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the warriors are dead? They would still be far from home. We must protect our women and children, even if it means we are strangers in the land."
    His mouth made a straight line. His words came like a sigh. "We will go on to the land of the Crows," he said. "There we can hunt buffalo and replenish our herds. The Blue Coats do not bother the Crow."
    At first I was sad. Then like a ray of sunlight, a thought came into my head. If the war was really over, Two Moons would let the marriage go forward. I began to feel happy. When we reached the Crows, Swan Necklace could find colored earths and paint our marriage blanket. Then we could have our own
dpi. When my father felt better, I would speak to him about it.
    I dropped back to ride with the children. I showed them the squirrels scampering up the trees and leaping from limb to limb. I pointed out the hawks that hung high in the sky and the woodchucks sitting beside their holes. I called out when we passed patches of ripening blackberries. I told them about the wire strung on poles beside the trail.
    "See the silver wire," I said. "It talks all day and night. It sings like a lark, sending the settlers' words from one town to the next."
    The children's laughter rang out for the first time since we left Salmon Creek. They did not believe that a wire could send talk across the miles. I found it hard to believe myself, but my father had told me about the click-clack. He said that the clicks ran through the wire like evil spirits, telling the one-armed general which trails we took and where we camped each night.
    Swan Necklace joined us. We rode side by side, our legs touching. I looked at Swan Necklace and thought about our marriage and my cheeks turned scarlet.
    To hide my embarrassment, I told the children stories about Coyote, the trickster with magic powers. One of their favorite stories was about the time Coyote created the tribes. One summer in the days before there were people, Coyote learned that a fearsome monster was eating all the animals. Coyote went to the river where the monster lived and let the terrible creature eat him, too. Once Coyote was inside the monster's belly, he started a fire. With a stone knife, he cut the monster's heart from its body. As the monster lay dying, Coyote slashed open its belly and freed all the animals.
    Coyote cut the monster's body into pieces and flung them across the land. Each piece of bloody flesh became a tribe. One piece became Flathead. Another became Crow. Another, Sioux. Another, Assiniboin. Another, Blackfoot. Another, Kutenai. Another, Bannock. Another, Cayuse. Another, Paiute.
    All the pieces were gone when Fox told Coyote that he had forgotten to throw a piece of the monster in the land beside the river where he had killed it. Coyote picked up the monster's heart and sprinkled the land with its rich blood. The drops of blood became Ne-mee-poo, the real people. Coyote never threw away the monster's heart and liver. To this day, you can see them, two huge stone mounds, in the center of our country.
    Another time Coyote and Black Bear got into a ferocious argument. Coyote was busy fishing when the argument started. He became so angry that he marched out of the river and threw his fishnet way up the hill. Then he grabbed Black Bear by the scruff of the neck and shook him hard, saying he'd teach the
bear not to bother him while he was fishing. He picked up Black Bear and threw him against the hill on the other side of the river, using his magic powers to turn the bear into stone. And there they remain to this day, high above the Clearwater, the net on one bank of the river and the bear on the other.
    I told stories until the shadows fell and we came to a halt. We had been in the valley for ten suns.

Ten
    W E HAD COME to a second vast valley of brush and willows and tall white trees. A clear stream ran silently from one far shore to another, a day's slow journey on horseback. Blossoms were scattered through the tall grass waving