grip, Scratch reached up with both hands and pulled Sweete’s face down to his, promptly planting a wet kiss on both of Shadrach’s cheeks.
“Damn, but it’s good to see you too, Titus Bass,” Sweete said in a husky whisper laden with deep emotion.
For a long moment there, Scratch could not speak. He hadn’t expected to be choked up this way with the reunion. Finally he said, “Was told up to the fort you was down here with Gray Thunder’s bunch. Knowed sometime back that you run off to the blanket with these here no-good Cheyennes.”
Sweete looped a muscular arm over Bass’s shoulder. “Pray tell, when you hear of that?”
“Can’t recollect if it were someone right here at Fort William or not,” he replied, a little aggravated that he couldn’t scratch up the proper notion. “Or, maybe it were on up the Arkansas at Fisher’s pueblo.”
Sweete waved for the young woman to move in their direction. “What’d they tell you ’bout me?”
“Said you was lookin’ to scare up some folks to take you in when Vaskiss and Sublette folded and closed down their fort on the South Platte. Said you was fixin’ to head out for to find a band of Cheyenne where you ended up takin’ a shine to a gal.”
“This here’s that gal,” Sweete announced, strong affection in his voice. “Titus—want you to meet Shell Woman.”
“Shell Woman.” Scratch bobbed his head in recognition.
“She knows her name in American talk,” Shad explained. “Ciphers more an’ more American talk all the time. Most times I call her Toote.”
“Toote?”
Shad smiled toothily. “Like them Frenchies say:
Nodding his head to the pretty woman, Bass said, “Toote it is.”
Dropping to one knee, Titus asked, “This li’l pup your’n?”
Quickly scooping the child off the ground and cradling her in his big arms, Shadrach said, “This here li’l doe- eyed gal is my daughter, Pipe Woman.”
“She is a purty one, Shad,” Bass agreed. “Good thing she takes after her mama, ol’ coon. Ugly a nigger as you are, I don’t figger you’d be a man to throw good-lookin’ young’uns.”
“Shit, look who’s talkin’ ugly!” Sweete growled, then turned to Shell Woman and spoke quickly in Cheyenne before she turned away. “My darlin’ baby here was born year ago last winter. And I want you to see my boy—he’s older’n my girl. I sent the woman to fetch him.”
“Jehoshaphat! You got two young’uns?” Scratch cried. “Been keeping that poor woman heavy with child, ain’cha?”
The proud radiance on Shad’s face drained to a look of pained sympathy. “When Shell Woman give birth to the girl here—she had her a long, hard fight of it. From that day on she said she knowed something tore inside her, knowed she’d never have ’nother child after the girl. I allays wanted more young’uns when it came my time to settle down …” A look of quiet resignation came over him. “These two—why, they be all any father could pray for—”
Bursting from the lodge door toddled a small boy, somewhat lighter skinned than his baby sister, but every bit as black-headed as their mother. He sprinted across the icy snow, his small capote slurring the snowy ground as his tiny legs pumped him toward his father. Reaching Shadrach, the child flung his arms around his father’s leg and clamped on fiercely.
“He was still sleepin’ when I left to take my piss in the brush,” Sweete explained. With one of his big hands, he gently turned the boy’s head so the boy was looking up at the stranger. After saying something in Cheyenne to the child, Shad told Bass, “This here’s High-Backed Bull. He’s allays been a cantankerous sort if’n he don’t get his way.”
“Some young’uns just like that.”
“But, his mother an’ me can usual’ calm him when he gets real excitable,” Sweete said. Then Sweete gazed directly at Bass. “You just come down from the north country?”
“Afore last fall.”
“What you hear of Bridger up that way?”
Scratch smiled at the remembrance. “You an’ him … allays was best of friends.”
“You’re the best friend a man could have too, Titus Bass,” Shad admitted.
“Still, I reckon you an’ Gabe allays will be best friends since’t you come out west with Ashley together,” Scratch explained. “Back then both of you ’bout as young and green as they come.”
“Jim, he was seventeen in twenty-five,” Sweete reminisced.
“An’ you was a big lad for fifteen … seems how you told me that story a hunnert times if you told me once’t!”
Shad tousled his boy’s hair and inquired, “Didn’t you reach the mountains in twenty-five?”
“Yep—come out on my own,” Scratch reflected. “Prob’ly come close to starvin’ half a dozen times afore three fellas run onto me and showed me the way the stick floats—”
“Why the hell didn’t I think afore!” Shad exclaimed. “You come outta Crow country alone? Or, you bring your woman and young’uns?”
“They all come with me,” Bass explained. “Never gonna go much of anywhere ’thout them now. Was too long out west to steal some Mexican horses in Californy—ain’t gonna stay away from my kin nowhere near that long again.”
“Stole Mex horses, did you?”
“OF Solitaire, Peg-Leg, passel of others—some good men, others awready turned snake-bellied thieves,” Scratch declared.
“You tell me all about it tonight over some elk?”
“That mean you’re inviting me for dinner?”
Sweete shook his head. “Naw. I figgered to invite Waits-by-the-Water for dinner, have your family meet mine … so I figger you’ll be tagging along anyways.”
Balling up a fist, he started to hurl his arm at his tall friend, but Shadrach caught the fist in his huge paw. “Best you save your energy, ol’ man—’stead of throwing punches at me! Gray as you got in these last few winters, time sure has to be gnawin’ at your heels.”
“How long’s it been, Shadrach—since we last see’d each other?”
“Was it them last sad ronnyvoo days back to forty?”
“Maybeso it’s been that long,” Bass admitted after a moment. “No matter how many year it was, allays too long to go ’thout seein’ good friends.”
“Companyeros from the shinin’ times.” Sweete laid his hand on Bass’s shoulder.
“Them was glory days, Shadrach,” he whispered with an anguished remembrance. “Them really was our glory days.”
*
*
THREE
Shad Sweete passed the pipe to Titus Bass and asked, “How come you won’t wait till green-up afore you push on north?”
“Wanna be in Crow country by summer,” Scratch replied. “I lollygag around these parts with you till spring, why—summer gonna be over time I reach Yellowstone country.”
As Titus brought the pipestem to his lips and sucked in that warm and heady smoke of Shad’s tobacco smoldering in the redstone pipebowl, he glanced over at his wife as she gently rocked the sleeping Jackrabbit in her lap. Magpie and Flea were already lying back-to-back between their parents, curled up beneath a blanket, eyes closed to the crimson light flutting against the inside of the buffalo-hide lodge cover. Swaying shadows climbed with
