“I don’t understand your point, Mr. Bass—”
“An’ where will you be on the hoop when you die and stand before the throne of your God?”
It was indeed a hot midsummer day—nonetheless the Prophet’s brow was sweating a little too much for a man who was doing nothing to physically exert himself.
Titus asked again, holding the iron band slightly higher, “Where will you be?”
“When I die I will be in heaven with all God’s faithful saints. Right where you can be if you accept His revealed word.”
“So you do got a beginning and an end, Preacher?”
“As do all God’s creatures.”
“Me too? A ignernt Gentile like me?”
“Yes.”
Bass lowered the hoop. “How ’bout my Injun wife and our young’uns?”
“Yes, they have a glorious end in paradise once they accept the teachings of God.” Young smiled again, as if beginning to feel more at ease.
“You take this here circle,” Titus began, gazing at that iron hoop, “why, this here’s my life, preacher. Just like my coming out here to the mountains was a part of the journey. No beginning an’ no end.”
“But in death—”
“When I die, my body goes back to the earth, don’t it?”
“That’s the way of all mortal clay, yes.”
“But my spirit goes on,” he said quietly. “Like the earth and sky. That don’t die, does it, Preacher?”
Young corrected, “Your soul goes to live with God in His heavenly paradise prepared for us.”
“I don’t want my soul—my spirit—to go nowhere,” he said with grave intensity. “I want it to stay right here where I been the happiest I ever could be.”
“There’s far more happiness in heaven with the rest of the faithful souls—”
“Maybe for you an’ your Saints, but for me I don’t wanna be nowhere but here with these rocks and sky, here with the ones I hold in my heart. There ain’t no other heaven, no other paradise for me to be in for all time.”
“I … see,” Young stated, then dragged a single fingertip along his upper lip beaded with tiny diamonds of sweat. “Elders—we see how the Holy Spirit can only speak to a man if his ears are not plugged.”
“It ain’t that my ears are plugged,” Titus replied. “I s’pose I just hear a differ’nt voice than you heard, Preacher.”
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.”
Bass swallowed hard. “Y-yes?”
“I prayed that you would find joy in this news.”
“H-how could I not?” he exclaimed. “You are … we are? Another baby?”
She nodded, unable to speak at that moment, the tears starting to spill down her high-boned, copper-skinned cheeks.
Immediately he wrapped his arms around her in a fierce embrace, hoisting her off the ground in a half circle before he plopped her back down on the dirt of that open-air blacksmith shop at Fort Bridger.
“H-how soon will this child come?”
“Winter,” she said, a little breathless. “Maybe as early as your day of birth, but probably later.”
“Winter,” he repeated, then suddenly kissed her, hard, on the mouth, and quickly dropped to his knees before her, pressing his cheek and ear against that slightly rounded belly.
“Do you want this child born in Crow country?”
She used both her hands to gently cup the top of that faded blue bandanna tied around his head. “This child will choose its own place to be born, Ti-tuzz. If we are back among my people, or if we are somewhere else of our choosing—this child will decide.”
He pressed his mouth against her soft belly and kissed it.
“No matter where we are when the child’s time comes, as long as we are all together there,” she said as he got to his feet once more, “then it will be as the First Maker has intended.”
“I will be there,” he promised, tears stinging his eyes as he painfully remembered not being with her when she gave birth to Jackrabbit. “For you, I will always be there.”
TEN
“Wagons coming!”
Titus Bass turned at the cry from his son’s throat. Wiping sweat from his eyes with a scrap of scratchy burlap there beneath the shady awning, he squinted at the front gate, both sides flung open for the day. At that moment Flea burst into view, reined his racing pony to a dust-stirring halt, and leaped to the ground near the fire pit.
“Wagons coming, Popo!”
As the barefoot boy came racing up to him on foot, yanking the spotted pony behind him, Scratch smiled and said, “Your American talk is gettin’ real good, Flea. Real good.”
Then he raised that grimy hand clutching the scrap of burlap and shaded his brow, staring beyond the boy and through the gate at the thickening cloud of dust to the northeast in that valley of Black’s Fork.
Bridger stepped from the store and glanced his way before he slapped his hat on his head, and he too regarded the distance. “That boy of your’n got the eyes of a hawk, Titus Bass!”
Looping his arm over his son’s bare shoulder, he proudly said, “That he do, Gabe. You want he should go with you to greet ’em?”
“Hell, his American is good as can be. I’ll tag along, but why don’t we let Flea lead ’em over to that southwest meadow where the grass ain’t awready been cropped down.”
He gazed at his son and asked, “You understand Gabe?”
Flea stared up at his father and nodded. With a gulp he said, “I go ride. Tell wagon men follow me. Meadow camp, good grass.”
“Can you tell ’em why we don’t want ’em to camp near the fort?”
“Bridger’s grass is Bridger’s grass,” Flea said, mimicking a stern tone. “Bridger’s grass for all year round, grass for Bridger. Not for wagon men.”
Patting the lad on the head, Titus said, “Get along with you now, son. You take them folks to the meadow on up the river two mile.”
The boy’s smile could not have covered more of his face as he wheeled away in a scurry of dust. Seizing a double handful of the pony’s mane he heaved himself onto its back, settled, and brushed some of his unbound hair from his eyes as he yanked the reins to the side. With excited yelps, Digger and Ghost suddenly appeared from the side of the stockade, already racing at full gallop as they sprinted to catch up to Flea’s racing claybank.
“I ’spect Shadrach bring his kin back here any day now,” Bridger said as he stood there a moment longer.
Titus asked, “Figger they’ll tag along with a train on their way down from Green River?”
“Could be,” Jim replied. “Been two weeks since I sent up them four coons to take over at the ferry.”
Fifteen days ago it had been. Barely a week before that four more former skin trappers from the old American Fur Company days showed up at Fort Bridger, men who had served in Jim’s brigades during those last half dozen years of the beaver trade. Each of them had a woman along, two with children in tow, and a third squaw so swollen with child she waddled about like a melon ready to burst. Shoshone gals, they were. The old friends weren’t looking for a handout, just a way they could manage to live something resembling the old life and still buy a few geegaws for their women. Jim offered them work at the ferry.
All four leaped at the opportunity handed them by their old booshway. One claimed he’d even worked a rope-and-pulley ferry across the Wabash back in the Illinois country. When Gabe dug in, he found out the former beaver man did know his stuff. Hiring the quartet to help out the three there already would allow Shadrach to bring his family back to the fort, turning over the operation at Green River to that party of old comrades. The four were to pass along Bridger’s request for Sweete to return as soon as he could get packed up. The big man’s help was sure to come in handy around the post while the emigrant season wound down, now that they were nearing the end of that summer of ’47.
“Better get on that ol’ horse of your’n, Gabe!” Bass cried as Jim shuffled away toward the gate, heading for the second, smaller stockade that served as a corral. “You figger to tag along with that lad o’ mine, you best be quick about it!”
In that moment of watching his oldest son rein his pony around and around Bridger playfully, Bass felt an immense p
ride in the lad. What a figure he cut upon this three-year-old claybank Jim had given him as a gift to train several weeks back, right after the trader returned from Fort John with the first train of the season, piloted by Joseph Reddeford Walker himself. Seemed the former Bonneville man had gone east to the mouth of the La Ramee earlier that summer to see if he could stir up any work guiding emigrants through to Oregon. By the peak of the summer season there had been seven parties already come by Fort Bridger, not including those Mormons with Brigham Young on their way to the valley of the Salt Lake.
Such pride he felt for the youngster as he watched him take off at a lope beside Bridger for the northeast. Flea wore his long, brown-tinted hair loose and unfettered in the hot breeze, floating gently as the pony bounded along to match its young rider’s exuberance. Flea twisted around slightly and waved his arm one time before the two of them were gone beyond the edge of the gate, into the trees, following the much-scarred pattern of ruts where little of the dry, browning grasses grew any longer. In turn he waved to the boy, then clucked to himself and turned back toward the shady awning, where clung the heavy stench of cinders and fire smoke, white-hot iron and half-burnt coffee.
“He’s a good lad,” Titus said with a stirring in his breast for the child quickly becoming a young man. “No man could want for any better.”
Come this winter, Waits-by-the-Water might well give him another son. Or, perhaps another daughter. Gawd, but it did not matter—long as Waits was delivered of the child with ease and the babe was whole in body and mind. He had seen a few of those infants born not quite whole: missing fingers, perhaps a clubbed foot, maybe their eyes sightless or they were unable to hear the sound of rattle or whistle when a grandparent gave them a naming ceremony. It was his only prayer—that this child and its mother would come through the birthing whole. He picked up the leather-wrapped handle of the hammer and looked at the shady doorway of the store. Thinking of her. Waits was not a young woman any longer. Her scarred, pockmarked face was much fuller than it had ever been. Three youngsters given birth, along with so much loss and sadness since she became his back in ’33. Older than most Crow women when they customarily took a husband, she had preferred to wait for the husband she wanted—wait to have children and raise a family with him.
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