Buffalo Palace (59 page)

“But you’ve hoped, and dreamed, and done all that you could to get there.”

“And I am getting there on my own.”

A smile wrinkled the lined face. “You’re getting there because God is answering your prayer.”

Of a sudden Titus had felt most uneasy, thrown there upon strange ground. Frightened again that he might just be in the presence of something far, far bigger than himself. “I don’t know nothing about that, sir.”

Removing his old felt hat from his head and dipping in a little bow, Tremble said, “I certainly hope that what you pray for, Titus Bass—will not become a yoke locked about your shoulders.”

Minutes later, not all that far downstream, Bass came across the tracks of a single horseman. The prints turned in front of him; then those pony’s hoofprints left the bank and entered the water. Now there were three, he confided to himself, brushing the grip on the flintlock pistol he had stuffed into the sash at his waist. Reassurance. The sort he got when he squeezed down, locking his grip around the rifle laid across the tops of his thighs. And turned to glance behind him. Hannah. All the rest behind her.

Three of them on the other side of the river now. He realized he’d have to keep his eyes moving back and forth along that south bank. It wouldn’t do to have himself surprised.

In bewildered silence twelve years back Titus had watched Tremble turn the big animal away and move off into the cold, frosty, autumn stillness of the forest. Before he climbed atop Able Guthrie’s old plow horse, Titus cautiously placed a hand upon one shoulder, as if to feel for any invisible weight there. Then touched the other shoulder in the same way. Still not satisfied, he shook his shoulders as if to rock loose anything perchance resting there. Then Bass decided it was all a little ghosty and superstitious of him to believe any preacher knew what he was talking about.

To think of it! Him, praying! Why, Titus knew he’d never prayed a prayer one in his entire life—leastways ever since he stopped going to church hand in hand with his mam.

A man had to provide for himself.

Just as he always had, Titus had figured.

Anything else was nothing more than superstition.

But—by damned—the hair went up on the back of his shaggy neck when after less than another mile he came upon the sign of a fourth horseman coming in from the
east, turning down the bank to cross the river just as the others had. And the only way possible he thought to quell his growing fear was to talk out loud. Hardly a whisper, but still so he could be heard. Whatever it was that others believed in, that which was greater than himself—Bass spoke to it now.

“Just show me the way outta this,” he whispered, his hand sweating on the reins and the lead rope strung back to Hannah.

“You know damn well I ain’t ever been one for going down on my prayer bones and taffying up to you … but you show me the way outta this here fix right now … I swear I’ll be one to look for your sign and heed, no matter what.”

With the back of a leather sleeve, he swiped across his sweaty face. Then added, “I vow I’ll pay heed and listen too.”

Hannah snorted.

Twisting around in the saddle, he watched her bob her head, jerking back on the lead rope.

He listened too.

She snorted again, her ears perked, pointing stiffly at the sky. And her glistening nostrils flared as wide as the eye sockets on a buffalo skull.

Damn, if that weren’t sign enough. The mule had winded Injuns.

What with them horses coming up behind her, Bass didn’t have time to stop and take account of much. Instead he tugged on Hannah’s lead rope and nudged the saddle horse in the ribs with his heels, reining it off into the trees that lined the narrow river. There at the edge of the cottonwood and brushy willow, Titus kept the horse at a slow walk, his eyes moving constantly, his ears eager for any suspicious sound. Yard by yard, they covered what must have been a mile, then a second mile. How much farther would they have to cover ground at this snail’s pace? he wondered.

Better to be slow, careful, and quiet? Or to jump and get the hell on out of the country—to make a race of it then and there?

He was squeezing down hard on his memory right then, trying to dredge up what it was Isaac Washburn had
told him he had done coming east with Hugh Glass and two others along the Platte when they found themselves butting squarely up against an Arikara war party come down to do some raiding in the middle of Pawnee country. But all he could remember of the tale was that the two others went under—leaving Hugh and Isaac to hide for their lives in a riverbank hole.

From there they traveled by night, hid by day.

It caused him to glance up at the sun then and there. Way up high did it hang that hot summer day. A long time till sunset, longer still until it would be slap dark. If he could keep from making a sight of himself, keep all these animals from stirring up too much noise at all … then maybeso that old preacher’s God was one to listen to a man’s vow—

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” he bawled as the saddle horse carried him slowly around a left-hand bend in the river.

Four of them … bold as brass—spread out across some twenty yards of a small, open patch of grassy ground not cluttered with trees and brush. He yanked ack on the horse’s rein and jerked to a halt, Hannah coming up on their tail roots.

Four horsemen all right—naked to the waist. Their brown skin glistening with sweat beneath the hot sun. Black hair tossing in the rare breeze, a feather or two stirring among them. And they were close enough for Bass to make out the dull smear of earth paint across cheeks and brows, noses and chins.

It didn’t savvy to get no closer, or to try hand-talk with those red niggers—not the way they was decked out to fill their dance card at the widow-maker’s ball!

Not taking his eyes off the four sitting still as statues just staring at him a moment, Bass yanked on Hannah’s rope, bringing the mule alongside him. There he pulled loose the knot securing the lead rope to the next horse and flung it far aside.

Then he hurled Hannah’s rope off onto her packs, slapping her on her neck and saying, “You’re on your own, girl! Best you cover ground … now—git!”

Screeching like a scalded house cat, Bass screwed that saddle horse around in a circle about as tight as if it had
been dancing two-legged atop one of Ebenezer Zane’s hogshead barrels of Kentucky tobacco leaf bound south for New Orleans. As he was jabbing heels against the horse’s ribs and slapping the loose end of the rein back and forth across its front flanks, Bass heard the yelps of those four behind him.

Goddamned Arapaho for sure!

Couldn’t be no others, he knew. This was Ute country—certain as sun. Only raiders wore paint. And the chances were better than good that where he saw four Arapaho … there would be more.

Glancing over his shoulder, as the horse bolted off for the open ground some distance from the river, Bass caught a glimpse of the four horsemen reaching the horses and mules. Damn, if his trick was working!

But in that instant flicker of a look through the sweat in his eyes, Bass could count only three of the four warriors slowing up, mixing in among the pack string he had just released and spooked into motion to cover his retreat.

Just where in hell that fourth horseman had gone, he could not tell in that heartbeat he gave himself before turning back and kicking hell out of the horse some more.

Hoofbeats right on nis tail now—so close, it made his skin crawl, knowing that sound signaled the approach of the fourth horseman. Instead of finding a painted warrior when he turned to look over his shoulder, Bass caught a glimpse of the mule, straining with all the bottom she had to keep up with him and the saddle horse on the flat-out.

“C’mon, you girl you!” he bellowed as loud as he could, feeling nis words ripped away from his lips the second they were spoken. “Get up here, Hannah! Get up! Hep, hep, girl!”

Again and again he called out, assuring her—reassuring himself that she could keep up with him despite her packs as he put more and more ground behind him, racing back downstream.

For the longest time, in and out of the brush and trees, up and down one rise after another, across shallow draws and sandy islands when he decided to ford the river itself, Bass glanced over his shoulder—finding the solitary horseman still coming. How the wind pulled at his shiny black hair feathered out behind him the way a raven’s
wing would glimmer in sunlit flight. His pony’s bound-up tail bobbing instead of flying loose on the run. Just a glimpse … but it looked to be the warrior carried a bow and a handful of arrows in his right hand, that arm held out for balance most of the time, except when he swept it back and struck the pony on the rear flank—urging more and more speed from the straining animal.

From side to side Hannah bravely lunged after Titus, laboring under her two packs that bobbed and weaved, pulling her in one direction, then the other. Already he could see the first foamy flecks of lather gathering at her chest harness. Ribs heaving, nostrils slickened, muzzle gulping air as she hung as close as her remaining strength allowed.

But when he looked back at Hannah the next time, the horseman had disappeared.

Bass blinked sweat from his eyes, then clumsily dragged his sleeve across his face with the arm that clutched the rifle, bobbing up and down like a Boone County child’s dancing toy. Maybeso it was a trick. He glanced at the nearby hillside, just to be sure the warrior hadn’t taken another route. Then Bass twisted to the other side—and still did not find the horseman.

But it was plain Hannah had started to fade.

As much as she tried, strained, lunged into the race, she was falling farther and farther behind him. And that made Scratch afraid the fourth horseman would then be able to capture her as her strength faded. As much as she would try to stay far from the Arapaho—it would likely be a futile effort once all her bottom was gone and she could run no more.

Then she would be snared just like those other horses and mules….

And that caused him his first doubt for what he had done in releasing the pack string.

Dry-mouthed, Bass no more hammered the horse with his heels. No more did he whip the rein back and forth, from side to side and flank to flank. He glanced back. Hannah was dropping behind all the farther.

He was drenched with sweat as he let the weary horse slow of its own, twisting in the saddle to watch the backtrail where he had been riding along the south side of the
river, his eyes moving everywhere at once. He licked his dry lips and gulped. Thirsty as he’d ever been—or perhaps it was just the fear.

The horse fought him a minute as it slowed all the more, tired of the race and thirsty too. Then Titus brought it around and slowly halted. Hannah came up within moments and stopped, heaving, lather at her halter, foam darkening the leather straps of her pack harness.

Had they made it out?

Just he, the mule, and this saddle horse?

Maybeso it was a good ruse, you savvy son of a bitch, he congratulated himself—still watching the far side of the river from the shadows where he sat on the played-out horse. Hannah snorted in her fatigue.

But every bit as soon as he was patting himself on the back, he heard the echoes of those doubts. Very little time did he give himself for celebration.

There was a good chance he had been wrong in freeing the pack string, part of him said. After all, he had done it almost on instinct. And now—able to think more about it, maybeso even to second-guess himself and the consequences of just what he had done—that act of self-preservation might not have been the wisest of choices.

But what other choices had there been? the other side of him demanded.

Run or fight. Damn well black-and-white, cut-and-dried. Four-to-one odds, at the outside. Hell, there might have been even more of the red niggers off somewhere. Chances good of that, he told himself—justifying his wheeling about and skedaddling all by his lonesome.

An Arapaho war party of ary four warriors come to Ute country? Just four of ’em?

About as likely as one of Annie Christmas’s whores showing up in a Natchez church to preach for Sunday meeting!

Nawww, he’d made the right decision….

So why did it feel so wrong down in the gut of him?

Always have figgered y’ to be the only one ’sides me I could trust with all them critters and the truck the rest of us cain’t take with us on downriver
.

That familiar, booming voice rang inside his head as
surely as if Silas Cooper were right there, speaking inches from his ears.

Someone had trusted him with near everything they owned—save for their weapons they took with them on that float down to a trader’s post. Near everything Silas, Billy, and Bud could tally up as their own in this life … and Scratch had gone and abandoned it back there: horses, truck, plunder—all of it.

What with the three of them gone off with them packs of beaver to trade high on the upper river before rendezvous, this sure as hell wasn’t feeling the way a man ought to treat the fellas who had saved his life more than once.

I trust y’, Titus Bass. These here other two niggers know I’d damn well trust y’ with ever’thing I own, Scratch … even trust y’ with my own life
.

Goddammit.

Slamming his heels back into the reluctant horse’s ribs, Bass reined around toward the river, loping past Hannah, who looked up at him almost humanly—her eyes clearly registering a very big question. If not asking what he was doing and where the hell he was going … then he was certain the mule was asking him just what kind of damned fool he thought he was.

“Stay or come,” he muttered under his breath after she was left behind and he was urging the saddle mount back into the river crossing. “I figger you’ll do only what you wanna do anyway—you cross-headed, stubborn she-critter.”

He figured there was no good decision in this, no clear path to take. And that, Scratch knew, always made for a mess of things in the end, he brooded as he came up the far bank and slowed the horse to a walk—moving carefully, quietly as possible, back into what was plainly enemy country.