Grace and the Guiltless

Chapter 11

A loud argument awoke Grace at dawn. Though she couldn’t understand the words, the tone was unmistakable. She peeked her head out of her kuugh’aanxiously. After the merriment of the previous evening and the kindness of the tribe, it shocked her to hear such hostility.

Sequoyah spotted her looking out and hurried over. “I am sorry they woke you.”

Grace rubbed her puffy, sore eyes and tried to make sense of the crowd of angry men. They all seemed to be directing their ire toward one scowling man who stood apart from the group, legs planted defiantly. “What’s happening?”

“That is Tall Tree. He does not take care of parents as he should. He is bad. Very bad. Good sons help parents. Feed them, fix the kuugh’a . . .”

“But what are they doing to him?” Grace asked as one of the men pointed to the woods and gave Tall Tree a shove.

“Joe say white men put bad men behind bars. Like cages. That is called prison?” Sequoyah looked at Grace with a question in her eyes.

Grace nodded. She supposed prisons were like cages. Cages she’d like to see filled with the faces of her family’s murderers. “You do not have prisons?”

“No. We send the bad ones out into the wilderness. It is sad, but Tall Tree did not listen to the council. They gave him many chances.”

After Tall Tree vanished into the woods, life at the camp resumed to normal. But Grace couldn’t get him out of her mind, especially after Sequoyah explained that those who were banished could never join another band. He was destined to live life alone. And that was the way she was . . . though she had done nothing wrong.

Her sense of loneliness only increased as the women began preparing breakfast for their children. Families gathered to eat, and Grace ducked into her kuugh’a before any of them saw her and motioned for her to join them. Her heart hurt too much to sit with a happy family.

A short while later, another commotion began. Looking outside, Grace saw that it was only a small group of men who were gathering to go hunting — and Joe was among them.

She hurried over to him. “Could I come along?” Grace asked. “It would be good training for me. I could see how you track game, or —”

Just then, one of the hunters rushed over to Joe and grabbed his arm. Grace recognized his face and his badly scarred chest. Tarak. He chattered rapidly to Joe, sending angry glances toward her. When he gestured toward their weapons and then jabbed a finger in Grace’s direction, she tugged on Joe’s arm, frowning.

“What’s he saying?” She knew whatever it was wouldn’t exactly be complimentary.

Joe sighed. “He doesn’t want me to teach a white girl Ndeh ways.”

Tarak glared at her with narrowed eyes as Joe spoke.

“Well, tell him —” Grace began. “Wait! Does he understand English?”

“A little. He understood that you were asking to come along on the hunt.”

“Then I’ll tell him myself.” Grace turned and met the fury of Tarak’s gaze with her own icy glare. “If someone killed your family, you would take revenge. I am the only one left to get justice. So I must learn.”

Tarak said something that Joe didn’t bother to translate.

Grace folded her arms and persevered. “Sequoyah told me the story of Gouyen, the woman who killed the Comanche chief to avenge her husband’s death. Joe said it’s a true story. If she can get revenge, so can I.”

Tarak refused to answer her in English, but what he did say, he practically spat. Grace took a step back at his angry tone.“What did he say?” she asked Joe, not taking her eyes off Tarak.