Buffalo Palace (73 page)

Bass shook his head, then scoffed, “You can’t all be so full of shit to think he’s gonna die from ticks!”

Solemn Isaac Simms took off that battered felt hat of his, the brim singed in places where he had not been all that careful in using it to stir up many a dying fire. “Listen,
Scratch. Joe ain’t listened to all that much Hatcher tried to teach him ’bout nothing—so it’s plain as paint Joe didn’t learn hisself ’bout ticks.”

“W-wait, dammit,” Bass said. “Just how the hell does a man die from ticks?”

“He gets the fever from ’em,” Hatcher explained, sadly shaking his head and the two legs on that badger cap too. “I only see’d one other like this.”

“That feller go under too, Jack?” Fish asked.

“Sartin as sun.”

Scratch simply could not believe his ears. “J-just from ticks?”

“From ticks,” Hatcher affirmed.

“We could bleed ’im, Jack,” Wood suggested.

“If’n Joe lets us, we’ll bleed him,” Hatcher agreed. “But Isaac the one’s gonna do it. He’s done it on us afore.”

“Awright,” Simms agreed, turning momentarily to look at the figure lying by the fire. “I’ll bleed ’im if he’ll let me.”

Bass watched Isaac turn aside quietly with Solomon Fish and go over to where Little shivered uncontrollably in his blankets. They both knelt and began talking so low, Titus could not make out what they said. Only then did he notice the sun was easing down on the far peaks rising to the west of them.

“I’ll go over see if them two need my help,” Scratch declared, then turned from the group.

He stood behind Fish and Simms for a few minutes as they tried desperately to hold Little’s arms still enough for Isaac to delicately prick open a vein in the sick man’s wrists. But because of the growing violence of his quaking, they succeeded only in scratching Little with the tip of the knife blade.

When Hatcher came up to watch those last attempts, Bass quietly said, “You don’t need me for nothing, I’ll slip off for a while.”

“Go right on ahead,” Jack declared. “Ain’t nothing more any of us can do here, I’m afeared.”

Picking his way west from camp, Scratch came upon Elbridge Gray rooting among the brush along the streambank. They signaled one another with a wave, but
neither one spoke a word. Already it felt as if a somber air were settling upon the valley.

Gray hunched back over his work, crawling about on his knees, working his knife into the damp soil, digging, prodding things out of the ground. At every camp Elbridge was the one to go in search of wild onions or Jerusalem artichokes among the thick undergrowth along the river bottoms, the one among them all to dig up the tip-sina, a rooted tuber that grew out on the prairie.

Bass wasn’t all that sure how long he walked, but when he stopped and circled back, Scratch could not see anything of their camp but the rising vale of a single wispy column of smoke emerging from the canopy of trees. That’s where he decided to go no farther. Nearby ran a game trail, on the far side of which stood a nest of large boulders. Bass climbed to the top and settled, drawing his legs against him, his arms knitted around them as he stared at the last lip of the sun slipping over the far, jagged horizon.

Ticks.

A critter so small a man might think nothing more of one than to yank it out of his hide and scratch where the damned thing had burrowed its head to suck at the man’s blood.

It weren’t like ticks was anything new to him, neither. Hell, all his pap’s animals had suffered ticks from time to time—cows, and even Tink herself. Never had he given a second thought to yanking ticks right out of the old hound’s hide. Now the rest were telling him Joe Little was going to die from the ticks.

A man don’t die. from ticks!

Up here where a man could get froze to death or get hisself chawed up by a sow grizzly? Where a fella’s pony might slip a hoof on an icy ledge or he might get hisself killed by thieving red niggers? A hundred and one things might kill a man out here for sure and certain … but not no ticks!

As the light began to drain from the sky, Titus brooded on it in that peculiar way he had come to dwell on all weighty matters. Scratch would cautiously reach out and barely touch a thing first before really grabbing hold of it—maybe even rub a finger or two across a subject
before diving in to stir it up good. It was as if Titus Bass tested things a time or two, exactly like a man would stick his toe into the water, testing its temperature before jumping on in.

Sure enough of a time not all that long ago he had been a man with a wild feather tickling his ass, a young pup what had come to the mountains as brave and stupid as a buffler in the spring with his nose stuck high in the air. But he’d been lucky. That, or Dame Fortune had merely smiled on one more of those rare men who went out and made his own luck happen.

Luck or fate, or medicine. There was more than enough mystery to give a man pause out here.

“Mind if’n ye have some company?”

He looked down, finding Hatcher there at the foot of the boulders.

“C’mon up.”

Jack scrambled up and over the nest of rocks, settling near Bass. “They’re warm, ain’t they?”

Scratch put his hand out to feel the boulder beneath him. For the first time he realized how the rock had absorbed the afternoon’s sunlight and heat. “Damn sight warmer’n the air up here.”

After a few minutes Jack turned to look over his shoulder, then asked, “Ye don’t figger our fire’s too big, do ye?”

Again Scratch glanced at the smoke. “You fearing Injuns, Jack Hatcher?”

“Only them what come out’n the north.”

They fell quiet again, both lost in thought until Titus asked, “Joe really gonna die?”

“He might’n pull through,” Hatcher replied solemnly. “But I cain’t lay much stake on that. But there ain’t much else we can do ’cept keep ’im at his ease. I dug out the last of the likker for ’im. With that fever—Joe was plumb going out of his head.”

“You done right, Jack,” Titus agreed. “Maybe help him sleep now.”

“It don’t feel like I done nothing right, though.”

Turning slightly on the boulder, Scratch said, “This is pure crazy, Hatcher. How’s a man die of ticks?”

“I ain’t got me a answer for ye,” he finally admitted. “Me and Caleb see’d it only once’t afore.”

“Seen what?”

“Man die of tick fever.”

“Tick fever? A mari really died of a tick bite?”

After nodding, Hatcher said, “He bums up with a fever—just like Joe’s doing right now. Tweren’t nothing no man could do for ’im.”

“Gotta be something, Jack—like you help a body through the croup-sick or the ague.”

“Joe ain’t got none of that. Been bit by the ticks what kill’t him. What give him the fever and kill’t him.”

“I know ticks. Ever since’t I was a boy—”

“These out here ain’t the same, Scratch,” Hatcher interrupted. “Ain’t the same like them back east where we both come from. Not down there on the prerra neither. These up here in the mountains … they can kill a man.”

“Sure as Blackfoot?”

“Sure as Blackfeets … and that’s for sartin.”

Almost in a whimper Scratch asked, “W-what’d Joe do wrong that he’s gotta die for it?”

“Like he tol’t us his own self: he pulled them ticks outta his own hide.”

“Shit, Hatcher. Man can’t leave the damned things stuck in there, can he?”

Wagging his head, Jack sought to explain. “Listen, Scratch: there’s a right way to set a trap, and a wrong way too. So there’s a way to get them ticks off your hide ’thout things turning out the way they did for Little.”

“How so?”

“Man’s gotta get hisself something hot and touch them sumbitcnes on the ass.”

“Something hot?”

“Like yer knifeblade ye heat up over the fire,” Jack continued. “Just touch them ticks on the ass, and they’ll come backing right on out.”

“Come out’n a man’s hide—just like that?”

“Ye gotta do it that way, Scratch,” Hatcher explained. “Wait till they pulled themselves out, then ye grab ’em and toss ’em in the fire.”

“Can’t just pick ’em off.”

“Joe did that,” Jack said gravely.

Bass nodded. “And now he’s gonna die.”

“’Cause when he pulled them ticks off him, the heads rip off then and there, and them heads stay buried there in a man’s hide.”

“What of it—them heads?”

“That’s the wust of it, Scratch,” Hatcher declared. “Them heads is what got the poison in ’em.”

“So it’s that poison gonna kill Joe?”

“He can’t last more’n two, three days now.”

“We staying here?”

Jack nodded, staring off into the distance. “We’ll trap. And in the by and by let the man die in peace. Give him a decent folk’s buryin’.”

“Least we can do for a friend,” Scratch said.

“The least I’d do for any man what rode with me,” Hatcher replied as he started to rise. “C’mon. Sun’s down. Time we got back and done ourselves up some supper. First light comes early—and we got traps to set.”

Titus clambered down the boulders behind Jack, thinking on just how rare was this breed of man he had cast his lot with—these men with Hatcher, even Joe Little as he lay his final hours beside a fire tucked far back into the wilderness. Theirs was a special breed cut for a special place where few survived. Fire hardened on the anvil of blistering heat and soul-numbing cold. Beaten and pounded under relentless watchfulness, forged by adversity and quenched in that joy of truly relying on no man but their own kind. Theirs was truly a breed of its own.

As he settled at the fire near the blankets where Little trembled, Bass felt those first stirrings of a sense of belonging to something bigger than himself. It had taken him three seasons, but now he felt as if he was a part of the lives these men shared one with another. Among them, out here in this wilderness, there existed few rules if any—and what rules there were existed for the sake of the living. Those rules were learned, and practiced, solely for saving a man’s hair and hide.

And there was a code of honor too—one that dictated that a man’s friends do what was decent when it came time to bury him, to speak their last farewell and leave ’hat old friend behind. As simple as that code was, Bass
realized he had already sworn to it before taking his leave of St. Louis. He had done what was right by Isaac Wash-bum—then come west to live out the life the old trapper would never live again for himself.

How temporal and truly fragile life had turned out to be, Bass brooded. No matter that these were a hardy breed of men, the toughest he had ever known—tougher than any plowman, tougher still than any riverboatman—the men of this breed lived for what time was granted them, then accepted death as surely as they had come to accept life on its own terms. Each man in his own way wanting no more out of life than was due him.

They were quiet around their fire that night as the nine ate, for the most part deep in their own thoughts as they chewed on half-raw pieces of a cow elk shot that morning. While the coffee brewed, they filled themselves on lean red meat and gulped down the boiled onions Gray had scrounged from the creekbanks.

For eating, a man used his knife only, no matter how big the cut of meat. Holding one end of a reddish piece of steak between his teeth, Bass pulled the other end, then sawed his skinning knife neatly through the outstretched portion, feeding himself chunk after mouth-filling chunk. Before he poured himself some coffee, Titus chopped up a well-done piece of elk into small pieces that Little just might swallow without the trouble of chewing. These he dropped into a second tin cup set before the dying trapper, next to his cup of water.

When he had plunged his knife blade into the hot coals and left it there to set a moment, Scratch poured a cup of steaming coffee, its aroma wild and heady. Not wanting the knife to become too hot, he pulled it from the fire, wiping it quickly across the thigh of his leggings, back and forth over the buckskin until its sheen had returned, cleansed of blood and gristle so he could nest it back in its scabbard.

He was struck with a sudden thought. “Where’s ronnyvoo to be this year?”

“That’s right—you wasn’t one to make it last summer,” Caleb Wood replied.

“Got hisself jumped by the Araps,” Simms reminded them.

“Then ye’ll have yerself a second go-round for Sweet Lake,” Hatcher announced.

Titus inquired, “Where you met up with the traders last summer?”

“The same,” Fish replied.

“Ah—ronnyvoo,” Mad Jack sighed as he leaned back on his saddle and blankets, one hand laid lovingly on his battered fiddle case. “Damn near what a man works for all year long, don’cha figger, Titus Bass?”

“I callate ronnyvoo is the prize what any of us gambles his hide for.”

“Likker and lovin’,” Caleb added. “By damn, for every man what comes to ronnyvoo, give ’im the wust of the likker and the best of the lovin’!”

Near moonrise Little began muttering and mumbling. As he lay shivering in his blankets, sweating from his rising fever, Joe rapidly slipped into a delirium. No longer did he experience any lucid moments, nor did he respond to the men who went to his side with water.

It was hard for any of them to turn away and sleep that night.

Sometime in that last hour before sunrise, the noisy muttering and thrashing quieted and Little finally fell silent. Taking his rotation at guard, Solomon Fish was the man up to hear when everything went quiet with Joe.

“Hatcher,” Fish whispered loudly, and he clambered to his feet. “C’mere!”

As the others slowly sat up in their blankets, watching in silence, Jack joined Solomon at Little’s side. Hatcher first held his hand just above Joe’s face. Then laid his ear over the man’s mouth. And finally Jack touched Little’s cheek, his forehead, then the front of Joe’s throat as he pulled back the blankets.

“He … he dead?” Caleb asked.

Instead of answering immediately, Hatcher laid his ear against Little’s chest and listened for what seemed like a good piece of eternity to Bass.

When he raised his head, Jack pulled the top blanket over Joe Little’s face. “Rufus, want you and Scratch start digging a hole.”

“He dead awready?” Simms asked.

“Fever took him quick,” Hatcher replied.

“Merciful heavens,” Wood whispered, grabbing that beaver-skin cap off his head. “Damn good thing it was quick.”