Chapter 100

My staff rose and demanded attention. James laid a comforting hand to my shoulder, but we both knew we would have to wait until we had more privacy. No telling when the boys would show up at the cabin. I walked back to the barn to tend the animals while he went to the field.

* * * *

I knew Little Bear had stored up his grief and not dealt with it properly when he was dumped into the middle of a family of four other children. Swept up in learning a whole new lifestyle, he had suppressed the loss of his family. Now, removed from the frenzy of the Mead and placed in the vicinity of where his loss had taken place, he immersed himself in sorrow—and likely guilt for not confronting it earlier.

I cautioned John—who was now playing War Eagle to the hilt—to remain close but not to stand in the way of his friend’s suffering. Roughly what the whites called a month elapsed before the older boy faced me with his thoughts.