“No, old friend.” Bass gasped with joy and surprise at seeing a familiar face. “They are presents.”
“So many presents?” Stiff Arm asked now as he urged his horse up beside that of Three Iron. “All these ponies are loaded with presents?”
“Yes!” Bass felt exuberant as he dusted off his rusty Crow, unused in so long. “My heart is so glad to be home again.”
A quizzical look passed over Three Iron’s face as the other two inched their ponies forward. “We … everyone thought you dead,
Bass suddenly felt some of his exuberance oozing as he realized just how long he had been away. “Yes, I have been gone many moons, but, look for yourselves … I am not dead.”
Three Iron gulped. “Your wife—”
“Waits-by-the-Water?” he interrupted the camp guard. “Does she believe I am dead too?”
With a wag of his head, Three Iron declared, “Like Stiff Arm said, you were gone so long.”
Then Stiff Arm himself explained, “And you did not come back.”
A sudden cold seized him. “My wife, and children … they—”
Three Iron turned on the bare back of his pony and pointed at the village. “They are camped at the southern end of the crescent,
For a moment he could not get the words out, his mind racing over the vocabulary, struggling to put voice to the question he most feared. Then, “My wife … Waits-by-the-Water, she did not give up on me to … to m-marry another?”
Stiff Arm shook his head, “No. She did not find a new husband.”
“S-so she is mourning?”
This time Three Irons nodded dolefully. “Yes. She has been alone for so long now.”
Titus was already jabbing his heels urgently into the ribs of the weary saddle horse as those last few words struck his ears. He yanked on the lead rope to the first packhorse as the whole string clattered onto the stony sandbar and entered the shallow ford. By now, more than fifty people had gathered on the far bank, a third of them children. They and a few camp dogs began to part as his roan came out of the shallow water, the horse’s legs dripping in the light that was leaking from the pale, pink western sky. His two dogs bristled warning at the curious curs that slinked too close, then stopped among the snow-covered rocks to give themselves a quick, vigorous shake from neck to tail root before racing to rejoin Bass’s horse as it lunged up the low cutbank and angled into the village.
The murmuring accompanied him as he turned among the lodges, sawing the saddle horse left as he hurried toward the southern end of the camp crescent. More and more of the people who had been on their way to the crossing came to a sudden halt, stopping to stare up at him as he led more than fifteen horses right down the main thoroughfare of the village. Some of them called out his name in excitement and relief.
Men who had known him as Rotten Belly’s white friend, who remembered him as Whistler’s trusted son-in- law, and those warriors who saw Titus Bass as the man who had honored Strikes In Camp with that final battle against the Blackfeet … many of them now raised their arms high in salute, some shaking their weapons to pay tribute to a fellow warrior.
And some of those women who recognized him quietly muttered his name. Many put their fingers over their mouths in shock and utter surprise, eyes wide as Mexican conchos.
“Popo!” the child cried.
A few yards ahead he spotted the short figure lumbering toward him across the trampled snow, one arm waving as she shuffled in an ungainly wobble, clearly hampered by the tiny blanketed bundle astride her hip.
“Magpie?” he cried in exuberance, although he was already sure as he yanked back on the reins. Fifteen yards behind her came a figure, not quite as tall, running to catch up. Titus sang out, “Magpie! It is you!”
“Popo!” she shrieked in excitement.
Titus hit the ground as his daughter crossed those last few steps to reach the horses. The moment he knelt she flung her empty arm around him. Clasping his daughter in a fierce embrace, he felt the tiny body at the very moment the small infant cried out.
Magpie was eight and a half years old now, he thought, surely old enough, responsible enough, to care for someone’s child—
Then Flea sprinted up, his copper cheeks red from his dash across the icy snow.
“Flea!” he cried, releasing Magpie so he could crush the boy who would soon be turning six. “Oh, Flea!”
He unwrapped one arm from around the boy and held it out for the tall girl, reminded how long-legged her mother must have been at the same age. Magpie stepped into that embrace he gave both of his children.
“Y-your mother?” he stammered. “Where?”
Flea pointed with his grimy hand at the far lodges, then held the hand up for his father to hold. “Come. I take you.”
“No, son,” he stood, nudging the boy against his leg. “Here. You will be old enough to serve as a pony boy one day soon. So you must take care of my horses for me.”
He looked at the long string, blinked, then looked up at his tall father. “Horses, Popo?”
“Bring them behind me.” Bass turned to Magpie and swallowed as he blinked his stinging eyes. Already the tears were beginning to stream down his sun and windburnt cheeks. “Take me to your mother.”
Gazing up at her father in wonder, Magpie laid her head against his side a moment as he enfolded her against his rib cage. She closed her eyes briefly. Then opened them. “We thought you … everyone believed … Mother knew you did not come back because you were—”
“I am not dead, little one,” Titus interrupted and squeezed her gently against him as they started walking toward the last of the lodges at the end of the camp crescent. “We need to show your mother what you can clearly see for yourself—I am far from being a ghost.”
Which suddenly caused him to remember. “Stop a moment.” Then he whistled once, and a second time. The dogs appeared among the lodges. “These are yours, my children.”
“Your dogs, Popo?” asked Flea as he stopped the saddle horse and sank to one knee, putting out his arms for the darker animal.
“That one is named Digger, son.”
“D-digger?” Flea repeated.
“Yes. It is the name of a poor tribe that lives far beyond the reach of the mountains. Out on the desert where little grows but cactus and scorpions, where those people have little to eat but rabbits and crickets.”
“Crickets?” Flea repeated. “They eat insects?”
“When they are hungry enough,” Titus told his son. “What they love to eat most is a stolen horse!”
The light-colored dog brushed against Magpie’s leg as it stopped by its master. “What do you call this other one?” his daughter asked.
“Ghost. Look at his eyes, and you will see his ghost eyes.”
“So these dogs followed you all the way back home?” Magpie inquired.
“Yes, I picked them out for you and your brother. They are your dogs now. But come—take me to your mother so she will see that I am not dead—”
His voice dropped off as the realization struck him every bit as cold and hard as an iron maul driving a wedge into a troublesome oak stump. His daughter’s long hair was gone. Uneven, shoulder-length tatters rustled in the cold breeze. It had been crudely done, hacked off with a knife as proscribed in mourning rituals. And Magpie’s hair wasn’t clean at all. Many of the greasy sprigs were still clumped with ashes now that he inspected her.
Titus quickly grabbed Magpie’s thin wrist and pushed up the loose blanket sleeve to expose her brown forearm. A lattice work of old, half-crusted wounds climbed from wrist to elbow in crude, parallel gashes, most nearly healed.
“How … how long ago did you cut yourself?”
“M-m-many days.” Her eyes began to tear as she slowly slipped her wrist from his hand. She started to step backward from him when he caught her and went to his knee.
“Magpie. You did not do wrong. Nothing to be ashamed of. I am proud of you—because you did this for me. Mourned me like your mother—”
He bolted to his feet, freeing her arm again. “Take me to your mother—now.”
Inside his belly, his guts felt as if someone had thrown alum on them, they pinched so bad. Shriveled up like a
