“Yes, Popo. I brought them back from the water and put them out to graze on the other side of that willow.”
He looked downstream at the bottom of the hill where the sun glared brightly on the rustling leaves. “I see them now. Good. Magpie?”
She poked her head from the lodge. “You need me?”
“Come help me tie up the dogs so they will stay here with you and your mother.”
When Ghost and Digger were secured at the ends of their tethers, and he had knotted a bandanna around each muzzle to keep them quiet, Scratch turned to his son and asked, “Flea, can you take me to look at this shelter you found?”
“Come up with me and I will take you.” The boy patted the back of his horse.
Titus retrieved two pistols and stuffed them in his belt before he handed his son the rifle, then bounded onto the rear flanks of the claybank pony. Once he had scooted forward against the boy, Scratch took back his rifle. He looped his left arm around Flea’s waist and said, “Let’s go see who these strangers are.”
They left the claybank tied in a clump of alder, then scrambled up the side of the hill at an angle. Scratch followed his boy to just below the top, then they both dropped to their bellies and crawled on up to the crest. At the top he peered down at the narrow creek, unable to find the shelter at first. Eventually he spotted a patch of what looked to be greasy, smoke-darkened canvas in the midst of a large stand of eight-foot-tall willow.
“Where are the three horses?” he whispered.
“On the other side,” Flea said. “You come around the hill, that way, and you see them.”
“Tied up?”
He nodded. “Long ropes.”
“Saddles?”
This time Flea shook his head. “I saw no saddles. White man or Indian.”
“But you saw the horses, son. What tribe are these strangers?”
“Don’t know, Popo.”
“Any weapons hanging outside?” he asked. “Shield or medicine bundle?”
“No. I saw nothing.” He grew thoughtful a moment, then told his father, “It is a poor camp, no signs of wealth. Maybe we leave them alone, and they won’t bother us too.”
“Can’t take that chance, Rea. With us camped just over the hill at the springs, these strangers are too close. Best to know who your neighbors are.”
Titus slid backward, then rolled onto his hip and sat up, pulling the first pistol from his belt. Handing it to the boy, he said, “Here. You know how to use this if you need to?”
“I remember.”
“Good. I want you at my back when we walk in there.”
When they reached the bank of the narrow creek opposite the shelter, Bass saw how much thought had gone into placing the structure where it was all but concealed, except from straight on. It had all the signs of an old camp: footpaths tracking upstream and down, all the grass around the stand of willow trampled by moccasins if not hooves, and a small portion of the sharp cutbank worn down by the strangers as they knelt while dipping water from the stream. He was certain this wasn’t a war lodge—a shelter hastily constructed for one night’s sleep as a war party walked or rode deep into enemy country. No, from the signs of things, this trio of strangers had been here for some time and didn’t appear to be in a rush to leave.
“We’ll wait here and see how many are inside,” he whispered to the boy. “If all three strangers are here, I will need to send you back for your bow. But if only one of them sleeps inside, we are in no danger with our three guns.”
“We just wait?”
He looked at his son. “Patience is something good for all young men to learn.”
Minutes later Flea whispered close to his father’s ear, “Were you very different from me when you were my age?”
Grinning, he tousled his son’s long, black hair and said, “Boys are the same, no matter where they grow up, no matter if they Crow like you, or a white boy like I was.”
“Sometimes I think that I will never grow up to be as good a man as you,” Flea confessed.
“That’s where you are wrong,” he said in a hush, deeply touched by the honor in his son’s words.
In exasperation, the boy said, “But you know all these things that I don’t think I ever will know.”
“I suppose I make you feel that way because I try to teach you all that I have learned—to help you understand all those things I did not understand. I want to give you my hand in growing into a man, the help that I did not have. So, I am sorry if I have not been a good and gentle father to you. Sorry if I tell you that you should learn patience … then I am not patient with you myself.”
“You have been a very good father,” Flea responded, his eyes filled with respect. “Maybe there are times when it is hard to be my father.”
Laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Titus whispered, “I will try better to remember that there are times it is difficult to be my son—”
“Look!” Flea whispered harshly.
A shadowy form appeared at the shelter’s low doorway, bent at the waist and knees, as the stranger stepped into a patch of shade and stood. A woman!
She straightened and shook her clothes around her—a long leather skirt that fell just below her knees and an ill-fitting cloth shirt once of a bright calico pattern, but now so crusted with grime and fire soot that it was hard for Titus to make out what color it had ever been. She wore no moccasins, her feet coated with a thick layer of ground-in dirt. She pushed back her unkempt hair and began to brush at it with a porcupine tail that had its quills clipped short, slowly and painfully yanking at the ratty knots, beginning to shake loose the bits of grass and ash that had collected there. She was not a young thing, he could see. Her hair hung well flecked with the snows of something more than forty winters, and her breasts sagged with not only the pull of age but the mouths of babes who had suckled at them what had to be a lifetime ago.
Perhaps there was a child inside that shelter; if not a child, then a youngster not quite become an adult—
A second figure stepped from the dark interior and emerged clumsily, one hand clutching onto the left side of the shelter to steady himself. Barechested, his legs naked as well, and not wearing any moccasins, the man tugged at his long breechclout, straightening it on the narrow strap of leather tied around his waist, then adjusting his manhood beneath the front fold of what had once been a bright red piece of trader’s wool. The bright colors of selvage at the edges of the breechclout were faded, frayed, and almost indistinguishable with soot and filth. He rubbed the heels of both palms into his eyes, then spread his fingers apart to push back what unruly sprigs of his graying hair had refused to stay bound within his long braids also dusted with flecks of dried grass.
“Where is the third one?” Flea asked. “Inside?”
“Wait, and we will see.”
The woman walked to the edge of the bushes, past the ground where the three horses raised their heads and followed her toward the hillside. There she yanked up the bottom of her short skirt, one side after another, raising it to her hips, then squatted and moistened the ground, unaware of the father and son across that narrow ribbon of water. When she stood, shifting the skirt back around her legs, and started back to the shelter, the three horses remained near the bottom of the hill to crop at the grass.
Quietly lifting the flap to his shooting pouch, Bass pulled out the spyglass and snapped out its three sections. He quickly looked over those three animals, inspecting their muzzles, manes, backs, and tails. These were not the proud possessions of a warrior: groomed, painted, a tail bound up for battle. All three showed their age, and two of them clearly had healing sores on their backs from an ill-fitting saddle. Slowly he dragged the spyglass across to his left, hoping to get himself a better look at these two aging and disheveled strangers.