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She broke into a mad run, and when she reached Carole’s side, she fell to her knees. Leonida stifled a cry behind her hand when she found Carole gasping for breath. Trevor was overwrought with fright as his mother clasped his hand hard, her eyes wild.
“Carole, oh, Carole, I’m so sorry,” Leonida said, gently touching her cheek. She recoiled and withdrew the hand quickly when she found just how cold Carole’s flesh was.
Leonida gave Sage a troubled glance when he came to rest on his haunches beside her, his own hand testing the feel of Carole’s face.
When Sage slowly drew his hand away and gave Leonida a slow shake of the head, meaning that Carole was not going to make it, Leonida swallowed a growing lump in her throat. She had to find courage enough to face the next few moments. It was necessary for her to keep her composure.
A little boy would soon depend on her.
“Leonida?” Carole whispered, her voice scarcely a scratch of a sound as she turned and gazed up at her. “Lean close. I’ve . . . something . . . to say.”
Willing the tears not to fall from her eyes, Leonida leaned her face down close to Carole’s. “What is it?” she murmured, her voice breaking. “Tell me.”
Carole reached a trembling hand to Leonida’s and gripped it softly. “Trevor,” she whispered, stopping to hack a painful-sounding cough. “You promised to care for him. Please love him as though he were your own.”
Sniffling, tears near, Leonida replied, nodding, “I shall.” Her heart ached with the torment of the moment.
Carole slowly closed her eyes and sucked in a shallow breath, then looked up at Leonida again. “Do not cast blame,” she said, again coughing fitfully. “It is a blessing to die. The . . . pain is . . . unbearable. Teach Trevor not to cast blame either, upon the Navaho chief. He has done me a favor if traveling up the mountainside has hastened my death. If I had put a gun to my brow, God would not . . . have allowed me to . . . enter Heaven. Now I look forward . . . to . . . the opened gates of Heaven, finally . . . at . . . peace.”
Leonida could not hold back the tears any longer. They gushed from her eyes in warm torrents against her cheeks. Before she had the chance to say anything else, Carole was dead.
Trevor wailed and threw himself upon his mother. Sage rose to his feet, took the child away from his mother, and held him tightly as he walked him away from the death scene. He took him to the cliff and showed him the wonders of the valley below, trying to draw his attention from the truth of the moment—that he no longer had a mother.
“Do you see the sheep, Trevor?” Sage asked, pointing to a flock of sheep running down a hillside, three goats leading them, and a small dog barking alongside. Behind came a Navaho brave, carrying a tall, curved stick. “The sheep were named ‘churros’ by the Spanish. See how they are so long-legged? They are thin and light with long legs and coarse, smooth wool, often brown. Do you see how some have four horns? Do you not think they are strange-looking with so many horns?”
Trevor finally stopped wailing. He wiped his nose and sniffled as he leaned away from Sage to take a better look. “They are funny animals,” he said softly. Then he turned to Sage, his eyes wide. “You have a pretty animal. Your horse. I like it.”
Sage smiled down at him. “You like horses?” he said.
“It would be fun to have one of my own,” Trevor said, again wiping his nose with the back of his hand. He cast his eyes downward. “I will never have a horse. I don’t even have a father or mother now.”
Sage drew Trevor into his embrace again and held him close, feeling a sudden bonding with this small, innocent child. Sage felt in part responsible for his mother’s death. He would spend a lifetime making it up to the child. If Leonida had agreed to raise the child as her own, then the child would be Sage’s as well.
“You will have a horse,” Sage said, gazing down into Trevor’s dark eyes. “One day you will own many. You will be raised in the tradition of the Navaho, as a Navaho.”
Trevor’s eyes widened and his lips parted in a pleasurable gasp. “I have played Indian and soldier before,” he said. “I was always the Indian. Now I will be one for real? I will one day fight the soldiers for real? That will be fun.”
Sage frowned down at Trevor. “E-do-ta, no. Warring is never fun,” he said. “It is not a game that one plays for fun. When soldiers and Navaho shoot at one another, it is not with toy firearms. They shoot real bullets and fire real arrows. They kill. They maim. Never want to go to war with anyone, unless you are forced to.”
“You will soon be forced to fight the soldiers from Fort Defiance?” Trevor asked innocently enough.
“E-do-ta, no. I would hope that it would be prevented,” Sage mumbled, not wanting to be forced to explain to Trevor that he, the small child that he was, was one of the pawns i
n this real war game with the white pony soldiers.
In time, Sage knew, Trevor would understand how it had happened , and why, if fighting did break out between his people and the soldiers. And Sage expected that it might, now that Kit Carson and the soldiers had left Fort Defiance to search for him and the captives. Sage’s only hope was that they would not find his stronghold.
“We must go back and see to your mother’s burial,” Sage said, his voice guarded as he gazed down at the child in his arms. He expected another outburst of tears, but to his amazement, and growing pride, the child seemed to be accepting his loss like a man. He saw in Trevor many possibilities. He seemed the sort that could be taught well the ways of the Navaho.
Trevor nodded.
Sage carried him back to the campsite. Leonida met them and lovingly took Trevor in her arms. “Sage, there is too much rock to dig a grave for Carole,” she whispered so that Trevor would not hear.
“We will place her as we place our own to those whose deaths come to them in the mountains,” Sage said. He gazed over at Carole, and then looked over his shoulder at the very spot where he and Leonida had found such love and peace within each other’s arms. It was a place of sweet fragrances, soft winds, and sunshine. At night the stars and moon would caress Carole as she began her long journey to her land of the hereafter.
Yes, Sage concluded to himself. It was a place where this kind woman could rest in peace as she waited to join those who had passed away before her.
“The Navaho do not touch the corpses of their own people, and never those of outsiders,” Sage said, looking around at the mournful women. “Come together, women, and carry your dead to the cliff yonder. There she will rest in peace until eternity.”
