Brave Warrior by Ann Hood

falcon.”
    “What does a falcon mean?” Maisie asked him.
    “Your life path is individuality,” Curly said. “You must learn patience with those who don’t understand that.”
    “Really?” Maisie said, as a feeling of peace came over her.
    Felix was thinking hard. Listening to Curly describe his vision and his father’s interpretation of it, something had struck him hard. Curly was told not to be boastful about his accomplishments, to letothers sing about his victories. This lesson seemed like one that Felix needed to learn, too. Hadn’t he betrayed Maisie because he thought he was better than her in some ways?
    Emotion tore through him, and he grabbed his sister hard and held her in a tight hug.
    Curly looked at them knowingly.
    “The vision quest teaches us many things,” he said.
    He turned to leave, but then returned as if he had forgotten something.
    “The horseman,” Curly said, “he instructed me to wear a single red-tailed hawk feather instead of a warbonnet. A warrior without a warbonnet,” he added.
    Maisie and Felix looked at each other.
    “I think it’s time,” Felix said softly.
    But Maisie was now searching the empty space where the tepees had been. Yellow Feather and the women had finished taking them down, and there was nothing left where she and Felix had slept.
    “Maisie,” Felix said. “The feather.”
    Maisie looked back at Felix, then at Curly, beforeshe broke into a run. Somehow she had to find whoever took down that tepee and the small bag that had been hanging on the post. The bag where she’d hidden the red-tailed hawk feather.

CHAPTER 9
Brave Warrior
    M aisie stared in the empty space where the tepee had stood. How would she ever track down that bag? Without it, there was no way back home. Strange, Maisie thought, just a few days ago Newport, Rhode Island, was the last place she wanted to be. But something about her vision quest and the falcon made her feel more comfortable in her own skin. Her life path, Curly had said, was individuality. Perhaps if she stopped caring about Bitsy Beal and Avery Mason and the rest of them, she might be able to follow her life path, whatever that meant.
    But if she didn’t find that bag, she wouldn’t get the opportunity to find out.
    She didn’t realize that Curly had followed her.He was standing beside her now, looking confused and displeased.
    “There was a bag,” Maisie began. “Hanging on one of the poles in the tepee.”
    Curly looked even more displeased.
    “The medicine bundle?” he demanded.
    “I…I don’t think so,” Maisie said. “It didn’t have medicine in it.”
    “You looked inside?” Curly said angrily.
    “I wanted a safe place to put something,” Maisie tried explaining. But Curly was not listening.
    He folded his arms across his chest and glared at her.
    “That was my father’s medicine bundle,” he said. “No one except the medicine man and my father knows what is inside it. Now its power is destroyed. Useless.”
    “I’m sorry,” Maisie said.
    Curly glared at her.
    “The only reason you were allowed to stay is because the Lakota share their food, their tepees. My father insisted, even though I told him I do not trust the white settlers. Even young ones like you.”
    “I’m so sorry,” Maisie said again, close to tears.“Where is the medicine bundle?”
    “My father has it with him. He will need it as we move past the settlers.”
    “Maybe I can talk to the medicine man and make it powerful again?” Maisie said hopefully.
    “Ha!” Curly snorted. “Do you have two or three horses for a new medicine bundle?”
    “No.”
    “Then you cannot help,” he said dismissively. “You’ve done enough damage. It is time for you to go off on your own. Back to your people.”
    With that he turned on his heel, away from her.
    “I can’t go back without what I put in that bag!” Maisie shouted after him.
    Curly stopped. He turned around slowly, his eyes steely.
    “What did you put in there?” he