him.
“Why is my mother so afraid?”
Scratch looked at Waits-by-the-Water and had to admit she did look frightened.
“I think she is excited about—”
“Do not come any closer!” interrupted the warrior beneath the swelling wreath of frosty breath that encircled his head.
“But we are friends,” Bass hollered in reply, watching one of the guards rein about and kick his pony into a lope, heading back to the village.
“I know you, Waits-by-the-Water,” the first warrior admitted. “When my younger sister was a little girl, you and she played together with your tiny lodges and horses and dolls. But you cannot—”
“Three Iron?” she suddenly asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes—”
“Then you know us!” Waits interrupted. “Why don’t you invite us into the camp? I have waited a long time to see my mother again, to show her how much her grandson has grown.”
“I can’t invite you into the village,” he shouted.
“But—you are my people!” she cried.
“Your husband is not,” Three Iron explained.
Far behind the camp guards Bass saw two riders emerge from the village, coming their way at a gallop. He turned to look quickly at the dismay on her face, realizing he must try to talk some sense into these warriors.
“You say you know me,” Titus began, hearing Magpie start to whimper quietly against his back. “Your people have always welcomed me—even when I came on foot chasing horse thieves.”
“I am Red Leggings,” shouted one of the guards near the end of the crescent. “I was with Pretty On Top the day we rode off with your animals many winters ago.”
“Then you must explain why you will not allow me to bring my wife and children into your camp to see their relations.”
Halting, one of the arriving horsemen announced, “It would be dangerous.”
“Strikes-in-Camp?” she wailed. “Is that you, my brother?”
“Yes, sister. I am here.”
She nudged her pony forward, saying, “How I longed to see you and my mother—”
At that instant Scratch lunged over and grabbed the pony’s halter, pulling to a stop.
“Stay there, sister!” Strikes-in-Camp demanded. “You can come no closer.”
“Brother!” she shrieked, covering her face with a hand.
Magpie began to wail behind him.
“Why won’t you accept your sister into the camp of her people?” Titus asked in a strong voice, words hanging brittle as ice while the clouds lowered over them. The sun was disappearing, rising into the blue-black, as if all the warmth of that crimson light was being snuffed out. Tiny lances of ice darted about their faces, stinging the cold flesh.
Strikes-in-Camp explained. “She might be sick.”
“S-sick?” Waits sobbed. “Only my heart is sick to be treated so badly by my people—”
Afraid he already knew, the trapper asked, “How do you think your sister is sick?”
“She is with a white man,” yelled another man.
“How will that make her sick, Strikes-in-Camp?”
“In that hottest part of the summer, we heard the stories of the white man sickness killing other tribes,” his brother-in-law explained, his pony pawing a hoof at the frozen, snowy ground.
Pausing as he thought, Bass suddenly said, “But you can see I am not sick—”
“We have heard the white man does not grow sick and die with this terrible affliction,” another warrior interrupted. “Only the Indians. Mandans, Arikara, Assiniboine, even Blackfoot too. Now that you have come, white man—this evil has followed us here.”
“You ran away from your fear of it, didn’t you?” Titus asked.
“The old men believed it the wisest,” the young warrior declared. “The oldest among them remembered the tribal stories of another time long, long ago when our people lived close to the great muddy river—a time when this same evil sickness of the seeping wounds and fever swept through the villages along the river.”
“The Crow have known about this sickness before?”
“Yes,” the young warrior said. “Our old men say only a few died because our people quickly scattered onto the prairie, running faster than the invisible terror that had come to kill us all.”
Bass nodded. “So your chiefs decided you should run again.”
“And stay as far away as we can from the white man who once more brings this evil to kill Indians who are his enemies,” Strikes-in-Camp said. “Even Indians who are his friends.”
“Look at me. I am not sick.”
“You are a white man. You carry the sickness in you,” he said, waving his arm in frustration. “While it doesn’t consume you, it will kill us.”
Stretching out his arm to indicate his wife, Bass said, “Look at your sister! She is alive! We have been to Tullock’s post and she did not die. Our children are still alive. There is no disease in them!”
Clearly frustrated now, Strikes-in-Camp roared, “You must stay away!”
“B-brother!” she keened, her voice rising even as the black belly of the clouds tore open with the first falling of an icy snow.
“If I take my wife into your camp to see her mother, what will happen to me?”
The warrior said, “I will have to kill you.”
Bass swallowed hard. “And if my wife comes to see her mother without me?”
Drawing himself up, Strikes-in-Camp said, “I will have to kill her.”
“We are not your enemies,” Bass snarled, feeling angry at his helplessness.
“The white man brought this sickness to the mountains. You must stay away from us.”
Scratch reached over and took his wife’s forearm in his mitten, gripping it reassuringly. “Tell your mother … say we send her our love and want to see her face one day soon.”
“Perhaps one day,” Strikes-in-Camp said sadly.
Waits began to cry, covering her face with a blanket mitten as she wheeled her pony around and started on their backtrail.
“Strikes-in-Camp,” Titus called. “You must be careful.”
“Of other white men like you?”
“No,” he replied. “I bring a warning that the Crow must be careful of the Blackfoot.”
“Not the white man?”
“No,” Bass said. “The Blackfoot carry this terrible sickness now.”
24
A wolf called that gray morning as the icy snow fell softer, then beat no more against the side of the brush- and-canvas shelter where he lay with her and the children.
Winter was old, almost done. Yet it hung on and on, refusing to give itself to spring.
For weeks now Waits-by-the-Water had hardly spoken a word. She still sang to Flea to put him to sleep at night, and she held Magpie in her arms too. She even made love to him with the same ferocity she always had … but she did not talk much at all.
Never, never about Yellow Belly’s camp. Not one word about her people.
Better to let that wound be, he decided, hoping it would heal on its own.
That wolf howled again, perhaps a different one. It was a plaintive call, anguished and lonely.
If it had been raining—instead of snowing—Titus might be more concerned, even afraid. A wolf that came out to howl in the rain was the spirit of a warrior killed before his time. So if it were raining instead of that weepy snow, it might well make him venture from these warm robes and blankets, push into the cold timber in search of that
