“They like it, don’t they?” Badger said from where he slumped on the wall bench, trying to roll a smoke. “All of ’em. Boss, too, else they wouldn’t be doin’ it near about every night.”
“Yes,” Pony breathed, feeling the beauty of moment and rising to it the way the sun rises to the dawn. “They like it. All of them.”
“Well, it’s more fun than rippin’ down barbed-wire fences, I guess, though I never could find a good reason for the game. Seems to me it don’t accomplish much.” Badger cussed softly as the tobacco spilled. His fingers were stiff and swollen with arthritis. He glanced up with surprise when Pony’s hands touched his and took the makings from him.
“My old aunt, Nana, taught me to roll these for her when I was a little girl,” she said as she settled beside him on the bench and deftly rolled the cigarette.
“But you don’t smoke the stuff yourself?” Badger said as she handed it back.
Pony shook her head. “I never could find a good reason for smoking,” she said. “Seems to me it doesn’t accomplish much.”
“You’re gettin’ to be real sassy,” Badger said as she started down the porch steps. She stopped at the bottom and looked up at him as he struck a match and lit the smoke. “Come to think of it, so was Lizzy Kinney, my old flame,” he added. Blue smoke curled up around his face and behind she heard the crack of the bat and Jimmy’s triumphant yelp as he apparently caught a fly ball that Caleb sent his way. “I guess there ain’t nothing a’tall wrong with a good woman being sassy from time to time,” Badger concluded as he took another deep draw and leaned back against the weathered boards of the old ranch house.
Pony hid a smile, shoved her hands into her pockets and walked slowly up the old path worn deep behind the ranch buildings that led to the sacred burial place. Behind her the voices of Caleb and the boys faded as she distanced herself from those she loved. At the end of the path she stood in windswept silence on the knoll above the ranch house, in the grove of tall, straight lodgepole pine. She read the inscription on the simple granite stone that marked where a woman lay buried.
Mary Bie Asiitash Weaver, born 1843, died June 2, 1932. Beloved wife of John Weaver and daughter of Little Wolf, Crow medicine man.
Pony let her thoughts wander. One hundred and forty years ago, Mary had come to live in this high mountain valley as the wife of a white man, and she had left a legacy that had endured into the twenty-first century. She’d paved the way for the Crow woman who now stood beside her grave, contemplating both the past and future, and marveling at how they had come full circle.
“Thank you,” Pony said quietly, touching the weathered headstone. “Aho.”
She stood there while the sky turned deep violet, darkening toward the night. The air was a buoyant blending of the high snowy places and golden warmth of the autumn valley, sweet and spicy with the scents of pine and sage. Somewhere in the meadows above the ranch the buffalo roamed, a coyote wailed its mournful lament and the spirit of the wind hissed softly through the trees. Pony was filled with a poignant happiness. “Ihakaxaaheet, aho. Aho,” she said. She heard an approaching footstep and a man’s familiar and beloved voice answered.
“She speaks, and behold he stands before her.”
Caleb approached quietly, and her heart leaped at his unexpected nearness. He drew her gently into his warm strong embrace. “Was I even close?”
“No.” She smiled, breathing his masculine scent, a mingling of saddle leather and sweat, pipe tobacco and horses, and relishing the lean, hard strength of his body. “I said, ‘The stars are brilliant tonight. Thank you.’”
“The stars are brilliant,” he murmured, pulling her closer, “but they don’t shine the way you do.” He kissed her while the tall pines whispered their secrets to each other. He kissed her until her spirit sang and her heart soared and the earth spun beneath her feet.
“I wish we could get married right away,” he said breathlessly when they came up for air.
“I know. But Guthrie and Jessie have been planning their wedding….”
“I know.” He bent his head to kiss her again and pulled her tightly against him with a low moan. “I know that waiting’s the right thing to do. I know they’re first in line. I was just thinking that maybe we should elope. Las Vegas isn’t all that far away….”
“October does seem very distant, but Las Vegas isn’t the place for us.” She traced the masculine lines of his face and her fingertips stilled at his chin. “Do you have a good blanket in your cabin?”
“I do. A four-point wool Pendleton. Are you cold?”
“No. I am not cold, but we would need a good blanket.”
“For what?”
“For the ceremony,” she said.
There was a long pause while he considered her words. “Tonight?” he said, his voice full of hope.
“Tonight.”
“What should I do with the blanket?”
“Wrap it around both of us and call me your wife. Mitawicu.”
“And then what?”
She smiled as she stepped away from him, taking his hand to lead him to his cabin on the bend of the creek. “Come with me, mitacante, and we will let our future together begin.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-3645-5
BUFFALO SUMMER
Copyright © 2003 by Penny R. Gray.
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