cold of a February night.
“Don’t ever do that again, old man,” the son snarled, laying his hand against his bruised cheek.
“Or what?” Whistler asked. “Perhaps it is you who should heed a warning. Maybe you should look over your shoulder more often when you are in enemy country. A man who so openly shames his family is surely the sort of man who has no friends to protect his back.”
That early morning when they crossed the frozen Missouri in the darkness, Bass discovered the tight knot in his belly along with the unshakable remembrance of that old shaman who had walked among the half-a-hundred warriors at dawn on that morning they had started north on this war trail so long ago.
Then, as now, it was snowing fitfully: not with huge, ash-curl flakes, but with those tiny, icy spears of cold pain as the wind whipped the glassy slivers sidelong across the ground. Slowly the old man moved between the rows of ponies and warriors quietly mumbling his songs as he shook an old rattle made of a buffalo bull’s scrotum. In his other hand he held a bull’s penis, stretched to its full length by inserting a narrow wand of willow. Both were his potent symbols of the bull’s power—the largest creature known to these people. The provocative maleness of those two objects, their utter masculinity plainly exhibiting that strength shown by the bull in his battles to assure his right to the cows, would now transfer their spiritual power to those men who were plunging into Blackfoot country.
So many more had wanted to come along, some who had all but begged Whistler to be included in the war party. Those he hadn’t selected for this dangerous journey had to stand back with the others in a wide cordon pressing in on either side of the five-times-ten who were the objects of a raucous send-off: cheering men, keening women, those boisterous children and yapping dogs darting in and out between the legs of the restive ponies.
Arapooesh’s successor, Yellow Belly, had parted the joyous, singsong crowd to stand before Whistler and the white trapper, holding aloft Rotten Belly’s sacred battle shield. No longer did it hang on the man-high tripod of peeled poles that stood outside the chief’s lodge. Instead, it had been passed down by the dying Arapooesh as a symbol of his office, as a token of the transfer of his power.
For a few minutes the noise had grown deafening as Yellow Belly held the shield aloft, hand drums beating and wing-bone whistles blown with shrill delight. Then as the chief lowered the shield, a hush fell over the crowd.
“Before you ride against our enemies,” Yellow Belly said, “each of you must touch the shield, touch the power of He-Who-Has-Died.”
First Whistler, then Bass, gently laid their hands on that round hoop covered by stiffened rawhide. Nearly the entire circle was covered with a pale-red earth paint; at the center stood a human figure with oversized ears and a single eagle feather, representing the moon who had come to the great chief in a vision and described the construction of this powerful shield and its medicine.
“Is it true,” Bass now asked Whistler as they pushed up the trail scuffed in the new snow by their forward scouts, come to that deadly land north of the Missouri, “true what your people say about the shield of He-Who-Is- Not-Here?”
“Its power to tell us the outcome of an event yet to happen?”
“Yes—I was told about the raid your brother wanted to lead against the Cheyenne in the south.”
Whistler stared into the cold mist ahead, then explained, “In the middle of camp he stacked a pile of buffalo chips, almost as high as his head. On the top he placed his shield and told us that he would let it roll to the bottom. If it landed with its painting against the ground, he would not lead the war party.”
“But years ago He-Who-Has-Died told me that his shield rolled down that stack of buffalo chips and landed with the paintings facing the sky.”
“Yes, and my brother led us to a great victory over the Cheyenne far to the south.” Then the warrior sighed and adjusted the heavy buffalo robe he had wrapped around the lower half of his body while they rode on horseback. “That shield was powerful enough to foretell its owner’s death.”
“How did he know he was going to die?”
“That summer morning we left to steal Blackfoot ponies, my brother again stacked up some buffalo chips, this time in the privacy of his lodge, and called his headmen to meet with him. When he laid his shield on top of the pile, he told us that if the shield rose into the air without his touching it, then his medicine had told him he was going to die in battle.”
Turning slightly in the saddle, Bass stared at Whistler a moment before he asked, “Is that what happened to your brother, to my friend?”
“We all saw the shield rise there before He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us. No one touched it as it floated as high as the chief’s head. And no one spoke until I told my brother he should not lead the horse stealers.”
“Why didn’t he listen to you?”
“The One-Who-Died said that his death was already foretold,” Whistler declared. “He could not call off the raid. He would not allow his people to believe he was anything but brave enough to face his own death.”
Despite knowing the shield had predicted his death, Arapooesh nonetheless pushed ahead with the raid. And as much as other warriors tried to protect him once they were confronted by superior numbers of the enemy, Rotten Belly did not hang back and let others do his fighting for him.
Scratch gazed at Whistler, sensing that this same trait of honor must also course through this younger brother’s veins—
Suddenly two of the advance scouts bolted out of the trees a half mile ahead, sprinting back toward the head of the march. They raced their ponies around in a tight circle, then slowed to a walk to explain their excitement.
“We have discovered a trail!”
Whistler asked, “An enemy trail?”
“It must be,” explained the second scout. “Many riders.”
“Is it a fresh trail?” asked Yellowtail as he rode up and brought his animal under control.
The first scout nodded. “Very little snow in the tracks.”
“Are they dragging travois behind them?” Scratch asked.
“There are a few,” the second scout declared.
Bass looked at Whistler. “It might be a small band of the enemy.”
“Women and children—they are our enemies too,” Strikes-in-Camp said.
Turning suddenly on the young warrior, Titus asked, “So now you kill women and children too? Does this make you a mighty warrior?”
“Those children will grow up to be fighting men and the mothers of warriors. Those women will bear the seeds, giving birth to more of our enemy—”
“Quiet!” Whistler demanded, clenching a fist in his son’s face. The group gathered round them fell silent. “We won’t kill the women, nor children. Mark my words: a warrior kills only the warriors.”
“Those women—”
This time Whistler drew his hand back, prepared to slap his son across the cheek, but he suddenly stopped his hand inches away. “I should take your weapons and your ponies from you—make you walk back to Absaroka.”
It was so quiet Bass could hear some of the horses snort in the cold air, the vapor rising from their nostrils like gauzy wreaths as the sky continued to snow.
“But I won’t do that, Strikes-in-Camp,” Whistler continued. “Not because you are my son … but because you need to learn how a Crow makes war on his enemy that is more numerous, an enemy that is stronger.”
Strikes-in-Camp glared at that hand Whistler lowered. Yet he did not utter a word to his father.
“I am the leader of this war party—not my son,” Whistler announced. “We are here to revenge the death of my brother. Not to stain the honor of our people by killing women and children. No—we will capture those women and children, take them back to our country when we turn around for home. The young ones will grow to become Crow. And the bellies of those women will give birth to many Crow warriors!”
The half-a-hundred immediately yipped and trilled in triumph with a great ululation of their tongues.
Then Whistler turned back to those two scouts, asking, “How far away do you judge the enemy to be?”
“Before the sun is in its last quarter of the sky and the winter moon has climbed out of the east,” the second young warrior explained, “we could reach them.”
