He felt his fur hat get torn off, then started to snort with this one last joke on his murderers when the Indian suddenly dropped to a knee so he could stare intently into Bass’s face. The young warrior reached out tentatively, as if unsure of what he was about to do, then gently tugged the faded black silk bandanna off the old trapper’s head. The Blackfoot’s eyes widened … but not in fear or surprise. Instead, in something like … like recognition.
For a moment the Blackfoot’s eyes grew big with wonder, even awe, as he looked this way, then that—as if afraid the Crow war party would come racing over the brow of the nearby hills and discover him … but eventually his dark eyes came back to rest on the white man’s face once more. Not near as wide now, no longer filled with amazement. Strangely, they had grown soft.
Titus gagged, felt his riven stomach lurch as he did his best to turn his head aside, puking up a great glob of blood onto the Blackfoot’s arm, the one that still gripped him by the back of his collar. Sensing how weak he was becoming, how much the temperature had fallen since he had ridden down on these five raiders, Scratch watched with dulled senses as the Indian scrambled onto his feet, turned, and with that hand still gripping the back of Bass’s collar … started to drag the white man across the crusty snow.
Slowly, yard by yard, lunge by lunge, the young man got the old trapper turned. As the Blackfoot started up the long, shallow slope toward the stand of some saplings and taller timber, away from the rushes and willow, escaping the dirty ice of that frozen beaver pond, one of the white man’s useless legs at a time slowly straightened out and trailed along behind him. He was helpless now. No matter what the Blackfoot decided to do with his body, it could not matter. He was good as dead already.
That dirty trench of new snow he was leaving behind told the story, smeared with gobs of his blood. How he struggled to maintain enough strength to hold in the long, warm, greasy coils of his own sundered gut, warm, steaming intestine that squirted out between his hands, escaping the pressure of his arms, spilling to his left side where Painted Robe had opened him like one of his grandpap’s Christmas hogs … trailing beside him in the snow. Oh—how he didn’t want his guts to be dragged through the bloody trench up this long, sagebrush-covered slope as the fat, frozen, fluffy flakes of snow collected on his coupled arms, steaming on the purplish coil of his warm gut that he could no longer contain.
With a grunt from them both, the Blackfoot stopped. Shifted his position, then yanked on the white man once more. Then again. Finally a last time. And eventually came around in front of the trapper, seized both of Bass’s shoulders, and tugged him up into a sitting position.
He struggled to focus that one good eye on the warrior as the Blackfoot gently nudged him back now. Without protest, unable to fight, Titus sensed the trunk of the tree press between his shoulder blades. He let his head relax back against the rough bark and sighed. Listening to the sounds of the warrior as the Blackfoot moved off on the icy snow.
Titus coughed and spewed up some bloody phlegm. Nothing left in his belly to bring up but more blood. Hell, he didn’t have a belly left to hold anything—
Suddenly the warrior was kneeling close again, unfurling the red capote as Bass watched the swimming of the colors and motion. Must be the murderer’s coat, he thought. But why?
Green-Stripe Blanket gently spread the red capote over the white man’s bloody body. He tugged it down Bass’s legs and tucked it under them. Watching this ceremony with complete disbelief, Bass finally brought his one good eye again to the man’s face. The smeared paint, the high cheekbones … like so many other brownskins he had fought and killed in all his seasons in this high and terrible land.
But this man’s eyes were soft. Not like the chertlike eyes of Yellow Paint Elkskin, or Buffalo Horn Headdress. Not at all like Painted Robe’s eyes filled with such hatred and fury. “Old man,” the Indian’s lips said.
Bass thought he shook his head slightly, heavy as it was, befuddled that he understood the Blackfoot’s language. And he tried to speak, but no sound came from his own tongue.
“Don’t talk, old man,” the warrior said, his words clear and distinct inside the white man’s head again. As if the Blackfoot spoke a passable American. “Save your breath for what must come next. You must save your breath to start your walk on the wind.”
“W-walk?” he finally uttered in a moist whisper. “Wind?”
With a nod, the Blackfoot stuffed a hand inside his blanket, reaching inside the sleeveless buffalo-hide vest he wore, where two of his fingers snagged the long, thin leather loop that was draped around his neck. Bending his head slightly, the warrior tugged the thong free of his otter-wrapped braids, on over the top of his head where he had tied a big handful of the hair at the front of his brow into a grease-crusted sprig that stood straight up, the sort of hairstyle a warrior would adapt when riding into battle, a symbol that any fighting man would understand: he was daring all his enemies to attempt to take his taunting scalplock.
With a tug, the Blackfoot finally pulled an object free from beneath the front of that buffalo-hide vest Bass could now make out was sewn from the reddish skin of a young buffalo calf. Straining, his vision fixed on what the warrior held out between them, the object just inches from the white man’s eyes.
An eagle wingbone whistle, suspended from its thong and gently nudged by the icy wind that spat sharp snowy arrow-points against their exposed flesh.
But … not just any eagle wingbone whistle. The half breath seized inside what Titus had left of his lungs. This … this whistle appeared familiar. Wrapped in porcupine quills of oxblood red and greasy yellow. A simple pattern of flattened, colored quills that he could not help but recognize.
Eventually his moist, swimming eye climbed to the warrior’s face. Something like a smile seemed to cross that face as the Indian realized the old man was studying him. The Blackfoot reached up to his chin, yanked on the thong that tied the wolfhide cape on his head, and pulled it off.
“Do you know me now, old man?”
There it was again. That perfect white man’s American talk he magically heard inside his head when the Blackfoot opened his mouth, moved his lips and tongue. Even though other, foreign sounds came out of the warrior’s face, like the garbled tangle of some foreign language … what Bass heard inside his head was nonetheless American talk he understood perfectly.
“I-I don’t know you,” and he hacked up more of the thick blood congealing at the back of his throat. Finally he stared at the whistle, and whispered, “But … I know th-that.”
“It was my brother’s,” the warrior said inside Bass’s head. “You killed him many, many winters ago.”
He stared at the whistle, realizing what the Blackfoot said must surely be true. That was where he had seen it before, having taken it off the dead man he had eventually buried in a tree, wrapped in a warrior’s red blanket.
“I don’t have a red blanket to bury you in,” the young warrior apologized. “The way you buried my brother that day. All I have is this red coat that belonged to my friend who you killed.”
Swallowing, Bass explained, “He killed my wife.”
“Your woman?”
“In the village. He was the only one of you I really wanted. I am glad he is dead now.”
“It is good you can wear his capote,” the young warrior declared. “He honors you, a mighty warrior who killed him. You wear the color of war as you die, old man. Just the way you honored my brother many winters ago.”
“One warrior always honors ano-another.”
As the first tear slipped from the Blackfoot’s eye, he said, “And you honored me that day too. Giving me my brother’s war whistle, placing it between my lips to blow for him as he began to take his first steps on the wind.”