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Soaring
Eagle
Chapter One
The night was too silent. No sheep bleated, no nighthawk swooped, no cricket
chirped.
Julio slipped his reed flute into his bag and scanned the faint outlines
of the blue mountains, eyes straining to see through the darkness.
He picked up a torch from his small fire and began to circle
the flock with Chivita, his sheep dog, at his side.
"Santa Maria," he prayed aloud, asking for protection from what
he felt lurking outside the meadow--wolves, bears, Jicarilla
Apaches, spirits…
The sheep grunted and shuffled, averting their eyes from the torch, and
tightened into a circle of dusty wool. A newborn lamb bleated.
Julio stiffened, listening, senses alert, sliding a tiny silver
coin back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. The smells
of rich, oily fleece and trampled grass rose to his nostrils.
Cool air brushed against his skin. A hoof clicked. Chivita began
to growl softly.
Slipping the coin into his bag, Julio dropped the torch. He put a rounded
rock in his sling and stood tensed, straining to hear. Still
nothing moved in the blackness. Chivita broke into a bark. She
raced around the sheep, her black coat swallowed by the night,
the white patches flashing like ghosts.
The screams of a terrified lamb and a triumphant yelp---"Yah-hee!
Yah!" ---shattered the tension.
Julio's sling sliced through the air, spinning the rock toward the voices,
but it was too late. The Jicarillas' cries and the bleating
of the lamb faded up the hillside, swallowed by the night.
"Chivita! Come back," Julio called. "Chivita!"
Panting, Chivita returned, her small muscular body quivering.
"I hate them!" Clenching his teeth, Julio knelt and stroked Chivita's
short wiry hair, letting his hand say the anger in his voice
was not for her. "They're too lazy to work! They let us work, then they steal! We've lost another lamb."
Aching over the loss, Julio reached into the leather bag hanging at his
side. His fingers felt the stones ready for the sling, his fire
flints and mechas, the wicks his sisters had twisted
for him from tree cotton to catch sparks, and found what he
was searching for---his reed flute. Easing down onto the ground,
he scratched behind Chivita's ear, then began to play. The soft music calmed the sheep--and him. The harm was done.
The Jicarillas would not be back, not tonight. But he wished, as he had every night for
three years, he were at Bent's Fort with Papa.
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