“Gonna be colder in Crow country than you were down in Taos while I was gone.”
Pulling apart the crumpled sheet of waxed paper, Waits selected one of the twisted carrots of tobacco, then refolded the rest and stuffed it back beneath the layers of that new blanket. “No, husband. I was colder there in Tahouse than I will be this winter among my own people because I did not have you with me.”
He sensed a stab of remorse, recalling the wrenching conflict he had suffered after deciding to leave his pregnant wife behind while he attempted a midwinter pilgrimage to hunt down some old friends in St. Louis. “No more should you fear, for we will spend the rest of our winters together, ua.”
As she returned and laid both the pipe and tobacco beside his knee, Waits rocked forward and planted a gentle kiss on his bare cheekbone. “I promise you the same, chil’ee. Until death takes me, I will spend all the rest of my days with you.”
Then she scooped up the infant and lifted her from his lap. “Let me hold this little girl while you fill your pipe. Then I can finally discover what the First Maker has named our daughter.”
From the narrow tail of that twist of dried tobacco he had traded from Nathaniel Wyeth, Bass crumpled a little of the dark leaf between a thumb and finger, dropping each pinch into the bowl of his clay pipe. Although fragile, these pipes had long been a staple of barter between the white man and the red—going back some two hundred years. While they might break if a man did not carefully pack his pipe among his possibles, they were extremely cheap. Bass, like most of those trappers who hunted this mountain wilderness, owned several of the creamy-white clay pipes. From its months of use, the inside of the bowl of this one had taken on a rich earthen tone, while the oils and dirt from Scratch’s hands had given the outside of the pipe a softer, hand-rubbed, sepia-toned patina.
Accustomed to watching how her husband practiced his habits, Waits-by-the-Water was prepared when he nodded his approval of having packed the bowl just so. From the edge of the coals she pulled a short twig she had propped there, suspending its tiny flame over the bowl as he sucked the fire into the tobacco. As he did, Bass looked sidelong, finding his daughter staring at the pipe, perhaps more so the bobbing flame she reached for with both of her tiny, pudgy hands.
“She wants to smoke with you,” Waits said, amusement in her voice.
“Tell her she’s not old enough,” Bass said when he took the stem from his lips, ready for their ceremony. “But you can smoke with me tonight.”
“M-me?” she replied. “I’ve never … unless one is a member of a woman’s lodge, w-we don’t … never smoke—”
“You are a member of my lodge,” he declared. “Better still, I have become a member of your lodge, woman. When I married you, we became our own clan.”
“B-but … I never before—”
“Tonight you will,” Bass interrupted. “This is for our daughter.”
“Smoking is a sacred thing,” she explained with a slight wag of her head, as much doubt written on her face as in the sound of her voice. “Men smoke together to deliberate on an important matter. Or to offer prayers.”
He chuckled as he leaned to the side, noticing how his daughter’s eyes remained fixed on that pipe in his hand before he looked closely into his wife’s eyes. “That is exactly what you and I are about to do. This is a sacred thing—this naming of a child, is it not?”
“V-very sacred, yes.”
“And we have deliberated on this matter of a name for some time?”
“You have deliberated,” she admitted, “and I have prodded you for an answer to your deliberations—”
“See, I am right,” he interrupted with a chuckle. “And now the two of us who belong to the Titus Bass coyote clan are about to offer a prayer for welcoming a third member to our clan.”
“Yes, a prayer.”
In one hand he held the pipe up to the sky as black as the gut of a badger. “First Maker, we offer our prayer as thanksgiving for showing us our daughter’s name.”
Then he placed the stem between his teeth, drew in a short breath, and let it out a little at a time, to each of the cardinal directions. That done, Bass handed the warm clay stem to his wife. For a moment Waits studied the pipe—until the baby reached out for her mother’s hand that held that interesting object.
“Smoke to pray for our daughter,” he said. “You see by her hand touching you and the pipe that she understands the importance of you smoking for her.”
Slowly the woman pulled her hand away from the baby’s tiny fingers, placing the stem against her lips.
“Don’t draw in much,” he advised. “Just a little. I don’t think the spirits will mind if you smoke only a little. Surely what is important is not how much you take in, but that you did pray with the smoke.”
Waits wrinkled her nose at the bitter taste as soon as she drew some smoke into her mouth. This she quickly expelled in one direction. Then followed suit with three more short puffs to finish her circuit of the directions as the child in her lap began to fuss.
“She wants that pipe,” Bass said as his wife handed it back to him. “Or she wants your attention.”
“When will I learn what her name has been all this time?” she asked, licking her lips and tasting the strong tobacco.
“Patience, my wife.” Then he raised the pipe to the sky again. “Grandfather Above—we offer this prayer to ask that you guide our steps in protecting this child as she grows.”
Once more he smoked, exhaling four light puffs to the four directions, then watched as Waits again completed the offering of her prayer as the baby began to fuss, kicking her legs and balling her fists as she flailed her tiny arms.
Quickly Waits handed the pipe back to Titus. “Now she wants only my attention.”
With a smile Scratch said, “Take her clothes off.”
“That isn’t what is going to make her happy.”
“As we offer our daughter to the Grandfather,” he explained, “she should be as naked as the day she came to be with us.”
Without a word of protest, Waits-by-the-Water released the knots in the soft strips of antelope hide that secured the sections of cloth around the child’s body. First that strip under the babe’s arms, then the one around its belly. And finally those that held absorbent grass stalks around the infant’s legs. With a dry scrap of wool, Waits quickly wiped her daughter’s bare bottom, then handed the squirming bundle over to Bass.
Completely dark beyond that small corona of firelight, hemmed in by a great encompassing wilderness where no sound was heard save for the yonder call of the mournful song-dogs, the quieting buzz of insects among the rustling leaves, and that muted babble of the nearby creek—Bass laid her tiny head in the palm of his left hand, stretching her little, lithe body along that forearm so that a leg fell on either side of his elbow. With the fingertips of his right hand, he gently caressed her forehead, cheeks, and under her chin, slowly soothing the fussy child, quieting her. Down each arm he lightly rubbed, fingertips pressing softly as he progressed.
When he looked up at Waits, he found admiration in his wife’s beautiful black-cherry eyes. Then he gazed down at his daughter once more and continued massaging her plump little body while he whispered to her the nonsense that makes no difference to an infant who knows only that she is the center of her own universe at that moment. Down each hip and on down each leg, Titus didn’t finish until he had gently rubbed every small toe.
He raised her head, and kissed the tiny brow, watching the babe’s wide, wondering eyes roll upward as he lowered his hairy face toward her. Then Bass clutched the infant in his two strong hands and slowly raised her above his head until his arms were outstretched. She began to squirm again, her legs kicking, arms pumping, fists flailing in discontent, a little brown-skinned ball of anger at the end of his arms, held here against the black sky in the fire’s light, her flesh lit red as Mexican copper.