Traveler trilogy Book 2.
Five years after killing Levi Cornwall, Arthur Morgan is happy. He has a wife who loves him, an honest job he enjoys, and two beautiful children named Sadie and Hiram. All of it is turned on its head, however, when Francis S...
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****TW: Graphic domestic abuse and graphic (but nonspecific) language about rape****
The horses began to climb higher and higher, out of the valley below them, and up to another small saddle between two peaks. As they neared the top, however, Rains Fall let out a pained, strangled cry. Jenny's head snapped towards him, and her face paled when she saw his agonized, wildly pleading face. "No!" he said, spurring his horse into a canter.
Jenny and Arthur exchanged a look and spurred their horses on as well, keeping up with Rains Fall as they finished ascending the hill. "Oh," Jenny said softly, as she realized what had upset Rains Fall.
Before them was a small hut covered in the charred remains of what looked like elk hides. There were broken pieces of pottery scattered about, as well as burnt remains of beautifully-decorated baskets and other artifacts. This must be the sacred site Rains Fall had mentioned earlier, and someone had come along and burnt it to ashes.
"Rains Fall, I..." Jenny began before her voice trailed off in sorrow.
"No," he repeated uselessly to himself, seeming to forget that Jenny and Arthur were there. "No, I... I need to find the chanupa."
"Let's help him look for it," said Jenny quietly to Arthur. Her voice dropped to a whisper and she continued, "Whoever did this probably either took it or burnt it like they did everything else, but we have to try."
"What's a chanupa?" Arthur asked her, raising an eyebrow.
"I think it's some sort of sacred pipe," was her reply. "My mother had one she kept with my grandfather's war bonnet, and my father burnt it with everything else she had that belonged to her people. Chanupa are another tradition the Lakota have in common with the Wapiti."
"A pipe," Arthur said, nodding at her. "Should be easy enough to find if it's still here."
"Who could have done this?" Rains Fall piped up from the other side of the charred hut.
Arthur shook his head and sighed. "Someone who wanted to enrage you." His eyes met Jenny's.
She was enraged, no question. This brought back memories of the day her father had burnt the chest of cultural artifacts her mother kept. Fire was such a permanent way to destroy things, and it was one used very effectively. Jenny had tried for years to keep this particularly unpleasant memory repressed in her mind, but with all this talk of sacred objects and the smell of smoke in the air, it all came rushing back to her with all the force of a massive waterfall.
She remembered her father, his face purple with rage and his breath reeking of whiskey, as he hit her mother across the face with closed fists instead of his palms. She remembered blood covering her mother's face from a busted lip, and the horrible, dark bruise over her mother's left eye where he'd blackened it.
And still her mother'd kept pleading. She'd hit back and bitten her evil husband on the hand and arm with her teeth, trying desperately to save what was left of her people and her family. Her fists rained down like hail upon his back, and her voice cried out in anguish and rage as she clawed at him with her fingers hoping something, anything, would get him to stop.
