Little Sharpshooter

Little Sharpshooter Chap 2

Randy didn't know what to do next. She roamed through the house looking in trunks and thumbing through books trying to decide if she would go to Miss Marla or do something else. Pa wanted his ashes with Mama and baby Jonah. She knew what that meant. With the pain in her leg, she couldn't do anything on her own. She had to leave Pa where he lay in the dirt. Randy was going to have to get Cheveyo to help. Maybe he could help her decide what she should do once they were done taking care of Pa.

Randy saddled up Al to search the hills for the lonely Indian. Every bounce shot pain through her leg. She was relieved to find Cheveyo's partially underground home right where she thought it would be. It had been a long time since she'd been there and had never sought him out on her own before. Hopping up to his door on one leg, she knocked hoping he would be there.

"Oh, Little Hawk!" Cheveyo's leathery brown face wrinkled with his smile. "Where is Big Hawk?"

Randy couldn't hold it together. Tears streamed down her face. She shook her head unable to speak. Cheveyo hugged her, he knew. She bounced on one leg when he shifted her off balance and she cried out.

"Little Hawk, what happened?" He pulled away, looking her over. 

With Cheveyo's help, she limped into his cool, earthy hut full of pungent smells from the herbs he kept in stacks along the walls. He left his people long ago to live a solitary life in the hills. Much older than her pa, many sought him for his Indian knowledge and wisdom since he was known as a peacemaker. That was how he lived peacefully in the desert. Her pa had always protected Cheveyo. Everyone in town and in the surrounding homesteads knew that. Randy wondered how Cheveyo would fare once news of her pa's death spread.

Cheveyo was there the day they burned her mama's and baby brother's bodies. Even though it wasn't the way of his people, he performed a sacred ceremony that day. She was calling on him to do it again.

It took some time before Randy could speak. "Two men killed Pa this morning. I hid in the attic but I didn't play the game as well as I could have. They shot me too." Randy wiped her face on her sleeve. "I need your help to take care of Pa."

Cheveyo sat on a stool in front of Randy. Miss Marla would approve that she was proper, wearing a skirt instead of trousers. He moved her skirt out of the way as he lifted her leg, rested it on his own, and examined her calf carefully, taking off the bloody bandage. He scrunched up his face, looking away.

"This is bad. How are you still walking?" Cheveyo rested her foot on the stool. He left to find a bucket of water. He plopped the bucket down, splashing Randy before easing her leg into it. She whimpered and gripped the wood of the chair.

"If it's not clean, you can get sick." He rummaged around the shelves on the wall, set some jars on the table. He dropped several herbs and water in a bowl to make a paste with a round mallet.

"I wanna go home and take care of Pa. He's still lyin' where he died."

"We need to take care of the living first. The dead can wait." Cheveyo cleaned the loosening dried blood off while her leg was immersed in water. He rested her foot on the stool again to let it dry while he cut strips of cloth to wrap over it.

Cheveyo slathered on the paste and wrapped it tight before he was ready to take her back home to take care of her pa.

By the end of the day they piled all the cut down sagebrush to make a large bed to set her pa's body on. With difficulty, she kneeled at his side to take off the necklace he always wore with her ma's wedding band on it. She removed his ring from his stiff finger and placed it on the chain with her ma's. Latching it around her neck, tears dripped off her nose onto his white lifeless face.