-hobybuchanon- Native American Indian Girl Returns -

Hoby took off his hat, ran a hand through his silvering hair. "I did come back. Three days after they took you. The place was locked up. They said you'd been sent to the reservation school in Oklahoma. Said no forwarding address."

"I'm not staying," Tala said quietly. "After this is done, I have to go back. My people need me."

Tala—because that was her real name, Hoby reminded himself, not the English name the social workers had pinned to her like a tag on a stray dog—tilted her head toward the mountains. "The same way I found it when I was six years old and lost in the blizzard. The same way the salmon find the creek where they were born." -HobyBuchanon- Native American Indian Girl Returns

"The chestnut's yours," he said. "Her name is Rain. She's stubborn, opinionated, and smarter than most people I know. You'll get along fine."

Hoby's throat tightened. "I should have fought harder." Hoby took off his hat, ran a hand through his silvering hair

Tala looked toward the mountain, and for a moment Hoby saw the child she'd been—the one who could speak to horses and find water in a drought and read the weather in the flight of birds.

The girl—no, not a girl anymore, he saw now—turned slowly. The face was the same sharp, intelligent map of cheekbones and dark eyes, but the child who had left on the Indian Agency truck was gone. In her place stood a young woman with the stillness of deep water. The place was locked up

They stood together in the growing light, the mountain casting its long shadow over the ranch. Somewhere up in the pines, a hawk screamed. And the old spring, hidden and forgotten, bubbled up from the dark heart of the earth—waiting to be remembered.

"Been ten years," Hoby said, his voice rougher than he intended.

She stepped closer, and Hoby saw for the first time the weariness in her eyes, the weight of something more than just the road.

They rode east, toward the mountain, toward the spring, toward the water that remembered everything. And behind them, the sun rose full over Two Rivers Ranch, setting the dew on fire, as if the whole world was holding its breath for what came next.