For a long time that early afternoon he continued to sit there, adding pieces of limb and branch to his little fire, sensing the breeze blow cold across the flesh of his neck where he had sawed off long sections of his hair, exposing his skin to the teeth in every gust of wind. Eventually he loaded Whistler’s pipe a second time and smoked, remembering other friends he had lost across the years.
Good men who had welcomed him into their lives and their hearts without conditions. Men who had become a part of Bass’s life, friends now become the chinking in so many of his memories. Old friends who had loved their life and their freedom as much as Scratch loved his.
Puff by puff he drew the strong, stinging tobacco into his lungs, then slowly exhaled as the breeze whipped the smoke away while he offered up his remembrances like a prayer. One by one he asked each of those who were gone to look down upon him now and in the months and years to come.
Strange, he thought, but when he was a youngster back on the Ohio after running away from home, he had always believed life was bound to get easier the older he became. Then he managed to collide with the wrong women—females who discovered his weakness, his need, and what unerring devotion he offered them—women who took and took until they left him behind. Certain that wisdom had come after every broken heart, Bass instead found a newer, deeper hurt with each new love. Instead of life growing easier, he discovered that life offered him no simple answers, no respite from the painful learning as he was knocked about.
How innocent he had been in earlier years, to believe that as he put mistakes behind him, he would find life all the easier. But for every woman who had scarred him, for every misstep he had made in life, there nonetheless had been a good friend who stood at his shoulder.
Those faces were monuments to the seasons of his life. Men who had remained steadfastly loyal through shining times and walks with death.
And now he had lost another.
Quickly Titus tugged at the bottom of his long buckskin shirt, dragging it over his head and from each arm. Yanking back the sleeves of his faded woolen underwear as the cold wind startled his bare flesh, Scratch gently dragged the knife’s blade across the back of his forearm. Then a second narrow slash close beside that first just beginning to bead and ooze with blood. Then a third, a fourth, and more he cut, slicing a series of slashes on down that forearm before he repeated the process on the other arm.
“He was the greatest of all Crow chiefs,” Bass whispered with a sigh, feeling the cold wind bite along the oozy wounds as he turned to glance at the dog. “Now he’s gone.”
Bass set the knife aside to stare at the tops of the far hills across the valley.
You are a man who understands that there is no use in lingering in this life when one’s time has gone, he remembered Arapooesh declaring when Bass and Josiah were about to set out on McAfferty’s trail after Asa had murdered the chief’s wife. Why should a man linger, like the wildflower in spring holding on to hope of passing the heat of summer and the cold of the coming winter? Only the earth and sky are everlasting.
“So many,” he whispered now. “So many it makes a man feel he ain’t got friends left.”
It is men that must die, Arapooesh’s voice reverberated in Bass’s head. Our old age is a curse.
Sensing the burn of tears, Titus said, “Times like this, I feel older’n I really am. And I feel any more years is a goddamned curse … living without them what’s gone is a hard thing. Too hard.”
Again, Rotten Belly’s words whispered in his head, And death in battle is a blessing for those who have seen our many winters.
In the death of a great chief, Crow tradition dictated that the band mourn across four days. The entire camp would grieve any man killed by an enemy—but especially a beloved chief like Rotten Belly, felled as he was in battle with their most hated enemies.
That first day of public grieving, the chief’s lodge had been painted with wide horizontal red stripes. Inside where no fire would ever burn again, the body was cleaned, dressed in his finest war regalia, then laid on a low four-pole platform. In his hands was placed a fan of eagle feathers, and his chest was bared to the spirits. There the body rested while his people expressed their utter sorrow at his death, their unrequited anger at the Blackfoot who had killed their leader.
Across those nights and days, Rotten Belly’s warrior society conducted elaborate ceremonies in his honor. The Otter Clan saw to it that the dead man’s treasured war totems lay beside his body, and assured that his face and bare chest were painted red. For hours they beat drums throughout the camp. Wailing, mourners pierced the skin at their knees, others pierced their arms to draw blood. Some jabbed sharp rocks against their foreheads, making themselves bleed. For four days a somber pall fell over the entire camp.
Then on the morning of the fifth day, the Crow had torn down their own lodges, abandoning the site on the Grey Bull River and leaving the chief’s lodge to decay with the elements through the coming seasons. While the dead man’s relations would continue to grieve in their own way, the rest of the band went on with its life and a new leader stepped to the fore.
From time to time as the sun sank from midsky and disappeared in the west this cold day of his own private mourning, Bass left his perch to scour both sides of the bluff for deadfall poking from the crust of snow, wood he could drag back to his fire pit. After each short trip he found he needed to rest longer and longer, sucking on more and more of the icy snow as he heaved for breath. Once he was ready, Scratch clambered to his feet and trudged off again. Exhausted, he returned from what he knew would be his last trip as twilight darkened the sky and threw the land into irretrievable shadow with night’s approach.
“C’mere, boy,” he called, patting the edge of the crude lattice platform beside him.
Zeke eagerly lunged up through the snow, then went to his belly at his master’s knee, laying his jaw on Bass’s thigh where he knew he would receive a good scratching.
“I’m glad you come along, ol’ fella. You’d been a mess for her back there in camp if’n I’d left you behind. Got yourself in the way but good, staying underfoot. Better the woman didn’t have you whining and moaning after I left.”
He watched the first stars come out before he grew too tired to watch any longer. Bass banked more wood against the fire, then rearranged the robe and blanket on the platform that kept him out of the snow.
“Lay here, Zeke,” he instructed, patting the robe.
The dog came up, turned about, and nested right next to him. Then Scratch pulled the other half of the robe and that heavy wool blanket over them both. Laying his cheek down on his elbow, Bass closed his eyes, listening to the distant sounds of that cold winter night—an utter silence so huge and vast that he felt himself swallowed whole by the open sky above them.
He tried to imagine what she was doing right then, if Waits-by-the-Water had Magpie on her knee as she helped her mother prepare supper. Or if the baby was sleeping. Perhaps even talking more than ever. He wondered if his wife was thinking of him right at that moment. Surely she was, for that had to be the reason his thoughts had turned instantly to her.