After the Thunder by Genell Dellin

Author:Genell Dellin [Dellin, Genell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780062250070
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-12-12T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

While she waited for Walks-With-Spirits, Cotannah slumped in her saddle and, on its horn, smoothed out the piece of paper she still held crumpled in her hand. Folsom Greentree.

The name sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Was it possible that he was reading the Star to learn the white man’s ways, as Millard Sheets said? Or was Sheets working with the Boomers in some way?

Or had Folsom Greentree subscribed to the Star in order to read, as Tay did, the plans of the white settlers greedy for the land belonging to the Choctaw Nation and to the Cherokee Nation to the north and the Chickasaw to the west? Was Greentree plotting to counter those plans? Was he a strong Choctaw patriot or a man who would break Choctaw law?

Would he be courteous to her when she rode onto his place or would he run her off?

Millard Sheets was a horrible man. How could he hate Indians so much?

“You’re staring a hole into that paper,” Walks-With-Spirits said. “Does it have a secret written on the other side?”

Her heart leapt and started thudding against her ribs, she whipped around in the saddle to look at him. He sat his horse just a stone’s throw from her inside the little grove of whispering trees.

“Why in the world did you sneak up on me like that?” she cried. “Even Pretty Feather didn’t hear you coming.”

“To put the color back into your cheeks. When you came out of that newspaper office your face was the color of eggshells.”

“Eggshells?”

“Not birds’ eggs—chickens’,” he said.

“Some chickens lay brown eggs. Brown is a color.”

“I’m talking about white chicken eggs. Thin-shelled ones ready to crack into pieces at the slightest touch of a fox’s teeth.”

Her heart was slowing and tears were threatening, but she smiled at him, he was trying so hard to distract her.

“That Millard Sheets is so vile I can’t tell you—he’s a fox in the Nations’ henhouse, all right. Oh, Walks-With-Spirits, I felt ready to crack into pieces when I came out of there, cold all over and about to throw up.”

His face hardened.

“But now you’re all right? How is he vile, in what way? What did he say to you?”

“That Indians are savages, intruders on the land intended for white people, all the old insults.”

His shoulders relaxed, as if in relief.

“Nothing you haven’t heard before?”

That made her laugh a little.

“No,” she said, “nothing new to my ears.”

Her anger began to return.

“Just infuriating, humiliating …”

“Now, now!” he interrupted. “Let’s not give him that power over us. He can’t take it if we won’t give it.”

The thought stopped her.

Walks-With-Spirits rode closer, his eyes warm and bright, almost smiling now.

“Who is he that we should take to heart his opinion?” he said. “He is no one to us, he is nothing but a scavenger with a withered spirit, who has no harmony with the earth.”

She felt warm inside for the first time since arriving at the office of the Star and the tension began to leave her. She smiled at him.

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