barked in the gray light of dawn-coming, reminding him a bit of how old Tink had bayed back in Boone County … not with the yip-yipping howl of the coyotes that stayed back among the hills or warily crossed the prairie-lands.
The sun would still be some time before making an appearance this morning, yet there was enough gray light seeping down from the smoke hole above him for Titus to begin to make out the shapes of things in the lodge, where his rifle stood close at hand, the small mound of blankets and buffalo robes where the woman’s child slept, the boy breathing softly. And he could even make out where he hung his buckskin shirt and the two tube leggings the woman had sewn for him.
That first night in the Ute camp she had wasted no time in attempting to explain that he needed to throw out the worn, grease-slickened wool clothing he was then wearing. By pinching her nose and pointing at his britches, jabbing a finger inside the folds of his blanket coat at his linsey-woolsey shirt, it became abundantly clear what she thought of his smelly, frayed, and worn apparel.
And the widow hadn’t put up with her guest’s poor hygiene for long at all either. It was only the second morning when he awoke to find her beating on his shirt spread out atop a large, flat stone, a small stone gripped in her hand as she repeatedly pounded his smoke-and sweat-blackened clothing.
“What the devil are you doing!” he shrieked at her, lunging out to wrench his shirt from her as he sat up, completely naked in the buffalo robe and blanket bed.
Just as promptly Fawn had grabbed the shirt back, holding it up before him to show the collar, pointing out the mashed bodies of the lice he had hosted for some time.
“I … I see,” Titus had told her sheepishly, pantomiming for her to continue her killing of the varmints, hammering his fist down on the big rock. “Go ’head on, woman. Kill every last one of ’em for all I care!”
Again and again she pounded, until she leaned back in exasperation and gazed at him. No matter that he could not understand what words she chattered in disgust at the moment. But clearly there was resolve on her lined face as Fawn wrenched up his shirt and canvas breeches and quickly ducked from the lodge with them in hand.
“Where you going?” he demanded as the door flap slid back in place, a chilling gust of winter breeze tickling across his bare flesh.
With a shiver Titus pulled a smoke-scented blanket around his shoulders and scurried out the doorway in a crouch. Squinting in the new day’s light reflected off the snow, he followed her as she stomped off toward a fire several other women were tending that early morning. Holding the shirt out as far as she could at the end of one arm, along with the breeches and his wool longhandles in the other hand, the widow instructed the others to stand back from their work at smoking a large elk hide draped over a tripod of saplings.
His bare feet began to complain with the cold of the trampled snow as he shrieked in frustration, “Said to you—where in hell you going with my clothes?”
Turning to look over her shoulder at him, Fawn muttered something in Ute to the others, then without further ceremony hurled the breeches beneath the kettle.
“Wait!” he hollered, lunging forward, not sure how he was going to rescue the pants from the flames that smoldered, sputtered, then suddenly began to catch hold of the greasy wool fabric.
“Damn you!” Titus said as he neared the woman.
But Fawn paid him no mind as she proceeded to fling the shirt atop the breeches—waited a few heartbeats until they began to smoke in kind—then hurled the filthy, faded red longhandles over the flames. Sighing with finality she stepped back, crossing her arms across her breasts, no small degree of self-satisfaction apparent on her face.
Skidding to a stop at the fire’s side in a flurry of powdery snow, he grabbed a long stirring stick away from one of the other women. She immediately jerked it back from him so he had no choice but to whirl on the widow.
“What in … what’m I gonna do now?” he roared. “Woman—them’s the only clothes I got me in the whole world! Damn if you women aren’t the most consarned, exasperating creatures! Jehoshaphat—I s’pose you didn’t figger I had to wear nothing more’n this goddamned blanket for the rest of the winter, did you?”
Behind their hands the women young and old sniggered at him. One of the oldest crones even pointed at his skinny white prairie-chicken legs protruding from the bottom of the pale-blue blanket and giggled, her wrinkled, old crow eyes merry. Titus looked down at his calves and ankles and feet, toes gone numb and turning blue as he stood there on the trammeled snow. Shivering, he realized he must look a sight. Maybe they laughed at just how silly a white man looked in nothing but a blanket, he decided—instead of how embarrassing it was for him that Fawn had thrown his old worn shucks in their morning fire.
He stood there blue-lipped and trembling inside his blanket with that bunch of women, all of them watching together as the flames consumed the last of his earthly clothing—until the widow turned, shot him a glance as she passed by, headed back to her lodge.
“Wait up!” he growled, wheeling barefoot in the snow, feeling club-footed with his unresponsive legs struggling to set themselves into motion.
From the corner of his eye he spotted Billy Hooks poking his head from a distant lodge, and nearby Tuttle came out to stand in the first shafts of winter sunlight, likely drawn by the early-morning commotion.
“Morning, Scratch!” Bud hollered out merrily, waving in genuine greeting. “How was your weddin’ night?”
“Simply fine, goddammit!” he grumbled as he stumbled along stiff-legged. “Thanks for asking!”
Hooks laughed as he waved. “Better you put on some clothes, Scratch—afore you leave out to go calling on your neighbors!”
“Damn you too, Billy Hooks!” he spat, just about the time Fawn ducked her head and disappeared into the lodge.
Titus was right behind her.
Standing there inside the warmth of the lodge, he no longer shivered near as much, realizing just how cold he had been outside. And he tried to figure out what the hell to say to the widow—to tell her how angry he was— dismayed, really—that she had destroyed his clothing. But the more he watched her back as she knelt and started pulling at the laces on a rawhide container, the less he could think of what to say, and how to make Fawn understand just how she had poked a stick into his hornet’s nest.
With the noise of their return, the child awoke and sat up, calling for its mother. She said something to the boy softly, and he lay back down, his wide, round, black eyes shirting from his mother to stare at the white man still standing near the door.
After a moment of rustling among the robes, Fawn turned to Bass and stood.
From her hands hung a large fringed buckskin shirt. She spoke to him, then shrugged, pantomiming that he was to take it. Bass held out one hand, still clutching the pale-blue blanket about him with the other.
“This for me?” he asked, then tapped his chest with a finger. “For me?”
With a nod the woman bent again and scooped up some more of the leather he now saw folded within a large, flat rawhide case. In each hand she held a legging as she stood. These too she held out for him to take.
“You,” she said in poor imitation of his English. “You.”
“Me?” and he allowed her to lay the two long tubes of buckskin over that arm of his clutching the shirt.
For a moment she stared at his crotch, then mimed a hand motion from waist to knee, up and down. And finally shrugged. Dropping to her knees again, she yanked her knife from her belt and pulled at a flap of the canvas he had draped over the piles of his possessions. The moment she jabbed the knife’s point into the dirty cloth and began to cut a foot-wide strip from its edge, he howled in dismay.
“Wait!” and he went to his knees beside her, reaching to stop the knife.
Fawn pushed him back and frowned at him as he shrank back from her threat when she brought the knife up in front of his face. Bass whimpered as the woman went back to work over the canvas until she had a strip a good seven to eight feet long.
Standing, she stepped over to the liner rope and retrieved Bass’s belt before returning to stop right in front of him.
“You,” she repeated.
Glancing quickly at the boy child, Titus stood obediently. The woman tugged the blanket off one of his shoulders, then waited for him to complete the disrobing. Impatiently she tugged it off his other shoulder and started to pull the blanket from him.
