Ride the Moon Down Page 8

  “I will think of you both, often,” he said, then turned on his heel and ducked into the sunshine as Zeke whirled twice round his legs, clearly eager for the trail.

  Miles away to the south along the gurgling creekbank, Scratch turned into the hills rising sharply in the west. The higher he climbed, the deeper the snow became—changing from no more than a windblown skiff to an icy crust deep enough to brush his calves by the time Samantha had tired and he’d dropped to the ground at the edge of some rocks jutting from the barren side of a hill that overlooked part of the valley below. Here where only some clumps of sage dotted the white, pristine slope, nothing obstructed his view. With a brilliant autumn sun overhead, Bass pulled the camp ax from the back of his belt and trudged to some nearby brush where he hacked off a number of branches he dragged behind him when he returned to the boulders.

  Thatching those limbs across one another on the snow, he constructed a crude platform that for the most part would keep him out of the snow, dampness, and cold through the hours and days to come. Retrieving his blanket and robe, Titus loosened Samantha’s cinch, then tied her off in some brush down the slope a ways where she could graze on some grass blown free of snow. He was winded by the time he and the dog made the slippery climb back to his perch where he spread out the robe across the small platform, fur side up.

  Next he used his bare hands to scrape the snow away from a small circle directly in front of his platform. Zeke inched forward, sniffing with intense curiosity at that patch of earth Bass was clearing.

  “G’won,” he told the dog. “Lay over there so you’ll stay outta my way.”

  Zeke turned and circled the man twice, eventually settling on the snow near the rocks where he could watch his master.

  In the crude circle he had cleared, Bass piled small twigs and slivers of bark he broke off the limbs beneath him. With enough small wood near at hand, Scratch unfurled the blanket and clutched it around his shoulders before he settled down upon the platform. By bunching the robe around him, Bass was ready to load Whistler’s pipe with his trade tobacco.

  Once the tall redstone bowl was filled, Scratch laid a sliver of charred cloth on the top of his thigh, striking the fire-steel against the flint, sending a tiny shower of sparks onto the blackened char. Quickly laying the cloth with its glowing ember over the top of the bowl, Titus sucked steadily on the stem, drawing the fire into the tobacco and smoke across his tongue, sinking deep into his lungs.

  Then he pulled the glowing char from the top of the bowl, laying it on a small piece of pithy wood. Blowing on the ember, he quickly ignited the dry pith. With it smoking readily, Bass stuffed the wood beneath the center of the fire pit he had cleared in the snow and laid several of the smallest twigs over the smoky embers. Leaning to the side to blow across the pith, the dead twigs suddenly burst into flame. He added more, larger twigs, then leaned back and sucked on the pipe.

  With the smoke held momentarily in his lungs, Bass gazed out across the valley. On his left sat the sere bluffs and red-hued rimrock marking-the valley of the Yellowstone. Off to his right rose the great bulk of the Absaroka Range. And before him in the middistance sat the Pryor Mountains. This had been Rotten Belly’s country—a land held by the might of an able chief at the head of a powerful people.

  As the sun continued to crawl toward midsky, Titus smoked the last of the tobacco in that pipe bowl, with each long puff recalling some memory of He-Who-Had-Died. Both good times and tragic. Remembering how Arapooesh had told visitors that this land of Absaroka was in the right place: not too cold and not too warm, notso far east onto the plains that the Crow could not gather in the cool shadows of the mountains. Remembering how the chief had stepped into the middle of his people’s grief and fury, offering two white men the challenge of bringing back the hair of a third white trapper, the hair of a murderer.

  Arapooesh, who winters’ ago had accepted Bass as a brother. This man Rotten Belly who had adopted Josiah Paddock as one of his own relations.

  When the pipe went out, Titus turned the bowl over and tapped it against the heel of his hand, knocking the ash and blackened dollop into the tiny fire before him. With a twig he scraped some of the growing mound of ash to the edge of the snow he had cleared from the bare ground. Setting the pipe aside on the robe, Bass dragged the coyote-fur hat, then untied the faded blue of the silk bandanna, from his head, laying both by Whistler’s pipe.

  Now that his naked skull was exposed to the winter sky, he carefully scooped up a little of the warm ash into both hands. Slowly he dumped the ashes on top of his head, using both hands to smear their warmth through his hair, rubbing it across that pale patch of bone.

  Reaching around to his back, Bass pulled free the long, much-used skinning knife from its sheath. Seizing that narrow braid he wore at his right ear, he dragged the blade of his knife across the middle of the braid, hacking it free. After flinging it into the flames at his knee, Scratch grabbed a handful of his long graying hair, sawing it loose, then tossing it into the fire where the strands sizzled and smoked, choking the cold breeze with its terrible stench. Clump by clump, he continued to work around the base of his head, crudely chopping off his curly hair until what remained hung just above his shoulders in ragged, uneven tatters, most of it choked with ash.

  For a long time that early afternoon he continued to sit there, adding pieces of limb and branch to his little fire, sensing the breeze blow cold across the flesh of his neck where he had sawed off long sections of his hair, exposing his skin to the teeth in every gust of wind. Eventually he loaded Whistler’s pipe a second time and smoked, remembering other friends he had lost across the years.

  Good men who had welcomed him into their lives and their hearts without conditions. Men who had become a part of Bass’s life, friends now become the chinking in so many of his memories. Old friends who had loved their life and their freedom as much as Scratch loved his.

  Puff by puff he drew the strong, stinging tobacco into his lungs, then slowly exhaled as the breeze whipped the smoke away while he offered up his remembrances like a prayer. One by one he asked each of those who were gone to look down upon him now and in the months and years to come.

  Strange, he thought, but when he was a youngster back on the Ohio after running away from home, he had always believed life was bound to get easier the older he became. Then he managed to collide with the wrong women—females who discovered his weakness, his need, and what unerring devotion he offered them—women who took and took until they left him behind. Certain that wisdom had come after every broken heart, Bass instead found a newer, deeper hurt with each new love. Instead of life growing easier, he discovered that life offered him no simple answers, no respite from the painful learning as he was knocked about.

  How innocent he had been in earlier years, to believe that as he put mistakes behind him, he would find life all the easier. But for every woman who had scarred him, for every misstep he had made in life, there nonetheless had been a good friend who stood at his shoulder.

  Those faces were monuments to the seasons of his life. Men who had remained steadfastly loyal through shining times and walks with death.

  And now he had lost another.

  Quickly Titus tugged at the bottom of his long buckskin shirt, dragging it over his head and from each arm. Yanking back the sleeves of his faded woolen underwear as the cold wind startled his bare flesh, Scratch gently dragged the knife’s blade across the back of his forearm. Then a second narrow slash close beside that first just beginning to bead and ooze with blood. Then a third, a fourth, and more he cut, slicing a series of slashes on down that forearm before he repeated the process on the other arm.

  “He was the greatest of all Crow chiefs,” Bass whispered with a sigh, feeling the cold wind bite along the oozy wounds as he turned to glance at the dog. “Now he’s gone.”

  Bass set the knife aside to stare at the tops of the far hills across the valley.

  You are a man who understands that there is no use
in lingering in this life when one’s time has gone, he remembered Arapooesh declaring when Bass and Josiah were about to set out on McAfferty’s trail after Asa had murdered the chief’s wife. Why should a man linger, like the wildflower in spring holding on to hope of passing the heat of summer and the cold of the coming winter? Only the earth and sky are everlasting.

  “So many,” he whispered now. “So many it makes a man feel he ain’t got friends left.”

  It is men that must die, Arapooesh’s voice reverberated in Bass’s head. Our old age is a curse.

  Sensing the burn of tears, Titus said, “Times like this, I feel older’n I really am. And I feel any more years is a goddamned curse … living without them what’s gone is a hard thing. Too hard.”

  Again, Rotten Belly’s words whispered in his head, And death in battle is a blessing for those who have seen our many winters.

  In the death of a great chief, Crow tradition dictated that the band mourn across four days. The entire camp would grieve any man killed by an enemy—but especially a beloved chief like Rotten Belly, felled as he was in battle with their most hated enemies.

  That first day of public grieving, the chief’s lodge had been painted with wide horizontal red stripes. Inside where no fire would ever burn again, the body was cleaned, dressed in his finest war regalia, then laid on a low four-pole platform. In his hands was placed a fan of eagle feathers, and his chest was bared to the spirits. There the body rested while his people expressed their utter sorrow at his death, their unrequited anger at the Blackfoot who had killed their leader.

  Across those nights and days, Rotten Belly’s warrior society conducted elaborate ceremonies in his honor. The Otter Clan saw to it that the dead man’s treasured war totems lay beside his body, and assured that his face and bare chest were painted red. For hours they beat drums throughout the camp. Wailing, mourners pierced the skin at their knees, others pierced their arms to draw blood. Some jabbed sharp rocks against their foreheads, making themselves bleed. For four days a somber pall fell over the entire camp.

  Then on the morning of the fifth day, the Crow had torn down their own lodges, abandoning the site on the Grey Bull River and leaving the chief’s lodge to decay with the elements through the coming seasons. While the dead man’s relations would continue to grieve in their own way, the rest of the band went on with its life and a new leader stepped to the fore.

  From time to time as the sun sank from midsky and disappeared in the west this cold day of his own private mourning, Bass left his perch to scour both sides of the bluff for deadfall poking from the crust of snow, wood he could drag back to his fire pit. After each short trip he found he needed to rest longer and longer, sucking on more and more of the icy snow as he heaved for breath. Once he was ready, Scratch clambered to his feet and trudged off again. Exhausted, he returned from what he knew would be his last trip as twilight darkened the sky and threw the land into irretrievable shadow with night’s approach.

  “C’mere, boy,” he called, patting the edge of the crude lattice platform beside him.

  Zeke eagerly lunged up through the snow, then went to his belly at his master’s knee, laying his jaw on Bass’s thigh where he knew he would receive a good scratching.

  “I’m glad you come along, ol’ fella. You’d been a mess for her back there in camp if’n I’d left you behind. Got yourself in the way but good, staying underfoot. Better the woman didn’t have you whining and moaning after I left.”

  He watched the first stars come out before he grew too tired to watch any longer. Bass banked more wood against the fire, then rearranged the robe and blanket on the platform that kept him out of the snow.

  “Lay here, Zeke,” he instructed, patting the robe.

  The dog came up, turned about, and nested right next to him. Then Scratch pulled the other half of the robe and that heavy wool blanket over them both. Laying his cheek down on his elbow, Bass closed his eyes, listening to the distant sounds of that cold winter night—an utter silence so huge and vast that he felt himself swallowed whole by the open sky above them.

  He tried to imagine what she was doing right then, if Waits-by-the-Water had Magpie on her knee as she helped her mother prepare supper. Or if the baby was sleeping. Perhaps even talking more than ever. He wondered if his wife was thinking of him right at that moment. Surely she was, for that had to be the reason his thoughts had turned instantly to her.

  And he thought on how warm it was lying next to her skin in the winter, even cold as deep as this. It saddened him to think of all those winter nights Arapooesh had endured after his wife was murdered. Knowing how hard it would be for him to endure two long winters without Waits-by-the-Water.

  Perhaps Rotten Belly had sought out his own death. Some men did just that: seeking an honorable death on its own terms. Like Asa McAfferty.

  Bass wondered if he would have the courage to seek out his own death when the time came.

  Then he thought on his woman, and their child—knowing because of them he now shared the promise of life.

  The dog lay warm against him, breathing slowly.

  As the Seven Sisters rose in the northeast, low along the horizon that first night of early winter, Bass dreamed of sunlit high-country ponds and the slap of beaver tails on still water, the spring breeze rustling those new leaves budding on the quakies, and the merry trickle of Magpie’s laughter.

  Dreamed with the pleasure of his wife’s lips on his.

  And that joy of crossing into a span of country where he knew he was the first man ever to set foot … as if it were the day after God had created it all, made that world just for him.

  There was little choice but for Scratch to put out the call—asking warriors to join him in making a raid deep into Blackfoot country.

  In those first days following Bass’s return to the village, Whistler not only readily offered to go along on the journey, but volunteered to spread the call.

  “I will be your pipe bearer,” declared the man not all that much older than Titus.

  “That means you are the one who will take responsibility for asking others to join you?”

  “Yes,” Whistler explained. “I will carry the pipe throughout the village and ask all who wish to join us in this blood journey to bring tobacco to our lodge.”

  “And you’ll smoke the tobacco of those you decide will go with us?”

  “We will smoke their tobacco, offering our prayers for a successful venture.”

  Bass felt humbled at this honor. “Whistler makes me proud, agreeing to act as pipe bearer on this war trail led by a white man.”

  “You are a son-in-law who gives me honor,” the warrior protested. “The loss of my older brother and my own selfish mourning blinded me to what must be done for my brother’s memory. Now you have returned to us after many seasons. And you have mourned as my people grieve: cutting your hair and drawing your own blood. You offer to ride into the land of the enemy to take revenge in the name of the One-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here.”

  “He-Who-Has-Died was a good friend,” Bass explained. “For such a friend who treated me like his brother, I am without honor if I do not go in search of Blackfoot scalps in his name.”

  After four nights in the hills beside his little fire, with only Samantha and Zeke for company as the sun rose, climbed, and fell each day, as the stars wheeled overhead each night, it was such a sweet homecoming to lie next to Waits-by-the-Water. To tell her how he had yearned for her closeness as he endured those days of isolation, eating snow and the dried meat he had packed along, moving from that rocky point on the brow of the hill only to gather more wood he lashed on the mule’s back twice each day: first with the sun’s rising so he would have enough for his little fire until dusk, and later as the sun began its tumble into the west so he had what he needed to keep his fire going through the long winter night.

  Darkness spent dreaming of his wife and Magpie, slumber troubled with frightening memories and terrifying visions that awoke him in the cold and the b
lackness to lay more wood on the struggling flames. Clutching the old dog against him beneath the buffalo robe, Scratch sorted through the dizzying glimpses of blood and loneliness, those confusing and blurred images of violence, despair, and loss.

  Each time the haunts visited him, he somehow managed to drift off again—reminding himself that he would never be frightened for himself, fearing only for those he loved.

  Strikes-in-Camp was the first to volunteer. This tall, haughty warrior had reacted with violent jealousy when Arapooesh chose Scratch and Josiah to go in search of McAfferty. Whistler’s firstborn, Waits-by-the-Water’s brother, and now one of Bass’s relations, Strikes-in-Camp nonetheless remained cool and distant to the white man.

  “I came to say I will go with you to take Blackfoot scalps,” the young warrior announced the afternoon of that first day Whistler spread the call across that camp of some three thousand souls. But he spoke only to his father, rarely allowing his eyes to touch the trapper.

  Whistler glanced at Bass, then asked his son, “Are there any others in your society who will join us?”

  “Some,” the warrior answered. “And they will come to join for themselves. I am not here to speak for them. Only for myself. You must understand that I do this not for my brother-in-law,” he explained, clearly refusing to mention the white man by his Crow name. “I go to take revenge on the enemy because they killed my uncle.”

  When Strikes-in-Camp had gone, Whistler settled at the fire again and continued drinking the strong coffee he and Bass shared every afternoon, an anticipated and much-enjoyed treat the trapper brought from the rendezvous where the white men gathered.

  After some reflection the aging warrior declared, “My son has been shamed, perhaps.”

  “Shamed?”

  “Yes, perhaps. Because you were the first to announce you were going to take Blackfoot scalps in the name of He-Who-Has-Died.”

  For some time Bass did not answer. How best to walk the straight road with his words without offending Strikes-in-Camp’s father. Eventually he said, “Your son could have raised the call as soon as the four days of mourning were over, as soon as this village moved on and left the chief’s lodge behind. He could have convinced many of his warrior society to join him, and he would have been well regarded.”