Hooks shook his head, eyes as big around as conchos, as he sputtered, “B-but … she ain’t a—”
Silas whirled Billy around and pushed him back toward the blanket-wrapped squaw. “G’won now and climb on that slut’s hump, Billy boy!” he roared. “Or I’ll do it for y’!”
“Silas?” Hooks pleaded, his feet locked in place, skidding across the snow as the insistent Cooper pushed him along.
“Listen—y’ bonehead idjit. Y’ don’t poke your stinger in ’er—I sure as hell gonna do it my own self!”
“B-but, Silas … she don’t—”
“Come to think of it,” Cooper suddenly interrupted, shoving his way past Hooks as he took off in that long-legged, lumbering gait of his, headed for the woman. “She’s a good-lookin’ wench, ain’t she? Y’ done wasted your bet, Billy. Think I’ll dip some honey out o’ her pot first off afore y’ get her all bumfoozled.”
Scratch had to agree—the woman was real pleasant looking: nice featured with a gentle nose and almond-shaped eyes, her glossy hair braided, one long twist spilling over a smooth-skinned bare shoulder. But the way these Crow fellers were acting …
From a standing start Hooks burst into a blur, shooting past Cooper to reach the woman just a heartbeat before Silas came to an abrupt stop before them both.
“Told y’, Billy: had y’ your chance’t. Now step ’side and let the booshway wet his whang in this’un first.”
“Ain’t … she ain’t what you think, Silas!”
When Cooper gave Hooks a playful shove aside and took him another step toward the woman, Billy leaped right back, saying frantically, “Silas—you cain’t … you ain’t gonna—”
It was then Cooper took the woman by the one bare arm she had exposed, clamping the blanket to her body, and turned the squaw back toward the lodge—his eyes clearly feasting on that bare shoulder.
“Tried to tell you, Silas!”
And that’s when Billy did the unthinkable. He grabbed hold of the woman’s blanket and began tugging. Immediately she wheeled away from Cooper and began pulling back on the blanket. Silas lunged for them both—seizing hold of Billy’s wrist.
“Leave her the hell be!” Cooper roared, shoving Hooks backward with a mighty heave. “Slut’s mine now!”
But as Hooks fell, the woman’s blanket came loose—and all hell came loose with it.
Billy sprawled in a heap on the snow. Cooper whirled, visibly shuddered—then stood frozen, staring openmouthed at the naked squaw. Tuttle was already on his feet, but now he too stood rooted to the spot, unable to comprehend what had just occurred.
Slowly, at first, the Crow men began to laugh—almost as one, as if on cue. Behind and all around their men, the women giggled too. Then every Crow in that camp seemed to be laughing, so hard that a mighty din it made that winter afternoon beneath the bare branches of the cottonwood.
For a moment all Cooper could do was point down at the figure naked before him, his arm trembling. Then he hobbled a halting step back, and a second, his mouth moving up and down. Lunging for Hooks, he pulled his naked friend off the ground as Billy fought to keep himself covered from all the Crow eyes.
Seething, Silas roared, “Why—y’ think this is some good laugh on me, don’t y’, Billy?”
As Cooper shook him slowly back and forth, they both stumbled back another step. Hooks tried to explain, “I-I didn’t know when she took me in!”
As Cooper and Hooks stumbled out of the way, Bass clearly saw what the Crow had been smiling about. The moment Silas moved back, Billy in tow, Titus saw it wasn’t a beautiful young woman at all. Instead, it was a very pretty, thin-boned young man, vainly trying to wrench his blanket back from Billy … and as he did, his very apparent male appendage wagged in the cold winter air.
“She’s a … a man!” Tuttle gushed.
“I’ll kill y’, Billy Hooks!” Silas vowed, nearly heaving Hooks off the ground.
“I didn’t do nothing!” he shrieked.
“Cooper!” Bass hollered, starting to rise. “Cain’t you see it’s their joke on Billy?”
At Scratch’s words Silas jerked around, still clutching Hooks in both paws. “Their … joke?”
“Yeah—I figure they knowed just how much Billy likes him his ruttin’,” Titus said with a shrug. “I’ll wager they thought they’d pull on his leg a bit.”
Cooper shook Billy once. “Y’ didn’t know nothing ’bout this?”
“How c-could I, Silas?”
By then Bass was making sign, asking his questions of the Crow men, getting his answers amid the laughter the warriors were sharing. One hand on the scruff of Billy’s neck, Cooper watched too. After a few minutes Silas burst out laughing, so hard he had to let go of Hooks and bend over at the waist.
“Say, Billy,” Titus explained, “from what I can tell, looks like this here wasn’t all that much a joke, after all. Seems like ever’ now and then the Crow have a boy what don’t wanna grow up a man.”
Glancing quickly at the young man, who wrapped the blanket about himself, then whirled on his heel to head back to the lodge, Billy asked, “He d-don’t wanna be a man?”
Scratch went on to attempt making sense of what to those four white men was the inexplicable, what was totally foreign to their world and time: this concept of a very powerful medicine the Crow believed those young boys possessed who did not want to learn the skills it would take to assume the role of a warrior but instead preferred to play with the girls, learning the ways of the lodge and how a woman was to care for her man. Rather than to chastise such boys for their differences and preferences, the Crow looked upon these young men as having been anointed by the Grandfather Above with some very special, and powerful, medicine.
Indeed, among these people there was no such thing as homosexuality. Quite the contrary—these rare and respected individuals actually believed themselves to be women spirits imprisoned in a man’s body. The Crow revered such powerful medicine no less than they revered their clan leaders, war-society leaders, and women warriors.
Scratching at his scruffy brown beard, not in the least attempting to disguise a silly smirk, Bass chuckled and went on to explain, “Way the Crow see it, Billy—you was the sort of hoss what likes his ruttin’ so much”—then for a moment Titus dug a toe at the ground, trying his best to suppress more of a giggle before he could continue—“they figgered to give you a crack at something a bit different in them ruttin’ robes, Billy!”
Came to be that Bird in Ground proved to be a steadfast friend to Titus that first winter the four spent in Absaraka, home of the Crow. After being shunned by both Hooks and Cooper, days later the young man/ woman offered himself as a partner to Titus. But without embarrassment or shame this time, Scratch was able to get across that while he did not hanker to set up lodge keeping with the Crow man, Titus nonetheless wanted to be a friend.
As the days deepened in the coldest heart of the winter, Bird in Ground took to riding out with Bass when the white man ventured off to set or check his traps in the surrounding countryside. Oh, at first there was some talk among the village folks—that much Scratch learned from Bird in Ground over the hours and days and finally weeks they spent together. There along the creeks and streams that fed the mighty Yellowstone, Bass and his Crow friend began to teach one another the first rudiments of one another’s native tongues.
In those dark, cold hours well before sunrise, Bird in Ground would bring his pony to join Scratch at the trapper’s wickiup—a crude shelter made from lodgepole saplings, willow branches, and an old, discarded, much-blackened lodge cover where Bass laid out his bed and cooked his meals when not spending a rare night coupling with a Crow woman or having supper with a family somewhere off in the village. For the most part, Scratch survived that winter, when he turned thirty-three, without the company of a full-time night woman. Not that the hungers didn’t stir him at inopportune times, but for the most part there always seemed to be a woman available just when he needed one the most that season of the Cold Maker. So while the other trappers made lounging and women, talking and more women, their winter activities, it didn’t take Titus long to realize he had a lot of idle time on his hands.