Ride the Moon Down

26

He prayed it would stay cold, so cold it dared not snow.

Much more often here in the Northern Rockies than anywhere else in the central or southern mountains it grew too cold to snow. His prayer was far more than merely wishing against any snow that might fill in and hide the hoofprints left by the Blackfoot war party. Instead, Bass realized the deep temperatures would keep the tracks from melting during the day, then refreezing at night. What that sort of thing did to the top layer of snow could be cruel torture to their horses’ legs. Much better that it stayed so cold it didn’t snow.

After stuffing the trade gun and that English fusil under the rawhide whangs on Samantha’s packs, strapping the extra pistols across the mule’s withers, Titus and Strikes-in-Camp began their chase. Crossing the frozen river, the Blackfoot trail headed straight across the lowlands for the better part of that afternoon—a trail that put both the pursued and the pursuers right out in the open under a hard, gray sky.

There was no way for the two of them to hide right out in the open, the direction the trail took. If the Blackfoot had chanced to leave a scout to watch over their backtrail, he would have spotted the two men coming behind. Nowhere to hide. But if the bastards did leave someone behind to watch for any pursuers, Scratch figured the Blackfoot would just scoff at two lonely riders trailing after them. They wouldn’t feel enough of a threat to lay any ambush.

But that didn’t mean the two of them could relax. It just didn’t pay not being wary when the trail they were following eventually headed off to the northwest, striking for the foothills. By sundown it was plain to see that the Blackfoot were intending to drive up the heights, crossing the high country to reach the Yellowstone on the far side. From there they would push on with their prisoners and plunder until they reached their homeland. They had killed some Crow warriors. And they had stolen some traps from a white man. Worst of all, the thieves had torn Bass’s life apart. They had his wife and daughter.

That first night they found some tall willow and cedar growing at the mouth of a coulee they could use for a windbreak. Unsaddling the animals, both men tore sage from the frozen ground, shook off the icy snow, then used the brush to rub down the beasts, doing their best to dry the horses before their sweat froze with the terrible cold as night deepened and the temperatures plummeted. That done, they laid scraps of the torn blankets over their three animals, then settled back in a copse of gnarled, fragrant cedar to wait out the morning.

“Sit here,” Titus whispered to Strikes-in-Camp. “Bring your robe to share with us.”

“Th-the boy?”

Scratch looked down at Flea. Then said, “Come, we will share our warmth with him.”

Together they spread one robe across the ground in the middle of their cedar shelter, then sat with the bundled infant between them before pulling a large blanket and the bigger of the two robes over their heads to make a tiny tent. Even though some of the bitter cold still wicked up through the robe from the frozen snow, the two of them were able to keep themselves and the infant warm enough that they didn’t shudder much.

Whether from the cold, or from his hunger, Flea began to fuss later just as Titus felt himself dozing off.

In that growing warmth of their shelter, Bass blindly felt for the knots binding the infant in his blanket cocoon. One by one he untied them, then pulled the bundled child into his lap. From a pouch he had dragged into the shelter with him, Scratch pulled some dried meat he had taken on his ride to the Crow village. The first small piece he broke off and held in his fingers while his other hand felt around to locate Flea’s tiny paw in the dark. Once he found it, Scratch shoved the strip of half-dried elk loin between the pudgy fingers and slowly brought the hand to the child’s mouth.

That quickly stifled Flea’s hungry sobs as the boy began to suck and gnaw on the meat.

For the longest time their breathing, the boy’s slurping on the jerked meat, and the mournful keen of the wind outside were the only sounds in that dark little world of their making.

“Should one of us stay awake?” the Crow asked.

“You sleep first,” Bass suggested, considering that some of the Blackfoot might have seen them and would creep back to ambush them. “Then you can listen while I sleep.”

“I will be quiet, so you can hear.”

It wasn’t long before he heard the warrior’s low, rhythmic snores. Later he realized he could no longer hear the boy gnawing on his supper. Time dragged as he struggled to stay awake in that tiny shelter. Every now and then Flea awoke, fussing—which stirred the Crow. But Titus always had some jerked meat to soothe his son. But one time the child kept whimpering—not satisfied with the strip of elk. In frustration Scratch reached down with his bare right hand, poking it out under a flap of their buffalo robe where he scraped some snow into his palm. Laying it against the boy’s chin, he felt Flea licking at the melting snow, his tongue eagerly lapping across Bass’s wet flesh. Twice more he brought some snow to the child’s mouth, until Flea wanted no more.

To keep himself awake through those long hours Bass concentrated on things, working them over the way he might examine a piece of streambank for beaver sign, searching for the right spot to make his set. Matters that might keep him alert—thinking on people and places and memories in the forty-four years of his life. Struggling to conjure up the faces of the old friends who had come and gone so long ago, the feel of those women, so many women, their shapes and smells, tastes and textures, so dim now because Waits-by-the-Water had come to dull any remembrance he had of others, the white and mulatto and red alike. It had been so many years since he had picked at these memories.

Likely Amy had herself some grandchildren by now, being a little older than he was at the time she had been determined to set her hooks in him. And Abigail might well be dead by now, murdered or dead of a pox—no way could he figure the life of a riverfront whore was a safe pillow for her nights. Then there was Marissa: another one likely to hook herself a husband …

And that set him to thinking of Amanda, the daughter left back in St. Louis. One day he’d have to consider packing up his wife and children, pointing their noses east to see the settlements—

But first a man had to get his family back, he scolded himself.

Amanda. Likely married herself in these last … four winters now. He might be a grandfather a few times over by now, with young’uns as small as Flea.

Bass clutched the boy to him, feeling the child murmur there in the warmth beneath his father’s coat—where Titus could feel the youngster against his heart.

I’ll find her for you, son. I’ll bring her back.

Twice he had cracked open his side of the buffalo robe, stuffed his fingers along the edge of the blanket, and peered out at the night sky, hoping to find some of the cold inkiness dissipating from the heavens. Finally a third time, hours later, Bass discovered the clouds had drifted on to the east, leaving the sky cold and clear. In the distance he could hear the cottonwoods booming, the smaller lodgepole popping as the temperatures plummeted.

But overhead, a little to the west over the rolling basin, he located the seven sisters whirling toward the horizon. More than half the night already gone.

“Strikes,” he whispered, then repeated it louder.

“You want me to listen now while you sleep?”

“Yes.”

The warrior began to stir. “I must wet the bushes first.”

“If you hold it in—it will help keep you awake,” Bass advised.

Strikes-in-Camp snorted. “If I hold it in, you and the boy will be wet before the sun rises.”

“Go. Wet the bushes.”

He listened as the warrior rustled out his side of the blanket and robe, scooting away to stand on the snow with a crunch, then heard the hiss of the hot urine splatter the frozen bushes nearby. The steaming liquid would likely freeze before it had melted all the way through to the hard ground.

Then the robe and blanket were pulled back, a gust of cold air accompanying the return of the shivering Indian.

“You should not worry: I won’t sleep now,” the Crow claimed. “How do you expect me to sleep when my manhood has icicles hanging from it?”

Bass chuckled softly. “Wake me before the first touch of light in the eastern sky.”

The wind had died by the time Strikes-in-Camp awoke him. The child was fussing, squirmy.

Pulling back the robe from his head and shoulders, Bass scooped a little snow into his bare hand and let the boy lick at it before handing him another piece of the dried meat to suck on. At first the child whimpered, not wanting to take the jerky, but eventually the boy snatched at it, his belly realizing the elk was better than hunger.

“Get me another scrap of the blanket for the child,” Scratch asked. twist in the rocky path ahead where the enemy could lie in wait—

“Zeke!” he cried.

His voice was louder than he would have wanted, but those sodden clouds hovering just overhead absorbed the sound before it carried up the trail as the gray-white ghost of a dog limped from the tangle of wind-gnarled cedar, then collapsed onto his belly, whimpering.

“C’mere, boy!” he called as he vaulted out of the saddle and passed the reins over to the warrior.

Hitching itself onto its hindquarters first, the dog struggled to rise onto its forelegs. He shambled toward his master three steps, whining—then settled to the snow, attempting to crawl as he flailed against the ground with his front legs. As Bass loped ungainly across the slippery snow and talus, the dog’s head rolled to the side, tongue lolling from his muzzle.

He went to his knees beside the animal, noticing the long smear of blood marking the dirty snow from the tangle of cedar to where Zeke lay, his chest heaving.

“Awww, boy—” Titus gasped the instant he spotted the broken shaft embedded in the front of the dog’s neck, low enough that the arrow point would have penetrated the chest too.

Surrounding the base of the splintered shaft, blood had darkened, drying and freezing in a stiffened mass of clot and ice wider than two of Bass’s outspread hands.

Already the dog’s eyes were glazing, half-lidded. Strikes-in-Camp trudged up to stop behind Titus, dragging the two animals behind him. Their hooves softly clattered on the loose shale caked with the wind-scoured ice.

“He followed them,” the Indian said quietly.

Bass only nodded. He cradled Zeke’s head across a knee, rubbing that spot between the scarred ears.

“I don’t think the enemy shot him at your camp,” the Crow observed. “With an arrow so deep in him, the dog could not live to make that long a journey.”

For a moment Titus gazed up at Strikes-in-Camp, his eyes imploring, begging the unknown. Then Bass looked down at the dog again and said, “They shot Zeke here. Today. Not long ago. They found him following them. See the tracks? One of them turned around and returned here to kill him.”

Then the trapper gazed down at the animal, finding that Zeke’s eyes were glazed no more—but had somehow become clear and bright. Bass happily rubbed the dog’s muzzle, believing the worst was over when Zeke licked his roughened hand, lovingly. But an instant later the eyes glazed over once more and the tongue stopped licking. Then Zeke went limp in his lap. For a moment Scratch watched the eyes, waiting with a hand on the dog’s chest—hoping that the heart would resume beating.

Finally, Titus admitted, “He’s gone.”

The warrior tugged on the white man’s shoulder, saying, “We must go.”

Bass pulled his knees from under the dog and stood. “Not yet. Zeke must be treated right.”

Without saying a word, Strikes-in-Camp stepped back as the white man brushed by him.

Some ten yards away among the twisted, wind-stunted cedar, a shelf of gray granite emerged from the slope. Trudging across the loose talus, Bass reached the shelf where he began to lay one layer of the shale after another until he had raised a low altar. The boy was starting to fuss again by the time he turned from the shelf and started back toward the snowy trail.

“We must go now, before it grows late,” the Crow reminded.

“Not till I’ve seen to the dog.”

“You do for the dog what you would do for a man?”

He knelt, hoisting Zeke into his arms. Then stood to stop before the warrior. “I’d do the same for any friend. Just like I put the whitehead your people sent me to kill in a tree scaffold. He was an old friend—”

“But there are no trees tall enough here.”

“That’s why those rocks will have to do,” Titus grumbled, that cold hole growing inside him, pushing past the Indian to trudge up the slope with the dog’s body across his arms.

He stretched Zeke across the top of that wide bed of loose shale, then gently laid a hand over the dog’s eyes. “We come some ways together,” he whispered in English as the wind grew stronger on that bare, exposed slope. “Maybeso you was getting old anyways—your time’d come. But no man had him the right to kill a dog like he kill’t you, Zeke. I want you to know I’ll rub out ever’ last one of the bastards—”

But he couldn’t get any more words out. Angrily, he turned away from the stone cairn and clattered down the slope. After scooping some snow into his bare hand, he let the cradled boy lick at it, swiping at his own runny nose with the back of the other mitten.

Titus bent and kissed the boy on the cheek, then stuffed a foot into the stirrup.

He rose to the saddle, saying, “Let’s go get your mother back.”

The reddish glow from the two fires below them reminded Scratch of the color of polished Mexican gold. A pair of them, their flames wavering in the distance down among the first line of trees the war party would have reached as they’d descended from timberline at dusk. But seen from above, the flickering light illuminated no more than indistinct shadows.

As they lay watching the fires, Bass and Strikes-in-Camp brooded on how to make their attack.

They couldn’t slip much closer without the clattering, sliding shale alerting the Blackfoot in the timber below. Either they would have to leave the animals there and cross the next mile or so on foot in the dark, or they would have to circle wide to west or east to make their approach on horseback.

“Better to take the horses with us. Get close as we can,” the Indian said. “We may need them if they see us and ride off again.”

Gripping the Crow’s forearm, Titus suddenly needed to know, “Why are you willing to risk your life against these great odds to take back your sister … when you would not allow her to come into your camp?”

“I am sick now,” he confessed. “It does not matter that you are sick or she is sick. I am sick now.”

“At your village, before—you were afraid of dying from the sickness.”

“No more am I afraid. The enemy who brought this to our country should die. I will kill as many as I can before I breathe my last.”

Wagging his head, Bass said, “I don’t understand your thinking: how you close your heart off to your sister when she brought you no harm. But now you are ready to die to save her and our daughter.”

Strikes stared into the white man’s eyes in the starlit cold. “It gives me pain to realize I have been a coward. I want to help free my sister while I still have strength. My skin is beginning to grow hot. Hotter all day.”

Pulling off a mitten, Bass reached out, fingertips touching the warrior’s face, finding the skin was feverish. “You must last until morning. We’ll attack them as soon as it is light enough to see. You must hold on to your strength until then.”

The warrior nodded. “I will be strong till then.”

“And when it comes time for you to die,” Titus vowed, “I will stay with you.”

“Stay with me?”

“To your last breath,” Bass declared. “Then I will tie your body in a robe, take you back to your people—”

“They must not become sick,” Strikes protested.

“But you will not give them the sickness after you have died … and your people must know of your courage in the face of the death that you know is sure to overcome you.”

“Come, then,” Strikes declared as he stood. “We will lead our horses down to the timber along that ridge to the east. We can reach their camp in time to kill them all before sunrise.”

Bass followed him back to their animals, where they took up the lead ropes and started down the slope, angling off to the right, walking among the tangle of boulders that stood out in bold relief against the pale, icy-blue snow. By the time they reached the timber and had circled on back to the west, Scratch realized several hours had elapsed. Throughout that long night the stars had slowly rotated in a slow crawl across the heavens.

Stopping to listen again, with their noses in the air, the two of them could hear the snuffling of the Blackfoot ponies, an occasional voice carried on a gust of wind, the same wind that brought them the smell of wood smoke.

Strikes leaned close and whispered, “Leave the horses here. Boy too.”

It suddenly struck him: what to do with Flea? How could he think of carrying the child with him—taking the chance of the infant’s cry alerting the enemy? But to leave the boy alone with the animals …

There was little other choice.

What if the Blackfoot killed the child’s mother at the moment of attack? What if they ended up killing the father during the fight? Then it was all the better that the enemy discover the child with the pony and the mule. Flea could grow up among the Blackfoot, marry and have children of his own—

If he did not die of the pox first.

There really was no other choice. Scratch knew he would leave the child suspended from his saddle. And should the boy awaken, perhaps the pony’s occasional movement would provide enough gentle motion to lull Flea back to sleep.

Moving slowly, Bass took the loops off the pommel, clutching the blanket-wrapped bundle against him for a long moment. When the child stirred, Titus reached into his pouch and pulled out a small strip of dried meat. He stuffed it into the side of the blanket where the child could find it. Then he held the boy in front of him, kissed Flea on the cheek, and hung the crude buffalo-robe cradle from his saddle once more.

“I am ready.”

“I pray morning comes before my strength is gone,” the Indian said as they started away from the animals, their arms loaded with weapons.

Instantly Bass held a rifle barrel out in front of the warrior, stopping Strikes in his tracks. “You realize what we are about to do. Remember when you said that you wanted to come as far as you could, and when you could no longer sit in the saddle, you wanted me to go on alone?”

“Yes.”

“I am not alone. And neither are you. We will kill them all before the sun rises for the day. Their scalps will be on our belts before another day begins.”

Strikes said, “It is good that a man is not alone when he embarks on his last battle.”

“I will always remember that you chose to be here to die, rather than to die in your blankets.” Then Bass started across the snow for the timber.

They didn’t stop until they spotted the glow of the two fires against the treetops. Without a word between them, both men stacked their weapons against a small boulder. Bass tapped the Crow on the breast, then pointed off to the left. Tapping his own breast, the trapper pointed off to the right. Strikes nodded and turned away.

Bass was the first to return to the boulder. In the deep cold he sat shivering, wondering about Flea back with the animals … worried about the Crow warrior—his ears constantly alert for any sound emanating from the night, when Strikes finally came out of the cloudy gloom.

“Did you find their guard?” Titus asked.

“Yes. One man.”

“I found another on the north side. He walks a little to keep himself warm.”

With a nod Strikes whispered, “Did you get close enough to look at the enemy?”

“No, not that close. You?”

“Close enough to see there are no longer ten warriors,” he explained. “At least, I saw three bodies tied in blankets on the ground. Away from the campfire, where they tied their ponies.”

“A small body?” he asked, his skin cold with apprehension.

This time the Indian shook his head. “No child in the blankets. Three large bodies. Men.”

“Did … did you see your sister at the fire?”

“No.”

“But you did not look at the three bodies—”

“No,” and this time the warrior reached out to grip the white man’s arm. “If the child is alive, then the mother is alive too.”

“Why can you be so sure?”

“A woman can give birth to many Blackfoot warriors.”

He stared down at the Indian’s hand on his forearm, the words sinking in, then gazed back into the Crow’s eyes. “All right. To go through with this, I must believe that she is alive. That Magpie lives too. I will trust you on this—even though I don’t know that I can ever trust you again.”

Strikes-in-Camp was startled. “Why do you distrust me?”

“You are a thief.”

The warrior leaned his face closer, nose inches from the trapper’s. “What did I steal?”

“You and Stiff Arm, with the others who were killed when the Blackfoot attacked, you were going back to your village after you had robbed me of my traps.”

“Your traps?”

“You wanted to drive me away,” Bass argued. “Because it’s not a good thing to kill your sister’s husband.”

Shaking his head, the Indian said, “I did not steal your traps.”

“The others, they stole them for you.”

“I—did—not—steal—from—you.”

“Not to drive me farther and farther away from your village?”

“You will believe me only if your heart wants to believe me,” the Crow sighed. “No one I know stole your traps. The only men in that country near your camp who would have taken your traps have now taken your wife and your daughter.”

It struck like a slap of cold wind. “The Blackfoot.”

“I am not ashamed to steal a white man’s horses, or his rifle if he is careless,” Strikes boasted, wiping a hand across his feverish face. “But I would never stoop to robbing anything from my sister’s husband.”

He had to admit, it did make a lot of sense. The Blackfoot. Too quick to accuse those he knew had shunned his wife, Titus could now see that the jagged edges of those pieces had only seemed to fit perfectly—until this moment …

“White man,” the warrior said, tightening his grip on the arm, “some time ago you told me you would stay with me when it is my time to die of the sickness.”

“Yes. I will stay by your side.”

“But you said this to me when you believed that I had stolen your beaver traps?”

“You are the brother of my wife. You honored me the day I made the marriage vow to your sister. Why is it so hard for you to believe that I would stay with you until your death, that I would return your body to your wife and children, to your mother?”

“All this time you believed I was a thief?” the warrior asked in a whisper. “How could you believe that I would rob from you—when you had honored me? Before the entire village of my people the day of your wedding—you honored me. How can you ever think I would steal from you?”

“I … I—”

“White man, I would protect you with my life,” he explained, gripping the trapper’s arm. “You must believe that.”

“I want to believe you, Strikes-in-Camp.”

“You must,” he said to Bass, pointing at the sky graying in the east, “because it is time to put your life in my hands.”