Buffalo Palace (53 page)

“Ain’t no wonder there’s them what’ll claim right to your face that the Blackfoot spell trouble in this here country,” Cooper said at their fire one evening late that spring.

“Their kind just wanna keep it all to themselves,” Tuttle replied.

Billy chimed in, “That’s the gospel, it is, yessirreebob!”

“Them with Fitzpatrick was fixing to head up this Way last fall,” Bass said. “So maybe that country ain’t all that much a secret, Silas.”

With those dark, chertlike eyes betraying the falsehood of that big grin on his face, Cooper growled, “Or maybe them company trappers are the sort to figger on scaring away us what are out here on our own hook.”

“If the trapping’s good,” Tuttle said, “I figger they’ll say what it takes to scare us off.”

“Fitzpatrick’s brigade ain’t the only ones,” Titus said, wagging his head. “S’pose you fellers tell me why them Crow warned us ’bout going west, torst Blackfoot country at the Three Forks?”

“The Crow try to skeer you away, did they?” Billy asked.

Snorting with a gust of sharp laughter like iron colliding with an anvil, Cooper cried, “You damn idjit, Billy! The
Crow
didn’t tell him no such a thing. That Crow feller what’s soft in the head—the one trying hard to be a gal—I’ll wager
he’s
the one what warned Scratch. Ain’t none of them warriors worth their salt gonna be so skeered to warn us away from here. Just some soft-brained man-whore what likes to wear squaw’s clothes!”

Turning to Bass there beside their fire, grinning hugely with that gap-toothed smile, Hooks rolled onto his hands and knees as he asked, “What else he like to do like a squaw? Been figgerin’ to ask you all along, Scratch. He let you hump him like this here?”

Tuttle and Cooper roared along with Billy as Hooks wagged his rear end provocatively, grunting and wheezing.

Vowing not to flare with anger, Titus got to his feet
and started away, wagging his head, not sure where he’d go at that moment. Just anywhere but there.

“Eh, Scratch?” Silas called after him as Billy’s high, mocking laughter followed Bass toward the ring of trees where they had corralled their horses. “Y’ ass-humped that soft-brained feller’s bones, didn’t y’?”

“I can tell he did, Silas!” Hooks cried out, “Bet Ol’ Scratch liked ass-humpin’ too, boys!”

“Maybeso if’n that man-whore was soft in the ass as he was in the brain!” Cooper shouted, flinging his voice after the retreating Bass.

The three of them continued to laugh and make their catcalls as Bass swept by his bedroll, took up his pouch and rifle, and kept on moving toward the animals. Their cruelty followed him to the rope corral where Hannah was the first to smell him coming. The mule nudged a pair of horses aside and inched up to the rope as Titus came to a stop to nuzzle her.

“Care to go for a ride, girl?”

Her eyes closed halfway as he rubbed up her muzzle, then scratched his way up to her forelock.

“C’mon,” he whispered to her. “I figger it’s time you got used to having me sit on your back.”

Bobbing her head eagerly, the mule came close to prancing smartly as he led her out of the corral and took up the extra length of her lead rope.

“Critter like you ought’n be good for more’n just packing my plews from place to place.”

As he flung himself up on her broad, bare back, Hannah twisted her head around to give him as quizzical a look as he had seen an animal ever give him. Patting her on the neck, Bass gently tapped his moccasins into her ribs.

“G’won, now,” he prodded, shaking the halter looped around her neck. “Let’s get.”

Standing like a statue for a moment more while she seemed to decide on just what to do, the mule finally set off slowly. He rode her all the way out of the timber toward the clearing at the end of the ridge where he could look both north and west at the deepening hues of twilight as the spring sun sank and the air cooled quickly. Over time the cold of the coming night helped: he came to lose
the heat of his anger at the three. After a while Bass told himself they laughed for no better reason than they were plain ignorant about such things. If not outright ignorant, well—then the three were plainly cruel to call Bird in Ground a soft-brained person.

Titus had met soft-brained folk throughout his life. The first he ever saw was a flat-faced girl about his age back to Rabbit Hash. She didn’t talk much, and what she said he never could understand. Her folks talked to her like folks would talk to a baby—all nonsense words and such. And while Bird in Ground didn’t do any of the things men of his tribe did, the Crow man made a lot of sense when he talked. There was times, Titus had to admit, Bird in Ground made more sense than all three of them fool-headed, yabbering yahoos put together!

Hell, Scratch thought, a man’s ways was just his ways … and if a fella turned out to do different from other men’s ways—then just who could say what was right, or what was better, or just who the hell was soft-brained?

Damn, if it weren’t hard at times to figger out just who had his best interests in heart. Bird in Ground, who had never said a cross word about another soul? Or them three, who didn’t miss a lick when it come to whacking others down a notch or two? Hard it was to weigh them out against the other, especially because the young Crow had sure appeared to care genuinely when he’d warned Titus … while Silas, Billy, and Bud actually had saved his life more than once.

So confusing to think on, that it almost hurt his head to try now to sort out what he figured was likely one of the most difficult puzzles life had ever presented him. Maybe some things were just supposed to be rocks a man wasn’t meant to crack—no matter how hard you hammered away at them. Some things in life just were and could defy a man’s most intricate cogitation.

Like women. Nawww, not all women. Maybeso just white women. Women like Amy and Marissa, and even Abigail. No matter that she was a whore—she was still a white gal. There was just something he’d experienced with white women that made them naturally hard for a man like him to fathom, while on the other hand the Indian
gals he’d rubbed up against were a lot more reasonable sort.

Seemed fair to say that most every white woman he’d had much cause to know anything about made a real tough study of herself. Rather than taking life on its own terms, white gals seemed to take such delicious relish in complicating things, enjoying how hard they made a man work at getting along with them.

Looking back now at that first woman creature he had tried to figure out in Boone County, Amy Whistler was clearly just that sort. And Marissa Guthrie too. Even the gal wrhat had come into his life between the two of them—Abigail Thresher. Times were that riverboat bang-tail had shown signs of being a stock-and-trade woman creature with all her confusing ways and all her confusing wiles, despite the fact that she was a whore in the end … a woman who, for all intents and purpose, set out a’purpose to satisfy a man’s baser hungers.

No two ways of Sunday about it: a white gal was just a white gal. A creature put on earth for no other purpose but to devil a man.

“Why the hell you getting yourself all bumfoozled over such a thing anyhow?” he chided himself as he stared off into the growing darkness and scratched Hannah’s ears. “You’re done with white gals. Done for all time.”

As the sky’s distant rose became purple, and in the end that purple turned a deep indigo-blue, the first stars of evening stood out ail the more distinctly. Ready at last to turn back for camp, he drank deep of the chill air … then blinked and looked again. To be sure.

There against the darkness that was the featureless valley far beyond flickered a point of light.

Squinting his best to bring its starry point into focus, Bass wasn’t sure at first what the sighting might be. Perhaps some dry timber set ablaze by a passing thunderstorm. But—that was pure balderdash: there hadn’t been any lightning in many days.

Maybeso it would be Fitzpatrick’s brigade of trappers, who had pushed north this spring out of the Willow Valley where they had plans to winter up all together. Then again—that was just as crazy a thought … because
a trapping brigade of any size would have them more than one fire.

The more Titus stared down at that faraway, solitary point of light, the more it fed his imagination, and his misgivings. Perhaps a wandering war party. After all, it was late spring, wasn’t it? Likely that the Blackfoot were moving about by now—no matter what Silas Cooper and any of those more experienced in such things might have to say on the matter.

“C’mon, girl,” he said in a hush to the mule as he clambered onto her broad back. “We got us news to tell.”

That night he led the others back to the meadow and rocky outcrop, where they all four gazed down at the faraway valley floor and that distant flicker of light.

“This far off—a man cain’t tell just what made that fire,” Cooper warned. “Could be a white man or a red nigger.”

“Hell, we can’t tell, Silas,” Hooks added.

Frustrated, Bass said, “If you fellas can tell me you know of a Injun what rides off by hisself alone—I’m ready to listen.”

Turning on Scratch, Cooper demanded, “Spit out what you’re trying to say.”

“I spent me a winter with them Utas, and ’nother winter with the Crow,” Titus explained. “Not once did I see a solitary Injun from neither band of ’em go out all on his own. Did any of you?”

“Nope, I didn’t,” Tuttle agreed.

Silas had turned to look back at the far flicker, but Billy reluctantly said, “Not me neither, Scratch. You’re right, dammit. Injuns don’t travel alone—like a white man does.”

“No great shakes, fellas. If’n its more’n one, cain’t be all that many if they got ’em just one fire,” Cooper tried to reassure them as he studied the darkness.

“But, Silas: it don’t take much of a fire to keep warm twice as many as we are,” Tuttle declared, his eyes filling with the first hint of dread.

“Maybe three times as many,” Scratch admitted. “Them Injuns don’t make big fires. And there ain’t no telling how big that fire is anyway, Silas.”

“How’s that?” Cooper demanded.

Pointing, Bass said, “Hell—we don’t even know how far off that fire is … so how’s any of us to say just how big a fire it is?”

“We best be clearing out,” Tuttle warned.

“Come morning’s soon enough,” Cooper stated flatly.

Billy nodded, his ready grin gone beneath the silver-pale moonshine. “Morning’s soon enough, Bud.”

Upon returning to their camp they nonetheless snuffed out their fire and decided upon a rotation of guards that would keep one man awake until it was light enough to pack up, load the animals, and start on their backtrail east.

“A damn shame too,” Hooks grumbled as the other three settled into their blankets there in the cold darkness. “The trapping in this country was some punkins too.”

“Ain’t that the way it’s bound to be for a man?” Tuttle moaned, rising on an elbow.

“We done ourselves good anyway,” Cooper said, lying still in his blankets. “I’d care to bet there ain’t four other trappers in all these here mountains what have near the plews we got in our packs already.”

“Ain’t that so!” Hooks exclaimed, pounding a knee and nearly toppling his cup of lukewarm coffee drained from the pot before the fire went out. “Just imagine the look gonna be on that trader’s face when we come rolling into ronnyvoo come summer, boys!”

“Yeah,” Tuttle cheered in the hush of their quiet voices. “We four gonna be kings of ronnyvoo!”

“Cocks of the walk, I’d wager!” Hooks continued. “Ain’t nothing we cain’t buy. Ain’t a squaw we cain’t hang with foofaraw and girlews. Why, we’ll stay drunk all the time!”

“Right from the first day till the last,” Bass said, joining in their imagined revelry. It felt good to shake off the fear and misgivings the way old Tink would shake water off herself after crossing a stream. “We gonna drink ourselves sick on trader’s rum every day, ain’t we, Silas?”

For some time Cooper didn’t answer. Long enough that Billy finally prodded, “Silas? You ’sleep?”

“No. Just been thinking more on ronnyvoo … and what the four of us ought’n do about all these plews.”

“What you mean—what we ought’n do?” Tuttle asked there in the dark as the satin-colored moon settled down on the tops of the pines to the west of their camp.

“We ain’t never had near this many beaver, have we?”

Billy replied, “We ain’t never had four of us afore, Silas. And Scratch here been working his ever-livin’ ass off since winter.”

“That’s the natural truth,” Tuttle added.

“So what you got on your mind?” Bass asked the question that for months now had gone unanswered as he slowly sat up and crossed his legs under the buffalo robe.

“H’ain’t so sure no more we should be making for ronnyvoo with these’r furs come summer,” Cooper admitted as he kicked the blankets off his legs, sat up himself, and brought a robe around his shoulders. “Not so sure we should wait till summer to sell ’em neither.”

“Why not?” Hooks inquired. “Summer ain’t no time for trapping beaver.”

From the darkness Cooper explained, “But by then every swinging dick in these here mountains is selling his plews to the trader coming out from St. Louie.”

“So if we don’t sell to the trader come high summer,” Scratch began with keen curiosity, “just what you got in mind for us to do?”

“Sell before the summer,” Cooper stated flatly.

“Hell, Silas—Ashley and his bunch ain’t gonna be back till high summer!” Tuttle argued.

“I don’t figger to have nothing to do with any of ’em,” Cooper admitted.

Growing more intrigued, Titus asked, “If I follow your thinking—we figger to sell our plews early, and we don’t figger on waiting for no trader tromping west from St. Louie … then where we gonna take all this beaver we got in these here packs?”

“Down the river, boys.”

“What?” Hooks asked, his voice rising. “You cain’t tell me we’re gonna cross that prerra?”

“No, Billy—I said
down
the river, you softheaded idjit.”

“That’s gonna be a bit of a ride for us,” Bass declared as he thought on it. “But I s’pose it can be done.”

Then Cooper admitted, “That’s something else I been working over in my head too.”