“They know there is great danger waiting for them in that camp of their enemies,” Waits-by-the-Water quietly explained as she rolled up the last of their bedding after breakfast.
“The Crow been outnumbered before,” he responded. “But never nothing like this.”
“Maybe you should tell them the thoughts in your heart, Ti-tuzz,” she suggested.
For a long time he had regarded the thirty-eight warriors and chiefs, who went about their special toilet, painting their faces and brushing their hair, tying on feathers, stuffed birds, and spiritual amulets, dressing in their very finest—then removed the covers from their shields and weapons with great ceremony. Although they had been riding through the heart of their enemy’s land for many, many days, by this afternoon these delegates would be entering what they believed might well prove to be the valley of their death. Surrounded by enemies many times stronger than their few numbers, the Crow began to sing their brave-heart songs as they tied up their ponies’ tails, rubbed their animals with dust, and made ready for one last fight.
“My friends and fellow fighting men,” Scratch had addressed them in their native tongue, then waited as they fell silent and stepped close to hear his words.
“No man here can doubt that I have fought the enemies of Apsaluuke. I have been a brother warrior to the great chief with the sore belly, and my father-in-law too. I held my wife’s brother in my arms as he died after we had pursued those Blackfoot into the mountains. So measure my words carefully, friends. They come from a fellow warrior.”
Flea came up to stand beside his father. Scratch put his arm around the taller fourteen-year-old’s shoulder and continued. “Pull the old loads from the barrels of your weapons and charge them with fresh powder. While there are not many of us, nowhere near as many as there will be of our enemies as we ride down into their gaping jaws, remember that we have far, far more medicine irons than do the Sioux, the Cheyenne, or the Arapaho. Your trade with the white man, with trusted men like Round Iron, who has married into your tribe like me, has assured that your men have always had more firearms, powder, and lead to protect your people and the land of Absaroka too.”
The first of the younger chiefs growled with agreement, a few of them yipping in excitement as his words worked up their martial feelings.
“We have more guns, my friends,” he reminded them again. “So do not be afraid. But—even more than the guns we can use to fight these enemies, who we will soon see face-to-face—know that the Apsaluuke have stronger hearts than these enemies, who will tremble when they finally see, for the first time, you warriors and fighting men who carry the scars of many battles against the mighty Blackfoot!”
Beside him Flea shouted with the older men, all of whom raised their muskets and flintlock rifles, shook their powerful war totems, and pounded on their shields, invoking their magic and the mystery of the spirits who watched over those who rode into battle, those men who put their bodies between those of their people and the weapons of their enemies. Gooseflesh rose along Bass’s arms, and the hair stood at the back of his neck as the three dozen surged forward as one, sharing this brotherhood one last moment before they rode on down this trail into the unknown.
Below them now at the bottom of that wide, verdant valley where Horse Creek flowed from the south into the North Platte, camp sentinels—both red and white—spotted the newcomers drawing up at the top of the low rise and looking down upon the treaty grounds, where tens of thousands of horses and more than two thousand lodges dotted the grassy bottomland. The horns of every camp crescent pointed east, one lodge circle after another of those browned buffalo-hide cones teeming with horsemen, women, and children at play in the summer sun of that late afternoon. * From the very tips of the lodgepoles fluttered long cloth streamers of varied colors, along with a few black scalp locks. As the Crow delegation watched from the knoll, activity began in the soldier camp—easy to spot by its orderly corral of wagons, fancy Dearborn carriages, and dirty canvas A tents, each with its single upright pole arranged in company row after company row, squared to their sense of worldly order while the world of the Indians was lived inside a hoop.
Titus thought on that as their horses blew atop the hill and Waits-by-the-Water brought her horse to a halt beside his. Brooding how the Indian lived his life in a circle, while most everything in the white man’s world was made with straight lines, angles, corners, and squares—whether it was the long rows a farmer like Roman Burwell was likely scratching out of the earth of Oregon Territory, or the angularity of the log house Row and Amanda would have raised for their children that first autumn in the valley of the Willamette, south of the Columbia River. There were no corners in a lodge. Besides those hours spent working at Bridge’s forge, or standing inside a trade room at Bents’ big lodge on the Arkansas, or back at Fort John on the North Platte, even down south to Taos at Josiah’s store, or in the Paddock home, Scratch could not remember feeling all that comfortable inside a squared-off building with its walls, corners, and no-nonsense roof too. To his way of thinking, the best home had neither walls to support a roof, nor a roof to rest upon its walls.
“See how they’re sending out a proper escort for us!” Meldrum announced in English above the hubbub of chatter, then turned and told the chiefs that they were about to be welcomed by that small squad of a dozen soldiers splashing across the knee-high Platte and lurching onto the north bank, where they set off at a lope toward the newcomers.
“What are these men?” Pretty On Top asked as he reined his horse around the front of the group so he could stop and await the escort detail between the two white men.
“They are fighters like your men, warriors for the white man’s people back east,” Scratch explained.
The chief measured him with his eyes, then asked, “These white warriors, they do not fight for you and Round Iron?”
“Not for me,” Titus said. “Maybe they help out the fur traders, but I don’t think they’re here to fight against the Crow.”
“How is it they all wear the same coats?” asked Stiff Arm.
“Maybe it’s easier to see one another when they are in a battle,” Scratch advised.
“Our fighting men dress the way their medicine tells them,” Three Irons said with disdain for the approaching soldiers. “They do not wear another man’s medicine.”
“These fighting men do not have their own medicine,” Bass explained. “They take their orders from their leader, and they do what he tells them.”
Stiff Arm wagged his head and said, “How can a man fight like that, following the will of another man?”
“Maybe that is why the soldiers will always have a hard time if they ever have to fight a band of warriors!” Titus cheered. “These soldiers will stand around waiting for their leader to tell them what to do while warriors ride right through them!”