Spirit Warriors: The Concealing

Part 2

The sun was slowly setting and a bone-chilling coolness set in. The evenings are always cool in this eastern part of Montana where the prairies meet the mountains. A wind picked up and seemed to steal my breath. I looked around at the beauty of the land around me and I felt peaceful. I love this land because I see it for what it is. I am not deceived by it, nor do I take it for granted. It is a cold, savage, beautiful place where the living is hard and dying is way too easy.

We would be spending another night with Archie in the tepees tonight. We had spent many nights out here with each other and with Archie. I couldn’t even begin to count them. Almost every weekend and more often in the summer, for years, we had been out there. At first our parents wouldn’t even entertain the idea of all of us being out there, a bunch of kids out alone in the woods. But Archie changed their minds. Archie and the hired hands at the Flying A looked out for us and Archie was always with us. Our parents respected and trusted Archie; everyone did. Ollie’s parents were the last to allow Archie to have us out overnight, but Ollie knew how to throw a fit and pout until he got what he wanted. Ollie said, “Being an only child has privileges.” If the rest of us tried that crap, we would have gotten a good whipping or been grounded forever.

Ollie’s parents finally learned what the rest of us already knew, that Archie would always protect us. Plus Archie didn’t put up with too much fooling around.

I looked around at our collection of five tepees. I had to smile when I looked at Lilly’s pink tepee and Bets’s green one.

Archie had shown all of us how to make and assemble a canvas tepee and he spent nights with us in the clearing. It took us a long time to make a big tepee. First, we had to assemble the frame, and that took several months to find the tallest thin trees to lie at the correct angles to form the frame. Then we had to have enough canvas to fit the big tepee. We laid the canvas in the grass and all of us painted bows and arrows and spears on it, and then sewed the canvas into the shape we needed to cover the tepee. Finally, we draped the canvas on the frame. Ollie climbed up the poles and tied the canvas down, careful to leave a hole for the fire to smoke. This first tepee was for Charlie.

That first summer, we all slept in Charlie’s tepee. Every night, we would call out “goodnight” to each other. It took a while by the time we all said it to each other. We giggled and laughed when we missed someone, or made up funny names for each other.

We laughed the hardest at Ollie and his “barking spiders.” That boy had some serious gas. He said he was lactose intolerant, but even when he didn’t have milk or anything with milk in it, he was still the gassiest person ever. Ollie wanted to try and light one of his farts on fire and see if he could start a fire. Archie told him, “Son, you will burn your tepee to the ground.” We laughed so hard we couldn’t stop.

I made sure that my pallet was next to Charlie’s and away from Ollie’s. My nightmares didn’t bother Charlie like they did the others, and he didn’t fart all night long.

Every summer we finished a tepee. The second summer, we worked on Lilly’s tepee. Charlie said she was next, and although we didn’t know why then, we all went along with the plan. Lilly wanted a pink tepee, and we dyed the canvas pink for her and painted white roses and lilies on it.

Ollie thought it was weird. “Whoever has heard of a pink tepee?” he asked. Lilly just laughed a delighted happy laugh. “It doesn’t matter, Ollie. It is mine. And besides, you were born in a pink hospital.” She stuck out her tongue at him. “Whatever,” he yelled back.Lilly turned and looked at her tepee with her arms crossed around herself like she was hugging herself. Her head was down. I walked behind her. “Hey, what’s up?” I asked.

Lilly looked at me with her warm brown eyes. “I was just thinking that this is the first time that I have ever had a real place of my own. Something that was made just for me.”