The woman on the roan mare handed Deacon's reins to a boy of about twelve and spoke to him quickly. The boy looked at the sorrel's foot, nodded seriously, and led him off toward a corral of brush and rope where Wes could see dozens of horses standing with their tails to the wind.
"He will pack the hoof with wet clay and wrap it," she said. "It is a stone bruise, not a break. Your horse will live." She looked at Wes, still shaking under his borrowed robe. "You are next."
They put him by the fire in a lodge so large that he could have stood up and walked around inside it without bending his neck, and someone took his boots and someone else put a horn spoon and a bowl of broth in his hands. He spilled half of it before his fingers came back to life. Nobody said anything about it. An old woman with a face like a dried apple handed him another bowl without a word, and he understood that he was being cared for by people who did not intend to discuss the matter.
He was on his third bowl, and the shaking had worn down to an occasional shudder, when the door flap lifted and the young woman ducked inside. She had shed the capote. Beneath it she wore a dress of soft-tanned elkskin, its yoke covered with rows of elk teeth that clicked faintly when she moved, a thing he had heard was a mark of wealth among her people. Behind her came a boy carrying his rifle and saddlebags, which he set down carefully near the door.
"You are warm now," she said. It was not a question.
"Yes, ma'am. Thank you. I don't know how to—" He set down the bowl. "I'm obliged. I'm Wes Harlan. I ride for Ransom Pike's outfit, down on the Clarks Fork. I was looking for strays. I didn't mean to come so far onto your land."
Something moved behind her eyes when he said Pike's name, but she only nodded.
"I am called Rides Far," she said. "My father is Strikes Twice. This is his camp." She glanced at the old woman, who had begun to scrape the bowls. "My father would like to see you. He has been waiting for some time."
"Waiting?" Wes said. "For me?"
"For someone like you," said Rides Far. "Tonight it seems it is you." She tilted her head toward the door. "Put your boots on. They are dry now. You do not want to stand before my father in your stocking feet. He will think you are a man who does not plan ahead."
The lodge of Strikes Twice stood near the center of the camp, and its cover was painted with a broad band of red around the bottom and a row of black horse tracks circling above it, as if a herd had galloped round and round the lodge and left their prints in the hide. Inside, the fire was low and bright. Men sat along the back wall on robes and backrests of willow, and the smell of tobacco hung blue beneath the smoke flap.