Wind Walker (65 page)

Scratch took a deep breath and let half of it out, the same way he held a breath in his lungs when he was aiming his rifle … then listened some more, doing his best to recognize a word, some fragment of the foreign sounds.

These had to be Little People, he decided. For some reason, he knew he was the only human around these parts. Titus wasn’t sure why he felt so certain about that … but, after
all, this was his dream. While the Crow could accept that they would never really see one of the creatures, Titus Bass wasn’t a Crow. He wanted to see one of them, talk to it—have the being talk with him, perhaps even show him some of their magic that so amazed generation after generation of the Apsaluuke people. Waits-by-the-Water and their children could believe in these holy beings out of hand, but Titus wanted to see for himself some of their notorious tricks and sleight of hand. The Crow had many long-held legends about Old Man Coyote—the well-known spiritual trickster … so maybe these sacred Little People had some tricks they could teach him.

“Come out here an’ lemme take a look at you.”

He heard a rustling to his left, then felt a brushing against the back of his leg. But as soon as he looked, it was gone.

“Stand still, so I can have me a good look afore you run away again.”

Scratch suddenly turned at more rustling, trying his best to catch a glimpse, for he was sure they were all around him at that very moment—and as soon as he had turned his head he felt as if something had trundled across his toes, the way a badger or porcupine might, had they not been such slow and lumbering creatures.

“Titus Bass.”

He understood that.

He grinned and said to the night, “You do speak American after all.”

“We talk so you understand us, yes,” the voice answered. “In the tongue of the listener.”

“Why won’t you show yourself to me?”

There was a pause while more leaves and branches rustled on all sides of him. Then the voice said, “We never show ourselves to you until you need us.”

Scratch smiled at that. “I need to see you, know you’re real an’ not just some dream of mine.”

“Dream? Why, you’re dreaming right now, aren’t you, Titus Bass?”

“Yep, s’pose I am.”

“Then—if this is your dream, you should realize this is very real,” the voice said as the rustling quieted.

He struggled to wrap his mind around that. Not since that night at Fort Bridger so many years ago had he given any thought to the two opposing worlds of unreality and dream, any thought to that unknown country where the two worlds converged, where they could ensnare a man into belief.

So he begged, “Why can’t you lemme see you?”

“Not till you need us,” the voice sounded soft, and only in his head, as if his ears weren’t hearing it. Instead, as if it were just inside his head all along. “Not till you really … need us badly.”

“When? When’s a man really need you badly?”

“Are you wounded?”

“No, I ain’t wounded.”

“Then you aren’t dying?”

“No,” he said testily. “I told you, I ain’t wounded an’ I ain’t dying.”

“Then why did you call us here to help you?” the voice sounded, edgy with anger. “We can’t understand why you’ve come here to this place and why you brought us here to help you.”

“Don’t you ’member: I’m dreaming this,” he reminded them. “I’m dreaming I was ridin’ up this mountain, into these here trees—when I thought I heard noise. I wasn’t thinking of you Little People, not thinkin’ ’bout your kind at all till I heard you movin’ around out there in the brush.”

He heard the immediate scampering of feet, untold numbers of feet, fading into the night.

“Wait!” he pleaded. “Don’t go!”

From farther away, this time certainly not within his head at all, the voice replied, “We have others to see to, Titus Bass. Ones who are in need of healing, people who are very ill—those who are dying—and the First Maker has sent us to find them because we are the only ones who can save them.”

“I ain’t sick … an’ I ain’t dyin’ neither,” he groaned. “I just wanted to get my own self a look at you.”

Now the voice whispered, so far away it was just barely
audible. “You will see us one day, Titus Bass. But not until that day when there is nothing anyone can do to save you.”

“S-save me?”

“You will see us at last … on that day when you are prepared to die.”

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, Meldrum!” Scratch shouted above the noisy hubbub of those war chiefs and headmen pressing up behind them. “I’ll be et for the devil’s tater if’n that don’t look ever’ bit like ronnyvoo camps down there!”

“Can’t claim as I ever saw that many Injuns in one place myself!” Robert Meldrum hollered. “Look at all them lodges and pony herds too.”

Both of those white men could understand the Crow tongue being growled back and forth among the thirty-eight warriors, chiefs, and old headmen who had accepted Tom Fitzpatrick’s invitation to join the other tribes of the High Plains and Rocky Mountains at this momentous gathering near Fort Laramie. These men of the north had every right to be more than a little anxious as they started down the long, low slope into the broad, yawning valley of the North Platte, where more than ten thousand of their most inveterate enemies awaited their arrival. Because they had the shortest distance to travel, the Cheyenne, along with bands of the Oglalla and Brulé Sioux, had been camping here for close to a month, since the end of August. In addition, a large camp of Titus Bass’s most implacable foes—the Arapaho—had come in to join the talks.

Two days back, when the Crow delegation had been nearing
Fort Laramie, Meldrum sent Fitzpatrick’s couriers on ahead to learn where they were to camp. No chance for a big council to be taking place anywhere near the post—they found the entire countryside deserted. As the small party from the northern mountains drew closer, two of the half-bloods came galloping out from the adobe walls.

“They move the camp,” one of the men shouted as he reined up in front of Meldrum and Bass. He pointed to the east. “Over to Horse Creek.”
^*

“How far are they?” Meldrum growled testily. He was fighting some raw saddle galls on his rump, a trader unused to spending so many weeks nonstop in the saddle.

The half-breed squinted his eyes as he calculated it. “Less than two days.”

“Maybeso we ought’n stay the night right here,” Bass had suggested. “Close to the walls.”

Rising slightly in the stirrups, Meldrum agreed, “Let’s get down out of these saddles soon as we can, Scratch. Let the others make camp while we go have us a look around the fort.”

Throwing up a hand in protest, Titus said, “Naw, I left enough bad blood here years ago. I’ll just hang back with the family and these chiefs. You go have yourself a look an’ tell me ’bout it when you get back to camp.”

“Where you suggest we throw down our bedrolls?” Meldrum had asked.

Titus tugged down on the wide brim of his hat to make a little more shade for his eyes and peered across the 180 degrees of the compass. “If we’re headed east at sunrise to-morry—I’d say we might as well camp yonder in them trees, far side of the stockade. We’ll have water and a little grass for the animals.”

“Good idee,” Meldrum said as he started to rein aside. “You tell the chiefs that we still got a two-day ride.”

“Just you ’member you don’t tell any of them bastards Titus Bass is in shootin’ distance,” Scratch said with a grin.

Meldrum tipped his hat, saying, “I’ll meet you in camp soon as I get my how-do’s said to them booshways over at the fort.”

Later that evening after supper, when the trader arrived back at the Crow camp, Meldrum brought with him some of the company’s headmen and a young soldier. Since that spring of 1825, when he had run into three dragoons at the oft-abandoned Fort Osage, Scratch had seen only one other bunch of soldiers in all his travels—some of General Kearney’s men spotted along the road outside Taos back in the early winter of 1846. First to come had been preachers with their Bibles and whiny cant, then their white wives reminding a man of all the thou-shalt-nots he had tried to escape … and eventually came those wagons loaded with plows and milkers.

“With so many of our citizens emigrating to Oregon along this central road,” explained the fresh-faced officer, “the government determined it was best to bring all the warrior groups to a peace council. That way we could not only assure safe passage along the Oregon Trail, but do our level best to see the tribes made peace with one another too.”

“You figger the Sioux and Cheyennes gonna treat these Crow or the Snake any better just because you had your peace meetin’ with ’em?” Titus asked at the fire, where most of the delegation from the Yellowstone country stood with grave interest, waiting for translation of the white men’s words.

“Yes,” said the officer. “Like Superintendent Mitchell and the others who came west to make this conference a success, I believe the lion can lay down with the lamb.”

Titus asked, “How many dragoons come out here to watch over things at this peace parley?”

“Just under two hundred, sir,” the soldier replied. “Officers and enlisted both.”

Meldrum gave Bass a knowing look before Scratch said, “Your army thinks that’s enough guns to keep all them Injuns off the Crow an’ Shoshone when them Sioux an’ Cheyenne take a notion to cut through their old enemies?”

“Mitchell has already made it clear that there will be no bloodshed between the tribes,” declared the officer with certainty.

“If you soldiers aren’t right, an’ you can’t keep a lid on the Cheyenne an’ Sioux,” Scratch responded, “there’ll be more blood shed at this here peace parley than you ever thought to see in your life.”

Even though Meldrum told Titus that the hated Bordeau had been relieved of control at Fort Laramie when the army bought the post back in ’49, Scratch never had been one to take unnecessary chances. Might well be some old friends of those employees Bass and Sweete had killed were still hangers-on, living a half-blood, squaw-man existence. Someone might just recognize that old gray-headed trapper who wore a distinctive bandanna, not to mention that long scar that traced itself down from the outside corner of his left eye.
^*
That night, and the next as they made their way east for the broad valley said to lie at the mouth of Horse Creek, Titus slept loose, restless, half aware of every noise in the night—whether the snort of a pony, the howl of a prairie wolf, or the booming rattle of Meldrum’s snore. That second morning east of the fort, the Crow had acted more nervous than they had since the day they put Fort Alexander and the Yellowstone country at their backs.

“They know there is great danger waiting for them in that camp of their enemies,” Waits-by-the-Water quietly explained as she rolled up the last of their bedding after breakfast.

“The Crow been outnumbered before,” he responded. “But never nothing like this.”

“Maybe you should tell them the thoughts in your heart, Ti-tuzz,” she suggested.

For a long time he had regarded the thirty-eight warriors and chiefs, who went about their special toilet, painting their faces and brushing their hair, tying on feathers, stuffed birds, and spiritual amulets, dressing in their very finest—then removed
the covers from their shields and weapons with great ceremony. Although they had been riding through the heart of their enemy’s land for many, many days, by this afternoon these delegates would be entering what they believed might well prove to be the valley of their death. Surrounded by enemies many times stronger than their few numbers, the Crow began to sing their brave-heart songs as they tied up their ponies’ tails, rubbed their animals with dust, and made ready for one last fight.

“My friends and fellow fighting men,” Scratch had addressed them in their native tongue, then waited as they fell silent and stepped close to hear his words.

“No man here can doubt that I have fought the enemies of Apsaluuke. I have been a brother warrior to the great chief with the sore belly, and my father-in-law too. I held my wife’s brother in my arms as he died after we had pursued those Blackfoot into the mountains. So measure my words carefully, friends. They come from a fellow warrior.”