“Man needs to get out, breathe the air,” Titus explained. “See some new country, a far land, just like the ol’ days, Shadrach.”
Sweete drew in a long, deep breath of the chill air as some sage grouse whirred away from their path. “How—how long you figger can a man hold on to the old days, Scratch?”
He thought for but a moment, then reflected, “Just as long as that man dares to hold on, my friend. Long as he dares to hold on.”
SEVEN
A long and muddy spring greened the prairie, short and hardy shoots uplifting beneath the aching blue of a sky that went on and on across those days while their tiny group plodded west through the stark and barren Red Desert so briefly aflower with a palette of heady color. The water in the streams and creeklets was poor for many days, laced with bitter salts, forcing them to search out hidden, bubbling springs or even fields of boulders where rain might be trapped in tiny pools. Most mornings the women found a thin crust of ice coating what water they had managed to collect in their brass kettles—the only sign they had begun their climb over the Continental Divide in crossing this austere and desolate stretch of country.
Eventually they reached the banks of the fabled Green River, lying by for two days while the horses ate their fill of the new short-grass and everyone soaked in those cold, legendary waters. After crossing the river, they struck west-northwest, following Black’s Fork as it meandered through a country of red and yellow bluffs, and spent the next night where Ham’s Fork poured in, camping in that verdant V of meadow formed by those two tributaries of the Green, here where the free men and fur brigades had gathered to celebrate the height of summer, eighteen and thirty-four.
While supper bubbled in the kettles that twilight at the fire, Titus called his long-legged daughter to come sit upon his knee.
“I grow so tall now, Popo,” she protested in English, standing before him. “Magpie not fit so good now.”
“You’ll always fit on your father’s knee,” he scolded as he patted his thigh again. “Come sit, girl.”
Waits-by-the-Water got to her feet at the far side of the fire, shifted her new shawl about her shoulders, and said, “Sit, because your father wants to tell you a story.”
“I listen too?” Flea asked, scratching Digger’s head. The dog had his muzzle laid on the boy’s leg.
He nodded at the youngster. “I think it’s good you listen to my story about Magpie.”
She leaned back a little against her father’s arm so she could gaze at her father’s wrinkled face. “A story about me?”
“Yes, daughter. You got your name right here at this place.”
Quickly peering down at the ground Magpie asked, “This spot?”
“Yonder, just across the river,” he explained and pointed. “Your mother and me, we were camped on upstream some. This here is named Black’s Fork.”
“Color of war, Popo?” Flea inquired.
“Black is the color of war—but I figger it was given a man’s name, son. Not for war.”
As Ghost followed her, Waits stepped around the edge of the fire pit, one hand on a hip and the other clutching a brass ladle. “This place, long ago, your father promise he teach you and me speak his white man talk, teach us together.”
For a moment, Titus gazed up at Shadrach, who stood nearby. “Near as I recollect, ronnyvoo of thirty-four was the last doin’s where I got likkered on John Barleycorn something bad. Paid heavy for it too. But it were a time I drunk my fill with a old friend I wasn’t ever to see again.”
“He a free man, or skin trapper like me?” Sweete asked.
“Neither. English. Jarrell Thornbrugh—a real John Bull of a Englisher.”
“Hudson’s Bay man?”
“By damn if he wasn’t” Titus replied, growing wistful. “Last time I laid eyes on him was right here in this valley. That’s back to a time when them Britishers was dispatchin’ a small brigade out to our ronnyvoo, for to keep a eye on us Americans. But, I never see’d Jarrell after thirty-four.”
Flea asked, “He not come back? Not to mountains?”
His eyes landed on his son sitting nearby. “No. Jarrell died two years arter I last saw him. Others said he was took by some croup-sick or the ague. That’s a wet and muggy country out there. I went, once. Long ago it was. This air, dry the way it is, keeps a man safe from the ague.” He lowered his eyes and wagged his head. “Jarrell was a better man than to die in bed. Such is for cowards and sick ol’ men—to die in bed. A good man like him, a brave warrior never lives forever. Only the rocks and sky live long, children. Only the rocks and sky.”
“Tell story of Magpie’s name,” Flea asked as he sashayed up beside his father’s vacant knee and plopped on the ground at Bass’s feet.
“Well, now—that’s where I was headin’ in the first place.” Scratch cleared his throat, remembering a precious and bygone heartbeat of time. “That summer night it seemed like the whole of the world held its breath, just for my baby girl.”
He went on to tell Magpie how it was that ever since they had arrived at that long-ago rendezvous of the white traders and fur trappers, the infant had taken to chattering more with every day—a happy, cheerful babble. “And for your mother, it was not an easy day to wait.”
“Wait?” Magpie asked.
“To learn your name,” he answered, winking at his wife. “She’s never been a patient sort, young’uns.”
“I was patient to wait for you,” she protested from across the fire.
“Damn glad you did.” Then he looked back into his daughter’s eyes, close as they were to his, and magnetically intent upon his every word now. “I sat by a fire, just like this’un, Magpie. Had you on my lap, just like I got you sitting right now. With the Apsaluuke, you know that menfolk are to name their young’uns, right?”
She nodded eagerly. “A name is a special gift, yes.”
“Your mother’d been after me for some time to give our first child a name.”
Magpie nodded. “Long time ago I was born in Mateo’s lodge in Ta-house.”
“So that evening I tol’t your mother you’d allays had a name.”
“Magpie was always mine?”
“Only took me a while to figure it out, daughter,” he admitted with a shrug. “The Creator—the Grandfather Above your mother’s people call First Maker—He was waiting for us to find out what name He’d already give you.”
Confusion crossed her face. “So my Popo did not name me?”
“I s’pose I did, but I had some help from First Maker too, because I got it wrong three times.”
“Three names you tried to give her?” Flea inquired as Shell Woman handed her young son to an enthralled Shadrach, who sat spellbound, listening to the story with the youngster.
“First I thought your name was Little Red Calf,” Titus explained. “You was just like a li’l buffler calf when they’re first born—all red and wrinkled up. But, wasn’t long an’ you changed—wasn’t red no more. So my mind come up with Spring Calf Woman, since you was born in the spring.”
Magpie’s eyes squinted up a bit. “But in the spring, calves turn yellow.”
“That’s right—because your hair ain’t rightly black like your mother’s.”
She lifted a handful of her own to inspect it.
“I have a sister got yellow hair,” Titus continued. “Yellow as the bright sun. One of my brothers too. You won’t never have yellow hair like them, but I did once’t—an’ I give you a little of that color afore you was born.”
“But Magpie never had no yellow hair,” Shad pressed, “so, what’d you name her for a third go at it?”
“Cricket,” he said in English. “For all them happy sounds she made as a baby … but by the time we got here to ronnyvoo, I had me a strong feeling that wasn’t the name either. I was starting to get worrisome: three tries an’ I’d got it wrong all those times.”
“Then Grandfather Above told you?” Magpie said, tugging gently on the front of his faded calico shirt.
