“Maybeso, not in your lifetime?”
Young finally nodded. “Perhaps not in my lifetime, yes. But just as Moses led his Israelites to the Promised Land but could not cross over, this might not be revealed to me before I close my eyes and take my final breath … then stand at the foot of the throne of God, when all things will finally be revealed to me.”
Titus sighed, “Some things just meant to be a … a mystery, Preacher.”
“Mystery, you say?”
In the tongs Bass held up the small hoop of iron that had lost all its crimson glow. Suspended between the two of them. The anointed Prophet and the dirt-ignorant old trapper. “Most ever’ kind of folk I come to know out here—man, an’ woman too—they figger what they can’t wrap their minds around ain’t for ’em to unnerstand.”
“But God has clearly shown mankind that He wants us to understand.”
“Where’s this hoop start, Preacher?”
“Why—clearly at the end you curved in.”
“Did your own hoop start when you was born?”
“My … hoop?” he asked with the sort of smile one would wear when answering the questions of a young child.
For a moment Scratch considered how best to explain that simple concept to this self-assured preacher. “The long journey your own spirit takes—ain’t it like a hoop? You’re born, live your life good as you can, then you die. So did your own hoop start when you was born?”
Young cleared his throat and reflected. “Certainly … no, it didn’t. My spirit yearned for a place among God’s faithful and chosen people at this very time in history.”
“You’re saying you was somewhere else on this hoop when you was born?”
“I don’t understand your point, Mr. Bass—”
“An’ where will you be on the hoop when you die and stand before the throne of your God?”
It was indeed a hot midsummer day—nonetheless the Prophet’s brow was sweating a little too much for a man who was doing nothing to physically exert himself.
Titus asked again, holding the iron band slightly higher, “Where will you be?”
“When I die I will be in heaven with all God’s faithful saints. Right where you can be if you accept His revealed word.”
“So you do got a beginning and an end, Preacher?”
“As do all God’s creatures.”
“Me too? A ignernt Gentile like me?”
“Yes.”
Bass lowered the hoop. “How ’bout my Injun wife and our young’uns?”
“Yes, they have a glorious end in paradise once they accept the teachings of God.” Young smiled again, as if beginning to feel more at ease.
“You take this here circle,” Titus began, gazing at that iron hoop, “why, this here’s my life, preacher. Just like my coming out here to the mountains was a part of the journey. No beginning an’ no end.”
“But in death—”
“When I die, my body goes back to the earth, don’t it?”
“That’s the way of all mortal clay, yes.”
“But my spirit goes on,” he said quietly. “Like the earth and sky. That don’t die, does it, Preacher?”
Young corrected, “Your soul goes to live with God in His heavenly paradise prepared for us.”
“I don’t want my soul—my spirit—to go nowhere,” he said with grave intensity. “I want it to stay right here where I been the happiest I ever could be.”
“There’s far more happiness in heaven with the rest of the faithful souls—”
“Maybe for you an’ your Saints, but for me I don’t wanna be nowhere but here with these rocks and sky, here with the ones I hold in my heart. There ain’t no other heaven, no other paradise for me to be in for all time.”
“I … see,” Young stated, then dragged a single fingertip along his upper lip beaded with tiny diamonds of sweat. “Elders—we see how the Holy Spirit can only speak to a man if his ears are not plugged.”
“It ain’t that my ears are plugged,” Titus replied. “I s’pose I just hear a differ’nt voice than you heard, Preacher.”
Throwing his shoulders back self-confidently, Young said, “The devil himself can whisper in your ear, Mr. Bass. What has that evil voice you hear been saying to you?”
“It said I don’t need no other man to tell me what I need to hear, to see what I need to see.”
“Then you will not trust to the word of God revealed through his chosen Prophet?”
“Who’s telling me it’s the word of God?”
He spread his hand upon his chest, “Why, those men God has anointed as His spokesmen here on earth—in the way of prophets, the way it has been since the earliest days of man on this earth.”
“The earth was here first? An’ the sky too?”
“Of course,” Young agreed.
“Then that’s the way it must be for me too,” Bass admitted. “If the earth an’ the sky was here first, they’ll be here through the end of time. I want my spirit to last as long. The way I seen how Injuns look at all there is around ’em. Makes more sense to me than all your glory an’ Thummin’ an’ your angel Moroni blowin’ his horn.”
“He announces the coming of the—”
“I hear my God speak to me good enough in a whisper, Preacher.”
Young worked his lower jaw around several times as if chewing on the words he was considering giving voice, but finally said with great finality, “So be it, Mr. Bass. Many times in our troubled past we have been told by God that not all men will hear His call. Some have their ears plugged to God’s glory.” He sighed and started to shamble around the anvil, his bearded jaw jutting. “Here on the doorstep to Zion—I am once more reminded that we cannot save everyone, my brothers. Even these simplest lambs lost forever in the eternal wilderness.”
Bass watched the Prophet and his Apostles turn aside and shuffle off toward the store. He plunged the iron hoop into the water. This time it barely raised a hiss or a bubble; it had cooled as he held it out before him in the tongs. Then he looked up to watch their backs as they stepped past Waits, each of them in turn touching the brim of their hats before they disappeared, one by one, absorbed by the shadows of that doorway. She turned and got to her feet, pushing a wisp of hair back from her damp brow, tucking it beneath that hair, which was pulled into one of her braids as she started his way.
“Ti-tuzz,” Waits said as she ducked into the shade of the low awning of tree branches suspended above his blacksmith shop. “Your face is troubled.”
It took him a moment to put his mind on the Crow she spoke at him, his head swollen with matters most heavenly … bringing his thoughts back to the temporal present. With a clatter he laid the hoop and tongs upon the anvil and let her step inside his damp, gritty arms.
“These men,” she said with her cheek against his neck, “they are not like any of your kind ever come out here before.”
“You are right,” he replied softly in Crow. “This is a whole new breed of horse. Not trappers, not even stiff- necked traders with their whiny ways. No, this is a high-nosed breed, woman.”
“They are not staying here at Blanket Chief’s lodge?” she asked, using her tribe’s appellation for Bridger. “They will be gone soon?”
“A few days at the most, then they will go on to a new country they are looking for.”
“Will they turn north, or south? Or go on far to the west where Blanket Chief says the trail people always go—toward the sun’s resting place?”
“No, these are not going on to the place the others go,” he explained. “This new breed is turning south from here to find the land their god has picked out for them.”
“It is good for them,” she said with a soft smile. “The First Maker has picked out a place for every people to be. He gave the Crow the very best place.”
He smiled too at his mind’s image of an old friend. “I remember Rotten Belly telling me how Crow country was in just the right place: to the north the winters were too cold; to the south the summers were too long; to the west were enemies and the mountains were too tall; while to the east the water was not good.”
“Was Arapooesh right?”
He combed his fingers along one of her braids wrapped in sleek otter skin and peered down into her eyes. “I
