Crack in the Sky tb-3

by Terry C. Johnston

  “What became of your chief?”

  “Big Hair was killed in a fight with the Blackfoot,” the man-woman explained just as the tall warrior came to a halt and his expressive eyes measured the white man. Bird in Ground continued, “The new chief of our people … is Arapooesh.”

  “Ara … Arapooesh,” Bass repeated, then took off his mitten and held out his hand.

  For a moment the chief looked down at it, then seized Bass’s wrist in his hand, and they shook, gripping one another’s forearms. The tall man had a warm and genuinely disarming smile.

  “Ti-tuzz Bazz,” Bird in Ground explained the white man’s name.

  After repeating the foreign sounds for himself, Arapooesh pointed at the fur cap pulled so far down over Bass’s head it reached clear to the eyebrows, hung below his ears on both sides. He said something so rapidly to Bird in Ground that Scratch was able to follow none of it.

  “Arapooesh asked if you had a long trip. If you stayed warm.”

  “Yes, I stayed warm,” Bass replied, wondering how much of that answer was the truth. “Tell your chief why I am here.”

  Bird in Ground asked, “The horse thieves?”

  “Thieves?” Arapooesh echoed.

  “Yes,” the Crow man-woman told the chief. “The white man followed the men who stole his horses. Their trail led him to our camp.”

  “The horse thieves came here?”

  Bird in Ground nodded, his eyes narrowing. “I know the ones, Arapooesh. I saw them return this morning after they were gone many days. They brought two ponies and the white man’s strange horse with them.”

  “Strange horse?” Arapooesh asked.

  “Half-a-horse,” the Crow man-woman attempted to explain.

  “Ahh, I have seen some of those,” and then the chief studied Bass a moment more. “Are you a friend of Bird in Ground?”

  And the Crow man quickly responded, “Yes, he is a friend of mine.”

  “No,” Arapooesh snapped, his eyes coming back to Scratch. “I asked the white man.”

  “I am Bird in Ground’s friend.”

  “Are you a friend of the Crow?” asked the chief.

  For a moment he thought, then said, “I am the friend of all Crow who do not steal from me. I am friend of all Crow who have honor.”

  The chief seemed to measure the heft of those words, then replied, “My people like horses very much. Sometimes we find horses, we take them for our own—”

  “I have never done a thing to hurt the Crow,” Bass interrupted angrily.

  “This is a good man, Arapooesh,” Bird in Ground explained. “He listens to our people talk and tries to understand. He even tries to understand about a woman who was born in this man’s body.”

  As Arapooesh regarded Bass, he scratched his smooth, plucked chin and finally said, “Tell me, Bird in Ground … tell me the names of the men who stole the white man’s horses.”

  Clearing his throat, plainly nervous, the man-woman toed the snow before him and eventually spoke the names of the five he believed were the raiders.

  Arapooesh’s eyes narrowed with concern. “You are certain?”

  “These are the five I saw come to camp this morning with the two ponies and the half horse.”

  “But,” Arapooesh said, wagging his head, “these are not …”

  “They stole from the white man. They stole from the man who is my friend. Stole from one who has done no wrong to our people.”

  As he drank in a deep breath, his chest swelling in contemplation, the chief finally turned away to raise his voice over the crowd. “I call for these five to come here so that I may talk to them: Red Leggings, Comes Inside the Door, Crow Shouting, Sees the Star, and … and Pretty On Top.”

  As several voices in the crowd took up the cry, echoing those five names and shouting the chiefs command through the village, the rest in the great throng started to murmur and whisper. Just when Bass was coming to believe that the five would not dare show their faces, the crowd parted in a rush of noisy excitement. Through that widening gap stepped the five.

  Titus blinked his eyes, recognizing the tall, thick curl heavily greased and pinned atop one of the thieves’ heads. He was Hannah’s tormentor.

  Suddenly seething all the way to the soles of his feet, Scratch started to lunge forward—then stopped abruptly. Shocked: for the first time looking closely at the five, into the faces of those horse thieves, into the eyes of these … boys.

  He whipped around on Bird in Ground, flushing with sudden rage. “W-what is this!” he sputtered in English, then asked in that foreign tongue. “These are boys!”

  “Boys,” the chief repeated in Crow as the five came to a stop near Arapooesh, eyeing the white man suspiciously. “Yes, they are boys.”

  “We are men now,” disputed the one with the tall greased curl on his head.

  Bird in Ground sneered. “You are men because you stole three horses from one white man?”

  “Three was all he had,” said another of the youngsters, then laughed with the rest.

  “So you did take this man’s horses?” Arapooesh asked, silencing them.

  Perhaps believing that he had good reason to boast, the one with the curl said, “We went out to steal horses, Arapooesh. We stole some and brought them back to our camp.”

  “But you stole a lone man’s horses!” Bird in Ground protested.

  The curled one snorted, “I will not be talked to like this by a creature who has a manhood between his legs but does not want to be a man!”

  As swiftly as a camp robber swoops down to raid the meat-drying racks, Bird in Ground lunged forward and smacked his flat hand across the youth’s face. “Pretty On Top!” he shrieked. “I am a person of honor … one who is strong enough to kill you with my bare hands!”

  Arapooesh stepped between Bird in Ground and the youngster as Pretty On Top started for the man-woman. “There will be no fighting between my people today.”

  “No woman talks to a warrior like this—”

  “You are not a warrior!”

  Again the youngster leaped for Bird in Ground, his hands thrashing like claws ripping the air.

  But Arapooesh restrained him. “What he says is true, Pretty On Top. You are not a warrior.”

  Wounding crossed his face: Pretty On Top slowly brought the fingers of one hand up to touch the bright-red mark on his cheek where he had been slapped. But it was plain that his feelings suffered more pain than had his flesh. “How will you ever call me a warrior, or how will any man ever ask me to come along on a scalp raid … if you won’t even consider me a man when I steal a white man’s horses.”

  “The white man,” Arapooesh started to explain, “he is not our enemy.”

  “Ever since the first white men came to our country,” Pretty On Top argued, “our people have stolen their horses.”

  Sees the Star agreed, his head bobbing. “The Crow have never killed a white man.”

  “You will never steal from this man!” Bird in Ground demanded.

  Pretty On Top snorted with laughter. “Is this white man your … husband?”

  Some of the young people in the crowd sniggered behind their hands.

  Bird in Ground’s cheeks flushed with anger. “Little boys like you will never understand the ways of a real man,” he declared, putting his face up close to the youth’s, “because you will never grow up to become a man.”

  This time the tall adolescent swung his arm back, ready to slap the older man, when his wrist was suddenly caught in the trapper’s mitten.

  “That’s right. You’re no man yet,” Bass grunted in Crow as he pushed the strong youth’s arm down, “because a man would never strike a friend.”

  Pretty On Top seized the wrist of the hand the white man had clamped on him, and for a moment they glared into one another’s eyes. “You are no friend of mine!” And he tried to fling Bass’s arm aside.

  Instead, Scratch slowly released his grip. “I am a friend of the Crow. I am a friend to all men o
f honor and bravery.” He turned to look into the face of Arapooesh, saying, “Until the Crow blacken their faces against me, I will be a friend to your people. Your friends are my friends. Your enemies … they are my enemies too.”

  “My people, we are not many,” the chief exclaimed as he laid his hand on the big youth’s shoulder. “We cannot afford to turn away any man who says he is our friend, any man who says he will stand against our enemies with us.”

  Some of the women in the crowd trilled their tongues in approval, and several of the old men raised their voices in triumph.

  “It was good you came to us this winter,” Bird in Ground said.

  With a smile Scratch replied, “I did not intend to visit your camp this soon.”

  With his strong hand Arapooesh turned to Pretty On Top so that he stared the tall youth directly in the eye. “We have this problem of the white man’s horses.”

  “They are our horses now!” the youth barked in protest.

  Bird in Ground lunged up to shout, “You stole from a friend of ours!”

  “You’ve never stolen a horse in your life!” Red Leggings snapped as he came to stand beside Pretty On Top.

  Arapooesh laid his other hand on Red Leggings’ shoulder. Now he clamped his hands down hard and said to them, “We do not steal from those who are our friends.”

  The five youths started to sputter in protest, but the chief dug his fingers into the shoulders of the two until their knees began to buckle and they howled in pain.

  “But we went out to risk our lives!” Pretty On Top wailed. “We wanted to show our people we were brave enough to go on a pony raid of our own!”

  And Comes Inside the Door agreed, “If the older warriors weren’t going to ask us along on the raids they were leading, then Pretty On Top said we would have our own raid to show our bravery!”

  “And you all were very, very brave,” Arapooesh declared. “No man or woman in this camp will question your courage. From this day all will know that you five are brave enough to start on the path that will make you warriors. And … all of our people will know that you five are wise, that you are men of honor who will do what is right.”

  For a moment the youths looked at one another; then Pretty On Top asked, “You are ordering us to return the white man’s horses?”

  “You tell me,” the chief said. “What would a true warrior do? One who did not care about his own wealth, but only about the wealth of his people?”

  “But a warrior grows rich by going to war!” Crow Shouting protested.

  “And one day you will go to war,” Arapooesh replied. “So tell me: what would an honorable man do?”

  Pretty On Top hung his head a moment. And when he spoke, the words came out as if they had a bitter taste on his tongue. “He would return the horses to the white man.”

  In a loud voice the chief asked, “Is that the answer for all of you?”

  The other four muttered their agreement.

  Clapping his hands on the two shoulders of the youngsters standing before him, Arapooesh roared with approval. “You three, go bring me the white man’s animals.”

  Crow Shouting, Sees the Star, and Comes Inside the Door immediately turned away and pushed their way through the crowd.

  As they left, the chief announced in his booming voice, “Today the heart of our people has been strengthened! Whenever a man does an honorable act, all our people are made stronger for it! And when a man does something that reflects well upon our people, we will reward his good works!”

  Wildly cheering, the throng responded, singing and whooping.

  Arapooesh continued. “As chief of our people, I will honor these five young men who have shown their bravery in going out to prove their courage. And I will celebrate these five because they have today shown us they are indeed men who do what is right for our people—they are men of honor!”

  Again the crowd raised its collective voice of approval.

  “Bird in Ground, I want you to take these five young men who exemplify Crow courage and honor to the place where my own ponies graze among our herds. Let them choose from among those animals that belong to me—all but my war pony and the horse that my wife loves so dearly.”

  The throng laughed while Bird in Ground said, “If you gave away your wife’s horse, Arapooesh … you would have to find you a new place to sleep tonight!”

  “These young men can choose from my ponies,” Arapooesh repeated with a smile.

  “Th-this is a great thing!” Pretty On Top gushed, his eyes wide with wonder. “You took back from us the white man’s three horses … and now you replace them with three of your own!”

  “No!” the chief said, shaking his head. “Not three. I said each of you will select a pony for himself. For five young men of courage and honor, I will award you each a pony!”

  “F-five ponies?” Red Leggings stammered.

  “This is a marvelous thing,” Bird in Ground declared to Pretty On Top and Red Leggings. “This shows you how a man of honor can become a great man, how a man of honor can become a leader of our people!”

  Several of the old men came up suddenly, whooping their songs of celebration just as the three youths led the trapper’s horses and mule into the middle of the camp circle.

  “It is good that you are here this winter!” Bird in Ground exclaimed as he turned to Bass, having to shout his words above the noisy celebration.

  Scratch watched the three frightened animals approach, their nostrils flaring, eyes wide as they were led through the crowd. He said, “This will be a good winter, here among friends.”

  “Your guns will help make us strong come spring when the Blackfoot raid from the north again.”

  But the trapper wagged his head and explained, “By spring I must be far from here.”

  “The beaver are not good in Absaroka?” the chief said as he moved close.

  “I have far to travel to the place where all the white men gather next summer,” he tried to explain.

  “This is the place my people choose to live,” Arapooesh said. “I have never understood why you white men have to come and go, come and go great distances.”

  With a smile Bass explained, “Whenever I leave Absaroka, it reminds me how good your country is. So it is really not a bad thing to go and come back when I find out how poor everywhere else is.”

  The chief clamped his hand on the taller man’s shoulder as the three youths brought up the animals and stopped before Arapooesh. He asked of Titus, “These are your horses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we have settled this matter to your satisfaction?”

  Stepping aside, Bass nuzzled Hannah between her eyes, rubbed his mitten along her neck, then turned back to the chief.

  “Arapooesh,” he said, “there is something that still troubles me.”

  His brow furrowing, the chief said, “Tell me so we can put this matter behind us.”

  Scratch thought a moment on how to express it, then said, “Your war pony, you care very much for it?”

  “I care for it the way I would care for a true friend,” the chief answered.

  Scratch nodded. “Then you would not want to see someone strike your horse between the eyes with a tree branch?”

  Arapooesh flinched but did not answer immediately. Instead, his eyes moved from Bass, to the mule the white man was petting, then shifted to stare at Pretty On Top. Without taking his harsh gaze from the youth, the chief asked, “Did you see your horse friend hit by a Crow?”

  “Yes.”

  Continuing to glare at Pretty On Top, the chief asked, “Is that person here?”

  “Yes, he is here.”

  Licking his lips thoughtfully, Arapooesh said, “A man of honor, a true warrior of his people—he would ask you how he could make restitution for hurting such a friend of yours. Do you find any fault with my words … Pretty On Top?”

  “No,” the youth answered in a voice almost too quiet to hear as the crowd fell hushed. When he took his eyes o
ff the ground, he looked at the trapper. “How can I make this up to you for hurting this half horse?”

  Titus wasn’t sure just how a man could ever truly make amends for injuring something so important as another man’s friend, be it a trapping partner, or … his mule. Wasn’t Hannah a true partner? Hadn’t she proved herself to be every bit as faithful, loyal, and steadfast to him as any person had ever been? Wasn’t she even more of a friend to him than many people had been throughout the years?

  “I do not know,” he eventually admitted, wagging his head as he looked into the face of Pretty On Top. Then—something struck him of a sudden. “Perhaps for this young warrior to tell me he knows that my animals are my truest friends … and that I would do anything to see that my friends are not hurt.”

  Contrite, the youth dropped his eyes. “I am truly sorry.”

  “I—I am sorry too,” chimed in Red Leggings.

  Arapooesh turned to the trapper. “No, this cannot be enough to pay you for the cruelty to your animal—for the hurt to your friend.”

  But Bass surprised them, saying, “Yes—their apology is enough, Arapooesh.” He watched the shock strike all the faces around him. Some of the bystanders even clamped hands over their mouths in amazement.

  Arapooesh asked, “Is this true what you are saying?”

  “Pretty On Top … I think he has grown many years this morning. He is older beyond his winters now for it. I believe he is already a true Crow warrior: a man of honor and courage. So I will consider this matter settled, Arapooesh … if Pretty On Top will tell me … that he will be a true friend to me.”

  Many of the old, wrinkled, scarred, and weathered warriors in the crowd yelped and cried out with shrill songs of celebration, raising their thin, reedy voices to the snowy sky overhead.

  “Pretty On Top?” the chief turned to ask. “You have heard the white man—”

  “I will be honored to be this white man’s friend,” the youth interrupted in a flurry, his lips quivering, betraying the emotions he fought to hide.

  Pretty On Top stepped away from Arapooesh, stopping in front of the trapper and his mule where the youngster placed his right fist over his heart while he held his left arm out to the white man.