Authors: Terry C. Johnston
By then the caravan had entered the most dangerous and deadly water scrape on the Santa Fe Trail. Far out ahead of the wagons, searching for water in any of the few sandy, dry river bottoms, Jedediah Smith was confronted by some Comanche buffalo hunters. Although his life oozed out on the end of a deadly fourteen-foot buffalo lance, his body was never found.
Even with Smith missing, Jackson and Sublette proceeded on to Taos, where they disbanded their partnership after turning over some six thousand dollars in supplies to Fitzpatrick. While Jackson headed west to California and his own fortunes, Sublette turned back for St. Louis to begin gathering finances and goods for his 1832 trading venture to the mountains.
Leaving Tom Fitzpatrick to load up what little he had been given on the backs of the mules he purchased in Taos, he hired some extra hands eager to go north into the Rockies, and made for the mountains—already more than a month late and with little hope of finding the company brigades and the free men still gathered, still awaiting his arrival.
Without any coffee and not so much as a twist of tobacco. And whiskey? Only in a man’s dreams was there any whiskey! It was shaping up to be another long, dry year.
What few bands of friendly Flathead and Shoshone showed up didn’t hang around long. With summer growing old, it would soon be a time for making winter meat.
Bass and the rest watched the lodgeskins come down, seeing the women tie the poles together into travois, watched the dust trails disappear against the horizon. Then the first of the free men began to pack up their plews and set off.
“Bridger offered any of us to throw in and travel with the company brigades to their fall hunt,” Solomon declared late one morning as he returned to Hatcher’s camp.
“What the hell we do that for?” Caleb demanded.
Fish shrugged. “He says Frapp’s gonna find Fitzpatrick. And when he does, Fitz is gonna have supplies for Rocky Mountain Fur. Only way any free man’s gonna get supplies is he’s gonna have to be hanging close to a company brigade.”
“The hell with ’em,” Rufus griped.
Elbridge asked, “We’ll go to Taos, right, Jack?”
“We’re gonna drown that goddamned Sublette in beaver next summer,” Hatcher declared.
“Pierre’s Hole gonna be ass-deep in beaver, that’s certain!” Bass exclaimed.
That evening Jack suggested his bunch pull out come morning. He cupped a hand at his ear and grinned in the fire’s light. “I hear them beaver calling to me from the Bayou.”
Isaac giggled and squeaked in a high voice, “Jack? Jack Hatcher? Why don’t you come catch me in your trap, Jack Hatcher?”
The rest guffawed and went back to tearing hunks off their antelope steaks using only their fingers and knives, wiping grease on their long hair to give it the same sheen a warrior gave his long braids with bear oil.
A sudden gust of wind slashed through their camp that twilight just then, scattering tiny coals like a swarm of fireflies dipping and swirling through camp until they snuffed themselves out.
In that surprising silence Scratch quietly said, “You fellas don’t s’pose … that Asa’s gone under, do you?”
Jack cleared his throat, tonguing the chunk of meat to the side of his mouth. “He ain’t showed up a’tall, has he?”
Bass looked around at the others, eager perhaps to
find something in their faces to hang his faint hope upon. “Maybe he went on down to Willow Valley, boys—and didn’t get no word about ronnyvoo getting moved over here on the Green.”
Caleb shook his head, absently replying, “I don’t figger Asa McAfferty for the kind to sit there in Willow Valley all by hisself for long. Most likely he’s gone and got hisself—”
But Wood was suddenly interrupted by a stern glare from Hatcher. Nothing was spoken—only that gaze of disapproval.
Wood coughed, then corrected himself, “What I mean to say is … maybe he’s gone off on his own like he allays does. Somewheres.”
Bass wiped his bloody knife across the front of his right legging, long ago grown black beneath rubbings of old grease. With a thickened voice he said, “S’pose you’re right, Caleb. Asa’s allays been a contrary cuss.”
“Asa’s set to do what’s on his mind and his mind alone,” Jack agreed.
“Man decides to go to Blackfoot country,” Bass continued, attempting to console himself, “them what he leaves behind shouldn’t go counting on seeing that nigger again. ’Less they’re plain, ignernt-headed fools.”
“He knowed what he was doing,” Caleb explained apologetically. “Wasn’t no way you was gonna keep him from where he was bound to go.”
Solomon declared, “When Asa said God was telling him to go to Blackfoot country, I knowed there was no use in me wasting my breath telling him not to.”
“We all know of fellers what don’t come in to ronnyvoo each year,” Jack said sadly. “But I’m damned happy to see your face here with us again, Titus Bass.”
He looked up through his swimming eyes, a knot of sour sentiment clogging his throat, making it hard for him to speak. Eventually, he said, “I figger that’s what Asa’s done: picked him his way to die.”
“About the most important thing a man can do in his life,” Hatcher agreed.
“’Cept for choosing how he’s gonna
live
his life,”
Scratch replied, “I s’pose choosing the way he’s gonna die runs close.”
Elbridge exclaimed, “You said yourself, Scratch—that Asa knowed there was Bridger’s brigade he could hang close to if’n he’d wanted to be sure he was safer.”
Wagging his head, Bass disagreed. “That wasn’t Asa’s way. He damned well wouldn’t have stayed anywhere near no company men. Naw, Asa had him something real serious stuck in his craw what made him go up there all brassy and bold, marching into Blackfoot country all on his lonesome.”
“So if McAfferty chose him this way to die,” Isaac commented, “then it’s for the rest of us to drink us a toast to him, and go on with our own living.”
“But we ain’t got no whiskey to toast him!” Rufus bellowed.
“Then we’ll drain our cups for him come next summer in Pierre’s Hole!” Caleb reminded them.
“Yep,” Bass agreed hauntingly. “We’ll just have to wait another year till we meet again in Pierre’s Hole … till we can drink to Asa’s ghost.”
Looking back on things now as another winter hinted it was about to squeeze its grip down upon this land, Scratch realized how a man could get things wrinkled but good on him. How the perfectly good rope of his life could begin at times to unravel into wild strands. But a man always had a choice to go on, or go back.
And Titus Bass had never been one to go back.
As much as there were some folks who had come into his life, taught him something, then were gone … he most missed those few who had refused to ask more than they gave back to life: folks like Ebenezer Zane and his boatmen, Ol’ Gut Washburn, Mad Jack Hatcher, and even Asa McAfferty in his own way—although Scratch was certain he still had to sort out the why and wherefore of the white-head.
And included with the rest of those who gave back to life in equal measure was the Crow man-woman named Bird in Ground.
But Bird in Ground was dead.
Perhaps even worse to accept was that it had happened early in the fall, when Titus had been trapping over east on the Tongue. No more would he have Bird in Ground to tutor him. No more would Scratch have the man’s smile and his patience and his hearty laugh. No more would he have that good friend.
Bird in Ground had taught him just how important it was to laugh at what scared him most. No fear could ever be near as great after a man laughed at it. How the Indian had taught him that special quality of laughter in the face of a terrible, immobilizing fear.
What sort of man was it who openly set himself apart from other men—declaring that he would be a warrior unlike any other warriors, that he was a man-woman who would do some man things, and some woman things too? How much courage had that taken?
“Bird in Ground was killed in battle,” Arapooesh explained as soon as Scratch had arrived at the tribe’s first winter camp established on the lower Bighorn.
He had choked on the news, unable to speak for minutes as a few of the other tribal elders and some of the young warriors gathered to welcome back
Pote Ani
to Absaroka with no more than a muted celebration.
Rotten Belly continued. “Two moons ago. He elected to go on a scalp raid against the Blackfoot with some of our strongest warriors. Bird in Ground had gone into battle before. He was not a stranger to fighting. He was not always a woman. On that raid no one feared for him, especially with the strongest of men going on that journey north.”
“North?”
Arapooesh pointed, nodding. “They intended to go far beyond the Three Forks country. Sure to find Blackfoot there. Bird in Ground said it was time for him to ride against the enemy, time to make his man side strong once more.”
“Yes,” Scratch replied. “He told me he always raided against the enemy once a year or so.”
“For this journey he asked a young man to go
with him, someone to hold and care for his war pony,” Arapooesh explained. “He asked Pretty On Top to go to war with him.”
Bass’s eyes slowly shifted to the youngster standing nearby, silent as a winter night. “You went on the raid with our friend, Bird in Ground?”
“He made me proud,” Pretty On Top answered, his sad eyes misting over. “No man ever before asked me to go with him on a raid against our most terrible enemy.”
Swallowing hard against the sour ball collecting in the back of his throat, Scratch said, “To ask you to go with him, he must have been very proud of you.”
Titus watched Pretty On Top struggle to keep from spilling his emotions, just the way the Crow elders taught this same detached stoicism to every young man hoping one day to become a warrior. Scratch said, “You became a good friend not only to Bird in Ground,” Titus declared, “but to me.”
The youth bit at his quivering lower lip.
Suddenly something cold in Bass’s gut reminded him … and just as quickly he was sure he knew to the day when Bird in Ground was killed. It made the hair bristle at the back of his neck, made it prickle down his arms—merely to be in the presence of something he did not understand, to be standing right here sensing the undeniable presence of something far, far bigger than any of them.
Earlier that autumn Scratch had been trapping the Tongue, when late of an afternoon he had gone cold. As much as he had tried, he could not shake the trembling. So extreme was it that he finally gave up trying to set his traps in that narrow river valley, and shuffled back to camp. There he had laid more wood on the fire, set the coffee over the coals to reheat, then squatted close to the flames with a blanket clutched around his shoulders. Although the fire grew hotter, it failed to warm him.
Shuddering with an icy emptiness, Scratch had snatched up a buffalo robe and wrapped it around himself head to knee, its furry warmth turned inside. When the coffee began to steam, he poured himself a cup and drank
it down despite how it scalded his tongue. But as warm as it was momentarily, even the coffee could not drive away that deep inner chill.
Its icy fingers seemed to penetrate right to the very marrow of him.
Finally, after more than three hours of shaking like an aspen leaf in an autumn gale, Scratch sensed the chill suddenly departing. Instead of the icy fear and the confusion clinging to his very core, he felt a warming sense of tranquillity come over him. No longer was he so frightened of this uncanny cold.
“H-how was he killed?”
Pretty On Top gazed up at the trapper evenly, saying, “One of our men was wounded and fell from his pony during the battle. With some men on horseback, others fighting on the ground, there was so much confusion and noise—no one really noticed the man fall at first, not until the enemy began to withdraw with their wounded and what ponies we hadn’t taken from them.”
Rotten Belly continued, “That’s when our men noticed that one of our warriors had fallen behind the Blackfoot lines.”
“This was Bird in Ground? The one who fell among the Blackfoot?”
“No,” and Pretty On Top shook his head. “It was one of my uncles. But while others stopped a moment to decide what to do, Bird in Ground rushed forward without waiting … without fear. He killed two of the enemy who came back to kill my uncle, then picked the man off the ground and started back to our side with him.”
“That’s when the enemy started shooting at Bird in Ground,” Arapooesh explained. “All of the Blackfoot trained their weapons on him.”
The youngster took up the story. “We watched the arrows fall around Bird in Ground, as if nothing could touch his body while he stumbled forward under the weight of my uncle. But then … one of the enemy reloaded his medicine iron—like the long one you carry—and pointed it at Bird in Ground. As the weapon roared, we saw him start to stumble, but he caught himself and
hung on to the wounded man as he kept on coming for our side.”
“Just to see Bird in Ground’s valor—that’s when more of our warriors were rallied again!” Rotten Belly exclaimed proudly. “Many of us rushed forward, racing right past him and the man he was carrying to safety, charging the Blackfoot.”
“They drove the enemy back for good at that moment,” Pretty On Top said. “But Bird in Ground slowly came to a stop on his wobbly legs. I ran to him, reaching him just before he fell, as he laid the wounded man out. I got there when he collapsed, unable to stand—sitting there singing his prayer song. When I looked at his back, I saw the small hole. But there was much more blood on the front of his shirt. ’See to your uncle,’ he told me. ’He can live from his wounds but I … I cannot.’”
When the youngster fell silent, struggling to hold in the strong emotion, Arapooesh filled the void. “As our men returned from driving the Blackfoot off, they were celebrating, happy, bringing the enemy’s ponies with them. But all fell silent when they arrived to see Bird in Ground sitting there, bleeding to death and not calling for anything to dull his pain, wanting no one to take from him this courageous death he had earned.”
Now Pretty On Top nodded, rubbing the back of his hand beneath his nose, and said, “He sat there talking to us for a long time. While the sun traveled from there, to there. Talking most of the while as if there were no pain. Then, after a long time of quiet from him, he told me, ’Remember my death, Pretty On Top. Remember that in the end we all choose how we live. But very few of us get to choose how we die. Remember that I did not choose to be a man-woman of the Crow … that medicine was thrust upon me when I had no choice. But I did bear up my strong medicine with dignity all of my days. And now I choose to die fighting my people’s enemy. Remember my death.’”