Buffalo Palace (35 page)

There, in the yonder land of Sweet Lake, lay rendezvous.

It was the hive that, in these lengthening days of slow warming of the land, would draw the drones from all points on the compass—just as surely as the queen bee compelled her loyal subjects back with the fruits of their own far-flung labors.

West of north they moved now, beneath the sun sliding off midsky, following the yellowed orb in its western march these days until they reached the branches of a river Cooper said a few others called the Verde. Said it was greaser talk for “green.” Word was that there they might just find more lowland beaver to catch. But no matter if they didn’t end up seeing a single flat-tail … once in
that country on the west side of the great continental spine, rendezvous wasn’t but a few more days’ ride on to the west.

This high-prairie country proved to be so different from the foothills, more different still than the mountains the four of them had just abandoned. Every day now they trampled unshod hooves through a warming land where lay carpets of the blue dicks in small flowering trumpets, or past the six open-faced purple blooms of the grass widow.

For the longest time Titus Bass cared little for, nor did he notice anything of, the beauty in that high, rolling wilderness. He was a long time healing. Scratch had hurt for days after that beating. Yet it was a hurt he swallowed down and let no man know.

If there was one small piece of Thaddeus Bass his son had carried away with him from Boone County, it was that a man did not complain of what ills he had brought on himself. No matter that a man might bemoan the unfathomable fates of weather, crop disease, or even the fickle nature of his breeding stock—what suffering a man brought to his own door must always be endured in silence.

For the rest of that horrible morning Titus lay where he had fallen, finding it hard to breathe deep for the sharp pain it caused him in his side and back. Most any change of position brought its instant reminder of the beating Cooper had just given him. It was not until late afternoon when Bass finally decided he was parched enough that he could no longer put off finding himself a drink of water.

Slowly and shakily rising onto his knees and one hand, Titus held the other arm splinted tight against the ribs that made it so hard to breathe, then crabbed inches at a time toward his side of camp, where water beckoned in a kettle—where his blankets lay.

From the corner of his eye he watched the three study him as he dragged himself along less than a foot at a time.

“Lemme help him, Silas,” Hook begged.

“You stay put, Billy,” Cooper warned. “Cain’t y’ see he’s doin’ fine on his own. Both y’ g’won back ’bout your business an’ don’t worry ’bout that’un. He’ll make it where he’s headed.”

No matter how badly his head hurt, the crushing pain in his face and jaw, too—Bass remembered those exact words for days to come. Yes, he thought to give himself the strength needed first to sit, later to stand and then walk, and finally what steel he needed in his backbone to stuff a foot in a stirrup and ride the morning Cooper’s bunch was moving camp. He kept those words in his heart and on his lips in those first days.

He’ll make it where he’s headed
.

By damn, I will, Scratch vowed.

There in his blankets, having lapped some water from the kettle into his cupped palm and brushed the sweet wetness against his swollen, bloodied lips, Titus collapsed for the rest of the afternoon. He awoke just after sundown, rubbing a crusty eye where blood had dried it shut, then peered across camp at the other three. While Silas cleaned and oiled weapons there by the fire, Hooks and Tuttle finished the last of their day’s catch—stretching and graining the big blanket beaver.

His eyes found the sun’s last light, his groggy mind determining that evening was now at hand. If he was going to have enough strength to make it to his sets come morning, he needed two things most of all: sleep and a little food in his belly.

The first was not a concern; he knew he would easily fall into a cozy stupor once more. But the food—why, just the thought of it twisted his empty belly, caused it to rumble in protest. He had no appetite and doubted he ever would again, but realized that if he was to demand something of his body, then it would soon demand something of him.

When next he awoke, the night was dark and silent—all but for the snores of the others curled up in their blankets upon pine-bough beds and buffalo robes. Stirring painfully, Scratch pushed himself up on an elbow, clutching that set of busted ribs with the other arm, then inched himself over to the water in the kettle once more. He repeatedly dunked his hand into the kettle, licking all he could from his palm and fingers until thirst was no longer his greatest need. Then he thought of Hames Kingsbury’s broken ribs—remembering how Beulah had wrapped
them securely and seen the flatboat pilot through his healing.

There beside the kettle lay the fixings left over from his supper more than a day before. Bass pulled a chunk of meat from the pot, blew the dust off it, and brought it to his mouth. Slowly parting his swollen, crusted lips, opening his jaw to slivers of icy pain below each ear, he tore at small threads of the cooked meat, swallowing a little at a time, not sure just how his stomach would accept it.

Shred by shred of that old, crusted meat he forced down, licking water from the palm he dipped into the kettle, sitting there in the midst of those mountains, listening to the nightsounds of men sleeping, the rustle of the breeze whispering through the quakies and the soughing of the pine. When the wind died, he could hear the faint murmur of the nearby creek trickling along its bed.

Above him stood the dark, jagged outline of the high peaks thrust up against the paler, starlit sky—huge, ragged hunks of that sky obliterated by the mountaintops punching holes in the nighttime canopy.

Nowhere else you gonna see anything like that, Titus Bass, he told himself as he chewed slowly against the pain in his jaw and neck. Then remembered a song long ago sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” not come to his recollection in many, many a year:

Him, a Kentucky boy. Just like Ebenezer Zane and Hames Kingsbury. Such as them was alligator horses. No, not Titus Bass—for he hurt too damn much.

His thoughts pulled his eyes to the rifle standing against a nearby tree. Within easy enough reach. And yonder lay the pistol with his shooting bag and possibles
pouch. Then he looked at the sleeping forms. There in the middle lay the biggest, clearly the one who had pummeled and kicked him like no better than a bad dog. And then he looked back at the rifle, studied the pistol again. Two bullets. If he did it then and there, which one of those three should get the second lead ball?

When he pulled the trigger on Cooper, the rifle’s blast would bring the other two out of their blankets like the rising of the dead come Judgment Day. So which would it be? One would live—to be freed along with Bass from Cooper’s grip. And then the choice became clear.

His mouth went dry just thinking about it. Murder is what they called it back there, down out of these here mountains and back east. Murder was to take another man’s life while that man lay sleeping in his blankets.

Licking his cracked lips, Titus began to drag himself over toward the tree, wincing with the sharp pain in his ribs. It was good, he thought, biting his bottom lip to keep from groaning as he inched toward his weapons. Such pain reminded him why he would take the life of a sleeping man.

His fingers locked around the rifle at its wrist, there behind the hammer, then climbed to that part of the forestock repaired with rawhide after the battle with the Arapaho raiding party. Bringing it down to his lap, Titus thumbed back the hammer—finding the pan filled. No man would want to chance a misfire when he set out to murder someone the likes of Silas Cooper.

Snagging hold of the pistol, Scratch moved his other hand as far up the rifle barrel as he could. Arm outstretched, he planted the rifle at his side, then slowly began to rise on shaky legs, pulling himself up an inch at a time on the makeshift crutch that in moments would take another man’s life. A wave of nausea swept over him as he stood, rocking against the long barrel—he was so light-headed that his temples throbbed. Yet Scratch swallowed down that faint misgiving and stuffed the pistol in his belt.

The second would be Billy Hooks.

Of the two, only Tuttle might have enough misgivings about shooting Bass. Hooks would have to die.

He pursed his lips together forcefully, hoping to muffle his grunts of pain as he began to hobble toward the fire
pit. Scattered on the far side lay the three of them. In a few moments there would be only one left … and he prayed Tuttle would realize that now he was free—

“Don’t do it, Scratch.”

That sharp whisper made him freeze, rocking there atop his rifle like a peg-legged crutch. Titus wasn’t sure in those seconds when he didn’t breathe, his eyes peering over the three forms, just which one had called out to him.

Then Tuttle slowly sat up. “I figger I know what you’re about to do, Scratch. But—killin’ him ain’t right.”

“You saw. He … he almost kill’t me.”

For a long time Tuttle just stared at Bass in that crimson-tinged darkness, his face grave in the low flames and shimmering coals of their fire, his eyes deadly serious. Then he finally spoke. “Them was his furs—his fair share, Scratch. The man could’ve kill’t you long time back. ’Stead, he took you on. You learned to trap, to live up here, and you kept your hair. You owe him.”

“The way you see it: I owe him.”

“That’s right,” Tuttle emphasized.

“Bet you owe him too.”

“I do—an’ that’s the devil’s gospel. For balls’ sake, Cooper’s saved my hash more’n I care to count. You owe him, same as me.”

“You got a gun on me, eh?”

After a long silence Tuttle quietly said, “I have.”

“I could kill him afore you took me, Bud.”

“But you won’t, Titus. I know you can’t. I know you see what he’s saying. You owe him your goddamned life. You won’t kill him ’cause you can’t take the life what give you back your own.”

Titus sighed long and deep, and, oh, how it hurt to fill his lungs like that. He tore his eyes off Tuttle and stared at the other sleeping form beneath its blankets.

“He right ’bout me goin’ under, Tuttle?”

“He saw to it you made yourself a trapper, Titus. Don’t figger you was a nigger what was gonna keep hisself alive out here when we found you.”

It was like lancing a festering, fevered boil … sensing that poison ooze out of him. Suddenly he felt as weak as a wobbly-legged, newborn calf.

Starting to turn away, pivoting on his rifle, Bass
stopped and whispered, “You can put your gun down, Tuttle. The killin’ fever’s gone.”

“I’ll be here to mornin’ for you, Titus,” Bud replied. “Goin’ with you out to your sets like Cooper told me.”

He choked hard on the pain. “Don’ know if I can.”

“I’ll be with you ever’ step of the way.”

Titus sighed wearily, completing his turn, and began to hobble off to his blankets, sleepier than he could remember being in a long, long time.

“Get your rest, Titus Bass.”

That voice froze Scratch where he stood.

“Y’ll need your strength come sunup,” it said.

Slowly he turned his head, peering over his shoulder—finding Silas Cooper pulling the sawed-off, shortened smoothbore trade gun from beneath his blankets now, laying it in plain view atop his belly. It was one of the trophies he had claimed off the dead Arapaho warriors.

“You just learn’t me something more, didn’t you, Silas?”

“Mayhaps I did, Scratch. G’won now—get in your blankets.”

He did just that, painfully settling back atop that single buffalo robe Fawn had given him, a robe he had laid over some pine boughs in making his bed at this campsite. After pulling the blankets up to his chin, he stared across the fire at the chertlike eyes gleaming back at him in the glow of the red coals. Then Cooper closed them.

And all that glimmered was the dull-brown sheen of the barrel on that stubby trade gun filled with lead shot that likely would have cut him in half had things come down to it.

That’s twice now he could’ve damn well killed me, Titus thought as he rolled painfully to attempt finding a position comfortable enough to sleep.

He seen me coming for him, thinking him asleep—could’ve had me dead to rights.

… Mayhaps I do owe him.

Yet that hurt most of all. Owing your life not once, but twice … twice to the bastard you’ve wanted to kill more than any other man alive.

*  *  *

From the Sierra Madre range rising west of the Medicine Bows, they continued north over the western rim of the Great Divide Basin, north still until they dropped into the southern tableland of the Red Desert Basin, where they struck out due west with the setting sun as their guiding lodestone.

Picking their way day by day between the jutting escarpments and low, solitary peaks of that parched, striated desert, the four always kept in view those mountains far to the north where the Wind River was given its birth. After striking the Verde River,
*
Cooper led them angling northwest along its meandering course until they reached the mouth of the Sandy: It was there they crossed to the west bank and finally left the Verde behind, making for the low range of mountains that lay almost due west.

“We get beyond them hills,” Silas explained one evening in camp, “I was told we’d likely see Sweet Lake from a ways off.”

“Yup—that’s what we was told,” Hooks agreed, dragging the back of his dust-crusted hand across his parched mouth.

Titus figured Billy had him the whiskey hunger bad. That, or he needed a woman soon in the worst way. Then Bass looked over at Tuttle, and Cooper too. Ana finally peered down at himself. If they all didn’t look the sight!