Ride the Moon Down by Terry C. Johnston

Author:Terry C. Johnston [Johnston, Terry C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76165-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-07-28T04:00:00+00:00

18

It brought some rest to a place inside her heart to return to her people. Two summers had passed while Waits-by-the-Water had been away, and a winter spent in that southern land of the Arapaho.

Days ago she and her husband had turned south from the white man’s fort at the mouth of the Yellowstone. It had not been a happy time for her there. So many half-breeds and Assiniboine, she never felt welcome. Better that a Crow woman stay safe inside the walls of that fort until Ti-tuzz could take them back across the Missouri and ride for Absaroka.

As they began their journey south, the weather turned mild for many days, but winter had resumed its fury by the time they found the village sprawled among the cottonwoods towering on a neck of land along the southern bank of the Yellowstone.

“It was near this place where we first talked,” she said as they halted to gaze at the welcome sight of those brown lodges.

Drawing in a long breath of the cold air scented with wood smoke and the fresh dung of hundreds of ponies, he looked about at the surrounding river bluffs—then gazed at her and smiled. “Yes. I remember. Now I want us to be even happier this winter than we were when we realized we needed each other.”

Over their seasons together Waits had grown even more patient with how slow he sometimes was to put his thoughts together in her tongue. She knew Magpie would have it easier than either of her parents, growing up with both languages spoken to her as they were.

Looking up, she found him staring at her still, his eyes twinkling. Then she realized he was watching her hand. She had been rubbing her huge belly unconsciously, thinking of this child to come.

“It will be born this winter, yes?” he asked.

With a nod she answered, “I think sometime in the next moon, perhaps.”

Urging his pony over beside hers, Bass tore off a blanket mitten and stuffed his bare hand beneath her buffalo robe, laying it upon that swollen belly beneath her capote. “You are so big—how many little calves do you have in there?”

She giggled. “I think there is only one, but it will be a big child.”

“A boy?” and his eyes sparkled.

“Perhaps,” she said. “If it is a boy, you will not forget your daughter?”

Bass twisted round to gaze back at the girl who sat behind him, clinging to his elk-hide coat. Patting the child’s leg beneath that half robe he had wrapped securely around her, he said, “This little one? I could never forget what she means to me! Tell me, daughter: by spring when the snows melt, will you be ready to learn to ride on your own?”

“Ride a pony by myself?” she asked in Crow.

“Yes,” he answered her in English, the way many of their conversations took place: mixing the two tongues together while they conversed, as if it were as natural as could be. “I think you will be old enough to learn, Magpie.

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