Death Rattle

25

Across the next two days he sat in utter amazement at his children—three of them now.

How tall and so like her mother young Magpie had become. Were it not for his daughter’s own inner strength and resolve, Titus was certain Waits-by-the-Water could not have made it through her grieving for a husband too late in making his return.

Then there was Flea. For so short a lad, the boy could nonetheless grab a handful of a pony’s mane and vault himself onto its back without the slightest exertion. The more he watched his son among their horses, the more certain he became that Flea really did understand the secret talk of their four-legged breed.

And the tiny blanket child—barely weeks old now that winter was fully upon them. Of the three, this boy looked most like his father’s side of the family. Sometimes in the way the infant would screw up his nose with a giggle or clench his eyes shut when about to bawl, either expression so reminded Bass of his younger brothers when they were only babes. Back in those days long, long ago before Titus knew there was any other life to covet but what his father’s life had been, and his father before him, and his own father before them all.

In those days when Titus had been a child.

Before he put aside childish things and stepped beyond the twenty-mile bonds that imprisoned most men to the ground where they were born and whelped, raised to a life on the soil, and would eventually die having ventured no farther in distance, no further in spirit.

Wanting more than what most men accepted as their lot in life, young Bass had grown old seeking what other men could only dream, having lived what most men never would dream.

And in his living out the yearning, Scratch had discovered the mute secrets most men only hungered for late at night after the candles were snuffed and their frontier cabins or stately town mansions fell as quiet as the soft, sleeping breath of their wives and children.

Titus Bass was a man more blessed than any he knew.

Their first night back in one another’s arms, Waits showed she understood just how hungry he was for her, perhaps because of her own appetite for him. Long after moonrise when the babe had been fed and the older two were long asleep in their blankets, while the embers burned low with a copperish hue every bit as red as Taos geraniums, Waits-by-the-Water wordlessly sat up in the soft, flickering light and shimmied her deerskin dress over her head. Quickly scrambling back beneath the buffalo robe, her hands raised his breechclout flap and found the belt’s buckle. She tore him out of his leggings in two swift tugs.

He wasn’t at all surprised to discover how hard his manhood became with nothing more than the delicious anticipation. Yet it virtually leaped when her fingers came exploring its heat. Clearly impatient, Waits rolled over on her side, scooting her hips back against him, then raised a leg and guided him into her moistness. As certain as he was that he would explode then and there, Bass was surprised when she stopped moving the moment he was planted inside her.

“Wait,” she whispered in the darkness. “Let this last.”

Despite the blood thundering at his ears, Scratch too wanted to savor this delicious joining a few minutes longer before their coupling was over all too quickly. So his hand explored her belly still rounded with the baby’s fat, wandering upward to cup and tease that milk-swollen breast. Soon enough his touch had her volving her hips against him, her hunger growing ravenous. He let her work against him while he remained unmoving, until he felt her shudder a second time and—unable to deny this most potent force of nature—he rode out the shock waves of his own release.

Bass did not remember falling asleep, it must have come over him so quickly that first night back in her arms.

“Tell me of the women by the big water,” she awoke him with a whisper that next gray morning.

“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?

“Why should I choose you?”

Maybe this joking had gone far enough. Scratch began to reach out to lay his hand on Flea’s shoulder when the boy took another step toward the claybank.

“Yes, of course I realize I can hear you, that I can talk to you. But why does that—”

With one more step toward the gelding, Flea stopped all but underneath the claybank’s neck, staring up at the pony’s eyes. The youngster nodded in the most matter-of-fact manner, then said, “I understand. Since you and I can talk to one another, that does prove you are the horse for me, doesn’t it?”

Titus hurried up and put his two hands on his son’s shoulders protectively, ready to put a stop to what he clearly did not understand, a situation that was giving him a very eerie sensation.

Flea turned confidently and peered up at his father. “This is the one, Popo. He told me something that makes sense.”

“W-what, son?”

“This horse admitted he isn’t the strongest horse, or the fastest horse either.”

“Then, why have you decided to choose him?”

For the first time, Flea reached up and patted the claybank along the strong jaw. “I choose him because he tells me he is most like you, Father. Not the strongest, nor the fastest. But because he is the smartest.”

Over the next few days, Bass spent part of every afternoon outside, basking in the late sun and carving a number of special invitation sticks that had to be ready when the time came for the naming ceremony. Using his smallest skinning knife, Titus carved his own unique patterns on the cottonwood pegs, then meticulously peeled away pieces of the bark to expose the pale inner bark. With a bundle of those sticks carved, he started Magpie coloring the pale patterns for him, using some vermillion powder he dissolved in warm water. He showed her how to dip a fingertip into the horn bowl and rub the part in her hair for decoration—to use the same technique in rubbing the red dye into wood.

On those days when the unpredictable weather permitted, he took Flea hunting with him. Again there were moments Scratch scolded himself for not learning to shoot McAfferty’s bow simply because all they ran across were snow-white hares. But eventually, they would happen onto some deer tracks, or even spot a few antelope grazing out on the flats where the wind had blown the old snow clear. The first time he showed Flea just how curious a creature the antelope was, the boy ended up laughing so loud that the few animals bolted away before Scratch could get off a shot. They had to mount up and follow the fleeing animals until the antelope finally stopped again.

Once more, Bass hid their horses in a coulee. “You can come with me, son. But if you laugh at how stupid those antelope are this time—instead of some fresh meat tied over the back of your new horse—I’ll take you back to camp tied down the same way!”

“I promise,” Flea said, trying hard to wipe the smile from his mouth with his small blanket mitten.

“When I start crawling, you get down on your belly with me,” Titus instructed. “There will be no talking from here on.”

“All right, Popo.”

“Here,” and Bass handed the boy his rifle’s long wiping stick, to the end of which he had tied a corner of a bright Mexican scarf, a bright yellow cloth covered with a profusion of blue and red flowers. “You know what to do when I tap your shoulder and point?”

“Yes. I’ll poke the stick into the snow so the antelope will see the scarf waving in the breeze.”

“Good, lad. Their curiosity will work against their suspicious natures and bring them to us so that we can pick one of them for our supper.”

The boy’s face got serious. “No laughing at those stupid animals though.”

He laid a mitten on his son’s shoulder. “Just make sure that one day in your life, you don’t become like the antelope and are fooled into being so curious you blunder into your own death.”

They emerged over the side of the coulee where the ravine grew shallow, staying on their bellies as they crawled a few yards onto the prairie. Bass stopped and put out his hand to touch his son’s arm. Flea nodded as he reached forward the full length of his arm and jammed the ramrod into the crusty snow. Now they had only to wait while that Mexican scarf rippling in the wind worked its magic to lure the unwary antelope into range.

As a doe moved closer, Titus dragged the hammer back to full cock as quietly as the lock would allow. She was clearly nervous, pacing anxiously side to side several yards at a time—never coming directly toward the hunters—but her eyes always watching that scarf nonetheless. As wary as she tried to be, her curiosity was soon to be her undoing. Then at sixty yards, it appeared she wasn’t going to come any closer.

Titus glanced up at the scarf, measuring the strength of the breeze and its direction. Laying his cheek against the rifle, he snugged the weapon into the curve of his shoulder. Squeezing back on the rear set trigger, he moved his bare finger forward in the trigger guard to wait there like a summer’s whisper while he got the sight picture he wanted on her front flank. She turned, still nervous … so he repositioned the front blade.

Then squeezed.

That .54-caliber Derringer roared—old workhorse that it was. He knew this rifle, knew where it would shoot and where to hold, as steady as any man was with a firearm.

Flea was up and running across the snow as Bass clambered to his knees, then brought his legs under him. He stood reloading there and then while the boy reached the antelope and danced around it.

“Let me dress it! Let me do it this time!” Flea cried as his father approached.

“You can help,” Titus offered, glad for his son’s enthusiasm as he came to a stop beside the antelope doe, “but you must learn what is most important, son.”

“What?”

Holding the blade, Titus handed his knife to his son. “Remember that your empty hand must always know what the hand with the knife is doing.”

They knelt together, and Scratch grabbed a fore- and rear leg on one side, easing the doe onto her back. He stretched out her neck, then cupped his hand around his son’s hand as they lowered the knife to make that first incision from throat to groin.

“Feel it in your hand, in your arm and shoulder too,” he instructed. “Don’t stab the point too deep, or you’ll make a mess of her insides and it will spoil the meat.”

As they gently worked their way down the chest, Titus gradually took some of the pressure off his son’s hand, allowing Flea to do more and more of that first carving by himself.

“You must always be careful not to cut off your hand, Flea,” he reminded with a grin, his son nestled there within his arms as they worked in tandem. “Unless you want to be a one-handed horseman when you grow up!”

This antelope was a most welcome change to the deer they had harvested in the shady bottoms or that elk cow they had spotted in the hillside timber. A different taste altogether. It warmed his heart to see how eagerly Magpie and Flea ate and ate, until they were stuffed at every meal—knowing how little the children might have had to eat while he was away chasing not the mountain beaver but California horses. And each time he gazed at their greasy, smiling faces, watching them gnaw every morsel from the bones, he silently renewed his vow never again to leave his family behind.

It happened that a name was spoken to him.

At sunrise the next morning Titus bundled the children against the bright, sunny cold, pulling fur hats down over their ears to protect them from the frigid winds and the sprinkling hoarfrosts. As Waits nursed the infant, Magpie and Flea stood before their father.

“I want my son to carry these sticks in his mittens,” Scratch instructed, then handed the carved and painted cottonwood pegs to Flea. “And at each lodge, you will give one to your sister so that she can make the invitation.”

“I ask them to come?” Magpie inquired.

Waits answered now, “To our lodge. At sundown this day. For supper and a naming.”

“Do you understand, children?” Titus asked them.

Both nodded their heads. Then Magpie answered for both of them. “We are ready to do this for our little brother.”

Scratch sank to one knee and gathered them both in his arms tightly. He released them and arose, saying, “Go then. And when you are done, hurry back. We have much, so much to do.”

After the two had shoved the door cover back in place over the opening, Waits-by-the-Water sighed, “You have decided upon a name?”

He chuckled, then said, “Dear mother of my children—we couldn’t have a naming ceremony for the boy if the Grandfather hadn’t already told me his name!”

At the appointed time late that afternoon the first guests arrived to scratch at the door pole.

“Is my white brother receiving dinner guests?” Turns Plenty asked.

Titus shoved the door flap aside, saying, “Come in, come in. I’m sorry you had to ask. Please, take a seat of honor as our first guest.”

As Turns Plenty eased around the left side of the fire in the path the sun takes across the sky, Scratch set his hand on his son’s shoulder and said, “Quickly now, put on your coats, children. I want you both to wait outside to welcome our guests. Magpie, you greet them, and Flea—you pull the door flap open for them to enter.”

The eager children quickly dressed for the cold and dived outside into the last of the sun’s light.

Singly or in pairs, the respected men of the tribe, as well as those who had long ago befriended Titus Bass, all appeared at their door. When the last had arrived, Scratch called his children inside to join those who encircled the cheery fire, so many they formed two rings. Warm as it was in the lodge, the men quickly shed their coats before they were offered what tin plates Waits-by-the-Water owned, along with lap-size sheets of scraped buffalo parfleche. On these the guests were invited to take their choice from chunks of the boiled or roasted elk speared from the steamy kettles and pulled from those roasting sticks positioned around the fire pit.

With supper done and everyone licking the grease from their fingers and lips, the coffee was ready to pour. At their father’s signal, Magpie and Flea began passing out the shiny, new tin cups Titus had traded off Lucas Murray at Bents Fort.

“The cup my children give each one of you now belongs to you,” Bass explained. “It is just the beginning of the gifts from my family to you—in return for honoring us with your presence while we announce the Grandfather’s name for our new son.”

With grunts and murmurs of agreeable good humor, the guests held out their new cups as Titus and Waits each transcribed half the circle with their steamy coffeepots. Many of the men clinked their empty cups together merrily, holding their gifts aloft to salute respect for their generous host.

When he finally filled his own cup and set the pot down at the edge of the fire pit, Scratch retook his spot beside the oldest among them and said, “Real Bird, will you honor us with a prayer over your pipe before we begin this ceremony?”

From his beautiful blanket pouch, this ancient warrior and mentor to Rotten Belly and many chiefs took his pipe stem, the bowl, and a large tobacco pouch made from the scrotum of an elk bull. Though many, many winters had turned his hair completely silver, Real Bird nonetheless still possessed a strong “elk medicine” unlike anything his people had ever known. He was a physician and healer, as well as being a diviner who could see into the days ahead and know what would come to pass.

With his pipe loaded, Real Bird held it before him and offered his prayer, face gazing upward through the wide, black hole where fire smoke rose in twisting spirals into the dark, winter sky. When the old one put the stem to his lips, Scratch picked up a small coal with a pair of iron tongs and placed it atop the tamped tobacco. After the diviner’s prayer, the pipe came next to the child’s father, Titus Bass, then continued on to the left until it reached the doorway, where it was passed back to the second row of guests so that its path continued back to Real Bird. Next it went hand-to-hand along the right side of the lodge, as each visitor offered his own extended prayer of blessing before drawing in his own six puffs of smoke that sent the prayer to the four cardinal directions, and to mother earth and father sky.

Once the pipe was back in Real Bird’s hands, the old shaman emptied the black dollop and separated bowl from stem. Then he called the mother forward with the infant.

“Give the child to its father,” Real Bird instructed.

Titus took the boy into his arms as Waits turned away and took her seat behind the second row of chiefs and headmen, near her two children who were watching in rapt attention from the shadows that leaped and danced upon the dew liner and lodge cover.

“Take the dressings from him,” the old shaman said.

Resting the bundle in his lap, Scratch pulled the blanket aside, then loosened the knots tied in the calico that was wrapped around the boy’s genitals to contain his elimination. Titus carefully wiped the child’s bottom with dried moss, then held the infant aloft upon his two hands. Hoisted upward there in the fire’s light, the youngster lay higher than any of them, suspended between the oldest of the band and the Grandfather Above.

“Father of this child—what is the name the Creator has chosen for the boy?” asked Real Bird in a reedy voice.

Tears glistened in his eyes and Bass found his throat clogged when he first tried to speak. “I-I have learned his name is Iische.”

“Jackrabbit?” Real Bird repeated as Waits-by-the-Water silently put her hand over her mouth, her eyes welling up.

“Yes.”

Around them many of the guests grunted or nodded to one another to signify their approval.

Turns Plenty announced, “It is a good name for a boy-child.”

“His legs are always busy,” Titus explained, “as if he wants to be let down from our arms so he can jump around.”

“Soon enough he will be,” Real Bird prophesied, then chuckled some as he raised his arm and placed his wrinkled, withered hand on the boy’s chest where Bass held the child aloft. “Iische … I name you by all that is holy to our people. You are loved not only by your father and mother, but your sister and brother. And you will always know the love of all your people.”

Several of the others openly and loudly offered their praise.

Then Real Bird continued, “You come from the finest of blood, Iische. In your veins flows the blood of your mother—and through her comes the blood of warrior chiefs: Arapooesh, Whistler … and Strikes In Camp.”

By now Titus was starting to tremble, not from holding the tiny infant aloft, but from the emotion threatening to overwhelm him as he considered Real Bird’s wise and moving words.

“And in your veins too flows the blood of your father,” the wrinkled shaman continued. “A man who was not born a warrior, nor born a friend of the Crow … but a man of honor who has become a warrior and many times proved himself a protector of our people. Iische, with your sister and brother you have a great honor to uphold. Your mother has proved she is the bravest of the brave, and your father is our unquestioned friend.”

Many in the lodge muttered all the louder now in their approval of the old shaman’s words.

“Our enemies are your father’s enemies,” Real Bird continued. “Our friends are his friends. And his children … are our children. If ever death should claim your father, children—then know that there are a half a hundred of us who will step forward to raise you as he would himself do.”

Tears were streaming unchecked down Scratch’s face and dampening his beard as he peered across the lodge to find Waits-by-the-Water’s eyes glistening as she repeatedly swiped fingers across her own wet cheeks.

“lische—may you grow as strong and true and every bit as straight as the Creator intended for you when he sent you to these parents He alone chose to give you, parents who would teach you, protect you, love you,” Real Bird prayed. “Jackrabbit—little Crow warrior!”

With those special words, the entire lodge roared with one concerted response, “Heya!” Bass folded the naked child back against him once more, so overwhelmed with a gush of emotion. “Come over here, children,” he called and gestured to Magpie and Flea.

They squeezed behind the second row of warriors to reach a small place made for them now right behind their father.

“It is time for the gifts now,” he instructed as they sat, his voice still unsteady, clogged with sentiment. “Do you remember those stacks of blankets we dragged up just outside the door this afternoon?”

“Yes, Popo,” Flea answered with an eager nod.

“As our guests leave our home, give them each a blanket as a token of our love, our esteem for them honoring us with their presence here tonight.”

As the first of the leaders and headmen began to stand in the crowded lodge and pulled on their fur coats or blanket capotes, Magpie and Flea threaded their way through the guests to dive outside to make ready their final part in the ceremonies. And when the crowd had thinned enough, Waits-by-the-Water got to her feet and moved over to sit beside her husband near Real Bird.

By now Titus was struggling with the last knot to retie the calico wrap around the squirming infant—all arms and legs in constant motion.

“Here, woman of my heart,” Scratch said, his face beaming with pride and love as he pulled the small blanket back over his son and handed the child to her.

“Iische” she repeated. “It is a very good name for him!”

“You see these strong legs of his? How they kick when he wants to go find you.” Titus cried with joy. “Your little jackrabbit—I think he is very hungry again!”