Free Ride the Moon Down by Terry C. Johnston

warm this winter.”
    “Gonna be colder in Crow country than you were down in Taos while I was gone.”
    Pulling apart the crumpled sheet of waxed paper, Waits selected one of the twisted carrots of tobacco, then refolded the rest and stuffed it back beneath the layers of that new blanket. “No, husband. I was colder there in Tahousethan I will be this winter among my own people because I did not have you with me.”
    He sensed a stab of remorse, recalling the wrenching conflict he had suffered after deciding to leave his pregnant wife behind while he attempted a midwinter pilgrimage to hunt down some old friends in St. Louis. “No more should you fear, for we will spend the rest of our winters together,
ua
.”
    As she returned and laid both the pipe and tobacco beside his knee, Waits rocked forward and planted a gentle kiss on his bare cheekbone. “I promise you the same,
chil’ee
. Until death takes me, I will spend all the rest of my days with you.”
    Then she scooped up the infant and lifted her from his lap. “Let me hold this little girl while you fill your pipe. Then I can finally discover what the First Maker has named our daughter.”
    From the narrow tail of that twist of dried tobacco he had traded from Nathaniel Wyeth, Bass crumpled a little of the dark leaf between a thumb and finger, dropping each pinch into the bowl of his clay pipe. Although fragile, these pipes had long been a staple of barter between the white man and the red—going back some two hundred years. While they might break if a man did not carefully pack his pipe among his possibles, they were extremely cheap. Bass, like most of those trappers who hunted this mountain wilderness, owned several of the creamy-white clay pipes. From its months of use, the inside of the bowl of this one had taken on a rich earthen tone, while the oils and dirt from Scratch’s hands had given the outside of the pipe a softer, hand-rubbed, sepia-toned patina.
    Accustomed to watching how her husband practiced his habits, Waits-by-the-Water was prepared when he nodded his approval of having packed the bowl just so. From the edge of the coals she pulled a short twig she had propped there, suspending its tiny flame over the bowl as he sucked the fire into the tobacco. As he did, Bass looked sidelong, finding his daughter staring at the pipe, perhaps more so the bobbing flame she reached for with both of her tiny, pudgy hands.
    “She wants to smoke with you,” Waits said, amusement in her voice.
    “Tell her she’s not old enough,” Bass said when he took the stem from his lips, ready for their ceremony. “But you can smoke with me tonight.”
    “M-me?” she replied. “I’ve never … unless one is a member of a woman’s lodge, w-we don’t … never smoke—”
    “You are a member of my lodge,” he declared. “Better still, I have become a member of your lodge, woman. When I married you, we became our own clan.”
    “B-but … I never before—”
    “Tonight you will,” Bass interrupted. “This is for our daughter.”
    “Smoking is a sacred thing,” she explained with a slight wag of her head, as much doubt written on her face as in the sound of her voice. “Men smoke together to deliberate on an important matter. Or to offer prayers.”
    He chuckled as he leaned to the side, noticing how his daughter’s eyes remained fixed on that pipe in his hand before he looked closely into his wife’s eyes. “That is exactly what you and I are about to do. This is a sacred thing—this naming of a child, is it not?”
    “V-very sacred, yes.”
    “And we have deliberated on this matter of a name for some time?”
    “You have deliberated,” she admitted, “and I have prodded you for an answer to your deliberations—”
    “See, I am right,” he interrupted with a chuckle. “And now the two of us who belong to the Titus Bass coyote clan are about to offer a prayer for welcoming a third member to our clan.”
    “Yes, a prayer.”
    In one hand he