Buffalo Palace (62 page)

Dragging out the old, much-worn rawhide belt scabbard, Titus sighed with relief. Such was his joy that his hands almost trembled as he clutched it, a mist welling in his eyes. Scratch slid the knife out. As worn and well used as it was, he had nonetheless always kept it sharp. A man could never have enough knives around camp. Now Gut’s old knife would likely make a big difference.

From that parfleche he pulled a bundle of scrap buckskin, pieces of hide Fawn had tanned and smoked and used for garments sewn for him or the boy that winter in Park Kyack. As she had taught him, nothing was thrown away—least of all those odd-shaped pieces left over after making moccasins or clothing. There beside Hannah he sank to the grass and sand. Working the knot loose, he spread the scraps apart as the soggy moss continued to drip down his neck, across his chest, and onto his lap.

Then he found a rectangular scrap that, with a little cutting, might work. He left a patch in the middle about the size of three fists. On either end of that middle section
he sliced two long straps. As he bent his head forward, Titus carefully centered the buckskin over the moss—squaring it so that the makeshift bandage overlapped the missing scalp lock. Now came the painful ordeal of lifting the right arm, rotating the shoulder high enough for him to accomplish the rest of this task. He bent over more … raised his arm a little higher, biting down fiercely, clenching his teeth against the burning agony in the bullet wound as he finally lifted the right arm far enough for his fingers to latch on to one of the straps dangling on that side of his head.

Barely able to breathe for the pain coursing through him, Titus quickly seized a strap on the left side of his cheek and knotted it crudely at his forehead.

Exhausted with enduring the torture, Scratch let the right arm drop, numbed, filled with painful arrows that radiated from the sharp torment in the shoulder. His breath came sharp and ragged … but at least he did not have to worry about the moss sliding off any longer while he waited for the pain to pass.

When he was prepared to endure it all over again, Bass again hunched over at the waist, making himself light-headed as he grabbed hold of those last two straps on his buckskin scrap and secured them beneath his chin—just tight enough that he could feel the knot when he swallowed, tight enough that he was sure the makeshift bandage would not slip off his head.

The wind suddenly came up, blustering down the snaking path of the riverbed—spooking him enough to jump. Startled, he lunged to his knees for the lead rope, ready to escape at any cost.

Then that gust of wind died, and he was left with Hannah, his heart hammering in his tortured head, his breath coming shallow and labored in the chest, where it tormented him to take a deep breath.

“You … you damned fool,” he chided himself in a whisper, and sank back to the ground from his knees.

Pulling the remaining scraps of buckskin together, he retied the bundle, then shuffled on hands and knees down the bank. There beside the river he tugged on Hannah’s lead rope.

“C’mon, girl,” he coaxed. “Get yourself a drink while’st you can. No telling when next we’ll have us a chance at water.”

She stood beside him on the grassy bank as he lay forward, held himself out over the water, and dipped his face. Drinking his fill as if it were a sweet potion, Titus drew back on the grass and sand, gulping down that last cold mouthful. Only then did the mule dip her head and lap at the river. He waited and twice told her to drink more. As if she somehow understood his prodding, Hannah returned to nuzzle more water down.

As the sun continued to fall, the wind came sinking down the ridge behind them, then blustered off toward a bend in the river—spooking him enough again to hurriedly wrap the lead rope around his left hand. When it had gone down the valley, Hannah stood over him as he crouched in her shadow.

Gazing up at the mule, he realized what they must do. “We can’t stay here no longer. Gotta make ourselves tracks.”

The warriors might return for no good reason at all—thinking they may well have left something on the dead man, figuring they might still find the mule carrying more of their ill-gotten plunder.

Steadying himself against her left foreleg with his good shoulder, Bass again forced his legs under him to prop himself up beside her. Pushing back that waterproofed Russian sheeting again, he dug around until he secured one of the thick wool blankets he used to roll himself within. Tugging to free it, Titus stopped suddenly—staring. Blinking his eyes. Not sure he wasn’t imagining what his eyes told him he saw.

Sinking to his knees and one hand of a sudden, he sobbed as he crabbed forward around the mule, dragging the right arm. He lost sight of the object as soon as he collapsed into a crouch—afraid now that his eyes had been playing tricks on him.

Desperate, he pushed against the thick tangle of leafy brush, prodding his way in farther and farther a few inches at a time—desperate to know for sure if it was real, or a trick his head was playing on him.

With a wordless gasp he closed his eyes and raised his
face to the sky for a moment. Then opened them again and reached out with that left hand, his fingertips brushing the scuffed wood of the curly maple forestock, the rawhide band. It was real. He hadn’t imagined it.

Grabbing hold before the rifle could disappear with a poof of his imagination, Scratch dragged the weapon out of the brush where it had gone tumbling, pitching and cartwheeling, during his fall from the saddle horse. There it had lain, hidden in the brush while the victorious warrior stole the rest of his weapons. Hidden, just as surely as Hannah had remained out of sight until it was safe.

Collapsing back with growing relief, Titus sat, cradling the rifle in his lap, stroking that rawhide repair, treating the weapon as if it were a living creature. Suddenly fearing the lock might well be broken, he dragged the hammer back. It clicked at half-cock. Then moved on back with a crisp snap to full-cock. With a thumb he flicked the frizzen open and gazed down at the priming powder still cupped in the pan. The derringer was loaded and ready.

Bringing it off his lap in that left hand, standing it up, Bass propped himself against the rifle and rose. Now he could hobble about, using it as a crutch. Shuffling over to the mule, he pointed the muzzle down at an angle and worked the barrel beneath those ropes securing the right side of her packs. There, he figured, he could pull it out quickly if need be. With no pistols, nothing but the old skinning knife he had stuffed into the back of his belt—Titus lovingly stroked the heavy-barreled rifle. It, like the mule, were gifts granted him this day, which might well have been his last.

Steadying himself with an arm around the mule’s neck, Bass hobbled beneath her head. It took a little doing, but with the sheeting finally draped back over that off side of the load, and the thick red blanket folded just so and laid over the top of the packs, Bass took up Hannah’s long rawhide lead again. Looping it over her neck halfway between ears and withers, he hobbled a single step so that he could grip his left arm around her jaw.

It was an embrace she struggled against at first—perhaps not sure what he intended to do—then, as he continued
to coo and pat and stroke, she settled—allowing him to hug her fiercely.

“You’re all I got now, girl,” he croaked, his voice breaking and his eyes filling with tears, spilling out on the blood dried and caked on his cheeks. “You gotta do for me … w-what I can’t do for myself.”

Laying the side of his face along her jaw for a moment, Bass eventually pulled himself away and hobbled back to her foreleg again. This was it—the test to see if they would be able to get themselves out of there.

Hell, he told himself—she could. That wasn’t the question at all. What he was about to endure was the test of his own grit. Perhaps one of the most supreme trials he had ever confronted. And here he was alone. No one to help. No one to know. Just him, and the mule. The friend who had come back for him.

Damn near the only friend he now had in life.

“Help … help me,” he whispered there at her ear as he reached over her withers as far as he could with his good left arm. “S-steady,” he coaxed, already wincing with the pain, tears clouding his eyes.

Bass said no more. He could not. His teeth were clenched too damned tight to utter a word. But sounds came out nonetheless as he raised himself off the ground a matter of no more than inches at first, struggling to pull his weight up against the side of the shifting mule with that one lone arm.

When he tried kicking his leg for additional boost, Bass cried out suddenly … and hearing himself, he clamped down on his lower lip, vowing he would not make that mistake again. Instead, he could only groan, gasping for breath with every sharp jab of pain as he pulled. Pulled.

Steady … dear God—steady, girl, he thought as the mule sidestepped again, shifting herself with his additional weight throwing her off balance.

Then he realized he had dragged himself more than two feet off the ground, and not knowing how long he could go on hanging there with the one arm bearing it all … but knowing at the core of him that he would never endure another attempt. This had to be it, or they would
be staying right there for the night, perhaps forever if the Arapaho returned.

Grunting, he forced that tingling right hand to seize a loop of knotted rope securing the sheeting over the packs. By rocking to his side Bass let go with his left hand and before his weak right arm failed him—he thrust out with the strong one, securing a new hold and hung there, stunned by the pain and ready to bawl.

Sure that he would weaken and cry out with the torment in that shoulder wound the next time he inhaled, instead Titus bit down on his lip, grunting as he pulled again, dragging his weight a little farther up the side of the mule. She volved her head back to look at him, see what he was doing … then suddenly lowered her neck.

Not waiting for Hannah to change her mind, for her to move—Bass lunged down her far side with the good hand and snatched a third hold, pulling, dragging, hauling himself on over her foreflanks until his waist lay across her withers.

As Hannah’s head and neck came up, he finally gasped for breath, spitting blood from the lower lip he had just bitten hard enough that a warm ooze trickled across his tongue.

“G-good … g-girl,” he stammered in a hoarse croak, the punctured lip already beginning to swell.

As he fought the dizziness and thumping of each heartbeat now clanging in his head with the power of a blacksmith’s hammer, Titus rolled onto his left side and with the numbed right arm yanked on the thick blanket, stuffing it down beneath him. There he knew it would pad him from the mule’s bony withers, here where he lay cradled between her neck and the front of Hannah’s packs.

With each of those violent movements, all that stretching of the shoulder, rotating it—Bass now rested there a moment, sensing the wound on the front of his shoulder seeping. For the first time since he had regained consciousness on the riverbank, the bullet hole had torn away from the inside of his buckskin shirt where the animal hide had crusted itself against the exit wound.

And as he hung there crimped at the waist over the back of the faithful mule, Scratch began to feel a warm trickle at the back of his neck—not sure if it was the river
moss still dripping …. or more of his own blood seeping now from the entrance wound in his back.

That, or the scalping.

If he didn’t bleed to death in the next few hours, he damn well might fall off because he couldn’t hold on anymore. No telling how long his strength would last. And when it failed, he would just tumble off the mule’s back. If that happened, Bass knew with rock-hard certainty that he would never get back on her. This was his chance. He’d been given this much by the power that watched over all things. A man had no right to expect any more than that.

This was his one chance. His to do with … or die. It was up to him now. Up to him and the mule.

After a moment more he tugged on the rifle one more time to be sure he could free it from the ropes; then Bass took up the long loop of rawhide rope.

“Awright, Hannah,” he whispered hoarsely. “Get … get us outta here.”

With a slight tug on the rope she started away from the riverbank with him slung over her like so much deadweight baggage. Turning slightly and taking those small steps, Hannah was careful where she placed each hoof, perhaps sensing the heavy burden placed on her. Not just the man’s weight—but his call to her spirit. It was up to her now.

As Hannah turned a step at a time, firmly planting each hoof before she moved another on the uneven, sandy grass of the bank, she turned Scratch’s face toward the west. Slowly, slowly she came around, turning so that he saw downriver. Through the mist of tears he got himself a long look at the sun settling beyond those tall cottonwoods.

How good this was—he suddenly thought, suddenly felt its certainty through his whole body. How damned good it was to watch this sundown.

So simple a thing to him before this day, this matter of the sun’s going down.

As she brought him on around, Bass gradually turned his head and rested it against her powerful, muscular foreflank flexing with each measured step. Resting his cheek against her power when he was now weak. Gazing back at that sunset.

As she plodded forward across the uneven ground, a hoof at a time … he gave thanks for the loyalty of that friend carrying him away from the riverbank there at the end of that day.

Watching the sun ease down past the bushy tops of the far cottonwoods, Scratch vowed his life would not be the same hereafter. This simple matter of a sunset was the powerful radiance of what surrounded his heart with all the more warmth. Not only did he have the mule and his rifle … but he had been given this sunset.

The gift of another day now brought to a close.

Had things been different—had the power that watched over all things not been wanting him to see things through new and different eyes—then, Bass realized, he would not be alive to watch this sun going down behind those cottonwoods … splashing the river’s surface with glittering light.