Hot as it had been, winter was no more than a fond hope now.
As if summer would never release its grip on the central mountains, the springs and creeks had shrunk like alum thrown on a green hide—little more than sparse, cool trickles—while the grass for the animals had withered and was harder to find day by day, the talc-fine dust rising from each hoof and travois pole, coating the inside of mouth and nose, burning the eyes with the sting of alkali, making him yearn all the more for the high places where a man found comfort and took sanctuary, no matter how steamy it became down below.
When they stopped on a nearby hill for a look into the narrow valley, he found no one camped near the colorful cones and terraces of the hot springs. The Shoshone must be ranging far to the east on the other side of the Bighorn Mountains in search of the herds of buffalo and antelope. For days now he had not spotted any sign of them, much less stumbling across a Snake village in one of their usual haunts in that Wind River country.
“This will be a good place to stay for two nights while I go hunting with Flea,” he told Waits-by-the-Water late that morning.
As she slipped to the ground, Waits arched her spine a little, a flat hand pressed at the small of her back. “Two nights to rest here. That will do my bones good.”
“Your back hurts from the long rides we’ve made?”
“This new child of yours,” Waits groaned as she slowly slid out of the saddle, “he is not a good rider like the rest of your children were.”
Legging off his horse, Titus hurried to her, putting his arm around her shoulder and bringing up her chin so he could gaze into her eyes. “We’ll stay here till you’re rested and ready to go on.”
“Should we pitch the lodge?” she asked. “What of a storm?”
“Magpie and Flea can help me,” he offered. He studied her belly, how she had really begun to show. “You rest over there in the shade for now.”
Gazing at him with a grin, she said, “I am not a helpless baby, Ti-tuzz. I can still do everything I have always done when I carried a child in my belly.”
“Enough, woman,” he chided her. “Jackrabbit, take your mother with you over there to the shade.” Then he turned back to his wife, saying, “I’ll let you put everything away when we have the lodge staked down for you. Now go sit with the boy.”
By the time they had the cover pinned against the poles, the air had grown warm—especially when the breeze gasped and died. So they could avoid the strong sulfurous odors of the gurgling springs, he had made camp upwind of the steamy pools, where shallow pools of hot water collected on a series of terraces. On downwind from them stood a tall cone composed entirely of minerals deposited over the eons by a single spewing spring, one microscopic layer after another. As he began to drag the baggage off the packhorses, Scratch had Magpie and Flea roll up the bottom of the lodge cover so the light breeze could move through the shady lodge.
“Now it’s time to take the horses to the crik,” he instructed his eldest son. “Water them good, much as they wanna drink. We don’t need to worry ’bout them gettin’ too much because we’ll be stayin’ put for two nights.”
“Do you want me to picket the horses when I am done watering them?” he asked. “Or, do you want me to let them wander?”
“They should be awright on their own,” Titus replied. “Let ’em find the grass they want to eat by themselves.”
What plants grew in this narrow valley not only tasted good but were highly nutritious, fed by the mineral-rich waters beneath the soil. It was clear to see from the many tracks and well-used trails crisscrossing their camping ground that the nourishing and flavorful vegetation attracted both deer and antelope to this valley too. As Flea moved off, herding the horses before him, Scratch considered taking the boy hunting at first light the next morning, when the game was moving out of their beds and down toward water. Yes, this would be a good place to lay over for a few days, he thought as he dropped to the grass in a patch of shade near the lodge, watching Waits and Magpie dragging their few belongings through the lodge door.
“Jackrabbit! Come over here to your father!” he called out in Crow.
The boy clambered into his lap and sat.
“You stay here with me,” he told his son. “Where you won’t be in the way of those women. Always best for a man to stand back and stay completely out of the way when a woman is at work. This is a good lesson for a boy to learn.”
As Jackrabbit slid off his father’s lap and laid his head down on Titus’s thigh, Scratch leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes.
Here at the springs they were more than halfway to the Yellowstone from Bridger’s post. They could afford to rest here before they marched on to find Yellow Belly’s Crow, who wouldn’t cross the Yellowstone and start south until the weather began to cool. Until then, the hunting bands would stay north, perhaps as far away as the Judith or the Musselshell, on the prowl for buffalo and wary of the Blackfoot. Time enough to be pushing on before the cold arrived. For now the second summer was hanging on—
“Popo!” Flea called excitedly as he rode up on the bare back of his claybank.
Titus immediately came out of his sleep, raising Jackrabbit’s head as he started to slip out from under the small boy. Magpie and Waits sat in the shade of the lodge cover, watching. “Trouble?” he asked.
Flea watched his father reach around for the rifle he had propped against the tree. “No trouble … I think.”
“What did you wake me up for?” He blinked as he stepped into the intense sunlight.
“Someone is staying near the creek.”
Alarm troubled his belly. “Indian?”
His head bobbed. “But they have no lodge. Only a small shelter made of branches and blankets.”
“How many?” he asked as he came to his son’s knee. A branch-and-blanket shelter sounded like a war lodge, a horse-stealing party on its way into enemy country.
“I don’t think there are many of them. I only saw three horses grazing nearby.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”
“How did you find this shelter?”
He patted the claybank beneath him. “I heard a horse whistle. My pony heard it too and asked me if we should go see. I thought we should go because we didn’t know anyone else was camped close to us.”
“You were careful?” he asked, then whistled low for the dogs. “Did you see if you were followed?”
Flea nodded. “I watched my back trail carefully.”
“Where is this shelter and the three horses?”
Turning to point as the two dogs bounded out of the brush, the boy said, “Over that low ridge, where the stream makes a slow circle at the base of the hill.”
“Our horses are safe?”