Silenced

By Susan F Roberts

Contemporary short stories that take place in the Montana landscape. Silenced is the story of a Native woman who finds herself in a white settlement where she discovers a talent that saves her life and leads to love. In Last Dance a woman goes to a cabin near Glacier National Park for some rest and recreation after a divorce. She finds herself in a blizzard and is saved from death by an acquaintance from grade school. In Indigo Night an artists jeopardises her marriage after meeting a musician, whose music stirs her passions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan F Roberts
• Release date: Mar 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301962723

Susan F Roberts

I grew up on the Rocky Mountain Front of Montana in an environment that was as ecologically drastic as the culture I found myself in. Mountains meeting prairie, Native American culture meeting white European. My father was a dyed-in-the wool cowboy and my mother a sweet young thing who didn't have a clue about which end of a horse to get on. I was conceived in the Great Bear Wilderness area the summer my mother was eighteen. She always said I was a Native spirit looking for a home.

Book preview

Silenced

A Book of Montana Short Stories

Published by S.F. Roberts at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 S.F. Roberts

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Silenced

Sweet Adolescents

Last Dance

Indigo Night

Silenced

Ovid Duvolierre was picking his way over a rocky abutment at the top of a mountain divide. All summer he’d been high in the country of the back bone shoring up the small cabin he spent the winters in. He’d left to travel down the front and out onto the prairie to the fort. Winter was his busy season, with months of laying trap, and every year he expected to make enough in beaver pelts to be able to retire and every year he found himself in the same situation, just surviving.

Turns by the Creek, near the age of seventeen, stood in the middle of a rich huckleberry patch with a leather bag filled almost to the top. She stopped to pop a ripe berry into her mouth delighting in the sweet yet pungent juice as it ran down the back of her throat. Her sister-in-law Meadow Bird was near by in the mass of short thick bushes. The afternoon sun warming the back of their leather dresses as they filled pouches with berries. Back at camp these would be dried and provide in the soon to come winter a delightful treat. So how’s Running Bear, Turns by the Creek called to Meadow Bird, a smile framing the words.

Fine, I suppose, Meadow Bird yelled back, a thin blush of color flaming across her smooth young cheeks. She stopped picking and laughed holding her firm belly full of child with both hands. Why would I care where Running Bear is? Meadow Bird called back.

More than you say, Turns by the Creek said popping another fat berry into her mouth.

Duvolierre had worked himself southeast along the banks of a creek, it was his hope to break into the prairie below and make the trading post near the Missouri River by the afternoon of the next day. He stopped suddenly listening for sounds below him in a meadow, the Great Medicine bear would like a berry patch like the one that lay below the ridge. He registered the low hum of voices and peeked from behind a rock to see two young native women working their way through the berry patch. He’d been without a woman since last spring when his woman had died in childbirth. These young women had the blush of womanhood on them and it stirred his loins. He moved around a tree and began snaking behind an outcropping of rock down the hill.

Meadow Bird laid the fingers of one hand into a fat patch of purple berries. Taking a few into her mouth she leaned into her haunches enjoying the burst of flavor in her mouth. A twig snapped and her head shot sideways looking for signs of brother bear. It would be silly to think a hungry bear would not recognize this wonderful spot. Sister, she called out, listening for a sound from Turns by the Creek. Her gaze fell for the moment on a patch of bright bluish berries, which with one swat from her raw hide paddle tumbled them into her pouch. Suddenly a scream arose on the quiet air. Dropping the bag of berries she ran in the direction of the sound. Downed branches from a lodge pole pine snagged at her buckskin dress, and she slipped on pine needles sliding in dirt on her knees. Struggling to rise she remembered the dream from the night before. Why had she not told Turns by the Creek about it earlier? She’d woken in a sweat near dawn remembering how the Big Medicine Bear had come upon them.

Meadow Bird burst through a thicket of berry bushes to find Turns by the Creek lying on the ground, the purple gems of fruit spilled around her. She laid still her eyes wide open and empty, blood seeping from a wound in her scalp and her buckskin dress shoved high on her hips.

Meadow Bird turned at the sound of movement but the man was upon her before she could react, his strong arms throwing her to the ground. A scream crossing her lips when she saw the necklace that danced around his neck, a long row of grizzly claws.

She was in the dream and the dream was in her later she woke the sun mean and hot on her face. She rolled to her side and vomited blood. Her head ached and her mouth was thick with blood. She tried to focus on something near by but all that she heard was the caw of a large black crow, his persistent message: survive, just survive.

Lieutenant Dunswood brushed a piece of lint from the sleeve of his