“N-no storm?” Sweete echoed.
Titus turned slowly in the saddle to peer behind them, wondering anew if perhaps he hadn’t really frozen to death in that ground blizzard, and had indeed ridden through that jagged opening between the world of mortal existence and the world of immortal and everlasting spirits the moment they put the storm behind them. Maybe this was only a part of the dream of death, the dream that came with a man’s passage from all that was to what would always be. Flea and the trail his son would take to lead them back to the rimrock, back to the place where Shad and Scratch had deposited their families before riding off to hunt buffalo, could be part of the death dream too. A place meant to confuse him into thinking he was still alive—when it was nothing but what his heart most fervently hoped at the moment he had died.
What he was now experiencing was nothing more than what he had been praying for in those moments before he had lumbered on through that ragged crack in the sky. At least the haunts and spirits of this cold land of after-death granted a man his final wish. Now he would see and hold his loved ones just one more time.
“Take us back to the others, Flea,” he said quietly, with no small degree of resignation that he had been swept up in something he could not understand. “Take us back.”
It was still dark when the rimrock loomed out of the night. What a good place to camp, he prided himself now. The westward-facing rock would have held the last of the sun’s warmth from the day, and once darkness fell the fire’s heat would radiate from the face of the cliff, warming the narrow hollow where the women were just beginning to unpack the horses when the men set off on their hunt. There, to the right, he spotted the first flicker of light against the face of the rim-rock—the dim dance of a fire. After the immense, bone-numbing darkness, after the absence of all light save for the subtle flicker of those frozen stars overhead, the reflection of that warm glow pulled him onward like the heat of her body as she always gave herself to him.
Shell Woman was apparently the first to hear their horses, even before Ghost and Digger did. She arose at the fire, turning, and moved in their direction. Wrapped in her blanket, she was only a few strides away from the horsemen when she noticed the bloodstained coat and that crude bandage of frozen green buffalo hide—and lunged to a halt beside Shadrach’s horse, her fingers in midair, hesitating to touch the thick wrapping.
“He said you’d know what to do,” Bass started to explain, then stilled his tongue when he realized Shell Woman didn’t understand much American, and he couldn’t speak any Cheyenne.
As soon as she had freed the yapping, eager dogs from their rope restraints, Waits-by-the-Water was hurrying his way, her eyes flicking from his face to Shadrach and back again. “I’m whole,” he said to her. “It’s Shad. Got took by some wolves.”
As he landed woodenly on the ground, she buried her face in his neck, wordlessly.
Having his arms around her again was like being home. But a thought scared him anew. Titus whispered against her hair, “Are you real?”
She pulled her face away from his chest, then tore off one of his mittens. Pitching it aside, she brought his hand to her cold cheek, where he could feel the tracks of hot moisture spilling from her eyes. “Can you feel how real I am?”
“I-I thought this all was … my death dream,” he whispered as he crushed her against him anew. “Dreaming of being back with you, when I was really froze to death out there in the dark.”
“You won’t see your death dream for many, many seasons to come,” she assured him with a sob.
Nearby, Sweete was clumsily attempting to twist himself around in the saddle.
“Wait, Shad,” Bass ordered as he tore himself away from his wife. “I’ll come help you an’ Shell Woman.”
As Titus pulled the big man out of his frozen saddle, he grunted, “Flea, get the meat off the packhorse. Give it to your sister. You build up the fire while Magpie cuts off some meat to roast for us. We ain’t et … not in a long time.”
Without a word of reply from either of them, Flea and Magpie went to work as Waits hurried away to fetch her parfleche filled with roots and leaves, spores and spiders’ webs.
The moment she and Bass had Shadrach lowered to the ground at the side of the crackling fire, Shell Woman tenderly kissed her husband on the forehead. Her tears glistened on both cheeks, narrow, shimmering streams tracing the roundness of her cheeks as she turned away from the flickering light and went to search among her own baggage.
With a painful sigh, Shad began to talk to her in Cheyenne. Back and forth they spoke in low tones. Scratch figured Sweete was explaining to her what had happened with the wolves, how they fought off the beasts, and Bass’s attempt to stem the flow of blood. On the far side of the fire little Jackrabbit sat up among the mounds of blankets and robes, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his tiny hands. Though he made not a sound, his mother leaned over and whispered to him. The boy nodded, his eyes fixed on Sweete, as if realizing that something grave was occurring before his wide eyes, which were taking in everything. Patting the blankets where the small boy sat, Waits called to the two dogs. Digger and Ghost trotted over and lay down by Jackrabbit, protectively.
After she had set two small kettles of water over the fire, Waits carried her parfleche of medicinals to a bare spot beside the wounded man. Magpie quietly worked her knife down into the frozen meat, carving off thin hunks she hung from sharpened sticks at the edge of those flames young Flea was feeding with twigs he had broken off of the deadwood dragged into their campsite.
“You get me something lean back on, Scratch?” Shad asked.
He pulled over some prairie saddles and a canvas-wrapped bundle, shoving the bundle against Sweete’s back. As the big man slowly eased backward, the saddles kept the bundle from sliding under his weight. Titus knelt beside Waits-by-the-Water at Shad’s right side, opposite Shell Woman.
“Help her,” Sweete asked. “G’won an’ cut this damn hide off my arm.”
One by one Scratch sliced through the stiff, narrow strips of frozen hide he had tied around the long section of skin he had bound around the gory wound. All around the edges of the crude bandage Shad’s coat was ragged, torn, and blackened with frozen blood. Stiffened, bloody fragments of his cotton shirtsleeve and the faded red-wool longhandles feathered up around the frozen edges of the buffalo hide.
When Shell Woman began to open a large, painted rawhide box she had placed on the ground beside her husband, Scratch asked Shad, “She gonna take it off?”
“Says she won’t, not till it’s soft.”
“That water she’s heating?”
Sweete nodded, his face drained of color. “I’m afeared this’s gonna hurt something fierce.”
“Only way to get her medicine on them cuts is to get that bandage off.”
“You stopped the bleeding, you beautiful son of a bitch,” Sweete whispered as he looked up with moist eyes. “You kept me from dying.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he answered reluctantly. “I just done what you asked me—get you to Shell Woman. She’s gotta mend you now.”
Without a word, Sweete let his head rock back against the bundle and closed his eyes once more. Several minutes later Waits carried the first kettle over to the Cheyenne woman. Then she handed Sweete’s wife a tin cup. From her rawhide box Shell Woman dug out some powders she sprinkled on the surface of the steamy kettle. Next she produced some dried roots, which she rubbed between her palms over the water, fragments and dust from the roots spilling into the kettle as she murmured over and over again a fervent prayer.
After dipping her bare finger into the hot water, Shell Woman nodded to her husband and scooped out a cupful. Positioning it over the frozen, rock-hard buffalo hide, she continued to whisper her prayers while she began to slowly dribble the hot water onto the stiffened skin. As the tiny, delicate stream of water steamed onto the arm and into Shad’s lap, she closed her eyes.
At the far side of the fire Flea was making noise as he broke apart limbs and branches to feed the fire that was holding back both the frightening cold and the terrifying darkness. Titus signaled his son to stop, gesturing at the Cheyenne woman. The youngster understood the gravity of the ceremony.
For what seemed like the longest time as the cold stars swirled overhead and the Seven Sisters traveled at least a fourth of their journey across the sky, Shell Woman poured one hot cup of water after another on the buffalo hide. From time to time she would turn Shadrach’s arm slightly, to moisten another part of the frozen skin. When she had scooped out the last of the water from the first kettle, she asked for the second container and prepared that kettle by crumbling dried roots and leaves into the steamy water, all without any interruption to her monotonous, repeated prayers.
Eventually Titus heard the scrape of the tin cup across the bottom of that second empty vessel. Shell Woman
