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Evidently he considered that fu
"And I imagine that a lot of your folk were more ready than most to believe that something had happened. Their spirits not being comfortably settled in the way things were before the Change, so. One of our founders said… what was it… When the going gets weird, the weird get going. "
"Ah, you're not just tall, handsome and quick with a chopper, eh, kilt-boy?" Red Leaf said with respect. "Yeah, there was that. It'd been one damned shafting after another for us since my great-great-granddaddy's day, when we lifted Custer's hair. Not that the son of a bitch didn't deserve it… Everyone else around here was knocked flat mentally in 'ninety-eight- their happy time was over, but they didn't want to admit it. A lot of us thought it was time to rock."
"We in the Willamette are the only place we know near a big city where everyone didn't die. And most did, so," Rudi pointed out.
Mathilda nodded. "There were more than a million people in Portland," she said. "My father and mother managed to get a couple of hundred thousand through alive. Nobody here… nobody east of the Cascades… was that badly off."
Red Leaf lay back on one elbow and handed them a skin bag from his saddle. "Yeah, the Ranchers got back on their feet after a while, doing the Lonesome Dove and Kit Carson thing. But a lot of us Lakota saw the Change more as opportunity knocking and landed on our feet. We knew what we wanted to do and we went and did it."
"And when you know that, and others don't, they'll follow your lead," Rudi said, and took a drink.
After a moment he looked down at the chagal. The liquid within tasted faintly alcoholic, and very slightly fizzy. The rest of the taste was something vaguely related to sour milk; as if you'd poured beer into what the hearth-lady of some farm left out for the house-hob. He took another swallow for politeness' sake and handed it to Mathilda; if he was going to suffer, why shouldn't she?
"Damn right," Red Leaf went on. "Though there was a fair bit of argument over what sort of opportunity it was. I mean, we couldn't really go back to the old ways."
"I remember my father complaining about that," Mathilda said. "He did want to go back to the old ways-the new ones having failed. But it was impossible. The people were different."
Red Leaf nodded. "Yeah, by 'ninety-eight it'd been five generations since we followed the buffalo; a lot of things we had to dig out of books and experiment with, or set up relays of people to learn from some old geezer who was the last one who knew it, or find a hobbyist, all the while not starving to death in the meantime. Would you believe it, there were even people on the rez who'd never butchered an animal or ridden a horse? Lakota who'd never ridden a horse! And finding people who knew how to make things like bows… Jesus."
"And they more precious than gold," Rudi said, remembering Sam Aylward.
"Damn right. And for another, just between me and thee and don't tell Three Bears I said so, the old days weren't all that great. They probably beat the hell out of living in a leaky mobile home on the rez and dying of diabetes or crawling into a bottle of bad whiskey or just plain what's-the-use, or even ru
"I'd noticed the tents weren't exactly tipis," Rudi said.
"The gers?" Red Leaf laughed. "That one was my doing. There was this guy from Mongolia at South Dakota U while I was there. Name of Ulagan Chinua-it means Red Wolf-he was studying how we managed our grasslands, some sort of State Department foreign aid thing, and he actually built a ger out of stuff from Home Depot-"
That required a minute's explanation, though Rudi had once helped strip the last useful goods out of a burnt-out shell with that name on the front.
"-and lived in it just off campus. A bunch of us used to hang out there and drink airag -"
He held up the leather bottle.
"What's airag?" Mathilda said; to Rudi's surprise she took it and drank a long swallow. "It's not bad. Sort of like small beer."
"Fermented mare's milk," Red Leaf said. "Red Wolf home brewed it; his mother sent him the starter culture by Federal Express. We'd swig it and swap stories about Crazy Horse and Genghis Khan or talk about girls and horses and football… I really miss football… It's too weak to get really blitzed on, and it makes milk easy to digest for us non-palefaces. Something about breaking down the lactose."
"What happened to Red Wolf?" Rudi asked curiously.
"I pretty well dragged him back to Pine Ridge with me about Change Day plus six; the poor brave bastard was going to try and ride a horse back to Mongolia via Alaska, but I talked him out of it. He married my t'anksi, my kid sister, as a matter of fact. Died three years back on a buffalo hunt-those bulls will hook you if you're not careful. But he was real helpful. Nice guy, too."
"I'd guess his people did well after the Change."
"I'd be surprised if they didn't, from what he told us about the place. Anyway, tipis are drafty; there's all that waste space above your head. A ger 's easier to heat, it doesn't blow over in storms, and if you put it on wheels all you have to do is unhitch the horses and you're there, wherever there is. And we had to get out of those shacks and trailers or freeze, with no more gas. Took a couple of years, but we managed."
He pointed; a family were leaving, their two gers drawn by half a dozen horses each and a wagon following along behind; two more were coming in, heading for the ba
"Moving around makes more sense here than trying to stay in one spot where you eat the land bare; in the winter we spread out in the sheltered places along the rivers or in hills, and in the summer we get together to swap and trade and socialize and talk politics. We're really stockmen now-we grow a few gardens here and there, we put up lots of hay, we mine the ruins and make stuff, and we hunt a fair bit, but there aren't enough buffalo to keep us fed. Not even now, and we've got a couple of million as of last summer's count. Back right after the Change, not a chance; plenty of cattle, though. You can live pretty well in this country, if you know how and you're careful and you've got enough acres."
"The real problem being the neighbors," Rudi guessed.
The Indian sighed. "No shit, Sherlock. Not the Fargo or Marshall people and the other Staters. We can live with them-they're not short of farmland anyway. When they do get crowded they'll move East. It's the Cutters."
"Who are mostly cattlemen too," Rudi observed.
"And we've got a lot of good grazing country; but even that wouldn't be too bad without that crazy religion of theirs. Yeah, a little raiding back and forth with the Ranchers, some horse-stealing. .. that keeps the younger guys on their toes, and keeps life from getting dull. But Corwin wants everything and they want you body and soul. And there are a hell of a lot of them nowadays. We Lakota can put thirty, forty thousand men into the field, max. The Cutters can do three or four times that."
The young man and woman from Oregon winced. "The Protectorate.. . my country… has about four hundred thousand people," Mathilda said.
"And the rest of our area… the realms that come together at the Corvallis Meeting… about as many again," Rudi added. "All of us together could probably match their numbers in war, or nearly."