Ride the Moon Down (62 page)

“No, wasn’t that a’tall,” Bass replied with a shake of his head. “If’n I’d buried the woman in a tree, proper that way for the wind to take her … I knowed I would ride on down that north side of them mountains, making straight for Blackfoot country.”

Rufus nodded. “Take you some goddamned hair.”

“One by one,” Scratch continued. “I’d kill ever’ last one of them bastards I chanced across. Times were at nights while I kept myself awake caring for the woman, I figured how I’d mark the bodies: cutting on ’em, scraping my letters in each one so they’d come to know who I was and what I was about.”

Solomon glanced at the youngsters nearby and asked, “You never figgered to see your young’uns again?”

“No,” he confessed. “I was gonna ride and kill till ever’ one of the Blackfoot was dead … or them sonsabitches kill’t me.”

Gray sighed. “Lookit your young’uns now, Scratch. Ain’t it turned out for the best you didn’t leave ’em for the Crow to raise? And you ain’t dead and skulped up there in Blackfoot country!”

“And the woman pulled through,” Graham cheered.

“Were a bunch more days afore she was strong enough to sit a horse, howsoever,” Bass continued his tale. “I got us back over the pass just a’fore another storm blowed down on us. We made it to some good timber and sat it out whilst she got a bit more of her strength back. Don’t know how many days that was, for I’d stopped a’counting and carving on that ax handle.”

Day by day they had backtracked for the Crow village, become anxious when they didn’t find it where the lodges had been standing weeks before when the ordeal had begun. As they were pushing out of the abandoned campsite along the snowy ground churned with travois scars, Titus had spotted the scaffold propped across the branches of a distant cottonwood that stood at the base of the rimrock. And from the way the gnarled tree trunk below that robe bundle was marked, they knew it had to be the body of Strikes-in-Camp.

“Them Crow gave him a decent funeral,” he declared, “even if they never did bring his body into camp—feared as they was of the pox.”

Beneath the spreading branches of the cottonwood they camped that afternoon, and as Bass built a fire and gathered wood for the night, Waits-by-the-Water knelt and began her mourning. She chopped off more of her hair and tossed it into the wind, those shorn locks grotesquely framing that wounded, pitted face. Tears flowed as she wailed, tearing her coat from her arms so she could slash her flesh until her strength was gone and Bass raised her from the frozen ground, carrying his wife back to the
warmth of the fire where he fed her, wrapped her, then rocked her to sleep.

“After the second day I told the woman it was time for her mourning to be done,” Titus said, looking over to see his young son toddling his way now. “It was time to be finding our young’uns.”

Some two and a half years old by then, young Flea lumbered the last few yards as his father spread his arms to welcome him. The boy vaulted into the air, sailing into Bass’s arms where he settled into his father’s lap, looking round at the hairy faces gathered there in the afternoon shade as the deerflies droned and Horse Creek gurgled along its sandy bed.

“How long it take you to find them Crow?” Solomon inquired.

“Weren’t long, not really,” he said, rubbing Flea’s bushy head affectionately. “They took off right after the four days of mourning for Strikes-in-Camp and them others the Blackfoot killed in the ambush. But we found ’em eventual’.”

It had made for quite a scene when Bass and Waits-by-the-Water showed up near the camp one day late that winter of 1838. As soon as he had seen the camp guards loping their way, Scratch halted, waiting. Among the sentries had been Pretty On Top.

The young warrior’s eyes filled with a mist as he whooped, his cry sailing to the cold blue sky of Absaroka as he brought his pony skidding to a stop with the seven others right in front of the white man and his wife who clutched the flaps of her hood over her face, not daring to let these people who had known her from childhood see her wounds.

“My heart sings!” Pretty On Top cheered, slapping his breast. “You are returned with your wife! How is this that she did not die?”

“My husband would not let me,” Waits announced from the muffle of her hood, surprising even Titus. “He said I could not die.”

“Then the medicine of Ti-tuzz is mighty!” cried Three Iron. “In the stories of our great-grandfathers, when the
pox visited itself upon us, very few were spared death before the scattering of the bands. So the First Maker has truly smiled on you, Waits-by-the-Water.”

She had looked over at her husband and said, “Yes, I know how the First Maker has smiled on me.”

The eight guards yipped and whistled with approval, causing their horses to jostle with the sudden loud exuberance.

Bass found her eyes smiling at him from the shadows of her hood and said, “Yes, woman—the First Maker has smiled on us both.”

Little Flea had been at their horses’ legs before the two of them even dismounted beside Bright Wings’s lodge. And Magpie was already reaching her arms to her father as Bass brought his pony to a halt. He had leaned over, caught her by the wrist, and swung her up behind him, marveling at how much it seemed she had grown. As he kissed and hugged her right there on horseback, Waits dropped to the ground to gather little Flea into her arms, smothering him with her kisses. Not knowing what he was doing, the babbling child pushed back the hood—his own eyes suddenly wide with surprise, even fear.

Around the woman others gasped, fell back a step, as Waits-by-the-Water snatched the hood over her head, beginning to sob because the boy continued to stare at her in shock and fright. But in that next moment Crane emerged from the lodge doorway, her stooped body hurrying to her daughter’s side where she flung her arms around Waits—crying, wailing, sobbing, keening, blubbering all at once.

Then Bright Wings was there too, the three of them hugging, their arms wrapped around Flea as he rested on his mother’s hip. The moment Magpie and Bass hit the ground, the young girl sprinted to her mother’s side, ducked between some legs, and ended up in the middle of all those women happily reunited.

Hugging Flea now before the boy toddled off again, Scratch looked at Magpie as she helped her mother cutting moccasin soles. Back then, upon their return to the Crow after chasing down the Blackfoot, Magpie had been no older than Flea was at this moment. But to look at the girl
now, tall and long-legged as she was, Titus found it hard to believe so much time had flowed past since that winter of the Blackfoot … realizing again that his daughter was more than four years old.

At times that late winter and on into the spring, Pretty On Top and his companions—Red Leggings, Comes Inside the Door, Sees the Star, and Crow Shouting—would ask to join the white man when he packed up and rode away from the village for two weeks or more at a time. By day the bored young warriors might follow Titus to the icy banks of the flooding streams, amused and intrigued by the trapper’s rituals. Most mornings one of the Crow would ride out to spend the day circling the surrounding territory, searching for any sign of enemy encroachment while he hunted for fresh meat.

Days later, with a load of beaver for Waits-by-the-Water to flesh and his own heart yearning to hold her, eager to embrace his children, Bass would turn around and return to Yellow Belly’s village. For two, sometimes three nights he would remain at the woman’s side, each day spent hunting elk and deer or mountain sheep for his wife’s big family, coupling with her, wrestling with his children and those cousins who now had no father of their own. Once he was assured the group had enough meat to last them many days, Titus packed up again and headed into the high country—sometimes alone, often joined by the young warriors.

With each subsequent journey as those weeks passed, Scratch was able to push higher into the hills, farther upstream, always there when the beaver emerged from their winter lodges to make repairs on their dams.

“We figgered you’d gone under for sartin,” Rufus confessed now. “When you didn’t come in for ronnyvoo on the Popo Agie last summer.”

“Why’d the booshways move ronnyvoo there ’stead of here on the Green where they said they’d meet the brigades?” Titus asked.

Elbridge explained, “Goddamned company booshways changed it on us when they growed tired of allays
having Hudson’s Bay show up ever’ summer over here in this country.”

“Englishers got to be a bit of a problem with the free men, so it seemed,” Solomon said. “They was offering a good price on fur over at Fort Hallee, and wasn’t asking so much for their trade goods neither.”

“Wonder why we ain’t see’d hide nor ha’r of John Bull yet this summer?” Bass reflected.

Isaac said, “Maybeso they don’t know we’re here this year for ronnyvoo.”

“Chances are better them English don’t give a damn ’bout coming to ronnyvoo no more,” Solomon observed, “what with the trade ain’t being what it used to be.”

“Damned good to see you’re still standing on your pins, Titus Bass,” Gray said. “We was a’feared you’d gone under.”

“Way things was,” Bass began, hoisting the restless boy out of his lap, kissing Flea on the cheek, then sending the naked child on his way, “I didn’t figger the woman was much ready to be around white folks. So I had me a choice of coming to ronnyvoo all on my lonesome … or sticking close to her and the young’uns.”

“You said them Blackfoot gone and ruin’t some of your plunder,” Isaac said. “How in blazes’d you fare ’thout them supplies what you’d get at ronnyvoo?”

He gazed at the two children playing in the grass beneath a great clump of willow. “We made out fine,” Bass said quietly. “High summer—when the beaver ain’t fit for a red piss—I packed up all I had and rode ’em over to the mouth of the Tongue.”

“Tullock’s fort?” asked Gray.

Titus nodded. “Van Buren. Me and Sam’l dickered and drank, then dickered some more. All in all, he’s a good man. That coon spent plenty of time trapping beaver his own self. Knows how it be to freeze your balls to catch poor plew. Tullock done the best by me his company would let him.”

Graham inquired, “He get all your fur last year?”

“Most. Even this summer I could trade it to the company here, or I could trade it to the company at Tullock’s
Crow post. Don’t make me no differ’nce,” Scratch confided. “Only differ’nce is, this nigger sure missed his companyeros when he don’t come in for that ronnyvoo on the Popo Agie.”

“Weren’t much of a hurraw last summer,” Solomon grumbled.

Rufus agreed. “Lookee round you right here, goddammit. Ain’t much to ronnyvoo at all no more.”

“Drips come out from St. Louie with a small pack train last year,” Elbridge explained. “Had him no more’n two dozen carts an’ some seventy-five men.”

“Getting smaller and smaller ever’ year now,” Isaac grumped.

Titus stretched out his legs, his knees aching from those countless seasons spent submerged in freezing water. “That Scotsman feller, Stewart—he come out again last summer?”

Gray’s head bobbed. “Sartin sure did. Brung him out some others too. Had ’nother furrin-borned fella with him this time. Name of Sutter.
^*
That’un said he was setting his sights on making it all the way to the land of them Spanyards in California.”

Rufus Graham snorted with laughter. “It were funny to hear that li’l rip of a runt grumble and cuss with his funny talk! Why, don’t you know he went from camp to camp at ronnyvoo, trying to hire him an outfit of fellers to guide him on to California.”

“He have him any takers?” Scratch asked.

Rufus nodded. “A few hooked up with Sutter and give up on beaver.”

“You ’member how that li’l pecker called ’em all a bunch of robbers!” Solomon hooted. “He howled that all it seemed most fur men really wanted to do in California was rob churches, stealing cattle and horses!”

“More’n a handful signed on with Sutter leastways,” Elbridge said. “And Stewart brung out a pair of young fellers, just to make a trip west.”

“Either of them two hap to be a artist—maybeso that Miller fella he had with him couple years back?” Titus asked.

“Just peach-faced boys,” and Isaac shook his head solemnly. “Their papa sent ’em out to see the West.”

Itching the side of his cheek, Scratch asked, “Who’s their papa?”

“William Clark, of St. Louis,” Rufus answered. “Same one took that bunch all the way to the far ocean with Lewis back … oh, more’n thirty year ago now.”

“His two boys come out to see this country for themselves, I reckon,” Elbridge observed with a wry smile.

“I’ll bet ol’ man Clark sent his young’uns out here to see this here country the way it was when he come through here years ago,” Bass grumbled sourly. “See this country a’fore it ain’t no more.”

“Ain’t no more?” Rufus squealed.

“Lookit, boys—nigh onto ever’ summer we see’d missionaries coming to ronnyvoo, on their way west with their carts and wagons and milk cows,” Scratch declared grimly. “We see’d white women and Englishmen, Bible-thumpers and furriners … and for ever’ one of ’em come out here—there’s just a li’l less wild country left for the likes of you and me.”

The others fell silent for a few moments, thoughtful. Then Solomon said, “I recollect Scratch is right on that. Even more of them goddamned missionaries come through last summer too.”

“More?” Bass groaned.

Gray said, “Had four white women with ’em too.”

“Don’t s’prise me none,” Bass admitted.

“Even had us a li’l fun when one of them preachers married one of the company fellers to his Nez Perce woman.”

“Married her?” Bass said. “You mean like stand-up white folks, read-the-Bible married?”

Elbridge nodded enthusiastically. “Them Nepercy stood around stone-faced and quiet as church mice whilst that missionary said the proper words over ’em both.”

“Most off, I recollect how last year them clerks from
St. Louis didn’t have a good word to say ’bout things back east,” Isaac explained. “They was grumping over how bad they was having it with furs.”

Simms went on to explain how the eastern hands who accompanied the caravan for that summer trip to the mountains and back were eager to describe just how gloomy the financial picture had become in the East. The Panic of Thirty-seven had the States in its grip. Money was tight, times were hard, trade goods were never more expensive, and beaver was falling fast.