Very gently she says, “It’s not going to be the same, no. In some ways, it may be better. Or there may be no one left to care. We just don’t know yet.”

Shannon’s color goes from the pink flush of annoyance to dead white. She manages, though, to muster a crooked smile. “Thanks. I think.”

Dakota returns it. “You’re welcome. I think.”

Leaving Shannon to her uncertain typing, Koda checks her patients for the second time since dawn. Sister Matilda and her kittens have gone home to general rejoicing in the Burgess household. The Scotty, sadder and with luck wiser, has recovered from his unfortunate encounter with the porcupine. The rabbit with the infected eye, though, is not progressing as well as he had done initially. The inflammation has faded, and he quietly munches his alfalfa pellets as she runs her hand down his back. The infection persists, though, evident in the thinning flesh over his ribs and the pale color of exposed skin and membranes. She makes a note on his chart to add a second antibiotic to his evening dose; penicillin and sulfa together will still take almost anything bacterial. If that doesn’t do the job, they will have to go to an antiviral, and supplies are short.

Not for the first time, a cold chill trickles down her spine. This rabbit may have a constitutional idiosyncracy or underlying condition that leaves him more vulnerable than most. Conditions are ripe, though, for the spread of disease of all sorts. Winter has held most infections in check, save for the usual bronchitis and colds of the season. With the return of the sun, the melting of corpses buried under a meter or more of snow, the likelihood of epidemic will soar. And there is no more public health service, no more Center for Disease Control, no more pharmaceutical companies to mount an emergency campaign for an effective drug or vaccine.

For much of the rest of the afternoon, she inventories the clinics’ supplies, making lists of drugs to search for or attempt to find on the black market that is rapidly springing up. Or rather, the open market; looted or not, merchandise is moving again, paid for in trade goods or services. If they are not already, medications will be at a premium. The unpleasant thought comes to her, not for the first time, that it may become necessary to reinstitute taxes on a population that is barely surviving.

At midday she returns home for a quick lunch and a quicker walk with Asi. Kirsten has gone into Rapid City for the afternoon session of the rapists’ trial. Testimony is almost finished, and closing arguments will begin soon. As the only surviving national symbol of law, Kirsten must be present when the verdict comes in. A smile touches Dakota’s mouth for an instant, and is gone. Kirsten’s strength is beyond question, but she has never faced the cold responsibilities of power before, the chill that must stiffen the fingers of any but the most brutal authority scrawling a signature across a death warrant.

Leaving Asi to his nap on the hearth, Koda returns to the clinic. The neutering surgery goes well, and the Basset mix starts coming out from under the anaesthesia before he is well settled in the hospital ward. The mother wolf and her cub lie stretched out in the sun, sleeping so soundly that they never stir as she passes. Igmú, becoming ever more restless as spring deepens around her and the call of her blood becomes more insistent, bats her ball about her enclosure with increasing fierceness; Coyote, more relaxed, wags his abbreviated tail and whines, thrusting his slender nose through the mesh of the fence for a pat and a scratch.

As the sun stands down toward the horizon, Dakota sets aside her work. In the storeroom, she lays out the buffalo hide robe her father has brought from home and unfolds it on the worktable. Unlocking the freezer, she gently removes the frozen body of Wa Uspewikakiyapi, setting aside its heavy plastic wrappings. She performs each movement deliberately, holding apart her anger and her grief. For a moment she rests her hand on his broad head. This will not happen again, she swears to him silently. Never again. Your people will be free, and safe.

With a pair of surgical scissors, she snips a lock of fur from his mane, where it is untinged by blood. She takes a second from the plume of his tail. These she affixes with a leather thong to the spirit stick, making a mane about the head and throat of the wolf she has carved. With it, she will undertake to remember and honor him as a beloved member of her family for the year of formal mourning and to host a give-away at its end. It does not matter that he is of another nation. He has been closer to her than any not of her blood, save one. Kola mitawa. My friend. My teacher.

And now there is another. As if summoned by the thought, a light step sounds in the corridor, followed by a tap on the door. “Dakota?”

“Come in.”

Kirsten opens the door, moving quietly. She pauses a moment, taking in the wolf’s body, the fur still in Dakota’s hand, the buffalo robe. Silently she crosses the floor and steps into Koda’s arms. Koda holds her tightly, not speaking, merely resting her cheek atop the silken softness of the fair head. After a moment, Kirsten says, “I wanted to be with you when—that is, for the ceremony.” She steps back a fraction and raises her face questioningly. “If that’s all right?”

Koda lays her palm against the other woman’s cheek. “Of course it’s all right. You’re family now, to both of us. All of us.”

Deep beneath their searching concern, a spark of joy lights the green eyes, and is gone. “Let me help.”

Together, then, they wrap Wa Uspewikakiyape’s body in the buffalo robe, tying it in place with long strips of braided sinew. Into one knot, Dakota ties a medicine hoop fashioned of a supple willow branch, with small patches of cloth—white, yellow, red and black—tied at the quarters and leather thongs running at right angles between them. Into another she fastens an eagle feather and two pinions from a redtail’s wing. “Because,” she explains, “he was a chief of his nation.”

When they are done, they wait quietly by the honored dead, their hands joined.

* * *

The knock sounds softly against the service door. “Tanksi?”

Dakota opens it to find Tacoma on the landing, Wanblee Wapka’s pickup backed up to the loading ramp. Her brother is in civilian clothes again, jeans and a deep blue ribbon shirt, his hair caught back at the nape of his neck. His gaze slips past her to Kirsten standing by the table, back again. “You’re ready?”

For answer she nods, and together the three of them carry the body of Wa Uspewikakiyape to the waiting vehicle. Though Tacoma still limps heavily, he has set aside his crutches. He moves awkwardly but surely as they sidestep across the landing and Koda carefully lowers herself, her hands never losing their hold on their chill burden, into the truck’s cargo space. A drum and beater occupy one corner, together with a long, narrow bundle Koda recognizes as her father’s canupah, his ceremonial pipe. A fringed bag, worked generations back in shell beads and porcupine quills, contains his herbs and other holy things. Kirsten and Tacoma follow her down, and they lay Wa Uspewikakiyapi on the spread deerhide that covers much of the truckbed. Bracing himself on the wheel housing, Tacoma folds down gradually until he is perched beside the drum, then lifts it to sit between his knees. Kirsten moves hesitantly as if to offer a hand, and he shakes his head almost imperceptibly. “Thanks. I got it.”

Koda steps over the side and lets herself down in a single drop; Kirsten follows via tailgate and bumper. Manny swings open the door to the back of the cab, and Kirsten climbs in, followed by Koda. Wanblee Wapka glances into the rearview mirror, checking his passengers. “Everybody settled?”

“Good to go, Leksi,” Manny answers, and Koda follows his gaze as he tracks from Tacoma in the cargo bed to her hand joined with Kirsten’s on the bench seat. His eyes go wide for a second, and he mimes thumping his head against the metal frame of the window to his left. “Everybody but me, right?”

“Not everybody,” Koda says.

The light moment passes as Wanblee Wapka pulls the truck out into the street, and from behind them begins the deep heart throb of the drum, beaten slowly. There is little traffic, vehicular or pedestrian, but here and there a uniformed soldier stops to stare at them as they pass. One or two, recognizing Kirsten’s profile where she sits by the right window, salute; yet another, whose high, broad cheekbones and copper skin bespeak her Cheyenne ancestry, removes her cap and bows her head. The guards at the gate snap to attention and pass them out with looks of puzzlement on their earnest faces, but make no demur. Once off the Base they turn toward the county road that leads into the foothills, the big truck taking the ruts with ease as they begin to climb toward the ancient streambed and its treeline, the place where Wa Uspewikakiyape had lived and died. For the most part they travel in silence, Koda lost in remembrance and a growing feeling of relief, anchored in time and place by the strong, small hand folded in her own.

Wanblee Wapka wrestles the truck up the slope of the rock outcropping that shelters the sealed den. Sliding to the ground, Dakota’s eyes run along the line of trees, the dry course of the ancient stream that once cut its way down through limestone to create the shallow drop from the narrow remnant of wooded meadow with its march of trees. Among them now stands a scaffolding made of strong, straight limbs and rope, its platform six feet above the grass. Boughs of pine and larch cover it, interspersed with the slender trumpets of scarlet madder, the blue stars of anemone. From each corner hangs a leather thong strung with white chalcedony and striped agate, porcupine quills and a falcon’s feathers. A circle of river pebbles makes a wheel about the scaffold, flat, larger stones set at the four quarters. This is a chief’s burial. “Washte,” says Koda. “Thank you, Ate.”

Manny and Wanblee Wapka lift down the body of Wa Uspewikakiyape and lay it by the scaffold. Tacoma sets the drum by the south upright and takes up his station before it. From his pouch, Wanblee Wapka takes several braids of herbs, sage and pine and sweetgrass, a smaller leather bundle that Koda knows contains pollen and another of cornmeal. Finally he unwraps his pipe. To Kirsten he says, “This is what we do for family when they go to walk the Blue Road. Everyone participates.”

Dakota watches as the meaning of his words sinks in, and Kirsten nods solemnly. Wanblee Wapka hands her the packet of cornmeal. “When the time comes, rub some of this on each of the posts of the scaffold. Then on Wa Uspewikakiyape’s wrappings. I’ll tell you when, okay?” She nods again, holding the folded leather as if it were the most precious thing in the world. In this light, her eyes are the wide clear green of the sea.

To Manny he gives a rattle made of turtle shell and antler. “Translate for her, will you?”

Finally he goes to stand beside Tacoma and the drum. “Everybody over here, please.”

As they form a tight circle about him, Dakota feels peace begin to well up inside her. Part of it, she knows, is the coming end of the wrongness she has felt ever since finding that Wa Uspewikakiyape’s body had not been left in dignity. Another part is the strong presence of her father, center of the compass of her world. Part is the warrior’s honor that surrounds Tacoma, body and spirit. Yet another is the energy her cousin Manny carries, the spirit of thunder that can break forth as the humor of a heyoka jester or as the death-dealing lightning.

And at the center of her heart is Kirsten, love returning again and again through the cycles of the sun and the turning earth.

Eyes closed, she hears the small sound of flint and pyrite struck together, smells the fragrance as the spark takes hold in a braid of sage. As Wanblee Wapka holds it out to her, Dakota waves the smoke toward her, washing it over her head and hands, over all her body. Awkwardly at first, then with more confidence, Kirsten follows her example; then Manny, Tacoma, Wanblee Wapka himself. He smudges the platform behind him, the drum, the buffalo hide that enfolds Wa Uspewikakiyape. As Tacoma once again begins the low, steady beat of the drum, punctuated by the rattle in Manny’s hands, Dakota carries a braid of sweetgrass around the circle, lifting it to the sky, lowering it to the earth at each of the four quarters, invoking Inyan the Creator, Wakan Tanka, Ina Maka. She feels Kirsten’s eyes on her as she paces the circuit, the calm touch of her thoughts.

When she returns to the center, Wanblee Wapka unwraps his pipe. It is a beautiful thing, made a hundred years ago and more. The bowl, carved of red stone in the shape of a buffalo, surmounts a length of hollow wood. Where it joins the stem, three eagle feathers hang by a leather thong strung with shell and turquoise. A spike just beyond it, to hold the pipe upright in the earth. Raising it to the east, Wanblee Wapka begins to pray:

“Ho! Wanblee Gleshka!Spotted Eagle, Spirit of the East,Hear us!Speak to us about giving thanks.Speak to us about wisdom.Speak to us about understanding.Speak to us of gratitudeFor the life of our brother,Wa Uspewikakiyape, who has goneTo walk the Spirit Road with you.We give you thanks for him.We thank you for the past,The present and the future.We thank you for all who are gathered here.”

He pauses, and Koda answers, “Han; washte.” Taking the offered pipe from his hand, she steps to the south quarter and raises it.

“Ho! Ina Mato!Grandmother Bear, Spirit of the South!Hear us!Speak to us about fertility.Speak to us about children.Speak to us about health.Speak to us about self-control.|Speak to us about creating good things for all people,About the creations of our brotherWa Uspewikakiyape who has goneTo walk the Spirit Road with you.Give us fruitfulness in all we do.”

Again, the soft murmurs of “Hau! Waste!”and from Kirsten, “Han!” Receiving the pipe again from Dakota, Wanblee Wapka steps to the western quarter and raises it.

“Ho! Tatanka Wakan!Sacred Buffalo, Spirit of the West!Hear us!Speak to us about purification.Speak to us about self-sacrifice.Speak to us about renewal.Speak to us about the Thunder.Release us from those thingsWhich are past.Speak to us about the gifts of our brother,Wa Uspewikakiyapi, who has goneTo walk the Spirit Road with you.Give us freedom from weariness in all we do.”

Dakota takes the pipe once again, stepping to the north. She raises it and prays:

“Ho! Tshunkmanitu Tunkashila!Grandfather Wolf, Spirit of the North!Hear us!Speak to us about rebirth.Speak to us about winter passing.Speak to us about the seed beneath the snow.Speak to us about life returning.Speak to us about our destiny.Speak to us about the destiny of our brother,Wa Uspewikakiyapi, who has goneTo walk the Spirit Road with you.Give us freedom from fear.

Koda hands the pipe to her father for the last time. Standing by the burial scaffold, he lowers it to the earth, then raises it again to the sky. Finally he holds it before him at the center. He chants,

Ho! Ina Maka, Wakan Tanka, Inyan!Mother Earth, Great Mystery, Creator!Hear us!Our brother, Wa UspewikakiyapiHas gone to walk the Spirit Road with you.Make his steps sure as he comes to you.Make his eyes bright when he looks upon you.Make his heart glad when he dwells with youIn the Other Side Camp,Among the Star Nation.We hold his memory,His friends, his student,His mate and children.We praise and thank himFor all he has given us.Give us his courage,Give us his strength.Give us his wisdom,So that one day we may join himAnd come safely to you.

The soft murmur runs around the circle again, and Wanblee Wapka thrusts the long spike of his pipe into the earth beside the scaffold. The drum and rattle beat steadily. Following his direction, Kirsten steps forward and rubs a pinch of cornmeal on each of the four poles, sprinkling the remainder on the buffalo hide that wraps Wa Uspewikakiyapi. Then Koda and her father lift the bundle into place on the platform, and the ceremony is done.

As Manny and Wanblee Wapka gather up pipe and pouch and drum, stowing them again in the truck, Koda drifts apart from the group, leaning against the straight trunk of a young birch. The sun poises just on the edge of the horizon, the sky above it shot with crimson and gold. A breeze stirs the leaves above her head, cool with the coming of evening. Quietly, Kirsten comes to stand beside her, saying nothing, offering her presence. Dakota extends her hand in silence, and Kirsten takes it. Peace settles around her, sweet and deep. After a time, she stirs. “They’re waiting for us.”

“Yes,” Kirsten answers.

“You all right?”

Kirsten murmurs something in assent, then says, “You?”

“Better.” Koda turns, her hand still in Kirsten’s. Together they descend the slope, take their places in the back seat of the truck.

Together. Going home.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

THE MORNING LIES gentle on the land as Koda steers the big truck out of the base. Dew spangles the buffalo grass that has grown up at the edges of the road, and the air that streams through the open windows carries its moist fragrance underlaid by the rich smell of earth. High above, a pair of ravens tumble down the depths of the sky, circling each other, giving chase, their calls ringing clear over the bare foothills. Kirsten leans from her window to get a better look. “Ravens, right? Courting?”

Koda grins back at her. “Ravens, courting. A-plus.”

A small smile curves Kirsten’s own lips. “Must be spring or something, huh?”

“Must be.” Taking advantage of a long, straight stretch of road, Dakota leans over and kisses her lightly. Kirsten’s mouth tastes of coffee, with a lingering hint of honey from the morning’s biscuits.

An intimate silence grows up between them, and Dakota marvels again at the way their thoughts seem to fit easily together, mortice and tenon, as if they have known each other from the womb. Not even with Tali has she ever known this wordless intimacy, something she has shared until now only with Tacoma. She watches now as Kirsten sips from the mug between the seats, then passes it without speaking to Koda. She drinks gratefully. She says, “I’m going to miss this. If we ever get stable again, you’ll be re-elected for life if you can make a trade agreement with Colombia.”

“Liberté, egalité, café?”

“You got it.”

At a crossroads—what used to be a four-way-stop—Koda turns onto the farm road that will lead them up toward the ridge where Wa Uspewikakiyapi is buried. They will approach it from the other side, the paved track belonging to the deserted Callaghan ranch; as long as there is still gas, the pickup is too valuable to risk to the axle-busting ruts of the cross-country route. Koda leans out, stretching to get a view of the truckbed. “How are they doing back there, Kirsten? Can you see?”

Kirsten turns in her seat, wriggling loose for a moment from the safety belts to peer through the cab window. “A bit. They look okay.”

Today is the spring equinox, and a day of freedom. Behind them in the truckbed, Manny and Tacoma watch over the two large crates holding Coyote and Igmú. Coyote, being Coyote, had followed a trail of chicken innards into his carrier without a moment’s hesitation. The bobcat had had to be coaxed and gentled, coaxed and gentled time and again until Tacoma could give her the final small push and Koda had fastened the door behind her. From what she can see in the rear-view mirror, Igmú still crouches, hissing, in a corner of the cage. If she ever again willingly approaches humans or metal man-things, it will be a triumph of curiosity over rage.

And that is all to the good. The world has changed, and new ways of living with the non-human world must be found. But the danger will never disappear entirely.

As she takes the turn-off that leads to the Callaghan gate a jackrabbit, still sporting patches of white winter fur, streaks across the asphalt in front of her, startling a flock of ring-necked pheasants from the grass at the other side. Kirsten gives a small, delighted exclamation as they rise, their wings drumming the bright air. They wheel out over the meadow, the sun catching the brilliant emerald feathers of head and throat, splitting the light into rainbows like a nimbus about them. “Oh my god,” she breathes. “What was—” Abruptly her voice sharpens. “What is that?”

Directly ahead of them, precisely in the middle of the cattle guard, lies a low shape of grizzled fur. Perhaps a meter long and two-thirds as wide, it swells up on its bandy legs, its lips curled back from teeth like roofing nails. It hisses, thrusting its squat body toward the truck, then rocking back on its haunches with a low growl.

Koda brakes the pickup about ten feet short of the gate. “It’s a badger. And he’s right bang in the middle where I can’t go around him.”

”But I thought they were, well—smaller,” Kirsten protests. “Like weasels.”

“City girl,” Koda teases gently. “This is a full-grown old man, and he’s defending his territory.”

“Yo!” comes Manny’s voice from the back. “What’s going on up there?”

“Badger in the gate!” Koda yells back at him and leans long and hard on the horn.

In response, the badger inflates himself further, the black and white stripes on his face wrinkling into a snarl, and lunges a foot toward the truck. The difference in distance is small, but it is enough that his teeth seem at least twice as long. His claws, curling at the ends over the bars of the cattle guard, could pass for daggers.

Koda leans on the horn again.

The badger swells, fur bristling, and feints at the pickup a second time. Kirsten flinches back in her seat, then gives an embarrassed grin. “They don’t eat trucks, do they?”

“Nah,” says Koda. “Just tractors.” And she shoves her elbow down on the horn a third time.

The badger does not budge. The truck rocks suddenly, and Manny runs past the cab, halting halfway between the front bumper and the gate. “Hoka!” he yells, waving his arms windmill fashion. “Le yo! Beat it! Ekta yo gni! Amscray!”

The badger snarls again, pushing up on its short legs and swiping at the air in front of his face with a set of claws like the prongs of a front-loader.

“Manny, dammit!”

“Get back here, you idiot!” Kirsten’s shout mingles with Tacoma’s as Koda leans on the horn again and guns the engine.

“Shoo!” yells Manny, undeterred. He waves his hat in a figure eight in front of him

The badger does not even twitch. An awful stench pervades the air, not so sharp as skunk spray, earthier, muskier. Manny flaps his hat again, this time in front of his face, coughing. “Please?” he chokes. “Le yo? Pretty please?”

From the back of the truck comes a soft, high whine, followed by a yip. Coyote, wanting out. The badger’s head tilts for a moment. Then he bares his teeth at Manny again, growling low in his throat.

“Get back in the fucking truck, cuz!” Tacoma bellows. There is more thudding and rocking in the cargo bed, Tacoma getting to his feet and aiming a rifle loaded with a trank dart over the roof of the cab. “Damn, I don’t know which of you dimwits to shoot!”

Coyote whines again, giving a series of soft yips. It is a greeting, not an alarm. Koda scans the meadow, from the line of trees along a low ridge to the woods and the drop-off of the limestone outcropping on the other side. No other coyotes are visible. None answers their returning brother’s call.