Wind Walker (87 page)

“Nawww,” Washburn protested with a bright smile that lit up his teeth the color of pin acorns, “you done it for your own self, Titus Bass. The way you was meant to all along.”

He cleared the lump in his throat and called across the meadow, “You both come to fetch me, did you?”

“Me too,” a new voice called as the shadow pulled itself away from the stand of aspen.

For a moment Titus sat right there, frozen and unable to move as he stared at Jack Hatcher, who stomped up between Washburn and Zane, looking hale and hearty and every bit as fit as that newly strung fiddle he raised up to the hollow of his shoulder.

“I come along to play us some of the ol’ songs, Scratch,” he cried out. “Ever’ journey must have its music, ol’t friend!”

“Never was much of a singer,” Titus admitted as he started to rise to his feet.

“Neither was I,” the new figure announced as it stepped into the meadow, hair the brilliant white of a newly born cloud. “But there was many a time I wished I could have sung, my heart was so filled with joy to find a friend like you.”

“Asa? Jehoshaphat, if that ain’t really you!”

McAfferty came up beside Hatcher, pounded Jack on the shoulder with his one hand, and said, “Maybe now’s the time you play a li’l music for this’un been a long, long time gettin’ into camp.”

Drawing his ratty bow across the strings, Jack kicked off a light and merry tune, something Scratch knew he should recognize from long, long ago.

“If you won’t sing,” a new accent cried out as the shadow tore itself away from the copse of trees, “I sure will. You always told me it was my songs kept you from growing sore afraid on that trip we made down the mighty Columbia!”

The big man could be no one else. “J-Jarrell! I heard the ague laid you down.”

Thornbrugh, the English-born former seaman who had finished out his life with the Hudson’s Bay Company, came up to join the group, stomping his foot and clapping his hands. “This fiddler doesn’t play so bad for being American!”

“C’mon, Titus!” Zane cheered.

Washburn waved him over, saying, “Come join the hurraw!”

As the notes from Hatcher’s fiddle filled that meadow, more shadows now stepped away from the trees, taking form only when they emerged into the sunlight. His old friend Arapooesh, legendary chief of the Crow. And at his elbow came Whistler, Scratch’s own father-in-law. At his side walked Whistler’s tall and handsome son, Strikes In Camp. When the three warriors moved up, the white men opened their tiny crescent, enlarging it once more.

“W-Whistler!” he croaked, his voice breaking with sentiment, his eyes filling with tears. Seeing the man made him want to hope all the more. Oh, how he had prayed with that last and final breath.

“Yes, my son—you have a question?”

“Whistler, have … have you seen her?”

“Who is it you ask for?”

“W-Waits …” But suddenly he remembered that proper manners dictated that he wasn’t supposed to speak the name of one who had died. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t use your names any longer—”

“That is not important now,
Pote Ani,”
Whistler responded with amused kindness. “Who do you wish most to see?”

“My wife … the only woman I truly loved in all my life.”

Strikes In Camp turned to his right and gestured to the line of quakies. A small figure stepped from the shadows, taking form as if emerging from beneath the surface of that beaver pond. Short, and towheaded, looking every bit like his mother—

“Lucas?” he cried as he finally lunged a step forward.

But instead of answering, the young child stopped right at that edge of the light, stretched out his little hand, reaching back into the shadows as Jack’s fiddle sang so sweetly the notes of a gentle lullaby.

As Titus watched, slack-jawed and numbed with wonder, he saw her take shape, slipping her long-fingered hand between Lucas’s little fingers. Into that edge of sunlight she came, dressed in a brilliant dress of doeskin, even more finely made than the one she had worn the day they gave
their vows to one another. And cradled across her other arm …

In his heart Scratch knew.

And instantly started forward, stumbling at first, for his legs were so long without movement. Careening forward, he trudged faster and faster, skirting around the edge of that tranquil blue beaver pond.

Titus knew who Waits held in her arm as she walked beside the grinning boy, clutching Lucas’s little hand, both of them slowly moving toward him while that crowd of old friends whooped and clapped, sang out their war song or some off-key ditty of an old tune their mam had soothed them to sleep with back in those days when there hadn’t been a care in their world.

Titus shuddered to a stop the moment he glimpsed the infant’s face, so like Waits-by-the-Water’s: with her big round eyes and those high cheeks blushed with copper. Hair more brown than black, wavy too, like his father’s.

As he stared dumbfounded at the babe, Lucas said in a whisper, “It’s your li’l boy, Gran’papa. Now you an’ me gonna teach him ever’thing … one day soon, ain’t we?”

The old friends and compatriots were swallowing him up of a sudden, their hands reaching out to touch him at long last over the years, tousle his hair, slap him on the back, and pound him on the shoulder. Finally she took another step forward and reached him herself, laying her damp cheek against his breast.

“Your friends,” she whispered to him, “they told me I wouldn’t have to wait for you very long. They said you always kept your promise—especially the last promise you made to meet me here on the mountaintop.”

His heart filling with joy as he wrapped his arms around her and raised his face to the sky, whispering his utter thanks … Titus knew he had made it to the mountaintop at last.

Terry C. Johnston
was born on the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas and lived all his life in the American West. His first novel,
Carry the Wind
, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books appeared on bestseller lists throughout the country. After writing more than thirty novels of the American frontier, he passed away in March 2001 in Billings, Montana. Terry’s work combined the grace and beauty of a natural storyteller with a complete dedication to historical accuracy and authenticity. He continues to bring history to life in the pages of his historical novels so that readers can live the grand adventure of the American West. While recognized as a master of the American historical novel, to family and friends Terry remained and will be remembered as a dear, loving father and husband as well as a kind, generous, and caring friend. He has gone on before us to a better place, where he will wait to welcome us in days to come.

If you would like to help carry on the legacy of Terry C. Johnston, you are invited to contribute to the

Terry C. Johnston Memorial Scholarship Fund
c/o Montana State University-Billings Foundation
1500 N. 30th Street
Billings, MT 59101-0298
1-888-430-6782

For more information on other Terry C. Johnston novels, visit his website at
http://www.imt.net/-tjohnston

send e-mail to
[email protected]

or write to
Terry C. Johnston’s West
P.O. Box 50594
Billings, MT 59105