Buffalo Palace (34 page)

“Don’t wanna kill him,” Cooper said as he switched hold of Bass now, drawing back his right arm, cocking it like the hammer on a huge weapon. “Why, this feller be our best trapper, boys! Wouldn’t do to kill him, would it?”

Titus felt his nose crumple as the fist smashed against his face, blurring his vision, sensing the hot blood oozing from it over his mustache and onto his lips as Cooper let go and he sank to his knees.

“Tell ’im, Silas!” Tuttle pleaded, daring to take two steps closer to the savage beating where Bass knelt, gobs
of blood seeping from nose and mouth. “Goddammit—tell ’im!”

“Tell ’im, Bud?” Cooper asked with an innocent sound to it, then suddenly brought the-toe of his moccasin up brutally beneath Scratch’s bloody and bearded chin, snapping his head backward with such force that it all but drove his body off the ground in an arch as he sailed into Cooper’s packs.

Tuttle continued, “C’mon, Silas. He didn’t know.”

Cooper wheeled on Bud, his knuckles red, scuffed from the beating he was giving Bass. “Sumbitch’ll know now, won’t he?”

“He’ll know, Silas,” Billy promised, trying that infectious gap-toothed smile of his. “B-but you don’t let ’im be, he cain’t catch no furs.”

Cooper stood over Scratch in that next moment, his shadow crossing Bass’s face. Titus blinked up, trying to focus, sensing that the blood was pooling at the back of his throat from both nose and jaw. Knowing too that if he didn’t get off the ground, he might well choke. Then it suddenly didn’t matter because Silas drove his foot right into Bass’s belly.

Titus doubled up, drawing his legs up reflexively, lying on his side in a fetal lump and coughing up blood on the hard, sharp pine needles that dug into the bloody side of his face.

“Maybeso they’re right, Scratch,” Silas snarled after he knelt right over the bloodied man, putting his face down within inches of Bass’s.

Vainly, courageously, Titus tried to raise an arm, if only to push the cruel face away. In such utter pain, he found he didn’t have any strength and dropped the arm with an agonized gush of air from his puffy, battered lips. As bad as his bones and belly felt, it was his spirit, the very heart of him, that hurt all the worse: lying there, beaten so badly without giving a good account of himself. Not like it had been back in St. Louis. Oh, for sure he had usually been beaten in those days of wenching and brawling, and beaten real good upon many an occasion. But such thumpings had always come after he had given back just about as good as he was forced to take—able to acquit
himself honorably in those wharfside tippling houses and knocking shops.

But this … Bass spit blood out with his swollen tongue, the needles plastered to the sticky side of his face, and his stomach wrenched with more burning bile … this beating he was taking at the hands of the man who had come along to teach him how to trap, how to winter up, the man who had shown up to teach him how to keep his hair in the far mountains, was something altogether different.

This hadn’t been any test of bloody knuckles between two drunken sports full of liquefied bravado simply out to prove one another’s mettle. Nor had this been the sort of senseless bloodletting, robbery, and mugging that naturally occurred in the darkened back alleys and narrow lanes of any river town back east. No, indeed—that look on the big man’s face, the sheer gleam of it in his eyes, why—the very way Silas had driven his maul-sized fists into the flesh of Titus Bass showed him just how much Cooper had enjoyed handing out that beating.

It made Scratch all the sicker as he lay there in the dirt and that bed of decaying pine needles, unable to pick himself up, dust himself off, unable even to crawl back to his own damned blankets, all the sicker to have seen the deep vein of passion ignited in Silas.

Titus had just been on the receiving end of something very cruel, very brutal—and ultimately very, very personal.

How glad he was when the blurry face and the man’s hot breath finally pulled back and Titus no longer had to stare up through his puffy eyelids at the taunting vision with its pitiless, crooked slash of a smile.

But just as Bass was celebrating that tiny flicker of momentary victory, Cooper grabbed a handful of Titus’s hair, slowly dragging his head back so that he was again forced to look up at his tormentor. The face loomed close again, so Bass strained to stare instead across the camp as well as he could, unable to focus with the blood seeping in his eyes—yet able at least to see the two standing there, watching Cooper hunker over his fallen victim like a wide-shouldered, predatory vulture.

Even Billy Hooks, the man for whom life was one
episode of fun after another, even he who found humor in most every event in his day—even he stood there, white-faced and stock-still, his jaw dropped in utter shock. Behind Bud’s dirty-blond, tobacco-stained beard, his face was ashen, the baggy eyes standing out all the more in the homely, hound dog of a face. Perhaps it wasn’t often enough that Cooper’s fury exploded for them to grow accustomed to it. Rare enough, perhaps, that such eruptions shocked them … but furious and extreme enough was his rage that both had somehow learned to stay back out of the way when Silas flailed and pummeled and punished with such bloody effectiveness.

“Lookit me, dammit!” Cooper spat into Bass’s face.

Painfully, slowly, Titus brought his eyes around, then twisted his head slightly beneath the clawlike grip on his hair—just enough so he could do as Cooper ordered him: look into the son of a bitch’s face. Bass felt more blood at the back of his throat, tried to spit it out past his swollen bottom lip with his tongue, sensed it dribble down his chin into his whiskers instead.

“That’s better,” Silas said then, the edge to his voice surprisingly gone. “When I say y’ lookit me—y’ best lookit me. Lemme tell y’, this here beatin’s been a long time comin’, Scratch. Way I see things, y’ likely was needin’ that for a long, long time. Hope this whuppin’ takes, I do. Hope y’ got outta this beatin’ what I wan’cha to l’arn.”

Still gripping Bass’s hair, Cooper turned slightly to look at the others. “Y’ figure he’s l’arn’t what he needs, boys?”

Hooks answered first. “Figure so, Silas.”

“How ’bout you, Bud?”

After a moment Tuttle responded, “Y-yeah. He’s the sort what l’arns fast, Silas.”

Cooper looked back, down at Scratch, smiling. “By damn if y’ ain’t right about that, Bud. Titus Bass do l’arn fast. Be it beaver … or be it beatin’s. He l’arns fast. But what say I see for my own self if’n he’s got him his lessons done for the day.”

“Y-you ain’t gonna hit him no more, are you, Silas?” Hooks pleaded suddenly as Cooper shifted over Bass.

“No, Billy. Not if’n he’s got the answers to his lessons this day.” Cooper leaned close again.

Titus tried to turn away, but Silas brutally yanked his head back, just like a man would grab a dog by the scruff of the neck and shake him—Cooper shook Bass’s head so much there, once, twice, that Titus saw those stars again, felt the teeth rattle in his busted jaw.

“Don’t turn ’way from me, son! I’m tellin’ y’ now,” Cooper warned, then waited while Bass finally fought to focus, to bring his eyes back to bear on his tormentor.

“That’s better. Now, then—s’pose y’ tell me just who them pelts belong to what’re over yonder in my packs. Whose pelts is they?”

Scratch blinked slowly, how it hurt the bruised eyelids swelling with blood, seeping with tears and coagulate. He swallowed a little more of the hot, thick crimson coating his tongue. “Y-yours,” Titus whispered, able to speak no louder.

God, how it hurt to say those words, to speak anything less than the truth … but it hurt a damned sight less than did the beating he knew would come if he didn’t say just that right then and there.

“That’s right, Scratch,” Cooper declared, victory clearly in his voice. Then he flung his words over his shoulder, louder still. “Y’ hear that, boys? Bass knows his lessons for the day. Say it again, Scratch. All them pelts in my packs—ever’ last one of the sumbitches—who they belong to?”

“You.”

“Say it for me again, Scratch. A little louder so the other boys sure to hear. Tell me the name of the man what owns them pelts.”

“Silas … Silas Cooper.” Heartsick, he wanted to throw up, spewing it then and there.

“And y’ know why, Scratch?”

“Y-you beat me and took ’em—”

Bass didn’t get any more out as the huge fist was driven into the side of his jaw again. How he struggled to hold the warm, wet blackness at bay. He felt the crown of his head hurt where Cooper shook his scalp, his hand tangled in Titus’s long hair.

“They’re mine because y’ owe me, Scratch. So say it!”

“I … I owe you.”

“Y’ owe me them pelts.”

“Yes. Owe you.”

“Very good, son. I damn well coulda kill’t y’ that first day an’ took ever’thing y’ owned, Titus Bass. You know that?”

“Kill’t me. Yeah.”

“But instead—my good nature tol’t me to take y’ on, like I took on these here others. Was my own good heart tol’t me to show y’ the ways of the mountains. If’n I hadn’t, likely some red nigger been wearin’ your hair on his belt by now, Titus Bass. If’ I hadn’t come along, likely your bones be bleaching white under the sun long time ago—like all stupid niggers what come to the mountains and get theyselves kill’t by grizz, or winter snows. Y’ owe me, Bass.”

“I … I owe you, Silas.” Maybe he did, his hobbled head thought. Maybe it made good sense. Perhaps it would make even more perfect sense once he quit hurting. Once he stopped wanting to lay his head down and die right there in the bloody pine needles.

“Yes,” Silas hissed with that smile. “Y’ owe me for savin’ your worthless hide. For not killin’ y’ my own self … for turnin’ y’ into the master trapper you become, Scratch. So them pelts y’ been pullin’ from your traps, why—one in ever’ three is mine.”

“One …”

“That’s right. In ever’ three,” Cooper continued. “An’ y’ be damned glad it ain’t more. Like I might well take me half. Right, Tuttle?”

“Yeah, Silas. Half.”

“But the older I get, Bud—the kinder grows my nature. Scratch here only owes me one in three,” Cooper explained. “You understand all this, Titus Bass?”

With a growing fog clouding his brain, Scratch replied, “I … owe … you.”

“Y’ owe me your goddamned life, Scratch. Ever’ day now y’ live—when a red nigger or a grizz likely kill’t y’—
y’
owe me your life ever’ day from now on.”

“Yeah. I owe.”

Eventually Cooper took his fingers out of Bass’s hair,
watching Titus slowly keel to the side in exhaustion, his eyes blinking up in the bright sun to try gazing at Silas, as some feral animal, trapped, treed, and cornered would watch the predator closing in.

“Y’ l’arnt good, Scratch. So I s’pect y’ to be at your traps in the morning. You’re good, son. Likely y’ awready got beaver Out there on your line. An’ if y’ got beaver, means I got beaver.” And then Cooper sighed. “Best y’ bring ’em all in, for us both. I got my share, don’t y’ see? Y’ owe me my share for helping you
survive
out here in all these mountains, Titus Bass!”

“Owe you. Yes.”

Then Silas stood, his great bulk throwing a shadow over Scratch’s face at last. He turned to Tuttle. “From the looks of things, Bud—seems to be that Titus here brought in a passel of furs this morning, early on. Best y’ be to getting ’em stretched and grained.”

“I’ll do that, straightaway, Silas.”

“Good man, Tuttle.” Then Cooper looked down at the fallen form at his feet. “Bud’s a damned good man to help y’ out, Scratch. He ain’t never been all that good a trapper—but I keep him alive, and he keeps care of things round camp, don’t he?”

Titus didn’t answer.

“Billy, how ’bout y’ puttin’ coffee on to boil, then havin’ yourself a start in on them pelts we brung in for ourselves?”

When the other two had turned away and moved off to busy themselves with their tasks, Cooper knelt over the bloodied man again. He laid a hand on Scratch’s arm.

“I don’t wanna kill y’, Titus Bass. But if y’ ain’t l’arn’t today, then your bound to l’arn soon enough—out here in this land each man is a law to hisself. An’ what that means to me is that y’ do and take for only yourself … and the others get what tit’s left over when you’re done. If there’s ’nother man big enough, good enough to kill y’ for what y’ have—then so be it. But for now, I’m big bull in this lick. Y’ remember that, an’ I’ll teach y’ to keep your hair. Y’ don’t l’arn—an’ y’ll be dead as a three-week-ol’ plew.”

As weak as that newborn buffalo calf, Bass whispered, “T-teach me, Silas.”

“ ‘At’s a good lad now, Titus Bass,” Cooper said, patting the arm again and rising once more. “I’ll wager y’ll go far in these here high and terrible places. Y’ just remember who it is teaching y’ to stay alive … and y’ll go far in these here mountains.”

Spring was done for by the time they had trapped themselves out of the last of the high country and slowly worked their way down through the foothills. From time to time they set traps along any promising stretch of creek or stream cutting its course through the high benchland that stretched north away to the far mountains where the three first ran across Titus last autumn. This broken, rugged, parched, and high benchland appeared to extend all the way west to the distant, hazy horizon where the roll of the earth still hid the lure of Willow Valley.