People of the Thunder (North America's Forgotten Past) Read Online Free Page B

Councilor Red Awl had anything to do with the murder of the White Arrow captives. Fast Legs was pretty sure that he and Smoke Shield had tortured an innocent man to death.
    He made a face, feeling cold muscles pull tight in his jaw. “That’s the war chief’s responsibility,” he whispered softly. His job now was the escaped wife, Lotus Root. She’d stolen Smoke Shield’s bow and arrows the night she escaped. Fast Legs had been ordered to retrieve them, kill the woman, and make his way back to Split Sky City.
    So, here he was, lurking in the forest, awaiting his chance. Too bad that Councilor Red Awl had to be from this far northern village. Fast Legs could look out past the Albaamaha village, just across their northernmostfields, and see the hills that marked the fall line—the rugged country leading up to the divide the Sky Hand shared with the Yuchi enemy. Living in the shadow of a powerful adversary like the Yuchi made things precarious. Just off to his right, past more Albaamaha cornfields, the palisade and protruding roofs of Bowl Town—the northernmost Sky Hand settlement—were visible. How Chief Sun Falcon held this vulnerable outpost together was anyone’s guess.
    Meanwhile, Fast Legs huddled in the forest, keeping an eye on Lotus Root’s bent-pole house with its thatched walls. The dwelling was larger than most Albaamaha houses, but what would a person expect a renowned mikko and councilor to live in?
    Killing Lotus Root had to be done right. He couldn’t march in, knock her in the head, and march out. No, it had to be accomplished in a way that didn’t lend credence to the woman’s story. He needed to get her alone, find some way to kill her, and remove the body. The last thing he and the war chief needed was evidence of Sky Hand murder, or a body for the Albaamaha to weep over. Lotus Root simply needed to disappear. But since he had arrived here, she had played the game like a rabbit who knows the hawk’s shadow was cast upon her.
    During the two days prior to the storm, however, Fast Legs had been forced to retreat from his hiding places close to Lotus Root’s village. The forest had literally been swarming with Albaamaha, as if they’d been preparing for the storm. They had spread out like crickets, picking up branches, calling back and forth, chopping at wood. So he had slipped back farther into the maze of trees until they finished whatever it was they had been doing.
    Now, with the weather keeping the Albaamaha inside, he had returned. He could see a huge stack of dead wood piled by Lotus Root’s house. What on earth would she need that much firewood for?
    A fit of shivering left him shaken and miserable. He shifted, rubbing his hands to make warmth, and glanced at the bow and arrows he had fashioned after weighting Red Awl’s body and sinking it in the backwater. The bow wasn’t his best work, the arrows either, with their crude points; but they’d do to kill Lotus Root. Assuming, that is, that she ever left the shelter of her house.
    For two weeks he had been living off the land, trying to sneak close enough to kill her. Each time, the pack of dogs that now lived at her house had set off the alarm, causing him to flee into the darkness.
    Twice, he’d sworn that passing Albaamaha had seen him. But in neither case had they raised an alarm. It was almost as if they knew he was there. Worse, he’d observed a constant procession of Albaamaha enter and leave Lotus Root’s dwelling. Was that what the firewood collecting had been about? Laying in a supply large enough that she didn’t need to set foot out of her house until summer came, or he finally gave up and left?
    Gods, have I ever been this cold and hungry?
    The distant palisade around Bowl Town seemed to beckon him where it dominated a thin neck of land bounded on three sides by the river. Chief Sun Falcon’s tall roof jutted up above the high walls. Fast Legs would be welcomed there, made a place by the fire, and fed real food. But