Death Rattle (56 page)

“They are Mexican. You’ve seen Mexican women.”

She propped herself up on an elbow. “Same as the women in Ta-house?”

“Some. There are Indian women, too—slaves and servants in their fields.”

“Did you … find any of them attractive to you?”

He pulled her against him. “You are the prettiest in my heart.”

“Did you lay with any of them?”

Stroking her hair, he assured her, “No matter how pretty a woman might be for that moment of my loneliness—how could I ever consider poor bull when I have prime cow waiting back here for me?”

She squeezed him with understanding. “Did you give your word when you said you wouldn’t ever leave again?”

“Meant it down to the marrow of my bone.”

When the infant’s needs had been seen to, that first morning Waits bathed her pocked and scarred body right there in the lodge by the crackling warmth of the fire, even washed her long-neglected hair with kettles of water Scratch and Magpie hauled up from the half-frozen creek while Flea cradled his little brother. This washing did not take much time, short as her hair was.

After she had brushed it with a porcupine’s tail, Waits asked, “Ti-tuzz, will you cut my hair?”

“Cut it?
You
have cut it enough already!”

With two straight fingers pantomiming a knife blade, she mimicked what she had done, saying, “My heart hurt so bad, it did not matter that I did a bad job of it. Please, Ti-tuzz—will you trim it straight as you can?”

So while her hair was still damp, he took up his sharpest knife and began the difficult task of trimming all those ragged, uneven ends so that—while it no longer brushed her shoulders—at the very least it was all of one length.

When he rocked back and sighed, gazing side to side at what he had done, Waits-by-the-Water said, “Magpie, bring me my looking glass.”

She peered at her reflection for several moments, first one view, then another, as she studied herself and the job Titus had done to smooth out how she had butchered her locks in thoughtless grief.

“It is so short now,” she said as she lowered the looking glass and gazed at him. “I will never let you cut my hair again.”

“And neither can you!” he scolded with a grin as the baby began to fuss in poor Flea’s lap. “I think he is hungry again.”

“Bring him to me, son,” Waits asked as she untied the side of her dress, there beneath her arm, to expose one engorged breast. With the infant tucked across her arm and hungrily latching onto the nipple, Waits said, “I think your new son is happy his mother is making more milk.”

“How warm it makes my heart to watch him with you, how happy I am for my eyes to look upon my Magpie and my Flea.” Bass held out his two arms, and the children slipped beneath them, one at each side.

“As those long summer days of waiting fell behind us, one by one,” she began to explain, “I did my best to make peace with that hole in my heart where the fear rested—a hole where spring rains slowly dried at the bottom of a cracked, crusty buffalo wallow … this hollow fear that you would never return. And every day as I
grew bigger and bigger with this child, the summer grew more hot. By fall I forced myself to admit that you would never return. The saddest part of what I told my heart was you would never see your son. That he would never know his father.”

The first tears spilled from the old trapper’s brimming eyes as he gazed into her face while she told him the story of her mourning.

“I made so much room in my heart for that grief, doing all I could to fill the gnawing hole you left inside me—that I was unable to believe that it was really you who walked into this lodge last night. Surely, I told myself at first, my heart must be making my eyes see what I hoped they would see more than anything else.”

“I … I am not a dream,” his voice croaked.

“But I was afraid you were—for the longest time—and that when I awoke from my dream it would be another cold morning without you here in our blankets beside me.”

“I have given you my promise, woman,” he sighed with such sharp hurt for what he had caused, reaching out his rough hand to enfold her slim fingers within it.

“My heart is filled with that promise,” she admitted. “No matter where you want to travel, no matter where you want to go, your family will go with you.”

“But I don’t think I’m going anywhere, woman,” he disclosed. “The only place I can think of needing to take you is to Tullock’s trading post at the mouth of the Tongue. But we won’t go there until the Crow are ready to trade their furs come spring. There are no more rendezvous. No more reason to journey to the Green or the Popo Azia or the Wind River. Those days are long dead.”

“You and Tullock are almost the only white men left in the country,” Flea commented as he poked the embers with a twig.

He grinned at the boy. “That’s just the way we ought to keep it too, son.”

“We will stay with this village, Popo?” asked Magpie.

“We’re going to live with the Crow, because my family is Crow,” he announced the decision he had made last
night while he clutched his grieving, disbelieving wife in his arms for the first time in far too many months.

Waits asked, “We will live with Yellow Belly’s people?”

“If the Crow have enemies to fight, I will ride into battle with them,” Titus answered. “When it comes time to hunt, Flea and I will go in search of game to feed our family. And I will always be at your mother’s side each night when the sun falls, to watch our children grow.”

She squeezed his hand as the tears spilled down her cheeks, unable to speak until she said, “I think my father, and my brother—they who are no longer with us—both would want me to tell you how proud they were that I married you.”

“There was a time when I wasn’t so sure how happy it made them that you decided to marry this old white man!” he joked.

“You were with both of them when they died,” she reminded. “You had to see … had to know how they felt about you—one warrior for another.”

Dragging a finger under his runny nose, Titus blinked some of those salty tears away. “You know what the white men call it when one of their kind runs off to live with the Indians?”

She shook her head.

He looked from Waits to Magpie. From her to Flea. And back to Waits-by-the-Water again before answering.

“They call it going to the blanket.”

With a grin, she said, “It is a good way to express it, this going to the blanket.”

“I do not understand,” Flea admitted.

He scratched his chin whiskers a moment, then explained, “I suppose they call it that because one of the most important contacts there has ever been between the white men and the Indians is to trade in blankets. That goes back a long, long time, son. Long before any man now alive.”

Flea asked, “So what does this mean, go to the blanket?”

“For a white man to go to the blanket—it means he’s
given up on being a white man anymore, given up on living among white folks and their ways ever again. He’s going to live in the blanket, with the Indians and their way of life.”

Magpie asked, “My father is going to be a Crow?”

“I can never be a Crow,” he admitted with a wag of his head. “Not like you and your two brothers are Crow, Magpie. But I will live among Yellow Belly’s people as a Crow. I come to the blanket because my wife is Crow. Because my children will always be Crow too. And … because there is nothing left for me as a white man.”

“This is your home,” Waits said as she laid the sleeping infant on the robes beside her and scooted closer to her husband. “This is where we should all stay now that the time of white fur trappers is fading in the past. Now that the mountains are no longer filled with white men, coming and going.”

“We’ll be just fine, living the Crow way,” Scratch told them as he looped his arm around her shoulder. “Going to the blanket, the white folks call it. I won’t argue with those white folks who look down on menfolk like me who go to the blanket. Truth be, I’m damn well proud to tell the whole world Titus Bass had gone to the blanket!”

“When can we name your new son in the old way of the Crow?” inquired his wife.

Flea seized on that and asked, “What will you name this little one, Popo?”

“Whoa, son. Hold on there. I haven’t had time to think on names for him yet. I only learned of him last night, and you want a name already?”

“He needs a name,” Waits agreed. “It is a father’s duty to name his children.”

“Yes, these two have good names.” And he squeezed both of the children against him.

Waits smiled. “So you’ll listen to what the Grandfather Above tells you his name is? Now that this child’s father has returned home—you must listen intently because the Creator will speak this boy’s name to you.”

“Yes,” Scratch sighed, gazing at the back of the baby’s
head as it slept. “I must find the right name for this child who came as a secret I did not know.”

“Can we help listen for what to name him, Popo?” Magpie asked.

“No,” Titus said gently. “It is my job to hear what the Grandfather Above tells me. I found the right names for you and your brother. So I trust that I will find the right name for this little one.”

“When you do,” Waits began, “what of a naming ceremony?”

The idea struck him as a good one. “Invite others to come celebrate with us?”

“Yes—we are here among my people, among this child’s people,” she declared. “We should name him in the traditional way.”

“Yes! I agree. With Magpie and Flea—we only had our family. Now we can gather others around us when we announce the little one’s name.”

She reached over to gently tug on his graying whiskers. “Your wife thinks you should get busy this morning to find out what that name will be.”

“Soon enough I will listen.”

“Not this morning?” she repeated.

“I have something else to do first,” he began with a wide smile, followed by a wink down at his oldest son. “Last night I promised Flea he would have a chance to hear the Cheyenne horses talk to him this morning.”

“Will my mother be angry with me?” Flea asked as they neared the end of the meadow where they had picketed the fifteen Cheyenne horses last night.

“Because I came to listen to the horses with you instead of listening for a name to give your little brother?” he asked, patting the boy on the back of the head as they scuffed through the deep snow. “No, son—your mother will be angry at
me!”

“She will be angry because you are giving me a horse?”

“Yes,” Titus answered. “She doesn’t think you are old enough to have a horse of your own.”

“Maybe she is right.” And the child wagged his head.

“Are you saying that because you think she is right? Or, are you saying it so you won’t make your mother angry at you?”

He glanced up at his father. “Maybe … because … sometimes she might be right.”

“Every boy your age has misgivings at times,” he consoled. “You must expect to have doubts too. Any man who is too sure of everything is a man I am afraid of. Do you understand?”

“I think I do, Father. It is all right to be afraid of some things.”

“Yes,” Titus answered. “Are you ever afraid of horses?”

“Not much anymore.”

“Then I figure it’s up to you to decide what you’ll do,” he said as they came to a halt near the steadiest animal of them all, that old roan saddle horse. “You can deny all that your spirit tells you about yourself just to keep your mother from being angry with you … or you can tell your mother that you have this spirit helper inside you that you are going to follow.”

“I don’t know what she would say to me if I told her that.”

“Neither do I, son. But you can’t be afraid of displeasing your mother. In the years to come, there will be many times in your life when you have to tear yourself from your mother. More and more as you grow up. You’ll even pull yourself away from your father too—so you can be your own person one day, following the call of your own spirit. But that won’t happen without some pain for all of us.”

“Father, can I tell you when I am afraid?”

Bass squeezed his son against him and kissed the top of his head. “Yes. As long as you let me tell you when I am afraid too. Those are the sorts of spirit things a father and a son share between them.”

“Will you talk to my little brother this way when he is older like me?”

“When he is ready, he will let me know that it is time for us to talk like this,” Titus assured, feeling his heart swell with such pride. “Shush, now—and listen. Let’s stand here and see if any of these horses talks to you this morning.”

They waited and listened for a long time. Then Bass nudged Flea forward. Together they walked among the animals, slowly, and as quietly as they could upon the icy, trampled snow that squeaked with every step. Of a sudden the boy stopped and turned around to stare back at a claybank gelding.

The horse stood with its rump toward them but had cocked its head around, as if staring at the youngster that just passed him by. Bass held his breath and listened, straining to hear any sound the animal might make, watching carefully to spot any suspect movement by the horse’s jaw. But he heard and saw nothing.

“No,” Flea suddenly spoke. “But next summer will be my seventh.”

It made the hair stand on Bass’s arms. His son took two steps away from his father, then stopped, all the closer to the claybank.

“I came looking for a war pony,” Flea continued. Then paused as he took another step closer to the gelding that from all appearances continued to study the boy closely.

“I know I am not ready to go to war yet, but my father told me even a pony boy should have a horse of his own.”

Somewhat skeptical, a part of Bass wanted to convince himself that Flea was having fun at his expense.

“The bay has the strongest wind?” Flea seemed to repeat. “And the small red is the fastest among you?”

Bass wanted to chuckle. This was a good joke Flea was having on his father—carrying on a conversation with the horse. Now, Titus would readily admit that he did believe different folks possessed different powers, even that his son might possess some special medicine that
would allow him to understand the secret language of horses … but to carry on a conversation back and forth with this claybank as if Flea was talking to a person?