“Then what?” Scratch continued by asking the big question. Maybe just the rising sound of his voice as he posed the problem made the youth look at him again. “So we take your kinfolk with us when we run onto the Crow. What you expect us to do when those Absorkees find out I’m dragging around a dead Blackfoot? They’re gonna chop your relation into some mighty small pieces right afore your eyes—an’ you’ll go to wailing again.”
He sighed, turned slowly around. And found himself studying the copse of trees. There. It wouldn’t take long. He could work with a rope, looping it over those two parallel branches—hoist the body up inside its red blanket and tie off the rope. Then he could shinny up that trunk and drag the body onto that pair of branches where he could tie it down in place. A good place for the body to rest, in one of those Bents Fort horse-trading blankets. A red funeral shroud for a warrior.
What in blue hell was he doing? He’d near been killed by these sonsabitches more times’n he had battle scars. So why was he even giving a second thought to burying this red nigger proper right here in the heart of Crow country?
“Shit,” he grumbled as he strode over to the cotton-wood where he angrily snapped off a few short limbs no bigger around than one of his fingers.
Quickly he used his camp knife to shave off the bark from each one, making it smooth, then sharpened the end of each stick until he had a half dozen some eight or ten inches long. Not near as long as lacing pins that locked the two flaps of a lodge over its poles, but long enough for the job at hand.
Dropping the peeled twigs beside the dead warrior, Bass knelt and rolled the stiffened carcass over. Dragging back the red blanket, he studied the young man’s face, then peered into the boy’s eyes. No reasonable man could deny they were blood kin. Then he gave study to what the warrior carried on his belt. Bass freed the leather strap from the buckle and dragged it loose before he resecured the strap and buckle and laid the belt aside. Not until then did he notice the whistle that hung from a thong around the dead man’s neck. At first it had been tucked out of sight in the warrior’s armpit.
But by tugging on the thin strap, Titus freed it, dragging the thong over the dead warrior’s head. Some six to seven inches long, it was clearly an eagle wingbone carved into a war whistle. Someone, maybe a family member, perhaps even the dead man’s lover or wife, had braided red, black, and yellow quills around the middle two thirds of the whistle.
He brought it to his lips, but just as he was about to blow the whistle, Scratch suddenly stopped. Aware that perhaps he shouldn’t out of respect for the enemy dead. For a moment, he returned the youngster’s quizzical gaze, then scooted over to drop the long leather loop over the boy’s head.
“I figger that’s rightly your’n, son. Maybeso, he’d wanted you to have it. It and this here belt with his fixin’s and knife too.”
Bass creaked to his feet, his knees grown stiff on the icy snow. “But I ain’t giving you that there belt and knife—not yet I ain’t.”
He dragged out his own knife and crouched over the dead warrior. Quickly tugging on the four sides of the red blanket, he pulled them together as tight as he could around the corpse. Then hole by hole, he punched the tip of his knife through the flaps of thick wool and inserted the long, peeled pins that would hold the blanket in place as a crude funeral shroud.
With two of his short lariats looped over a high branch above that pair of parallel limbs, and the ends of both ropes knotted around the frozen corpse—one at the ankles and one around the shoulders—Scratch went to fetch his saddle horse. When he had the loose ends of both lariats secured around the large pommel, Bass grabbed the reins in one hand, gave the youngster a quick look, then spoke softly to the roan.
“C’mon—easy, easy now.”
As he tugged on the reins, the animal slowly inched forward, taking the slack out of the ropes, then eased the body off the ground where it began to swing a little, first in one direction, then to the other, twisting slowly, slowly in a half circle from its two ropes.
“That’s a good, girl. A li’l more, li’l more now.”
He kept the horse moving a step or two at a time until the warrior had been raised high enough that the body hung suspended just above the pair of lower branches.
“Stay put,” he cooed, patting the steady old roan on the neck before he turned back to the tree.
There he stripped off his wide belt and the elkhide coat, then wearing only the buffalo-fur vest in that bitter cold, Scratch pulled himself off the ground, swinging up and onto the first low branch. From there he shinnied himself onto the pair of limbs growing just below the gently swinging corpse. With his thick buffalo-hide moccasins gripping the two branches, he steadied himself with one hand locked on that higher limb the ropes were looped over, then grabbed one of those ropes with his other bare hand.
“Awright, horse—back now. C’mon back.”
He clucked with his tongue too, a sound he was sure the roan would recognize from their miles and seasons together. The horse twisted its head around as if to determine where that noise was coming from, so he repeated it.
Then reassured the roan, “C’mon.”
It took two steps back. “That’s good. Just a li’l more.”
Those coarse one-inch ropes slid through his callused palm as the red shroud eased down upon the two parallel branches. With a little more coaxing the horse inched back three more feet and stopped again; enough that Titus now had sufficient slack to loosen the knots around the ankles and shoulders as he crouched precariously on the limbs above the horse. One at a time he pitched the freed ropes over the branch above him so that they spiraled to the ground below him.
With one final tug on the shroud, he had the Blackfoot’s body positioned along the strongest portions of the parallel limbs. Then he dropped to the ground himself to pull on his coat once more before freeing the two ropes from the pommel and stuffing their loops atop one of the packs of trade goods.
Striding over to where the youngster had watched the whole ordeal in utter amazement, Scratch could read a completely new expression on the boy’s face.
“I figgered it was what you’d done your own self … if’n you’d been freed up to do it.” He knelt with a sigh. “Time for us to be movin’ for the day.”
Stuffing his knife into its scabbard suspended from the wide belt he buckled around the elkhide coat, Scratch worked at the knots tied around the youngster’s ankles while the look on the boy’s face changed to one of confusion mixed with no little fear.
Titus rocked forward on one knee, locking the other knee down upon the youth’s lower legs. “Ain’t gonna hurt you.”
Still holding the boy down, Titus pulled the rope free of the ankles and wrapped a loose end between the youngster’s bound wrists. Now he had a long section of the rope that would serve just like a lariat used on a led horse.
“C’mon. It’s time you stood up,” he said as he took a step backward, then a second.
Bass gestured with his free hand. “Stand
Slowly dragging his legs under him, the youth leaned his weight forward onto his bound hands and struggled to rise. But it was immediately clear that the muscles in his legs were cramped from being bound together on the cold ground for so long. Titus stepped around to stand behind the boy, wrapped both of his arms beneath the youth’s armpits, and grunted him to his feet.
“Damn, son—if you aren’t a big chunk of it,” he grumbled as the youth came off the ground shakily.
Standing there at that moment, it surprised Scratch just how tall the youngster was. The top of his black hair reached Bass’s eyes. And he felt solid as a hickory stump. Thin, wiry, lean as whipcord to be sure—but solid nonetheless. This was a boy already galloping down the road to manhood, that much was certain.
For a moment the youngster wobbled unsteadily on his legs. Then he gradually got his balance, and Bass slowly released his grip on the Blackfoot.
“You’re gonna ride,” he explained as he steered the youth toward the horse that had carried the pups in those empty baskets Scratch was taking home as a present to Waits-by-the-Water.
“Take ’er easy,” he said as they kept walking, step by step. “Keep them pins under you or you’ll spill for certain.”
At the horse’s side, Scratch gestured that the youngster was to mount. It took no further urging as the boy grabbed a double handful of the horse’s mane there at the withers, then sprang onto the narrow back and settled
