Brave Warrior by Ann Hood Page A

asked evenly.
    “A…a feather,” Maisie said.
    By now, Felix had joined them.
    “You lost the feather?” he said.
    Maisie nodded.
    “What is so important about this feather?” Curly asked Felix.
    “It’s from home,” Felix said carefully. “It’s hard toexplain, but we need to give it to you in order to go back.”
    Curly’s face grew thoughtful.
    “This feather has power?” he asked finally.
    “Yes,” Felix and Maisie both answered.
    He seemed to consider this carefully.
    “Come,” he said to them. “We will go to my father and seek his advice.”

    “How could you do something like that?” Felix whispered to Maisie as they walked across the empty field.
    By now, the people were loading their horses with their belongings, preparing to leave.
    They found Worm throwing buffalo hides onto a horse and securing them with rawhide.
    “Father,” Curly said. “Do you have your medicine bundle?”
    Worm shook his head no.
    “What?” Maisie exclaimed. “Where is it?”
    “Little Thunder borrowed it,” Worm said, surprised by Maisie’s reaction. “He needed good luck.”
    “But where is Little Thunder?” Felix asked.
    Worm shrugged and pointed toward the horizon.
    “Gone,” he said simply.
    Frightened, Maisie looked at Felix. He looked back at her, fear in his eyes.
    Curly said, “Little Thunder does need good luck. Your feather will give him special power.”
    “No, no,” Felix said. “You don’t understand.
We
need that feather.”
    “To give to me,” Curly said.
    “Right,” Felix said.
    “I give it to him,” Curly said, satisfied.
    “You can’t,” Maisie insisted.
    Worm spoke softly, his voice tinged with sadness.
    “Four summers ago, a great council met at Fort Laramie to end the government’s intrusion on our land and our people. They insisted we choose a chief, someone to tell us what to do. All of us! The Lakota and the Crow and the Cheyenne, the Arapaho and Shoshone. As if one man could order so many different people.”
    Worm paused, considering this idea before he continued.
    “Since we do not believe in such a person, the government chose for us. They gave us presents andmoney so that the white settlers could move safely along the Holy Road. They were satisfied with this. But no one, not Conquering Bear, who they named chief, not me, no one, rules the Lakota.”
    He set his dark eyes directly on Maisie.
    “No one rules the Lakota because we own nothing and nobody. You see?”
    “I understand,” Maisie said, “but—”
    “Little Thunder needed good luck,” Worm reminded her.
    She watched as he climbed on his horse and slowly joined the tribe as they left what had been their village.
    “How can we find Little Thunder?” Felix asked Curly.
    “You can ride with us,” Curly said, his voice heavy with resignation. “Maybe we see him. Maybe not.”

    “Arapaho,” a voice whispered to Curly through the tepee flaps a few nights later.
    They had ridden for days across the plains before finally setting up their tepees. Maisie and Felix were so dispirited that they did not even feel relieved to be off horseback and on the soft buffalo hides, gazing upat the stars through the opening at the very top of the tepee. Without that feather, they were trapped here in 1800s, out in the Great Plains, with no hope of getting back home to Newport.
    Curly sat up.
    “Are they planning a raid?” Curly asked.
    “In the morning,” came the answer.
    Then the sound of footsteps hurrying away.
    Maisie shivered despite the warm blanket covering her. She thought of her bed in the Princess Room, with its supersoft sheets and silk canopy. She thought about the big pink poufe, and how she liked to sink into it and think her thoughts. All of those things seemed impossibly far away, and Maisie feared she would never see Elm Medona, or her mother, again.
    “We must prepare for battle,” Curly said to Felix.
    “Battle?” Felix sputtered.
    “Maybe get good horses,” Curly added.
    Felix