Chapter Five
THE COTTONWOODS • SNOW • THE LONG NIGHT • MORNING • A SMALL FARM
BEATRICE AND Lionel rode hard through the day and into the night. They barely spoke, choosing instead to ride in silence, the events of the morning running feverishly through their heads. The snow started back up around dark, and they stopped at a small stream under a cluster of cottonwood trees.
“I guess we best lay up here” was all Beatrice said. She slipped down from Ulysses’s back at the water’s edge and started to gather the fallen pieces of cottonwood that lay scattered under the snow. Lionel did the same. Then Beatrice produced some matches from her tobacco pouch and lit a small fire.
They huddled next to each other for warmth for most of the night, the cold haunting them into the earliest hours of morning. Lionel stared into the fire, falling in and out of a shivering sleep on Beatrice’s shoulder and listening to Ulysses, who stood over them in the darkness. Hunger gnawed at Lionel’s stomach, and he thought about the meals they had missed by running away from the school. Lionel knew that Beatrice must be hungry too, but she hadn’t said anything, so Lionel didn’t say anything either.
The snow continued to fall, wet on their clothes, and Beatrice pointed out that this was a good sign, as the army men would have trouble following their tracks.
“Where are we going?” Lionel asked.
“I figured we’d head to Grandpa’s, if I can find it.”
Lionel thought about the three hawks and the eagle that he and Beatrice had seen the only time he had ever been to his grandfather’s house, near the northwest border of the reservation. Lionel could still see the great birds circling overhead, but had trouble picturing his grandfather’s face.
“Do you remember going to Grandpa’s?” Beatrice asked. She got up, found a rock, and cracked the ice on the small creek.
“Sort of,” Lionel answered.
Beatrice lay down in the snow and cupped water by the handful into her mouth. Lionel watched as she washed the dried blood that lined her face from her temple to her neck. Her forehead was cut, and Lionel wished that he had cracked the ice on the trough with his rock before Jenkins had had the chance to do so with Beatrice’s head.
Beatrice smashed more ice, then led Ulysses to the hole so he could drink. Lionel joined them, and soon after, they were on the way, riding northwest toward the mountains.
They rode through the morning, Beatrice sitting tall on Ulysses’s back, the snow falling around them. Lionel thought that Beatrice seemed different. She was quiet, which was not unusual, but her silence was stronger, almost as if she were more at ease out here on the open plain despite their troubles. He watched her as she scanned the horizon, looking back from time to time to make sure that they were not being followed.
About midmorning they came to a bluff that overlooked a small group of log cabins and a corral. This was the first time that Lionel and Beatrice had ever laid eyes on the two hundred forty acre plot of Big Bull Boss Ribs.