Across the next five days more than ninety others came to Whistler’s lodge on the outskirts of the Crow village to ask that they too could ride along, men old and young. Some were men of such considerable winters that they had long since given up the war trail, content to let younger men do battle in the name of their people. Most of these Whistler turned away with his thanks, acknowledging that they had already given many years serving in defense of the Crow nation. And there were many of the very young, really no more than boys—most tall and lithe, of ropy, hardened muscle, but every one of them smoothfaced.
“Some mother’s son,” Whistler would say when he had turned them away and promised that he might lead them on the next war trail. “I am a father, and I know what fear I had in my own heart when Strikes was just as young, believing he was ready to take scalps for the first time. I remember how Crane wept, begging me to keep him from going. How she pleaded with me to go in secret and demand the pipe bearer turn our son away, to prevent him from going along.”
“Each man must have his first fight,” Scratch said as he savored that coffee. “My first blooding was against the Choctaw.”
“Ch-choctaw? I have not heard of these people.”
“They live east of a great muddy river, so far away that your people have no name to call that river,” Bass explained. “I was nearing my seventeenth winter.”
“That is a good age for a young man to go on his first pony raid.”
Titus nodded with a smile, saying, “I wasn’t a pony holder, even though I was with older, wiser men. None of us were out to steal horses. I was alone, hunting supper when the Choctaw found me—chased me—and wounded one of the others.”
“Did you kill any of your enemy?”
“Later,” he said, remembering how the canoes slipped up alongside the flatboat in the dark, warriors sneaking onboard to initiate their fierce and sudden attack. “I lost a good friend in that fight.”
“And you killed your first man that night?”
“Yes, I know I killed. There was no doubt.”
“Blood you spilled, to atone for the blood of your friend the enemy spilled,” Whistler observed grimly.
Scratch gazed into the older man’s eyes. “Yes. Sometimes the only thing that will do … is blood for blood.”
“Now we ride this trail together,” Whistler said quietly. “Together and alone, we go to do what old warriors know must be done.”
6
From the moment they forded the half-frozen lichii’likaashaashe, every last one of them realized he was leaving Absaroka behind. With every mile, every step, every breath taken north of the Yellowstone, they were inching closer to enemy country.
North by northwest the war party marched from the moment it grew light enough to ride till it became too dark to safely cross the broken landscape. If there was a place where rocky outcrops or the shelter of trees would hide the flames from distant eyes, then the older men allowed the warriors to disperse and start half a dozen fires where eight to ten men gathered to warm their dried meat, their hands, their stiffened joints from sitting too long on horseback. Fire or not, through the endless winter nights they talked in low tones as Whistler and the white man moved from fire to fire, group to group, reminding the young that they were on an honor ride, calling upon the veterans to be watchful of the young men when it came time to fight.
Every morning three or four proven warriors were chosen to mount up before the others. In the dim light of dawn-coming, these wolves would make a wide-ranging circle of their camp to learn if they had been discovered, searching for any trail of enemy spies. When they had reported back that all was safe, the scouts for that day would lead out ahead of the others as the sun brightened the winter sky. Riding ahead on both sides of the march, their task was to choose the safest path of travel through dangerous country, scouring for sign of the enemy, some telltale smoke on the horizon.
Day after day they trudged farther and farther north, encountering nothing more than last autumn’s fire pits lying cold in old camps. Ahead they watched the clouds boil around the snowy peaks of two mountain ranges, then struck the south bank of the Musselshell.
As they stopped to water their horses at a spot along the river’s edge where the water slowed, remaining unfrozen, Whistler sent the scouts across to the north. He said, “We follow the Bishoochaashe toward its headwaters and cross to the far side of those mountains. From there we should see the Aashisee.”
“What your people call The Big River?” Scratch asked.
“I have heard it flows north for a long way,” Whistler explained as they started across the Musselshell with the rest, “then it turns east, through the land of the Assiniboine and the Arikara before it curves south at the land of the Hidatsa and finally enters the country of the Lakota.”
“From what you describe, that must be what my people call the Missouri.”
“Miss-you-ree,” the older man slowly tried the word out on his tongue.
“Good,” Bass said. “The Missouri. I lived beside that river for many winters. More winters than I should have before I broke free.”
Whistler smiled. “This Aashisee is a good river this far north … before it goes far to the south where it enters the land of the white man. But on the other side of this Miss-you-ree, we must hold tight to our hair.”
With a grin Bass said, “Many Blackfoot wanting our scalps, eh?”
Whistler glanced at the top of the white man’s head. “But this is nothing new for you, son-in-law.”
“No,” Bass replied as their horses slogged onto the north bank of the Musselshell and shook themselves like big dogs. “More times than I can count, these Blackfoot have tried to take what I have left for hair.”
Around the fires that last night before they reached the Missouri, the older warriors, those contemporaries of Rotten Belly and Whistler, spoke of Arapooesh. Not only did they speak in reverent tones for one who had died, but they recalled the departed chiefs sharp, cutting sense of humor, the youthful jokester he had been in years long gone. And they talked of his many war deeds.
Not content merely to defend Crow land from encroachment, Arapooesh was constantly organizing war parties to venture into enemy territory on pony or scalp raids. East toward the land of the Lakota, southeast to steal from the Arapaho and Cheyenne. Southwest to sneak into Bannock country. And there was always the northern land of the Blackfoot.
“He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us made himself very popular among our people many long years ago by bringing back so many enemy horses,” Whistler explained to the curious young men come along on their first war trail.
Another old warrior, Turns Plenty, spoke. “Very rarely did he lose a scalp to the enemy.”
“Every young man wanted to ride with him,” Whistler observed.
“If a man steals the easiest horses,” Strikes-in-Camp said, “then he never has to worry about fighting the enemy.”
Biting his tongue for some moments, Whistler glared at his impudent son, then said, “Your uncle often showed he was as good a war leader as he was good at stealing horses.”
Yellowtail agreed. “He-Who-Is-Dead always chose the best men, put them on the best ponies, made them carry the best weapons … so his war parties would be ready to fight for their lives if necessary.”
Whistler continued. “Those times we rode into enemy land, my older brother always chose at least two ways to get out of that country so we could make our escape with the ponies we stole and our hair. He figured out places where we could all meet after we had split up to throw the enemy off our trail.”
“But if escape did not work,” Real Bird declared, “He-Who-Has-Died was ready to turn around and fight. That’s when his leadership proved itself—for he had made the effort to choose only the finest warriors with the best weapons.”
“Like us,” Strikes-in-Camp boasted.
Whistler gazed at his son. “Sometimes it is better for a warrior to let others do his bragging for him.”
“
Perhaps it was that way in your day,” the young warrior argued, teetering on the edge of disrespect. “But today, with the coming of the white men and the Blackfoot pushing hard against us—I think our people need warriors who aren’t afraid to speak for themselves.”
Whistler opened his mouth to speak, but Bass put his hand on the old warrior’s forearm and got his words out first. “A man who speaks too much for himself might find that there isn’t anyone else willing to speak for him.”
Glaring at the white man as if his hatred for Bass was smoldering anew, Strikes-in-Camp announced to the group, “Perhaps we shall do better in the land of the enemy than He-Who-Is-Not-Here ever did. Perhaps our deeds will far outshine his.”
Scratch watched a few of the young heads nod, young faces smile.
Then Whistler stepped over to stand beside his son. “Maybe you are right, Strikes-in-Camp. Who knows? We who are old horses, like Pote Ant and me, have tired bones, so it’s not so easy making war anymore. Perhaps you are right that war is a job best left for the young men.”
“My father sees the wisdom in my words, does he?”
Whistler put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Perhaps. I will trust that you will be there to save my life if an enemy warrior is about to take my scalp.”
Swelling his chest like a prairie cock, Strikes-in-Camp said, “I will watch over both of you who are too old to make war—my father and the white man who has married my sister.”
Moving on around the circle, Whistler stopped behind Bass and Pretty On Top to say, “He-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here was never the sort to boast pridefully. Though he had many war honors, he rarely spoke of them before others.”
Bass added, “He made no big show of all that he had done, never prancing up and down like some young colts out to prove how strong they are.”
“As I said, white man—I will even save your life since you are married to my sister.”
“No wonder you don’t understand what your father is trying to teach you,” Scratch uttered with regret. “Your uncle was so much more a man than you will ever be.”
“But he was the one who taught me many things!” the young man snapped.
Whistler shook his head and said, “So why didn’t you learn to be more like my brother?”
“Because I am going to be a man in my own right,” Strikes-in-Camp spouted.
Bass watched Whistler turn and move into the darkness, heading for the nearby fire where another group sat out the long winter night. Looking back at Strikes-in-Camp, he said, “You have shamed your father with your selfish disrespect.”
“My family has shamed itself, white man,” he snarled. “My sister shames herself by fornicating with you. My mother and father shame themselves because they accept the white man who shamed their daughter into their lodge.”
“Your sister and I are married.”
“By the white man way?”
“No, not in the white man’s church,” Bass reluctantly admitted the truth. “We have promised our hearts to one another—”
“You white men are like rabbits in heat,” the warrior sneered. “You will say anything to our women to get your manhood under their dresses—”
Scratch found himself bolting to his feet before he realized it, but two sets of hands appeared out of the darkness to stay him. Struggling to free himself, he turned first to the right, finding Turns Plenty holding his arm. On the other side stood Whistler.
“He is not angry at you,” Whistler explained. “He is more angry at himself.”
“The white man is a coward,” Strikes-in-Camp said. “That day in our village, two winters ago, he could have fought us like an honorable man. Instead, he let us tie him up, him and his friend.”
“You will also remember how my brother came to free the two white men,” Whistler protested as he let go of Bass’s arm. He stepped over to stand before his son. “Already the white man and I have talked,” he told the young man. “There will be a ceremony for your sister when we return from this war trail to avenge the killing of He-Who-Is-Not-Here.”
“Ceremony?”
“She will marry the white man in the way of our people,” Whistler declared.
Bass swallowed hard, choking on the surprise of it.
“No matter,” the young warrior growled. “Too late to make my sister anything better than a whore who lays with white men—”
Scratch was lunging across the snow when he was jerked backward by Turns Plenty’s hold on his right arm. But as he shrugged that arm in a second attempt to free himself, he watched Whistler’s arm dart into the fire’s dim light, slashing out. His hand struck Strikes-in-Camp’s cheek with a pop as loud as an old cottonwood booming in the cold of a February night.
“Don’t ever do that again, old man,” the son snarled, laying his hand against his bruised cheek.
“Or what?” Whistler asked. “Perhaps it is you who should heed a warning. Maybe you should look over your shoulder more often when you are in enemy country. A man who so openly shames his family is surely the sort of man who has no friends to protect his back.”
That early morning when they crossed the frozen Missouri in the darkness, Bass discovered the tight knot in his belly along with the unshakable remembrance of that old shaman who had walked among the half-a-hundred warriors at dawn on that morning they had started north on this war trail so long ago.
Then, as now, it was snowing fitfully: not with huge, ash-curl flakes, but with those tiny, icy spears of cold pain as the wind whipped the glassy slivers sidelong across the ground. Slowly the old man moved between the rows of ponies and warriors quietly mumbling his songs as he shook an old rattle made of a buffalo bull’s scrotum. In his other hand he held a bull’s penis, stretched to its full length by inserting a narrow wand of willow. Both were his potent symbols of the bull’s power—the largest creature known to these people. The provocative maleness of those two objects, their utter masculinity plainly exhibiting that strength shown by the bull in his battles to assure his right to the cows, would now transfer their spiritual power to those men who were plunging into Blackfoot country.
So many more had wanted to come along, some who had all but begged Whistler to be included in the war party. Those he hadn’t selected for this dangerous journey had to stand back with the others in a wide cordon pressing in on either side of the five-times-ten who were the objects of a raucous send-off: cheering men, keening women, those boisterous children and yapping dogs darting in and out between the legs of the restive ponies.
Arapooesh’s successor, Yellow Belly, had parted the joyous, singsong crowd to stand before Whistler and the white trapper, holding aloft Rotten Belly’s sacred battle shield. No longer did it hang on the man-high tripod of peeled poles that stood outside the chief’s lodge. Instead, it had been passed down by the dying Arapooesh as a symbol of his office, as a token of the transfer of his power.
For a few minutes the noise had grown deafening as Yellow Belly held the shield aloft, hand drums beating and wing-bone whistles blown with shrill delight. Then as the chief lowered the shield, a hush fell over the crowd.
“Before you ride against our enemies,” Yellow Belly said, “each of you must touch the shield, touch the power of He-Who-Has-Died.”
First Whistler, then Bass, gently laid their hands on that round hoop covered by stiffened rawhide. Nearly the entire circle was covered with a pale-red earth paint; at the center stood a human figure with oversized ears and a single eagle feather, representing the moon who had come to the great chief in a vision and described the construction of this powerful shield and its medicine.
“Is it true,” Bass now asked Whistler as they pushed up the trail scuffed in the new snow by their forward scouts, come to that deadly land north of the Missouri, “true what your people say about the shield of He-Who-Is-Not-Here?”
“Its power to tell us the outcome of an event yet to happen?”
“Yes—I was told about the raid your brother wanted to lead against the Cheyenne in t
he south.”
Whistler stared into the cold mist ahead, then explained, “In the middle of camp he stacked a pile of buffalo chips, almost as high as his head. On the top he placed his shield and told us that he would let it roll to the bottom. If it landed with its painting against the ground, he would not lead the war party.”
“But years ago He-Who-Has-Died told me that his shield rolled down that stack of buffalo chips and landed with the paintings facing the sky.”
“Yes, and my brother led us to a great victory over the Cheyenne far to the south.” Then the warrior sighed and adjusted the heavy buffalo robe he had wrapped around the lower half of his body while they rode on horseback. “That shield was powerful enough to foretell its owner’s death.”
“How did he know he was going to die?”
“That summer morning we left to steal Blackfoot ponies, my brother again stacked up some buffalo chips, this time in the privacy of his lodge, and called his headmen to meet with him. When he laid his shield on top of the pile, he told us that if the shield rose into the air without his touching it, then his medicine had told him he was going to die in battle.”
Turning slightly in the saddle, Bass stared at Whistler a moment before he asked, “Is that what happened to your brother, to my friend?”
“We all saw the shield rise there before He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us. No one touched it as it floated as high as the chief’s head. And no one spoke until I told my brother he should not lead the horse stealers.”
“Why didn’t he listen to you?”
“The One-Who-Died said that his death was already foretold,” Whistler declared. “He could not call off the raid. He would not allow his people to believe he was anything but brave enough to face his own death.”
Despite knowing the shield had predicted his death, Arapooesh nonetheless pushed ahead with the raid. And as much as other warriors tried to protect him once they were confronted by superior numbers of the enemy, Rotten Belly did not hang back and let others do his fighting for him.
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