Read Online Ride the Moon Down by Terry C. Johnston - Free Book Online Page B

How … how did you know you were wrong?”
    He shrugged, presenting the baby one of his gnarled fingers. She grabbed it readily. “Only from the feeling I had inside.”
    “You felt this three times?”
    With a nod Bass said, “At first I thought of
daa’xxa’pe
.”
    “Little Red Calf?” and she chuckled behind her fingers.
    “Remember how red she looked for a long time after she was born,” he explained. “Just like the little buffalo calves when they are born.”
    “Yes,” she said with a smile. “It would be a good name for a girl.”
    And he agreed with that. “I know—but I eventually figured out that she was not named Little Red Calf.”
    “What was the second name you thought she had?”
    Clearing his throat, Bass declared, “Spring Calf Woman—
daa’xxap’shii’le
—because she was a little yellow calf dropped in the spring.”
    “Yellow? How is this little one yellow when you just said she was a red calf for a long time?”
    “Her skin was red for so long. But look at her hair,” he told her. “Is it as black as a raven’s wing like yours?”
    “No,” and Waits shook her head. “But it isn’t the color of her father’s hair either.”
    “I agree—but it is easy to see that her hair is lighter than a Crow’s, and may even have some light streaks in it as she grows up and her hair grows longer.”
    “So … yellow?”
    “Yes—because my sister and one of my brothers had blond hair. Yellow as riverbank clay.”
    “I think I am glad we did not find out her name was Spring Calf Woman,” Waits replied thoughtfully. “That is far too much to say for a little one. I remember how hard it was for me, how long it took to learn to say all of my name when I was so small.”
    “Most parents give little thought to what trouble they may cause their child when they name them,” he explained.
    “And I suppose you would say that most parents do not try hard enough to find out what their child is already named?”
    “Yes!” he responded with glee, pedaling his hands up and down for the baby who had a fierce grip on his two index fingers.
    Waits laid a hand on Bass’s knee, took the girl’s foot in her other hand, and caressed the tiny toes. “What was the third name you wanted to give our daughter before you found out it did not belong to her?”
    “Cricket.”
    “The happy insect?”
    “Yes,” and Titus laughed easily, thinking about itagain. “For the last few weeks coming here, I have listened to her as she began to make sounds.”
    “Sounds?”
    “Just sounds. But most times they were happy sounds. I was reminded of a tiny cricket hiding somewhere under our blankets, or in my beaver hides, chirping so cheery and happy.”
    She echoed the name as if trying it out—“Cricket.”
    “But at dawn this morning after you fed her and she did not go right back to sleep,” he explained quickly, “I had the feeling that cricket was not her name. Something told me.”
    “Grandfather Above told you.”
    “Yes,” he replied. “And as she sat in her cradleboard watching you, and looking at me too—talking to us like we understood everything she was trying so hard to say—the Creator finally agreed that I had found our daughter’s name.”
    “After three others, you are sure this is the one?”
    “Yes,
ua
” he answered, using the Crow word for
wife
. “I discovered the name she has had all along.”
    “So,
ak’saa’wa’chee”
she addressed him as a father, “are you going to tell me just what this little person of ours is named?”
    “I think you should bring me my pipe and tobacco,” he suggested.
    She clambered to her feet and knelt among the rawhide parfleches and satchels. “See?” Waits proudly held up the small clay pipe. “I know where you keep this safe.”
    “There’s some new tobacco I traded for, laying there in that new blanket we now have for the baby.”
    Waits pulled back the folds of the thick wool blanket, fingering it a moment. “She will stay