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The sounds were soft and quiet in the forest, as though the birds were distant, instead of overhead. Squirrels scampered up the trees, some seeming to take wing as they jumped from limb to limb, tree to tree.
“I’m so glad that you allowed me to come with you today,” Lauralee said, smiling over at Dancing Cloud. “I just wish Brian Brave Walker could have joined us. I feel that this length of time away from him will erase perhaps what closeness that may have begun to form between us. I would hate to think that I would have to begin all over again trying to draw him into liking me.”
She paused. “Yet I truly see that it is best that he not accompany us,” she said contemplatively. “His fear of traveling to the trading post seemed so intense. What do you think he fears there? When asked, he always shies away from answering.”
Dancing Cloud’s eyes narrowed with thought, then he turned to Lauralee. “It is someone he fears, not something,” he said thickly. “I gather from this that perhaps the person or persons he has fled from trades also at this trading post. If so, and this person came to trade at the same moment we were there, and he saw Brian Brave Walker, the child’s life might have that quickly been put in danger.”
He sighed heavily. “We must protect this child from all harm, especially those who have filled his life with hate and fear,” he said, leaning over to pat his stallion when it gave off a nervous whinny.
Lauralee sensed something might be wrong. Her own horse reacted to it. She turned halfway around in her saddle as did Dancing Cloud. She looked slowly through the tangled underbrush and trees.
When she saw nothing, she gazed at Dancing Cloud. “I’ll be glad when we get to the trading post,” she murmured. “Although beautiful, there is something eerie about how everything is kept so shadowed from the lack of the sun’s ability to penetrate the thick foliage overhead. Anyone or anything could be lurking in those shadows. Perhaps even the very person Brian Brave Walker fears.”
“Do not allow your imagination to work overtime,” Dancing Cloud said, chuckling. “I have traveled this very path many times before. Never have I been accosted.”
“I would have thought there would have been others traveling with us today,” Lauralee said, taking another nervous glance over her shoulder.
She could not shake the feeling of being stalked. She blamed her insecurities on Clint McCloud. It was not all that foolish of her to worry about him, much less think that he was possibly there, stalking her and Dancing Cloud. Her Uncle Abner had told her that Clint McCloud now made his permanent residence in North Carolina. She prayed that his home was far from these mountains.
If not . . . ?
She was glad when Dancing Cloud interrupted her troubled thoughts.
“The others made trade while I was gone,” Dancing Cloud said. “What I trade today is what I had accumulated before I received word from your father, requesting my presence at his bedside. It has kept well in my absence. I need supplies now. So now I make trade.”
“What do you plan to get today for your trade?” she asked, herself having made a list of household goods that she needed for cooking.
“Many things,” he said, his eyes dancing into hers. “And what do you plan to take from the shelves at the trading post?”
“Many things,” Lauralee teased back, envisioning herself making pies and other surprises for Dancing Cloud. While she had lived at the orphanage she had been assigned several days in the kitchen to assist the cooks. She had learned at age ten how to make her first pie. “I think it will be fun to gather kitchen supplies for special meals that I plan to make for you, my handsome Cherokee.”
“And so you also cook as well as you make love?” he teased.
Lauralee blushed and laughed softly.
Dancing Cloud chuckled at her innocent bashfulness. He then gazed around him, his eyes feasting on the beauty of the mountainside. “The mountain has been good to me this trading period,” he said, his horse stepping high over a fallen tree branch. Lauralee’s horse followed his lead. “I have much ginseng and other medicinal herbs this time to trade.”
“I am surprised that ginseng is found in these mountains, and that this very ginseng will go as far as China for use by the Chinese,” Lauralee said.
“‘Sang,’ it is called by some. But my people usually call it atali-guli, which means ‘the mountain climber.’ My favorite name though is ‘Little man, most powerful magician. ’” Dancing Cloud smiled. “I have heard that the Chinese people will trade silver for this little man.”
“Why do you call the root a man and a magician?” Lauralee asked, arching an eyebrow.
“Because the root often has the shape of a man, with arms, legs and a head,” Dancing Cloud explained. “Some of my people even believe the root has a magic power that makes it invisible to those who are unworthy of collecting it. I do not believe this superstition, but still, I always show respect to the little man. When I am gathering ginseng, I leave the first three plants I find, only digging up the fourth. I say a prayer of thanksgiving to the atali-guli, and drop a bead into the hole as an offering to the plant spirit. In this fashion, there is always more ginseng to be found in the woods where I hunt.”
Lauralee looked blankly at him.
Dancing Cloud recognized the
puzzlement in her eyes. “You will learn in time everything about my people’s beliefs that for now puzzles you,” he said. “The white man looks simply at things. The red man sees the mystery about life and learns from it. The white man seems not to care. They just take and rarely give back.”
“I care about every living thing,” Lauralee said softly. “My feelings run deep for everything and everyone. And I am eager to learn, Dancing Cloud. Please teach me that which I never learned while I was packed like a sardine among a countless number of other orphans at the orphanage. No individual time was taken. I am free now not only to love, but to learn.”
“See the cedar trees?” Dancing Cloud said, gesturing toward a grove of trees at his right side. “It is held sacred above other trees. Its small green twigs are thrown upon the fire as incense in certain ceremonies, to counteract the effect of harmful dreams. It is believed that malevolent ghosts cannot endure the smell, but the wood itself is considered too sacred to be used as fuel. According to myth, the red color comes originally from the blood of a wicked magician whose severed head was hung at the top of a tall cedar tree.”
He gestured toward another tree, where strips of bark lay feathered on the ground at the base of its trunk, leaving long stretches of the tree bare. “Lightning has struck that tree,” he said solemnly. “But it has not died. Because the tree had the strength to survive the lightning, we believe it can convey that same fortitude to others. When our men prepare for Cherokee games of competition, we burn branches from such a tree and then use the coal to paint designs on our bodies. The force of the thunderbolt will then bring us victory in the contest.”
Lauralee smiled at the innocence of these practices, then turned her eyes straight ahead when the barking of a dog a short distance away made her horse jerk its head with a start. She yanked on her reins to steady her horse.
