“Tell me, Jack,” Scratch, said as he knelt beside Hatcher, something not making a lot of sense to him. “I don’t rightly remember what these bucks did on that buffler hunt last year … but I can’t rightly say I ever saw these here Snake wear paint and put on their fancy war clothes when they was fixing to go on a meat hunt.”
Hatcher’s eyes bounced across the nearby warriors, some grave doubt beginning to cloud his face. Just as he began to open his mouth, he shut it again. Shifting himself on his elbow, he strained to listen to what the many Shoshone tongues were saying.
“I ain’t for sure just yet, Scratch,” Jack began, his voice strangely quiet, “but I got me the idea this wasn’t no—”
As suddenly as they had appeared out of the forest, the Snake warriors around the trappers became quiet as hushed word of something was whispered among them with the speed of a prairie fire. They fell completely silent as a young man on foot led a pony and its rider into the crowded clearing at the foot of the boulders.
“Ain’t … ain’t that the old medicine man?” Titus asked in a whisper the moment he recognized the frail man atop the horse.
“Sure ’nough is,” Caleb Wood replied in a whisper.
In the hush of that high-country forest the young man who was apprenticed to Porcupine Brush helped the old one off the animal’s back and steadied him on his thin, birdlike legs. Then the blind man began to sing softly, shaking a buffalo-bladder rattle around and around in a circle as his apprentice helped him shuffle slowly through the gathering that parted before him. Goat Horn, the Shoshone war chief who had led his warriors there, stepped forward so he could walk on the other side of the shaman until they stopped right before Hatcher’s blanket.
Between the chief and shaman a few words were quickly spoken in a whisper.
“What’s he say?” Fish leaned down to ask of Jack.
Hatcher translated, “The ol’ codger asked who was still alive, and Goat Horn tolt him we all was.”
Porcupine Brush appeared much gratified at that answer, his wrinkled, wizened face brightening with a wide smile as his sightless eyes seemed to look left to right slowly, as if they somehow could see, perhaps as if they were in search of one white man in particular.
Mumbling something to his young apprentice, the shaman was shuffled over so that he could face Bass. Letting go of the young one’s arm, Porcupine Brush’s old fingers worked at the knot in the thongs holding that sacred white buffalo calf robe over his shoulders. Sliding the robe off his arms, he nonetheless clutched it in a bundle to his breast as he spoke with a soft, thready voice to the nine white men there, where they had been prepared to die.
“Wants us all to sit with him,” Hatcher said, motioning them to join him on the ground.
Handing the calf robe to his apprentice, the old man sat a few feet from Hatcher and Bass. On the ground in front of the shaman the young man spread the beautiful curly hide of the sacred buffalo calf. When the shaman was told all the white men were sitting before him around the calf skin, he raised his face to the sky above and began to sing his prayers. Through every chorus of his difficult song, the shaman rubbed his gnarled hands back and forth across the white hide, at times stuffing those swollen knuckles of his fingers deep into the thick fur.
Putting his lips up behind Hatcher’s ear, Graham asked, “What all’s he saying?”
Shaking his head a minute as if struggling to understand, Jack tried to explain. “All he was doing was just praying a bit ago … but, but now he’s saying … he wants to tell us that—that he knowed we was in trouble.”
“He kn-knowed?” Wood echoed.
Hatcher nodded, his eyes half closing in disbelief. “Says something ’bout his spirit helper four days ago.”
Gray roared happily, scratching at his ample belly, “Whatever it was—I’m sure as hell glad the ol’ codger’s spirit helper was up to talkin’ that day!”
“Hush!” Jack ordered. “Says … wait: ol’ man here says he was told we was in a fix days ago.”
A sense of something grand and very holy enveloped Titus Bass at that very moment. As certain as he had ever been about anything in his life, Scratch suddenly felt a great power there about them. At long, long last he stood in the presence of that great and unexplained mystery. Perhaps it was even the force that guided the way of all things.
“Sure,” Hatcher continued. “Makes sense these here Snakes knowed we was in a fix long afore this morning, don’t it? How the hell else was they gonna get to us in time?”
Simms turned to ask, “You don’t figger they was out hunting, Jack?”
“No—the ol’ feller says they come straight here, ready for war. And they knew right where we was s’posed to be,” Hatcher replied, his voice going softer as he peered down at the calf robe, sounding a little less sure of himself now as they stood upon this strange ground. “I don’t have me no idea how in heaven … but the old’un says they knowed we was about to be rubbed out by their enemies—the Blackfeets.”
“How he know all this?” Wood inquired.
Graham asked too, “Yeah—how this here ol’ man know about us days ago when we ain’t even made it here yet?”
From out of the very air around them, Bass understood. Without the slightest hesitation he quietly said, “I s’pose his spirit helper told him.”
The rest turned toward Scratch—staring, unbelieving, and about ready to scoff until Hatcher asked a question of the shaman in the Shoshone tongue. The old man smiled, his blind eyes pooling with tears as he answered.
Then Jack turned to look up at Titus Bass with great wonder, even stunned amazement, on his face as Scratch leaned across the hide, taking one of the old hands in both of his.
“Tell ’im it’s me, Jack—the one what’s got hold of his hand,” Titus said.
When Hatcher explained, tears spilled from the shaman’s blind, milky eyes onto his wrinkled cheeks.
“The old’un says he knowed about Scratch here—Porcupine Brush calls Titus the white man’s buffler shaman—that he knowed when Scratch needed their help,” Hatcher explained, wagging his head slowly. When he brought his eyes up to look at Titus, Jack said, “Since’t he was the one what the All Powers chose to bring the medicine calf to the Snakes—”
Gray interrupted, “Hold on there—you’re telling us that something tolt him about Scratch and the B-blackfeets coming to jump us?”
“Yup,” Hatcher solemnly answered Gray’s question. “Porcupine Brush says behind his blind eyes he saw all what was to happen to Titus Bass. Says he was told ’bout this four days ago.”
Isaac Simms asked, “Just who in hell told the ol’ man ’bout all of this?”
“Not who tol’t him, Isaac. But what tol’t him,” Jack said as he reached out and laid his hand atop Scratch’s. “Porcupine Brush knew all ’bout it …. ’cause he was tol’t by Titus Bass’s white medicine calf hide.”
TERRY C. JOHNSTON
1947-2001
TERRY C. JOHNSTON was born the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas and lived all his life in the American West. His first novel, Carry the Wind, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books appeared on bestseller lists throughout the country. After writing more than thirty novels of the American frontier, he passed away in March 2001 in Billings, Montana. Terry’s work combined the grace and beauty of a natural storyteller with a complete dedication to historical accuracy and authenticity. He continues to bring history to life in the pages of his historical novels so that readers can live the grand adventure of the American West. While recognized as a master of the American historical novel, to family and friends Terry remained and will be remembered as a dear, loving father and husband as well as a kind, generous, and caring friend. He has gone on before us to a better place, where he will wait to welcome us in days to come.