But these people did not celebrate such annual events, nor did they have any similar religious festivals to mark the progress of each year beyond the tobacco ceremony of their women. Instead, these Crow celebrated war, perhaps the birth or naming of a child, maybe even the success of a war party or pony raid, nothing but that tobacco planting ceremony to track the march of the seasons the way the white man did.
From beyond the far edge of the crowd came a growing murmur. He turned to watch the witnesses part for a group of men resplendent in their very finest war clothing.
“Sore Lips,” whispered Pretty On Top. “Strikes-in-Camp’s war clan.”
As more than twenty of them emerged onto the open ground that surrounded Scratch, he glanced at their faces, finding each man painted, feathers and stuffed birds tied in his hair, an animal head lashed onto his own with a rawhide whang tied under the chin. All but one of them carried a tall staff—some crooked, some straight—but each bearing feathers tied at right angles to the poles, wrapped in otter fur, arrayed with enemy scalps.
Only Strikes-in-Camp—who stood at their center—remained empty-handed. He crossed his arms, looked at the white man, and waited.
“Now,” Pretty On Top whispered.
Scratch looked over at the young warrior. “The presents?”
Pretty On Top nodded.
Wanting to ask that handsome young warrior to wish him luck, Titus suddenly realized the Crow had no concept of luck, much less the crazy notion of one person passing on that luck to another. Instead, he turned to his right and stepped up to Turns Plenty who held the halters of two ponies. The old man handed the white man those halters, then stepped over to join Pretty On Top.
With his heart beginning to pound, Bass started for the far side of the open ground at the center of that huge crowd suddenly growing breathlessly quiet, so quiet Scratch could hear the whine of his winter moccasins on the old, icy snow, hear the slow plodding of each one of the eight hooves with that pair of ponies behind him. Somehow he made it across the arena at the center of the village and stopped a few feet from Strikes-in-Camp.
“These horses are for you,” he said as confidently as he could muster it, having practiced and rehearsed the words over and over the past two weeks, to get them just right for this day.
Pointing to the scalp hanging from the halter beneath the jaw of each pony, Bass continued. “And these scalps—they belonged to the Arapaho warriors who rode these ponies against me last spring. The horses and the scalps of two brave warriors I now give to the mighty warrior I ask to become my brother-in-law.”
Strikes-in-Camp took a few steps forward, moving around one of the ponies, then came back between the pair, lifting a leg here, touching a flank there, staring into the eyes of these gifts. When he turned and walked back to where he stood in the midst of his Sore Lip warrior society, Strikes-in-Camp recrossed his arms.
Anxious, Bass flicked a glance at Pretty On Top. The young warrior made a quick gesture with his hand.
Scratch turned back to Turns Plenty, then stepped up to Waits-by-the-Water’s brother and held out the halters to those two ponies.
For a long moment the man stared at Bass, then looked over the white man’s shoulder at Pretty On Top, Windy Boy, and Turns Plenty behind the trapper. Finally Strikes-in-Camp took the halters, held them a heartbeat, and passed them to one of the painted warriors who stood beside him. The man started away with the two Arapaho ponies.
By the time Strikes-in-Camp recrossed his arms and stared again at him, Bass realized he could barely hear —his heart pounded so loudly in his ears while he started to turn slowly around on those shaky legs of his, reminding himself he must not stumble, must not fall there in front of her people.
Less than three steps brought him back to Windy Boy, who held out his left hand. In it he clutched the halters to another two ponies. Quietly clucking for the pair to follow, Bass slowly started back to Strikes-in-Camp, stopping again a few feet from the warrior and his Sore Lip comrades.
“I bring more gifts to Strikes-in-Camp,” he said in a studied cadence with the Crow words. “Two more horses.”
“Two more horses,” Strikes-in-Camp repeated, not budging, moving only his eyes as he looked from the white man to stare at one of the ponies.
Turning, Bass pulled the oxblood blanket from its back and held it before Strikes-in-Camp as a soft murmur came from the crowd. “This will keep your wife warm on those nights when you take the warpath against our enemies.”
Strikes-in-Camp brushed the blanket with his fingers, lifted a corner, inspecting it as if to ascertain that it truly was new.
“Two moons ago I traded for it,” Titus explained, scrambling for these words not in his planned script. “From the Crow trader—Tullock—at the mouth of the Tongue River.”
Eventually Strikes-in-Camp took the red blanket from Bass’s arm and passed it back to one of his warrior society. “Yes, it will keep my wife warm when I am not with her.”
Bass thought he saw a little softening in the man’s eyes. His heart leaped. For days now since he and Waits-by-the-Water had discussed this ceremony with her mother, Titus had steadily grown more apprehensive. From the beginning Strikes-in-Camp had frostily objected. He had even refused to talk to his mother about the white man’s wanting to ask for his sister in marriage.
Three more times Waits had prevailed upon her mother to ask Strikes-in-Camp, hoping to wear him down. But each time he had grown a little more insolent. Then, yesterday, both of them had gone together to speak to him.
Waits had returned alone to pull back the flap to their shelter and clumsily squatted on the bedrobes. “Strikes-in-Camp says he will take your gifts.”
Titus hadn’t been sure he’d heard the words correctly at first. So he asked, hesitantly, “Your brother said he would give you away to be my wife?”
Then she was smiling not just with her mouth, but with her whole face, flinging her body against his as the tears gushed down her cheeks. He wasn’t sure which of them cried more at that moment, but yesterday had lifted much of the gray pall that had settled about him since their arrival in Absaroka.
“But I don’t understand—he refused three times before,” Bass said, wagging his head, happy and confused all at once. “What made him—”
“I reminded him that you and I were already married in the way of our people, that we didn’t need any ceremony,” she told him, gripping one of his hands in both of hers while Magpie snuggled up next to them both. “Then I reminded him that you had no responsibility to ask anyone for me when I had no father.”
“What did he say?”
“He scolded me again that I should not have given myself to a white man.”
Bass gazed down at her belly, touched it, and said, “It’s a little late for that now.”
She grinned radiantly. “Then I told him you wanted to do your promising before my family, before all my people—whether or not he gave me to you.”
“You told him I was going to promise myself to you before all your people no matter if he was there or not?”
“Yes, I said those words to him.”
“That’s when he agreed?”
But she wagged her head. “No.”
“What made him decide?”
“Not until I told my brother that you were honoring him before all our people. You, the man he hated almost as much as any Blackfoot or Lakota warrior. You, the man he had no good words for. You were honoring him by coming before our whole village to offer him presents, to show our people that my brother was a man worthy of his respect. I told him that you would be showing our people that he was a man of true stature now, not just a young warrior trying to make a name for himself.”
“And?”
“I told him how important that would be in front of our village—to see you, a white warrior with many scars and many, many coups, honoring him by asking for me in marriage.”
“That’s what changed his mind?”
Nodding, Waits-by-the-Water said, “I think he finally realized that it would be an honor to have you in his family, a man who would offer him presents despite all the bad that he has spoken of you, all the bad he has wished
