Ghost Warrior Read Online Free PDF Page B

father is gone.”
    â€œWe must not speak of him again.” He stood back and pushed her tangled hair away from her face, something he hadn’t done since she was a small child in need of comfort. “If we mention those who have left, we call them back and hinder them in their journey.”
    Women and children emerged singly or in small groups from the bushes, but Morning Star waited for one who had yet to come. The boy, Talks A Lot, arrived to tell him the men were gathering for a council and Skinny, the band’s leader, wanted him there.
    â€œTell him I’ll come soon.”
    When She Moves Like Water finally appeared, she was carrying a sleeping child on her back. “This is Little Squint’s daughter,” she said. “A soldier’s horse stepped on her arm and broke it.”
    The girl whimpered when Sister lifted her and held her against her chest. Sister laced her fingers to form a seat for her, and the child laid her head on Sister’s shoulder, her broken arm dangling at her side.
    Morning Star enfolded She Moves Like Water in an embrace so passionate that Sister knew Skinny and the rest of the men in council would grow impatient before it ended. She turned away, unable to bear the sight.
    Sister wanted to rejoice in her brother’s happiness. She wanted to like the woman who had displaced her in his affections. She wanted to admire She Moves Like Water’s beauty and grace, two qualities she was sure she would never have herself, but all she could manage was a false courtesy.
    Sister went off in search of Little Squint, walking among
those looking for lost relatives and friends. People spoke in hushed voices. The women and children were scratched and bruised. Many were bloody. The children lay exhausted where they fell. In the chill night air, they cupped together for warmth and shared what blankets they had. Broken Foot’s wife, Her Eyes Open, distributed food and water jugs from the cache of them hidden in a crevice under a heap of boulders.
    Sister found Little Squint huddled in her blanket. She rocked back and forth, desperate to grieve out loud for her lost child, but knowing she dared not.
    â€œ Ta’hinaa, she lives.” Sister put the girl in her mother’s outstretched arms. “Ask Her Eyes Open to mend her bone.”
    Little Squint was so grateful she blurted the words that were used only in extreme circumstances. “ Na’ahensih , I thank you.”
    Sister was weary all the way through, but she went looking for the kin of those she knew the soldiers had killed. The news that she had gone among the dead traveled faster than she did. Some people avoided her, as though the ghosts clung to her like smoke, as though she were the killer and not merely the messenger. In a way, she was. As long as they didn’t know for sure, they could believe that their loved ones had been captured or they had only been delayed reaching here.
    They could hope that the missing ones would appear days, weeks, even months or years later. That had happened before. The missing were not dead until Little Sister said so. She felt like Ghost Owl, spreading dark wings of grief.
    In her sad wake she left orphaned children staring into a darkness that wouldn’t dissipate with the sun’s rise. Women sawed off their long hair with their knives. They pulled their blankets over their heads and rocked silently back and forth, shaken by grief.
    The last one she found was He Who Yawns, on his way to the council.
    He spoke to her first. “They say you walked among the dead.”

    â€œYes. Your people have left on their journey.”
    â€œThe Mexicans killed all of them?”
    â€œYes.”
    His mother, his young wife, and his three daughters lay dead and mutilated. No one had lost more than He Who Yawns.
    She returned to where She Moves Like Water slept wrapped in her blanket. She unrolled her own blanket next to her. She fell asleep to the low drone of