Ride the Moon Down tb-7

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I said my fare-thees to you twice’t a’fore, Jarrell,” Bass stabbed the silence between them as the men sweated and the horses stamped in a semicircle around the two of them.

  “What’s that you’re trying to say?”

  “That this may be a fare-thee too, but it’s also a promise to cross your tracks again.”

  Titus held out his hand between them, but Thornbrugh shoved it aside roughly and seized the American in both of his massive arms, pulling the smaller, thinner man into a ferocious embrace. At that very moment Scratch was grateful Jarrell nearly squeezed the breath out of his body. For that moment Thornbrugh choked off the sob that threatened to overwhelm Titus.

  When the big Englishman pulled back, their arms outstretched between them, Bass blinked several times, squinting as if troubled with the intense light. But it was the fire of those sudden tears that stung his eyes now.

  Thornbrugh inched back another step. “I’ll hold you to that promise, Titus Bass—true lord of this great wilderness! If God doesn’t take me, and the good Doctor so chooses, I’ll be back here to your rendezvous next year.”

  “I’ll be here, friend. Lay your set to that.” And he studied the way the huge man moved as Thornbrugh turned and stepped back to his horse, taking his reins from McKay, then rose to the saddle.

  “Give my respects to the Doctor.”

  “I will do that,” Thornbrugh agreed as he urged his horse away slowly.

  “He’s a good man … for an Englishman!”

  Jarrell bawled with a crack of sudden laughter that split the hot air. “You aren’t a bad sort either—not for a wretched American!”

  Then he called out, “Watch your backtrail, Jarrell!”

  Thornbrugh turned and smiled hugely with those massive teeth of his like whitewashed pickets surrounding a settlement house. He waved one last time, then twisted back around in the saddle and was swallowed up by the rest of those bringing up the rear of that column.

  When Bass finally felt the fiery touch of the sun against the side of his face, he reluctantly wheeled about and started for the shade, finding Waits-by-the-Water standing in the shadows, the sleeping infant at her shoulder.

  “It pleases my heart so much that you have such friends as these,” she said as he came into the shade.

  Laying an arm over her shoulder, he turned to watch the small brigade slowly move away, disappearing into the shimmering heat rising in waves from the sunburnt landscape.

  “First Maker has blessed me with a few good people through all my days,” he responded in Crow. “The sort of friends that show me, no matter all the mistakes I made in my life, just how the Grandfather still smiles on me.”

  “A man’s life is not all horses and battle honors,” she said. “In the end, a man’s life must count for more than that, husband.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, turning with her now, heading back to their bowers as the valley fell quiet once more. “Good friends, and this wonderful woman who has blessed me with a beautiful child.”

  “A child who has no name.”

  “But not for long,” he said, squeezing her against him.

  Breathless, she turned within the yoke of his arm. “Have you chosen a name for our daughter?”

  “Tonight when the sun settles to the edge of the earth, we will celebrate for her.”

  4

  It seemed as if the rest of the world held its breath.

  With the sinking of the sun and the arrival of twilight, that faint afternoon stirring of the air grew still. From the burning cottonwood limbs a dizzying array of sparks popped free, each dancing firefly swirling upward without torment in its dazzling ascent.

  The baby talked and talked, more than she ever had, playing with her hands, reaching out for the distant sparks as if to snatch them from the darkening sky. Ever since arriving there at rendezvous a handful of days ago, she had suddenly taken to chattering, more every day it seemed. A happy, cheering babble.

  This evening as the baby talked to the sparks and those leaping blue-yellow flames, Titus sat with his daughter on his lap, cradled against him, his back resting against a downed stump as Waits-by-the-Water completed the last of her chores at the edge of the fire, stuffing utensils, root, and leaf spices away in her rawhide bags, then looked over at her husband and sighed.

  “This has not been an easy day,” she admitted.

  “Why?”

  “It is hard to wait,” the woman confessed. “Knowing she would finally have a name.”

  “She’s always had a name,” Bass explained.

  Waits stared at him a moment more before asking, “What do you mean, our daughter has always had a name?”

  “One Above has had a name for her all along, perhaps even while she was growing in your belly—preparing for her arrival in the world.”

  Rising sideways, the woman got to her feet and moved around to his side of the fire. There she settled at his knee, facing Bass, her legs tucked to the side in that woman way of hers.

  “If she had a name from the beginning,” Waits asked, “why didn’t we know it?”

  “First Maker was waiting for us to find out what her name is,” he declared.

  “We had to find out her name?” and she smiled at him, the lines of confusion disappearing from her forehead.

  “All we had to do was find out what the Creator had already named her.”

  “Was this easy for you to learn what her name was?”

  “No, not easy at all,” he admitted. “I was wrong three times.”

  “Three? How … how did you know you were wrong?”

  He shrugged, presenting the baby one of his gnarled fingers. She grabbed it readily. “Only from the feeling I had inside.”

  “You felt this three times?”

  With a nod Bass said, “At first I thought of daa’xxa’pe.”

  “Little Red Calf?” and she chuckled behind her fingers.

  “Remember how red she looked for a long time after she was born,” he explained. “Just like the little buffalo calves when they are born.”

  “Yes,” she said with a smile. “It would be a good name for a girl.”

  And he agreed with that. “I know—but I eventually figured out that she was not named Little Red Calf.”

  “What was the second name you thought she had?”

  Clearing his throat, Bass declared, “Spring Calf Woman—daa’xxap’shii’le—because she was a little yellow calf dropped in the spring.”

  “Yellow? How is this little one yellow when you just said she was a red calf for a long time?”

  “Her skin was red for so long. But look at her hair,” he told her. “Is it as black as a raven’s wing like yours?”

  “No,” and Waits shook her head. “But it isn’t the color of her father’s hair either.”

  “I agree—but it is easy to see that her hair is lighter than a Crow’s, and may even have some light streaks in it as she grows up and her hair grows longer.”

  “So … yellow?”

  “Yes—because my sister and one of my brothers had blond hair. Yellow as riverbank clay.”

  “I think I am glad we did not find out her name was Spring Calf Woman,” Waits replied thoughtfully. “That is far too much to say for a little one. I remember how hard it was for me, how long it took to learn to say all of my name when I was so small.”

  “Most parents give little thought to what trouble they may cause their child when they name them,” he explained.

  “And I suppose you would say that most parents do not try hard enough to find out what their child is already named?”

  “Yes!” he responded with glee, pedaling his hands up and down for the baby who had a fierce grip on his two index fingers.

  Waits laid a hand on Bass’s knee, took the girl’s foot in her other hand, and caressed the tiny toes. “What was the third name you wanted to give our daughter before you found out it did not belong to her?”

  “Cricket.”

  “The happy insect?�
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  “Yes,” and Titus laughed easily, thinking about it again. “For the last few weeks coming here, I have listened to her as she began to make sounds.”

  “Sounds?”

  “Just sounds. But most times they were happy sounds. I was reminded of a tiny cricket hiding somewhere under our blankets, or in my beaver hides, chirping so cheery and happy.”

  She echoed the name as if trying it out—“Cricket.”

  “But at dawn this morning after you fed her and she did not go right back to sleep,” he explained quickly, “I had the feeling that cricket was not her name. Something told me.”

  “Grandfather Above told you.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “And as she sat in her cradleboard watching you, and looking at me too—talking to us like we understood everything she was trying so hard to say—the Creator finally agreed that I had found our daughter’s name.”

  “After three others, you are sure this is the one?”

  “Yes, ua” he answered, using the Crow word for wife. “I discovered the name she has had all along.”

  “So, ak’saa’wa’chee” she addressed him as a father, “are you going to tell me just what this little person of ours is named?”

  “I think you should bring me my pipe and tobacco,” he suggested.

  She clambered to her feet and knelt among the rawhide parfleches and satchels. “See?” Waits proudly held up the small clay pipe. “I know where you keep this safe.”

  “There’s some new tobacco I traded for, laying there in that new blanket we now have for the baby.”

  Waits pulled back the folds of the thick wool blanket, fingering it a moment. “She will stay warm this winter.”

  “Gonna be colder in Crow country than you were down in Taos while I was gone.”

  Pulling apart the crumpled sheet of waxed paper, Waits selected one of the twisted carrots of tobacco, then refolded the rest and stuffed it back beneath the layers of that new blanket. “No, husband. I was colder there in Tahouse than I will be this winter among my own people because I did not have you with me.”

  He sensed a stab of remorse, recalling the wrenching conflict he had suffered after deciding to leave his pregnant wife behind while he attempted a midwinter pilgrimage to hunt down some old friends in St. Louis. “No more should you fear, for we will spend the rest of our winters together, ua.”

  As she returned and laid both the pipe and tobacco beside his knee, Waits rocked forward and planted a gentle kiss on his bare cheekbone. “I promise you the same, chil’ee. Until death takes me, I will spend all the rest of my days with you.”

  Then she scooped up the infant and lifted her from his lap. “Let me hold this little girl while you fill your pipe. Then I can finally discover what the First Maker has named our daughter.”

  From the narrow tail of that twist of dried tobacco he had traded from Nathaniel Wyeth, Bass crumpled a little of the dark leaf between a thumb and finger, dropping each pinch into the bowl of his clay pipe. Although fragile, these pipes had long been a staple of barter between the white man and the red—going back some two hundred years. While they might break if a man did not carefully pack his pipe among his possibles, they were extremely cheap. Bass, like most of those trappers who hunted this mountain wilderness, owned several of the creamy-white clay pipes. From its months of use, the inside of the bowl of this one had taken on a rich earthen tone, while the oils and dirt from Scratch’s hands had given the outside of the pipe a softer, hand-rubbed, sepia-toned patina.

  Accustomed to watching how her husband practiced his habits, Waits-by-the-Water was prepared when he nodded his approval of having packed the bowl just so. From the edge of the coals she pulled a short twig she had propped there, suspending its tiny flame over the bowl as he sucked the fire into the tobacco. As he did, Bass looked sidelong, finding his daughter staring at the pipe, perhaps more so the bobbing flame she reached for with both of her tiny, pudgy hands.

  “She wants to smoke with you,” Waits said, amusement in her voice.

  “Tell her she’s not old enough,” Bass said when he took the stem from his lips, ready for their ceremony. “But you can smoke with me tonight.”

  “M-me?” she replied. “I’ve never … unless one is a member of a woman’s lodge, w-we don’t … never smoke—”

  “You are a member of my lodge,” he declared. “Better still, I have become a member of your lodge, woman. When I married you, we became our own clan.”

  “B-but … I never before—”

  “Tonight you will,” Bass interrupted. “This is for our daughter.”

  “Smoking is a sacred thing,” she explained with a slight wag of her head, as much doubt written on her face as in the sound of her voice. “Men smoke together to deliberate on an important matter. Or to offer prayers.”

  He chuckled as he leaned to the side, noticing how his daughter’s eyes remained fixed on that pipe in his hand before he looked closely into his wife’s eyes. “That is exactly what you and I are about to do. This is a sacred thing—this naming of a child, is it not?”

  “V-very sacred, yes.”

  “And we have deliberated on this matter of a name for some time?”

  “You have deliberated,” she admitted, “and I have prodded you for an answer to your deliberations—”

  “See, I am right,” he interrupted with a chuckle. “And now the two of us who belong to the Titus Bass coyote clan are about to offer a prayer for welcoming a third member to our clan.”

  “Yes, a prayer.”

  In one hand he held the pipe up to the sky as black as the gut of a badger. “First Maker, we offer our prayer as thanksgiving for showing us our daughter’s name.”

  Then he placed the stem between his teeth, drew in a short breath, and let it out a little at a time, to each of the cardinal directions. That done, Bass handed the warm clay stem to his wife. For a moment Waits studied the pipe—until the baby reached out for her mother’s hand that held that interesting object.

  “Smoke to pray for our daughter,” he said. “You see by her hand touching you and the pipe that she understands the importance of you smoking for her.”

  Slowly the woman pulled her hand away from the baby’s tiny fingers, placing the stem against her lips.

  “Don’t draw in much,” he advised. “Just a little. I don’t think the spirits will mind if you smoke only a little. Surely what is important is not how much you take in, but that you did pray with the smoke.”

  Waits wrinkled her nose at the bitter taste as soon as she drew some smoke into her mouth. This she quickly expelled in one direction. Then followed suit with three more short puffs to finish her circuit of the directions as the child in her lap began to fuss.

  “She wants that pipe,” Bass said as his wife handed it back to him. “Or she wants your attention.”

  “When will I learn what her name has been all this time?” she asked, licking her lips and tasting the strong tobacco.

  “Patience, my wife.” Then he raised the pipe to the sky again. “Grandfather Above—we offer this prayer to ask that you guide our steps in protecting this child as she grows.”

  Once more he smoked, exhaling four light puffs to the four directions, then watched as Waits again completed the offering of her prayer as the baby began to fuss, kicking her legs and balling her fists as she flailed her tiny arms.

  Quickly Waits handed the pipe back to Titus. “Now she wants only my attention.”

  With a smile Scratch said, “Take her clothes off.”

  “That isn’t what is going to make her happy.”

  “As we offer our daughter to the Grandfather,” he explained, “she should be as naked as the day she came to be with us.”

  Without a word of protest, Waits-by-the-Water released the knots in the soft strips of antelope hide that secured the sections of cloth around the child’s body. First that strip under the babe’s arms, then the one around its belly. And finally those that held absorbent grass stalks around
the infant’s legs. With a dry scrap of wool, Waits quickly wiped her daughter’s bare bottom, then handed the squirming bundle over to Bass.

  Completely dark beyond that small corona of firelight, hemmed in by a great encompassing wilderness where no sound was heard save for the yonder call of the mournful song-dogs, the quieting buzz of insects among the rustling leaves, and that muted babble of the nearby creek—Bass laid her tiny head in the palm of his left hand, stretching her little, lithe body along that forearm so that a leg fell on either side of his elbow. With the fingertips of his right hand, he gently caressed her forehead, cheeks, and under her chin, slowly soothing the fussy child, quieting her. Down each arm he lightly rubbed, fingertips pressing softly as he progressed.

  When he looked up at Waits, he found admiration in his wife’s beautiful black-cherry eyes. Then he gazed down at his daughter once more and continued massaging her plump little body while he whispered to her the nonsense that makes no difference to an infant who knows only that she is the center of her own universe at that moment. Down each hip and on down each leg, Titus didn’t finish until he had gently rubbed every small toe.

  He raised her head, and kissed the tiny brow, watching the babe’s wide, wondering eyes roll upward as he lowered his hairy face toward her. Then Bass clutched the infant in his two strong hands and slowly raised her above his head until his arms were outstretched. She began to squirm again, her legs kicking, arms pumping, fists flailing in discontent, a little brown-skinned ball of anger at the end of his arms, held here against the black sky in the fire’s light, her flesh lit red as Mexican copper.

  “We honor this gift you have given the two of us, First Maker!” he said now.

  “This little one who you knew would make a place for herself in our hearts.”

  Slowly, the baby slowed her leg’s gyrations, quieted her fussing.

  “You gave this little one her name at the very beginning—even from the start of time … and you have waited for us to discover her name for ourselves.”

  The child cooed, reaching for those sparks that spiraled upward from the flames leaping inches from Bass’s knees. Then he realized his daughter was no longer trying to catch the daring, dancing sparks. Instead she reached for those twinkling bits of light just beyond her reach, those stars flung against the blackened backdrop.