for a few days, he thought as he dropped to the grass in a patch of shade near the lodge, watching Waits and Magpie dragging their few belongings through the lodge door.
“Jackrabbit! Come over here to your father!” he called out in Crow.
The boy clambered into his lap and sat.
“You stay here with me,” he told his son. “Where you won’t be in the way of those women. Always best for a man to stand back and stay completely out of the way when a woman is at work. This is a good lesson for a boy to learn.”
As Jackrabbit slid off his father’s lap and laid his head down on Titus’s thigh, Scratch leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes.
Here at the springs they were more than halfway to the Yellowstone from Bridger’s post. They could afford to rest here before they marched on to find Yellow Belly’s Crow, who wouldn’t cross the Yellowstone and start south until the weather began to cool. Until then, the hunting bands would stay north, perhaps as far away as the Judith or the Musselshell, on the prowl for buffalo and wary of the Blackfoot. Time enough to be pushing on before the cold arrived. For now the second summer was hanging on—
“Popo!” Flea called excitedly as he rode up on the bare back of his claybank.
Titus immediately came out of his sleep, raising Jackrabbit’s head as he started to slip out from under the small boy. Magpie and Waits sat in the shade of the lodge cover, watching. “Trouble?” he asked.
Flea watched his father reach around for the rifle he had propped against the tree. “No trouble … I think.”
“What did you wake me up for?” He blinked as he stepped into the intense sunlight.
“Someone is staying near the creek.”
Alarm troubled his belly. “Indian?”
His head bobbed. “But they have no lodge. Only a small shelter made of branches and blankets.”
“How many?” he asked as he came to his son’s knee. A branch-and-blanket shelter sounded like a war lodge, a horse-stealing party on its way into enemy country.
“I don’t think there are many of them. I only saw three horses grazing nearby.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”
“How did you find this shelter?”
He patted the claybank beneath him. “I heard a horse whistle. My pony heard it too and asked me if we should go see. I thought we should go because we didn’t know anyone else was camped close to us.”
“You were careful?” he asked, then whistled low for the dogs. “Did you see if you were followed?”
Flea nodded. “I watched my back trail carefully.”
“Where is this shelter and the three horses?”
Turning to point as the two dogs bounded out of the brush, the boy said, “Over that low ridge, where the stream makes a slow circle at the base of the hill.”
“Our horses are safe?”
“Yes, Popo. I brought them back from the water and put them out to graze on the other side of that willow.”
He looked downstream at the bottom of the hill where the sun glared brightly on the rustling leaves. “I see them now. Good. Magpie?”
She poked her head from the lodge. “You need me?”
“Come help me tie up the dogs so they will stay here with you and your mother.”
When Ghost and Digger were secured at the ends of their tethers, and he had knotted a bandanna around each muzzle to keep them quiet, Scratch turned to his son and asked, “Flea, can you take me to look at this shelter you found?”
“Come up with me and I will take you.” The boy patted the back of his horse.
Titus retrieved two pistols and stuffed them in his belt before he handed his son the rifle, then bounded onto the rear flanks of the claybank pony. Once he had scooted forward against the boy, Scratch took back his rifle. He looped his left arm around Flea’s waist and said, “Let’s go see who these strangers are.”
They left the claybank tied in a clump of alder, then scrambled up the side of the hill at an angle. Scratch followed his boy to just below the top, then they both dropped to their bellies and crawled on up to the crest. At the top he peered down at the narrow creek, unable to find the shelter at first. Eventually he spotted a patch of what looked to be greasy, smoke-darkened canvas in the midst of a large stand of eight-foot-tall willow.
“Where are the three horses?” he whispered.
“On the other side,” Flea said. “You come around the hill, that way, and you see them.”
“Tied up?”
He nodded. “Long ropes.”
“Saddles?”
This time Flea shook his head. “I saw no saddles. White man or Indian.”
“But you saw the horses, son. What tribe are these strangers?”
“Don’t know, Popo.”
“Any weapons hanging outside?” he asked. “Shield or medicine bundle?”
“No. I saw nothing.” He grew thoughtful a moment, then told his father, “It is a poor camp, no signs of wealth. Maybe we leave them alone, and they won’t bother us too.”
“Can’t take that chance, Rea. With us camped just over the hill at the springs, these strangers are too close. Best to know who your neighbors are.”
Titus slid backward, then rolled onto his hip and sat up, pulling the first pistol from his belt. Handing it to the boy, he said, “Here. You know how to use this if you need to?”
“I remember.”
“Good. I want you at my back when we walk in there.”
When they reached the bank of the narrow creek opposite the shelter, Bass saw how much thought had gone into placing the structure where it was all but concealed, except from straight on. It had all the signs of an old camp: footpaths tracking upstream and down, all the grass around the stand of willow trampled by moccasins if not hooves, and a small portion of the sharp cutbank worn down by the strangers as they knelt while dipping water from the stream. He was certain this wasn’t a war lodge—a shelter hastily constructed for one night’s sleep as a war party walked or rode deep into enemy country. No, from the signs of things, this trio of strangers had been here for some time and didn’t appear to be in a rush to leave.
“We’ll wait here and see how many are inside,” he whispered to the boy. “If all three strangers are here, I will need to send you back for your bow. But if only one of them sleeps inside, we are in no danger with our three guns.”
“We just wait?”
He looked at his son. “Patience is something good for all young men to learn.”
Minutes later Flea whispered close to his father’s ear, “Were you very different from me when you were my age?”
Grinning, he tousled his son’s long, black hair and said, “Boys are the same, no matter where they grow up, no matter if they Crow like you, or a white boy like I was.”
“Sometimes I think that I will never grow up to be as good a man as you,” Flea confessed.
“That’s where you are wrong,” he said in a hush, deeply touched by the honor in his son’s words.
In exasperation, the boy said, “But you know all these things that I don’t think I ever will know.”
“I suppose I make you feel that way because I try to teach you all that I have learned—to help you understand all those things I did not understand. I want to give you my hand in growing into a man, the help that I did not have. So, I am sorry if I have not been a good and gentle father to you. Sorry if I tell you that you should learn patience … then I am not patient with you myself.”
“You have been a very good father,” Flea responded, his eyes filled with respect. “Maybe there are times when it is hard to be my father.”
Laying his hand on the boy’s shoulder, Titus whispered, “I will try better to remember that there are times it is difficult to be my son—”
“Look!” Flea whispered harshly.
