last night.
Now he was waiting for her to slip—to gag, to choke or to fling the bread to the ground in disgust. But no, she would not let him win. Pride was one thing. Letting children go hungry was quite another.
Bit by bit she finished the bread, swallowing each piece as an act of sheer will. She avoided biting down or even touching the dough with her tongue. If she were to find a weevil in her mouth, her hard-won control would be lost. Ahkeah watched her every move, his eyes smoldering, his mouth twisted in a thin, humorless smile.
A gasp of relief broke over the assembly as the last bit of bread disappeared into her mouth. Miranda forced it down her convulsing throat. Done.
Flashing Ahkeah a defiant look, she glanced around frantically for water. It was Ahkeah himself who passed her a canteen. “Right from the Pecos River,” he murmured. “Just like the water we drink. Well done, Miss Howell. You’ve proved your point.”
He jerked his head in an affirming nod, and the Navajos at the front of the line spread out along the stations at the table, sacks open to receive their ration of tainted flour. Miranda gulped the brackish water, her stomach churning as people milled around her. Had she done the right thing, or should she have allowed a stubborn man his pride? Never mind, what was done was done. And suddenly she wanted nothing more than to get as far as she could from this miserable place.
“Miss Howell?” The reporter shouldered his way into her path as she turned to leave. His eyes were a watery blue, and a splintered hickory toothpick jutted from between his thin lips. “My name is Hyrum Blount, Miss Howell. Your quick action prevented an incident that could have turned very ugly. What do you have to say to readers of the Denver Post?”
Bile rose in Miranda’s throat as she turned on him. “Are you disappointed, Mr. Blount?” she flared. “Would you rather have seen a hunger strike, or better yet, a bloodbath? Would that have made a more sensational story to wire home to your paper?”
The reporter’s startled face blurred in Miranda’s vision as she felt the greasy bread and alkaline water welling up into her throat.
“Miss Howell, are you all right?”
Shoving the man aside, she stumbled around the end of the table and bolted for the back side of the issue house.
A ghost of a smile teased Ahkeah’s lips as he watched her go. It did not surprise him that Miranda Howell was sick. But his amazement at her boldness and tenacity warmed to a grudging admiration. For a bilagáana, the woman had courage.
Would he have pushed a confrontation over the flour if she had not come forward? He shrugged—a white man’s gesture that he had never quite managed to lose. His people had eaten far worse than infested flour in their four years at the fort. Perhaps it was just as well that nothing more had happened. At least their bellies would not be empty this week.
He stood at the corner of the long table, aching as his gaze wandered down the long, sad lines of his people. Even the great warriors, Manuelito and Barboncito, were here. They had surrendered with their starved little bands only a few moons after the main body of the Diné had reached the fort. Now they stood gripping their ration sacks with the others, the cold spring wind whipping their threadbare clothes against their bones.
On ration day, all the Diné at the fort were required to come in and be counted, to make sure none had slipped away. Not that the bureau had any reason to worry. Of the few families who’d attempted to leave, all had either returned, starving, on their own or been hauled back on a wagon bed, their frozen bodies stacked like cordwood.
Would life be like this in the Oklahoma Territories, or would conditions be even worse? The only thing the Diné knew for certain was that they would be even farther from their four sacred mountains—so far that the Holy People would never bless them again.
Shaking off his gloom, Ahkeah scanned the line for his own small family. He glimpsed his aunt, standing where he’d left her, bundled in the woolen poncho he’d placed around her shoulders the night before. She looked lost and weary. Maybe it was time he found someone else to help care for Nizhoni. The old woman was growing too frail to keep up with an active little girl.
Glancing around, he concluded that there would be no more trouble with the rationing. The major’s strong-willed daughter had seen to that. It would be safe to relieve the old woman of Nizhoni and walk the little girl around the fort. She loved seeing the horses in their corrals and the colorful American flag fluttering from its pole on the parade ground. There was so little color in her own drab life—no blooming wildflowers against warm russet sand, no flash of silver jewelry, no bright ribbons in her long black hair. He had no heart to deny his child the little pleasure she found in this dismal place.
Pushing other concerns aside, Ahkeah shouldered his way through the milling crowd toward the place where his aunt stood. Nizhoni would be close by, probably clinging to the trailing poncho. Like most Diné children his daughter tended to be shy in the presence of strangers. He’d never had to worry about her wandering off on her own.
All the same, a shadow of foreboding crossed his mind as he approached his aunt. She was huddled in the line, her wizened face staring straight ahead, eyes focused on some inner vision that only she could see. This trancelike state seemed to be coming upon her more and more of late.
No, he acknowledged sadly, he could not trust her to care for Nizhoni any longer. It was time he took someone else into his household—perhaps his recently widowed cousin Naahooyéí, and her two young sons. They could use his protection, and he could use their help. He would begin digging another dugout for them as soon as—
Ahkeah’s thoughts scattered as the line shifted, suddenly giving him full view of his aunt, from her scraggly head to the worn remnants of her dusty moccasins. Only then did the realization hit him like a blow—the old woman stood alone, her hands dangling listlessly at her sides.
Nizhoni was nowhere to be seen.
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