Buffalo Palace (36 page)

Hats, faces, hands, and damned near every exposed inch of clothing, even their horses and pack animals, from nostrils to tail root—all of it layered with a thin coating of superfine dust. Beneath the high summer sun the pale talc seemed to cling tenaciously to the horses and the men because of the sweat that poured out of them from sunup to well past sundown every one of those lengthening days.

At what those early trappers called Sweet Lake,
**
to distinguish it from the bitter-tasting and immense inland lake they called the Salt Sea, lying not all that far to the southwest, Silas Cooper had been told by Ashley’s trappers that a man would have to decide upon one or the other of two courses from there on in to the rendezvous
site. The southern route would lead them around the lakeshore until they were able to strike out. due west toward the last range of mountains they would have to cross before dropping into the Willow Valley.

Cooper chose to take them on the longer route, but one that was bound to be much easier on man and horse alike. At the north end of Sweet Lake they picked up the Bear River, named years before by a brigade of British Hudson’s Bay men, which they followed even farther north before it angled west, then quickly swept back again to the south, looping itself through some austere country dominated by lava beds, eventually flowing on around the far end of that tall range of mountains they might otherwise have had to cross.

“Damn easier going on these here animals,” Titus declared as they made camp that first evening after they had pointed their noses south along the course of the Bear River. Nearby was a soda spring from which bubbled bitter water.

“Don’t mind taking our time at it my own self,” Tuttle said as they unloaded the weighty packs, dropped them to the ground.

Next came the task of picketing the animals out to graze in the tall blue grama, where most of the horses chose to plop down and give themselves a good roll and dusting before beginning to fill their bellies on the plentiful salt-rich grasses. From night to night Tuttle and Bass rotated these tasks with Cooper and Hooks, who this evening were gathering wood, starting the cookfire, and bringing in water for their coffee.

“Lookee there, Bud,” Titus said, the hair standing on his arms as he slapped Tuttle on the back to get his attention. He pointed, his alarm growing. “You s’pose them to be Injuns?”

Tuttle squinted into the distance stretching far away to the north of them. “Don’t figger so. Lookee there—you can see them niggers is riding with saddles. Legs bent up the way they is. Only red-bellies I ever knowed of rode barebacked: legs and feet hanging low on their ponies.”

“Yeah, maybeso you’re right,” Titus agreed, peering into the shimmering distance as the sun secreted itself beyond
the western hills. “Looks to be they got pack animals with ’em.”

Tuttle asked, “How many you make it?”

Bass counted them off silently, his lips moving as he did. “Least ten. Ten of ’em for sure.”

“We best us go tell Cooper and Billy we got folks coming in.”

Silas was a cautious one on occasions such as this, Scratch thought. But, then—it made sense that Cooper would be. After all, why shouldn’t a man who, without guilt or remorse, would take from another white man be suspicious that other white men might just ride on in and steal from him?

“Get your guns out and ready,” Cooper ordered the other three. “Leave ’em handy. Leave ’em for them niggers to see in plain sight if’n there’s to be trouble.”

Tuttle tried to tell him, “I’d care to set they only some of Ashley’s men goin’ to ronnyvoo—same as us, Silas.”

“Don’t matter none to their kind to leave the bones of us’ns to be picked clean by the buzzards right here … an’ take all our plews on in to ronnyvoo for themselves. Y’ think about that, Bud Tuttle—and then y’ tell me y’ don’t figger we ought’n be ready to keep what’s ours.”

So they stood spread out, the four did, as the ten approached at a walk. Then suddenly Cooper tore the wolf-hide cap off his head and waved it, whooping at the top of his lungs. It surprised Bass so much, he was scared for a moment—especially the next instant when Billy and Bud joined in, wheeling about to seize up their weapons as they cheered and hurrawed to the skies.

With the first whoop Titus lunged for his rifle, diving to crouch behind a pack of pelts where he would have some protection and a good rest for the weapon when the shooting started. He had no sooner taken cover than the ten riders began to screech and holler, pounding flat hands against their open mouths with a “woo-woo-woo,” and raised their rifles in the air.

The first of those long weapons boomed with a great puff of gray smoke. Cooper squawked like a raven in reply, pointing his own rifle into the sky, firing it just before a second rider shot his off.

“What the blue hell?” Bass hollered into the noisy tumult.

Billy turned slightly, raising his rifle over his head, aiming for the puffy clouds. “It’s a good sign, Scratch! Good medicine! They’s emptying their guns!”

“That there be a likely bunch of good coons, boys!” Silas hollered. “I see me a couple faces I could lay to being at last summer’s doin’s.”

In the end all but Bass had fired their rifles by the time the ten came close enough to plainly see the dust caked into the creases on the men’s faces. A double handful of bearded, dirty, sweat-soaked, hard-bitten men who brought their animals to a halt there among the four and peered down from the saddle with widening grins.

“Been follerin’ your sign for last three days, we have,” the first man spoke.

He had twinkling eyes and a good smile, Bass decided. Then Titus looked over to fix his study on the second rider: not all that old, really—but it seemed that he, like the first rider, also spoke for the others. Still, he had given the older man at his side the first say.

“Welcome, boys! Get down an’ camp if you’re of a mind to,” Cooper offered them all with a grand, sweeping gesture.

“Be much obliged,” that young second rider replied.

Immediately a third said, “Figger you fellas be hur-ryin’ on to ronnyvoos like us.” He had a round face, that sort of easygoing countenance that naturally put most men at ease. “Bound for the Willow Valley?”

“Ain’t no two ways of it!” Hooks cheered just before he turned back toward the fire and pushed the coffeepot closer to the flames. “Likker an’ women it’s gonna be for this here child!”

The second rider slowly eased out of the saddle, his damp flesh squeaking across the wet leather as he slid free. “We hear the general’s bringing him likker out this year.”

“Bound to be some shinin’ times,” the first rider agreed as he dropped to the ground.

Bass watched the older one take off his hat and slap it against his legs, stirring up a cloud of fine dust. He can’t be much older’n me, Titus thought. His hair hung long and brown, some of it fair, well-bleached by the sun. For
sure the wrinkles were worn there around the eyes, and his skin had long ago turned a shade of oak-tanned saddle leather like all the rest. But there were no creases at the sides of his mouth—he couldn’t be a day over thirty, Titus figured.

Silas stepped up to the man, asking, “So your bunch making tracks to ronnyvoo now?”

The man nodded, then motioned off to the north. “The general sent out riders to pass the word that he was getting close.”

“Close?” Hooks repeated, his voice rising a full octave in excitement.

That first rider nodded. “We figure him to be no more’n a few days out of Willow Valley.” Then he held out his hand to the tall, slab-shouldered Cooper. “I’m the general’s leader for this band. Name’s Fitzpatrick. Tom Fitzpatrick.”

That’s when the second rider stepped up to Tuttle, holding out his hand. “An’ my name be Jim Bridger. Outta Missouri.”

Now, that youngster couldn’t be a day over twenty, Titus thought as Bridger and Tuttle shook.

At that the last four riders sank to the ground, and the rest of the ten strode up among the rest, shaking hands all round with Cooper’s bunch.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus exclaimed, bent slightly at the waist to peer closely at the other man, his chin cocked in wonder, his hand suddenly frozen, stopped in midair between them. “You’re … you ain’t a negra, are you?”

“My pa was a Virginia landowner,” the man said without a hint of shame, glancing at his empty hand before dropping it to his side. “Fortune had it that my mother happed to be one of his slaves. I was borned out to the slave quarters … but my pa brung us both into the house after his first wife died.”

“Didn’t mean you no offense by nothing I said,” Scratch apologized, shamefaced and offering his hand out firmly before him. “Here. My name’s Titus Bass.”

The tall mulatto with Caucasian features and coffee-colored skin grinned warmly. “No offense taken. Name’s Beckwith. After my pa. You can call me Jim … Jim
Beckwith, of Richmond County, Virginia. But I was brung up in the woods near St. Charles. You know where that is on the Missouri River?”

“St. Charles? Same village lays north of St. Louie?”

The tall mulatto nodded, sweeping both his hands down his dust-coated but colorful buckskins in that manner of a genteel horseman settling his clothing upon dismounting. Bass had him figured for a man who liked to cut a dashing figure here among the greasy, rough-shorn, ramshackle hellions he rode in with.

“My pa figgered to move west, so he brung Ma an’ me there back to O-nine.”

“Hell, I was still a Kentucky boy back then my own self.”

Beckwith stood at least six feet tall, perhaps a little more. He grinned, his kind eyes smiling. “Out there in that Lou’siana wilderness, I soon had me twelve brothers an’ sisters.”

Scratching at his beard, Bass replied, “Don’t sound like you’re no freedman neither.”

“No, I ain’t. Never needed freeing from my pa.”

“Knowed me a Negra once’t,” Titus said, remembering. “He was a freedman. But I never knowed what become of him.”

Beckwith explained, “No need bein’ a freedman: my pa and ma was rightfully married. Means I ain’t never been a slave.”

“Your pap was well-off, I take it.”

Shaking his head, Beckwith replied, “Nawww—we wasn’t wealthy, by no means … but my pa had him a good heart, an’ he made sure there was no question that his children was no slaves. Went himself off to a judge at court to declare my emancipation.”

Confused, Titus tried to repeat the word, “E- … e-man-see—”

“Means his pa told the world Jim here was a free man,” explained the thickset third rider as he came up and handed Beckwith the reins to a horse. “C’mon, Beckwith. We got us these critters to keer for—then we kin palaver all we want with these boys.”

The two weren’t a matching pair, by any means, it was plain to see. Whereas the one named Daniel Potts was
short and beefy, trail dirty, besides being mud-homely to boot, the mulatto cut quite a figure compared to the rest, what with his colorful buckskins. He was tall too—the tallest there with the exception of Cooper himself—standing an inch or two over Bass and most of the others there on the prairie floor among Fitzpatrick’s brigade. And Beckwith affected a bit of the dandy: wearing his long black hair in a profusion of tight, well-kept braids that hung past his shoulders. As the mulatto started to turn aside with Potts, Titus decided he might just try one of those braids in his own long hair—as handsome as they were on Beckwith.

With a booming voice Fitzpatrick offered, “Say, Cooper—we have us two elk quarters along we’d offer to lay up by the fire for us all if’n that makes you fellas no mind.”

“Never make it a habit to turn down good meat,” Silas said. “Bring it on—we’ll likely chaw everything down to the bone this night!”

Most of the riders dropped their saddles, blankets, and packs onto the prairie near the quartet’s fire, then turned back to see to their horses. After rubbing down their saddle mounts with thick tufts of prairie grass, Potts strode up with his arm around Beckwith’s shoulder. Together they peered at Bass.

The stubby Potts asked, “Tell me something, mister—we look anywhar’ as dirty an’ bad off as the four of you scurvy niggers?”

Titus grinned, glancing down at his dusty, greasy, sweat-stained clothing. “I s’pose we do at that, Potts. Mayhaps even worse off.”

“Call me by my Christian name, will you? It be Daniel.”

“Sure—an’ my given name’s Titus.”

Tuttle broke in, slapping Bass on the back and saying, “But he’d sooner answer to his real handle.”

“What’s that?” Beckwith asked.

“Scratch,” Titus answered as Bud was getting his mouth open. “They give me the name Scratch some time back.”

The mulatto asked, “Was it skeeters?”

Titus shook his head. “Fleas.”

“Big’un’s too,” Tuttle said before he turned back to the fire, chuckling.

“Well, now—Scratch,” Potts said, looking wistfully over at the translucent blue of the Bear River nearby, its border of tall emerald willow in full-leafed glory. He slapped Beckwith on the back and declared, “Me an’ Jim here was cogitating that we’uns go find us a pool in that river yonder. Have us two a sit and a soak afore supper.”

The idea struck Scratch like a fine one indeed. Impulsively he asked, “You mind company?”

Potts grinned readily. “Why—no. Allays good for a man to have a new face and new ears once’t while. We both got stories Fitz, Frapp, and the other’n’s is tired of hearin’ … an’ I’ll wager you got a few tales to tell your own self.”

“Yeah!” Beckwith agreed. “Damn right we’ll all go have our own selves a sit in that cold river—either till we cain’t stand the cold no more, or we turn the water to mud!”

“Likely that Negra boy gonna turn the water to mud, Scratch!” Billy Hooks was suddenly nearby, laughing and wagging his head with cruel sarcasm. “But that brown-assed Negra still gonna be a Negra when he comes out’n that river—no matter how hard the black son of a bitch scrubs hisself!”

Beckwith was turning on his heel to start for Hooks when the strong and stocky Potts locked his friend’s arm and held the mulatto in place—at just the moment Bass stepped between the mulatto and Billy, staring Hooks in the eye.

“This man ain’t done nothing to deserve the talk you’re throwing at ’im, Billy.”