Mountain Moonlight - By Jane Toombs Page 0,39

snakes today. When he rattled at me, I remembered what you said so I stopped moving. He wasn't coiled so I stayed still and waited and did what Pauline said and sure enough, he didn't try to bite me."

"What happened?" Vala demanded, hurrying up to them. "Are you all right, Davis?"

"He spotted a rattlesnake," Bram said, playing it down. "He had seven rattles." Davis put in.

Vala glanced around nervously.

"It's okay, he went in the greasewood," Davis assured her.

"I'd still rather get out of here," Vala said.

Bram nodded and they remounted. He wondered why the boy had been chanting Mokesh's name--is that what Pauline had told him to do if he met a rattler? Why would she do that? Mokesh did have sort of a hissing sound. Ndee words often matched the animal they described. Bram blinked.

Where had that thought come from? And why had he suddenly recalled what the word Mokesh meant?

Golden Eyes. Rattlesnake.

The story his father had told him about Mokesh began unraveling in his mind, a story he would have sworn minutes ago that he'd never heard. Another blocked memory. How many of them had he stowed away like that?

Troubled by the realization he'd selectively eliminated another good memory of his father, he passed the rest of the day's trip in a half-daze, paying just enough attention so they didn't get off the right trail. As he'd intended, he called an early halt.

"Doesn't look like we'll find a better place than this for a night camp," he said, noticing that Davis didn't protest. The ride had to be making him hurt.

Once they'd set up and chowed down, Bram asked Davis what Pauline had said about rattlers.

"She told me that's what Mokesh's name meant and if I didn't scare the snake, it'd go away peacefully if I chanted that name over and over. So I did."

"Didn't do any harm," Bram said. "And you remembered what I said about snakes. Smart kid."

"I was scared," Davis admitted.

"That's smart, too."

"I'd have screamed," Vala put in.

"Maybe it's a good thing I saw the snake and not you, Mom."

"I'd just as soon neither of us had seen it," she told him.

"Speaking of snakes," Bram said, "when it gets dark it's my turn to tell a story." Very deliberately, he added, "It's one my father told me when I was a kid. He wasn't around much but when he was, we did things together."

As he spoke, Bram felt something give way within him. Was it because he'd never before said anything good about his father?

"My father doesn't do much with me," Davis said matter-of-factly. "'Cause I'm a poor athlete."

Bram wasn't going to let it rest at that. "You mean in team sports."

"Yeah."

"I noticed you have a good sense of balance and I mentioned to your mother that I think you'd do well on skis. That's a sport you can do alone."

Davis stared at him. "Skiing? You really think I'd do okay?"

"Hey, good balance is half the battle."

Davis's pleased expression rewarded him.

As the evening slipped into night, Vala began posing riddles. Davis knew most of them, but she caught Bram on several. He dredged a few up from his younger years and finally caught her on one. They were laughing together when he noticed Davis's speculative gaze shifting from one to the other of them and wondered why. It made him uneasy.

"The snakes must be asleep by now," Bram said abruptly. "Time for my father's tale."

He told them about the wounded stranger the Ndee welcomed into their camp and how the old medicine man, Mokesh, meaning Yellow Eyes, cured him.

"When enemy soldiers came for the stranger and demanded him, the Ndee refused to give up the man, even though warned that, as a result, a great enemy force would soon come through the mountain pass and kill every man, woman and child of the Ndee."

"Mokesh listened to the Great Spirit and understood what he must do to save his people. He would stand guard in the narrow pass and stop the enemy warriors."

"The Ndee didn't see how he could stop more than one man, but when he looked at them with his yellow eyes, they believed him. And so, instead of fleeing, they remained in their camp, waiting and watching."

Bram told how the enemy warriors laughed at the old man facing them with nothing more than a medicine rattle and a stick with two curved points at the tip.

"But when they charged at Mokesh, the warriors fell back screaming in pain. Before their eyes he changed