cage. As the bullet smashed through the chest, blood spewed from the man’s mouth the instant he was driven backward, landing in a heap.
Watching the warrior’s legs twitch for a moment, Bass rolled to the side, finding Waits-by-the-Water whimpering, clutching at the back of her head. Her blanket coat still smoldered as he dropped the empty pistol and took her into his arms there on the snowy ground.
Collapsing against him, she began to cry inconsolably as Magpie staggered up to fold herself against them both.
“Take your hands away,” he told his wife as he tried pulling her wrists from her head.
“It hurts so—”
“I won’t touch,” he reassured her. “Only to look.”
A patch the size of his palm had been burned from her head, the flesh red and oozy. All around it the hair was singed close to the scalp. It would grow back—but he figured that patch would soon turn to scar tissue.
“My hair?”
“It will grow back,” he told her.
Waits gathered Magpie beneath one arm as the child’s whimpers quieted.
“You were not alone,” his wife whispered wearily.
“Your brother,” he told her. “I am afraid—”
Waits-by-the-Water pulled her cheek from his chest, pointed into the darkness. “He was there.”
Magpie sat up, stood, and stared her father in the eye. “Where is my brother?”
Wrapping his arm around the girl, Bass said, “He stayed with our horses. Samantha is taking care of him while he sleeps.”
“I want to see him,” Magpie pleaded.
Scratch said to his wife, “Why did the enemy take the two of you, but they did not steal the boy?”
“He was sleeping when the Blackfoot rushed into our camp. Magpie was sitting near him beneath a small shelter beside the brush when the enemy came toward me—which gave Magpie a moment to cover up the boy and push him into the bushes.”
“You did this, Magpie?” he asked the girl. “You saved your little brother?”
“You found him safe?”
Bass felt the mist at his eyes. “Right where you left him, daughter. Where I could find him. Your father thinks you are such a brave girl, Magpie. When we reached that place, Strikes-in-Camp and…” He had suddenly remembered; “I must see to your brother. Stay here by the fire.”
“I want to see my brother—”
“Stay here with your mother.”
Titus scrambled up and turned away quickly. In a few minutes Bass trudged back into the firelight, struggling under the weight of the large warrior slumped across the white man’s shoulders. Slowly he knelt by the others, allowing Strikes-in-Camp to settle back on a robe near the fire.
“He is shot,” Bass declared as Waits-by-the-Water knelt over her brother.
The man’s eyes half-opened, rolled, then fixed on the woman. “I do not have much time.”
Slipping an arm beneath his head, Waits raised her brother into her lap. “You came to help.”
Bass told her, “He came even though he was already dying of the sickness one of the warriors gave him days ago.”
She turned her head slightly, looking off to the darkness. Scratch realized she was gazing in the direction where the three bodies of the dead Blackfoot lay wrapped in their blankets—felled not in battle, but by a ghastly silent killer.
Strikes gripped his sister’s arm. “This is far better: to die fighting our oldest enemy rather than to die slowly with the fever, my flesh rotting with decay. It is not a good thing for a man to die helpless against that terrible sickness.”
“No,” she sobbed, her tears starting to spill. “I am proud that you will die in battle, an honorable man— protecting our people, protecting your family.”
“Sister, I am sorry I wronged you when you came to visit our mother,” he whispered, his voice weakening. “Forgive me for my fear.”
“This sickness makes everyone afraid of shadows,” Bass declared. “I don’t think we can blame a man who does something out of fear for his family.”
“I w-was wrong,” he gasped.
“I forgive you, brother,” she said, laying her fingertips on his cheek. “You … you are so cold.”
Strikes-in-Camp smiled bravely. “A good thing, now that I am dying.”
“The enemy, they were consumed by such a hot fever before they died,” she explained.
“Better that the cold hand of death take me in battle than the fire in this sickness.”
They watched him close his eyes wearily. For a few minutes his breath came more and more shallow, each gasp a wet rattle as his chest filled with blood. Then Strikes half opened his eyes again, stared up at his sister. “Tell my wife I loved her. Tell my children … say they must remember the touch of their father to the last of their days.”
“I—I will tell them,” Waits promised.
“Sister, I go now,” he whispered, his lips barely moving. Then his eyes rolled slowly to gaze over at the trapper. “Friend Ti-tuzz … I go now to ride the war trail with He-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here.”
Bass bent over, laying his lips beside the warrior’s ear. “Go now, friend. It is time. Soon you will climb into the forests to hunt with your father forever. Very soon you will ride beside him into battle against the enemy. It is time to go, my trusted brother.”
About the time Scratch was returning to the fire with Flea and the two animals early that morning, Stiff Arm came riding in with Pretty On Top and more than thirty Crow warriors. They had spent most of the night high among the stunted cedar and pine on the far side of the pass, waiting until there was enough light to cross over the ridge and continue their pursuit.
With a genuine measure of relief mingled with concern, the white man hurried to prevent the warriors from approaching the infected camp.
“Stay back!” he ordered. “Come no closer—the killing sickness is strong here!”
Stiff Arm and Pretty On Top halted the others, then crossed the last thirty yards on foot to reach Scratch on the far side of the Blackfoot camp.
“How did you make it back to the village, to reach us here so quickly?” Titus asked of the two warriors. “I believed you were going to be at least a full day behind us.”
Pretty On Top answered, “Stiff Arm did not have to return to the village. These men were among hunting parties already out in the hills. Some of us were already following the tracks of the Blackfoot when we heard the gunfire of your fight with the enemy. So Stiff Arm did not have to lose time going all the way back to our camp because we met him on the trail.”
“You must know that my wife’s brother is no longer alive,” Bass explained.
“D-did he die from the sickness the enemy gave him?” Stiff Arm asked.
“No, He-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here died killing the Blackfoot.”
Stiff Arm nodded. “I told the others the story of the Blackfoot ambush, and how your wife’s brother killed two of the enemy who had the sickness from the white man.”
Bass smiled as he looked at the many warriors. “And these men chose to come with you—even though they were following the sickness?”
“Yes,” Stiff Arm answered. “Most decided to come along, to be as brave as your wife’s brother had been. But I really thought you would be in your camp, caring for him. It worried me when the enemy’s trail passed right through your camp and we did not find you there. For a long time it worried me that the two of you would bring your woman and children along to track down the Blackfoot—so we hurried fast and hard behind you, sleeping only when it grew too dark to see your trail.”
Shaking his head, Scratch explained, “We did not bring my family. The Blackfoot captured them in my camp. The enemy took them from me. He-Who-Has-Been-Killed decided to die in battle against the Blackfoot instead of letting the sickness kill him.”
“This camp is not clean?” Pretty On Top observed nervously.
