Wind Walker (60 page)

“It was the old seer, Real Bird, who made him afraid—many, many summers ago, when he was a young man like us,” Stiff Arm declared. “Back before he became a war chief, Real Bird told him that he had a vision that as long as He Who Is No Longer Here stayed close to the Elk River, he would live long as a leader of the people. But if he ever stayed too long north of the river, venturing too far into the land where the Blackfoot roamed … that the spirits would not be strong in him and he would be weakened, grow sick, and die.”

“Then your chief had every reason to be afraid,” Titus said. “The old healer had seen his end in a dream … and it came to pass.”

“And the same for you?” Three Iron asked. “Will it come to pass too? What Real Bird saw in a dream about your final day?”

Bass strove to wave off the old seer’s prophecy, saying, “Not every dream comes true.” He looked at Waits a moment, saw her eyes cloud with doubt.

“That old man has rarely been wrong,” Stiff Arm declared.

“For more winters than any of you have been alive, I have
come and gone from Absaroka,” Titus explained to them. Just the saying of those words, made him suddenly feel all the older here before these youngsters. In those days among the hardwood forests of Boone County, he had been like them: their blood running hot like a potent sap through their veins—undeniable and unstoppable, with their whole lives ahead of them.

Sore from the long rides they had been making every day on this journey north, he flexed his sore back. Then Scratch responded, “Then—if old man Real Bird’s dreams are true it means I am destined to leave and return to the land of the Crow one more time. From that day on I must make sure I never leave my wife’s people again, so no trouble comes to all who are around me.”

Three Iron smiled, glancing quickly at Magpie when he said, “I think some of our young men truly would like it if your family never left the Crow at all!”

Gazing at his daughter, whose high cheekbones were blushed with the rose of embarrassment, her eyes fixed on the withers of her horse, Scratch said, “You be sure to tell all those who have ears that it will be a long time before Magpie’s father entertains a suitor for her. This is only her fourteenth winter, so they are wasting their time if they come scratching at our lodge door.”

Some of the older guards quickly turned their eyes on the younger members of their group. But instead of looking away, Don’t Mix said, “Your daughter is a fine prize, no matter how long a man has to wait.”

“But you stay away from her,” Bass reminded. “Don’t come around our lodge at all.”

Looking squarely at the father, Turns Back asked, “Will you let the camp know when you decide Magpie is old enough for us to court her? In the old tradition of telling the camp that your daughter is ready to take a husband?”

For a moment he caught his wife’s eyes. Waits-by-the-Water barely lowered her lids and dropped her chin slightly, just enough to signal him. Scratch turned back to the handsome young warrior and said, “Yes. We will tell all the people
when Magpie is ready to leave our lodge and start a life of her own, with a husband of her choosing.”

Don’t Mix tapped himself on the chest and asked, “You will give your daughter away to one of us?”

“Perhaps,” Scratch replied. “Maybe only Real Bird knows what the future holds for any of us. As for you and me … the seasons to come will have to remain a deep mystery.”

Which is the way he had always preferred it.

“T-T-Ti-tuzz!” Waits whispered softly.

As he awoke Waits-by-the-Water was already huffing—gritting her teeth while her breath came quick and labored. Scratch rolled toward her, onto his right hip, and propped himself up on an elbow, about ready to ask her what troubled her so … then felt the dampness. Slipping a hand between them, his fingers brushed over the blanket she had been sleeping on every night for the past two weeks. Initially he had thought she folded the blanket up in four layers beneath her to provide a little more insulation from the frozen ground.

But that first night she stretched out upon that old red blanket, Waits had explained, “I think this child’s time is soon.”

Now he discovered the blanket below her buttocks was damp, quickly growing chill. Worried, he immediately brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed at them. Not the smell of blood, more so her fragrance.

“How long ago?” he asked as he sat upright.

Her head plopped down onto the horsehair pillow, weary from the effort. “Not long now,” she said, exhaustion apparent in her voice.

“Why didn’t you wake me before?”

She turned to gaze at him in the dim light, a grin written
on her face. “What are you going to do to make this any easier for me, husband?”

Turning, he pitched some small pieces of broken limb onto the embers. “I could make more light, warm the lodge for you too.”

He leaned forward, grabbed his long hair in one hand to keep it out of the ash and coals, then blew several times on the fire to excite the flickering flames. “And,” he continued, considering whether he could call upon the services of a midwife, “I could go get Bear Below to help us—to help you give birth to this child.”

Before she had a chance to answer, Waits-by-the-Water looped her hands beneath her thighs and scrunched up with another strong contraction, her eyes clenched shut as she huffed noisily. So noisily he thought she was going to awaken the children. Titus turned and looked at Magpie’s side of the lodge. The girl was already awake, her eyes wide as capote buttons as she watched in silence. He turned to the boys’ side of the lodge, finding Flea’s eyes open. But Jackrabbit hadn’t moved.

“Is your brother awake, Flea?”

The boy looked closely, then said, “No.”

“Let him sleep,” Scratch whispered. “Do you want to stay while your little brother or sister is born?”

For a moment Flea looked across the fire at Magpie, then answered. “I’ll stay here with our mother while she delivers this child.”

“Magpie?” he asked his daughter.

“S-stay,” she confessed. “Last time—when Jackrabbit was born—I was too little to understand. Now I can see, and I want to know how a woman suffers when she gives life to a child.”

“This is a good thing,” he said, but thought better of it and turned back to Waits. “The children, they can stay to watch this event with their own eyes?”

She nodded clumsily, huffing her way through the end of that long contraction. “Y-yes, they can stay with us.”

“Flea,” Scratch directed, “put on your coat and go to Bear
Below’s lodge. Tell her your mother’s time has come and we need her here now.”

Carefully crawling over his little brother, Flea sat down next to the rekindled fire and pulled on his heavy, thickly furred winter moccasins. Then he dragged his blanket coat over his arms, stood and lashed it around his waist with a sash before ducking from the lodge door. A cold gust snaked its way through the portal before Flea got the stiffened door flap closed, along with a dusting of powdery flakes.

“It’s snowing again, Magpie,” Bass prodded her. “Get up and come help me.”

She immediately kicked her way out of the blankets and robes, sliding on her knees closer to the fire where she rubbed her hands together over the rekindled warmth. “What can I do, Popo?”

“Bring more of that wood beside the door over here by the fire. You’re going to start heating up some water as I hold your mother while this baby comes.”

After she had begun to drag some of the broken limbs toward the fire pit, Magpie asked, “Did you hold my mother like that while I was being born?”

“I did at first,” he declared. “Then I was shooed out of the room.”

“In Mateo’s house.” She repeated the lesson she had learned in Taos last winter. “And when Flea was born?”

“I always promised her I would be with her when a child’s time came to be born,” he explained. “Except I was a long, long way off when Jackrabbit came along.”

“B-but you did not even know”—Waits huffed—“that I was carrying—your new child when you—left to go trapping that spring.”

“I would have been there for Jackrabbit, Magpie,” he apologized, “if I had known not to go to the land of the Mexican horses. Bring your mother some water to drink.”

He had Waits propped up against him by the time Magpie brought over a half-filled tin cup. After her mother had finished the next long contraction, Waits took a sip of the cold
water, then a long drink, letting it wash down her dry throat deliciously. He heard the crunch of footsteps outside, the low murmur of voices just before the heavy, frozen deerhide was dragged aside and in came that spindly leg wrapped in a wool blanket legging, a buffalo moccasin so big that it made her feet look three or four times as big as they really were. Bear Below stood hunched over, one of the old woman’s arms supported by Flea. This was the boy’s eleventh winter, and he had begun to shoot up in the same weedy way his father had when he had been the same age back in faraway Rabbit Hash on the Ohio River.

“Did the boy wake you?” Titus asked.

“I have been waiting for this baby too, so I heard him coming to get me,” the old woman responded, tearing off her coat. “Look at those feet of his!” and she pointed at Flea’s moccasins. “This one could never creep up on anyone!”

She passed her blanket coat to Flea, then started shuffling around the fire pit to the rear of the small lodge. “You have had three births already?”

When Waits could only nod, Titus said, “Yes, this is her fourth birthing.”

“So, child—tell me how it is for you.”

“Not hard. I think this child will come easy.”

“I will see for myself,” Bear Below stated.

She slowly collapsed to her knees on the bedding, squatting at the feet of Waits-by-the-Water, and dragged back the top blanket so she could reach under it with both hands. Closing her wrinkled eyelids, Bear Below turned her head as if staring at the fire with those closed eyes while she felt about. Just about the time Waits began to pant through her nose again, Bear Below said, “That’s good. Let it come over you and carry you with it. Do not tense … do not—that’s it. You must remember not to tense your body, girl. Stay loose and the child will slide on out into this world.”

Bear Below rocked back onto a bony hip and settled there between the upfolded legs of the mother.

“Did you see or feel the child’s head?” Waits inquired.

“Not yet,” the old woman reassured her. “But very soon I think.” Then Bear Below turned to the white man. “Tell me, do you make good coffee?”

“I do—but I want to stay here beside my wife.”

Bear Below shifted her bottom so she could look over her shoulder at Magpie. “What is your name?”

“Magpie.”

“Do you make good coffee?”

She looked at her father, and he nodded. “Y-yes, I … well, my father tells me I do.”

“Make us a pot of your coffee, Magpie.”

As his daughter busied herself with the pot and some coffee grounds they brought north from Fort Bridger, Titus instructed his son, “Bring some more of that wood over here by the fire.”

The pot hadn’t been on the flames very long when Waits-by-the-Water announced, “It-it’s time now.”

Bear Below was already there between the mother’s knees, pushing the blanket off her legs, folding up the bottom of the long hide dress onto the swollen belly so that she had an unobstructed view of the birth opening. “Yes, girl—I think I see the head coming now.”

“I feel him coming!”

“A boy?” Titus asked his wife. “You think this is another boy?”

She nodded as she gulped air, huffing between her gritted teeth.

The old woman cooed, “There you go, easy now. That’s the head. Let’s turn a little and let those shoulders out too.”

Doing his best to keep his wife propped up as he leaned to the side, Titus attempted to get a look at this babe being born.

“You are doing good, mother,” Bear Below cheered as Magpie crabbed up close behind the old woman, looking over her hunched shoulders. “Just a little more. This next time you can push hard for me.”

Staring transfixed on the child emerging into the world, Magpie’s mouth hung open. “Little brother—do you want to see this?”