“I-I don’t know what you are getting at.”
Titus reached out and laid his old hand on the youngster’s bare knee, saying, “I have always thought that the most important reason why Don’t Mix began courting my daughter is that she is pretty enough for such a handsome warrior to have as his wife. She will look good with him. Everyone will say that they are a handsome couple. He did not ever think that Magpie’s beauty could lie beneath her skin as well. He was never interested in what lay inside my daughter.”
“Perhaps he has not thought to look inside to see how beautiful she is—”
“Tell me what you think about my daughter, Turns Back.” He nudged the warrior, squeezing the youth’s knee paternally. “Better yet, tell me why you never came to court her yourself.”
He turned, stared at the old trapper, and swallowed hard. “I don’t know what you want me to say—”
“Say what is in your heart. What you feel about Magpie.”
The young man looked again at the couple, staring a long time before he finally spoke. “I think she is the finest woman any man could marry.”
“Because she is beautiful?”
Turns Back shook his head. “No. Because she is gentle. I have seen her with Jackrabbit, and little Crane. She will make a fine mother to her children.”
“What else do you think about her?”
“I think Don’t Mix is the luckiest man alive.”
That made his heart feel so heavy and sad. Titus felt the hot sting of tears there in the dark as a tall, thin, and weedy youngster emerged from his parents’ lodge and noticed the couple. Flea shook his head in adolescent disgust, then turned and hollered into the darkness.
“Popo!”
“Over here, son!”
Flea started toward them. Turns Back clambered to his feet, dusting off his breechclout. Titus got up much slower than the young man. He grabbed the warrior’s wrist.
“Don’t you think Magpie deserves to hear what you think of her?”
“I-I never could—”
“My daughter deserves to know,” he whispered insistently.
“Don’t Mix is my friend. I don’t want to embarrass him or Magpie.”
“Maybe Flea deserves a good brother-in-law too,” Titus, reflected.
“I like Flea,” he said as the fourteen-year-old youth stepped up to them in the shadows.
“I hope you like me,” Flea said, with a fraternal grin. “I’ve taught you almost everything you’ll ever know about horses.”
Turns Back laughed at that, in an easy way that made Titus feel all the more affection for this shy and selfless warrior.
“So,” Turns Back said as he laid a hand on Flea’s shoulder, “I know as much as you about horses, my friend!”
Flea snorted with that same easy laughter that had always had a special place in his father’s ear. He said to his older friend, “That’s where you are wrong, Turns Back. I’ve taught you everything you’ll ever know about horses, right?”
“Right.”
“But,” said Flea, “I haven’t taught you everything I know about horses!”
All three of them laughed together as Turns Back pounded the young man on the back. Already Flea stood an inch taller than his father, almost as tall as Turns Back. Then the young warrior sighed and turned, gazing again at the couple.
“I will speak to her for you,” Scratch said quietly. “If you won’t speak for yourself.”
“No, no. I could not have you do that,” Turns Back protested. “There’s no reason to cause trouble for the two of them.”
Flea studied the two older men suspiciously and asked, “Are you talking about Magpie? Are you?”
“Yes,” Titus answered, laying a hand on his son’s shoulder. “I think the wrong man is courting your sister, Flea.”
The youngster whirled on the warrior, saying with exasperation, “All this time I thought you were my friend! Why couldn’t you be honest with me and tell me you were only acting like you were my friend because you wanted to be around my sister—”
“I do want to be your friend.” And he put out a hand to grip the young man’s arm.
Flea shrugged it off, taking a step back, saying angrily, “How can I believe you anymore?”
“He’s telling you the truth, Flea,” Titus soothed. “Turns Back has never said anything to Magpie because he did not want to wreck his friendship with Don’t Mix.”
“But he doesn’t mind wrecking his friendship with me!”
“I don’t want that to happen, Flea,” Turns Back pleaded.
“This is an honorable man,” Scratch told his son. “If he could never bring himself to confess his feelings for Magpie, how was that being dishonest with you?”
Flea stood there, staring at the ground for a long time. “I don’t know—”
“Listen, Flea,” Turns Back said. “To prove to you just how much I want to be your friend, I want you to know that I will never tell your sister what I feel for her.”
“Y-you’d do that for me?” Flea asked.
“Yes, because I want to stay your friend. I would rather know that you trusted me than to have your sister fall in love with me. I could never marry your sister knowing that you thought I had betrayed you.”
“Do you see how honorable a man he is?”
Turning to glance at his father a moment, Flea looked at Turns Back and asked, “You … really do feel this strong in your heart for my sister?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“But—you never told her?”
“No.”
Flea looked at his father and said with a grin, “I think Magpie is going to marry the wrong man.”
Titus himself smiled, his heart swelling with pride and happiness. “I am glad you see things the same as I do, son.”
Turning back to the warrior, Flea said, “If you do not want to tell her yourself, I will tell my sister how you feel about her. Tonight, after Don’t Mix has gone—”
“N-n-no, Flea,” he pleaded. “I cannot make things hard on Magpie, or for my friend Don’t Mix.”
“But,” Titus said, “didn’t you tell me Magpie deserves the very best husband? The man who can love her the way she deserves to be loved?”
The young warrior eventually nodded with great reluctance.
“So,” Scratch asked him, “which of us will it be who tells Magpie that she is making a mistake to marry Don’t Mix? Will it be me, her father? Or Flea, her brother … or—”
“It will be me,” Turns Back interrupted, drawing back his shoulders there in the dark. “It is my heart the words must come from.”
* The mountain man’s word for the Mojave Indians.
* Crack in the Sky
* Rosebud Creek.
TWENTY-FIVE
By the middle of that summer’s moons, the two young lovers were no longer standing with the blanket wrapped around them and their foreheads touching. Instead, Waits-by-the-Water told them they could put the blanket over their heads to give them just about all the privacy young lovers could enjoy before they exchanged commitment vows in front of their families and friends.
But, it hadn’t been an easy journey seeing Magpie to her wedding day. For some time Titus Bass had known women were a headstrong bunch. He’d not encountered anything to change his opinion on that until he found out there was indeed a creature more headstrong than any woman he had ever known … and that was an adolescent female with her juices all stirred up for a handsome young warrior. How the family had ever gotten to this warm summer day without killing one another would be a story worth telling his grandchildren over and over again. A tale of pain and tears, a tale of just how the heart could shatter into innumerable pieces. A story of how Magpie eventually won a victory, how she had triumphed in what her heart wanted most.