Wind Walker

TWENTY-THREE

That Indian was a proud man, one who had made plenty of mistakes, owned up to his faults, yet was still paying for what lay in the long-ago past. It didn’t seem fair to Titus Bass, since he’d made a heap of mistakes in his own life.

Still, he damn well understood just how few things in his own life had turned out anywhere near fair. Scratch could admire the warrior’s dogged persistence, as well as his survival savvy. And he got to thinking that perhaps there was a reason why he had run onto Slays in the Night after all these years, now that they were both no longer young and frisky as bull calves in spring … now that they had rubbed their old horns down to a polish and they no longer frolicked, the sap of youth no longer coursing through their veins. Considering the odds that once stood against the Shoshone warrior, it was nothing less than a wonder that Slays in the Night was still alive at all. The Injun had the ha’r of the b’ar in’im, for sartin.

Even in her youth, that Digger woman could never have been a comely gal, Titus thought the more he looked her over that evening at supper. She didn’t talk much either, mostly keeping her eyes lowered except when she stole furtive glances at Waits-by-the-Water or one of the children. Red Paint Rock had to be half again as old as Waits. She was built sturdy and close to the ground, but it was the pear shape to her body that made the woman seem all the more squat—especially when she stood next to the tall Shoshone.

“This is really the old friend who stole our horses long ago?” Waits whispered at his ear when he called her to the lodge after everyone had eaten supper and wiped their greasy hands on their hair.

“Yes,” he responded in a hush. “The man’s medicine has seen better days.”

“Our horses, our things are safe from him now?”

Laying his hands on her shoulders, Titus reassured, “That was a long time ago, far away, a wrong committed by another man.”

“You can be sure of him?”

“I want you to believe in me when I say I can.”

She looked into his eyes. “Then I will trust you, even though I do not know if I can trust him.”

“You can trust me.” He turned to kneel at the stack of blankets.

She stepped up behind his shoulder. “What are you doing?”

“I am making gifts to them,” he explained, feeling her eyes on his back as he pulled out a red blanket, and a multi-striped one too. Sensing her waiting there behind him made him a little edgy, feeling as if he had to explain this act of charity when she herself was the most giving person he himself had ever known.

He turned slightly on his knees and asked, “Them extra guns—where’d you lay ’em?”

“You’re going to make a gift of a gun?” she asked, surprised enough that her voice rose an octave.

“Yes. He has nothing but a poor gun that is only good to shoot a few poor rabbits.”

“There, back where you sleep. I laid them under that green blanket.”

“The extra lead and powder we got for my work at Bridger’s fort?”

She pointed. “In the basket—there.”

Scratch crabbed toward the back of the lodge on all fours, pulled back the blanket, and started appraising all the extra firearms he owned, most of them taken from the bodies of dead enemies over the years. He picked out a rifled flintlock, then selected a pistol that could use the same size ball.

“What does she have to cook in?” Waits asked.

Her sudden question startled him. Scratch turned and peered over his shoulder at her with a shrug. “How’d I know what she’s got to cook in? Didn’t pay no attention. Only saw her skinnin’ a pair of poor-lookin’ rabbits—”

“Isn’t that just like a man.” She let her words whip him even while she grinned. “This woman needs something too, but all you can mink about is your gifts to the man.”

He smiled back at her. “What you got in mind for Red Paint Rock?”

“I have a kettle she can have,” Waits began as she crouched on the robes and went to digging through her belongings. “And a new knife too.”

He stood, scooping up the rifle and pistol, then started for the door—stopping to lean over and plant a kiss on the top of her head as she dug out a few yards of some cloth and several feet of red ribbon. When he had ducked out of the lodge, Scratch called for his children.

“Flea, take your sister and little brother into the lodge to help your mother,” he directed. “I want you to bring me the two blankets your mother will show you. And help your mother bring out all that she is gathering up too.”

It wasn’t long before Flea and Magpie carried the heavy wool blankets out and laid them on a shady patch of grass so Titus could prop the rifle against the stack and lay the pistol on top of it all. He went back to the lodge to pick out some powder and lead while the children helped their mother bring out the rest of her gifts. Through it all, Slays in the Night and Red Paint Rock watched with growing interest and curiosity as the white man’s family bustled back and forth to the lodge and the dogs whimpered to be let off their ropes.

At last, Scratch settled again at the fire, where the antelope haunch roasted. He pointed at the spit, then signed, “How long has it been since you ate antelope?”

Self-consciously, the warrior said, “A long time. They move too fast for my … for my old gun.”

“You and the woman are lucky that old gun of yours can keep you both fed.”

“We get a little to eat. Enough for her and me,” the Shoshone replied. Then, pointing at the rifle leaning against that stack of blankets, Slays said, “I like the looks of your gun. Such a gun shoots straight, kills a lot of game.”

“That ain’t my gun over there,” Titus corrected. “Used to be.”

The Shoshone looked at him quizzically until Scratch explained, “It’s your gun now.”

“M-my gun?” he signed, tapping his breast with a trembling hand.

He stood up again, reaching down to pull the warrior’s arm. “C’mon. Let’s go see how your new rifle feels in your hands.”

As he stepped away from the fire with the white man, Slays said something to the Digger woman. Her eyes grew wide, bouncing back and forth between the rifle, the old trapper, and Bass’s family, who stood nearby, watching their guests. After a moment of stunned silence, Red Paint Rock quietly said something to her husband.

The Shoshone stopped just feet short of the blankets and rifle. “Friend,” he said in his language, beginning to sign again, “we do not have anything of value to repay you for this kindness.”

That poverty tugged at his heart. “There’s no need to give anything back to us for the gifts we make to you and your wife.”

“G-gifts?” he asked. “M-more than the rifle?”

“Lookee there,” and he pointed at the stack, “first whack, you both likely could use a couple new blankets. Them come right out of Jim Bridger’s storehouse a few days back. Brand spankin’ new they are. An’ you’re gonna need some powder an’ lead to shoot your new rifle—so I give you some of that.”

Slays’s lips moved slightly, but no words slipped out.

“Here, lookee,” Bass said as he picked up the small skin pouch from the top of the blankets. “Inside is a worm”—which he brought forth and held up for the Shoshone to see—“so you can pull a patch from your barrel. An’ … this here’s a screw—good to yank a dry ball from your breech.” He saw the mortified look on the man’s face. “Don’t you worry none. I’ll teach you how to use ’em afore we push on north in a couple of days. Show you how to give your barrel a good cleanin’ with some boil’t water too.”

“Clean, this gun?” signed the Shoshone.

“You don’t clean that barrel?”

He shook his head.

Laying a hand on the Indian’s shoulder, he said, “Got some presents for your woman too. We’ll give ’em to her while you go back an’ fetch that gun of your’n.”

“Get gun?”

“Yepper—go get your old gun for me to look at.”

By the time he came trudging back with that well-worn smoothbore trade gun, Slays in the Night found his wife crying uncontrollably as she sat on the grass, surrounded by those two new blankets, the gift of a new brass kettle, along with a small iron skillet and ladle too. In addition, Magpie, Flea, and even Jackrabbit were handed small gifts by their mother to present to Red Paint Rock. A few yards of coarse cloth, some blanket strouding and shiny ribbon, along with a little brass wire, a handful of brass tacks, and a few nails too. But what made her lose control was the earbobs Waits put through the holes in her earlobes: wires from which were suspended small pewter turtles. Slays found the woman rocking back and forth on the ground, blubbering like a baby from her joy.

The Shoshone halted a few yards away, struck dumb himself for a moment before he could sign: “She never had someone give her anything pretty. Now so many pretty things.”

“Maybeso, we all know what it’s like not to have somethin’ what makes us truly happy,” Titus said gently. “I’m truly proud we made you both happy with our gifts.”

Tearing his eyes away from his wife, Slays looked at Titus. “W-why do you give us all of this?”

“When I look around at my family, an’ where I’m livin’ out my days, I see how much I have—the good things I been given.” He tried to explain that intangible warmth residing in his heart. “I got a lot more’n I ever deserved, friend. More’n I can ever use, so there ain’t no use in keepin’ it to my own self. I figger I should share with other folks all the good what’s been give to me.”

For years now Scratch had struggled to sort out why he had ever deserved a woman anywhere as special as Waits-by-the-Water, or the children who brought him such joy and made his heart swell with pride. After the oft-misspent life he had led to reach this day, after the mistakes he had made and the people he had hurt along the way … exactly why he was so richly blessed remained an unsolvable mystery to him.

Swallowing hard, Slays began to sign, his hands trembling. “This is so difficult to ask, the words to find … but why do you and your family do this for a man who stole horses from you many years ago?”

“That was a long, long time in the past,” he explained. “Ain’t ever been one to carry a grudge. I just figger you was a differ’nt fella back then. The two of you need help now. Me an’ my family can help you ’cause we got more’n we can ever use. Ain’t no sense in holdin’ on to any of it when we could pass it on to some folks who’ll get a real good use out of it.”

“I can’t remember when I ever felt this rich!” he signed as he spoke Shoshone. Then he asked, “How do I ever repay you, friend?”

Titus smiled at that. “You called me friend.”

“Yes, because that’s what we are?” Slays asked. “Even when I stole your horses, you did not kill me because you were still my friend. So you need to tell me, how can I repay you?”

He thought for a moment, his eyes looking at the pleasure it gave his wife and children to see such joy on the face of the Digger woman, a happiness that came from helping those who had little of their own but their lives, the poor clothes on their backs, and a few old weapons. Scratch sensed that this moment beside the hot springs with these two people might just mark the start of some healing for his injured soul, battered and wounded by deep loss. He knew his healing had begun this day.

So it was he looked at the tall Shoshone, the man grown as old and wrinkled as he, then said, “The way you repay is you help the next person you can, same as you been helped along your own self.”

“My horse smells his own kind,” Flea announced days later when his father brought his animal to a halt beside the boy.

Scratch looked at the claybank’s eye, finding that it seemed to be studying him. Then he peered at his son. “You know this from the way he is acting?”

“He told me, Popo.”

Bass took a moment to peer back over his shoulder, into the broad valley where he signaled Waits-by-the-Water to hold up with the other children and their pack animals. “Where are these other horses he smells?”

“Beyond the ridge.”

Drawing in a deep breath, he said, “That’s a long way for your pony to smell his own kind, Flea. Especially when the air is so heavy with the coming storm.”

“I believe him and what he told me,” Flea asserted. “But do you believe me?”

After a moment’s pause, Titus responded, “I believe you, son.” He took the big-brimmed hat from his head and waved the signal to Waits. She raised her rifle high, a black silk bandanna fluttering where it was knotted around the muzzle, to show she understood she was to remain where she was near the trees. “Let’s go find these horses you’ve found.”

From the morning they had put the hot springs at their back and continued north into the land of the Crow, they had not come upon any recent sign of the Mountain or River bands. A week ago they had put the Yellowstone River behind them and pressed on for the valley of the Judith, finally encountering fresher horse trails and even the remains of a recent campsite. But still no dust on the horizon or columns of smoke curling wispily into the chill autumn sky. The farther they rode in search of buffalo, the closer they drew to Blackfoot country, and the greater the odds the Crow village would invite an attack from those inveterate enemies. For days he had been as wary as a bull elk during the high-country rut, sleeping little at night, thinking how good it would have been to have another man and his guns along—Josiah Paddock, Shadrach Sweete, even Slays in the Night.

But one of them had become a storekeeper in old Taos; by now another had likely reached the new territory of Oregon leading a train of emigrant dreamers; and the Shoshone protested that he was as close to Blackfoot country as he ever wanted to be. Slays said he and his woman might start south toward Bridger’s post; then again, he might just remain right there near the hot springs for the winter. Cold as the rest of that country could become, the narrow valley stayed a bit warmer, most hospitable to man and beast alike.

Each time he brooded how having another gun along would have made him ride a mite easier in the saddle, Titus remembered how unflinchingly Waits, Magpie, and Flea all took up weapons at that final eye-to-eye with Phineas Hargrove. So he had decided they would push north another two days in search of the hunting bands. If they hadn’t found Yellow Belly’s bunch, then he’d turn south by east, striking off toward Fort Alexander. Chances were trader Robert Meldrum would know where both the River and the Mountain bands were using up the last of these precious autumn days in making meat for the winter. After all, Meldrum’s American Fur Company had a vested interest in every one of those shaggy hides the warriors managed to get, after the women had skinned the beasts and dressed the hides into soft sleeping robes suitable for the market downriver in St. Louis and beyond.

Winters upon winters ago, when King Beaver ruled these mountains, who would have ever conceived that buffalo would one day be the only hide worth trading? Or that there’d be only one outfit a man could sell to when he had furs for barter? Or that the traders would no longer pack their goods overland to a midsummer rendezvous in some central valley … hell, he groused—nothing ever would be the same again, nothing like those glory days when he and a few others walked this land as giants. As bold and brassy as young bulls in the spring of their lives! Why, back in those heady days how could any of them even begin to believe those shining times would come to an end?

So full of life were those seasons that not one of them gave a thought to what might lie on the horizon … until it was too late, until the first emigrants were moving through with their white women and their preachers too, until the big fur companies had choked the life right out of the beaver business and only buffalo were left, until every man jack of them had shuffled on to Oregon country or limped back east with his tail between his legs … except for a hardy few who held on and on and on. Become half Indian, half white … but not near enough of one race or the other to make a home or find some peace in either world.

And the saddest thing was these princes of the wilderness had brought about their own ruin. The big fur brigades had trapped many of the richest streams entirely clean of beaver, taking even the kits before they moved on to strip another section of the river, keeping the harvest out of the hands of the English and other American outfits. Over time in those final years a man could ride into a valley and not find a dam or a pond, nary a beaver lodge—much less hear the warning slap of a tail striking water, or the industrious chawing through the tender saplings, the branches of each young tree rustling as it fell and was dragged through the meadow. Greed—and the belief that if a man did not take everything he could for himself then others would come along to take it all for themselves—had turned this brief ride through glory into an endless, wandering search to recapture some shred of that magnificent era—

He heard the whistle, jerking awake suddenly, aware that he had been dozing in the saddle, the sun splendidly warm on his face, lulled asleep.

Titus found Flea pointing at the line of trees ahead of them. Shadows tucked back in the cottonwood. Beyond that fringe of trees the valley stretched north into an irregular bare meadow that meandered along the east bank of a stream that eventually poured its bounty into the Musselshell. Some three miles away at the end of that open ground grazed some horses, a sizable herd content and unalarmed in the midday autumn sun. Narrow spirals of dusky smoke lifted into the sky from lodges beyond the timber, hidden from view. That was not a war camp; instead, a large gathering made before the first hard snow arrived and the bands eventually broke up into smaller clan units, dividing off to last out the winter in the lee of the mountains.

Three riders appeared from the trees ahead, one of them raising a shield as signal. For the first time Bass turned to look to his left, the bad side, and spotted the horseman who seemed to appear out of nowhere on the ridgetop across the stream. The rider waved back with what appeared to be a piece of faded blue blanket. Off to the right he heard the snort of a horse. Four more horsemen brought their animals out of the trees nearby and came to a halt.

“Hold up, son.”

Rea drew back on his reins and turned around in a half circle, gentling the lead mare who controlled their packhorses. Keeping an eye on Waits, Magpie, and young Jackrabbit, Titus waited several moments until he was assured they were close enough, then turned back to peer at the horsemen. The three riders in their front had already put their horses into motion, while the four off to the right approached more slowly, cautiously, at an angle.

“Pote Ani? Is that really you?” one of the voices called out.

“It is me!” Titus cried in Crow with growing excitement, squinting in the bright autumn sun at the trio, unable to discern which one had called out his name.

“The old shaman—Real Bird—he said he had seen you in a dream a few days ago … that you were going to return twice more,” the young man explained as he approached. “But after that second return, you would never leave the Crow again … without a terrible end coming to you and all those around you.”

A cold fingernail scraped its way slowly down his backbone with that prediction from the old soothsayer. He trained his eyes on the youngster and asked, “Who are you?”

“Stiff Arm!” the young man cried.

“No! You are grown so much in this past year!” Titus marveled, immediately forgetting the ominous prediction with the joy of returning home to his wife’s people. “When we left last summer you were but a youngster, growing quickly … but a youngster still the same … and look at you now! A young man! Is this what happens when you put away the things of a boy?”

“Do you remember me too?” one of the four asked as they came up and halted on his right.

Turning, Bass studied the youth’s face. “Is that you, Three Iron?”

“Has it truly been a year, Pote Ani?”

Titus nodded. “Long enough for boys like you to grow into such fine young men.”

He watched how that made both of them beam there before their peers.

“Could this be little Flea?” Stiff Arm asked with a grin, pointing out the young horseman sitting next to Titus. “The boy who was so small when you left us last summer?”

“Like my father said, a year is a long time in the life of a young warrior,” the boy replied, his face glowing.

Three Iron agreed, “Well said, Flea! Well said!”

Then a young man Bass did not know asked, “So that must be Magpie?”

Seeing how they all had trained their eyes beyond him, Titus turned in his saddle to find his wife and the other two children approaching with the lone travois horse.

“No, Turns Back,” Stiff Arm said, “that cannot be little Magpie!”

“But who else could it be, Pote Ani?” asked another youngster Scratch did not know.

“Pote Ani, please forgive our brash manners,” Three Iron apologized. “These boys—Turns Back and Don’t Mix—they are as amazed as I am just how beautiful Magpie has become in the year since she has been away.”

With a guarded sigh, he took a moment and studied his daughter as the last three members of his family came to a halt around him. The girl was every bit as beautiful as her mother must have been at that young age—which made Scratch wonder if Magpie herself would choose to wait for just the right man … or if she would allow herself to be swept off her feet by the first suitor who turned her head with sweet talk and a bevy of pretty presents.

“Magpie?” breathed the youngster named Don’t Mix. “You are now the prettiest girl in our camp!”

She dropped her eyes as Waits asked, “Husband, who are these young men?”

“We are some of the camp guards. My name is Stiff Arm,” the horseman introduced himself.

“Who is this one who talks to my young daughter without waiting for her mother’s permission?” Waits asked, her eyes boring into the guard next to Three Iron.

“I-I am Don’t Mix,” he answered, grown a bit anxious in the face of a mother’s sternness.

“Who is your mother, Don’t Mix?” she asked him abruptly. “Do I know her?”

“I d-don’t know—”

“Maybe I should know her first before you take the liberty of talking to my daughter, Don’t Mix.”

“I apologize for him,” Turns Back volunteered, off to the side. “Maybe we forget ourselves and our manners when we see how pretty a girl has come back to live in our camp.”

She turned to look at the one who had spoken up. “Do I know your mother?”

“Yes, I think you do,” the boy declared. “She has told me you and she were friends when you were children yourselves.”

“What is her name?”

Turns Back said, “Bends. Her name is—”

“Yes, Bends,” Waits repeated. “She is your mother?” When the youngster nodded, she looked him up and down. “Are you sure? You are not the skinny little boy I knew as the son of my friend. Where is that little boy who had such big feet and skinny legs that I was always afraid he would trip over his moccasins and break a bone?”

All around Turns Back the other youngsters were sniggering behind their hands, just the way young men would do when one of them had fun poked at him.

Turns Back swallowed hard to keep down his anger at them and said, “That little boy … he is no longer a little boy, Waits-by-the-Water. He has grown up … and wears even bigger moccasins now!”

“I can see,” she told him, gazing down at his sizable feet. “This name of yours, Turns Back, is it a new name?”

“Yes,” the boy answered. “I was given the name last spring.”

Stiff Arm explained, “Turns Back got his name when he turned back into a buffalo herd on foot to kill one more cow for his family. All the older men, they said it was a brave thing to do for his family, that no one else had ever done such a thing—and on foot! Later that day, the old shaman, Real Bird, said it was just as he had seen it in a dream.”

“So you were very brave that day?” Titus asked the youngster.

“My uncles gave me the new name for my bravery, yes.”

Waits took a deep breath and rocked back in her saddle, wriggling there between the tall cantle and saddlehorn, both of them ornamented with long fringes and colorful porcupine quills. “I am glad to see you again, Turns Back, who is no longer a little boy with big feet. I am very much looking forward to seeing your mother again. I want to tell her how proud she should be that you remember your manners so well … when there are other young men who do not remember what their mothers tried to teach them.”

As she said these last few words, her eyes fell on the youngster called Don’t Mix. His eyes were promptly downcast, and a crestfallen look crossed his face. By all appearances, he was duly chastised by an older woman, the mother of a young and beautiful girl—right in front of that girl, no less!

“Tell me,” Bass inquired, “where is Yellow Belly’s village headed now? Are you still hunting for buffalo?”

Many of the others turned their eyes to look at Stiff Arm, but it was Three Iron who spoke up first.

“The One Who Used to Lead Us … he died night before last.”

“Y-Yellow Belly,” Titus stammered, forgetting the custom of not speaking the name of one who had passed on. “He’s dead?”

“Yes,” answered Stiff Arm. “The old ones met for a long time last night, but they did not decide on a new chief. So they went off to their beds and will meet again tonight.”

“He wasn’t killed?” Titus asked, astonished at the news.

“No, he fell sick many days ago while we were far to the north,” Three Iron stated. “He immediately ordered the camp to start south again for the Elk River.”^*

“The One Who Used to Lead Us firmly believed that if he got back to the Elk River and could cross it to the south, touching once more the land where he was born,” Stiff Arm continued the story, “he would be healed.”

“But …” —and Three Iron paused—“he did not live to make it back to the river.”

Titus gazed at Waits a long moment, watching how the gravity of this news struck her too. When he finally looked back at these youngsters, all of them less than a third of his age, Scratch said quietly, “He was … your chief was younger than me. Healthy, and strong as a warhorse. I cannot believe that he would be brought down by anything but the hand of his enemies in battle.”

“Everyone thought the same thing,” Turns Back suddenly commented. “That is why the news caught every man in camp by surprise. Our chief was so strong and vigorous.”

“How did this happen?”

Three Iron explained, “He grew sick one day while we were out hunting buffalo—most of the men in our camp were on the hunt.”

“Who was with him?” Titus asked. “Any of you?”

They turned to look at Don’t Mix.

The brash youngster now said, “I was near him, watched him rein up his horse. By the time I got my head turned around to find out why he was stopping in the middle of the buffalo chase, he had both hands clawing at his chest … and he was slowly falling off his horse.”

“Did you go back for him?”

Don’t Mix nodded. “I called for help, from anyone in the sound of my voice. Those who were close enough to hear came running to help, but I don’t think there was anything any of us could do.”

Now Stiff Arm took up the story, “The older men called up one of the travois the women had brought out to the hill overlooking the buffalo herd. We loaded him on it and hurried him back to camp.”

“Real Bird was called to make ready his medicine,” Three Iron said. “Even before we got our chief back to camp.”

Titus asked, “Was he still alive when he reached the village?”

“Yes,” Stiff Arm replied. “He was breathing hard, like a man running uphill on foot. And sweating too, even though it was a very cool day.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

It was quiet a moment, then Three Iron said, “He did not speak until Real Bird was standing over the travois when it arrived in camp, when the healer started to pray. That was three nights ago.”

“What did he say to the old shaman?”

Three Iron looked at Titus, explaining, “Our chief wanted the healer to hurry him back to the Yellowstone as fast as the men could drag him on that travois. To start immediately and not stop until he was on the south bank.”

Stiff Arm continued. “He swore he did not want to die north of the Elk River.”

For a moment he studied their young faces, their averted eyes. These young men had something more to say than they were telling him. Finally Bass prodded them, “Why was your chief so afraid to die north of the river?”

When the rest would not speak, Turns Back admitted, “When our chief finally stopped breathing, Real Bird made his announcement to the camp … and said that he had always been afraid of dying so close to Blackfoot country.”

“Why was he afraid of that?” Titus asked. “Many a good Crow warrior has died in Blackfoot country.”

“It was the old seer, Real Bird, who made him afraid—many, many summers ago, when he was a young man like us,” Stiff Arm declared. “Back before he became a war chief, Real Bird told him that he had a vision that as long as He Who Is No Longer Here stayed close to the Elk River, he would live long as a leader of the people. But if he ever stayed too long north of the river, venturing too far into the land where the Blackfoot roamed … that the spirits would not be strong in him and he would be weakened, grow sick, and die.”

“Then your chief had every reason to be afraid,” Titus said. “The old healer had seen his end in a dream … and it came to pass.”

“And the same for you?” Three Iron asked. “Will it come to pass too? What Real Bird saw in a dream about your final day?”

Bass strove to wave off the old seer’s prophecy, saying, “Not every dream comes true.” He looked at Waits a moment, saw her eyes cloud with doubt.

“That old man has rarely been wrong,” Stiff Arm declared.

“For more winters than any of you have been alive, I have come and gone from Absaroka,” Titus explained to them. Just the saying of those words, made him suddenly feel all the older here before these youngsters. In those days among the hardwood forests of Boone County, he had been like them: their blood running hot like a potent sap through their veins—undeniable and unstoppable, with their whole lives ahead of them.

Sore from the long rides they had been making every day on this journey north, he flexed his sore back. Then Scratch responded, “Then—if old man Real Bird’s dreams are true it means I am destined to leave and return to the land of the Crow one more time. From that day on I must make sure I never leave my wife’s people again, so no trouble comes to all who are around me.”

Three Iron smiled, glancing quickly at Magpie when he said, “I think some of our young men truly would like it if your family never left the Crow at all!”

Gazing at his daughter, whose high cheekbones were blushed with the rose of embarrassment, her eyes fixed on the withers of her horse, Scratch said, “You be sure to tell all those who have ears that it will be a long time before Magpie’s father entertains a suitor for her. This is only her fourteenth winter, so they are wasting their time if they come scratching at our lodge door.”

Some of the older guards quickly turned their eyes on the younger members of their group. But instead of looking away, Don’t Mix said, “Your daughter is a fine prize, no matter how long a man has to wait.”

“But you stay away from her,” Bass reminded. “Don’t come around our lodge at all.”

Looking squarely at the father, Turns Back asked, “Will you let the camp know when you decide Magpie is old enough for us to court her? In the old tradition of telling the camp that your daughter is ready to take a husband?”

For a moment he caught his wife’s eyes. Waits-by-the-Water barely lowered her lids and dropped her chin slightly, just enough to signal him. Scratch turned back to the handsome young warrior and said, “Yes. We will tell all the people when Magpie is ready to leave our lodge and start a life of her own, with a husband of her choosing.”

Don’t Mix tapped himself on the chest and asked, “You will give your daughter away to one of us?”

“Perhaps,” Scratch replied. “Maybe only Real Bird knows what the future holds for any of us. As for you and me … the seasons to come will have to remain a deep mystery.”

Which is the way he had always preferred it.

^* Yellowstone River.