After the Thunder Read Free Page B

they’re real, all right.”
    Emily ran to Aunt Ancie and Uncle Jumper, and they all embraced. Cotannah turned to look at the woodsman again. Walks-With-Spirits. The name fit him.
    And it was one she knew she’d never heard before. So why did he seem familiar to her? There was something about the way he moved …
    He was on his knees now, mixing some medicine. His hands worked with a sure grace that looked swift but not hasty. He knew what he was doing, that showed plainly in every line of his sinewy body, and the coyote knew it, too, for it lay without struggling.
    She hoped it lived.
    The thought hit her suddenly, with a surprising force.Why? Why would she care? It was only a coyote, after all, a predator that in hard times would eat people’s live-stock.
    But she did want it to live.
    Because of the intense way Walks-With-Spirits was trying to heal it, she supposed, because his broad shoulders—and they were broader than she had noticed during that moment in the road, wide and intriguingly muscular beneath his thin shirt—bent over the animal with an air of such pure purpose.
    That was it. She wanted him to win. She wanted him to be rewarded for caring about his pet so much. When she cared about something or someone, she, too, cared with every fiber of her being.
    The thought froze her heart. It made her turn away abruptly from the sight of Walks-With-Spirits and go to Emily and her aunt and uncle. No, that was wrong. She used to care with every fiber of her being. She didn’t do that anymore; Tonio was proof of that. Caring was way too dangerous. Caring would break her heart.

Chapter 2
    “A h, and here is this new Choctaw—look at her, Jumper,” Aunt Ancie was saying, stroking Sophia’s cheek and meeting her unswerving gaze. “
Holitopa
. This child is a darling, that’s all there is to it.”
    Sophia took the endearment solemnly, as her due.
    Then, without warning, she let go of her mother’s neck and held out both her tiny hands to Ancie, who threw the end of her shawl over her shoulder and eagerly took her into her arms.
    “You are a darling, all right, your old Aunt Ancie can tell you that.”
    Ancie snuggled Sophia against her wrinkled face. For an instant, Cotannah wanted to be the one who was holding the plump baby in her arms—she wanted to feel that warmth, that trust, that innocent sweetness so close to her—but then she turned away from that sight, too. She wasn’t going to start caring a whole lot for Sophia, either, no matter how precious a baby she was.
    As suddenly as she’d gone to Ancie, Sophia wanted to be put down. She began wiggling and struggling, fussing and demanding to be free. Ancie set her on her feetand took her hand, walking with her toward the porch steps.
    “Come with me, all of you dear people,” Emily said, and linked her arm through Cotannah’s as she used to do. “Come into our home and rest yourselves. You’ve ridden a long, long way to see us.”
    Restlessness—the stinging yearning for something, anything—for going, doing, for something to change, something she even didn’t know how to name, rushed through Cotannah with a searing force. That sudden, venomous longing to be somewhere else, doing something else, she didn’t know where or what, took her more often now, especially since she no longer had Tonio to distract her.
    “No. I don’t want to go in the house.”
    Emily stopped still and looked at her, her huge brown eyes filling with such dismay that Cotannah reached out to her. Emily, no doubt, was thinking that Cotannah didn’t want to enter Tay and Emily’s home—the home of the Principal Chief that once had been considered Cotannah’s rightful place. But that wasn’t it. It was the demons that drove her.
    “I’ll come in in a minute. I want to take care of Pretty Feather first.”
    Emily glanced at the Texas vaqueros dismounting all around them and at her own two stableboys, who had come running to see the new arrivals.
    “You don’t need