Ain’t you got a surprise comin’? Scratch thought as he was rolled onto his side. Figger to tear off my hat to scalp me now … an’you’re gonna find I awready been scalped!
He felt his fur hat get torn off, then started to snort with this one last joke on his murderers when the Indian suddenly dropped to a knee so he could stare intently into Bass’s face. The young warrior reached out tentatively, as if unsure of what he was about to do, then gently tugged the faded black silk bandanna off the old trapper’s head. The Blackfoot’s eyes widened … but not in fear or surprise. Instead, in something like … like recognition.
For a moment the Blackfoot’s eyes grew big with wonder, even awe, as he looked this way, then that—as if afraid the Crow war party would come racing over the brow of the nearby hills and discover him … but eventually his dark eyes came back to rest on the white man’s face once more. Not near as wide now, no longer filled with amazement. Strangely, they had grown soft.
Titus gagged, felt his riven stomach lurch as he did his best to turn his head aside, puking up a great glob of blood onto the Blackfoot’s arm, the one that still gripped him by the back of his collar. Sensing how weak he was becoming, how much the temperature had fallen since he had ridden down on these five raiders, Scratch watched with dulled senses as the Indian scrambled onto his feet, turned, and with that hand still gripping the back of Bass’s collar … started to drag the white man across the crusty snow.
Slowly, yard by yard, lunge by lunge, the young man got the old trapper turned. As the Blackfoot started up the long, shallow slope toward the stand of some saplings and taller timber, away from the rushes and willow, escaping the dirty ice of that frozen beaver pond, one of the white man’s useless legs at a time slowly straightened out and trailed along behind him. He was helpless now. No matter what the Blackfoot decided to do with his body, it could not matter. He was good as dead already.
That dirty trench of new snow he was leaving behind told the story, smeared with gobs of his blood. How he struggled to maintain enough strength to hold in the long, warm, greasy coils of his own sundered gut, warm, steaming intestine that squirted out between his hands, escaping the pressure of his arms, spilling to his left side where Painted Robe had opened him like one of his grandpap’s Christmas hogs … trailing beside him in the snow. Oh—how he didn’t want his guts to be dragged through the bloody trench up this long, sagebrush-covered slope as the fat, frozen, fluffy flakes of snow collected on his coupled arms, steaming on the purplish coil of his warm gut that he could no longer contain.
With a grunt from them both, the Blackfoot stopped. Shifted his position, then yanked on the white man once more. Then again. Finally a last time. And eventually came around in front of the trapper, seized both of Bass’s shoulders, and tugged him up into a sitting position.
He struggled to focus that one good eye on the warrior as the Blackfoot gently nudged him back now. Without protest, unable to fight, Titus sensed the trunk of the tree press between his shoulder blades. He let his head relax back against the rough bark and sighed. Listening to the sounds of the warrior as the Blackfoot moved off on the icy snow.
Titus coughed and spewed up some bloody phlegm. Nothing left in his belly to bring up but more blood. Hell, he didn’t have a belly left to hold anything—
Suddenly the warrior was kneeling close again, unfurling the red capote as Bass watched the swimming of the colors and motion. Must be the murderer’s coat, he thought. But why?
Green-Stripe Blanket gently spread the red capote over the white man’s bloody body. He tugged it down Bass’s legs and tucked it under them. Watching this ceremony with complete disbelief, Bass finally brought his one good eye again to the man’s face. The smeared paint, the high cheekbones … like so many other brownskins he had fought and killed in all his seasons in this high and terrible land.
But this man’s eyes were soft. Not like the chertlike eyes of Yellow Paint Elkskin, or Buffalo Horn Headdress. Not at all like Painted Robe’s eyes filled with such hatred and fury. “Old man,” the Indian’s lips said.
Bass thought he shook his head slightly, heavy as it was, befuddled that he understood the Blackfoot’s language. And he tried to speak, but no sound came from his own tongue.
“Don’t talk, old man,” the warrior said, his words clear and distinct inside the white man’s head again. As if the Blackfoot spoke a passable American. “Save your breath for what must come next. You must save your breath to start your walk on the wind.”
“W-walk?” he finally uttered in a moist whisper. “Wind?”
With a nod, the Blackfoot stuffed a hand inside his blanket, reaching inside the sleeveless buffalo-hide vest he wore, where two of his fingers snagged the long, thin leather loop that was draped around his neck. Bending his head slightly, the warrior tugged the thong free of his otter-wrapped braids, on over the top of his head where he had tied a big handful of the hair at the front of his brow into a grease-crusted sprig that stood straight up, the sort of hairstyle a warrior would adapt when riding into battle, a symbol that any fighting man would understand: he was daring all his enemies to attempt to take his taunting scalplock.
With a tug, the Blackfoot finally pulled an object free from beneath the front of that buffalo-hide vest Bass could now make out was sewn from the reddish skin of a young buffalo calf. Straining, his vision fixed on what the warrior held out between them, the object just inches from the white man’s eyes.
An eagle wingbone whistle, suspended from its thong and gently nudged by the icy wind that spat sharp snowy arrow-points against their exposed flesh.
But … not just any eagle wingbone whistle. The half breath seized inside what Titus had left of his lungs. This … this whistle appeared familiar. Wrapped in porcupine quills of oxblood red and greasy yellow. A simple pattern of flattened, colored quills that he could not help but recognize.
Eventually his moist, swimming eye climbed to the warrior’s face. Something like a smile seemed to cross that face as the Indian realized the old man was studying him. The Blackfoot reached up to his chin, yanked on the thong that tied the wolfhide cape on his head, and pulled it off.
“Do you know me now, old man?”
There it was again. That perfect white man’s American talk he magically heard inside his head when the Blackfoot opened his mouth, moved his lips and tongue. Even though other, foreign sounds came out of the warrior’s face, like the garbled tangle of some foreign language … what Bass heard inside his head was nonetheless American talk he understood perfectly.
“I-I don’t know you,” and he hacked up more of the thick blood congealing at the back of his throat. Finally he stared at the whistle, and whispered, “But … I know th-that.”
“It was my brother’s,” the warrior said inside Bass’s head. “You killed him many, many winters ago.”
He stared at the whistle, realizing what the Blackfoot said must surely be true. That was where he had seen it before, having taken it off the dead man he had eventually buried in a tree, wrapped in a warrior’s red blanket.
“I don’t have a red blanket to bury you in,” the young warrior apologized. “The way you buried my brother that day. All I have is this red coat that belonged to my friend who you killed.”
Swallowing, Bass explained, “He killed my wife.”
“Your woman?”
“In the village. He was the only one of you I really wanted. I am glad he is dead now.”
“It is good you can wear his capote,” the young warrior declared. “He honors you, a mighty warrior who killed him. You wear the color of war as you die, old man. Just the way you honored my brother many winters ago.”
“One warrior always honors ano-another.”
As the first tear slipped from the Blackfoot’s eye, he said, “And you honored me that day too. Giving me my brother’s war whistle, placing it between my lips to blow for him as he began to take his first steps on the wind.”
He didn’t know if he could talk
anymore, it was getting so hard to breathe, just to keep his eyes open, “I-I …”
“Don’t go to sleep yet,” the Indian scolded. “You must walk this last road alone, but you must walk it before you sleep.”
“C-can’t—”
Scratch felt the Blackfoot slip the long leather loop around his neck, tug it down behind his long, curly hair, then gently straighten it out before he held up the whistle once more.
“Yes … you can. Because you are a warrior. You must do this before you start your last, long walk.”
Then the young man brought his fingers up, gently parting the old trapper’s lips, prying his teeth apart as Bass felt himself sinking into such unimaginable cold. Eventually the youngster managed to slip the end of the whistle between Scratch’s teeth.
Leaning back at last, the Blackfoot brought his face down close to the old man’s, his two dark-cherry eyes looking back and forth between the good eye and that milky, clouded one.
At long last the warrior whispered, “Now … it is time for you to blow for yourself. Blow to call on the First Maker, the guardian of all warriors. Blow to call upon He Who Will Listen To Our Final Prayers. Blow, you old warrior!”
He tried, but only a weak whisper of air escaped the end of the warrior’s wingbone whistle.
“You must try harder, old man,” the Blackfoot urged. “The day you were born, the First Maker blew His breath into your mouth, into your spirit the very moment you emerged from your mother’s womb. Now it is time for you to blow out your last breath, to return it back to the First Maker … in the great circle of a warrior’s life. That first breath He gave you, now you must send it back to Him with your final prayer, old warrior. One last breath and it will be finished.”
He tried again. A little louder.
“That wasn’t your last,” the warrior explained. “The last will be strong. As strong and mighty as you have been a warrior all those seasons you have walked this earth. But now, you must begin a different journey. You will begin to walk on the wind for all time. So you must blow.”
Leaning back, the Blackfoot rocked onto his haunches, then stood, looking down at the white man. “This is for you to do now, on your own. Make this last prayer of yours a good one, old warrior. The First Maker will hear what prayer rests in your heart as you blow with that final breath … and he will be there to walk beside you on the wind.”
Bass sat there, leaning against the tree, blinking his pooling eyes as the young warrior turned slowly and trudged down the gentle slope. After a few steps, the young man whose life he had once saved, the young man whom Titus Bass had once sent back to his people … this Blackfoot warrior stopped—turned—and spoke one last time.
“Pray for what is most dear in your heart, Wind Walker.”
THIRTY-FOUR
He watched the young warrior trudge down the snowy slope until he could not see the figure anymore for the swirling snow that swept in upon gusts of cold wind.
Cold.
How he wished he could spend one more warm night with her. Just holding her, not even taking her in a fevered, frantic rush. Just to cradle her against him one more night. To lie there feeling her heart beating against him, listening to the soft breathing of their children in their lodge until the sky at the top of the poles turned gray and a new day was a’born. What he wouldn’t give to feel her arms around him one last night.
But it was too late now. So cold. Even his warm gut was starting to freeze in his hands.
The snow stung his eyes, sharp against his wet cheeks where his tears had fallen. So he closed them, wondering how he would ever have the strength to blow now that he was growing weaker and weaker. He didn’t have enough will left in him—
With a soft rustle of movement, he felt them approach, brushing against him on both sides.
Slowly Titus opened his eyes, blinked to be sure. And saw them. The Little People. And gradually the realization of what that meant made his throat go dry.
One of them, almost completely covered with long, unkempt gray hair, leaned close to his face and whispered, “You see us, old friend?”
“Yes, I … I finally see you.” He thought the words in his mind, his front teeth still clamped around the end of that whistle.
The Little Person smiled warmly, then peered down the old man’s frame as he asked, “Do you remember what I told you long ago about when the time came that you would finally see us?”
Titus nodded, weakly.
“Do you feel pain?”
Bass nodded again.
The leader made a simple gesture, and his four companions came up to stand around the old man. They reached out with their tiny, hairy hands. Without warning, two of them slapped him on the soles of his feet, hard. One of the others gently laid his hands over the gaping belly wound, and the fourth spread his fingers over the bullet hole in his chest.
“Now—is there any pain?”
He shook his head, struck with wonder, bewildered by the magic. The immense, bone-numbing cold was still there, so icy he had never experienced anything close to it. But … no more did he suffer the pain.
“Then we have done all we can for you, old friend,” the leader said softly as his four companions stepped behind him. “Do you remember what your Blackfoot helper said before he left you to do the rest on your own?”
He remembered.
“Good. We are going away too. Now you must do what remains for yourself. Close your eyes and make your prayer.”
Without attempting to speak, he let his eyelids fall. And with his total being concentrated on struggling to draw one last, ragged, liquid breath deep within his shredded lungs. There it was! Such warmth that he wanted to sing out in victory, to cry out in joy. Lo, those many years, the countless seasons he had taken for granted this simple act of breathing. And only now, at the end, learning that the First Maker, his Creator who had given him his first breath as a newborn, was now asking him to utter one last prayer with his final breath.
“Pray for what is most dear in your heart, Wind Walker.”
The young Blackfoot’s words rang in his head.
And he felt that warmth from his chest rising into his throat, at the back of his tongue, one last gush of immense joy and gratitude for all that had been given him in his life, feeling the hot tears seeping between his eyelids he had clenched against the snowy, icy blasts of cold … that final prayer entered the whistle. Shrill and high.
An eagle’s cry of victory as it leaped from the wingbone, into the air, rising … rising … rising through the terrible cold … far, far higher still.
For the longest time he sat there, the tears frozen on his cheeks, conscious of how the cold was gradually diminishing. Knowing that if he weren’t already dead, he soon would be. After all, Titus reasoned, he no longer sensed the bone-jarring temperature, nor the insistent tug of the wind at his hair and flesh. Even the rock-hard trunk of the tree he leaned against no longer mattered—
Then, just when he wasn’t so sure what had happened to him, Scratch sensed what felt like warm breath against his face, heard the gentle call of a Steller’s jay as it rose in flight—so clear and distinct he could hear every flap of its wings.
Afraid his eyes would be frozen shut, Bass slowly opened them, but no more than slits because of the bright light illuminating the meadow before him. No winter scene … instead, what he saw was a sunlight benediction rained down upon a green, grassy beaver meadow ringed by jack pine and aspen, fragrant cedar and aromatic sage. Shadows dappled the far edge of that glen where sunlight shot through the leafy branches in a complex tapestry of color … enough to convince him it was no longer winter. He wasn’t cold anymore. And suddenly he realized he wasn’t alone.
At first he thought it was the Little People who had come to take away the pain from his dying, perhaps they who had created this dream for him. Because, he remembered with a sudden reckoning, that dream was in fact reality all along. If he had taken all those years in these high and majestic places to learn
anything … it was that most simple fact that his dreams would always be more real than anything he had ever experienced.
Wanting to speak, Titus pushed his tongue against the wingbone whistle. But his lips were so dry they had fused together. So he reached up and gently pulled the whistle free. Licked his lips, and let the whistle lay against his chest. That’s when he looked down and noticed the blood. He’d been wounded many times before—knives and lead balls and arrows too—but never before had he seen so much of his own blood. Wallowing in it by the time the young Blackfoot got him dragged up this slope, to this shady stand of trees overlooking the beaver meadow …
But, while the blood still soaked his shirt and leggings, brownish, blackened stains smeared up and down the middle of him, when he slowly raised his two arms away from his belly to inspect himself, there was no wound, no coil of torn and twisted gut. Bewildered, he moved the whistle aside and stared down at the chest wound. A blood-ringed hole in the middle of his buckskin shirt. But when he gently probed with a finger through that hole, he encountered no wound.
The Little People could tell him. There they were! Across the meadow in the streaks of sunlight and shadow streaming through those beckoning quakies. A beaver gave a warning slap with its tail, then slipped beneath the placid surface of the pond reflecting the aching blue of the sky overhead.
“I hear you!” he said, surprising himself with how strong his voice had become after being so weak, feeling so drained, so damned empty for so long. “C’mon out—I got a few more questions for you—”
But he cut off his call in midsentence as the shadow became figure and stepped into the edge of the light, moved down the emerald bank, and came to a stop at the grassy edge of the uncluttered pond.
“Titus!”
“Y-yes,” he answered, his throat seizing in wonder as he recognized the man from the distant past. “That r-really you?”
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