The employee reached inside his belt and pulled out a folded piece of foolscap about as big as a man’s palm. As he held it down to Meldrum, Titus saw it had been sealed with a huge dollop of dark blue wax, at the center of which was imprinted a seal. “Here, sir. This is what they brung for you.”
“When they get here?” Meldrum asked as he reached up to take the folded packet.
“Just now,” the young man explained. “Give me the note—but I didn’t want to open it. Brung it to you right away.”
“Good man,” he said, gazing down at the symbol hardened in the wax. “Who’s this from?”
Clearing his throat, the clerk said, “These here couriers said it’s very important, Mr. Meldrum. They’ve come all the way north from Fort Laramie, carrying this here letter from a man they called Fitzpatrick.”
Scratch took a step closer now, studying the dark, swarthy faces of those five strangers. That name of an old companion from their beaver days just did not fit into the scenario he was constructing with Bordeau tracking him all the way to Fort Alexander—
“Thomas? Thomas Fitzpatrick?” Meldrum asked.
The half-blood who had spoken before now nodded, echoing the name. “
The trader held his finger beneath the dollop of wax as he inquired, “Your booshway?”
“Hay-gent, In-gee-an hay-gent for all the mountains,” he said in a thick, barely understandable accent.
“If that don’t beat all,” Titus said with apparent relief that this special day would not be marred by the eruption of violence. “You hear that, Meldrum? Ol’ Broken Hand’s a’come the Injun agent out in these parts!”
“I heard tell of that last year, as I recollect,” the trader explained as he turned to the trapper. Then he looked back at the half-breed. “That ol’ white-headed boss of your’n sent this note to me?”
The half-breed nodded. “Is your name Meel-drum?”
“Close enough, it is.”
“Thomas Fitzpatrick write it for you,” the horseman declared. “You name on dis let-tair.”
Meldrum immediately turned over the folded paper. There it was, written in a strong hand.
He immediately flipped the folded paper over and dragged his index finger beneath the folds held down by that thick dollop of cracked and faded blue wax. Quickly he spread the paper with his hands, and his eyes danced over the neat swirls of ink made upon the foolscap. When he was done reading it in silence a third time, his lips moving soundlessly, Meldrum raised his eyes from the paper, gazing up at the older trapper.
“How you feel about making a journey with me, Titus Bass?”
He glanced at his wife, then asked, “What sort of journey?”
“South to Fort Laramie.”
“That’s where Fitzpatrick wrote you from?”
“Yes. You’ll come?”
“I … I dunno,” Scratch said. “Like I told you couple years back … last time I was there, I left ’thout good terms. Bordeau an’ some of his Frenchies—”
“That was long, long ago.” Meldrum interrupted. “I don’t even think Bordeau’s around anymore. ’Sides, you’ll be with me—I’m part of the company too.”
“Be with you?”
The trader nodded. “I want you to make this important journey with me.”
Despite Meldrum’s enthusiasm, it still didn’t sound all that good: the two of them riding off with these five half-breeds who might have been put up to some murder by an old antagonism. “Just you an’ me goin’?”
“Hell, no!” Meldrum exclaimed with his engaging smile, shaking that stiff sheet of wrinkled foolscap.
“I ain’t never trusted the Frenchies—”
“Them?” asked the trader. “They’ll be outnumbered all the way south.”
“Outnurnbered?”
He stuffed the paper inside his shirt and poured a little more brandy in their cups. “I’m s’posed to bring along the chiefs and headmen of the Crow nation: Pretty On Top, Flat Mouth, Falls Down, and young Stiff Arm, all of them comin’ with us. And more too.”
He wagged his head in deliberation, holding out his arm for his wife to come stand by his side. If the chiefs and headmen were coming along, then it made sense that his family could ride along with the delegation as well. Titus asked, “What in tarnation for?”
“Sounds of it, Fitzpatrick is callin’ in all the tribes to join him for talks at Laramie,” Meldrum said dramatically, patting the paper he had placed between the folds of his shirt. “Broken Hand says he’s gonna sit down with all them chiefs, and he’s gonna make ’em all smoke a pipe with their enemies.”
“Fitzpatrick figgers he’ll get all them war bands to make peace, one to the other?”
Meldrum nodded. “So I want you to come with the leaders of the Crow.”
Turning to Waits-by-the-Water, Scratch asked her, “You understand what Round Iron’s sayin’?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll go together?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Turning back to the trader, grinning, he said, “Looks like we’ll go see for ourselves if ol’ Broken Hand gonna make a good peace with all them bad cases. Now, pour me some more of that there booshway’s brandy—I got me a wedding to celebrate!”
He didn’t awaken until the early afternoon of the following day, his head pounding like a hammer on an anvil as the sun finally slipped in beneath the bottom of the upturned lodge cover, making his flesh hot and causing his head to swim. When he eventually sat up and opened his eyes, Titus realized there wasn’t much left in the lodge. Someone had come and stolen most everything that belonged to his wife. His wife—
“Waits?”
She bent to her knees and stuck her head under the rolled-up lodge cover. “You are awake? How is your head?”
“Pounding like a drum,” he moaned, cradling his temples in both hands.
“Little wonder,” she scolded him in Crow. “You stayed up most of the night dancing and singing and pounding on any drum someone would loan you.”
“Don’t talk so loud,” he growled. “I can hear you just fine if you’d talk softer.”
“Go back to sleep until you feel better,” she said with a giggle. “I have too much work to get done before we leave for me to sit and argue with a drinker man—”
“Leave?”
“With Round Iron and the chiefs,” Waits reminded.
“Oh … right,” and he remembered foggily. “When?”
“Tomorrow at sunrise. Before then, I have to finish packing what we will take along for the children, and leave the rest with Magpie.”
“M-Magpie, yes.” He remembered her wedding too. And for some reason, that really saddened him. “She … doesn’t live with us anymore.”
“She has a husband, and they have their own lodge now.”
“Are they going with us?”
“No,” she answered. “Turns Back and those war chiefs staying behind are leading the people into the mountains—the Baby Place,
“Right … the mountains,” he said as his head sank back onto the horsehair pillow. “The children’s footprint mountains, where the Little People live?”
“Yes. They might run into some of our holy friends, the Little People.”
Closing his eyes, Titus heard her shuffle off and felt himself drifting back into a blessed sleep. The idea of cool, shady mountains sounded damned good to him; at that moment he wasn’t so sure the air was moving at all. Heavy and hot. Maybe if he prayed right now the sacred Little People would answer by blowing with their breath,
