Buffalo Palace (28 page)

“Drink,” she repeated. “Cold—for the fire inside you. Put out the fire.”

“Put out the fire,” he echoed in Ute.

So he drank a sip, physically forcing the foul-tasting, bitter liquid back on his tongue, down his throat. Then pursed his lips to drink a bit more. Then more until she no longer pressed the spoon against his lips.

Like sudden freedom, he savored those moments after Fawn laid his head back upon the buffalo robe and withdrew her arm, like stolen, furtive heartbeats he was sure were quickly going to lead him back into the escape of sleep now.

But instead she brushed more of the cool water across his forehead and face, then murmured something to him about a willow stick.

Bass felt an object pressed against his lips. Figuring it to be more of the fire-eating liquid, he opened his mouth slightly, his eyes tearing open into slits. But this time instead of the spoon, the widow pressed between his teeth a thin wand of willow.

“Bite on this,” she instructed quietly, “when you want to cry out.”

Cry out? Cry out for what? Nothing could be worse than what she had already put him through. He had no need to cry out now, not now that she had finished pouring that bitter water down his throat. All he needed now was to sleep … so why in the devil would she say he might want to cry out—

His back arched, convulsing with the sudden, sharp stab of pain at his shoulder, radiating clear to the roof of his head and to the soles of his feet. Sputtering, Bass finally got his tongue to shove the willow wand out from between his teeth and started to growl, spittle dripping from both corners of his mouth.

As suddenly he felt big hands on him, sensed the peeled willow wand shoved not so gently against his teeth this time—clearly without the kindness of the widow.

Through the tears and drops of sweat pooling in his eyes, Titus tried to make out who was there with Fawn. Who held him down as he struggled against the thunderous pain in his shoulder, the torment shooting down the entire length of his left arm? Bass could not recognize him. Blinking, he wanted to be certain who it was because Titus swore to kill the bastard once he was healed and strong enough to go searching for the one who had forced him to endure this pain.

He shrieked, crying out, then whimpered in his fevered torture, trying his best to thrash back and forth, to arch his back up, throw off the oppressive weight of his handler, to kick free of the one who seemed to sit squarely on top of him.

Then as suddenly he felt as weak as a newborn calf, his legs gone to butter. Oh, the pain was still there, so he had to save what strength he had left so that he would not die. No more did he have anything to use in fighting this strong one.

Maybe it was Cooper. Big enough, strong enough to be. Cooper would be the sort to enjoy this. Maybe even simpleminded Billy Hooks. No, he decided: they would be off whoring with their squaws right now. Days of hunting away from camp meant they would have one thing and one thing only on their minds. So they would be with their women, thrashing about in the robes instead of thrashing about with a fevered friend.

Maybeso it was Tuttle. Of the three, he believed he could count on Bud.

Tightly Bass clamped his eyes shut, trying to squeeze all the moisture from them so when he opened his eyes, he could see who had come to help the widow.

Into slits, then open wider still … until he peered
up at the old, lined face. Skin darker than an old saddle. More seams and wrinkles in it than a cottonwood trunk. Eyes old and all-seeing, yet somehow possessed of a deep kindness as they gazed down at him in these last few of the white man’s futile, fevered convulsions.

She spoke to the old one in hushed tones. He replied in same. Behind them both the small boy whimpered. Fawn touched Bass’s forehead one last time with her cool hand, then turned away and went to the child.

Likely to feed the boy, he thought as he laid his cheek against a damp, cool spot on the buffalo robe beneath him where some of his sweat had collected. How long had it been since he’d had to pee? Titus wondered. He couldn’t remember peeing since before they were jumped by the Arapaho. And he wondered if he had done the unthinkable—to go and wet himself. Still, he felt wet everywhere on his body, everywhere his fingers touched. Maybe Fawn and this old man would not notice he had wet himself, since he was damp all over.

Then he realized it might just be all right. He hadn’t done the unthinkable. The fever—it had taken every drop of moisture in his body, soaked it up, and poured it out through his skin. There’d been nothing left for him to pee.

Funny how a man thought on such things like that when walking up the threshold to death’s door.

The strong, leathery arm raised his head. Bass felt the hard, smooth texture of the horn spoon pressed against his lips.

Yes, he thought. Water. The more I drink, maybe I can live. More, his mind echoed, convincing himself. This was sweet and clear. Not the bitter water she gave him. More.

Bass drank his fill until he could drink no more, and slept.

“You have been gone a long, long time,” the voice said out of the darkness as Bass’s eyes fluttered open.

His mouth was dry again, his lips so parched, he could feel the oozy cracks in them … but his skin no longer felt as tight and drawn as it had when he had been burning up with the fire of that fever.

For a moment he struggled to focus, then gazed at the
old man’s face, watching it withdraw and the widow’s replace it right above him. Staring down at him with a wide, crooked-tooth smile.

“You are back from wandering the dark paths,” she said, her fingertips lightly touching his brow. “For some time now you have not been hot. It is good.”

“Yes,” he said in English, recognizing only the Ute word for “good.” Too hard to try remembering the Ute words now, to say them or understand them. If he ever could remember them again. So sure was he that the fever had burned away a good portion of what little he had in the way of his mind, just as a farmer set his fires to burn away the stalks from last year’s crop so that the next spring’s planting had that much better a chance.

“Yes,” she repeated in English. “Are you hungry?”

He thought a few moments—then understood—assessing the way he felt there on the robes, and finally answered, “No. Not right now. Maybe later.” He had said it in English, but when he shook his head slightly, she seemed to show some understanding.

“The old one came to guide you through the land of darkness, Me-Ti-tuzz.” He remembered that was what she called him as Fawn signaled to the man. The old one came close enough for Bass to see once more.

“You …,” and then Scratch struggled to remember the Ute words, how to put a few of them together. “Two … help … me … no more fire?”

“No more fire,” the old man repeated in his native tongue. “No more walk on the dark path.”

“No more fire,” Bass echoed confidently, remembering only tattered fragments of the fevered convulsions, how hot and wet he had been, how he had thrashed about.

Slowly, painfully, he raised his head to look down at himself. Surprised, he found upon his bare chest the smeared and many colors of patches and stripes of earth paint. Mystical symbols. Potent signs. And farther south on his belly were smeared what appeared to be dry, flaky powders, crude lines raked across his flesh by fingertips in some simplistic pictograph.

“This?” he asked weakly.

“You are better now,” the old man said, then turned to Fawn. “Wash off the paint, woman.”

Using that same clump of moss, she dipped cool water onto his flesh and gently scrubbed off the dried earth paint.

As she finished, the old man asked, “Should we tell the others with him?”

“They are gone,” Fawn replied.

“Gone where?” Titus asked as soon as the words registered, afraid the trio had abandoned him, leaving him behind when they rode off for parts unknown.

“To the streams,” she explained. Then, setting the moss scrubber aside, Fawn slapped her two open palms together with a smacking sound to imitate the animal’s own method of signaling a warning. “To catch the flat-tails.”

“Beaver!” he said in English with relief. And let his head sink back onto the buffalo robe beneath him.

“They come back soon,” she continued. “This is good?”

“Yes,” he said in Ute. “This is very good that they come back. I go with them when we leave for the spring.”

“Spring,” she repeated the word, her eyes drifting away. “It comes soon. And you go.”

“Yes.” He cheered himself with the thought. Then because he could not think of the words in Ute, Bass tried hard to explain in English, “To catch beaver in its prime! To mosey easy-like on down to ronnyvoo where the trader will have him whiskey! An’ there’ll be women too!”

In that next moment he suddenly realized what he had said. “Women for all the men what ain’t had a good woman to wrap up in the robes with ’em all winter, Fawn,” he tried to apologize in English.

Clumsily he reached out and took hold of one of the woman’s hands. Again he spoke in Ute, “You know I leave soon. Come spring.”

“Leave Fawn. Yes. Me-Ti-tuzz only a winter guest. Come again maybe next winter.”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “Maybe next winter.”

She pulled her hands from his and turned aside as the old man continued to stuff things away in his shoulder pouch. Bass glanced again at his wounds, finding each of
them covered with moistened leaves held down with thin strips of cloth.

“You both help me,” Bass declared to them, watching their faces turn so they could look at him. “I will not forget. I may leave come spring … but I won’t ever forget you both.”

Imperceptibly at first, the days began ta lengthen.

It happened that Bass realized it was a little brighter in the lodge those mornings when he awoke. Instead of the gray wash to everything just beginning to announce the coming of the sun, the light was already there to greet him each time he opened his eyes beside her.

As well, night was held at abeyance for just a little longer. Twilight seemed to swell about them in that high mountain park, the end of each succeeding day celebrating itself with just a few more heartbeats of gentle glow as the sun eased out of sight. Why, a man would have to be nothing short of blind not to notice that spring was on its way.

It was clear to Titus that the other three realized it too as the snow grew mushy beneath his own thick, fur-lined winter moccasins of buffalo hide. From time to time, yes—snow would fall from those clouds gathered up there near Buffalo Pass, then only from those clouds collared around the peaks to the far north. Eventually, there were no more storms.

As the snow retreated into the shadowed places, so the game retreated farther up the mountainsides. The men traveled higher, stayed out longer, to supply the camp with meat. And the nearby streams were nearly trapped
out. Over the last few days Silas Cooper had been forced to take his trappers farther and farther still to run onto a creek where they stood a chance of finding beaver what would come to bait.

Plain as paint, the time was coming to move on.

“Where you set us to go?” Tuttle asked Cooper of an evening just days ago as they had sat in the last rays of the sun, smoking the bark of the red willow mixed with the pale dogwood. Some time back they had finished off the last of Bass’s tobacco.

Silas sighed. “Yonder to the west.”

“Them mountains we come through to get here?” Hooks inquired, digging a fingernail around inside the bowl of his clay pipe. Just then he struck a hot coal, sure enough, and jerked the finger out to suck on it like a child with a precious sliver or some such injury worth nursing.

Cooper quickly glanced round at the other three, then stared off to the high peaks bordering the sundown side of Park Kyack. “That be the direction a man takes him to mosey off to ronnyvoo, ain’t it?”

“Surely it is,” Bud agreed.

Cooper’s gaze landed on Bass. “What say y’ then, Scratch?”

“Say me to what?”

“Where away would y’ lead this bunch, if’n it was you callin’ the tune?”

Pulling the cane pipestem from his mouth slowly, Titus wiped the back of his hand across his lips thoughtfully. “Near as I recollect, there was many a stream in that country where a man would be smart to lay down his traps. Yessir, Silas. No two ways to it—that’s good country yonder for a beaver man.”

Cooper smiled as big as he had ever smiled, here with his plans given such credence. “Damn straight, Scratch. By bloody damn, boys! This here greenhorn pilgrim we come across’t last fall h’ain’t so wet ahin’t his ears no more now.”

“But afore we go and tramp off to this here Ashley’s ronnyvoo,” Scratch replied, “it’s plain to me we best be taking our time through that high country.”

“Take … taking our time?” Cooper asked, all but incredulous.

“Damn, but there’s a ronnyvoo ain’t a one of us wanna miss!” Hooks whined, worry in his eyes.

Titus looked at Billy, then at Tuttle. “You’re cutting a trail through beaver country to reach ronnyvoo, ain’cha?”