Buffalo Palace (68 page)

Scratch recognized him as the young warrior who had followed him in yesterday’s procession, Hannah’s handler. As he watched the warrior at the fire, Bass figured it must have been a high honor to be near the white man who’d brought the white buffalo calf, an honor to be placed in charge of the white man’s mule too, Titus figured as he watched the warrior break off limbs and feed them to the glowing coals. A time or two the Shoshone bent over the coats, blew, and excited the new wood to burst into flame. When he had the fire beginning to climb, the young man rose, held his hands over the heat a moment, then turned his head.

Finding Bass watching him, the Shoshone smiled and immediately came over to the travois, picking up a small skin pouch filled with water that lay nearby. This he offered to the white man. Bass took a swallow, finding the water some of the best he could remember ever tasting. Cold and sweet. Like that he remembered in the high country. So good on his tongue and the back of his throat that again he drank until he could drink no more. Letting his head plop back onto the buffalo hide, Bass sighed and found his eyes heavy again as he rested the water skin across his belly.

In a matter of moments he opened his eyes again—the tap at his shoulder insistent.

Beside him stood the young warrior, holding on to the bail of a small cast-iron pot. Within it lay chunks of pink meat cooked last night.

Nodding his thanks, Bass gathered up a handful and brought one to his mouth. Although cold, the meat was
tender, tasty. And exactly the sort of feed Titus figured he needed most to get back on his feet. Ain’t nothing like buffler, Isaac Washburn had told him what now seemed like so long ago. True enough—there wasn’t nothing like buffler, he’d found out for his own damn self, Bass thought as he chewed with nothing short of pure joy.

Then he suddenly realized how poor his manners had been. Around a chunk of meat Titus mumbled, “Thankee, friend.”

The warrior immediately squatted there at Scratch’s shoulder, patted himself on the chest and repeated the invocation, “Furrr-rend.”

“Yes, you … friend.” As he watched the warrior take a piece of meat to chew on for himself, Bass swallowed his bite and said, “Me: Titus Bass.”

His brow knitting with consternation, the warrior tried repeating that. “Ti … Ti …”

“Yes. Ti—tus.”

“Ti—tuzz.”

“Good. Now say, Ti—tus Bass.”

“Ti-tuzz Bezz.”

“No,” Scratch corrected. “Ba. Ba. Bass.”

“Ba-azz,” the Shoshone echoed, making two syllables out of the word.

“You’ll make the circle,” Bass replied, grinning.

“He won’t know what the hell y’ mean by that.”

Scratch turned his head to find Hatcher propped on his elbow, then rising to a sitting position to pull his blanket over his shoulders.

“He don’t know no American?”

“No, he don’t savvy no American,” Jack answered, inching toward the fire pit’s warm glow. “But he’s a right smart fella. Chiefs oldest boy.”

“Don’t say,” Bass replied, looking over the tall warrior’s face again, into those eyes.

“Stick yer hand out to him.”

“What? Why the hell I wanna—”

“Y’ gone an’ tol’t him yer name,” Hatcher began. “I figger y’ ought’n least shake hands with him.”

“Shake hands?”

“It’s just ’bout that nigger’s favorite thing to do,” Jack explained. “He thinks its some punkins, the way
white men shake hands one with t’other. G’won, stick yer goddamned paw out to him, Scratch.”

A little warily, Bass held out his right hand, relieved to find that the arm and shoulder did not yelp in great pain as soon as the warrior seized the hand and began to shake it vigorously. They shook. And shook. Then shook some more.

Finally Bass looked over at Hatcher. “H-how long this fella gonna shake my hand?”

“I figger he’ll shake ’bout as long as yer gonna shake with him,” Jack answered. “Mebbeso, since he knows yer name, ye ought’n know his.”

“All right, Jack,” Titus said as he began to slip his hand from the Shoshone’s grip. “You gonna tell me what be this here feller’s name?”

“Titus Bass, meet your new friend,” Hatcher said, rubbing his hands together over the coals. “That there Snake goes by the name Slays in the Night.”

“Damn good thing it is too—ye starting to feel pert enough to try forking yer legs over a saddle, Scratch!” Jack Hatcher said cheerfully a few mornings later as he dragged his blanket over his back so he could hunker down near the flames he fed a few pieces of wood, then held both palms over. “Be getting time to head for the high country soon, that for sartin.”

With each morning that the air became a little colder, Bass did feel a growing anxiety to be away and once more at that endeavor in the mountain valleys. Lying here so weary, beaten, and pummeled in body—still mightily hungering in spirit for those high and lonely places. “I … I’m looking forward to making that tramp, Jack.”

“So ye figger to trap this fall, do ye?” Jack asked with a grin on his face where the stubbly beard was beginning to fill out.

“I do.”

But then again Scratch realized just how little he had to his name … which caused a little of the starch to seep right out of him. Embarrassed, he looked away from Jack, and instead stared at the fire. “Don’t have me much. What I do got, I know I’m no way near being fixed for high-country doings. After them ’Rapahos got off with
nigh onto everything—ever since, I ain’t had me a chance to look at what I was left in Hannah’s packs.”

“Stands to reason ye ain’t yet looked,” Hatcher commented. “Why, the way ye was hanging on to that mule for yer life. Eeegod, child—ye was just hanging on to life itself!”

With a slight wag of his head, Bass sensed the sudden sting of loss and remorse pierce him. The loss not just of place and people left back east—but the great and weighty loss of friends, the loss of furs, and now the loss of most everything he’d worked so hard to call his own. “Shit, I don’t even know if I got traps, not what other truck I got in them packs—”

“Ye ain’t poor, nigger!” Hatcher interrupted with a snort. “Why, ye got yerself half-a-dozen prime traps! Square-jawed they be: strong of spring and some handsome pan triggers, I might add. Some of the finest handiwork this nigger’s seen. Any man got hisself traps an’ truck like that gonna make it just fine. Where’d ye come on them traps?”

“Made ’em my own self.”

“Don’t say?” Jack commented with a little astonishment, then went back to stirring the fire with a limb. “Blacksmith?”

Bass nodded. “Was for some winters. Livery, in St. Louie.”

“When we gone through your truck—I see’d ye had you a little of this and a little of that too,” Jack added, turning again to eye Bass carefully. “Like I said, Scratch: a man ’thout much more in the way of mountain fixin’s might have him trouble making do on his own hook—”

“I ain’t no brigade trapper, Jack,” Titus replied a bit testily.

“Didn’t claim ye was,” Hatcher explained. “But I want ye to know that with a good horse—a man what has him the fixin’s you got, and that ornery mule of yer’n … why—he could make a damn fine go of it if’n he’s planning to throw in with some others.”

Bass instantly bristled. “Just tried to tell you: I ain’t no brigade trapper.” He locked his arms across his chest and hrrumphed as if he’d been insulted in the worst way.

Hatcher immediately roared at that, standing to turn
his back to the flames and lifting his long-tailed war shirt to rub the breechclout that draped over his cold rump. “Ain’t a one of us neither, Scratch! Not no bunch o’ pork-eaters. No, sir—not my boys!”

Flushed with embarrassment, Scratch said, “D-didn’t mean you and the rest, Jack.”

“Ever’ last one of ’em is cut from the same cloth you be, Titus Bass,” Hatcher explained.

“I—I don’t doubt it.”

“So when I go saying ye might make do just fine with what fixin’s ye got if ye was to go and throw in with others—I wasn’t talking about ye throwing in with booshways like Sublette, or Fitzpatrick, or even li’l Davy Jackson. Why, they all good fellers, but a booshway is a booshway, and their kind is still the sort to honey-fuggle a man right outta his hard-earned plews!”

“Long as I got traps, powder, and lead,” Bass explained, slowly sitting up on his travois bed there by the trappers’ fire at the edge of the camp circle, “I figger to make back what I lost over the next two seasons.”

When Jack stopped rubbing his rump and straightened, he. peered long and hard at Bass. “There ain’t really no two ways to say this to ye, Scratch. Ye figger to hunt flat-tails this fall up in that high country … I’m thinking ye should join up with me and the boys.”

For a few moments Titus was stunned, purely astounded at the offer. When he finally found words, he said, “Jack—I ain’t g-got much to put up.”

“Ye got a few traps, and a damn good gun, nigger,” Hatcher said with a grin, coming over to pick up the bail to the coffee kettle in one hand. “But even more important than that is what ye got in here.” Jack tapped his heart. “Any man what can ride out of ’Rapaho country with a bullet hole showing daylight right through him, why—more dead’n alive and hanging on the back of a ornery mule like he was a tick stuck fast and sure to some ol’ bull … then I figger that man can ride to the high country with me any season of the year.”

How full his heart felt at that moment! “You … you certain about this?”

“Sartin as it’s gonna snow on-the high places, Scratch.”

“Maybeso you should talk it over with the others.”

The voice came from behind Titus. “We awready talked it over all we need to.”

Twisting his head around, Scratch found Caleb Wood there. Behind him stood the others: Elbridge Gray, Solomon Fish and Joseph Little, Issac Simms and Rufus Graham, John Rowland and Matthew Kinkead.

Hatcher repeated, “We all want you to join up.”

“But,” Rufus grumped, “you gotta vow you stop this laying around, goddammit. Man fixin’ to light out for the high country—he ought’n be up an’ around, don’t you think, fellers?”

“By God—Rufus is right!” Fish roared. “Let’s us get Titus forked over a horse this very morning.”

The rest started toward him as Elbridge Gray turned back for a pair of saddle horses tied nearby. Lord, was Scratch ever ready when they helped steady him as he pushed himself up and off that travois. Then, slowly, the others stepped back to let Titus stand alone.

“Lookee there, Mad Jack!” Kinkead cried as Hatcher stepped up, flinging the blanket off his shoulders.

“Yer ready?” Jack asked.

Bass nodded, watching Gray lead one of the horses up to the group. “This your’n, Elbridge?”

Gray glanced at Hatcher a moment.

Jack nodded once. “Go ’head.”

Then Elbridge said, “No. It ain’t mine, Scratch. We’uns—well … we all pitched in some and traded for to get a saddle pony from these here Snakes for you.”

He had trouble swallowing as the others stepped close to circle him and the horse. “I … I … I don’t—”

“Ain’cha gonna climb up?” Jack proposed.

“Steady him now, boys,” Rowland instructed when Bass went to stuff a left foot in the stirrup. “Help him on up there.”

Fish and Simms, stocky men both, helped Titus boost himself onto that big, carved cottonwood stirrup—getting the other leg kicked over the high cantle and eased down as Rufus guided Titus’s right foot into the other hand-carved stirrup.

Scratch asked, “Who’s saddle this be?”

“Yer’n,” Hatcher replied. “It’s Injun. All we had us—
but … from the looks of how ye sit it, gonna work out just fine for ye till we can get to ronnyvoo next summer and fix ye up with one of the trader’s American saddles.”

Titus shifted this way and that on the rawhide-covered wooden tree with the high pommel in front and its high, wide cantle in the back.

“Damn if it won’t do, fellas,” he said quietly, having a little trouble getting the words out.

“See? Told ye he’d like it,” Hatcher proclaimed.

“Man got himself a rifle, a good horse, saddle, and a mule to pack along a few traps,” Bass said, his eyes stinging as he looked down on the six of them gathered around his new pony, “why—that man got hisself just about all he’ll ever need.”

Hatcher grabbed Bass’s wrist and said, “That, and a few friends along too when he points his nose for the highlands.”

“Yes,” Titus choked. “Man can make do anywhere, no matter what—if’n he’s got him a few friends … f-friends like you fellas.”

He could cotton to a little more riding each day—so before another eleven days had passed, Scratch felt ready to sit the saddle long enough for them to take up the trail north.

Three times in more than two weeks while he was with them, the Shoshone moved camp, following the herds south as the remains of summer faded and autumn first kissed the cottonwood along the creeks, spinning gold of the trembling aspen that dotted the timbered slopes above the valleys where the buffalo grazed. The village had been shooting and butchering and fleshing hides for many days now, every member of the tribe involved with these preparations for winter before they would turn north and make their way into a valley sheltered from the harsh winds and the deep snows. There they would find respite from the raiding Arapaho to the south, the wide-ranging Blackfoot slipping down from the north.