Tushpa's Story (Touch My Tears by Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer

Author:Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RockHaven Publishing

13

I was hard asleep when a hand shook my shoulder. I sat up straight to see Ishtaya in the darkness, finger to his lips to shush any sound I wanted to make.

“Come,” he whispered. “We must find Yakni Foi. We fear what he is doing.”

I nodded and crawled to my feet, the leather pouch with its new string still around my neck. Nukwia stood behind Chilita, shivering. She nodded toward the trail that led to the river landing. I knew what she meant. I knew where Yakni Foi had gone.

We followed each other through the darkness, sensing our way over the unfamiliar terrain as we went down, down.

The tavern and public house was set far enough from the river to save it from minor flooding in springtime, but close enough to make use of the water for common purposes. The trail we followed came up from the river near the ferry boat. Mist from the river filled the air here, cool and refreshing. But it did not relieve the tension as we climbed the embankment toward the buildings.

Rumors said a touched man by the name of Rorer owned the place. And that he had used the Removal of the Indians to redirect traffic traveling to the Red River country to use his ferry instead of a competitor’s upstream. It seemed the whites cheated each other as well, not just the poor savages they considered us to be.

I didn’t care about the gossip of the whites, but our people enjoyed telling these stories and poking fun when they could to keep the bitterness and anger at bay. But I knew one person who handled the horrors of it all another way. That was why Ishtaya had awakened me. Why we were walking into a white man’s tavern in the middle of the night.

Music and laughter told us not everyone slept. Light streamed from the windows by the tavern door, showing our way up the steps. Ishtaya and Chilita looked to me. Nukwia looked down. I knocked softly and opened the door with hesitation.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the room, but I quickly slipped inside with my friends behind me, closing the door without a sound as we gazed around the room. No one noticed us.

The inside was huge, much larger than any structure I’d been in. A fireplace took up most of the far wall, although only coals burned in the late spring night. Near it, a man played a fiddle like Homer’s, and like Homer, he seemed limited to one tune, but he played it vigorously as if it was the first time of the evening.

Cots and makeshift beds littered the floors, most along the walls but some blankets were also spread on the large eating table in the center of the room. People curled under these blankets, heads burrowed deep under them in an effort to find some kind of shield against the light and racket of the room.

A man danced about with a jug in hand.

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