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“It will be the same for you,” Dancing Butterfly said, then sucked in a quick breath and paled. “I am sorry. What I said made it sound as though you have not had a child, yet you have. How could I forget about your son David? How could I be so insensitive?”
“Many have forgotten about him,” Mary Beth said, sighing. “I never shall, though. Never, never.”
Then Mary Beth gave Dancing Butterfly a warm hug. “And do not feel bad about what you said,” she murmured. “I know what you meant.”
She stepped away from Dancing Butterfly and gazed down at her own flat belly. She placed her hands on it. “Soon, ah, soon, all will know that at long last their chief’s wife is with child,” she said excitedly. “For too many moons now I have seen our people’s eyes watching me, filled with disappointment and sadness as they gaze at my stomach. They wish for a son in their chief’s image, one that can one day be as great a leader as his ahte, his father. I have felt so, so inadequate because of those looks.”
“I am sorry you have felt that way,” Dancing Butterfly murmured. “Had our people known how they were making you feel, they would feel bad, too, for they love you, Mary Beth. Everyone loves you.”
“And I love them,” Mary Beth said, turning to go back to her lodge.
“Come inside my lodge with me,” Dancing Butterfly encouraged. “Bead with me for a while. I know how concerned you are about our husbands not being home from the hunt yet. They do not usually stay away as many nights as they have this time.”
Mary Beth looked toward the outer perimeters of the village as she had done so often since daybreak. She was puzzled over why it should take so long for the warriors to return. No doubt with the dwindling herds of buffalo, it was more difficult to find the animals.
She was especially eager for Brave Wolf to return home this time. She was certain now that she was finally with child.
She had not told Brave Wolf yet because she had not wanted to disappoint him in case she was not pregnant after all.
Now that she had counted off six full weeks since her monthly should have started, she was ready to tell Brave Wolf the wonderful news. She smiled when she saw a deer bounding away into the forest thicket.
“It is so wonderful to know that you are with child,” Dancing Butterfly said. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”
“I wanted Brave Wolf to be the first to know, but I just could not wait a moment longer to say it aloud to someone,” Mary Beth said, beaming. “That person should be you. You are such a wonderful friend.”
Dancing Butterfly giggled. “When we first met I did not treat you like a friend,” she said softly. “I was so cold . . . so cruel . . . so untrusting.” She sighed. “I was so wrong.”
“You were right not to trust me,” Mary Beth said. “I am white. Not many whites had given you cause to trust them.” She sighed and smiled. “I am so glad that you soon saw me as no threat to your people and decided to take me into your heart as your friend.”
“Special friend,” Dancing Butterfly corrected. She dropped her hands from Mary Beth’s and knelt when her son came running to her, his eyes wide with excitement.
“Mother, White Coyote opened his eyes,” Little Horse cried, flinging himself into his mother’s arms. “I just saw him do it. His eyes are such a pretty color.” He glanced toward the sky, then smiled again as he looked at his mother. “They are the color of the sky.”
He stood up and grabbed one of his mother’s hands, then reached for one of Mary Beth’s. “Come. See,” he said eagerly.
Mary Beth took one of Little Horse’s tiny hands and went with him and Dancing Butterfly to a small hut made of willow branches, where they crawled inside.
Mary Beth’s heart went out to the lone white coyote that had rejoined its tiny brothers and sisters in nursing. There was a difference between him and the others, for they were not coyotes at all, but kittens.
Two days before Brave Wolf had left for the hunt, he had found an abandoned white coyote pup not far from the village. He had searched for its mother, but finally gave up on finding her.
Devoted to his nephew Little Horse, he had brought the
pup home to him.
It was Little Horse who had ever so nonchalantly taken the pup and placed it amid five kittens as they nursed from their mother. The pup was soon nursing alongside them, as though it had been born with them.
The mother cat had taken the pup in and licked and groomed it as though it were her own.
Mary Beth was touched deeply by the sight of the kittens and coyote together, the kittens all black, contrasting with the white. And seeing the tiny pup, she had finally gotten over the fear of coyotes which had stayed with her from the first moment she had heard them howling in the darkness.
She smiled down at the mother cat, who seemed to smile back at her, for this was the very cat that had once belonged to Colonel Downing. Sweetness, as Mary Beth had named her, had given birth to many litters, all grown now and happily keeping the Crow people’s cornfields free of white-footed mice, and the huge and ugly kangaroo rats that abounded in Montana.
“You cannot see White Coyote’s eyes now,” Little Horse said, sighing. “He is feeding again. But you can come back later to see or I can bring him to you when he is through feeding.”
Mary Beth patted him on a cheek. “He is a beautiful puppy,” she murmured. “I’m glad you love him so much.”
“Uncle Brave Wolf was so nice to build this special birthing hut for the mother and her kittens,” Little Horse said. He smiled from ear to ear. “I want to give one of these kittens to each of my special friends.” He turned pleading eyes up to Mary Beth. “Aunt Mary Beth, can I? Can I have these kittens for my friends?”
