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widened. “Did you hear him, boys? Christmas has come early this year.”

Chapter Eight
    They headed west as fast they could without riding their horses into the ground. To the west were the mountains. To the west was King Valley and safety. Or so Evelyn hoped. The problem was getting there. Even riding hard, it would take seven to eight days to reach the foothills and another ten days to reach home.
    It was simply too far.
    Evelyn realized that if the scalp hunters came after them, they were as good as caught. Waku and his family had never sat on a horse until recently. They were middling riders, and their lack of experience would do them in. She could see the strain beginning to tell already, and they hadn’t been underway more than a few hours. Dega was doing well enough, but then he’d done a lot of riding with her. Teni did pretty well, too, but Tihi and the youngest, Miki, and Waku, himself, had yet to learn how to sit a horse so that a long, hard ride didn’t set their leg muscles to cramping and their insides to feeling as if they had been tossed around in a tornado.
    Plenty Elk rode the best of them all. He impressed Evelyn. She evidently impressed him, too, because at one point, when they stopped to rest, he signedthat she was a good rider. She thanked him for the compliment and turned to see Dega watching, his expression peculiar.
    They pushed on until twilight and made camp in a basin where the glow of their fire wouldn’t give them away and they were sheltered from the night wind. Thanks to their water skin and plenty of jerky and pemmican they didn’t want for drink or food.
    The young Arapaho got the fire going, using buffalo droppings for fuel. She vividly remembered the time her mother took her to visit the Shoshones and her uncle, Touch the Clouds, gathered buffalo chips for a fire. She’d refused to sit near it because she was sure the stink would make her sick. Her mother and her uncle humored her, but when the cold got to her, she came and sat with them, and discovered, to her amazement, that the odor was more like that of a musty old rug than the foul reek she’d expected.
    Now, Evelyn hunkered and held her hands out to the dancing flames. She liked the warmth on her palms.
    Across from her, Waku moved his legs and winced.
    â€œYou’re hurting, aren’t you?”
    â€œSome, yes,” Waku acknowledged.
    â€œYou’ll hurt worse tomorrow night,” Evelyn predicted. “You’re just not used to the kind of riding we have to do.”
    Waku stretched and winced again. “Are you sure they will come, these scalp men?”
    â€œMy pa told me about scalp hunters. He says there’s not a shred of virtue in any of them. They kill a person and don’t bat an eye. Old, young, male, female, human life means nothing. All they care about is money.” Evelyn listened to the yip of a coyote. “I don’t know how much they get for a scalp.But you can bet it’s enough to make what they do worth it to them, even with the risks. You and your family are money in their pokes. So, yes, I think they’ll come after us.”
    Waku gazed at his loved ones. Once again they were in danger. He missed the old times, before the massacre, before they were forced to flee, back when his world was peaceful and orderly and his family wasn’t constantly in danger.
    Dega was listening intently. “These scalp men come, we fight.” He would die rather than let Evelyn or his family be harmed.
    Evelyn wanted to avoid a clash if she could help it. They were bound to be outnumbered. The scalp hunters would be better armed, too, with rifles and pistols for every man.
    Resting her chin on her knees, Evelyn wrapped her arms around her legs and contemplated how in God’s name she could save her friends. It seemed hopeless. Here they were, surrounded by miles and miles of open prairie. There was nowhere to hide. There was no way to conceal their