“Pierre’s Hole gonna be ass-deep in beaver, that’s certain!” Bass exclaimed.
That evening Jack suggested his bunch pull out come morning. He cupped a hand at his ear and grinned in the fire’s light. “I hear them beaver calling to me from the Bayou.”
Isaac giggled and squeaked in a high voice, “Jack? Jack Hatcher? Why don’t you come catch me in your trap, Jack Hatcher?”
The rest guffawed and went back to tearing hunks off their antelope steaks using only their fingers and knives, wiping grease on their long hair to give it the same sheen a warrior gave his long braids with bear oil.
A sudden gust of wind slashed through their camp that twilight just then, scattering tiny coals like a swarm of fireflies dipping and swirling through camp until they snuffed themselves out.
In that surprising silence Scratch quietly said, “You fellas don’t s’pose … that Asa’s gone under, do you?”
Jack cleared his throat, tonguing the chunk of meat to the side of his mouth. “He ain’t showed up a’tall, has he?”
Bass looked around at the others, eager perhaps to find something in their faces to hang his faint hope upon. “Maybe he went on down to Willow Valley, boys—and didn’t get no word about ronnyvoo getting moved over here on the Green.”
Caleb shook his head, absently replying, “I don’t figger Asa McAfferty for the kind to sit there in Willow Valley all by hisself for long. Most likely he’s gone and got hisself—”
But Wood was suddenly interrupted by a stern glare from Hatcher. Nothing was spoken—only that gaze of disapproval.
Wood coughed, then corrected himself, “What I mean to say is … maybe he’s gone off on his own like he allays does. Somewheres.”
Bass wiped his bloody knife across the front of his right legging, long ago grown black beneath rubbings of old grease. With a thickened voice he said, “S’pose you’re right, Caleb. Asa’s allays been a contrary cuss.”
“Asa’s set to do what’s on his mind and his mind alone,” Jack agreed.
“Man decides to go to Blackfoot country,” Bass continued, attempting to console himself, “them what he leaves behind shouldn’t go counting on seeing that nigger again. ’Less they’re plain, ignernt-headed fools.”
“He knowed what he was doing,” Caleb explained apologetically. “Wasn’t no way you was gonna keep him from where he was bound to go.”
Solomon declared, “When Asa said God was telling him to go to Blackfoot country, I knowed there was no use in me wasting my breath telling him not to.”
“We all know of fellers what don’t come in to ronnyvoo each year,” Jack said sadly. “But I’m damned happy to see your face here with us again, Titus Bass.”
He looked up through his swimming eyes, a knot of sour sentiment clogging his throat, making it hard for him to speak. Eventually, he said, “I figger that’s what Asa’s done: picked him his way to die.”
“About the most important thing a man can do in his life,” Hatcher agreed.
“’Cept for choosing how he’s gonna live his life,” Scratch replied, “I s’pose choosing the way he’s gonna die runs close.”
Elbridge exclaimed, “You said yourself, Scratch—that Asa knowed there was Bridger’s brigade he could hang close to if’n he’d wanted to be sure he was safer.”
Wagging his head, Bass disagreed. “That wasn’t Asa’s way. He damned well wouldn’t have stayed anywhere near no company men. Naw, Asa had him something real serious stuck in his craw what made him go up there all brassy and bold, marching into Blackfoot country all on his lonesome.”
“So if McAfferty chose him this way to die,” Isaac commented, “then it’s for the rest of us to drink us a toast to him, and go on with our own living.”
“But we ain’t got no whiskey to toast him!” Rufus bellowed.
“Then we’ll drain our cups for him come next summer in Pierre’s Hole!” Caleb reminded them.
“Yep,” Bass agreed hauntingly. “We’ll just have to wait another year till we meet again in Pierre’s Hole … till we can drink to Asa’s ghost.”
Looking back on things now as another winter hinted it was about to squeeze its grip down upon this land, Scratch realized how a man could get things wrinkled but good on him. How the perfectly good rope of his life could begin at times to unravel into wild strands. But a man always had a choice to go on, or go back.
And Titus Bass had never been one to go back.
As much as there were some folks who had come into his life, taught him something, then were gone … he most missed those few who had refused to ask more than they gave back to life: folks like Ebenezer Zane and his boatmen, Ol’ Gut Washburn, Mad Jack Hatcher, and even Asa McAfferty in his own way—although Scratch was certain he still had to sort out the why and wherefore of the white-head.
And included with the rest of those who gave back to life in equal measure was the Crow man-woman named Bird in Ground.
But Bird in Ground was dead.
Perhaps even worse to accept was that it had happened early in the fall, when Titus had been trapping over east on the Tongue. No more would he have Bird in Ground to tutor him. No more would Scratch have the man’s smile and his patience and his hearty laugh. No more would he have that good friend.
Bird in Ground had taught him just how important it was to laugh at what scared him most. No fear could ever be near as great after a man laughed at it. How the Indian had taught him that special quality of laughter in the face of a terrible, immobilizing fear.
What sort of man was it who openly set himself apart from other men—declaring that he would be a warrior unlike any other warriors, that he was a man-woman who would do some man things, and some woman things too? How much courage had that taken?
“Bird in Ground was killed in battle,” Arapooesh explained as soon as Scratch had arrived at the tribe’s first winter camp established on the lower Bighorn.
He had choked on the news, unable to speak for minutes as a few of the other tribal elders and some of the young warriors gathered to welcome back Pote Ani to Absaroka with no more than a muted celebration.
Rotten Belly continued. “Two moons ago. He elected to go on a scalp raid against the Blackfoot with some of our strongest warriors. Bird in Ground had gone into battle before. He was not a stranger to fighting. He was not always a woman. On that raid no one feared for him, especially with the strongest of men going on that journey north.”
“North?”
Arapooesh pointed, nodding. “They intended to go far beyond the Three Forks country. Sure to find Blackfoot there. Bird in Ground said it was time for him to ride against the enemy, time to make his man side strong once more.”
“Yes,” Scratch replied. “He told me he always raided against the enemy once a year or so.”
“For this journey he asked a young man to go with him, someone to hold and care for his war pony,” Arapooesh explained. “He asked Pretty On Top to go to war with him.”
Bass’s eyes slowly shifted to the youngster standing nearby, silent as a winter night. “You went on the raid with our friend, Bird in Ground?”
“He made me proud,” Pretty On Top answered, his sad eyes misting over. “No man ever before asked me to go with him on a raid against our most terrible enemy.”
Swallowing hard against the sour ball collecting in the back of his throat, Scratch said, “To ask you to go with him, he must have been very proud of you.”
Titus watched Pretty On Top struggle to keep from spilling his emotions, just the way the Crow elders taught this same detached stoicism to every young man hoping one day to become a warrior. Scratch said, “You became a good friend not only to Bird in Ground,” Titus declared, “but to me.”