“No,” and Bass shook his head. “You and your warriors must stay over here, upwind of the sickness and the enemies.”
As the warriors dismounted, Stiff Arm and Pretty On Top reminded them that the Blackfoot were infected. There would be no hacking apart the enemy this day. In silence the thirty-two assembled some distance from Waits-by-the-Water while she finished binding Strikes-in-Camp’s body within a blanket and a buffalo robe for the journey back to his village. As Magpie sat talking with Flea, Bass stripped weapons from the Blackfoot, claiming all the firearms, knives, and tomahawks for himself. Bows and quivers he carried over to the war party, dropping the weapons on the crusty snow for the Crow to argue over.
Later, Pretty On Top called the trapper to return to the group. “Ti-Tuzz, none of these men want the Blackfoot weapons.”
“They are afraid of the sickness?”
“Yes. Keep them for yourself.”
Shaking his head, Bass replied, “I don’t want the bows. Don’t want nothing else—no clothes, no coats or blankets. I will burn them.”
Stiff Arm asked, “Will the flames kill the sickness on them?”
“I can only pray it will.”
While the restless, frightened warriors huddled upwind of the Blackfoot bodies, Scratch inspected what baggage the enemy war party had along, searching for what had been stolen from him. A half dozen of his Mexican traps and most of his beaver, along with a good supply of tacks, lead and powder, coffee, ribbon and beads. Not everything, but enough discovered among the dead to confirm they had already divided what they had plundered from his camp at the time they kidnapped Waits and Magpie.
While Stiff Arm’s warriors started fires and ate at the edge of the clearing, the white man finished saddling and packing his animals for the return journey across the pass. Over the back of the dead man’s prized war pony Bass tied Strikes’s body. Hoisting Magpie into Pretty On Top’s lap for the first leg of the trip back across the mountain, Scratch took the blanket cocoon from Waits, helped his wife to her feet, then followed her slowly to her pony. There she seized the tall pommel, preparing to climb into the saddle, but instead gasped as if struggling to catch her breath.
“C-carry the child w-with you,” she whispered, her voice low and raspy. “I am v-very … tired.”
He watched her wearily pull herself into the saddle, then her eyes smiled weakly at him. He knew she had to be exhausted from her harrowing ordeal. Bass turned with Flea’s blanket and robe cradle across his arm, starting for his pony when Magpie screamed in fear and the warriors cried out in warning.
Whirling just as Waits-by-the-Water pitched from her saddle onto the frozen ground, the white man darted first to Stiff Arm. “Hold my son,” he croaked with dread. “His … his mother—”
At her side Bass slowly rolled the woman over, pulled her across his lap, cradling her head against his chest. Gazing into his wife’s eyes, he yanked off his mitten, then laid his callused fingertips to her brow.
“I have the fire of this terrible death burning in me,” she whispered. “Now I will die.”
“No … no you won’t,” he sobbed.
“Leave me here—”
“I can’t do that.”
“Our children, they must not see me die,” she pleaded.
For a long moment Scratch peered at Magpie, silently watching the child’s terrified eyes. Gently he started to pull his legs from under the woman’s shoulders as he said, “I will tell her, then send the others away, back to the village while I stay with you.”
“You must go with the children, to care for Magpie and—”
“I will be at your side while you are sick,” he whispered against her ear, “just as I promised I would be at your brother’s side.”
“The others, they will take our children?” she asked weakly.
“Yes, Pretty On Top, the others, they will care for our children until we can come for them.”
“Tell Magpie I love her.”
Bass stood, quickly moving across the crusty snow to the horsemen. “Stiff Arm, you must go on without us.”
His eyes were heavy with concern. “You are staying till your wife dies?”
“She will get better, then we will come,” Bass said angrily.
Pretty On Top clearly read the frustration and anger in the white man’s face. “We will go back to our village, and wait for you to return.”
Gratitude filled Bass’s eyes when he gazed up at his young friend. “My children—take them both to Crane. She and Bright Wings will watch over the children until their mother and I rejoin you.”
“The children will be safe with us,” Pretty On Top vowed.
Taking a step backward, Bass’s eyes touched the front ranks of those horsemen, then he went to Magpie’s knee.
“Popo?” she whimpered, still frightened.
“Your mother is too weak to ride now,” he comforted, stroking the girl’s blanket legging. “We will come to be with you soon. Stay with your grandmother and your aunt. Help care for Flea as your mother knows you can. She will rejoin you both very soon.”
“How long, popo?”
Swallowing, he did not want to lie to his child again as he had in the blizzard. But in matters of life … and death, he would. “We will be coming right behind you. Magpie, do not be afraid now—because you are with those who will protect you, care for you. For your mother’s sake … remember to take care of your little brother, always.”
“Until you come back to us?” she asked plaintively.
“Take care of him always.”
She sobbed, “You will come back?”
“Yes,” he promised. Then reached up to pull her face down to his. Bass kissed the little girl on the cheek. “You will see me soon.”
Stepping aside to Stiff Arm’s pony, the trapper pulled back the blanket flaps and kissed his son’s forehead. Looking up at the warrior, he whispered, “If I do not return, you will see that my son is raised to become a warrior like the rest of his people—like his uncle, and his grandfather?”
“Your son is Crow,” Stiff Arm said. “But he will always know of the good American who was his father.”
Slowly taking three steps back, Bass waved to Magpie. “Go now—all of you. While you have so much of the day left for your journey.”
Most of the warriors gave some signal to the trapper as they turned their ponies away and started back up to the pass, but not one of the horsemen uttered another word as the animals snorted, their unshod hooves crunching across the icy snow glaring with the day’s new light as the wind soughed through the heaving boughs of wind- gnarled cedar and spruce.
He listened to the sound of those hooves disappear as he held his wife, gently rocking her against him while the sun flooded across that timbered slope.
Later, when it grew quiet but for the wind in the trees, Waits-by-the-Water asked, “My children?”
“They will be safe,” he promised her. “The others are taking them back to the village.”
“He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us?”
He cleared his throat and said, “They will put him on a warrior’s scaffold, to honor him before his family and the rest of his people.”
“I know this sickness will not kill you,” she said softly. “It comes from the white man … so the white man won’t die.”
“Many, many of my people still die—”
“No,” she cut off his words. “You must promise me our children will not die because they were born with white blood in their bodies.”
Her eyes implored him so, their hollow, teary recesses begging him for reassurance. Bass realized he had already lied to his daughter in matters of life and death. So he would lie to her too.
“Yes. You are right. Our children will be safe.”
