Comanche Dawn by Mike Blakely Page A

saying, “ Noomah. Noo-oo-mah-ah. ” His father’s dun came forward first, snuffing in the boy’s direction. Shadow took this horse by the muzzle and exhaled into his nostrils, the other horses now gathering around him as if he were one of them. Taking the dun’s dark mane, he sprang to its back, the horse sweat stinging the gash to his inner thigh.
    He turned again to the village, the dun obeying a tug to his mane and the pressure of moccasins against his sides. Riding past the people who had come to watch, Shadow raised both arms and swept them backward, his legs clamped around the loping dun. He thrust his wounded chest forward that the people might admire the injury. When he passed his father, he saw that Shaggy Hump no longer smiled, yet neither did he scowl. Beside him, the toothless old man of the Corn People was laughing like a wheezing dog.
    *   *   *
    When dark came the boys played the flaming stick game. They chose straight, spearlike sticks, making one end blaze in a fire. They took turns throwing these blazing lances through the night sky, none flying farther than Shadow’s, in spite of his injuries.
    Later, they lay outside a lodge where many warriors had gathered. There, the boys listened to stories of battles and escapes, of great hunts for buffalo and huge humpbacked bears. There were several boys listening here, and some began to fall asleep. At last, Shadow yawned and slipped away, wending his way among the lodges to his own tipi—a comfortable little shelter of four poles and five skins. When he entered, he saw that the half-moon was shining down through the smoke hole, casting its soft light on a grassy place he had yet to cover with robes.
    Shadow was tired, but he felt well. After riding today, he had bathed in the stream called Sometimes Water, getting the dirt out of the places where the horses had stepped on him. These wounds were getting sore and tender now, and he was very proud of them. He would sleep well.
    He left his loin skins where they fell and lay naked upon the soft hairy side of an old, supple buffalo robe. He pulled the robe gently over his chest, careful not to irritate his wound. He was drifting quickly toward the land of dreams when he heard the faint rustling of the hide that covered the entry hole to his lodge.
    Forcing his eyes open, he saw Slope Child step in and kneel beside him inside the small lodge. He started to rise, but she motioned for him to be still and quiet. She carried something in her hand—a small container made of buffalo horn.
    Bending over him, she whispered, “I bring medicine for your wounds.”
    â€œThey are nothing,” he said, whispering back.
    She gave the sign for silence, dreamlike in the moonlight that shifted down through the smoke hole. She lifted the buffalo robe from his chest. She dipped her finger into the buffalo horn container and gently, sparingly spread the medicine of herbs and bear fat on the skin that the hoof had scraped and gashed. She worked slowly, her eyes moving from the injury to Shadow’s eyes. She put the horn on the ground so she would have a free hand to rest on his bare chest. Her hand was warm. She took a long time.
    â€œNow the leg,” she whispered.
    Shadow tried to remain calm, but when she shifted the robe across his lower body, he felt a surge of pleasure like lightning pulsing through clouds. He kicked the robe away and was embarrassed, thinking Slope Child might make fun of him, as it was a woman’s place to shame a warrior’s every weakness. She said nothing, but he was afraid to look into her eyes. He just stared at the sky through the smoke hole and felt her hands go through the exquisite process of treating the wound on his inner thigh, her free hand wandering ever farther up his sound leg.
    Finally, she put the medicine horn aside and lifted the deerskin dress over her hips, over her breasts. He closed his eyes, for he had been told that