When the big Englishman pulled back, their arms outstretched between them, Bass blinked several times, squinting as if troubled with the intense light. But it was the fire of those sudden tears that stung his eyes now.
Thornbrugh inched back another step. “I’ll hold you to that promise, Titus Bass—true lord of this great wilderness! If God doesn’t take me, and the good Doctor so chooses, I’ll be back here to your rendezvous next year.”
“I’ll be here, friend. Lay your set to that.” And he studied the way the huge man moved as Thornbrugh turned and stepped back to his horse, taking his reins from McKay, then rose to the saddle.
“Give my respects to the Doctor.”
“I will do that,” Thornbrugh agreed as he urged his horse away slowly.
“He’s a good man … for an Englishman!”
Jarrell bawled with a crack of sudden laughter that split the hot air. “You aren’t a bad sort either—not for a wretched American!”
Then he called out, “Watch your backtrail, Jarrell!”
Thornbrugh turned and smiled hugely with those massive teeth of his like whitewashed pickets surrounding a settlement house. He waved one last time, then twisted back around in the saddle and was swallowed up by the rest of those bringing up the rear of that column.
When Bass finally felt the fiery touch of the sun against the side of his face, he reluctantly wheeled about and started for the shade, finding Waits-by-the-Water standing in the shadows, the sleeping infant at her shoulder.
“It pleases my heart so much that you have such friends as these,” she said as he came into the shade.
Laying an arm over her shoulder, he turned to watch the small brigade slowly move away, disappearing into the shimmering heat rising in waves from the sunburnt landscape.
“First Maker has blessed me with a few good people through all my days,” he responded in Crow. “The sort of friends that show me, no matter all the mistakes I made in my life, just how the Grandfather still smiles on me.”
“A man’s life is not all horses and battle honors,” she said. “In the end, a man’s life must count for more than that, husband.”
“Yes,” he agreed, turning with her now, heading back to their bowers as the valley fell quiet once more. “Good friends, and this wonderful woman who has blessed me with a beautiful child.”
“A child who has no name.”
“But not for long,” he said, squeezing her against him.
Breathless, she turned within the yoke of his arm. “Have you chosen a name for our daughter?”
“Tonight when the sun settles to the edge of the earth, we will celebrate for her.”
4
It seemed as if the rest of the world held its breath.
With the sinking of the sun and the arrival of twilight, that faint afternoon stirring of the air grew still. From the burning cottonwood limbs a dizzying array of sparks popped free, each dancing firefly swirling upward without torment in its dazzling ascent.
The baby talked and talked, more than she ever had, playing with her hands, reaching out for the distant sparks as if to snatch them from the darkening sky. Ever since arriving there at rendezvous a handful of days ago, she had suddenly taken to chattering, more every day it seemed. A happy, cheering babble.
This evening as the baby talked to the sparks and those leaping blue-yellow flames, Titus sat with his daughter on his lap, cradled against him, his back resting against a downed stump as Waits-by-the-Water completed the last of her chores at the edge of the fire, stuffing utensils, root, and leaf spices away in her rawhide bags, then looked over at her husband and sighed.
“This has not been an easy day,” she admitted.
“Why?”
“It is hard to wait,” the woman confessed. “Knowing she would finally have a name.”
“She’s always had a name,” Bass explained.
Waits stared at him a moment more before asking, “What do you mean, our daughter has always had a name?”
“One Above has had a name for her all along, perhaps even while she was growing in your belly—preparing for her arrival in the world.”
Rising sideways, the woman got to her feet and moved around to his side of the fire. There she settled at his knee, facing Bass, her legs tucked to the side in that woman way of hers.
“If she had a name from the beginning,” Waits asked, “why didn’t we know it?”
“First Maker was waiting for us to find out what her name is,” he declared.
“We had to find out her name?” and she smiled at him, the lines of confusion disappearing from her forehead.
“All we had to do was find out what the Creator had already named her.”
“Was this easy for you to learn what her name was?”
“No, not easy at all,” he admitted. “I was wrong three times.”
“Three? How … how did you know you were wrong?”
He shrugged, presenting the baby one of his gnarled fingers. She grabbed it readily. “Only from the feeling I had inside.”
“You felt this three times?”
With a nod Bass said, “At first I thought of
“Little Red Calf?” and she chuckled behind her fingers.
“Remember how red she looked for a long time after she was born,” he explained. “Just like the little buffalo calves when they are born.”
“Yes,” she said with a smile. “It would be a good name for a girl.”
And he agreed with that. “I know—but I eventually figured out that she was not named Little Red Calf.”
“What was the second name you thought she had?”
Clearing his throat, Bass declared, “Spring Calf Woman—
“Yellow? How is this little one yellow when you just said she was a red calf for a long time?”
“Her skin was red for so long. But look at her hair,” he told her. “Is it as black as a raven’s wing like yours?”
“No,” and Waits shook her head. “But it isn’t the color of her father’s hair either.”
“I agree—but it is easy to see that her hair is lighter than a Crow’s, and may even have some light streaks in it as she grows up and her hair grows longer.”
“So … yellow?”
“Yes—because my sister and one of my brothers had blond hair. Yellow as riverbank clay.”
“I think I am glad we did not find out her name was Spring Calf Woman,” Waits replied thoughtfully. “That is far too much to say for a little one. I remember how hard it was for me, how long it took to learn to say all of my name when I was so small.”
“Most parents give little thought to what trouble they may cause their child when they name them,” he explained.
“And I suppose you would say that most parents do not try hard enough to find out what their child is already named?”
“Yes!” he responded with glee, pedaling his hands up and down for the baby who had a fierce grip on his two index fingers.
Waits laid a hand on Bass’s knee, took the girl’s foot in her other hand, and caressed the tiny toes. “What was the third name you wanted to give our daughter before you found out it did not belong to her?”
“Cricket.”
