Wind Walker (11 page)

At the far side of the fire Flea was making noise as he broke apart limbs and branches to feed the fire that was holding back both the frightening cold and the terrifying darkness. Titus signaled his son to stop, gesturing at the Cheyenne woman. The youngster understood the gravity of the ceremony.

For what seemed like the longest time as the cold stars swirled overhead and the Seven Sisters traveled at least a fourth of their journey across the sky, Shell Woman poured one hot cup of water after another on the buffalo hide. From time to time she would turn Shadrach’s arm slightly, to moisten another part of the frozen skin. When she had scooped out the last of the water from the first kettle, she asked for the second container and prepared that kettle by crumbling dried roots and leaves into the steamy water, all without any interruption to her monotonous, repeated prayers.

Eventually Titus heard the scrape of the tin cup across the bottom of that second empty vessel. Shell Woman dropped the cup at her side, leaned back, and closed her eyes as she held her hands just above the soggy buffalo hide, her fingers spread wide. When she finally breathed the last of her
prayers and opened her eyes, Shell Woman slipped her fingers under the edges of the moistened hide. Bass winced, knowing this was going to hurt Shadrach. No matter how moist Shell Woman could have gotten the thick, green hide, with all that blood drying, coagulating, and freezing too—it was going to cause some excruciating pain when she ripped the buffalo hair from that jagged spiderweb of deep lacerations.

Sliding up on his knees right beside his friend, Titus seized Shadrach’s right hand so that Sweete wouldn’t be able to fling the arm at Shell Woman, attempting to prevent his woman from ripping that bloodied, furry bandage from those wounds shrieking in agony. Inch by inch, she pulled back on the soggy hide; every new moment, with each new tug, Bass was prepared for Shad to try jerking away from the hold he had on him. But, surprisingly, the big man did not flinch, not one little twitch, as he and Titus watched in wonder while the last edge of the soggy hide came away in Shell Woman’s hands—

Scratch felt the breath catch in his throat as he stared at what had been a series of messy, gaping, oozy wounds where the blood simply refused to cease flowing while he laid the green hide over them. Instead, what he now bent over to inspect was a series of thick, swollen welts, each long line appearing like a dark, oiled rope—the sort riverboatmen used on the Kentucky flatboats. And protruding from the tangle of dark welts was a gleaming white hair that shimmered in the fire’s light. He glanced at Shadrach, finding as much amazement on Sweete’s face as he knew was on his—then, unable to resist any longer, Titus reached out with a lone finger to brush along one of the welts. It really was fuzzy after all. He yanked the finger back, suddenly afraid. This was strange to the extreme.

“Where’d all the blood on my arm go?” Shadrach asked. “Feel this here,” Titus instructed.

“That can’t be buffler hair, can it?” Sweete said as he pulled his finger away, leaning close.

Scratch himself bent over to inspect the welts again, rubbing a finger across the swollen wounds, sensing the stiffened fuzziness of the hairs sealed within the jagged lacerations. “Cain’t be. The hairs ain’t black, like the hair I tied ’round your arm.”

“So is it, or isn’t it the buffler hair?”

With a shake of his head, Bass leaned back and stared into Sweete’s eyes. “Some hair, from somethin’, got closed up in them wounds, slicker’n a nigger could do if’n he’d been trying to knit a wound in just that way.”

“B-but, you didn’t do that—”

“No, I didn’t, Shadrach,” he whispered. “I don’t know for sure, but it seem to me the hide done it on its own.”

Sweete followed Bass’s eyes … down, down to gaze at the soggy buffalo hide spread across Shell Woman’s lap.

“The damn thing ain’t bloody at all,” Shad gasped quietly with a shudder.

Titus swallowed with difficulty and croaked, “Lookit the color of that hide, Shadrach.”

“W-we didn’t shoot no white buffler … that cow we was cutting up when the wolves jumped us weren’t white!”

Scratch leaned over, brushing his fingers across the wide strip of white fur lying across the Cheyenne woman’s lap. He glanced up at Waits-by-the-Water and found she still held her hand over her mouth in astonishment. As Bass lifted the rectangular strip of soggy white buffalo hide off Shell Woman’s lap, the Cheyenne woman leaned against her husband, silently beginning to sob, her shoulders quaking.

“You told me to bring you to her, Shad.”

Sweete cradled his wife against him. “My gut told me that was the only way I’d hold off dying. Didn’t wanna go under out there on my own.”

“You wasn’t figgering that her medeecin was gonna keep you from dyin’?”

With a shake of his head, Shad said, “I only knowed my heart’d be stronger if I died with her right there beside me. N-never really knowed for sure she had her mother’s power.”

“Her mother’s power?” Titus repeated. “What power is that?”

“Been handed down, mother to daughter, for generations back in them Cheyennes.”

“What medeecin?”

“White buffalo—an’ it’s a strong power.”

“I figger Shell Woman knows she’s just found out she’s got that power handed down to her,” Bass sighed, staring down at those white hairs bristling from the welts of torn tissue and coagulated blood. “I figger she knows her white buffalo medeecin saved your life.”

A cold, steady rain sluiced off the soggy, shapeless brims of their low-crowned hats as they came to a halt at the crest of the low hill and gazed down at the tall, weathered adobe stockade erected around the American Fur Company’s Fort Laramie.

“Thar’s Fort William, Shadrach,” Titus said, flicking a droplet of moisture from the end of his cold, red nose.

“When they put up them mud walls?” Sweete asked as Bass’s eldest son came to a stop on the hill with the packhorses.

“I dunno,” Titus replied, failing to remember. “Last time I was here, I reckon on how there was timbered walls.”

“How long’s it been, you been here?”

“Years. Can’t recollect how many gone by now. You?”

Sweete wagged his head. “Had to be afore beaver went to hell.”

“Back near the end—when Bridger was a brigade cap’n for American Fur?”

“Naw,” Sweete replied. “Bridger always stayed ’bout as far away from here an’ them booshways as a man could keep himself.”

Bass sniffled, “Likely was some time afore that last ronnyvoo we had us over on the Seedskeedee near Horse Crik.”

“American Fur squeezed ever’thing outta the mountains,” Shad grumped.

“Then they kept on squeezin’ so hard they damn near choked ever’thing north from here, clear up to the Englishers’ country.”

“Only reason they ain’t got a finger in the business south of the Platte is the Bent brothers—” but Sweete caught himself. “I mean, what them brothers did afore Charles was murdered down to Taos.”

Titus smiled, flashing those crooked teeth the color of pin acorns. “You reckon they got some whiskey to trade, Shadrach?”

“What the blazes you got to trade for whiskey?”

“I figger it’s you got some trade goods.”

A quizzical look crossed Sweete’s face. “I ain’t got no foofaraw to trade. Ain’t worked for Vaskiss or the Bents in many a season … an’ I ain’t laid bait or set a trap in longer’n that—”

“Can you still arm-wrestle like you done back in them ronnyvoo days?”

For a moment Sweete gazed down at his right arm, then patted it with his left hand. No longer did he wear the left one in that black bandanna of a sling. “Long as it’s the right arm.”

“Your other’n, it’ll come, Shad,” Bass reassured. “Don’t you worry—I’ll lay how you’re getting stronger ever’ day. You can still fotch ary a man with that right arm of your’n.”

“That how you figger we’re gonna get us some whiskey to drink?”

Titus shrugged. “Don’t pay a man to trap beaver no more. Onliest thing the traders want nowadays is buffler robes. But neither of us got a camp o’ squaws to dress out buffler robes. What’s a ol’ man like me s’posed to do but find a likely young’un with big arms like you to wager whiskey on?”

“What you got to wager against a cup of hooch?” Shad inquired.

He thoughtfully scratched at his chin whiskers. “That
Cheyenne skinner hangin’ off your belt sure to grab someone’s attention at the trade counter.”

“My skinner and this sheath Shell Woman worked for me?” he whined in disbelief. “An’ my right arm to boot? You’re just ’bout as slick as year-old snake oil, Titus Bass.”

“Smooth talker, ain’t I?” And he grinned as the rain splattered his face.

“Shit. You can’t get away with nothin’, ol’ friend—you’re so bad at lyin’.”

“Then you’ll buy me a cup of whiskey?” Scratch begged. “Ain’t had none since Dick Green topped off my gourd back down to Bents’ big lodge on the Arkansas.”

“If’n you’ll put up something of your own against two cups of whiskey, then I reckon I can throw in my arm for a match.”

“Shell Woman don’t mind you drinking?”

Turning to peer over at his wife, Sweete ruminated a moment, then said, “I can’t callate as I’ve ever had a drop o’ whiskey since I’ve knowed her.”

“Nary a cup down to that mud fort on the Arkansas?”

He wagged his head. “Nope. Not a drop since I been around Shell Woman an’ her people.”

Titus chuckled softly and said, “Then she ain’t see’d you drunk the way I see’d Shadrach Sweete get in the cups!”

“Nope. Them days belong to another man now, Scratch.”

“You was a wild critter, Shadrach,” Bass commented with fond remembrance. “Good damn thing you never got so drunk we’d had to rope you to a tree till your head dried out. Would’ve took a bunch of us to get you wrassled down and tied up.”

“Can’t say as I’ve ever see’d you get bad in the cups neither,” Sweete admitted. “So you figger to tear off the top of your head and howl at the moon tonight?”

“Nope.” And he shook his head dolefully. “Them times is over for me too, lad. I hurt too damn much for days after. Can’t swaller likker like I used to and stay on my feet.”

“We’re just getting old.”

“The hell you say! Speak for your own self!” And he shuddered with a chill that was penetrating him to the bone. “I’m getting damned cold sitting out in this rain, water dripping down my ass what’s gone sore on this here soggy saddle—listening to you spoutin’ off ’bout whiskey,” Titus grumbled. “A few swallers’d sure ’nough warm my belly right about now.”

The fifteen-foot-tall double gate was still much the same as it had been on his last visit to Fort William, but now the arch that extended overhead bore the figure of a horse galloping at full speed, painted red in a primitive design that reminded Scratch of how a horse might be rendered on the side of a Crow or Shoshone lodge. A little distance out, he whistled the dogs close and they all angled away from the mud walls, aiming instead for that flat just below the fort, where the La Ramee Fork dumped itself into the North Platte. Here they would camp close enough to the post to conduct some business, but far enough away that there was little chance of their families being disturbed. After Titus sent Magpie and Flea off through the brush to scratch up what they could of kindling dry enough to hold a flame, he turned to help Shell Woman and Waits-by-the-Water with that small Cheyenne lodge the two women erected only when the weather turned as inhospitable as it had this day.

“Here, I’ll lend a hand,” Shadrach offered as he grabbed an edge of the buffalo-hide lodge cover.

“Not with that arm of yours still mending,” Bass scolded.

“A’most good as new awready.”

Titus shook his head. “G’won and tend to the stock. Three of us raise the lodge while you get our goods off them horses.”

The early spring rain finally let up late in the afternoon, not long after the women and Magpie got Shell Woman’s lodge staked down and the smoke flaps directed against the breezy drizzle. Inside the women unfurled buffalo robes and blankets around the small fire pit, then got the little ones out of their wet clothing. To the left of the door Flea piled the
driest wood he could find down in the brushy creek bottom, while the women stacked bundles of their belongings dragged inside, out of the weather. Again tonight the two families would gather beneath one roof, crowded hip to elbow, sharing their warmth and their laughter rather than erecting Waits-by-the-Water’s lodge nearby.