the converging poles toward the smoke hole and that black triangle of starry sky over their heads. Opposite the fire sat Shell Woman, her son’s head propped against her leg and her infant daughter asleep at her bared breast.
Right from their arrival in Gray Thunder’s camp late that afternoon, Scratch had sensed the courteous strain, a civil tension, that electrified the air as the two women were brought together in these most unusual circumstances. Their peoples, Crow and Cheyenne, had been at war all the way back to those generations of elders who remembered long-ago-told stories of conflicts and hatred between the tribes when they both had lived far, far to the east of the Missouri River. Migrating west had given the Crow only a temporary respite from war against the Cheyenne. Generations after they had fled the valley of the Upper Missouri for the country of the Yellowstone and Bighorn Rivers, the Cheyenne had begun to mosey west too.
“But Shadrach’s wife isn’t from one of those sneaky bunches who trouble the Apsaluuke farther north,” Titus had attempted to explain to his wife after telling her they were invited to dinner that evening in Gray Thunder’s camp. “This bunch never has killed a white man. Always traded with whites. Made friends with the Bents and others for their own good: guns and powder, beads and brass.”
“Maybe they are friends with your people, Ti-tuzz,” she had responded grimly. “But I see or hear nothing to show me Gray Thunder’s people haven’t murdered my people when they had the chance.”
“This village has never been north of the South Platte,” he had explained in American. “Other’ns do run with them Sioux. They’re the Cheyenne making trouble up north. But this bunch—”
“Stay south.” She interrupted him in American too. Then continued in her own tongue, “They are not my kind, Ti-tuzz. But because I feel safe with you, I will go where you take me, as I always have gone to be at your side.”
“What are your kind, Waits-by-the-Water?” he had made the mistake of asking, pricking her pride. “There any tribe what you Crow get along with good enough to call your kind?”
“Flathead. Josiah’s woman—Looks Far Woman—she probably is my kind,” she declared in Crow.
“Dammit,” he grumbled in exasperation. “It’s clear as sun there ain’t very many of your kind, woman— because the Crow are at war with most ever’body around ’em.”
“Except the white man,” she had reminded him with a soft smile. “I always liked Shadrach fine.”
“Then you come tonight to see ol’ Shadrach again?”
With her lips momentarily pressed into a grim line of thoughtfulness, Waits finally nodded once. “I will meet this Cheyenne wife of his, and see the children Shadrach has made with her too. Then I will judge if there is any chance for two enemies to feel safe in the company of one another.”
“And become friends,” he urged.
Her eyes looked squarely into his. “Maybe to be friends is a lot harder thing, so you must be patient for what may never happen. To feel safe … that is enough for now.”
All evening there had been that tense civility between the two women—both aware their husbands had been the best of friends and trapping partners, men who had protected and nourished their own friendship.
“Shell Woman may feel like she’s the outsider here,” Shad whispered as the fire crackled in the pit near their feet.
“But, this be her home,” Titus responded quietly.
“Can’t you see—you an’ me, an’ Waits too, we all knowed each other years ago when the two of us trapped together, Scratch. Shell Woman an’ our young’uns ain’t been around the rest of you none, the way I was. I’m sartin she feels this here’s a case where ever’body knows ever’body but her.”
“Such things take time, Shadrach,” Titus consoled as he handed the pipe back to its owner. “You’ll recollect that no matter how many times you and me crossed trails in them early years, it weren’t until the last of the beaver trade we finally come to be friends.”
“Most all this afternoon while’st I was waiting for supper-time and you to be coming, I been thinking a lot on them times. How you said they was our glory days,” Sweete sighed. “How you s’pose Gabe’s doing over to his post?”
“What I heard, Jim’s full o’ pluck and doing fine.”
“You ain’t never been there yourself?”
“Not once,” Titus admitted. “After we talked ’bout Gabe this mornin’, more I cogitated on it, an’ the more it made sense to take me a ride on west to the Green and have a look at what Bridger’s been doing with hisself after all these years.”
Shad leaned forward to whisper, “You s’pose he’s still in business with Vaskiss over west of the mountains?”
“They’re both likely lads; I figger they had the gumption to make a go of damned near anything they ever set their minds to.”
Shadrach quivered a little with anticipation. “So you’re goin’ to see him, Scratch?”
He glanced for a moment at his woman, found her smiling at him as she sat listening to their man-talk, her legs folded to the side in that woman way of hers, rocking their youngest. Her smile always reassured him.
“Yeah, Shadrach,” he replied. “Fixin’ to drop in on Bridger, have a look at his new diggin’s, sit and palaver ’bout the ol’ days for a spell afore we tramp on down the Wind River for Crow country.”
Sweete cleared his throat, that scratchy bullfrog of a voice dramatically softened now. “Sure would like to see ol’ Gabe my own self.”
“Why, child—you askin’ yourself along?”
Shad’s face brightened. “Figgered I’d have to work harder’n that to get you to come to the bait, pilgrim!”
“Who you callin’ pilgrim, you lop-eared greenhorn?”
“Damn, if it wouldn’t shine for our families to ride north together!” Shad gushed with enthusiasm. “So, how long afore you was planning on leaving, Scratch?”
He dug at an itch under his chin, then said, “When I first rode in here, I fixed my sights on laying over at the fort two nights at the most—so I was gonna pull out come morning.”
It was like the air suddenly went out of Shad. With a grump of resignation he said, “Morning don’t give Shell Woman much time.”
“Hell, Shadrach—ain’t a Injun woman what can’t take down a lodge and pack it up in the time it takes you an’ me to eat our lunch and have us a pipeful of that tobaccy o’ your’n.”
Wagging his head, Shadrach explained, “It ain’t getting ever’thing tore down and packed up I was meanin’. It’s just … Shell Woman’s got family—folks, sisters, and a brother, ever’one she growed up with in this camp. I allays figgered I’d give her all the time she needed to say her goodbyes afore I ever yanked her off with me—”
“Ask her if’n you give her a day, she’d be ready to go mornin’ after next.”
He watched the two of them talk back and forth, listening to the strange word-sounds in the Cheyenne tongue. But mostly he trained his attention on Shell Woman’s face—watching how her eyes darted to the newcomer and his Crow wife. Finally Shell Woman rocked onto her knees and turned aside to lay her infant daughter on the robes, her back to the men as she went about putting her small children to bed. For those breathless moments, Bass had worked his expectations and hope into a lather.
Finally Sweete explained in a whisper, “She says no matter how long I’d give her, it’d never be long enough to say good-bye to her folks, her blood kin.”
Disappointment flooded through Titus. “I’m real sad to hear that—”
“But Shell Woman said a day would be awright … long as I promised to get her back to her people one of these days soon.”
His heart leaped again. “Sh-she says … you’re all gonna go?”
Shad’s head bobbed up and down eagerly. “Damn if we ain’t!”
To Scratch’s left, both Magpie and Flea were abruptly awakening to the noisy voices, blinking their eyes and squinting at the exuberant men who had bounded to their feet to begin pounding one another on the back and shoulders. Across the lodge little Bull Hump woke up, propping himself up on an elbow to watch the same strange scene as the two men jigged beside the low fire.
Finally turning back to Magpie and Flea, Scratch held down both hands. His children put their hands in his as he pulled them up and helped them into their heavy blanket coats, winter moccasins, hoods, and mittens, preparing to make that snowy tromp back to Fort William. At the doorway, he stopped Waits-by-the-Water and put his arm around her shoulder as she clutched the sleeping Jackrabbit against her shoulder.
