The Five Dollar Mail Book 3: The Road Home

1: And A Little Child

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. Chapter artwork of Zitkala-Ša as Still Water Woman made by found images by me. All graphics by me. 

Book 1: The Green, Book 2: Lynch's Boys, Book 3: The Road Home, and the Riders & Kickers Anthology are available on Amazon under the name Regina Shelley. So if you hate waiting for chapter posts and/or want a more polished read, the finished product is available now.

Still Water Woman scowled into her hearthfire as she turned the stones at its perimeter, warming them evenly. She glanced at Eagle Bone, shouldering open her doorflap and carrying the limp, gray-faced man into the shadowy warmth inside her lodge. Normally, Still Water Woman wouldn't have the fire stoked this much on a comfortable spring day, and the air felt stuffy to her. "I would like my brother to be gentle with his captive," she said pointedly into the fire. "The man's spirit is barely in his body. It is not good to shake someone who is this cold."

Eagle Bone frowned, grunting as he lay the white man on the tidy, flattened grass of the floor and helped her ease him out of his soaked buckskin coat. "My sister would not have to worry about that if she had not let Runs Laughing talk her into bringing him in here in the first place. This is foolish. He was with Richard Galloway. My sister should be sewing this white man's yellow hair into a hoop right now, not trying to bring him back from the dead."

Still Water Woman pointed to the abraded, bruised ligature marks on the man's wrists, the traces of bruising on his pale face. "This man was not Richard Galloway's friend or brother."

Eagle Bone grunted unhappily, slicing away the man's wet clothing and carefully easing him into the blankets and furs Still Water Woman had prepared. Cool, white sunlight shafted down through the smoke hole at the peak of the lodge and Still Water Woman quickly glanced over the unconscious man's nakedness, taking inventory of his injuries. Bruises on his face and hands, cut on his palm, mark over his hip...probably from a kick or a fall. Knee is scraped and bruised and swollen. None of this will kill him. It can wait. She grabbed his jaw and turned his head, looking at the light abrasions under his jaw. This man was a captive. He has been fighting, and was bound. She flipped a light trade blanket over him and tucked it around the contours of his slender body. Settling a hand over his chest, she felt his weak heartbeat slowly but insistently fluttering within. Grabbing a stone from around the fire, she settled it carefully between his legs where the big arteries were. She snugged more stones into his armpits and then lay smaller ones against his belly and chest before covering him over with layers of furs.

Eagle Bone glanced at her before stooping on his haunches and staring into the fire. He gave her a sullen glance before fixing his brooding gaze once again on the glowing embers. "This is risky," he said unhappily to the flames before him. The stranger's wet clothing had gotten his shirt wet, and shook the damp leather against his chest in the heat of the hearth. "I do not like having this enemy in the lodge of my sister."

Still Water Woman sighed and sat back, surveying the stranger in her lodge. She would not have guessed he was alive if she had not felt his heart beating beneath her hand. It was almost as if the river had washed all the color from him, leaving his skin gray and his long hair the color of fading cottonwood leaves. She wondered if his eyes were as pale as the rest of him beneath the golden-lashed eyelids. Instead of the coarse hair white men frequently grew on their faces, his jaw was dusted lightly with silky, barely-there stubble and she figured he was younger than she by a few years, probably between twenty or twenty three winters at the oldest. His hands were calloused, his wiry muscles well defined and taut. This one is used to hard work. He's not as soft as his delicate face makes him appear. The man Richard Galloway had been strong enough when they'd dealt with him in the past, but he had soft hands. He was the type of white man who used money and guns to get what he wanted. She wondered if this one had fought Richard Galloway, and wondered how that had ended.

Another streak of sunlight cut into the dimness of the lodge and Runs Laughing stuck her head inside. "Is he dead?"

Still Water Woman smiled fondly. Runs Laughing was always bringing things back to the lodge. Lizards and spiders and puppies. The puppy had actually turned out to be a good dog, and she wished it was here now instead of back at the main camp with the other dogs. She would have put it into the furs with her patient for extra warmth. This particular find, she knew, was going to prove problematic. But her sister had a kind heart, and that was worth something. "No, little sister." She shook her head. "But listen, he is very cold, and his heart is very weak."

Runs Laughing walked tentatively over, looking down at the motionless stranger with curiosity. "What will we do if he wakes up?" She said.

"If he is anything like the other one, he will feel my knife," Eagle Bone muttered. "If he is not, we will sell him to the bluecoats."

"I do not wish to sell him," Runs Laughing said, sitting down. "And I do not like bluecoats."

Still Water Woman raised an eyebrow, watching her brother turn to look at Runs Laughing with an expression of surprise on his face. She looked back over at her little sister, waiting to see where this was going.

Eagle Bone looked amused. "My littlest sister is a child. She does not..."

"The sweetgrass-haired man belongs to me," Runs Laughing said with an air of finality. "I found him and claim him as my captive. My brother Eagle Bone does not say what becomes of him. I, Runs Laughing, do."

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