The youth bit at his quivering lower lip.
Suddenly something cold in Bass’s gut reminded him … and just as quickly he was sure he knew to the day when Bird in Ground was killed. It made the hair bristle at the back of his neck, made it prickle down his arms—merely to be in the presence of something he did not understand, to be standing right here sensing the undeniable presence of something far, far bigger than any of them.
Earlier that autumn Scratch had been trapping the Tongue, when late of an afternoon he had gone cold. As much as he had tried, he could not shake the trembling. So extreme was it that he finally gave up trying to set his traps in that narrow river valley, and shuffled back to camp. There he had laid more wood on the fire, set the coffee over the coals to reheat, then squatted close to the flames with a blanket clutched around his shoulders. Although the fire grew hotter, it failed to warm him.
Shuddering with an icy emptiness, Scratch had snatched up a buffalo robe and wrapped it around himself head to knee, its furry warmth turned inside. When the coffee began to steam, he poured himself a cup and drank it down despite how it scalded his tongue. But as warm as it was momentarily, even the coffee could not drive away that deep inner chill.
Its icy fingers seemed to penetrate right to the very marrow of him.
Finally, after more than three hours of shaking like an aspen leaf in an autumn gale, Scratch sensed the chill suddenly departing. Instead of the icy fear and the confusion clinging to his very core, he felt a warming sense of tranquillity come over him. No longer was he so frightened of this uncanny cold.
“H-how was he killed?”
Pretty On Top gazed up at the trapper evenly, saying, “One of our men was wounded and fell from his pony during the battle. With some men on horseback, others fighting on the ground, there was so much confusion and noise—no one really noticed the man fall at first, not until the enemy began to withdraw with their wounded and what ponies we hadn’t taken from them.”
Rotten Belly continued, “That’s when our men noticed that one of our warriors had fallen behind the Blackfoot lines.”
“This was Bird in Ground? The one who fell among the Blackfoot?”
“No,” and Pretty On Top shook his head. “It was one of my uncles. But while others stopped a moment to decide what to do, Bird in Ground rushed forward without waiting … without fear. He killed two of the enemy who came back to kill my uncle, then picked the man off the ground and started back to our side with him.”
“That’s when the enemy started shooting at Bird in Ground,” Arapooesh explained. “All of the Blackfoot trained their weapons on him.”
The youngster took up the story. “We watched the arrows fall around Bird in Ground, as if nothing could touch his body while he stumbled forward under the weight of my uncle. But then … one of the enemy reloaded his medicine iron—like the long one you carry—and pointed it at Bird in Ground. As the weapon roared, we saw him start to stumble, but he caught himself and hung on to the wounded man as he kept on coming for our side.”
“Just to see Bird in Ground’s valor—that’s when more of our warriors were rallied again!” Rotten Belly exclaimed proudly. “Many of us rushed forward, racing right past him and the man he was carrying to safety, charging the Blackfoot.”
“They drove the enemy back for good at that moment,” Pretty On Top said. “But Bird in Ground slowly came to a stop on his wobbly legs. I ran to him, reaching him just before he fell, as he laid the wounded man out. I got there when he collapsed, unable to stand—sitting there singing his prayer song. When I looked at his back, I saw the small hole. But there was much more blood on the front of his shirt. ’See to your uncle,’ he told me. ’He can live from his wounds but I … I cannot.’”
When the youngster fell silent, struggling to hold in the strong emotion, Arapooesh filled the void. “As our men returned from driving the Blackfoot off, they were celebrating, happy, bringing the enemy’s ponies with them. But all fell silent when they arrived to see Bird in Ground sitting there, bleeding to death and not calling for anything to dull his pain, wanting no one to take from him this courageous death he had earned.”
Now Pretty On Top nodded, rubbing the back of his hand beneath his nose, and said, “He sat there talking to us for a long time. While the sun traveled from there, to there. Talking most of the while as if there were no pain. Then, after a long time of quiet from him, he told me, ’Remember my death, Pretty On Top. Remember that in the end we all choose how we live. But very few of us get to choose how we die. Remember that I did not choose to be a man-woman of the Crow … that medicine was thrust upon me when I had no choice. But I did bear up my strong medicine with dignity all of my days. And now I choose to die fighting my people’s enemy. Remember my death.’”
When the young man turned away, averting his misty eyes, the chief continued. “That’s when Bird in Ground slowly fell over to the side and closed his eyes. After all that time and pain, he simply laid over and closed his eyes … as if he were going to sleep.”
“I will never forget that look on his face,” Pretty On Top declared. “He was content. He died at peace with his medicine. At peace with the way he chose to die—as a man of honor. As a very, very brave warrior.”
After a long time Scratch was able to speak. He pointed to one of the brown buffalo-hide cones. “Is that his lodge?”
“Yes,” Rotten Belly answered. “Among our people the lodge is something a woman possesses. Not a man. But Bird in Ground’s medicine told him different, because he was a man-woman. We have not let anyone tear it apart or take it down in mourning. I don’t know what I will choose to do when we have to move from this camp—”
“May I sleep in it?” Titus suddenly interrupted.
For a long moment Arapooesh looked into the white man’s face. “Yes,” he finally answered. “I think that would be a good thing, Pote Ani.”
Pretty On Top agreed. Quietly he said, “I know Bird in Ground would say it is a good thing too—this, what you do to stay close to the spirit of your friend.”
She lay warm against him within the scratchy warmth of the wool blankets, both of them nestled under the weight of two buffalo robes. His own skin still smelled of hers and their coupling in the firefly darkness of the lodge where Bird in Ground once lived.
This woman who had been with him for several weeks now was younger than some who had come to be a bed warmer for him on the long winter nights spent among the Crow. This woman who had lost two infants to sickness and told him she could never carry another in her belly because something was torn inside her. No children, and now no husband. He had gone off to hunt one day early last fall, gone to bring in some game for their lodge … and never come back.
She too battled the beast of loneliness.
Here in the deep hours of the long winter night, Bass smelled the firesmoke in her tangled hair and thought back on the faces and hair, the breasts and bellies, hips and legs, of all those who had gone before her. And with those memories Scratch wasn’t at all surprised to find he still sensed the same sort of seeping emptiness he had always felt, something akin to that first flush of contentment that washed over him right after the moment of coupling began to seep out of him like milk oozing from a crack in one of his mam’s earthenware crocks.
Maybe, Titus told himself, he should be at peace with what he had shared with each of them in turn. Maybe that was enough.
Suddenly there in the darkness beneath that patch of dark sky hung above him at the smoke hole, Scratch found himself looking back on Amy as his very first stumble, falling headlong into the world of women. Oh, how he had been swept up with what his own body was experiencing while his hands raced over virginal Amy’s warm flesh, those soft breasts and rounded hips, the downy fur of her down below—all of it arousing him frantically: while his head didn’t have any idea what to do next, it was his body that took command of him that night at the swimming hole.