Native Gold Read online

  Sakote relaxed his stance and grinned. He’d known Noa would come sooner or later. He watched the man scale recklessly down the hill toward them, one hand holding the hat to his head, one arm swinging in counterbalance.

  If ever there was a man Sakote could call brother with pride, it was Noa. He’d arrived four leaf-falls ago, before the great herd of miners, from a place he called Hawaii. Unlike most of the white men since, he’d always looked upon the Konkow with respect. He’d shared their deer and learned their customs. In exchange, he’d taught Sakote English and everything else he knew about the world of the willa—the white man.

  Noa’s boots crunched on the pebbles at the bottom of the hill. Silence was the one Konkow trait he’d never mastered. Sakote smiled as Noa jumped up beside him on the boulder, a bunch of withered blue lupines drooping from his hand. Sakote knew who the blossoms were for.

  "What brings you here?" Sakote asked, switching over to the language he knew as well as his own now. He slicked the hair off of his forehead and bit back a grin as he slyly nodded toward the clump of blossoms in Noa’s fist. "Are those for me?"

  Noa frowned awkwardly down at the blooms, as if he had no idea how they’d gotten there.

  In the water, Hintsuli giggled. Then the little boy’s attention was quickly diverted to a grandfather trout gliding along the silt of the creekbed, and he dove straight down, all slippery bottom and scrambling legs.

  Sakote chuckled and clapped Noa on the shoulder. "My friend, I fear there’s no hope for you. Every day for two moons my sister goes to you in the valley. Today you bring her flowers. Maybe in another two moons you’ll bring her a deer." He leaned toward Noa and rapped the buttons of his blue miner’s shirt. "She’ll be an old woman by the time you sleep in her hubo."

  Noa turned as red as manzanita bark. "Sakote!"

  Sakote flinched at the use of his name. He’d never grow accustomed to the way the settlers threw sacred names about as casually as rocks.

  "You know that isn’t the way I do things,” Noa said. “It just...it wouldn’t be right." He absently whacked the flowers against his dusty thigh and grimaced. "Towani is...she’s special. And young. And pretty. Pretty as the bloom of an aloalo."

  Sakote felt laughter creep into his eyes. He had no idea what an aloalo was, but it was funny to see his friend so befuddled by his little tadpole of a sister.

  “You should take my sister from the village,” Sakote said, shaking his head. “She’s no use to us. She’s ruined the weaving of three baskets this past moon with her lovesickness. She burns the trout. She spills the acorn meal. And every morning, she rises before dawn to walk to the valley. Maybe that," he added, thumping Noa on the chest again, "is why she didn’t return to the village last night until everyone was already asleep." He winked. It was a good gesture, one he’d learned from Noa.

  But Noa didn’t return his smile. Instead, he blinked in confusion. Then he drew back in disbelief. "You think she came to me? That she spent the..."

  He backed up a step, and Sakote had to make a grab for his arm before he stepped right off the boulder. Noa sniffed and pulled his arm away. Sakote had obviously offended him.

  "I’ve known you for four years,” Noa said. “You’ve been like a brother to me, Sakote, and I’ve always treated Towani with respect. I would never..." He lowered his voice and straightened proudly. "I would never take her like that without the benefit of a proper Christian marriage."

  If Noa hadn’t looked at him so solemnly, Sakote would have burst into laughter. For the Konkow, there was no such thing as a proper marriage. If a man felt affection for a woman, he simply moved into her hubo, her home. If she didn’t cast him out, then they were wed. But Sakote understood Noa’s customs and his concern. He nodded and slung a companionable arm across his friend’s shoulders.

  "I know, my brother, I know," he told Noa gently. "But you know her heart already belongs to you."

  Relief softened the lines in Noa’s forehead. Sakote knew it would be a good marriage. Noa and Towani would live in the place the miners called the Valley of the Squaw Men, where she’d find companions among the other native women who’d married settlers.

  "Wait." The happiness dimmed in Noa’s eyes. "What did you say about Towani?"

  "That her heart belongs—"

  "No, no, no." He looked faintly alarmed now. "About last night."

  “That she didn’t return until...” Sakote frowned. "My sister wasn’t with you last night?"

  Noa shook his head almost imperceptibly.

  “Then where..?”

  "I know where she was," Hintsuli volunteered, squinting up from his perch on a small boulder in the midst of the stream. His interest in the trout had obviously waned some time ago, and he could understand enough of their words to know they were talking about Towani.

  Sakote nodded for him to continue.

  "She went to the willa camp."

  Noa stiffened beside him.

  "What?" Sakote asked. "Why?"

  Hintsuli shrugged. "She said she was taking medicine to the white healer.”

  Sakote’s scowl deepened. Medicine? What medicine? And who was this white healer? Going to the willa camp was forbidden. It was too dangerous for the Konkows to mix with the white miners. Towani knew better.

  But he could see that Noa’s thoughts were traveling a different path. Noa worried that someone else—this white healer perhaps—might be vying for Towani’s heart.

  Sakote clasped Noa’s forearm. “Don’t worry. I’ll sort things out.” He would sort things out, even if he had to deal with Towani the way the whites handled disobedient children, by taking a willow switch to her backside. “You go home. I’ll talk to my sister.”

  "No talk! No talk! No talk!" Hintsuli chanted cheerfully in English, tromping up the bank of the creek, his wet, bare feet making mud boots of the fine silt. "She’s in the time of yupuh. She’s gone to the women’s hut."

  "What?" Sakote glared sharply at his little brother. How did Hintsuli know about yupuh? Had he peered into the women’s hut? "Wicked boy! It’s forbidden to look—"

  "I didn’t look!” Hintsuli jutted out his smug chin. “She told me to tell you she was in the time of yupuh."

  Sakote tightened his jaw. A shadow had fallen across the beautiful day. His sister was up to something—sneaking off to the miner’s camp and telling Hintsuli to lie for her—and he had to find out what it was.

  "I promise, brother," Sakote swore to Noa, "I’ll find the truth."

  Noa nodded brusquely, but his step was heavy as he began the long journey home, and Sakote’s heart ached for his friend. He squeezed his hands into fists. He wanted to shake his foolish sister, shake her till her teeth clattered like a shokote rattle and she came to her senses.

  Chapter 2

  When Sakote returned to the village, he resisted the urge to barge into the women’s hut and yank his sister out. Instead, he let his blood cool in the lengthening shade, filled his belly with trout, and waited patiently for her to emerge.

  But she didn’t. Not when the women returned from digging bulbs beside the creek. Not when the sweet smoke of roasted fish drifted into the canyon. Not when the young men finished gambling beside the dying embers of the fire. The hunting-bow moon moved far to the west, the tribe retired for the night, and still she didn’t come out.

  Sakote spit onto the gray coals of the cooking fire, making them sizzle. He glared toward the women’s hut. Did she think she could hide in there forever? Towani had always been willful, but how dared she defy him—the man who was to become the next headman of the Konkow? And how could she break Noa’s heart with such deception?

  He poked at the charred remains of the fire with a dogwood branch and scanned the cluster of hubos—the bark-covered houses that made up the village. No smoke curled from the tops of the conical roofs. The Konkow slept.

  Sakote had seen his people through another day, brought food to his mother’s fire, told a tale ofOleili, Coyote, to the children, and liste
ned to the wisdom of the elders. He should be content. Yet it was never contentment he felt when the sun went to sleep behind the hills. It was always relief. Which was why his sister’s defiance troubled him.

  Their world was changing. The elders didn’t see it, partly because they didn’t travel as far or see as much as Sakote did, and partly because they didn’t want to. They didn’t see how the white men arrived as thick as grasshoppers in the flower season. How they planted sticks in the ground as if they could possess the land. How they fought with fists and drank whiskey till they couldn’t walk. How some of them looked upon the Konkow with hateful eyes and Coyote’s sly grin.

  Noa was different. He understood the Konkow ways. He would provide meat and shelter for Towani, and he’d carry her in his heart. They’d make babies together to grow and thrive among the other children of the valley. Noa would care for Towani. He’d protect her. And Sakote would have one less Konkow to worry about.

  But if Towani mingled with the white men from the mining camp...

  One brave cricket attempted to sing, his chirrup slow and hesitant across the cool night. Sakote pulled the deerskin up over his shoulder and dropped the dogwood branch onto the coals. He sighed, and it felt as if his spirit left him with his breath.

  How could he protect Towani? How could he protect the village and his people? There were too many white men, and he feared what his vision foretold—that he wouldn’t be around to keep them safe.

  The chirping cricket abruptly ceased his song, and Sakote froze, pricking up his ears. Furtive but heavy footfalls approached, crunching the mulch of the forest. It was a man, by the sound. Sakote slipped his knife from its sheath, testing the edge with the pad of his thumb, and stared quietly toward the source of the commotion.

  The footsteps slowed as a figure broke through the shadowy cedars into the village clearing. When Sakote saw who it was, he put away his knife and waited.

  Noa hunkered down beside him. "We have to talk, Sakote,” he whispered. “Something’s happened. Something bad, very bad." He rubbed his fingers nervously across his mouth.

  Sakote’s heart thudded. He despised the English language at the moment, with its subtleties and endless ways to stretch out the telling of a story.

  "A friend of mine brought news from the mining camp," Noa said under his breath, "about that white healer Towani went to see. Doc Jim was his name, Dr. James Harrison. It seems he...well, he up and died last night."

  Sakote’s heart turned to ice.

  "No one knows what he died of," Noa continued, "since he was the only doctor for miles around. There weren’t any marks on him or anything. He just dropped dead in his cabin."

  Sakote stared hard into Noa’s eyes, black as pitch in the darkness, and he feared he knew what was behind the white healer’s death. Towani’s “medicine.”

  Noa bit his lip. "Most of the miners suspect it was too much liquor. It seems he had an unnatural hankering for whiskey." He dropped his head down, his hat shielding his eyes. "But if someone were to look too closely into the man’s liquor bottle...or if there were, I don’t know, a couple of long black hairs on his coat or a...a footprint by his cabin where there shouldn’t be..."

  Sakote’s blood, frozen in fear, now began to heat with rage. How could his sister have done such a thing? How could she have killed a white man? How could she have endangered their people in this way? He clenched his fists and thrust out his jaw. His nostrils flared with a breath deep enough to feed a loud bellow of outrage. But he remained silent, instead channeling his fury into the icy glare he shot toward the women’s hut. Noa seized his arm, trying to stop him as he lurched forward, but Sakote wrenched from his grasp.

  Noa cussed under his breath and followed Sakote as he stalked off.

  It was forbidden for a man to enter the women’s hut. The Great Spirit, Wonomi, would be vexed. But at the moment, Sakote didn’t care. He’d waited long enough. He ducked down and crept through the low crawlway.

  Little light penetrated the hut, and it took Sakote a moment to see that there was only one person sleeping inside. He edged forward, and when Towani stirred, he made a grab for her. She had time for one short squeak of surprise before he clapped his hand over her mouth and hauled her up with an arm wrapped around her waist. She struggled like a trapped cougar kitten, snarling, twisting her head, and clawing at his arms.

  "Quiet!" he hissed.

  When she heard his familiar voice, she ceased fighting, but she still held her body stiff, wary of him.

  He lugged her out of the hut, eliciting a curse of irritated disbelief from Noa, and then carried her off into the woods with Noa at his heels.

  When they reached a starlit break in the trees, far from the ears of the village, Sakote set his sister abruptly onto her feet.

  "Speak!" he commanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Towani flinched momentarily, but then lifted her proud chin and stared off into the night. "I have nothing to say."

  Her voice cracked, and it was hard to speak roughly to her when she looked so pale and sleepy in the moonlight. But he had to do it. He had to know the truth.

  "You’ve killed a white man," he bit out, "and you have nothing to say?"

  She glanced at him, clearly startled that he’d found out.

  "What did you give him?" he demanded. "What did you put in his whiskey?"

  She looked nervously at Noa, and Sakote grabbed her by the shoulders.

  "Answer me."

  Her eyes glistened wetly. "Buckeye."

  Sakote’s chest felt as if it would cave in. Somehow he’d hoped he was mistaken. Somehow, impossibly, he’d hoped that Towani knew nothing about the white man’s death, that she was innocent, that she was still his wide-eyed little sister whose worst flaw was a stubborn streak. But it was not to be. In one word she’d condemned herself. In one word she’d become a murderer.

  "Why?" Sakote choked, unable to rectify the innocent trembling of his sister’s chin with the murderous truth of her actions. "Why, Towani?"

  Hearing him use her name made tears fill her eyes and spill over onto her cheek. Beside them, Noa grimaced and fidgeted uncomfortably. But she didn’t answer.

  "Do you know what you’ve done?" Sakote freed one hand from her to rake his hair back in frustration. "Do you understand what you’ve done, my sister?"

  "He was only a stupid willa," she muttered, though she dropped her eyes in shame to speak the insult.

  Fury rose in him like a creek in the storm. "And who are you, that you would kill anyone needlessly and without sorrow? NotKonkow. Not my sister." He jerked her shoulder. "Who are you then? A hudesi?"

  She gasped. The hudesi were people so depraved and evil that they couldn’t enter the spirit world after they died, but became ghosts, forever wandering the earth.

  "Why did you do it?" Sakote demanded, digging desperate, fearful fingers into her shoulder.

  "Stop it!" Noa protested, shoving at Sakote’s back.

  "Why, Towani?" Sakote insisted.

  "You leave her alone, Sakote," Noa warned, "or I swear I’ll—“

  "Why!"

  Towani burst into sobs, jolting Sakote from his rage. He released her like a hot cooking stone, and she buried her face in her hands. Noa went to her, enfolding her in his arms.

  "I’m not evil," Towani mewed in English, instantly filling Sakote with self-loathing.

  Noa soothed her. “Of course you’re not,” he said, combing her hair with gentle fingers and flashing Sakote such a glare of accusation that he felt like a hudesi himself.

  "The willa was a...a bad man," she sobbed.

  Sakote pressed his lips into a straight line and stared at the moon, which seemed to grin at him in mockery. Towani didn’t understand. Not only had she done a terrible thing, but she’d put all the Konkow in danger. She might feel justified in what she had done, but the white man’s ways were different, and they often destroyed what they didn’t understand.

  "Many of the willa are bad men," Sakote s
aid. "But you can’t kill them just because—“

  "I had to kill him," Towani said quietly. The faraway look on her tear-stained face sent a chill along his backbone. "My spirit wouldn’t rest. It wouldn’t be still...until I took vengeance."

  Sakote frowned. What was she talking about?

  "I couldn’t tell you, my brother," she said. "You would have slain him like a warrior, and the willa would have hunted you down. But a woman..." A teary smile faltered on the corners of her lips as she stared up at the stars. "She can be clever, like Coyote." She shook her head at him. "They won’t find out. I left no signs. No one saw me. It is done. Akina."

  Sakote’s thoughts spun like leaves caught in a whirlpool. "No, it’s not done. You speak of vengeance. For what? How do you even know this man?”

  Sakote saw Towani’s throat bob as she swallowed hard. "That is between The Great Spirit and me."

  "The hell it is!" Sakote barked, borrowing Noa’s expression. "You poison a white man. You put our people in danger. And now you hide the truth from me, your own brother!" He raised a fist of anger, though they both knew he’d never struck anyone in his life, not even another man. "Tell me why."

  Towani’s eyes grew bright with fear, but she said, "No."

  "Towani," he growled.

  "I won’t. I won’t ever tell you." Her chin began to quiver again. "I won’t tell anyone!" she cried. "Akina!"

  "Towani!" he roared.

  Sakote wasn’t prepared for the great shove Noa gave him, one that sent him sprawling on his backside in pine needles. Shock displaced his rage, and he looked up, bewildered, into Noa’s snarling face.

  "You know what you are, Sakote?" Noa spat. "You’re a fool! A big, dumb, ugly, blind fool!"

  With those parting words, Noa yanked the deerskin from Sakote’s shoulders and wrapped it tenderly around Towani. Then, with one backward glance of condemnation, he guided Towani through the forest on the path toward the valley, toward his home.

  Sakote collapsed onto his back with a defeated sigh and lay upon the scratchy leaves, staring up at the stars. Somewhere on a distant hill, a coyote yipped and howled. Nearby, a deer mouse rifled through the mulch. An owl floated on silent wings across the sky, like a lazy arrow shot from the bow of the moon.