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whom it was said they would screw a snake if somebody’d hold its head, paid her attentionas a woman. White men had never done much good for her, you see, and now Pa and the others with the wagons had got themselves killed.
    I mention this to explain Caroline’s peculiar manner at that time. I think she was also humiliated at not having been raped.
    “Well, Caroline,” said Ma, standing there in her long, washed-out dress and sunbonnet; she looked like one of them little dolls you can make out of a hollyhock blossom with a bud for its head. My Ma was small, not far over five feet, and I reckon my lifelong shortness is due to hers. “Well, Caroline, I expect we will have to go back to Laramie. I’ll tell the soldiers and they’ll come to fetch you.”
    “I wouldn’t count on that,” replied Caroline. “Indins know all about how to hide their tracks.”
    “Well, then,” Ma said, “you must drop a button now and again, or a piece of your shirt, to lay a trail.”
    Caroline impatiently scraped the sweat from her forehead and wiped the hand on the butt of her jeans. She believed, I think, that Ma was trying to diminish her danger and self-concocted glory, and the direct result of that was the cooking of my goose.
    “Maybe they won’t hurt me permanently,” said Caroline. “Maybe they’ll hold me for ransom. I don’t expect to be murdered, or why would they want Jack to come along, too?”
    That awful whimper, I discovered after a bit, was issuing from my own throat. Hearing my name had set it off.
    To her credit my Ma went up to Old Lodge Skins’s horse and begged him not to take me, on account of I was her youngest and only ten years old and skinny. He nodded with sympathy, but when she was done he beckoned to his followers, who rode in and tied all eight horses to our wagon as if the deal had been closed. Even then the subsequent events might have failed to transpire had not the Cheyenne hung around for a bit in the hopes they would get a cup of coffee! Indians simply never understood whites and vice versa.
    “Bill will take one of the ponies and ride back for the soldiers fast as he can go,” Ma said, giving me a great hug. “Don’t think bad of your Pa, Jack. He done the best he could, given his vision. Maybe by taking you and Caroline, the Indians are trying after their own fashion to make up for what they done yesterday. I don’t think they’re bad people, Jack, or they wouldn’t have brung the horses.”
    There you had it. Nobody thought to ask Caroline how she knew what the Cheyenne were up to without speaking their language.There was a time when I suspected my Ma actually wanted to get rid of us, because the soldiers never came; which was before I found out, some years on, that Bill rode back to Laramie, sold the horse, got a job with the traders, and not only never reported about us to the Army but also never rejoined the wagons. No, my Ma was well-meaning but ignorant. My Pa was crazy and my brother was a traitor. Then there was Caroline. They weren’t much of a family, I guess, but then I was not with them long.
    Ma give us each a kiss, and Caroline mounted one of the ponies brought by the Indians, pulling me up behind. The other kids waved in silence, Bill with a dirty, scared grin. Old Lodge Skins, dawdling about nearby on his horse, grunted quizzically and covered his lips. I didn’t know then that this is how Indians show astonishment—their mouth falls open and they cover it so their soul can’t jump out and run away.
    He thereupon gave evidence of wanting to make another speech, but Caroline motioned him to come on, dug her heels into the mount, which was skittish owing to its unfamiliarity with white hindquarters, and we went off like a cannon shot, heading north.
    At top of the rise, she pulled in on the rawhide bridle and waited for the three Cheyenne, who weren’t in no hurry, I’ll say that for them. Then we rode on down to the river, which was yellow and swollen from the