Buffalo Palace (29 page)

Bud nodded, but Billy glanced at the dark-faced Cooper.

Silas said, “So, Scratch—what fur y’ got to rub with me?”

“We’re up there anyways,” Titus began, “so let’s set us some traps. Catch us some beaver on the tramp.”

Hooks grinned, then scratched at the side of his face when he asked, “What you think of that, Silas?”

Warily, the way an animal might react as it kept itself from being backed into a corner, Cooper said, “If’n there’s time, ary a man’d be struck with the stupids what he didn’t try to trap what beaver he could.”

Tuttle picked at a scab on his nose while the light sank out of the sky. “For balls’ sake—ronnyvoo’s still a far piece off. Take our time getting.”

Hooks nodded amiably, saying, “Maybeso we ought’n head there straight off.”

“No,” Tuttle corrected, “plenty of time till ronnyvoo, more weeks’n I care to count.”

Billy’s shoulders sagged in disappointment. “I was hankering for that trader’s whiskey—just to talk of ronnyvoo!”

“Soon enough, Billy,” Silas replied, then turned to Bass. “Just how full was y’ fixin’ to get your beaver packs?”

“Full as I can,” Bass answered. “I go through a piece of country what looks to be crawlin’ with them flat-tails … I say let’s drag what critters we can outta the streams on our way.”

“Boys”—Cooper brightened of a sudden as he called out in his booming voice—“looks to be we took us on a greenhorn last autumn, and now we got us a master trapper as our partner, don’t it?”

“Har! Har!” Tuttle exclaimed. “Scratch is a damn sight better trapper’n me—”

“Wouldn’t take much for that!” Hooks gushed, belly-laughing.

Bud frowned. “An’ I’d care to lay a set that he’s some better’n you, Billy Hooks!”

The wide smile was whisked from Billy’s face as Hooks looked over at Cooper.

Silas said, “I daresay Bud might well be dead center, Billy. Scratch awready got better’n you.”

“Awright,” Hooks replied with a single nod of his head, “then you the only one he ain’t a’bettering—right, Silas?”

Cooper regarded Bass a moment. “For now, Billy. For now I’m still the best in this here trappin’ outfit.”

Hooks inquired, “What haps when Scratch gets better’n you, Silas?”

His eyes narrowing, Cooper chewed over that a moment, then replied, “It don’t mean a thing’s gonna change, Billy, This here still be my outfit—no two ways about it. No man take it from me. Y’ understand that, Bud?”

Turtle’s eyes hugged the ground. “I figger I know how your stick floats, Silas.”

Cooper continued. “Good. Might’n be some man pull more beaver’n me outta the water … but that don’t mean he’s man ’nough to lead my outfit.”

Hooks grinned all over again, like he had come up with it in the first place. “You ain’t got balls enough to lead this outfit, Scratch! Not man enough to take it ’way from Silas!”

“Never said I was,” Bass defended. “Silas asked me a question, and I tolt him I was fixin’ to trap me a bunch more beaver on the way to ronnyvoo.”

“Your packs is damn near the heaviest there is right now!” Tuttle exclaimed.

“Hush up, now!” Cooper ordered, slapping a hand down on Turtle’s forearm. “If’n we find we got more packs’n we can carry—then we just get us more animals to carry ’em.”

“More animals from where?” Billy asked.

“These here Yutas,” Cooper said with a grin. “Afore we pull out come morning, what say we buy us some more ponies?”

“Good idea, Silas,” Tuttle said. “You always was the thinkin’ man in this outfit.”

“An’ I allays will be, Bud. Don’t you ever forget
that.” Cooper’s eyes left their faces as he peered over their shoulders. “Now, what y’ suppose these ol’ fellers got on their minds?”

The three turned, finding more than a dozen of the tribal elders and revered warriors headed their way, each of the Ute wrapped in a painted buffalo robe or in a blanket to which wide strips and rosettes of porcupine quills had been added.

By the time the old men came to a stop before the trappers, more of the village was gathering behind them. A lone man’s voice began to sing out, startling Bass. Other men quickly joined in the song, and women trilled their tongues.

“What’s goin’ on, Bud?” Scratch whispered to Tuttle.

“Dunno,” he answered with a shrug.

“I’d lay we’re big men to this here village,” Silas boasted as the song was coming to an end. “Something big up a stick to them.”

“Yessirreebob! Gonna have to come back one day soon to visit that li’l squaw again,” Hooks added, rubbing his groin with a grubby hand. “Been a fine thing, dipping into that honey-pot!”

When the last note of the song had drifted off toward the aspen and lodgepole pine surrounding their camp, the leader of the hunting party stepped forward. He gestured, wanting the four white men to stand.

As all four got to their feet, the crowd inched in even more tightly. Looking about him curiously, Titus studied the faces until he found Fawn, her young son, White Horse, clinging to her back, his little arms clamped around her neck. She smiled. And that went a long way to easing his apprehension.

One man after another began to speak in excited tones, some waving their weapons, others rattling a shield; then the hunting-party leader waved forward the old man Titus remembered from his delirium.

“That one says he knows y’,” Cooper said, translating some of what was being said as the wrinkled one began to speak haltingly.

“I recollect he does,” Bass said. “Name is Crane. Him and Fawn got me through the fever of my wounds.”

Cooper turned an ear toward the talk. “Y’ recollect any of what he said to y’ when you was took with fever?”

“Nary a thing,” Titus admitted.

“Seems to me this bunch figgers you was the big bull in that scrap,” Cooper explained.

“I heard some talk of it my own self,” Bass said. “Understood part of
it
—but it don’t make no sense to me.”

The old man pointed at Titus, waving him forward.

“G’won, now, Scratch.” Tuttle prodded him with a shove of his hand.

As the old one started to speak again, he carefully removed two scalps from the pouch he wore slung over his shoulder. With one held aloft in each hand, the pair tied together with one long whang of leather, he began to tell the story of the hunt for food to fill the hungry bellies in their village, a hunt where they discovered sign of enemy Arapaho once again come trespassing on Ute land.

“There was no time to prepare for battle,” the old man known as Crane explained, telling the crowd what must surely have been a well-known story by then. “No time for paint. No time to smoke one’s pipe, only enough time to sing a prayer—before the Arapaho came down upon us.”

Wild shouts erupted from the full ring of onlookers. Men yelped and women keened until the old man shook the scalps again, ordering quiet.

“In the battle that took four of our friends, uncles and nephews to us all—one man among our hunting party displayed great bravery!”

Again they raised their voices in shouts of joy.

“Now at last the time has passed for mourning,” the wrinkled one declared. “We can celebrate the courage of our friends who helped save our people. Their guns helped win the day for our people!”

As more cheers rolled over the trappers, men and women alike leaned forward to pound the four white men on the backs and shoulders in congratulation.

“Yet there is one among them who showed more bravery than all the rest in the face of those enemy when they attacked us from behind!”

Now the crowd grew strangely quiet as the old man
turned slowly, slowly about, the scalps still held at the end of his outstretched arms.

“He is the only warrior that day to take
two
enemy scalps!
Two!”

Suddenly Bass found the pair of scalps held before his face as the old man shook them violently.

“This is the hair of our enemy!” Crane cried out to the crowd in his quavery voice—answered by great shouts leaping from more than a hundred throats. “Two enemy warriors are naked of hair in the beyond land now!”

Wheeling, the old man dropped the leather thong over Bass’s head so the two scalps hung around his neck, high on either side of his chest.

“The courage of this white man saw his feet through on his terrible journey into the dark country, so deep were his wounds. He returned to us, granted life by the life-giver of us all. We give our thanks that he was spared for us: a true friend of the Ute, and sworn enemy of the Arapaho!”

Now again the leader of that hunting party stepped forward and put his arms around a stunned Titus Bass, hugging him once before he turned to address the crowd.

“As we planned, this is to be a night of celebration. Women! Bring out the meat! Children! Open a path for the men of this camp! Come, everyone! Celebrate tonight, for our white friends depart in the morning!”

As some in the crowd surged close and began to nudge the trappers along toward the center of the village, Cooper leaned close to Titus. “Y’ get all of that, Scratch?”

“Maybeso enough.”

“You’re some big coon to these here red niggers,” Silas grumbled.

“A big, big shit!” Hooks echoed with that ready grin of his.

“Ain’t done nothing special,” Bass replied, trying to make less of this spontaneous celebration in his honor.

“Y’ something big up a stick to them,” Cooper argued. “But mind y’—don’t ever go figgering you be as savvy as me, hear? Don’t ever y’ figger y’ can outtrap, outfight, outsquaw Silas Cooper! Y’ got that, ‘Rapaho-killer? Y’ got that?”

“I … I don’t aim to take nothing away from you—”

“Tell me, Bass! Right here an’ now,” Cooper interrupted. “Don’t y’ ever try to stand head to head with me like y’ done once.”

“Silas always give a man one chance to show his stupids,” Hooks proclaimed. “What Silas always says: give ever’ man one chance to show he can be a dead fool.”

“Billy’s right, Scratch,” Cooper reminded. “And y’ done had your chance back up there near Buffalo Pass when y’ laid your hand on me.”

Bass flinched with another look into Cooper’s cold black eyes. Almost a good head taller than Bass, and with some eleven or twelve years on him too. “I understood you, then, Silas. An’ I don’t fix on ever giving you cause to raise a hand to me. Not among friends.”

“That’s right, ’Rapaho-killer!” Cooper roared, flinging his long arm over Titus’s shoulder so suddenly that it surprised Bass as they came to a halt at the center of camp with the others. “We’re friends, ain’t we? Friends allays take good, good care of each other!”

The tight ring about the trappers loosened as women and men alike began to throw down blankets and robes, seating themselves around the huge fire ring as women came forward bearing rawhide platters heaped with boiled meat and roasted marrow bones, sections of stuffed elk gut and minced slices of raw liver one could dip into tiny bladders filled with tangy yellow gall. Everywhere folks began to talk at once, laugh together, sing out in merriment and exultation.

“Well?” Cooper demanded, turning on Bass, seizing Titus’s shoulders in his big hands and squeezing hard. “I asked y’. H’ain’t we friends?”

“Yes, Silas,” he said, trying not to wince with the pain the big man created in that left shoulder, a hot, deep pain where it had not yet fully healed. At the same time he was determined not to show Cooper, nor the others, just how much he hurt. “We’re friends.”

“Allays will be?”

Bass nodded. “Yes, always will be friends, Silas.”

“Good man!” and Silas pounded Titus on the top of the shoulders. “What say we stuff our gullets full this
night, fellas … then each dog-man of us rut ary a squaw dry till mornin’ light when Silas Cooper’s outfit pulls out for the high country!”

“Womens tonight!” Hooks cheered. “Aye—an’ the high country tomorry!”

Full as a tick about to burst he was as he waddled back to Fawn’s lodge that night long after moonrise. He cradled the boy in his arms on that walk, then laid the sleeping youngster among the blankets where the widow made a warm nest for the child. Titus stood looking down on them both as she tugged up the buffalo robe, then turned and stood before him.

There in the red-hued glow of the dying fire, Fawn freed the sash from her worn blanket coat and flung them both to the far side of the lodge, her eyes never leaving his. Then with her left hand she pulled at the ties on her right shoulder, doing the same at her left shoulder, loosening the top of her dress enough to slowly slide the skins down over her arms, tugging the garment on down over her breasts, then down her rounded belly and hips, finally to let it spill off her thighs to lay in a heap around her ankles like that last, old snow withdrawing in a ragged ring around the trunk of every aspen, lodgepole, and patch of sage in the surrounding hills.

He found his mouth bone dry as he watched what the dim flicker of the last limbs and glowing coals did to the dark hue of her brown flesh. His eyes savored the roundness to her, the full sway of her breasts as she stepped on out of her dress, the soft, full curve of her hips as they molded back to her full bottom.

Just before she moved into him, Bass gazed down at the dark triangle of hair there where her thighs blended into her rounded belly. Then she pressed herself against him, arms encircling his waist, cheek buried against his chest.

Pushing her away slightly, Titus hurried out of his coat with a shudder of excitement—then yanked his shirt over his head as she hastened to pull at the buckle, loosening his belt so that breechclout and leggings fell together. She knelt immediately, tugging at his moccasins, eagerly yanking at the leggings in a rush of motion, her eyes
crawling up his legs to where his flesh began to throb and grow in anticipation of her.

Then she stretched up over him like a big cat, pushing him back upon their bed, finally arching herself out to full length atop him, her mouth finding his. The taste of her, wild with red meat simmered until tender with those dried leaves she harvested last summer—again his heart sang with happiness that he had taught her to kiss him back. Their mouths sucking, drawing, savoring one another’s as his hands stroked down that concave valley at the small of her back, then rising onto the rounded knoll of her bottom. Fingertips played over the fleshy fullness of her hips only briefly before his hunger drove him to push her off to the side where he could lick and suck on her breasts, running a hand down to that warm delta where she already grew moist.