The Outcast Read Online Free PDF Page B

common and that the Crows took their women by stealing them, which made no sense. Why steal a woman if you were going to let other men have her? Maybe it wasn’t true. Rumors about other tribes were not always based on fact.
    The white hair moved out of sight of the window, and the Outcast tensed, thinking he was coming outside. But no, the man reappeared holding something the Outcast had never seen before. He did not know what to make of it. It was square, and consisted of many white sheets with blacks marks on them. The white man opened it and then began talking in a loud voice, with much gesturing.
    The woman rolled her eyes. She sat in a marvelous thing that rocked back and forth. She was using long metal needles to weave a garment. She said something that caused the old man’s cheeks to grow red.
    Then both of them grinned.
    The Outcast realized they were very much in love, these two. He remembered the time he had been in love, and was mad at himself.
    He had seen enough.
    The Outcast ducked down and left. Apparently there were only the two men and the two women in the entire valley. Whoever lived in the other lodges must be gone, or the lodges would be aglow with light.
    The Outcast had gone a short way toward the trees when there was a tremendous splash in the lake. He looked, imagining it was a fish, but whatever it was had gone back under, leaving ripples.
    Once on the pinto, the Outcast reined to the west. He would spend the night deep in the timber. He must get plenty of sleep. Although he had been banished from his tribe, he had not stopped being a warrior. He still counted coup.
    And he had new enemies to slay.

Chapter Four
    They came out of the heart of the darkness. There were seven of them—short, stocky warriors as different from other mountain and plains tribes as the night from the day.
    Their buckskins were crude and lacked whangs. The sleeves flared from the elbows to the wrists, and on the right hip of each legging were three concentric circles painted in black. They carried ash bows and had quivers filled with arrows fletched with raven feathers. The hilts of their knives were carved from antlers, and the blades were iron.
    Most remarkable of all were their faces: low foreheads, thick eyebrows, eyes like black pitch, jutting jaws, and scars. Scars in intricate patterns that covered every inch of skin on their face, deep scars that formed symbols. What they stood for, only the short men could say.
    The men moved at night and laid up during the day. Less chance of being seen that way.
    They were a secretive people. Bitter experience taught them the need for it. Once they lived far to the south along a great bay. Life had been good. They hunted and fished and ate the hearts of their enemies, as their forefathers had done for more winters than there were blades of grass.
    Then a new tribe came. A large tribe in the thousands, compared to their paltry hundreds. The warriors rode on fleet, giant dogs, which the Tunkua later learned were called horses, and did not like having their hearts eaten. They made fierce war on the Tunkua, or Heart Eaters, as they called themselves, and it became apparent that unless the Heart Eaters fled, they would be wiped out.
    Councils were held. They could not go south. There was nothing but water. They had canoes, but only a few, and they always stayed close to shore. They were not a seafaring people.
    They could not go east. That way lay vast swamps and bayous infested with alligators and snakes.
    The west did not appeal to them. The land was dry and hot, much of it desert, and claimed by a tribe they held in great dread, the Shis-Inday.
    The only way, then, was for the Heart Eaters to go north. They packed their possessions on travois drawn by dogs, and in the dead of night left the land they loved, bound for the unknown. They crossed a near-endless prairie of waving grass. The plain did not suit them, so they turned to the northwest, and after countless sleeps