Ride the Moon Down (12 page)

From the moment they forded the half-frozen
lichii’likaashaashe
, every last one of them realized he was leaving Absaroka behind. With every mile, every step, every breath taken north of the Yellowstone, they were inching closer to enemy country.

North by northwest the war party marched from the moment it grew light enough to ride till it became too dark to safely cross the broken landscape. If there was a place where rocky outcrops or the shelter of trees would hide the flames from distant eyes, then the older men allowed the warriors to disperse and start half a dozen fires where eight to ten men gathered to warm their dried meat, their hands, their stiffened joints from sitting too long on horseback. Fire or not, through the endless winter nights they talked in low tones as Whistler and the white man moved from fire to fire, group to group, reminding the young that they were on an honor ride, calling upon the veterans to be watchful of the young men when it came time to fight.

Every morning three or four proven warriors were chosen to mount up before the others. In the dim light of dawn-coming, these wolves would make a wide-ranging
circle of their camp to learn if they had been discovered, searching for any trail of enemy spies. When they had reported back that all was safe, the scouts for that day would lead out ahead of the others as the sun brightened the winter sky. Riding ahead on both sides of the march, their task was to choose the safest path of travel through dangerous country, scouring for sign of the enemy, some telltale smoke on the horizon.

Day after day they trudged farther and farther north, encountering nothing more than last autumn’s fire pits lying cold in old camps. Ahead they watched the clouds boil around the snowy peaks of two mountain ranges, then struck the south bank of the Musselshell.

As they stopped to water their horses at a spot along the river’s edge where the water slowed, remaining unfrozen, Whistler sent the scouts across to the north. He said, “We follow the
Bishoochaashe
toward its headwaters and cross to the far side of those mountains. From there we should see the
Aashisee
.”

“What your people call The Big River?” Scratch asked.

“I have heard it flows north for a long way,” Whistler explained as they started across the Musselshell with the rest, “then it turns east, through the land of the Assiniboine and the Arikara before it curves south at the land of the Hidatsa and finally enters the country of the Lakota.”

“From what you describe, that must be what my people call the Missouri.”

“Miss-you-ree,” the older man slowly tried the word out on his tongue.

“Good,” Bass said. “The Missouri. I lived beside that river for many winters. More winters than I should have before I broke free.”

Whistler smiled. “This
Aashisee
is a good river this far north … before it goes far to the south where it enters the land of the white man. But on the other side of this Miss-you-ree, we must hold tight to our hair.”

With a grin Bass said, “Many Blackfoot wanting our scalps, eh?”

Whistler glanced at the top of the white man’s head. “But this is nothing new for you, son-in-law.”

“No,” Bass replied as their horses slogged onto the north bank of the Musselshell and shook themselves like big dogs. “More times than I can count, these Blackfoot have tried to take what I have left for hair.”

Around the fires that last night before they reached the Missouri, the older warriors, those contemporaries of Rotten Belly and Whistler, spoke of Arapooesh. Not only did they speak in reverent tones for one who had died, but they recalled the departed chiefs sharp, cutting sense of humor, the youthful jokester he had been in years long gone. And they talked of his many war deeds.

Not content merely to defend Crow land from encroachment, Arapooesh was constantly organizing war parties to venture into enemy territory on pony or scalp raids. East toward the land of the Lakota, southeast to steal from the Arapaho and Cheyenne. Southwest to sneak into Bannock country. And there was always the northern land of the Blackfoot.

“He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us made himself very popular among our people many long years ago by bringing back so many enemy horses,” Whistler explained to the curious young men come along on their first war trail.

Another old warrior, Turns Plenty, spoke. “Very rarely did he lose a scalp to the enemy.”

“Every young man wanted to ride with him,” Whistler observed.

“If a man steals the easiest horses,” Strikes-in-Camp said, “then he never has to worry about fighting the enemy.”

Biting his tongue for some moments, Whistler glared at his impudent son, then said, “Your uncle often showed he was as good a war leader as he was good at stealing horses.”

Yellowtail agreed. “He-Who-Is-Dead always chose the best men, put them on the best ponies, made them carry the best weapons … so his war parties would be ready to fight for their lives if necessary.”

Whistler continued. “Those times we rode into enemy
land, my older brother always chose at least two ways to get out of that country so we could make our escape with the ponies we stole and our hair. He figured out places where we could all meet after we had split up to throw the enemy off our trail.”

“But if escape did not work,” Real Bird declared, “He-Who-Has-Died was ready to turn around and fight. That’s when his leadership proved itself—for he had made the effort to choose only the finest warriors with the best weapons.”

“Like us,” Strikes-in-Camp boasted.

Whistler gazed at his son. “Sometimes it is better for a warrior to let others do his bragging for him.”

“Perhaps it was that way in your day,” the young warrior argued, teetering on the edge of disrespect. “But today, with the coming of the white men and the Blackfoot pushing hard against us—I think our people need warriors who aren’t afraid to speak for themselves.”

Whistler opened his mouth to speak, but Bass put his hand on the old warrior’s forearm and got his words out first. “A man who speaks too much for himself might find that there isn’t anyone else willing to speak for him.”

Glaring at the white man as if his hatred for Bass was smoldering anew, Strikes-in-Camp announced to the group, “Perhaps we shall do better in the land of the enemy than He-Who-Is-Not-Here ever did. Perhaps our deeds will far outshine his.”

Scratch watched a few of the young heads nod, young faces smile.

Then Whistler stepped over to stand beside his son. “Maybe you are right, Strikes-in-Camp. Who knows? We who are old horses, like
Pote Ant
and me, have tired bones, so it’s not so easy making war anymore. Perhaps you are right that war is a job best left for the young men.”

“My father sees the wisdom in my words, does he?”

Whistler put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Perhaps. I will trust that you will be there to save my life if an enemy warrior is about to take my scalp.”

Swelling his chest like a prairie cock, Strikes-in-Camp said, “I will watch over both of you who are too old to
make war—my father and the white man who has married my sister.”

Moving on around the circle, Whistler stopped behind Bass and Pretty On Top to say, “He-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here was never the sort to boast pridefully. Though he had many war honors, he rarely spoke of them before others.”

Bass added, “He made no big show of all that he had done, never prancing up and down like some young colts out to prove how strong they are.”

“As I said, white man—I will even save your life since you are married to my sister.”

“No wonder you don’t understand what your father is trying to teach you,” Scratch uttered with regret. “Your uncle was so much more a man than you will ever be.”

“But he was the one who taught me many things!” the young man snapped.

Whistler shook his head and said, “So why didn’t you learn to be more like my brother?”

“Because I am going to be a man in my own right,” Strikes-in-Camp spouted.

Bass watched Whistler turn and move into the darkness, heading for the nearby fire where another group sat out the long winter night. Looking back at Strikes-in-Camp, he said, “You have shamed your father with your selfish disrespect.”

“My family has shamed itself, white man,” he snarled. “My sister shames herself by fornicating with you. My mother and father shame themselves because they accept the white man who shamed their daughter into their lodge.”

“Your sister and I are married.”

“By the white man way?”

“No, not in the white man’s church,” Bass reluctantly admitted the truth. “We have promised our hearts to one another—”

“You white men are like rabbits in heat,” the warrior sneered. “You will say anything to our women to get your manhood under their dresses—”

Scratch found himself bolting to his feet before he realized
it, but two sets of hands appeared out of the darkness to stay him. Struggling to free himself, he turned first to the right, finding Turns Plenty holding his arm. On the other side stood Whistler.

“He is not angry at you,” Whistler explained. “He is more angry at himself.”

“The white man is a coward,” Strikes-in-Camp said. “That day in our village, two winters ago, he could have fought us like an honorable man. Instead, he let us tie him up, him and his friend.”

“You will also remember how my brother came to free the two white men,” Whistler protested as he let go of Bass’s arm. He stepped over to stand before his son. “Already the white man and I have talked,” he told the young man. “There will be a ceremony for your sister when we return from this war trail to avenge the killing of He-Who-Is-Not-Here.”

“Ceremony?”

“She will marry the white man in the way of our people,” Whistler declared.

Bass swallowed hard, choking on the surprise of it.

“No matter,” the young warrior growled. “Too late to make my sister anything better than a whore who lays with white men—”

Scratch was lunging across the snow when he was jerked backward by Turns Plenty’s hold on his right arm. But as he shrugged that arm in a second attempt to free himself, he watched Whistler’s arm dart into the fire’s dim light, slashing out. His hand struck Strikes-in-Camp’s cheek with a pop as loud as an old cottonwood booming in the cold of a February night.

“Don’t ever do that again, old man,” the son snarled, laying his hand against his bruised cheek.

“Or what?” Whistler asked. “Perhaps it is you who should heed a warning. Maybe you should look over your shoulder more often when you are in enemy country. A man who so openly shames his family is surely the sort of man who has no friends to protect his back.”

That early morning when they crossed the frozen Missouri in the darkness, Bass discovered the tight knot in his belly along with the unshakable remembrance of that old shaman who had walked among the half-a-hundred warriors at dawn on that morning they had started north on this war trail so long ago.

Then, as now, it was snowing fitfully: not with huge, ash-curl flakes, but with those tiny, icy spears of cold pain as the wind whipped the glassy slivers sidelong across the ground. Slowly the old man moved between the rows of ponies and warriors quietly mumbling his songs as he shook an old rattle made of a buffalo bull’s scrotum. In his other hand he held a bull’s penis, stretched to its full length by inserting a narrow wand of willow. Both were his potent symbols of the bull’s power—the largest creature known to these people. The provocative maleness of those two objects, their utter masculinity plainly exhibiting that strength shown by the bull in his battles to assure his right to the cows, would now transfer their spiritual power to those men who were plunging into Blackfoot country.

So many more had wanted to come along, some who had all but begged Whistler to be included in the war party. Those he hadn’t selected for this dangerous journey had to stand back with the others in a wide cordon pressing in on either side of the five-times-ten who were the objects of a raucous send-off: cheering men, keening women, those boisterous children and yapping dogs darting in and out between the legs of the restive ponies.