this distance. “I’ll wager one of the warriors took a spill and got hisself trompled over?”
“Nawww, ain’t had nary a man die this hunt,” Hatcher began to explain. “That other travois be for a special hide … a white-buffler hide.”
Titus whispered in wonderment, “Ain’t never seen one of them.”
Shrugging, Hatcher declared, “Ain’t many men can claim to laying eyes on a white buffler at all, Scratch. But this here bunch of Sho’nies found ’em the critter running in the pack ’long with the others—this morning right after we started our hunt.”
“Something special ’bout a white buffler?” Titus inquired. “Special enough to carry it on its own travois?”
Hatcher said, “That’s right. It’s big medicine, powerful doin’s, Titus Bass.”
“An’ so be you too,” Caleb Wood added.
Titus stammered in astonishment, “H-how’s that?”
Turning slightly, Jack said, “Look down there. See that bunch?”
“They been there long as we been up here,” Scratch agreed.
Hatcher explained, “Been busy there all morning long. Ol’ medicine men and respected warriors—all of ’em been smoking and singing and praying while’st they been at cutting that hide off the critter real careful.”
Bass nodded. “That hide must be something special to em.”
“Damn right it is,” Gray said.
Then Hatcher went on to say, “They’ll take that white hide back on one of the travois—since it be such powerful medicine to these here Sho’nies. Why, they’ll ride back into their village singing and such.”
“Don’t you know they’re all worked up about it awready,” Simms commented as Rufus Graham pointed his horse away from the ceremonial group and began making his way toward the trappers on the slope with Bass.
“They’ll be singing lots of strong-heart songs for ye too,” Hatcher said. “For yer healing, Titus Bass.”
“For … for me?”
“Where ye landed here is right across the valley from where they dropped that white medicine animal,” Jack said. “Don’t ye see?”
Wagging his head, Bass admitted, “I don’t understand.”
For a moment Hatcher looked at a few of the others. Then he said, “Ye be a white man, Titus Bass. And now ye showed up with yer own powerful medicine too.” Hatcher pointed to Scratch’s shoulder. “That bullet wound and all—the ol’ headmen down there already say ye got big medicine.”
Slowly shaking his head in utter confusion, Bass found that to sort through all of this made him weak, and all the more bewildered. “Don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, fellas.”
Hatcher grinned widely with those pin-acorn teeth of his filling fully half of his face. “Listen, the way them chiefs see it: yer the one brung that white buffalo here to bless this bunch of Sho’nies.”
“Me?” he squeaked. “B-bless?”
Nodding, Jack continued. “Way they see it, besides their All Spirit taking care of ’em, yer the one they ought’n be grateful to for bringing ’em this blessing. Now they won’t have no empty bellies, won’t go hungry for buffler—so the old stories go.”
“Stories?”
“’Bout the white buffalo, Scratch,” Kinkead said. “When such a medicine critter comes once in many generations, the Sho’nie people gonna be blessed with meat and shining times—they’ll stand strong against their enemies … and stand strong, shoulder to shoulder, with all their people.”
Knocking dust and grass from his rump as he rose, Caleb Wood said, “Matthew told you what be the honest truth, Titus Bass. Them chiefs been praying and smoking and such about you.”
“But! I … I didn’t bring no white buffalo here!” Bass protested.
Hatcher smiled, chuckling a moment before he asked, “Just how in hell ye know ye didn’t?” And then he laid a hand gently on Bass’s wounded shoulder. “Ye damn well been out’n yer mind for more’n the last three days, ain’t ye?”
Titus answered, “I s’pose it’s been that long. Yes.”
Hatcher continued, “And that’s how long we’uns with that village been follerin’ the trail of this here herd. Face up to the bald-faced truth of it, Titus Bass: ye just dropped off your mule in one hell of a good spot!”
Shaking his head with how incredible the whole story sounded, Scratch grinned at the circle of trappers and replied, “You ain’t telling me nothing I don’t already know.”
“And that white buffalo calf down there—Titus Bass and it are mighty big medicine to these here folks,” Hatcher repeated, a look of seriousness returning to his face.
So much of it just did not make sense to him. “If’n I got all this medicine power, and you say I’m so damn special to these here Snakes, why the hell them bucks come up here on the jump and pull their bows on me?”
With a shrug Jack replied, “Mebbeso they didn’t know just what ye was at first, Titus Bass.”
Perhaps it wasn’t merely that he was still confused, hungry, and weak, but that he was more than a little afraid, what with all that the trappers were telling him about medicine and white-buffalo hides.
Scratch looked Jack in the eye and asked, “What’s that mean, Hatcher? They wasn’t sure what I was at first?”
“Just look there,” Hatcher said, an arm swinging in an arc to point out the nearby Shoshone warriors, who had put those bows back in their quivers.
Bass saw how the bowmen still kept a respectful distance from him, their eyes nonetheless fixed on him nearly all the time, most of those dark eyes filled with undisguised awe.
“Mean to tell ye these here bucks is likely real scared of ye—that’s what it all tracks,” Hatcher explained. “From the looks of things, they prob’ly still good and scared of ye too.”
“Don’t make them no never-mind if’n you and I both know you can’t get up on your feet and fight ’em off by hand, flat on your back the way you was,” Wood declared candidly.
“That’s right,” Hatcher added. “To them, they just figger ye be a shaman what can use yer heap-powerful medicine right where ye was.”
He had gone in search of the buffalo, and found them.
Not once, but twice now. That first had been a journey that had brought him out of the old frontier of Kentucky, across the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and to the realm of the buffalo at long, long last.
Now he had pointed Hannah north, something in him praying, something in him trusting. Gone in search of the buffalo again.
But this time Bass ended up with more than he ever could have dreamed. If it was true what Hatcher and the old men were saying, that white buffalo calf had come to him special. And in the end that sacred animal not only had just saved the Snake from their hunger, but had saved Scratch as well.
That first time he went in search, Titus found the buffalo on the Great Plains just when his doubt had been at its deepest. And now he had found them again—and the white buffalo calf had come—just when his need was at its greatest. A need not just to rescue his body from dying of hunger … but to save his spirit and cause it to thrive.
“That buck says he’s seen ye afore,” Hatcher told Bass as the trappers dragged the wounded man through the Shoshone village toward the stand of trees where the white men had erected their blanket and canvas shelters.
Bass looked again at the young warrior, trying to remember where he had first seen the face. “When I laid eyes on him back there—I had me the same feeling,” Scratch admitted.
Jack explained, “And he told me where it was: over to what them Ashley boys call the Willow Valley. Summer before last winter, he said it was. He told me he saw ye at the place where all the white men sing and dance together.”
“Ronnyvoo.” Bass sighed with some fond remembrance.
“Yeah—ronnyvoo, all right.” There was a look of immense and fond remembrance on Hatcher’s face too.
The warrior walked right behind the travois where Titus lay, having taken it upon himself to follow close at hand with Hannah. Ever since the moment they had left the narrow valley where the white buffalo calf had been killed, the young Shoshone had been leading the mule behind his pony. Once the procession reached the outskirts of their village, however, all the men dismounted, leading their ponies and pack animals through the crowded camp on foot.
