Wind Walker

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I ’member the night.”

  “You recollect I was in the cups, an’ how we talked of what was dream … an’ what was real?”

  Bridger swallowed. “I ’member that too.”

  “Them dreams you fellas will have of the used-to-be days are gonna be real … an’ all the rest of these seasons without beaver, these seasons when the unhonorable men come crushin’ in on us—why, that won’t be real a’t’all,” he told his friends. “Way I see it, the dreams is just about all we got to hang our hands on to now. So them dreams of what was our glory time are gonna be all the sweeter for it.”

  Few of them could hold their eyes on him now, most of the old friends dragging hands beneath their cold, dribbling noses or smearing an eye here or there.

  “I ain’t got no doubt you’re gonna see me again an’ again, over an’ over, in your dreams,” he explained with difficulty at putting the feelings into words. “But I don’t figger you’ll ever see me like this again. In your dreams I won’t be feelin’ all my war wounds an’ all these here battle scars.”

  Quietly, Sweete said, “We lived through a high time when other’ns went under, Scratch.”

  “That’s right,” he responded. “An’ in them dreams each of us gonna have in the seasons to come, we’ll all be fresh an’ brand-new again, boys. Can’t you see them dreams now? Why, we’ll be settin’ foot out here again for the first time—just like this land was brand-new. The day after God made this country for our kind, when we was the onliest white niggers to put down a mokerson track out here.”

  Scratch could tell by the way tears were trickling from their eyes that most of these old friends were remembering those glory days already. Veterans of more than two decades of survival, countless seasons and battles, victories and losses. Friends moved on and friends gone under. These last holdouts were remembering those bright and shining times when this country was brand-spanking-new … and they had been the first.

  The goddamned very first to walk this high and mighty land.

  “I’m going back north to live out what I got left of days, fellas,” he confessed in a voice cracking with emotion. “Spend it with my family, up there with my wife’s relations. Now that it’s come my time to cross the river an’ go, I don’t want none of you to stare at this here ol’ nigger too good. Don’t want you to ’member his gray head or the tired way he moves in his ol’ bones.”

  “Don’t look at you?” Sweete asked.

  “I want you ol’ friends to do me honor,” he started to explain, “to remember me when we was all like young bulls come spring green-up: strong, an’ wild, an’ with the sap runnin’ through us so heady that no man dared stand agin’ any of us, red or white.”

  Dragging his coat sleeve beneath his nose, Scratch quietly said, “That’s the Titus Bass I want you to ’member. When you boys close your eyes, I want you to dream on them glory days we had. An’ I’ll be there. No matter what happens to me from here on out, I swear to you under this great sky that them dreams are gonna be more real than us standin’ here right now.”

  Shadrach impulsively threw his arms around the shorter man, hugging him fiercely. As Sweete took a step back, the others came up and embraced their old friend in turn. Until it was time for Bridger.

  With a deepening melancholy, Scratch looked into Jim’s face and said, “Nothing lives long but the earth an’ sky, Gabe. Only the earth an’ sky.”

  They hugged and pounded each other on the back, then stepped apart.

  Smearing the back of his powder-grimed hand beneath both eyes, Scratch cleared his throat and told them with a strong voice, “That dream I tol’t you about … that’s where Titus Bass is gonna live for all time to come. That’s how Titus Bass is gonna stay with you.”

  Quickly he turned on his heel and went to his gray pony before any of them could say or do something that would stay him any longer. Settling in the saddle, he gestured for his son to start the others down to the crossing. When his family were on their way toward the bank, Scratch turned for one last look at these old faces he would only see in dream from here on out.

  “I’ll see you again—soon enough, my friends!” he cried out, his voice cracking with painful emotion. “Just dream of them glory days, by damn, you dream it in your hearts … for that’s where I’ll allays stay!”

  They didn’t have all that much when they put Fort Bridger behind them and started for the Green River, not after the Mormons had stolen all the extra weapons, blankets, buffalo robes, even unto what extra clothing an old mountain man, his wife, and their children possessed.

  But by the time Mary Bridger finished explaining to her people what had happened to all of them at the hands of Brigham Young’s Avenging Angels, Washakie’s Shoshone opened up their hearts and their hands to the family of Titus Bass. A blanket from this person, a buffalo robe from another, an old saddle someone wasn’t using, a worn kettle or dented coffeepot—nearly everyone gave something to the old mountain man, this good friend of Jim Bridger who had married the chief’s daughter.

  Once again Titus was stunned by the generosity of these people who lived with far less than any Mormon family ever would own, yet were a people more than willing to share what little extra they had with this stranger and his Crow wife. On top of that, it had struck Scratch, the Shoshone and Crow held no undying love for one another. So it was with deep gratitude that he had watched as Little Fawn brought the first gift to place upon the ground in front of the brush shelter where Titus and his family were preparing to spend that cold night after running onto Washakie’s people near the banks of the Green River.

  “While we menfolk was in council with Washakie’s headmen,” Jim had explained in a whisper as one person after another came forward with a gift for the Bass family, “that wife of mine went round the camp, tellin’ ever’one just what you an’ your’n been through to help us, Scratch. What you give up, what you lost just to be there to help a old friend like me.”

  Scratch’s eyes brimmed as he looked over the goods given by people who did not have great wealth but were rich in spirit.

  He said, “Don’t know how I’ll ever come to thank ’em all—”

  “You awready have, Titus Bass,” Jim interrupted in a whisper. “These folks know you chose to stand by a friend against a whole damn army of thieves and murderers—an’ your family lost near ever’thing for it. These folks is honoring me by honoring my friend, Titus Bass.”

  For a long time he could not speak, the lump so tight and raw in his throat. Instead, the old trapper stood on his tired legs, one arm wrapped around his wife’s shoulders, as they watched the procession of Washakie’s people bringing gifts to the family of that man they honored as a faithful friend.

  Many times in the following days he squinted his eyes against the low winter light glinting off the icy skim of snow … and remembered back to that afternoon as the sun sank and the weather turned bitter. His wife and children had been doubly warmed with those gifts of clothing, blankets, and robes. From there on out, they had no fear of freezing before seeing Crow country. Enough robes to throw over a small shelter made of willow limbs he and Flea could tie together, forming a low dome. Two old kettles to boil the meat he and his son had somehow managed to scare up in the coulees and at the foot of the ridges as they plodded north for the Yellowstone. When at last they would reach the land of the Apsaluuke and found Pretty On Top’s people, they could crowd in with daughter Magpie, her husband, Turns Back, and what was sure to be their first child of their own. As soon as Titus, Turns Back, and Flea could, they would hunt for enough robes the women would flesh free of hair, grain to a smooth finish, then sew together to construct a small lodge for Waits-by-the-Water, replacing the one burned by the Mormon raiders.

  By midwinter, life would return to normal. Something as close to normal as it could be for a man and his family who had lost a stillborn child, had everything else he had accumulated over the years either carted away to Salt Lake City or burned to uselessness in t
he cinder-choked ash heap that was Jim Bridger’s fort. What bright hope it had taken to raise those walls back in ’43, more than ten winters ago. The same hope that now carried Scratch and his family north through the short days, traveling between sunup and sundown, huddling through the long, bitter, winter nights as they chattered of the joy to come with seeing the faces of family and friends, gazing at familiar landmarks and that place a man called his home.

  That used-to-be country where things might just stay the way they always had been for … just a little longer. A hope that it would be for all of them as it always had been for just … a little longer.

  If that could be called a prayer, then it was the prayer of Titus Bass. The plea of a man who found himself caught in a world he did not recognize, a world where he felt lost and adrift. Better for him to flee that world the white man was changing into his own image. Far, far better for Titus Bass to strike out for what he knew, for what he remembered was tangible, for what he could embrace as the way things had always been, and might always be. That didn’t make him a coward, did it? he asked the First Maker. To escape all that he knew was wrong, to flee where he knew men still valued honor above all? As he considered it, Scratch tallied up every ill and evil wind that had befallen his family—from the attack by the Arapaho in Bayou Salade to the troubles for Magpie at Fort John, hired St. Louis killers to the devastation of the smallpox, Comanche kidnappers to a Taos uprising … against one travail after another they had prevailed, until Brigham Young’s Mormons came riding into their lives to kill their friends and steal everything Titus Bass had ever owned. And all of their troubles seemed to happen south of Crow country.

  So this was the best a man could do—taking his family north away from all the trials they had ever encountered. Up there along the Yellowstone, back into the country of the River and Mountain Crow bands, life had remained virtually unchanged over these last twenty-some years. Few white men had ever come, fewer still had stayed on. The Blackfoot had their post up at the mouth of the Marias. The Assiniboine, their Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone. And the Crow had “Round Iron” Robert Meldrum at Fort Alexander near the mouth of the Rosebud. Despite those far-flung outposts, few white men had come to stay … sure as hell not the way it was to the south, from the Sweetwater and Devil’s Gate country all the way down to troubled and bloody Taos. Once a man got on the north side of Shoshone land and was headed into Absaroka, he would find life was quieter, more predictable, this far north—

  “Friend!”

  Scratch jerked back on the reins and brought the old rifle up, realizing he had been dozing, daydreaming, not paying a goddamned bit of attention. Behind him he heard Flea’s hoofbeats as the youngster’s pony hurried him from the far right flank.

  He blinked in the waning light of that windy winter afternoon. Blinked again, clearing the water from his one good eye, and found the figure emerging from the brush. He wasn’t sure what to think, what the devil to expect as Flea galloped closer, protectively vigilant in the face of any danger to his father. But, that was not the sort of term an enemy would use, was it?

  “Who calls me friend?” he demanded of the figure bundled in a long capote and fur cap, heavy hide mittens.

  “I am Slays in the Night!” the man cried. “You ’member me, Ti-tuzz friend?”

  “Damn, if it ain’t you now!” he exclaimed as he reined up near the old warrior. He looked about quickly while the lone Indian scuffled over, his moccasins crunching through the ankle-deep snow, dodging clumps of sage and juniper. He gazed at the face of this old friend with wonder now as the Shoshone’s features took sharper focus. “What the hell you doin’ out this far from your stompin’ grounds, down south at the hot springs? A mite close to Crow country for your likin’, ain’t it?”

  “I come looking …” he started to explain, then stared at the ground, as would a man searching for the words.

  “Lookin’ for what? Where’s that woman of your’n? What’s her name? Painted Rock? Something such—”

  “Red Paint Rock.” He looked up, his eyes filled with great pain when he interrupted. “She is gone.”

  “That’s a damn shame, friend,” he said quietly, glancing at Flea as he struggled to find some words. “I know how that can cut a man to the marrow to have your wife die on you—”

  “No die. She is gone.”

  He squinted at the Indian for a moment, then dropped from the saddle. Waving his wife and family to close up and join him, Scratch asked, “Gone? She run off from you?”

  “Blackfeet!” Slays snarled the word.

  Of a sudden he remembered how Washakie had informed the party of old trappers that the Blackfoot were raiding, far south of their usual haunts. “You see ’em come through?”

  His head bobbed. “North,” and he started to sign as well as speak his birth tongue to tell the story. “Big war party of Blackfeet. Sweeping north. Striking down the Bighorn River … riding strong. Very big war party, go for Crow country.”

  “They hit Washakie’s camp,” Titus said. “But his warriors were too strong for them Blackfoot.”

  “Washakie,” he repeated the chief’s name. “We were friends … long time ago.”

  Stepping closer to the old Shoshone, Scratch noticed again just how gray the man’s hair had become in the last few years—the black streaked with the snows of many, many winters and more than his share of trials too. He laid a hand on the Indian’s shoulder. “They kill Red Paint Rock, or they run off with her?”

  He swallowed. “Take her,” he signed, one hand suddenly sailing off the other. “She is not a pretty woman. She’s no good to them. Why take my Red Paint Rock from me?”

  “They took her,” Scratch explained to his wife as Waits-by-the-Water and the children came to a halt behind him on foot, leading their horses. “That means she’s still bound to be alive.”

  Suddenly the old Indian dipped his face into both of his hands and wailed, his shoulders trembling. Bass understood loss. Goda’mighty, did he ever understand loss. Quickly he folded his old friend into his arms and let the warrior quake against his shoulder.

  “You been hidin’ since they took her?”

  Stepping back, the Shoshone snorted and said with his hands, “Eight days now. This eighth day. They take her. I follow on foot. Blackfeet take my woman, my horses. They take everything else.”

  And Scratch understood how it felt to have the Blackfoot swoop down and ride off with a man’s wife. How it felt to have the Mormons sashay off with everything he had accumulated in his life of wading crotch-deep into streams or punching all the way into California to steal some Mexican horses. Bass understood how a man could feel everything being jerked out from under him by forces he could not comprehend, much less control.

  “The gun I give you?” Titus asked, hopeful.

  Pointing back at the brush where he had been hiding, the Shoshone said, “I have the gun still. Balls and powder too. I go hunting.”

  “Man’s gotta eat.”

  But Slays shook his head. “I go hunting for Blackfeet. Eight days, I follow their horses down the river.”

  “Was you gone when them Blackfoot come through?”

  “Hunting antelope with my friend’s gun,” he replied with his hands. “I come back, see them riding away. Big, big war party. Dressed like Blackfeet. My lodge is empty. Horses gone. But I still have my gun, and my legs, and a small piece of buffalo robe—so I start following their trail down the Bighorn for the Elk River into Crow country.”

  Scratch looked into the eyes of his wife. She nodded slightly to tell him she had understood the import of the Shoshone’s sign language. Then he glanced at Flea.

  “Son, take the packs off that red horse there,” Titus instructed in Crow. “Spread those packs among the other three horses. Our friend can ride the red horse.”

  He turned and explained to Slays in the Night, “Crow country is dangerous for one lone Shoshone man.”

  Slays snorted. “I am old and the rest of my
days are on my fingernails. Crow kill me if the Blackfeet don’t. This is all dangerous country now, when a man is ready to die for one he loves. It makes no matter. I am not running away from this one last fight.”

  Bringing his hand down on the warrior’s shoulder, Scratch said, “Ride the red horse for now. Until we get your wife and your horses back from these Blackfoot. Maybe they don’t realize they’re headin’ right into the heart of where the Crow are probably killin’ buffalo for winter meat.”

  “You want me to ride with you?” Slays asked. “With your family?”

  “My friend will be safe with me,” Scratch reassured as Flea led the red horse over. “Now, let’s get movin’ again. My feet get cold standin’ here in this hard wind. We gotta scratch us up a place to stay for the night, somewhere the wind won’t find our old bones!”

  “And in the morning?”

  “With tomorrow’s sun,” Titus answered in sign, “we’ll follow those tracks to get your woman and horses back.”

  But the cold wind that was picking up near sunset had brought with it new snow. Big, fat flakes the size of ash curls had started to fall not long after dark and continued past sunrise. Falling slow, except when the wind gusted like a frantic child, then rested before its next spasm of blustery fury.

  Try as they did, neither of them could make out the trail, so snowed over and windblown it had become during that long winter night. But they forged on that following day, and the next two, continuing on down the Bighorn toward the Yellowstone. And by the middle of the fourth day they stopped on the high ground and gazed north into the narrow valley that lay off to the west, discovering a smudge of smoke laying low against the winter sky, hanging in among the leafless cottonwoods.

  “That many fires would not be the war party,” Scratch observed. “Not this time of day.”