The Arrow Keeper’s Song by Kerry Newcomb Page B

Big plans and great expectations.” She sighed and reflected a moment. “He named my brother right. Clay. Easy to shape into whatever Father wants him to be.”
    Tom couldn’t help but notice a hint of bitterness in her voice. Allyn might be ambitious, but he seemed no more overbearing to Tom than most fathers with a daughter sweet as a plum hanging ripe and tender on the vine. “What plans?”
    â€œBy the way, you owe me an apology for this afternoon,” Emmiline replied, smoothly changing the subject before she inadvertently discussed her fathers business. One casual remark could endanger all her father’s hard work. “You missed a wonderful picnic. I guarantee you would have enjoyed yourself.”
    â€œI do indeed apologize,” said Tom, allowing himself to be steered away from the topic she herself had begun.
    â€œWhat got into you, riding off like that? One would think you had seen a ghost.”
    â€œMaybe I did,” Tom said, remembering the dust devil. He was still troubled by the experience. It was a wind, he told himself, nothing more, just the heat currents rising from the ground. And the voices … merely the product of his imagination.
    â€œOh, dear. You wipe that expression off your face right now, Tom Sandcrane. You look as if you’re about to bolt again. Am I as frightening as all that?” Emmiline pressed against his side, her curves against his ribs, an enticing pressure. Maybe not frightening, he thought, but she made him nervous as all hell.
    On returning to Cross Timbers from Panther Hall, Tom had ridden straight for Allyn Benedict’s house, where he had a standing invitation to Sunday dinner, leaving Seth to worry over the mauled hound draped over the rump of his horse. Margaret Benedict always cooked more than enough, and to-night Tom found the Indian agent’s company preferable to Seth’s. He was still chafing at his father’s hostility. The next time, Tom swore he’d ignore those damn voices in the wind, and if Seth’s fat was in the fire, then so be it—let him stew in his own juice.
    A carriage rolled out of the dark and wound its way up the road from the settlement. The vehicle pulled to a halt before the porch, and Father Kenneth peered around the edge of the leather cover. Moonlight glinted off the silver hair of Luthor White Bear, who was seated beside the priest in the carriage.
    Father Kenneth was a stocky, good-natured man in his early fifties. His close-cropped blond hair was in retreat from his wide forehead; the inevitable hair loss would leave him bald by the time he turned sixty. A bushy blond beard and mustache and thick, round wire-rim eyeglasses were the significant features of this kindly man’s face. Belonging to the order of Capuchins, he wore a hooded brown robe over his shirt and Levi’s. A rope belt, from which usually dangled an assortment of carpenters tools and a rosary, circled his waist. The priest’s skills with hammer and saw and his willingness to use them for the benefit of the local Cheyenne had endeared him to the tribe. Father Kenneth was a man who preached by doing, but Sunday was a day of rest for the priest, and the tools of his former trade were back at the rectory.
    â€œEvening, Tom. Miss Emmiline.”
    â€œEvening, Father Kenneth,” Tom said, doffing his hat. He nodded as his gaze slipped from the priest to Luthor White Bear, the Keeper of the Sacred Arrows.
    Luthor was the sole proprietor of the Cross Timbers mercantile. He was an ambitious and successful merchant who anticipated making even greater profits once Cross Timbers became a thriving town and not a mere reservation settlement. The merchant dreaded that others should think of him as just another tame Cheyenne, lumping him together with the rest of the tribe. He considered himself a man of substance and was determined to remain that way when the lands were open to homesteaders and