Buffalo Palace (48 page)

After two lumbering steps forward the ungainly grizzly dropped to all fours, snorted, and turned back to its original course—the mule. For a moment he was relieved and let the air rush out of his chest in a great gust … until he realized the creature still wanted Hannah.

“No!”

Bass hollered before he thought, before he could catch himself. And found he was on his feet, standing, bringing the rifle to his hip, laid over that left forearm still clutching the camp ax.

As if the beast ignored him entirely, the grizzly picked up its pace. Its huge frame rocked from side to side as it rolled on down the gentle slope toward the mule. Hannah thrashed and kicked—at times she turned her rump in its direction, preparing to deliver a sharp hoof against her attacker, then other times she tried to pull away at the end of the long rope, bawling, tail whipping in the breeze.

Before he realized what he was doing, Bass found himself sprinting on a collision course for the two of them, wondering if he was going to make it in time before the angry, bloodied grizzly lunged for the helpless mule.

“You son of a bitch!” he screamed.

For some strange reason the bear skidded to a halt at that, quartered to its left as it stretched up to its hind legs, there to stand and stare at him. Then, as quickly, it lunged forward onto its front paws again … as if suddenly discovering Bass. Wiggling its head around—the better to see with its poor vision and to smell with that powerful nose—the grizzly no longer peered at him with eyes filled by wild aggression. Instead they appeared confused, as the massive creature poked its long snout in the air and attempted to take its own measure of this strange, noisy, two-legged creature.

But at that moment Hannah chose to let out another frightened, braying yelp.

The monster turned back to her as suddenly—drawn by the plaintive bawl of the four-legged animal. Perhaps that cry was more of something the boar understood far better than the spoken language of the two-legged mystery.

As if dismissing the man, the grizzly lumbered to its four paws and continued toward Hannah, its jaws snapping greedily as the mule’s bray was choked off in a frightened peal.

Skidding to a stop less than twenty-some yards from the bear, Scratch slammed the rifle into his shoulder, peered down the barrel, and slipped the narrow front-blade sight over the slowly moving animal until he had the grizzly’s chest at the center of his sight-picture and set the trigger. As the bear rocked back on its haunches, throwing one paw into the air to take a warning swipe at the mule frantically kicking at its attacker, Scratch eased back on the front trigger.

With a roar the rifle shoved itself back into his shoulder. Through the cold smudge of gun smoke he watched the boar swat at his chest with the same paw he had used to claw the air, then sniffed at his wound beginning to ooze a little blood. The grizzly licked it, snorted, then turned back to Hannah, now angrier than before.

How he wished he had time to reload the more powerful rifle as he yanked the pistol from the sash tied around his capote. His hands were shaking as he checked the powder in the pan, dragged the frizzen back down,
and cocked the hammer. He knew he would have to get all the closer now to his target. Even though the pistol threw the same-size ball as his rifle, there wasn’t nearly the punch, nor the powder charge.

He closed to within ten yards before the bear had reached the sidestepping mule.

“You touch her—you’re goin’ to hell right here!”

With a loud roar the boar stood again, swiping at the air, presenting Scratch the best shot of all. Holding right on the center of the beast’s chest, Bass pulled the trigger. He felt the weapon jerk in his hand. But through the haze of smoke saw the grizzly merely settle to its rump as it rubbed its paw on its chest. Another flesh wound.

Making it even angrier than before.

Flinging the pistol aside, Bass swung the ax from left hand to right as the bear shot to its hind legs, then slowly settled a second time. It snorted at the noisy mule, then slowly began to close the distance between it and the annoying two-legged.

Clutching the ax in both hands, Scratch brought it over his head, preparing for the attack.

Run
, his instincts told him.

Again, everything he had ever heard tell about the grizzly reminded him he wouldn’t have a chance running. Not in an out-and-out footrace. The only prayer he had would be to leap to the side at the last instant, jump behind and to the side, and then maybe—just maybe—he could drive the ax down into the creature’s skull, splitting it open like an overripe fruit.

Unconscious of anything but the beast, Scratch barely heard the snort of a horse and the warning whinny of another above Hannah’s frightened bawl as the boar drew nigh—close enough for him to smell the dank, musky stench of the animal, to sense the fetid breath stinking of the rotted carrion it had been feasting upon. Hot and repulsive: every bit as much so as was the stench of death.

Lifting the ax higher in both hands, Scratch watched the bear rise slightly as it closed to within five feet … four feet … then its mighty arms came out like the jaws of a huge steel trap as the beast roared, loud enough to block out all sound—breath filled with such a stink, Bass wanted to close his eyes …

But he kept them open, trained on his enemy—and just as the grizzly lunged with those swinging arms and slashing razors, Scratch pitched to the left, diving right under the beast’s huge front leg. Before he consciously thought what to do, before the monster even began to turn, Titus savagely hurled the ax down on the back of the bear’s head, sinking it deep into the thick, tough neck muscle, feeling the bone crack and splinter at the base of the creature’s skull all the way into his forearms.

As he yanked back on the ax handle, he was sure he would never budge it. Though he tried again—the ax head did not move, buried in splintered bone and sinew and muscle. Slick as the handle was with hot, sticky blood, Bass could hold on no longer as the beast shuddered, flinging the man aside.

With a cry of great pain the grizzly whirled on its two-legged tormentor just as Scratch pulled his last weapon from its scabbard on his belt. The skinning knife wasn’t much—but it was all he was left with … and there and then he vowed he wasn’t about to go down without using it all on the monster.

With a vicious swipe the grizzly split the air an inch from Titus’s face. Bass jerked backward so quickly, he nearly lost his balance. Lunging, the boar was on him, arms locked around Scratch’s shoulders, the first paw drawn up and back, preparing to rake as the huge jaws opened and sought to close down on the coyote-skin cap the man wore.

Then, as quickly as he thought death had him in its clutches … the monster freed him, flinging the two-legged tormentor away like so much river flotsam.

Bass landed on his back, stunned a moment, the breath knocked out of him—then watched in astonishment as the grizzly slowly turned its butchered head this way, then that, as the two men came up on either side of it.

From that deadly close range they both fired their pistols now, taking steely, deliberate aim. And as the muzzle smoke billowed up, he watched Tuttle and Hooks dance side to side out of the way of the bear’s weakening attempts to lunge out with its immense arms … when an immense shadow suddenly crossed behind Bass, all but
stepping over him—coming between the fallen man and the wounded grizzly.

Stopping no more than arm’s length from the beast, Cooper brazenly stuffed the muzzle of his rifle right into the bear’s wide, snarling mouth … shoved it right on to the back of the creature’s throat and pulled the trigger with a jerk.

The back of the bear’s head exploded, thrust backward as Cooper leaped out of the way. Both Tuttle and Hooks stepped aside as the immense beast stumbled on backward a few lumbering steps, then came crashing down on its back.

For several long moments—none of them moved. No one made a sound. Then …

Still holding the empty rifle pointed at the grizzly, Silas asked quietly, “It dead, Billy?”

Hooks moved cautiously forward. “T’ain’t breathin’, Silas.”

“For balls’ sake,” Tuttle whispered, “he’s a big’un!”

“Y’ two stay back,” Cooper warned. He pulled his own belt pistol, a huge smoothbore with an immense flintlock on it, and swapped his rifle to his left hand.

Only when he stood over the bear, straddling one of the beast’s forelegs, did he Anally look at Titus. “Y’ ain’t never run onto griz afore, have y’, pilgrim?”

Scratch dragged a hand across his lips. “N-n-no, I ain’t.”

“That ax in the back of the head’s a bright idee, it is,” Cooper explained. “But shootin’ for the heart like y’ done be just a waste of time. Ol’ Ephraim here can eat you and ever’ last one of us in the time it takes for two dozen balls to get through his tough ol’ hide, Scratch.”

Gulping, Bass could only nod.

Cooper rose to full height, placed one moccasin on the bear’s chest, there on the blood-slickened hide. “I s’pose I’m cursed with havin’ to teach y’ ever’ lesson, ain’t I, Titus Bass?”

“Leastways,” Bass replied in a harsh whisper, “you l’arn’t me ’bout bears.”

“Why—lookee here,” Cooper said, smiling as he swept a hand the length of the grizzly carcass, “I’ve done gone an’ saved your worthless life again.”

Ol’ Scratch, they were calling him now.

“On account of you gettin’ the green wore off,” Billy Hooks told him one morning early that spring of 1827 as they were on their way west, making for the Three Forks country.

As if it was something learned, Bass looked over at Silas Cooper for some sort of confirmation. The big man squatted by the fire, warming his hands, late that morning after they had been out since well before first light, setting traps among the streams that watered the Yellowstone north of what would one day soon come to be known among the mountain men as Colter’s Hell.

“Billy ain’t tellin’ y’ no bald-face, Scratch,” the black-bearded man agreed. There flashed one of those exceedingly rare twinkles of good humor in the marblelike eyes. “That’s for sartin. Y’ see’d yourself through your second winter: now, that makes a man a hivernant, or I don’t know poor bull from fat cow.”

“Ol’ Scratch,” Bud Tuttle repeated it now, grinning as he clearly took some pleasure in that coronation. “It’s purely some for a man’s companions to start callin’ him Ol’ this or Ol’ that. Hell, Titus—these here bastards don’t even call me Ol’ Bud!”

“Plain as your own ugly mug that y’ ain’t earned
yourself that name the way Scratch here has,” Cooper sniped. “He’s come to be twice the trapper y’ are.”

Tuttle pursed his lips and nodded. “I cain’t argee with y’ there, Silas. Scratch’s better’n both Billy an’ me—so why you call Billy Ol’ Billy and y’ don’t call me Ol’ Bud?”

Cooper slowly pulled the ramrod out of the long fullstock’s barrel, doubled the small oily patch back over, and drove it back into the muzzle, shoving it all the way down to the breech as he swabbed burned, blackened, sulfurous-stinking powder out the barrel. “True enough Scratch is better’n the two of you at bringing them flat-tails to bait. But the reason I likely ain’t ever gonna call you Ol’ Bud is you ain’t never gonna be half the mountain man Billy is. An’ Scratch here,” Silas said as he dragged the ramrod out of the barrel and pointed it at Bass, “why—he’s already got Billy beat way up on that stick.”

Instead of protesting, Hooks merely took that appraisal in stride. Looking over at Bass, Billy said, “I figger Silas got that right, Scratch. After two winters with us’ns, you already come to be near good as Cooper.”

With a faint grin cracking his black beard, Cooper looked up at Bass and replied, “Near good as me, Scratch.”

“You got you a long head start on me, Silas,” Titus conceded, self-effacing and aware that he must never put himself in a class with their forty-five-year-old leader.

Into the fire Cooper tossed the small round patch of cloth, well-lathered with bear oil and blackened powder from the grooves of his rifle. Landing on a blazing limb, where it spat and sizzled a moment before the edges began to turn black, Silas declared, “And there h’ain’t no use in you figgerin’ y’ll ever catch up to me neither. Makes no matter that you’re a dozen years younger’n this nigger. No matter neither how good y’ figger to get at trappin’ or trackin’ or nothin’, Scratch.”

“I ain’t ever tried to be better’n—”

Cooper interrupted, “Because y’ don’t stand a whore’s chance at Sunday meeting of ever outriding, outfighting, outpokin’, or outkillin’ me.”

With a shrug Bass admitted, “Plain you be a better man’n all of us, Silas.”

“Damn right I am,” Cooper declared as he wiped an
oily patch up and down the browned barrel of his rifle. “An’ there h’ain’t nothin’ the three of you can ever do what can change that.”

Bobbing his head, Hooks said, “You’re the booshway of this here outfit, Silas Cooper! Big bull in this here lick!”

Chuckling a moment, Cooper finally said, “But don’t go getting the idee that means none of y’ can let up on trying to outtrap the other fellas, now. This nigger wants to have us more plew to trade than any four men rightly should.”