Lou had traded some wormy fat back with one of the general's escorts a few days before for some soap. She needed to take the waters, cleansing her spirit, for her action yesterday. She saw this as the opportunity she needed. Scared of exposure, her thoughts went to sorting out what she must do - wash her clothes and scrub herself, take the waters and offer a prayer. The lye soap was wrapped in a cotton rag. She took it from her haversack and unwrapped it. She sniffed it. The smell invoked the presence of her grandmother Mama Bear's iron wash pot over a hickory fire just down from her back porch. Mama always boiled bedclothes early Monday morning, cold or hot weather.

With her mind bringing Mama Bear into its' consciousness she felt a chill even in the August heat. She felt the hard, translucent, rough-cut bar of soap. Putting it to her nose again, she drew in the strong, chemical, clean odor as if to be with her grandmother beside the black iron wash pot at home. Her spirit yearned for Mama Bear's presence and blessing and Grand and Mother. She blocked her yearning for Johnny and Daddy. The dead were not to be bothered.

Directly in front of her about twenty feet away, standing out alone in front of the tree line illumined by the high sun's strong light was a cedar tree. The tree was over twenty feet tall and was snarled, thick and full-needled. A huge moss-covered limestone boulder, three feet tall and five feet long, lay to the tree's left. A bit startled as she took in the scene, her spirit smiled. Her heaviness lifted.

Standing six feet from the tree and rock, she spoke to them imagining that her grandmother and mother's spirits filled them. "It is done, Bear Woman, Lone Cedar. Mockingbird has fulfilled the blood law, the obligation honored." She went to her vest, put her hand through its opening and into her shirt. She carefully pulled out a soft, small, tan deerskin bag. She breathed in deeply, taking in the sun's warmth and the deep green tree's vigorous fragrance. Taking a pinch of her grandfather's shredded burley tobacco; she walked forward and tossed it up and toward the cedar tree then on the limestone outcropping.

"Mama, Grandmother - Great Fire, Life Spirit - the balance is restored."

===

Dog tired, he'd not had any real sleep in three days. Two-hour naps somewhere in the haze of that space of time didn't count for much. The major rubbed his low back and thought, "Damn, Solon, you're getting to be an old man! What is it thirty-four; well, well, it's thirty-five." His dark brown, near black, hair had become a bit thinner on the top of his head and in the places above his ears there was some gray. His chin stubble also had some increasing gray. The staff meeting with the general and commanders had been brief and he thought to get away from war for a little while. Taking his haversack and saddlebags, he walked deeper into the woods away from people.




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