Wind Walker by Terry C. Johnston Page A

up at Waits-by-the-Water and found she still held her hand over her mouth in astonishment. As Bass lifted the rectangular strip of soggy white buffalo hide off Shell Woman’s lap, the Cheyenne woman leaned against her husband, silently beginning to sob, her shoulders quaking.
    “You told me to bring you to her, Shad.”
    Sweete cradled his wife against him. “My gut told me that was the only way I’d hold off dying. Didn’t wanna go under out there on my own.”
    “You wasn’t figgering that her medeecin was gonna keep you from dyin’?”
    With a shake of his head, Shad said, “I only knowed my heart’d be stronger if I died with her right there beside me. N-never really knowed for sure she had her mother’s power.”
    “Her mother’s power?” Titus repeated. “What power is that?”
    “Been handed down, mother to daughter, for generations back in them Cheyennes.”
    “What medeecin?”
    “White buffalo—an’ it’s a strong power.”
    “I figger Shell Woman knows she’s just found out she’s got that power handed down to her,” Bass sighed, staring down at those white hairs bristling from the welts of torn tissue and coagulated blood. “I figger she knows her white buffalo medeecin saved your life.”
    *
Ride the Moon Down

FIVE

    A cold, steady rain sluiced off the soggy, shapeless brims of their low-crowned hats as they came to a halt at the crest of the low hill and gazed down at the tall, weathered adobe stockade erected around the American Fur Company’s Fort Laramie.
    “Thar’s Fort William, Shadrach,” Titus said, flicking a droplet of moisture from the end of his cold, red nose.
    “When they put up them mud walls?” Sweete asked as Bass’s eldest son came to a stop on the hill with the packhorses.
    “I dunno,” Titus replied, failing to remember. “Last time I was here, I reckon on how there was timbered walls.”
    “How long’s it been, you been here?”
    “Years. Can’t recollect how many gone by now. You?”
    Sweete wagged his head. “Had to be afore beaver went to hell.”
    “Back near the end—when Bridger was a brigade cap’n for American Fur?”
    “Naw,” Sweete replied. “Bridger always stayed ’bout as far away from here an’ them booshways as a man could keep himself.”
    Bass sniffled, “Likely was some time afore that last ronnyvoo we had us over on the Seedskeedee near Horse Crik.”
    “American Fur squeezed ever’thing outta the mountains,” Shad grumped.
    “Then they kept on squeezin’ so hard they damn near choked ever’thing north from here, clear up to the Englishers’ country.”
    “Only reason they ain’t got a finger in the business south of the Platte is the Bent brothers—” but Sweete caught himself. “I mean, what them brothers did afore Charles was murdered down to Taos.”
    Titus smiled, flashing those crooked teeth the color of pin acorns. “You reckon they got some whiskey to trade, Shadrach?”
    “What the blazes you got to trade for whiskey?”
    “I figger it’s you got some trade goods.”
    A quizzical look crossed Sweete’s face. “I ain’t got no foofaraw to trade. Ain’t worked for Vaskiss or the Bents in many a season … an’ I ain’t laid bait or set a trap in longer’n that—”
    “Can you still arm-wrestle like you done back in them ronnyvoo days?”
    For a moment Sweete gazed down at his right arm, then patted it with his left hand. No longer did he wear the left one in that black bandanna of a sling. “Long as it’s the right arm.”
    “Your other’n, it’ll come, Shad,” Bass reassured. “Don’t you worry—I’ll lay how you’re getting stronger ever’ day. You can still fotch ary a man with that right arm of your’n.”
    “That how you figger we’re gonna get us some whiskey to drink?”
    Titus shrugged. “Don’t pay a man to trap beaver no more. Onliest thing the traders want nowadays is buffler robes. But neither of us got a camp o’ squaws to dress out buffler robes. What’s a