Throwing his shoulders back self-confidently, Young said, “The devil himself can whisper in your ear, Mr. Bass. What has that evil voice you hear been saying to you?”
“It said I don’t need no other man to tell me what I need to hear, to see what I need to see.”
“Then you will not trust to the word of God revealed through his chosen Prophet?”
“Who’s telling me it’s the word of God?”
He spread his hand upon his chest, “Why, those men God has anointed as His spokesmen here on earth—in the way of prophets, the way it has been since the earliest days of man on this earth.”
“The earth was here first? An’ the sky too?”
“Of course,” Young agreed.
“Then that’s the way it must be for me too,” Bass admitted. “If the earth an’ the sky was here first, they’ll be here through the end of time. I want my spirit to last as long. The way I seen how Injuns look at all there is around ’em. Makes more sense to me than all your glory an’ Thummin’ an’ your angel Moroni blowin’ his horn.”
“He announces the coming of the—”
“I hear my God speak to me good enough in a whisper, Preacher.”
Young worked his lower jaw around several times as if chewing on the words he was considering giving voice, but finally said with great finality, “So be it, Mr. Bass. Many times in our troubled past we have been told by God that not all men will hear His call. Some have their ears plugged to God’s glory.” He sighed and started to shamble around the anvil, his bearded jaw jutting. “Here on the doorstep to Zion—I am once more reminded that we cannot save everyone, my brothers. Even these simplest lambs lost forever in the eternal wilderness.”
Bass watched the Prophet and his Apostles turn aside and shuffle off toward the store. He plunged the iron hoop into the water. This time it barely raised a hiss or a bubble; it had cooled as he held it out before him in the tongs. Then he looked up to watch their backs as they stepped past Waits, each of them in turn touching the brim of their hats before they disappeared, one by one, absorbed by the shadows of that doorway. She turned and got to her feet, pushing a wisp of hair back from her damp brow, tucking it beneath that hair, which was pulled into one of her braids as she started his way.
“Ti-tuzz,” Waits said as she ducked into the shade of the low awning of tree branches suspended above his blacksmith shop. “Your face is troubled.”
It took him a moment to put his mind on the Crow she spoke at him, his head swollen with matters most heavenly … bringing his thoughts back to the temporal present. With a clatter he laid the hoop and tongs upon the anvil and let her step inside his damp, gritty arms.
“These men,” she said with her cheek against his neck, “they are not like any of your kind ever come out here before.”
“You are right,” he replied softly in Crow. “This is a whole new breed of horse. Not trappers, not even stiff-necked traders with their whiny ways. No, this is a high-nosed breed, woman.”
“They are not staying here at Blanket Chief’s lodge?” she asked, using her tribe’s appellation for Bridger. “They will be gone soon?”
“A few days at the most, then they will go on to a new country they are looking for.”
“Will they turn north, or south? Or go on far to the west where Blanket Chief says the trail people always go—toward the sun’s resting place?”
“No, these are not going on to the place the others go,” he explained. “This new breed is turning south from here to find the land their god has picked out for them.”
“It is good for them,” she said with a soft smile. “The First Maker has picked out a place for every people to be. He gave the Crow the very best place.”
He smiled too at his mind’s image of an old friend. “I remember Rotten Belly telling me how Crow country was in just the right place: to the north the winters were too cold; to the south the summers were too long; to the west were enemies and the mountains were too tall; while to the east the water was not good.”
“Was Arapooesh right?”
He combed his fingers along one of her braids wrapped in sleek otter skin and peered down into her eyes. “I have journeyed far, far to the north—up near the country of the Blackfoot where the English trade. And far, far to the south where the Apache roam the mountains and valleys. I have gone all the way to the end of the land where the deep, white-ruffled ocean touches the last place a man can stand with dry moccasins. And many times you have asked me to tell you about that country where I was born far to the east. Sometimes when I think of all the country I have traveled, all the mountains and rivers, valleys and deserts I have crossed in my seasons, my head starts to hurt with the remembering of so much … far more than one man can hold in his mind.”
“Have you ever found a better place than Crow country for Ti-tuzz?”
Taking her face gently in both of his rough, weathered, cinder-blackened hands, Scratch said, “That’s what I am trying to tell you, ua.” He used the intimate word for spouse. “There is no better place, and all other country I have seen is dimmed by the beauty of that wild land we call our home.”
“I miss my country,” she admitted. “But I would miss you more if I were not with you.”
“I promised to take you with me, everywhere I go—and our children too. Until our little ones grow and they are gone with lives of their own, we will be together.”
“Magpie will be first,” she said with a mother’s resignation. “Although she professes that she never wants to go.”
“Yes. One day soon she will admit that she is ready to leave us.”
“Perhaps when she gives her heart away, as a woman will do for the man she loves.”
Titus squeezed her, then said, “And Flea will be next—when he grows old enough to be with other young warriors and sleep in a shelter of his own.”
“That will happen before he even picks a wife,” she speculated.
“And little Jackrabbit,” he said. “But, that time seems so distant now that it is hard to see even with far-seeing eyes.”
Waits shifted her weight a little self-consciously and asked, “So what of Jackrabbit’s little brother or sister?”
“It would be a long, long time before that child would be ready to leave its mother and father.”
Then she pulled away from him slightly, within arm’s length, so she could hold his wrists and gaze into his eyes. “So what child do you hope Jackrabbit will have? A little brother, or a little sister?”
“He is in his fifth summer, so what do you think Jackrabbit would like most?”
“I think he would like a little sister.”
“And why would a boy want to have a little sister?”
“I only know that I want another baby girl,” she confessed.
“Yes,” he said in a whisper. “Magpie was so dear. Girls are very different from boys. A sister for Jackrabbit would be good.”
“But,” she said, the smile gone from her eyes, “you would not be disappointed if Jackrabbit has a little brother?”
He began to look at her strangely, something gradually coming into focus for him the way he would twist on that last section of his spyglass as he brought a distant object into the sharpest focus. He did not realize his mouth was hanging open until she placed a fingertip beneath his chin and pushed it closed for him. With other fingers she took hold of his hand, moved it down to her belly.
“I first came to know while you were gone with Blanket Chief, taking Shell Woman to Sweete,” she explained as she pressed his palm flat against her soft, rounded belly with both of hers.
He stood there, still speechless.
“So this morning while you talked with these strange white men as you worked,” Waits continued, “I sat in the sun, closed my eyes, and made a prayer of my own.”