hunchedover at first, staring at his feet, and would not speak. At last, in a voice filled with anguish, he said to Holy Track. âI never knew you were hiding in there. My words were not for you to hear.â
Holy Track glared, angry at his uncle for a moment, then he shrugged and pretended that he didnât care.
Wild plum trees were blooming in the scrub. Willow had leafed out narrow and green, and the sloughs glittered in the early light. The question of a tree and a place arose among the chimookamanag. However, they were diverted by two others who appeared dragging Cuthbert behind a horse. They pulled him slowly, so they could hang him, too. Cuthbert looked like a big caterpillar coated with gray dust. They cut him out of his ropes and hoisted him into the wagon. He lay still, blinking up at the others.
âAh,â said Cuthbert after a little while, from his bloody face, âthey have rubbed off the worst of my nose. It is a pity to die now that I am handsome.â
âYouâre still ugly, my brother,â said Asiginak.
âThen I wonât be such a loss to the women,â said Cuthbert. âIt is a comfort.â
The wagon jostled them along in a friendly way. As they crossed the boundary into the fields and roads off the reservation, a farmer or two stood in his field, stilled and planted, and watched the slow procession of men, horses, dogs, wagon, and trussed Indians, pass by.
The Baby
MOOSHUM LOOKED OVER at his daughters, who had begun arguing away at the end of the yard. He swigged precisely at his medicine. Suddenly, Mama and Geraldine quit talking and frowned up at the sky. They walked over to the clothesline, but before they had even plucked off one clothespin, they resumed arguing. Instead of taking in the rest of the wash, the two looked over at us to make sure that we werenât listening. When they saw us watching, they swished their skirts and strode swiftly around to the front of the house. We turned back to Mooshum. He told us other things he knew. How the littlebrother of a woman named Electa Hoagâwell, he wasnât little, exactly, at seventeenâhad run away in the night just after the murder, taking two of her newly baked loaves, his shoes, a woolen jacket, and an extra pair of overalls. Her husband Oricâs cap was also missing from the hook by the door. Oric had gone off so quickly, summoned by Colonel Benton Lungsford and the sheriff, that heâd forgotten to wonder where heâd put the cap. Electa might have said something about Tobek running off when the men came back from the farm, not long after. She might have said something, but she was too surprised by the baby Oric held up there on the horse. She was too distracted by it, and then absorbed when he leaned over the saddle and transferred it into her arms. Instead of screaming, the baby just gave her a calm and trusting look, a direct look, like it was all grown up now but still caught in the tiny body. Oh, it screamed later, she told Mooshum, it turned into a baby again. That was once the men had rustled up some food for themselves and gone and she was alone cleaning it and trying to feed it. After she knew about the murders, Electa decided that she would tell Oric that he must have taken the cap with him and lost it, laid it down in shock somewhere on the farm. Knowing what had happened, she decided that she would not let on that Tobek was missing, run off, not for a while, not for as long as she could.
âIf she had toldâ¦â said Mooshum. âIf only she had toldâ¦and then there was Johann Vogeli. My old friend Vogeli. He was coming back from the barn when he saw his father, Frederic, smoke a cigarette in the middle of the day.â
Â
âWhatâs so strange about that?â I asked.
âI donât know,â said Mooshum.
Vogeli
FREDERIC VOGELI WAS standing in the yard talking everyday German to the Buckendorfs. Johannâs late mother had
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