“Then we’ll drain our cups for him come next summer in Pierre’s Hole!” Caleb reminded them.
“Yep,” Bass agreed hauntingly. “We’ll just have to wait another year till we meet again in Pierre’s Hole … till we can drink to Asa’s ghost.”
Looking back on things now as another winter hinted it was about to squeeze its grip down upon this land, Scratch realized how a man could get things wrinkled but good on him. How the perfectly good rope of his life could begin at times to unravel into wild strands. But a man always had a choice to go on, or go back.
And Titus Bass had never been one to go back.
As much as there were some folks who had come into his life, taught him something, then were gone … he most missed those few who had refused to ask more than they gave back to life: folks like Ebenezer Zane and his boatmen, Ol’ Gut Washburn, Mad Jack Hatcher, and even Asa McAfferty in his own way—although Scratch was certain he still had to sort out the why and wherefore of the white-head.
And included with the rest of those who gave back to life in equal measure was the Crow man-woman named Bird in Ground.
But Bird in Ground was dead.
Perhaps even worse to accept was that it had happened early in the fall, when Titus had been trapping over east on the Tongue. No more would he have Bird in Ground to tutor him. No more would Scratch have the man’s smile and his patience and his hearty laugh. No more would he have that good friend.
Bird in Ground had taught him just how important it was to laugh at what scared him most. No fear could ever be near as great after a man laughed at it. How the Indian had taught him that special quality of laughter in the face of a terrible, immobilizing fear.
What sort of man was it who openly set himself apart from other men—declaring that he would be a warrior unlike any other warriors, that he was a man-woman who would do some man things, and some woman things too? How much courage had that taken?
“Bird in Ground was killed in battle,” Arapooesh explained as soon as Scratch had arrived at the tribe’s first winter camp established on the lower Bighorn.
He had choked on the news, unable to speak for minutes as a few of the other tribal elders and some of the young warriors gathered to welcome back
Rotten Belly continued. “Two moons ago. He elected to go on a scalp raid against the Blackfoot with some of our strongest warriors. Bird in Ground had gone into battle before. He was not a stranger to fighting. He was not always a woman. On that raid no one feared for him, especially with the strongest of men going on that journey north.”
“North?”
Arapooesh pointed, nodding. “They intended to go far beyond the Three Forks country. Sure to find Blackfoot there. Bird in Ground said it was time for him to ride against the enemy, time to make his man side strong once more.”
“Yes,” Scratch replied. “He told me he always raided against the enemy once a year or so.”
“For this journey he asked a young man to go with him, someone to hold and care for his war pony,” Arapooesh explained. “He asked Pretty On Top to go to war with him.”
Bass’s eyes slowly shifted to the youngster standing nearby, silent as a winter night. “You went on the raid with our friend, Bird in Ground?”
“He made me proud,” Pretty On Top answered, his sad eyes misting over. “No man ever before asked me to go with him on a raid against our most terrible enemy.”
Swallowing hard against the sour ball collecting in the back of his throat, Scratch said, “To ask you to go with him, he must have been very proud of you.”
Titus watched Pretty On Top struggle to keep from spilling his emotions, just the way the Crow elders taught this same detached stoicism to every young man hoping one day to become a warrior. Scratch said, “You became a good friend not only to Bird in Ground,” Titus declared, “but to me.”
The youth bit at his quivering lower lip.
Suddenly something cold in Bass’s gut reminded him … and just as quickly he was sure he knew to the day when Bird in Ground was killed. It made the hair bristle at the back of his neck, made it prickle down his arms— merely to be in the presence of something he did not understand, to be standing right here sensing the undeniable presence of something far, far bigger than any of them.
Earlier that autumn Scratch had been trapping the Tongue, when late of an afternoon he had gone cold. As much as he had tried, he could not shake the trembling. So extreme was it that he finally gave up trying to set his traps in that narrow river valley, and shuffled back to camp. There he had laid more wood on the fire, set the coffee over the coals to reheat, then squatted close to the flames with a blanket clutched around his shoulders. Although the fire grew hotter, it failed to warm him.
Shuddering with an icy emptiness, Scratch had snatched up a buffalo robe and wrapped it around himself head to knee, its furry warmth turned inside. When the coffee began to steam, he poured himself a cup and drank it down despite how it scalded his tongue. But as warm as it was momentarily, even the coffee could not drive away that deep inner chill.
Its icy fingers seemed to penetrate right to the very marrow of him.
Finally, after more than three hours of shaking like an aspen leaf in an autumn gale, Scratch sensed the chill suddenly departing. Instead of the icy fear and the confusion clinging to his very core, he felt a warming sense of tranquillity come over him. No longer was he so frightened of this uncanny cold.
“H-how was he killed?”
Pretty On Top gazed up at the trapper evenly, saying, “One of our men was wounded and fell from his pony during the battle. With some men on horseback, others fighting on the ground, there was so much confusion and noise—no one really noticed the man fall at first, not until the enemy began to withdraw with their wounded and what ponies we hadn’t taken from them.”
Rotten Belly continued, “That’s when our men noticed that one of our warriors had fallen behind the Blackfoot lines.”
“This was Bird in Ground? The one who fell among the Blackfoot?”
“No,” and Pretty On Top shook his head. “It was one of my uncles. But while others stopped a moment to decide what to do, Bird in Ground rushed forward without waiting … without fear. He killed two of the enemy who came back to kill my uncle, then picked the man off the ground and started back to our side with him.”
“That’s when the enemy started shooting at Bird in Ground,” Arapooesh explained. “All of the Blackfoot trained their weapons on him.”
The youngster took up the story. “We watched the arrows fall around Bird in Ground, as if nothing could touch his body while he stumbled forward under the weight of my uncle. But then … one of the enemy reloaded his medicine iron—like the long one you carry—and pointed it at Bird in Ground. As the weapon roared, we saw him start to stumble, but he caught himself and hung on to the wounded man as he kept on coming for our side.”
“Just to see Bird in Ground’s valor—that’s when more of our warriors were rallied again!” Rotten Belly exclaimed proudly. “Many of us rushed forward, racing right past him and the man he was carrying to safety, charging the Blackfoot.”
“They drove the enemy back for good at that moment,” Pretty On Top said. “But Bird in Ground slowly came to a stop on his wobbly legs. I ran to him, reaching him just before he fell, as he laid the wounded man out. I got there when he collapsed, unable to stand—sitting there singing his prayer song. When I looked at his back, I saw the small hole. But there was much more blood on the front of his shirt. ’See to your uncle,’ he told me. ’He can live from his wounds but I … I cannot.’”
When the youngster fell silent, struggling to hold in the strong emotion, Arapooesh filled the void. “As our men returned from driving the Blackfoot off, they were celebrating, happy, bringing the enemy’s ponies with them. But all fell silent when they arrived to see Bird in Ground sitting there, bleeding to death and not calling for anything to dull his pain, wanting no one to take from him this courageous death he had earned.”
Now Pretty On Top nodded, rubbing the back of his hand beneath his nose, and said, “He sat there talking to us for a long time. While the sun traveled from there, to there. Talking most of the while as if there were no pain. Then, after a long time of quiet from him, he told me, ’Remember my death, Pretty On Top. Remember that in the end we all choose how we live. But very few of us get to choose how we die. Remember that I did not choose to be
