“What is this waste … land?”
“Where there is little water, little vegetation, no food for the horses. We lost half of their number before we reached the mountains, crossed over, and started down to the fort.”
“So you had only a few by the time you reached the land of the Cheyenne?”
He gripped her shoulders as he explained, “My share was …”—and he grappled with finding the Crow term for so great a number—“more than any warrior of your people has ever owned before.”
She quickly put her hand over her chapped mouth. “You are making fun with me,” she snipped at him.
“It is true. I would not lie to you.”
For a long moment she gazed into his face, steadily—as if reading something of import there. “This was a dangerous trip you had.”
“No more dangerous than any trip I ever made with you at my side.”
She snuggled against his elkhide coat. “The most fearsome trips you ever made were always the ones without me. Because I am not beside you, I know you take chances you would not if I were with you.”
Scratch had no rebuttal, because she spoke the truth.
In his silence, she continued, “So, I have decided that—because you always do dangerous things without me along—I simply won’t let you go on any more journeys without me.”
“I won’t argue with you on that,” he relented immediately. “Never again will I go anywhere without you and our two children.”
She straightened a little and asked, “You saw Magpie? Flea too?”
“Yes, both of them—”
“Did your daughter have the baby with her?”
“Yes,” he soothed, remembering that tiny infant Magpie had on her hip. “She held someone’s young child in her arms. Carrying it when she came up to embrace me. Whose child is this—who our young daughter would be caring for?”
Waits’s eyes narrowed, staring at him strangely a moment, then quietly asked, “Ti-tuzz, did you look at this baby Magpie carried when you rode into camp?”
“I-I did not look at the child, no,” he apologized. “More than anything I wanted to hold Magpie and Flea—to assure them I was not dead, then find where your lodge was pitched so I could come hold you. I had no interest in someone else’s child—”
“That babe is yours, Ti-tuzz.”
His heart skipped a beat, then took off in a gallop. “M-mine?”
“Whose child do you think your daughter would be caring for?”
“I … I don’t—”
“Your son, Ti-tuzz,” she announced. “You have a new son.”
“No. It can’t be. When I left … you weren’t … I didn’t … no, it can’t be!”
“Do you remember the last time you held me in your arms?”
“That cold dawn when I was leaving on my hunt last spring?”
“Yes,” she replied. “There was still snow on the ground.”
“I remember, yes.”
Laying her hand along his hairy cheek, Waits explained, “I didn’t know that morning, but I was already carrying your child, Ti-tuzz. His life was already growing in my belly. I wouldn’t know for many days to come—and when I did know for sure, it was later in the spring. I carried this son of yours for many moons, hoping with each new moon that his father would be home before he was born. But—”
“But I was gone too long.” Titus felt the stab of pain pierce him as he clutched her tightly again. He had been gone while she went through her woman’s time all alone. “You gave birth to him while I wasn’t here to hold you, not here to see our child’s face, or to hold him while you gained back your strength. I love you for your strength, woman.”
Waits-by-the-Water asked, “Did you hear him?”
“The babe?”
“Yes, did you hear him cry?” she asked. “He has the lungs of a little buffalo bull, he is so loud.”
Wagging his head, Scratch replied, “No. He did not cry out but once when I squeezed him too tightly when I put my arms around Magpie.”
Again she smiled, warming her pocked, ash-streaked face. “You just wait, Ti-tuzz. You will hear that little bull bellow when he is hungry!”
“I will go fetch our children,” he said, starting to slip from her embrace.
“It must be dark outside,” she said, gazing quickly at the smoke hole. “I don’t think I have anything for you to eat here—”
“I have meat.” And he bent to kiss her forehead. “You clean yourself and make ready your pot. I will send Magpie in with our new son and a pouch of yesterday’s venison. Then I will take my big son to help me with our Cheyenne horses.”
Waits reached out for his bare hand. Grabbing it between both of hers, she brought the hand to her lips, then pressed it against her wet cheek. He sank to one knee and wrapped his free arm around her shoulders.
“I will never leave you again,” he vowed. “That is a promise that I will die before I ever break. Believe me when I tell you, I will never leave you, ever again.”
Her eyes were sparkling with tears as she peered up at him, releasing his hand.
“Prepare the pot, woman,” he reminded as he stood. “There’ll be no more starving yourself, for tonight we’re going to start putting some meat back on your bones!”
Ducking back through the narrow doorway, he stood in the deepening gloom of that winter evening. All round them the lodges were aglow with a dim, translucent light cast from the fires within. Magpie stood rooted right where she had been. Flea was beside her, the weary horses strung out behind them both.
“My mother—she’s seen you are alive?” the girl asked as Scratch appeared.
“Bring my new son to me,” his voice croaked as he started toward her.
Magpie held the bundle out to her father. “He doesn’t look a thing like Flea. I thought all brothers were supposed to look alike. But this little one, he is nowhere near as ugly as Flea.”
Behind her, Flea growled.
“That is just the sort of thing you expect a sister to say about her brother, Flea,” Titus confided as he pulled back a flap of that blanket wrapped around the infant.
Beneath the cold starlight, the tiny child looked no different than Magpie had in those days and weeks after she was born, no different than Flea. Not until they began to grow older, a month or two at least, did they begin to take on their individual appearance—differences that became more marked as time went by.
“What do you think, Popo?” Flea asked as he raised himself up on tiptoes to look at his baby brother. “Do you think he is better looking than me?”
“No, you are both handsome Ti-tuzz men,” Bass gushed, filled with such overwhelming pride to hold his new son.
“Then,” Flea declared, “he must be so much better looking than his big sister!”
She half swung a fist at him as he ducked aside.
“Girl,” Titus chided. “You go inside now. And take your little brother with you. He will be hungry soon.”
As Magpie folded the infant into her arms, her face went sad momentarily. “My mother has not always had milk for him. She has been too weak at times.”
“What did she do to feed your little brother?”
“Sometimes, other women brought milk from a mare,” she confessed. “And sometimes … I think they brought their own milk. We fed him all we could with a spoon.”
Titus wrapped his arms around his daughter and the baby. “You are very strong, a very good sister, Magpie. I promise you that you and Flea will never have to worry about such things again. I will never leave my family, ever again.”
“You make good promises,” Flea said.
“You know I never make a promise I can’t keep.”
“You have always kept your word to us, Popo,” Magpie said.
“Now, go, daughter! Get your littlest brother inside. Help your mother with the fire, and get some water on to
