Ride the Moon Down by Terry C. Johnston Page A

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.
    And he thought on how warm it was lying next to her skin in the winter, even cold as deep as this. It saddened him to think of all those winter nights Arapooesh had endured after his wife was murdered. Knowing how hard it would be for him to endure two long winters without Waits-by-the-Water.
    Perhaps Rotten Belly had sought out his own death. Some men did just that: seeking an honorable death on its own terms. Like Asa McAfferty.
    Bass wondered if he would have the courage to seek out his own death when the time came.
    Then he thought on his woman, and their child—knowing because of them he now shared the promise of life.
    The dog lay warm against him, breathing slowly.
    As the Seven Sisters rose in the northeast, low along the horizon that first night of early winter, Bass dreamed of sunlit high-country ponds and the slap of beaver tails on still water, the spring breeze rustling those new leaves buddingon the quakies, and the merry trickle of Magpie’s laughter.
    Dreamed with the pleasure of his wife’s lips on his.
    And that joy of crossing into a span of country where he knew he was the first man ever to set foot … as if it were the day after God had created it all, made that world just for him.
    There was little choice but for Scratch to put out the call—asking warriors to join him in making a raid deep into Blackfoot country.
    In those first days following Bass’s return to the village, Whistler not only readily offered to go along on the journey, but volunteered to spread the call.
    “I will be your pipe bearer,” declared the man not all that much older than Titus.
    “That means you are the one who will take responsibility for asking others to join you?”
    “Yes,” Whistler explained. “I will carry the pipe throughout the village and ask all who wish to join us in this blood journey to bring tobacco to our lodge.”
    “And you’ll smoke the tobacco of those you decide will go with us?”
    “
We
will smoke their tobacco, offering our prayers for a successful venture.”
    Bass felt humbled at this honor. “Whistler makes me proud, agreeing to act as pipe bearer on this war trail led by a white man.”
    “You are a son-in-law who gives me honor,” the warrior protested. “The loss of my older brother and my own selfish mourning blinded me to what must be done for my brother’s memory. Now you have returned to us after many seasons. And you have mourned as my people grieve: cutting your hair and drawing your own blood. You offer to ride into the land of the enemy to take revenge in the name of the One-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here.”
    “He-Who-Has-Died was a good friend,” Bass explained. “For such a friend who treated me like his brother, I am without honor if I do not go in search of Blackfoot scalps in his name.”
    After four nights in the hills beside his little fire, with only Samantha and Zeke for company as the sun rose, climbed, and fell each day, as the stars wheeled overhead each night, it was such a sweet homecoming to lie next to Waits-by-the-Water. To tell her how he had yearned for her closeness as he endured those days of isolation, eating snow and the dried meat he had packed along, moving from that rocky point on the brow of the hill only to gather more wood he lashed on the mule’s back twice each day: first with the sun’s rising so he would have enough for his little fire until dusk, and later as the sun began its tumble into the west so he had what he needed to keep his fire going through the long winter night.
    Darkness spent dreaming of his wife and Magpie, slumber troubled with frightening memories and terrifying visions that awoke him in the cold and the blackness to lay more wood on the struggling flames. Clutching