Ride the Moon Down Read Free Page B

Ashley man for that first ronnyvoo?”
    Wagging his head, Bass replied, “Didn’t see my first ronnyvoo till twenty-six. But I made ever’ one since.”
    “That makes nine of ’em, Bass.”
    Drawing himself up, Scratch sighed. “Time was, I didn’t figure I’d ever see near this many ronnyvooz, Dixon. S’pose it’s nigh onto time for us to make camp.”
    “That sure is a handsome woman,” the man declared, backing one step to grab himself a last admiring look at Waits-by-the-Water. “I take it she yours.”
    “My wife. Crow. They are a handsome people. We been together for more’n a year now,” then he nudged his heels into the buffalo runner’s ribs.
    “Handsome woman, Titus Bass,” Dixon repeated. “But, like I said, that sure is one ugly dog!”
    “Thankee kindly,” Scratch replied with a wide, brown-toothed grin. “Thankee on both counts!”
    As the infant suckled at her breast, Waits-by-the-Water watched her husband call the dog over to have it lay beside him as he squatted at their small fire. She studied how the man scratched its torn ears, the scarred snout, that thick neck the wolf tried vainly to crush—seeing how gently her husband’s hands treated the big dog, recalling how his hands ignited a fire in her.
    Her husband loved his animals, the buffalo pony and mule, and now this dog too. Almost as much as she knew he loved her and their daughter.
    “Have you decided upon a name?” she asked.
    He stared at the flames awhile. The only sound besides the crackling of their fire were the shouts and laughter from down the valley where the many white men camped and celebrated. How the white man could celebrate!
    “No,” he finally admitted, not taking his eyes off the fire. “This is so important, I do not want to make a mistake.”
    “Who do you want to name her if you don’t?” she asked.
    Her husband turned to look at her. “Isn’t it the father who gives a name among your people?”
    “It is one of the father’s family.”
    Wagging his head, Bass peered back at the flames. “Besides the two of you, I don’t have any family out here. I might as well not have any family left back there anyway. So there is no one to name our daughter but me.”
    “Arapooesh calls you his brother.”
    Nodding, Bass replied, “Yes, Rotten Belly is like a brother.”
    “Perhaps he can help us when we return to my people for the winter,
chil’ee
, my husband.” She sighed and gently pulled her wet nipple from the babe’s slack mouth. Waits laid the sleeping infant beside her and pulled the corner of a blanket over the child.
    “I am anxious to see Rotten Belly,” Scratch admitted.“It will be two winters since we have talked and smoked together.”
    “A good man, my uncle is,” she said, scooting over to sit alongside him. “You have decided where we will go when we leave this place of many white men?”
    “We will ride north when we go. There are beaver still to trap in Absaroka. We can take our time and work slowly north through the mountains while the flat-tails put on their winter fur, then find Rotten Belly’s camp for the winter.”
    She grinned. “I will be going back to my people a married woman.”
    “And a mother,” he added, looping an arm over her shoulder and pulling her against him. “Mother of a beautiful daughter.”
    “You still think of me as beautiful too?”
    Staring her full in the face, his brow knit with concern. “I don’t ever want you to feel anything less than beautiful—for you are all my sunrises and all my sunsets. The way the light strikes a high-country pool.”
    “You still think of me as your lover?” she asked, slipping her fingers beneath the flap of his breechclout to barely brush his manhood lying there under the layer of wool.
    Waits wanted him now. All too fleeting were their moments alone. How desperately she wanted to know that he still thought of her as a woman, that the fire between them had not diminished now that she had given birth to