

“Your name before they called you Leather Belly.”

“Snow Child.”

To Sam, the name Snow Child sounded much better, and he wondered why her parents would give their daughter an unfeminine name like Leather Belly. Maybe to them such a name didn't sound as bad as it did to a white man. Sam figured he still had a lot to learn about Indian ways, particularly those of the Blackfeet.

Turning toward Leather Belly and raising himself up on one elbow, Sam was about to speak when he noticed that she was sleeping, her long black hair spread fan-like on the green grass, her breast rising and falling with the steady breathing.

Sam didn't disturb Leather Belly's well-deserved rest. But he took advantage of her closed eyes to look at her more closely. The strong nose, the shapely eyebrows, her muscular arms and veined hands with callused palms and short broken fingernails—a woman accustomed to hard work. Yet her face was almost childlike, with no wrinkles in the fine bronze skin, slightly flushed beneath the high cheekbones.

Beneath the soft buckskin shirt her body no longer had the chubby look, at least not to Sam.

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