Buffalo Palace

8

Every few days during the heart of that winter when the weather tempered, the four of them left the village with some of the Ute warriors for a few days of hunting. Not only did they seek game to take back to the hungry mouths awaiting them in the winter camp, but the brownskins also surveyed the countryside for pony tracks, for firesmoke, for any sign of their enemies.

“’Rapaho?” Titus repeated Turtle’s admonition as the white men came to a halt at the tree line bordering a clearing where the advance warriors had just come across some hoofprints.

“That’s what these niggers say they was,” Billy Hooks responded instead. “’Rapaho. Good-sized war party of ’em too.”

As the last of the group halted, most of the warriors dropped to the ground to inspect the tracks.

Silas Cooper agreed. “More red-bellies—out looking for ponies, h’ar, and coup!”

“How they so sure what band it were?” Titus asked, intrigued.

With a shrug Cooper explained, “Maybeso they figger to tell us they know the difference atween ’Rapaho and Shian—but I’ll be damned if I can. C’mon over here with me, fellers—an’ let’s have us a look-see.”

The three dismounted to join Cooper, dispersing among the Ute, who were carefully moving up and down within the many foot-and hoofprints, each blanket-coated warrior bent over, closely studying the enemy’s spoor. The winter breeze tousled the feathers tied to loose, flowing hair or to those animal skins the warriors had pulled over their heads in the fashion of caps, each one tied with a rawhide string beneath a bare brown chin.

“That one,” Cooper announced, pointing to one of the warriors, “he says that spot be where one of ’em got off his pony to look at a bad hoof.” Silas bent over and studied the snowy, crusted ground himself. “Yep—I can see it plain my own self too. There be that nigger’s pony prints … and there be where the nigger clumb down afoot.”

Tuttle commented, “Then you’re telling us these Yutas know what sort of red nigger made them tracks just from the mokerson prints?”

“That be the how of it,” Cooper replied.

“Nawww—them could’a been Shian, Silas,” Billy Hooks protested. “Them niggers are in this country alla time too. Kissin’ cousins to them ’Rapaho, yessirreebob!”

“Maybeso you’re center, Billy boy,” Cooper agreed, then looked over at Bass. “Them Shians do keep close company with the ’Rapaho anyways.”

“Likely they’d all lift a Yuta scalp if’n any of ’em had their chance, Silas,” Tuttle observed.

“Not this day,” Cooper vowed with unmasked bravado as he straightened and patted one of the two pistols he carried at his belt. “Them stupid ’Rapaho out hunting ponies and skelps in our part o’ the country … maybeso we ought’n get these here Yutas go with us to hunt down them ’Rapahos.”

“Skelps and ponies!” Hooks repeated joyfully, clapping his blanket mittens together. “Yessirreebob! Skelps and ponies for us all!”

But as it turned out, the leader of the hunting party would not be dissuaded from his goal: securing meat for those left behind in the winter camp. He steadfastly told Cooper and the other white men that their first rule was to provide for the village, and only when there was enough meat back in camp would a Ute warrior go traipsing off to follow an enemy trail in hopes of bringing home ponies, scalps, enemy weapons, and war honors.

Cooper and Hooks grumbled, threatening to pull out and turn back to the village on their own. But in the end they hung in with the meat hunters as the afternoon waned and the day began to grow old. As the horse rocked beneath him and the sun fell below the furry wrinkle of his old coyote-skin cap, Titus found his eyelids growing heavy. His mind drifted back to his first hunting trip out with the Ute warriors—the first time he had left Fawn and her son, White Horse, behind.

The new year itself had come and gone on that hunting trip—the first Titus could recollect not boisterously celebrating among white men. The fact that it might well be the first day of 1826 hadn’t even made no never mind to the other three trappers. No man among them had a calendar anyway—so it didn’t seem vital in the least to celebrate one day’s importance over another. Not a Christmas neither.

“For balls’ sakes, such doin’s as that be the whatnot and befugglin’ a man’s gotta leave behin’t when you come out here to these mountains,” Tuttle had declared, explaining how the three of them felt about holidays.

“Only one time a year do a man got him any reason to celebrate, Scratch,” Cooper went on to explain. “That be the summer: time when a man cain’t trap, seein’ how the plew h’ain’t prime no more … an’ seein’ how that’s when the trader says he’ll be back to buy our furs and maybeso have some likker to sell us this time out.”

“Trader?” Bass inquired, his mind fired. “Likker? You said a trader’d have some likker? Like rum or whiskey? Where in blue hell—”

“Right here in the mountains—yessirreebob!” Billy exclaimed, his eyes dancing as he licked his lips with the tip of a pink tongue.

Titus wagged his head in disbelief. “Traders come out here to the mountains? Had me no idea.”

“First time we heerd about it our own selves was just last winter,” Tuttle declared. “Fellas said a trader named Ashley been out to the mountains with his own company of trappers. Word was Ashley wanted the news spread all over that he was coming back the next summer with trade goods and likker—not just for them fellers what come west with him in the seasons afore, but for all niggers like us what could allays use more powder and G’lena lead, coffee and sugar, all such.”

“I heard of Ashley, I have,” Titus declared. “He was the high-pockets behind a feller named Henry years back when that Henry feller pushed upriver … the year Hugh Glass got hisself chawed on by a grizzly bear.”

Tuttle asked, “Washburn tol’t you ’bout Glass?”

“Yepper.”

Cooper said, “We heard of this here Glass.”

“Last summer was some doin’s, weren’t it, fellers?” Hooks said with that ready, contagious smile.

“We was up to those hills where we run onto you,” Cooper explained. “Run onto a band of Ashley’s boys what tol’t us ’bout the plans to rendezvous come that summer.”

Billy’s face grew most expressive as he recalled, “Just like they told us to, we moseyed on over to a place called Horse Creek on the Green, where we pitched camp with more trappers’n I see’d in all my days.”

“More’n a hunnert!” Tuttle claimed. “And some three dozen more added in.”

Cooper jumped into the recollection. “Few days later some Hudson’s Bay come rollin’ in. There was a bunch of Injuns tagging along with ’em—women and young’uns too. But, damn, if Ashley wasn’t one to keep his trade packs closed till all his men was in.”

“ ‘Ceptin’ tobaccy,” Hooks complained. “That was all he traded for till the last of his own moseyed on in.”

Silas nodded. “Still had us a merry time of it—didn’t we, Billy?”

Hooks dragged the back of a blanket mitten across his dry lips, eyes dancing. “Eatin’, spinnin’ tales … and, oh—them womens!”

“Long as it lasted,” Tuttle grumbled. “Ashley had the beaver out of our packs and into his inside of two days afore he was turning back for St. Louie! Two goddamned days!”

“After all that waiting,” Billy chimed in, “we wasn’t about to sleep through none of it, Scratch! A man stayed awake through it all!”

Titus asked, “So you got yourselves good and drunk?”

“Shit—Ashley didn’t have him a drop of likker!” Hooks groaned.

Cooper slammed a fist down into his palm. “And that son of a honey-fugglin’ booshway give the best dollar for beaver to his own boys!”

“Three dollar the pound he paid ’em!” Tuttle exclaimed.

Hooks bobbed his head, saying, “An’ for us he give only two.”

“Said we was free trappers,” Silas added. “Like we was something what didn’t belong out here. Tol’t us our kind wasn’t bound to no man … so he wasn’t bound to give us no more’n what dollar he damn well felt like giving us!”

“You took two dollar the pound?” Titus asked.

“Hell if we did!” Cooper spouted, his chest puffing. “Our packs was filled with prime plew—seal fat an’ sleek. When he saw what we had to trade, why—that trader’s eyes bugged out to see what we brung us into that Horse Creek camp.”

“Ashley give us four dollar on some!” Tuttle boasted. “An’ on some o’ Cooper’s fur he give Silas five dollar the pound!”

“No shit?” Scratch gasped, going dry-mouthed to think of what his own winter’s catch might bring. “F-five dollar the pound?”

“Damn bet he did,” Tuttle said. “Then we traded for what powder and coffee and sugar we needed to winter up to make it round for next summer—’stead of us having to head east to the Missouri to barter our provisions.”

“Trader says he’s bound to bring him some likker out this year,” Billy announced. “Then this child will have it all—womens and some whiskey!”

“Now, y’ reckon why summer be the only time a mountain trapper got him to celebrate, Scratch?” Cooper asked.

“Ronnyvoo do surely shine,” Tuttle added wistfully himself. “Hope that trader be true at his word—comin’ back this summer.”

Cooper gazed off wistfully. “Ashley took his caravan off to the north. Headed down the Bighorn to the Yallerstone. On to Missouri to float home to St. Louie.”

Tuttle spoke up. “Seems a likely way for a man to go what has him a lot of furs, Silas.”

Cooper nodded, speaking softly, dramatically. “Might be at that, Bud. Makes all the sense in the world.”

Titus remembered how he had sensed the leap of tiny wings within his stomach when he asked, “We going to ronnyvoo this summer?”

“Come green-up,” Silas assured. “When the plews stop being prime and sleek … four of us take off for Willow Valley,* where Ashley promised he’s to show up by the middle o’ summer.”

“You know how to find this Willow Valley?” Bass inquired.

“We’ll find it,” Cooper claimed.

“H-how we know when it gonna be the middle of summer?” Titus asked, anxious. “Ain’t none of us keep no calendar stuffed away in his plunder!”

“Middle of the summer, Scratch,” Tuttle declared with a shrug. “Simple as that for a man to sort out.”

Nodding, Silas said, “Soon’s the high country starts to warm up, it’s getting on to be summer down below. I figger that be the time for us to mosey down outta this beaver land and sashay on over to that Bear River for ronnyvoo.”

“Bear River?”

Tuttle turned to Bass. “Near where them Ashley boys say we’ll run onto Willow Valley.”

“With all our plews!” Billy exclaimed. “Buy us whiskey and womens!”

“But first we gonna trap out what streams there is hereabouts, ain’t we, Silas?” Titus inquired.

“Y’ damn right we will,” Cooper replied. “The way you’re getting the hang of things—why, we gonna pull into ronnyvoo with more plews in our packs than any of them other niggers!”

“Only trouble is,” Tuttle advised sourly, “we hear us that Ashley has him plans to put higher prices on his trade goods, and he don’t figger to be offerin’ top dollar for our fur no more.”

Hooks moaned, “No more five dollar for prime plew.”

“Why such?” Titus asked.

Cooper nudged his horse up close to Bass. “Y’ ’member that fella Henry we knowed of come upriver with Lisa years ago?”

“Yeah, like I said—hear him and Ashley is partners now.”

“Not no more,” Tuttle explained as Bass was the last to clamber aboard his horse and they all began to move off behind the Ute hunters. “Henry figgers he’s had him enough of the mountains.”

“That cain’t be true,” Bass replied. “T’ain’t possible for a man to get him enough or these mountains out here.”

Cooper said, “True it be: for Ashley’s took him on a new partner. Jedediah Smith. While Ashley goes back to St. Louie to fetch up for trade goods for ronnyvoo, Jed Smith has charge of the hull mountains.”

“So what’s that mean to us come summer when we go off to sell our plews at ronnyvoo?” Titus asked.

“Means ever’ man of us got to make his own choice,” Cooper said with a shrug. “Man’s gotta figger out for his own self if’n he’s better off sellin’ plew at ronnyvoo to them high-pocket St. Louie traders … or he heads down the Big Horn, Yallerstone, and the Missouri on his own to sell what’s his back direct to them other traders at posts along the river.”

“I’ve a good mind to keep my furs for the river traders!” Billy exclaimed. “Damn Ashley and the rest of them thievin’ niggers!”

“That makes two of us, Billy,” Cooper agreed. Then his eyes bounced from Tuttle to Bass. “I’ll just have to wait till summer green-up to see what Ashley’s offerin’ for plew. So come that time, the both of you two’ll have to figure out where your stick floats: mountain trader, or river trader.”

Tuttle glanced quickly at Bass and hurriedly replied, “I’m in with you, Silas. What works out best for your plews works out best for all our plews, I say.”

“What about you, Scratch?” Cooper asked.

“Back there to that village is my first season’s catch,” he started. “Worked hard for it—but I reckon I wouldn’t have near none of it less’n you three come along to show me proper. Titus Bass gonna hang on and ride the whole trail with you … to the river, or to Ashley’s ronnyvoo.”

“That shines, Scratch!” Cooper cheered, his big teeth showing in his black beard.

“But this here ronnyvoo,” Bass replied, “sure wouldst like to see me one of them, one of these days.”

“You will, Scratch,” Hooks said confidently. “Maybe even this summer. Right, Silas?”

“That be the square of it, Titus Bass. Man don’t rightly know in winter just where he’ll be come summer—”

Scratch’s reverie shattered as a shrill scream split the dry, cold air ahead on the narrow trail winding its way out of the trees and into an open glade ringed by steep side slopes, a tumble of boulders, and more lodgepole pine than there were bristles on a strop-hog’s back.

The hair rose at the back of Bass’s neck in that next instant as a pony snorted, other horses whinnied, and some of the Ute cried out. Voices shrill and loud answered, shouting from the trees as enemy warriors appeared from behind the snowcapped rocks all about them. As he watched, mesmerized and frozen, the enemy materialized in a great crescent before the Ute, yanking back the rawhide strings on their short bows, letting fly a first volley of arrows—more than Titus had seen since his first and only Indian fight with the Chickasaw.

Cooper was bellowing as he and Tuttle hit the ground in a leap, smacking their horses in the flanks.

“C’mon, Scratch!” Hooks hollered as he kicked his leg over the neck of his horse and plopped into the snow. The animal screeched, sidestepping, then yanked away from Billy, an arrow quivering high in the animal’s withers.

“C’mon, Billy!” Tuttle hollered a few yards ahead where the shadows split the ground into bars of sun and shadow. “We got us a Injun fight!”

Hooks wheeled for one last look at Bass as Titus leaped from the saddle. “Skelps! Them’s Injun skelps for this here child!”

As Billy whirled away into the shadows of the lodgepole toward the bright patch of sunlight and snow just beyond where the Ute were milling in disarray as the enemy advanced, an Indian pony suddenly clattered out of the melee toward Bass. Wild-eyed and snorting, its head bobbing as it threaded its way through trees, other animals, and in among the men rushing past it—Titus suddenly saw the Ute warrior still atop the animal, holding on only with the strength of his legs.

Both of the man’s bloody hands were wrapped around the shaft of an arrow, tugging, yanking, pulling with all his might to free it from the back of his throat where it had flown directly into his mouth and buried itself in the base of his tongue.

Titus watched the man weave past atop that careening pony, hearing the warrior’s death-gurgle as the Ute strangled on his own blood.

Bass went cold, shuddering involuntarily as a few arrows hissed into the stand of lodgepole beside him, and some even thwacked into the trees with the splintered crack of winter ice breaking up. Dropping to his knees, he peered ahead at the confusion of bodies darting this way and that among the shadows and brilliant sunlight.

A scream shattered the forest behind him.

Bass whirled, bringing up the rifle, remembering the fleet-footed warriors who had chased him through the Mississippi River woods, all the way back to the river-men’s Kentucky boat.

He had no time to think. Barely enough to jerk back the hammer to full-cock and pull hard on the set trigger before yanking back on the front trigger. He hadn’t aimed. Everything done on feel, impulse—as the enemy, with the top half of his face painted in black, leaped through the shadows, across that last five yards, a huge club circling over his head, sunlight glinting off the three sharp knife blades swinging down from the sky toward Bass’s head.

For a moment more the black face screamed, then went silent, contorting as the warrior fell, skidding to his knees. It was as if the lower strings of a marionette had been suddenly cut as the warrior crumpled—yet with that headlong motion his right arm continued to bring that war club forward, released at the end of his arm: whirling onward with a dull hum.

Glinting. Flashing in the sun.

On instinct Bass brought up his rifle at the last moment, ducking aside as the club tumbled into him. Its long handle struck the rifle with a wooden clunk, and the blades tumbled on past.

Slicing.

He grunted as he fell, rolling onto his shoulder—finding the fall hurt as he spilled onto his belly in the snow. Afraid, remembering that his rifle was empty, Bass rocked onto his knees. Allowing the rifle to fall out of his hands, he turned to find the warrior spilled facedown in the snow. Titus yanked the pistol from his sash, cocked and pointed it, trembling, at the fallen enemy.

“Scratch!”

Whirling about on his knees in the deep snow, Bass saw Hooks thirty yards away, ramming home a ball, seating it deep against the powder and breech of his rifle. Racing halfway between the two white men, a warrior came to a halt in a spray of snow, went to one knee, and brought the string back on his bow as it came up to his cheek in one smooth, swift, blurred arc of motion.

Instead of firing, Bass dropped onto his shoulder—his mind suddenly iced with hot nausea as he rolled, then came back up on his hip and brought the pistol up, aimed at the warrior moving in a blur to pull a second arrow from the same hand that clutched the bow.

Jerking back on the pistol’s trigger, he felt the weapon jump in his hand. A great gray puff of smoke issued from the short muzzle as Bass swapped the pistol to his left hand and with his right pulled the last weapon he could use for his defense.

With the knife held out before him he leaped upon the bowman who clutched his upper arm—a red, glistening ooze seeped between his fingers as his face showed surprise the moment the white man collided with him.

Titus seized a hunk of the Indian’s hair in his left hand, drew the skinning knife back at the end of his fully extended right arm, and slashed downward with all the fury he could muster. It hurt so to feel the warrior wrenching away from his left arm … then suddenly his right hand felt warm. Flecks of warmth spat against Bass’s face as the blood gushed.

No longer able to hold the struggling warrior with his weakened left arm, Titus flung the Indian backward as the enemy quivered and thrashed—his throat slashed so completely that his head keeled to the side, nearly severed from his body.

“That’s the way to shine, nigger!”

Bass jerked up with a feral growl, finding Silas Cooper scuttling toward him out of the shadows. Behind the tall man there were muffled shouts and the whinny of horses. Cooper went to his knees beside Titus.

“That red nigger’s skelp is yours, Scratch!” he cried out in exultation, slapping Bass on the back.

Wincing in pain, Titus grunted as icy shards filled the base of his skull, Sent shooting stars exploding behind his eyelids as he struggled to maintain consciousness.

“Damn nigger!” Cooper’s voice called out above him. “Scratch’s hurt. Billy!”

For some time Titus struggled to keep from losing his breakfast, then remembered they hadn’t really stopped for a noonday meal. Only a little yellow bile spilled up as his empty stomach revolted and he retched on the snow.

“You’ll be awright,” Hooks was saying over him somewhere.

Then someone was wiping cold snow on his face. Bass’s eyes fluttered half-open so that he could look up into Billy’s face.

Of a sudden, there beside Hooks’s hairy face, was Turtle’s, both of them staring down at Bass like masks suspended in the air above him.

“It’s over, Scratch,” Bud confided softly.

As much as he tried to listen to the silence of that rocky lodgepole clearing, Titus couldn’t hear anything. Maybe the silence meant that it really was over.

“Looks to be the greenhorn got two his own self!” Cooper suddenly bawled in triumph, appearing behind the other two, who continued to stare down at Bass. “How’s he gonna fare, Billy?”

“Get me his coat off and I can tell you better, Silas.”

They yanked and jerked, pulling his belt and sash off, then parted the blanket coat so that they could drag it down the left arm enough to look at the shoulder wound.

“It’s deep,” Hooks said solemnly.

“But clean enough,” Tuttle added. “She’ll knit up in time.”

Bass’s eyes opened now and then, fluttering in pain as the others prodded and pulled; then a great pressure was added to the source of his pain. He closed his eyes and wished they would just cut the arm off—it hurt so damned much.

“Don’t you go to sleep on us,” Tuttle commanded about the time Titus felt more cold snow rubbed on his cheeks, across his forehead, some of it spilling against his eyelids.

He blinked the cold away, trying to say something—to tell them to leave him sleep—but no words came.

“Think he wants us get him his skelps, Silas!” Billy roared over his shoulder at the tall man.

“By damn—this here pilgrim’s got his first Injun ha’r, this’un does!” Cooper bellowed lustily. Then he stuffed his face right in between Hooks’s and Turtle’s, saying in a softer voice, “Don’t y’ worry none, Scratch. I’ll go right off an’ fetch up them two skelps of your’n my own self for y’-”

“Silas,” Tuttle spoke through that thick, suffocating blackness slipping down over him, “I don’t think Scratch heard you none.”

There were pieces of it that came to him from time to time, like the ragged, painful consciousness that brought him awake with startling suddenness, yelping in protest before he would pass out again.

Yet, thankfully, Bass was able to pass through most of the homebound journey suspended in that blessed blackness where pain will take a man when it becomes more than he can bear.

Three of the injured Ute were dragged back to the village in improvised travois, like Scratch. The rest of the wounded stoically rode their ponies back to Park Kyack’s southern reaches.

Four of those warriors who had been at the very lead of the hunt that terrible day returned to their people slung over the backs of their ponies.

Once again the Ute had paid an awful price in their ages-old warfare with the Arapaho, who season after season continued to contest any trespass onto land they considered their own, on either side of the great tall mountains scraping the undergut of the winter-blue sky. None of the old Ute warriors were ready to give in and move off, leaving the Arapaho the freedom to roam that country. And with this loss of four young, healthy men, the entire village was now even more resolved to resist the violent encroachments of a people who had only recently begun to push up from the eastern plains into the fastness of the Rocky Mountains.

To the Ute way of thinking, the Arapaho were the interlopers, nothing more than unwanted trespassers, dangerous and deadly newcomers … at the same time what white men the Ute had run across had posed no danger—after all, the trappers were far too few, showing up infrequently at best, then moving on quickly enough without setting down roots. In short, the pale-skinned beaver hunters posed no real threat to Ute sovereignty of these high mountains, parks, and pine-ringed valleys.

But, like the Apache and Navajo to the south, like those Comanche raiding out of the southeast, now the Arapaho and the Cheyenne were threatening along the borders of Ute land from their traditional haunts on the eastern plains.

Within days it would be time for the Ute chiefs to deliberate and argue where best to move their winter camp to another site with better grazing for their ponies, more wood for their fires, a place where the winds did not carry so much of the stench of human offal and rotting carcasses of game brought in to feed the many hungry mouths.

But Bass knew none of this.

Titus slept fitfully that first night he was dragged through the doorway and deposited upon the widow’s blankets. Here at last, he told himself, he could try sleeping through the sharp pain as the edges of his wounds rubbed one another with the manhandling, the crude travois jouncing over uneven ground. To lay in one spot and just sleep. But the male voices were no sooner gone than the woman herself was busy above him.

Unable to get his coat off, Fawn did only what she could do. For a few minutes there he was somewhat conscious of hearing the heavy blanket wool being cut, sliced, hacked away with her cooking knife. Then it felt as if she were slowly, delicately, slashing along the seam of the left arm, down the left side of the shirt she had made for him weeks earlier. Finally he felt her tugging where the smoked leather of the shirt crossed over his left shoulder.

By cutting the shirt half off the left side of his body, Fawn was able to pull it off the right side, for the first time fully exposing the three deep gashes, blue and purple and a deep brown against his startling white flesh. So swollen, so oozy, were the wounds that she gasped and began to sob.

It might have been only the cold still air or the sudden silence there within the lodge, or it might have been her stifled sobs—but something made Titus open his eyes at that moment, finding it hard to focus in the dim light, the fire’s reflection flickering on the lodge skin behind her. Then his eyes found her crumpled over beside him, her head pressed down in her hands, her tiny shoulders shuddering as she did her best to stifle the sobs that racked her.

She nearly jumped when his right hand reached out and gently touched her arm.

“I … I ain’t gonna die,” he said in English—forgetting himself—his mouth as dry as it had ever been.

Bass watched her eyes pool as she brushed fingers down his hairy cheek. The moment he licked his dry, cracked lips, she understood. Quickly she dragged over a small kettle of cool water and from it pulled a buffalo horn fashioned into a large spoon, which she used to slowly pour rivulets of life past his parched lips, blessed drops washing across his dry tongue, spilling into his throat.

In the end he had strength enough to nudge the horn spoon aside and turn his face away, closing his eyes once more. How he wanted to do nothing but sleep that night, for a few moments thinking just how sweet it would be to wake up in the dim light of early dawn, finding her naked beside him in the quiet stillness before first light … to awaken and find that all of this was nothing more than a dream. So sweet was it to imagine the feel of that freedom from the pain of his body, so real was it to feel her steamy flesh against his—

Scratch nearly came off the buffalo-robe bed, his back arching in sudden, unexpected, excruciating pain.

“I’m sorry!” she cried out to him in Ute.

He looked at her in surprise, perhaps some disgust, then peered over at his shoulder. The deepest wound had begun to bleed freely again. When he looked back at her, Bass, found in her hands the rough ball of moss-green lichen dripping water and some of his crusted blood in the narrow strip of pounded dirt there between the robe bed and the fire pit.

“Damn you, Fawn,” he growled in English. “That hurt like hell!”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated again in her tongue.

Then it suddenly hurt him that he had lashed out and hurt her. His foggy, pain-crazed mind cleared, like a wind blowing away wisps of thick mist. “You were cleaning me?” Bass inquired in Ute.

“Yes. I need to open the wound, to clean it well before I can put my plants in it.”

“P-plants,” he stammered. Just the thought of any more scrubbing on the deep, jagged gashes … the prospect of anyone probing down into that torn, ugly, purple muscle was enough to make his head ache and spin as it was.

“Plants,” she repeated, dragging up a large soft-skinned bag to lay across her lap as she sat there beside him, her legs tucked to the side in that way of a woman. Holding back the large flap, Fawn pulled several smaller pouches tied at their tops with thongs, then retrieved two wooden vials, at the top of which were stuffed wooden stoppers.

“You put your plants in my wounds?”

She nodded, biting her lip between her crooked teeth as if she knew for certain herself what pain that announcement must cause him.

“Your husband—you used your plants for him?”

Her eyes immediately dropped to her hands in her lap, shuffling absently some of the pouches and wooden vials. “No. I did not have a chance to try healing my husband. He was dead when they returned his body to our village.”

How he wished he could trade places with one of the others right now, even simpleminded Billy Hooks. Staring up at the spiral of poles laced within one another at the top of the lodge, Titus hurt of the flesh from his wounds, hurt of the heart for what pain this woman endured.

“As I told you before, I won’t die,” he repeated, this time in Ute.

“Your wounds, they are terrible.”

As much as he did not want to look, Titus turned his head slightly and peered down at them. And quickly looked away. They were ghastly. Long ribbons of flesh torn asunder by the sharp, tumbling knives on that Arapaho war club. If nothing else was done for them, he was sure someone would have to attempt pulling the edges of the flesh together once more.

At least that is what his grandpap, even his own pap, had done for animals who suffered tragic accidents or falls. Stuffing some moist, chawed tobacco down into the edges of the wound before using a woman’s sewing needle and thread to draw things shut. Perhaps even some spider’s web at the edges of the laceration, if one could find such a thing back in the corners of the cabin or barn. His mam claimed it helped in drying out the edges of the wound, helped the flesh knit back together as it dried. Healing the most natural way possible. Something folks on the frontier took in stride and Bass had always taken for granted.

The way a Chickasaw arrow was cut from the meat of Ebenezer Zane’s leg. Or the way Beulah had bound up Hames Kingsbury’s ribs, then prayed over him till he was healed. Or the many times the blackened but steady hands of Hysham Troost had laid poultices on wounds Titus brought home from the Wharf Street watering holes, drawing out the poisons until it was time to pull the flaps of skin together with some of Mother Troost’s sewing thread.

But never had he laid eyes on anything near as terrible as this.

“Leave it be, Fawn,” he told her softly as his eyes closed. “Just cover me now and let me sleep.”

He felt her drag a wool blanket over him, gently laying the corner over that bloody shoulder and upper arm. Then she pulled a buffalo robe over that. The weight of it felt reassuring there as he began to drift off again into that netherworld somewhere between healthy sleep and what fitful unconsciousness the mind conjures up in its attempt to escape the brutal trespass of pain.

The last he remembered was the coolness of her hand and the roughened touch of the damp lichen she held in her fingers, brushing back the long, unkempt hair from his forehead and the sides of his face. Cool water, as she continued attempting to put out the fire of that fever she was certain was already on its way.

Somewhere in the darkness he was certain they were jabbing hot pitchforks into his side. Scooping a huge shovel filled with smoldering coals into his ears, one after another, so that his head filled with smoke and steam and unbearable heat, searing the back of his eyes, choking him with the rising torture.

How he thrashed and shuddered, kicking violently at the blankets and the robe, flinging them from his body until the pain reminded him of the wounds and he came close to wakefulness—enough to recognize just where and how much he hurt—fully expecting as he opened his eyes into pain-weary slits that he would see the tiny demons who were Old Lucifer’s cloven-hoofed minions gathered in a tight ring all about him, jabbing at him with their instruments of interminable death.

Oh, how he had listened in childlike rapture to the wandering pastors who had circled back and forth across the length of Boone County when he had been young. Their breath smelling of fire and brimstone, each one invariably continued to preach to the family who invited them back to their land after church service for a home-cooked meal and a warm place to sleep over the Sabbath night before the circuit rider moved on the next morning.

But Scratch did not find Lucifer there at hand. Nor his diminutive demons. Nonetheless, as he lay there in Fawn’s lodge, he believed the old bastard himself had just taken his leave of the place—hot as Bass was. For the love of a cool dip in that pond back home right about now. Even to have someone rub some snow on his burning skin right now.

Where was she?

“Fa … Fawn?”

He barely heard his own voice croak her name. Then he called out again, this time trying to force it, make it louder. She was there almost immediately—the sound of her coming through the door flap, the shadow of her holding the bail of the kettle in one hand, setting it on the low flames with a sputter.

“Water,” he demanded in English, rubbing his dry, cracked lips. “Water.”

She understood the word, the gesture, and sank to her knees at his side with the horn spoon, scooping up his head within an arm, pulling him up gently and pressing the spoon against his lips.

“The fire,” she declared quietly as most of the water dribbled from the corner of his mouth, “the fire burns you up from inside.”

“Fire,” he repeated in a tortured croak. “Put out the fire, Fawn.”

He closed his eyes to the tears of pain, to the drops of sweat running off his brow, to the dancing shapes of hideous reality flickering on the lodge skins, and tried to think back to that first Rocky Mountain snow last autumn as the high country began to cool and the aspen quaked in the breeze that carried on it the prophecy of winter. So cold and dry were the flakes that he caught them on his sleeve, on a blanket mitten, then blew them off like a sprinkling of ash. Cold, white ash landing on his face, tangled in his eyelashes, melting on his tongue. Like no snowflakes he had ever tasted back east along the Missouri, farther still in Kentucky—

The moment something was pressed against his lips, Titus opened his eyes again into narrow slits. He could see the movement of the woman so near that he heard her tiny bursts of breath coming fast and shallow. Slowly she poured the liquid against his parting lips. Bitter, so bitter a taste that he coughed, sputtering, spewing it from his mouth as he turned his head.

“No,” she said sharply, that word spoken just as tough as the way she had uttered it that day long ago when she had destroyed those infested white-man clothes of his.

She grabbed hold of a clump of long hair at the nape of his neck and wrenched his head around into a cradle of her forearm.

“Drink,” the woman commanded.

“No, tastes like shit,” he whimpered in English, nearly a sob as his eyes filled with more stinging salt dripping from his forehead.

“Drink,” she repeated. “Cold—for the fire inside you. Put out the fire.”

“Put out the fire,” he echoed in Ute.

So he drank a sip, physically forcing the foul-tasting, bitter liquid back on his tongue, down his throat. Then pursed his lips to drink a bit more. Then more until she no longer pressed the spoon against his lips.

Like sudden freedom, he savored those moments after Fawn laid his head back upon the buffalo robe and withdrew her arm, like stolen, furtive heartbeats he was sure were quickly going to lead him back into the escape of sleep now.

But instead she brushed more of the cool water across his forehead and face, then murmured something to him about a willow stick.

Bass felt an object pressed against his lips. Figuring it to be more of the fire-eating liquid, he opened his mouth slightly, his eyes tearing open into slits. But this time instead of the spoon, the widow pressed between his teeth a thin wand of willow.

“Bite on this,” she instructed quietly, “when you want to cry out.”

Cry out? Cry out for what? Nothing could be worse than what she had already put him through. He had no need to cry out now, not now that she had finished pouring that bitter water down his throat. All he needed now was to sleep … so why in the devil would she say he might want to cry out—

His back arched, convulsing with the sudden, sharp stab of pain at his shoulder, radiating clear to the roof of his head and to the soles of his feet. Sputtering, Bass finally got his tongue to shove the willow wand out from between his teeth and started to growl, spittle dripping from both corners of his mouth.

As suddenly he felt big hands on him, sensed the peeled willow wand shoved not so gently against his teeth this time—clearly without the kindness of the widow.

Through the tears and drops of sweat pooling in his eyes, Titus tried to make out who was there with Fawn. Who held him down as he struggled against the thunderous pain in his shoulder, the torment shooting down the entire length of his left arm? Bass could not recognize him. Blinking, he wanted to be certain who it was because Titus swore to kill the bastard once he was healed and strong enough to go searching for the one who had forced him to endure this pain.

He shrieked, crying out, then whimpered in his fevered torture, trying his best to thrash back and forth, to arch his back up, throw off the oppressive weight of his handler, to kick free of the one who seemed to sit squarely on top of him.

Then as suddenly he felt as weak as a newborn calf, his legs gone to butter. Oh, the pain was still there, so he had to save what strength he had left so that he would not die. No more did he have anything to use in fighting this strong one.

Maybe it was Cooper. Big enough, strong enough to be. Cooper would be the sort to enjoy this. Maybe even simpleminded Billy Hooks. No, he decided: they would be off whoring with their squaws right now. Days of hunting away from camp meant they would have one thing and one thing only on their minds. So they would be with their women, thrashing about in the robes instead of thrashing about with a fevered friend.

Maybeso it was Tuttle. Of the three, he believed he could count on Bud.

Tightly Bass clamped his eyes shut, trying to squeeze all the moisture from them so when he opened his eyes, he could see who had come to help the widow.

Into slits, then open wider still … until he peered up at the old, lined face. Skin darker than an old saddle. More seams and wrinkles in it than a cottonwood trunk. Eyes old and all-seeing, yet somehow possessed of a deep kindness as they gazed down at him in these last few of the white man’s futile, fevered convulsions.

She spoke to the old one in hushed tones. He replied in same. Behind them both the small boy whimpered. Fawn touched Bass’s forehead one last time with her cool hand, then turned away and went to the child.

Likely to feed the boy, he thought as he laid his cheek against a damp, cool spot on the buffalo robe beneath him where some of his sweat had collected. How long had it been since he’d had to pee? Titus wondered. He couldn’t remember peeing since before they were jumped by the Arapaho. And he wondered if he had done the unthinkable—to go and wet himself. Still, he felt wet everywhere on his body, everywhere his fingers touched. Maybe Fawn and this old man would not notice he had wet himself, since he was damp all over.

Then he realized it might just be all right. He hadn’t done the unthinkable. The fever—it had taken every drop of moisture in his body, soaked it up, and poured it out through his skin. There’d been nothing left for him to pee.

Funny how a man thought on such things like that when walking up the threshold to death’s door.

The strong, leathery arm raised his head. Bass felt the hard, smooth texture of the horn spoon pressed against his lips.

Yes, he thought. Water. The more I drink, maybe I can live. More, his mind echoed, convincing himself. This was sweet and clear. Not the bitter water she gave him. More.

Bass drank his fill until he could drink no more, and slept.

“You have been gone a long, long time,” the voice said out of the darkness as Bass’s eyes fluttered open.

His mouth was dry again, his lips so parched, he could feel the oozy cracks in them … but his skin no longer felt as tight and drawn as it had when he had been burning up with the fire of that fever.

For a moment he struggled to focus, then gazed at the old man’s face, watching it withdraw and the widow’s replace it right above him. Staring down at him with a wide, crooked-tooth smile.

“You are back from wandering the dark paths,” she said, her fingertips lightly touching his brow. “For some time now you have not been hot. It is good.”

“Yes,” he said in English, recognizing only the Ute word for “good.” Too hard to try remembering the Ute words now, to say them or understand them. If he ever could remember them again. So sure was he that the fever had burned away a good portion of what little he had in the way of his mind, just as a farmer set his fires to burn away the stalks from last year’s crop so that the next spring’s planting had that much better a chance.

“Yes,” she repeated in English. “Are you hungry?”

He thought a few moments—then understood—assessing the way he felt there on the robes, and finally answered, “No. Not right now. Maybe later.” He had said it in English, but when he shook his head slightly, she seemed to show some understanding.

“The old one came to guide you through the land of darkness, Me-Ti-tuzz.” He remembered that was what she called him as Fawn signaled to the man. The old one came close enough for Bass to see once more.

“You …,” and then Scratch struggled to remember the Ute words, how to put a few of them together. “Two … help … me … no more fire?”

“No more fire,” the old man repeated in his native tongue. “No more walk on the dark path.”

“No more fire,” Bass echoed confidently, remembering only tattered fragments of the fevered convulsions, how hot and wet he had been, how he had thrashed about.

Slowly, painfully, he raised his head to look down at himself. Surprised, he found upon his bare chest the smeared and many colors of patches and stripes of earth paint. Mystical symbols. Potent signs. And farther south on his belly were smeared what appeared to be dry, flaky powders, crude lines raked across his flesh by fingertips in some simplistic pictograph.

“This?” he asked weakly.

“You are better now,” the old man said, then turned to Fawn. “Wash off the paint, woman.”

Using that same clump of moss, she dipped cool water onto his flesh and gently scrubbed off the dried earth paint.

As she finished, the old man asked, “Should we tell the others with him?”

“They are gone,” Fawn replied.

“Gone where?” Titus asked as soon as the words registered, afraid the trio had abandoned him, leaving him behind when they rode off for parts unknown.

“To the streams,” she explained. Then, setting the moss scrubber aside, Fawn slapped her two open palms together with a smacking sound to imitate the animal’s own method of signaling a warning. “To catch the flat-tails.”

“Beaver!” he said in English with relief. And let his head sink back onto the buffalo robe beneath him.

“They come back soon,” she continued. “This is good?”

“Yes,” he said in Ute. “This is very good that they come back. I go with them when we leave for the spring.”

“Spring,” she repeated the word, her eyes drifting away. “It comes soon. And you go.”

“Yes.” He cheered himself with the thought. Then because he could not think of the words in Ute, Bass tried hard to explain in English, “To catch beaver in its prime! To mosey easy-like on down to ronnyvoo where the trader will have him whiskey! An’ there’ll be women too!”

In that next moment he suddenly realized what he had said. “Women for all the men what ain’t had a good woman to wrap up in the robes with ’em all winter, Fawn,” he tried to apologize in English.

Clumsily he reached out and took hold of one of the woman’s hands. Again he spoke in Ute, “You know I leave soon. Come spring.”

“Leave Fawn. Yes. Me-Ti-tuzz only a winter guest. Come again maybe next winter.”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “Maybe next winter.”

She pulled her hands from his and turned aside as the old man continued to stuff things away in his shoulder pouch. Bass glanced again at his wounds, finding each of them covered with moistened leaves held down with thin strips of cloth.

“You both help me,” Bass declared to them, watching their faces turn so they could look at him. “I will not forget. I may leave come spring … but I won’t ever forget you both.”

*Cache Valley, on the present-day Utah-Idaho border