Once the hunters had been spotted approaching from the distance, a long gauntlet had begun to form, two long rows of old people singing their prayers, men and women chanting their praises, children shrieking and whistling in joy. Not all that long after Rufus Graham’s band of hunters had returned to find the travois, word spread through the camp like a prairie fire. Just as soon as the spotters on the hill announced that they had seen the cavalcade coming, everyone had not only turned out to see for themselves that pale, curly hide of the sacred white buffalo calf, but jostled and shoved to get themselves a good look at the hairy white man with the powerful medicine who was responsible for bringing the sacred calf to the Shoshone people.
Lying there in his travois as the village folk pressed in to take a close look at him, Titus saw how Hannah danced and bobbed, straining against the young warrior who acted as her handler. She hesitated, snorted, swung her rump about each time some of the crowd got too close. Then the villagers fell back from the excited animal.
Maybe it was a good thing, after all, he thought as the Shoshone studied him in his passing, a good thing that Hannah did not particularly take to the smell of Indians. Just the way he’d heard some tell that Indian ponies didn’t take all that well to the scent of a white man.
Far as he was concerned, Scratch really couldn’t smell a bit of difference. But, then, he figured, critters like horses and mules were just naturally born with better noses. Still, he had been around enough Indians himself, especially the squaws for long periods of time—sleeping, eating, coupling, arguing, and embracing—to say with some measured degree of certainty that neither the Ute nor the Crow smelled any different from any man Bass had bumped up against in all his wanderings.
The same should hold true for these Snake, he thought. Truth be, except for the sometime stench of the bear grease gone rancid on their hair, the Indians he had come across were a lot cleaner folk than were any white trappers out here to the mountains. Simply put, while the Indians bathed in rivers during the warm seasons and endured steam baths in sweat lodges during the winter … why, most ary white men he’d met out here shunned scrubbing and water as if it were poison to the skin.
Onto the framework lashed to the bottom of those two travois that Rufus Graham and the Shoshone hurried out to what the Indians were now calling “The White Buffalo Valley,” the hunters took the time to lay green buffalo hides they had just skinned off the dead animals left in the wake, of their successful hunt. On one of those hides would rest the white buffalo calf robe. On the other would rest the man responsible for bringing the buffalo to the Shoshone people.
As these older tribal leaders were at their work in the valley, preparing for their triumphant return with the sacred skin, more and more people showed up as news of the hunters’ success spread through the village—many travois were needed to carry the butchered meat and tongues, to haul back to camp the heavy green hides that would be staked out on the ground, stretched and scraped, then tanned and smoked for lodge hides and warm bedding, protection against the winds that would howl with the coming of winter.
As soon as they turned all those horses and drags around to begin their trip north from the valley, the long cavalcade had stretched out far behind. Scratch. But in front of him, leading them all, was the horse and its travois bearing the white calf hide. Ceremonially skinned by the old-man priests, the entire hide had been carefully removed, including that peeled from the skull, clear down to the nostrils, all the way back to most of the fur covering the four legs, complete with the tail.
“Small as it was,” Hatcher had explained as he set off for the camp, riding beside Bass’s travois, “likely the calf was born this last spring’s drop. Mebbeso no more’n four months old.”
“Just a babe,” Wood agreed from the far side of the travois.
“But that calf being a cow makes for some strong medicine, Scratch,” Hatcher continued. “Means a special power been give to these people. Power not just to feed themselves on the buffler, but power for these people, to have many children—so the tribe grows strong.”
Never had Titus seen such celebrating: not among the Ute nor among the Crow, even at the Boone County Longhunter Fair. At twilight, fires were lit in front of each lodge not long after hunters returned to the village. There the women and children sliced and roasted meat not just for their own family, but for any visitor who came by. There was singing, with and without the many drums that throbbed in every quarter of the village, pounding along, with the hundreds of feet that hammered the earth as evening swept the day aside and presaged the night.
While the temperature continued to drop, Elbridge Gray and Isaac Simms dragged Bass’s travois over to one of the closest fires where the singing was the strongest. Here by the dancing, leaping flames Bass found it was warm, the chill air convincing him that summer must surely be dying, autumn on its way. Up there in the mountains the first snows would soon be falling, and with those first cold days the elk would begin to gather and bugle— always a sound that made his heart leap and the hair stand at the back of his neck. Then, as sure as sun, the cycle would turn a little more and the snows would begin their creep on down the mountainsides as the beaver repaired their lodges and prepared for their ponds to freeze over—each and every one of the big bucktoothed rats putting on an extra layer of fat beneath their sleek, shiny fur. Under those long guard hairs would lie the downy felt that protected the animal’s skin itself from the cold of water and wind. That sought-after beaver felt was highly coveted by hatters who constructed the fine waterproof “tiles,” those tall, stiff top hats for gentleman types back east of the Mississippi River.
As he lay watching the joyous celebration there by the fire, the women brought him food. Not just the jerked, dried venison Hatcher’s men had given him earlier, but juicy, half-cooked pink meat kissed by the sizzling flames, every last chunk of it dripping grease and juice down his lips, into his beard, and onto his buckskin shirt as he ate, and ate, and ate. And sweet, cool water too. As much as he wanted, gulping huge drafts of it to wash down the meat until he found his belly full and warm, and his eyes grown heavy.
Scratch would awaken from time to time that night and always find someone near: a Shoshone woman or two, along with at least one of Hatcher’s men—folks staying their vigil by his travois to bring him more to eat, more sweet water to drink, or a trapper to help him hobble off into the shadows so he could relieve himself.
Always he would return to his blankets and sleep. No matter the singing and drums, no matter the dancing feet and the laughter in those happy voices. Bass slept. And ate. Then slept some more.
Morning slipped up quiet and cold before the sun came to chase back the chill. Slowly, through slits, he found the gray light did not assault his eyes. No more the drums and dancing. No more laughter and singing. Here in that last cold hour before dawn, the Shoshone had gone off to their lodges and shelters—this village on the move, a migratory people who had been hunting the buffalo for hides and meat to hold back the hoary beast of winter.
So still was the camp and the horseshoe of trees where the tribe had raised their lodges two days back that Bass easily heard the snore of more than one of the men bundled on the ground at the nearby fire. At least a dozen of them in all, wrapped in robes and blankets, their feet close to the coals like the spokes of a wheel. One—it looked to be Rufus Graham—lay sprawled flat on his back, wheezing like the bellow of a two-stack river steamboat, what with missing his four front teeth, both top and bottom. On either side of him lay Shoshone warriors wrapped up like woolly caterpillars in their furry buffalo robes, sleeping despite Graham’s noisy serenade. Beyond, over near one of the other trappers, lay a warrior curled in a tight ball, having nothing more than a heavy saddle blanket to cover himself from shoulder to hip.
Bass sighed, closed his eyes, and went to press his cheek back against the thick fur of the stiffened green buffalo hide beneath him when he heard the quiet footsteps. Out of the murky gray of predawn shadows between the far lodges emerged a tall figure wrapped in a blanket coat, his hood pulled up so that it hid most of his face. A bundle of firewood he dropped beside the fire pit before he swept back the hood.
Scratch recognized him as the young warrior who had followed him in yesterday’s procession, Hannah’s handler. As he watched the warrior at the fire, Bass figured it must have been a high honor to be near the white man who’d brought the white buffalo calf, an honor to be placed in charge of the white man’s mule too, Titus figured as he watched the warrior break off limbs and feed them to the glowing coals. A time or two the Shoshone bent over the coats, blew, and excited the new wood to burst into flame. When he had the fire beginning to climb, the young man rose, held his hands over the heat a moment, then turned his head.
Finding Bass watching him, the Shoshone smiled and immediately came over to the travois, picking up a small skin pouch filled with water that lay nearby. This he offered to the white man. Bass took a swallow, finding the water some of the best he could remember ever tasting. Cold and sweet. Like that he remembered in the high country. So good on his tongue and the back of his throat that again he drank until he could drink no more. Letting his head plop back onto the buffalo hide, Bass sighed and found his eyes heavy again as he rested the water skin across his belly.
