Death Rattle

29

They completed introductions all around, both sets of children standoffishly sizing up their counterparts as all youngsters are prone to do. Then Looks Far called her eldest over to her, unknotting the string of a canvas apron around Joshua’s waist.

“You take our old friends to the house. Move your tick and Ezekiel’s too—get them out of your room and into Naomi’s to give our guests a place to sleep.”

“Yes, mother.”

“We’re all going to sleep together in our room?” Charity whined in that way of a child feeling put out.

“If I did my ciphering correct, there’s only going to be five children in that one room, Charity,” Josiah scolded. “But there’s going to be a whole family in Joshua’s room for a while.”

Scratch blurted, “We don’t mean to put you out—”

“Damn! You ain’t putting us out!” Paddock exclaimed. “How I’ve yearned to lay eyes on you, so many times in the last twelve years … but feared you was dead.”

Bass snorted with a little laughter. “It weren’t for no lack of trying by some red niggers, and a few white bastards too!”

“He curse that way all the time, Father?” Naomi asked.

“I’m sorry, Josiah,” Titus apologized sheepishly. “Forgot myself around the children. Most times with my own pups I’m speaking Crow so they don’t understand no American cussin’.”

“You young’uns wanna know how to cuss at someone you don’t like?” Josiah asked his children. “You pay real close attention to this here old man, youngsters. He’s the cham-peen who’s gonna teach you to do it right!”

“Go on now, Joshua,” Looks Far nudged with a big grin. “Take these friends to our place and get them settled. They must be tired from their long journey.”

Scratch admired how well she spoke English after all these years of practice. “Looks Far—I’ll wager you’re pretty good at talkin’ Mexican too.”

She smiled even bigger in that round face of hers and answered, “I get lots of practice with both. We hardly ever use any Flathead at all down here.” She winked at Titus.

“You talk good ’Merican,” Waits-by-the-Water agreed in her own halting English she rarely used.

Joshua quickly kissed his mother on the cheek, then asked, “How long will you be?”

“We always close up at sundown,” Josiah explained to his son. Then turned to Titus, saying, “Looks Far is usually the first to head for home. She gets a fire and supper started before I lock things up here.”

“We’ll be pleased to light a fire and heat up some victuals for your family,” Titus volunteered as they started toward the door. He halted at the door jamb and marveled at Joshua. “This big lad of a boy can show us where everything is. Damn, if he ain’t gonna be a big chunk of it, just like you was, Josiah.”

“Glory, glory, glory,” Josiah whispered as he stopped in the open doorway and pulled Scratch into another fierce embrace, refusing to let go right off. “Never, never, never did I think I’d ever see you again, old friend.”

“Don’t you remember what I said that spring morning when we gave our fare-thee-wells?” Bass prodded.

Paddock nodded. “I can recall it like it was just last week—I think about it so often. You was sitting on your horse, everything loaded up to go, with the sun just breaking over the Sangres … an’ you told me, ‘This ain’t the last you’ve heard of Titus Bass!’”

“Ain’t I allays kept my word to you, Josiah?” Titus backed away a step so he could gaze into Paddock’s glistening eyes. “I wasn’t ’bout to go for my final ride across that big belt in the blue ’thout seeing Josiah Paddock again.”

“How long can you stay in Taos?” Looks Far asked as she joined them at the door.

“It’s winter out there,” Bass declared, nodding toward the square. “I recollect we were fixin’ to spend us a winter here in Taos long time ago. This time I reckoned on finding ourselves a place to hole up till spring comes round again.”

“A place to hole up?” Paddock repeated, his voice rising. “You’re damn well gonna hole up with us till spring!”

“Only if’n you lemme work off what I’ll owe you for putting us up,” Titus offered.

“No man as old and skinny as you—not to mention ornery too—could ever work enough to pay for his keep!” Josiah roared and slapped Titus on the back. “Now take your family on to our house and relax till we get home to start swapping stories of the ol’ days!”

“C’mon, Waits,” Titus said, stepping onto the low wooden porch that fronted the village square. Directly across from the Paddocks’ shop stood the Catholic cathedral with its pair of bell towers. “I gotta have some time to cogitate on this so I can come up with a few stories ’bout Josiah to tell his young’uns.”

“Nothing you can say to these children of mine are they gonna believe from you anyway!” Paddock snorted with laughter.

“By the by,” Bass said of a sudden, halting at the foot of the porch and heeling around to look at Josiah. “Just remembered I wanted to ask you ’bout something we saw a while back when we was coming into town: there was this bunch of soldiers heading down the Santa Fe cutoff. At first, I see’d ’em from a distance and thought they was soldados.…”

“But they weren’t Mexicans, were they, Scratch?” Josiah asked knowingly, the merry light of humor gone from his eyes.

Titus wagged his head. “Strange to see them horsemen riding along under a flag the likes of what they’d fly back in the United States.”

“You’re right. What you saw was an American flag.”

That confirmation surprised him, almost as much as seeing those American dragoons. “So how come them soldier fellers is out here?” Bass inquired. “That government back in the States hammered out some agreement with these here Mexicans now so they can have American soldiers ride up and down the Santy Fee Trail atween the settlements and here? I reckon it’s a good idee for them soldiers to protect all the traders hauling goods down here to Mexican territory, what with running mules and gold back up to Missouri. Soldiers to guard all that money on the trail, I’ll bet.”

The big-toothed, ready smile had drained from Paddock’s face. “I s’pose you didn’t know a thing ’bout any of it when you headed down here.”

“Nothing ’bout what?”

“I just figgered you’d come down east of the mountains,” Josiah declared. “Maybe hear word of it when you come through the Pueblo or Hardscrabble. Maybeso even stop at Bents Fort—”

“We didn’t come down east of the mountains,” Bass explained, mystified and uneasy at this sudden turn in Paddock’s mood. “Figgered it was safer going through the parks.”

“So there was no way you could know ’bout the American soldiers.”

“Know what ’bout ’em, Josiah?”

Paddock cleared his throat. “Taos ain’t Mexico no more, Scratch.”

“Ain’t … M-mexico no more?” He glanced around the square, shocked and baffled. It looked the same. Mostly Mexicans, a generous sprinkling of Indians in from the nearby pueblo. But only a small scattering of pale-skinned folks who were clearly American—foreigners standing out every bit as much as a kernel of corn would if it was laid atop a bowl filled with black peppercorns. “Can’t believe it—”

“Army from the States marched through here last summer,” Josiah declared. “Drove off the Mexican Army without a fight, throwed out the Mexican government. We’ve got us an American governor now—Charles Bent.”

“The hell you say!” Bass said, struggling to absorb it all. “Not that weasel Armijo now? Your governor’s one of them Bent brothers?”

“Right. He’s in charge of things now … him and a few troops General Kearny left down at Santa Fe when he went marching off to seize California from the Mexicans. Charlie Bent’s family stays up here in Taos—so he comes up from the territorial capital in Santa Fe to see ’em couple times a month.”

Scratch peered across the square, then turned back to gaze at Josiah. “I’ll be go to hell right here and et for the devil’s tater if that ain’t some news guaranteed to take the shine off a new brass kettle. You … you ain’t pulling on my leg, are you, Josiah?”

Paddock shook his head, his face all seriousness. “It’s the honest-to-God truth, Titus. Taos is U.S. territory now.”

Taos, Santa Fe … all the rest of it too. Country he’d slipped into and out of, ever watchful for Mexican patrols who enforced the laws, seizing a man’s beaver pelts to collect their heavy taxes. Country where he had always been an interloper, nothing more than a pale-faced visitor in a foreign land. And now this all belonged to the United States of America? There really was something tangible to celebrate this holiday season!

While the Mexicans’ preparations for the approaching Nativity was nothing new to Waits-by-the-Water, all of the decorations and traditional practices were strange and curious to Magpie, Flea, and Jackrabbit too. In those last few days before the Catholic population celebrated the birth of their Savior, the priests conducted a procession every morning, then again every afternoon. Children sang as they paraded through town, marching for the square and the cathedral, carrying boughs of piñón or cedar, some hoisting platforms where carved and painted effigies of the holy family sat in plain view of the throngs who crowded the placita. It reminded Scratch’s children of the Crows’ annual tobacco celebration, or the revelry at the return of a victorious war party.

How Titus loved to stand on the porch of Paddock’s store and witness the grand parade twice a day with his youngsters. Too, how he took so much fun and satisfaction in secretly buying the three of them and Waits little presents, sneaking into the shop’s back room to wrap up those gifts with colored paper Looks Far provided, tying them up with twine. But after all the building anticipation, the special day came and went so quickly—a day when the shops remained closed and the Paddocks slipped from the house early to attend an early mass.

“It’s helped me some,” Josiah admitted later that morning when his family returned to have breakfast and open their presents. “Not that I understand much of what the priests say in the masses—hell, I’ve learned Flathead and Mexican too, but the tongue them priests use I can’t savvy at all.”

“It helped being a Catholic like all of them, eh?” Bass asked. “Mathew Kinkead told me you’d taken the vows.”

“There’s some Americans in the village—a few anyway—say they don’t plan on sticking around down here for long anyway,” Paddock explained. “Just make some money and be gone back to the States. As for the rest of us, we’ve made a home here and plan on raising our families in Taos. I hope the Mexicans and them Pueblos look at us different now that we made ourselves a part of this place.”

“Besides, with having a Injun wife and half-breed young’uns,” Bass agreed, “you ought’n fit right in.”

Paddock grinned as Looks Far brought them steaming cups of Mexican cocoa. “My family’s home is here now. Mexico wasn’t bad to me for them years after you left. But now that this here is American territory—it suits me just fine. There was a few tense times when General Kearny pulled out for California, but things simmered down all right. We’ll just give it time and life’ll go right back to the way things were before the army marched in and throwed the Mexican government out.”

Six days later Looks Far Woman came home early in the afternoon, with Joshua and Naomi in tow, the three of them carrying long garlands they had constructed of gay paper flowers tied to thick strands of brown baling twine. In the main parlor of their small home, Looks Far and Waits-by-the-Water helped the youngsters hang the garlands while baking fragrant treats for the celebration planned for that night and into the following day.

“Just what are you having your friends come over to hurraw about?” Titus asked Looks Far.

She stood clutching one of the garlands for Joshua, who was up on a chair, hanging the strand in long loops over nails he had just hammered into the adobe bricks near the low roofbeams. Looks Far stared at him as if Bass had lost his mind. “Josiah wants everything to be right for you, Titus.”

“For me? Why all this fuss for me?”

Now she squinted her eyes at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Why—Josiah, he invited many of our American friends to come here—to help celebrate your birthday with us!”

“M-my birthday? I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed.

Looks Far glanced at Waits, finding the Crow woman smiling with great approval. Then she said to the old trapper, “You forgot your own birthday?”

“Can’t ’member the last time I took special notice of that day, no,” he answered.

From his perch on the chair, Joshua asked, “How old you gonna be, sir?”

“Well, now,” he delayed thoughtfully, staring at the floor, a bit baffled as to just where to start. Then he looked at Looks Far to inquire, “What year this gonna be—when it turns a new one at midnight?”

“Why … it will be 1847, Titus.”

“So lemme see,” he sighed, sinking onto the floor and holding his palms up, so he could begin counting.

Scratch had gone through folding down all his fingers twice when Looks Far came over to kneel before him.

“You want us to count the years for you?”

He beamed up at her, extremely grateful. “I’d be real ’bliged.”

“Joshua, come over here and help Mr. Bass figure out how old he’ll be tonight.”

Clambering down from the chair, the youth grabbed a thick hunk of chalk and a small slate board from a wide, wood shelf, then settled on the floor right in front of Titus and crossed his legs, mirroring the trapper. “All right. It’s gonna be 1847 at midnight tonight,” Joshua began, writing down those numbers on the slate. Then he looked up at the old man. “When were you born, Mr. Bass?”

“I told you afore, Joshua—I want you to call me Titus.”

“Yes, sir, Titus.”

Scratch cleared his throat. “I was born on the first day of 1794.”

Joshua noticeably rocked back in astonishment. “That’s a long time ago, Mr., er … Titus.”

“1794 was a long, long time ago—no argeement on that.”

Then he cocked his head to the side to watch how Joshua scratched out that year right below the first four numbers. After a line was drawn beneath them both, the youngster went to ciphering, arriving at one new number at a time—but, to Scratch’s surprise, Joshua held up his slate when he had only two numbers written below the line.

“You’ll turn fifty-three tonight.”

He swallowed at the mere weight of that figure. Then looked up at those gathered near, everyone staring directly at him as if waiting for him to react to the news. “Hell. I can’t ever ’member knowing a soul near as old as that. ’Cept for my grandpap, I durn well may be older’n anyone I ever knowed!”

Just past sundown they began to show up at the door—single men, and those with families too. They slipped off their heavy woolen coats, mufflers, and scarves, disposing of them and their winter caps in the corner of a small bedroom at the back of the house. Soon there were enough people crowded in the front parlor that some of the guests began to trickle over into other rooms of the Paddock residence.

“Hola, Sheriff!” Josiah called out to the man just coming in the door with his wife, a small boy, and a chilling gust of cold. Paddock grabbed Titus and Waits by their elbows as he had done several times before, escorting the two of them to greet every new guest.

Looks Far embraced the man, then helped him off with his coat before shuffling away for the kitchen once more, chatting with the sheriff’s wife as the two of them threaded their way through the gathering with the young child in tow.

“Josiah!” the new arrival cheered, holding out his hand. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Sheriff, I’d like you to meet my old, and dear friend—Titus Bass,” Paddock started the introductions.

“I’m Stephen Lee,” the sheriff declared. “And Josiah here’s told me a lot about your days together. Heard tell of you my own self more’n a time or two.”

That name sounded familiar, then he found the peg to hang it on as they shook hands. “Wasn’t you hooked up with Jim Beckwith for a time?”

“Threw in together to do some trading up at the Pueblo a few years back,” Lee explained. “Things didn’t turn out the way I figured they would so I sold out to Beckwith and come back down here.”

“So you was out here some time before giving the Pueblo a try?”

“I trapped more’n my share,” Lee admitted. “Ran with outfits working out of Taos afore I moved up to the Arkansas with Beckwith. After I sold out to Beckwith it seemed the natural thing to do was get on back down here to San Fernando. You see, close to twenty years ago when I first come to the village, I’d spotted a purty gal I just couldn’t take my eyes off. Ever since we was married, I been putting down some roots.”

Titus squeezed Waits against him and said, “Women have the knack of doing that to a man if you’re not careful!”

“You come in for the winter?” Lee asked as Josiah stepped back up with a clay cup for the sheriff.

“From the looks of it, we’re here till the weather fairs off enough, maybe come March,” Scratch explained. “Then we’re on the tramp for home.”

“Where’s home?”

“My wife’s Crow,” he said. “It’s her home.”

“From the sound you just gave it, Crow country may not be your home.”

Titus thought a moment before he replied, “Just about anywhere there ain’t a village or settlement or town is my home, Sheriff.”

“Please call me Stephen.”

“All right,” he agreed. “Ain’t you used to folks calling you sheriff by now?”

“Haven’t been county sheriff but a few months really,” Lee confessed. “Kearny came through late last summer—and turned everything on its head around here. Jesus, can you believe this is American territory now, Josiah? No American fur hunter is gonna have to swear allegiance to Mexico, not ever again.”

“Damn good thing too, Sheriff Lee!” Tom Tobin cried as he stepped up to the group, hoisting his clay cup over his head.

“A toast to America’s newest territory!” John Albert cheered as he joined them.

All round the room, guests stopped in the middle of their conversations to hold up their cups and glasses, some calling out “here, here,” while others huzzahed lustily and the cups clinked, good wishes being shared.

“There’s my daughter an’ her husband,” Lee said as a young couple came out of the kitchen. “I’ll speak at you boys a li’l later.”

Paddock bent to whisper at Bass’s ear. “Stephen’s daughter there—Maria—she’s named after her mother: Maria Luz Tafoya, a prominent Taos family. Li’l Maria got married herself couple of years ago.”

For a moment Scratch studied the pretty girl across the room as her father approached and they hugged. Bass said, “Two years ago? Jehoshaphat! She don’t look much older’n Magpie is right now, Josiah!”

“She was old enough by Mexican custom,” Paddock disclosed. “She’s sixteen now.”

“You’re telling me her father an’ mother give her away when she was fourteen?” he asked incredulously.

With a nod, Josiah said, “The Mexicans marry ’em off awful young down here. But she married a good American boy. Came out here from Missouri with his folks not long before they married. Name’s Joseph Pley.”

“I can see I better keep an eye on my daughter till it comes time to get outta here an’ back to Crow country!” Scratch commented as Paddock drained his cup.

“Simeon!” Josiah shouted across the room, holding up the empty clay cup. “You’d better open up that next case of your lightning before all these tongues dry out and won’t wag anymore!”

“Turley’s here?” Tom Tobin asked.

“Hell, yes! I asked all the foreigners our Mexican friends hate so badly to come tonight!” Paddock replied.

Albert pointed out two men at the middle of the room. “An’ we all ain’t ’Mericans here—there’s two Frenchies the Mex boys seem to hate just as much as they hate us.”

“Antoine LeBlanc works for Turley,” Paddock explained. “And the other’s Jean-Baptiste Charlefoux. He’s the one there with his Mexican wife and their daughter. She’s a pretty girl, just turned seven.”

A loud pounding thundered on the plank door. Josiah tore it open and immediately backed inside as a pair of men stepped into the house. Suspended between them was a huge brass kettle. Both called out to the crowd, asking the guests to step aside and clear a path as they slowly made their way to the kitchen.

“What you have there, Asa?” asked Charles Town when he came up to raise the kettle’s brass lid.

“What the hell you think it is?” the older man growled.

Bending at the waist, Town sniffed beneath the lid, drinking in the fragrance. “Your famous New Mexican eggnog!”

Another cheer went up in the room.

“You didn’t shut down your cantina for the rest of the night, did you, Asa?” Tom Tobin inquired.

“Got some help minding the bar for me till I get back,” replied the tavern keeper as they pushed on for the kitchen with their eggnog. “Already got sign of being a busy hurraw.”

“That’s Asa Estes,” Josiah explained as he slipped up to Bass’s elbow once more. “Owns a watering hole not far from here. A good man—Missouri bred. Been out here for several years now, and does he make a nog that’ll pin your ears back to your ass if’n you aren’t careful!”

“Just look at you, Josiah Paddock,” Bass said proudly, beaming once more at his old friend.

The younger man grinned. “What you mean by that, ol’ man?”

“Why, here you got Simeon Turley who makes some damned fine lightning, I must say. And you got this fella Asa Estes comes by your shindig with his famous eggnog,” Scratch explained. “It’s plain to see that you’re a man who has some fine friends. Friends who sure as hell hold you in high regard, son.”

Laying his long, muscular arm over the shorter man’s shoulder, Josiah spoke close to Bass’s ear. “If there’s one man—one friend—who taught me the real value of friendship, who taught me that my family and my friends were my true wealth in life … then you are that man, Titus Bass.”

He looked up at Paddock, his own eyes clouding with sentiment. “Damn, if you don’t know how to make a man proud.”

“Cornelio, c’mon over here and meet a friend of mine from way, way up north,” Josiah called out.

A thin-boned, dark-skinned Mexican stepped over, and Scratch recognized him for the man who had helped Asa Estes carry the kettle into the house.

“This here’s a good friend of mine, Cornelio Vigil,” Josiah announced. “And this is Titus Bass.”

Scratch held out his hand and said, “Good to meet any friend of Josiah’s, Señor Vigil.”

“Please to call me Cornelio,” the man replied. “We are friends now too.”

They shook as Paddock went on to explain, “Cornelio was appointed as our district attorney by General Kearny.”

“Sounds like you got handed a tough job,” Bass commented. “Bet it keeps you busy nowadays, bringing justice down on all them folks gonna cause trouble for the new American officials?”

Vigil grinned slightly. “Some of my people still haven’t made the adjustment, Señor Bass. To their way of thinking, if they can stir up enough trouble, they can throw the Americans out.”

“Throw Americans out?” Titus echoed. “Josiah, how can any of these Mexicans down here think they got ’em a better life under Armijo and his government than they got under the Americans?”

“Truth is,” Paddock began, his voice growing quiet and confidential, “Governor Bent’s folks heard tell of a plot to stir up some big trouble—a well-planned revolt of Indians and Mexicans too.”

Vigil nodded. “Earlier in the month, Señor Bass.”

Titus asked, “What come of it?”

The new district attorney answered, “Soon as word leaked out that Bent was coming to arrest them, the two ringleaders vamoosed. Rumor says both of them scampered south into Mexico for safer territory, fast as their horses could carry them.”

“So news has it the governor’s relieved he was able to cut the head off that rebellious snake before it had the chance to bite anyone and hurt some innocent folks,” Josiah declared.

“From all that Stephen and I hear from our informers around town, everything has settled down in the last two weeks,” Vigil explained. “With both of those revolt ringleaders long gone from these parts, life here in Taos has gone back to being just the way it always has been: peaceful and sleepy.”

“Did Charles Beaubien come up from Santa Fe for New Year’s?” Josiah asked Vigil.

“No, he stayed down at the capital,” Cornelio answered. “I think he really savors playing judge more than he should.”

“Beaubien’s an old Frenchie trapper,” Paddock explained to Titus. “Appointed by Kearny to serve as one of the three judges on the Santa Fe court. His teenage son is right over there—”

Bass let Josiah turn him slightly as Paddock pointed out the handsome young man. His eyes immediately widened and his nostrils flared. Angrily he asked, “You mean that parley-voo spooning my Magpie over there in the corner?”

“That’s him. Narciso Beaubien,” Josiah replied. “He’s a good lad. Seems to have a fine eye for a pretty girl too.”

Titus could feel the heat climbing from his neck into his beard. “I figger that good lad needs to know he better damn well stay away from my li’l girl—”

“Hol’ on, Scratch,” Paddock warned as he snagged hold of Titus’s arm, stopping the trapper in place. “Lemme go and tell him myself. We’re both fathers—you an’ me—but it might be better if I do this for you. That way it won’t embarrass Magpie in front of anyone.”

Scratch was surprised at how quickly he had been ready to boil. Never before had he seen any young man give his daughter a second look. But as he gazed at her now, he realized for the very first time that she really did appear far older than her twelve and a half years. She was already blooming into quite a beautiful woman … just like her mother.

“Awright,” Titus relented. “You just tell that boy her papa’s gonna gut him with the backside of a rusty file if I ever catch him sniffing round her anymore,” Bass demanded in a growl. “Go remind ’im she’s only twelve years old.”

“Hol’ on, hol’ on,” Paddock soothed, patting both of his open palms against Scratch’s chest. “Maybe them talking is all innocent and nothing to fret over, Scratch. Sometimes you got a real quick temper.”

“Me?” he grumbled, his eyes locked on the pair of youngsters flirting across the room. “A quick temper?”

“Seems I remember a winter—long time ago, after we brung back McAfferty’s hair—in a instant you convinced yourself Waits had wronged you and I was the one who betrayed you with her.”

Slowly his eyes came back to Josiah’s now, and blinked self-consciously with deep regret. “I … I never should’ve figured either of you’d go and wrong me. I allays been sorry—”

“I don’t expect another apology, Scratch. I only want you to hol’ on a minute and let me go over there ’stead of you,” Paddock offered again. “I’ll take care of this quiet.”

He watched Josiah turn away, threading his way through the crowd to reach the two youngsters. It was but a matter of moments before Magpie’s eyes suddenly flicked in his direction and locked on her father’s angry glare across the room. She quickly averted her gaze and stared down at the clay floor, just before the young man turned his head to look over Paddock’s shoulder, studying the room a moment before he located the gray-headed trapper who was glaring a hole into him like a hot poker.

The young man protectively glanced at Magpie, then stared down at the exact same spot she was studying between their toes. Josiah put a hand on the girl’s shoulder a moment, then she stepped around his elbow and started along the edge of the room, making for the kitchen. With Magpie on her way, Paddock looped his left arm over the young man’s shoulders and they turned together, inching into the crowd toward that spot where Bass and Vigil stood watching it all.

“Narciso, I want you to meet Magpie’s father, Titus Bass,” Josiah introduced.

Beaubien self-consciously held up a hand between them. “My apologies, Mr. Bass. I had no intention of giving anyone the wrong impression, especially your daughter. I was not … I didn’t know she was so young, sir. I apologize profusely. I hope you can understand just how pretty a girl she is—and understand that she looks much older. I’m extremely chagrined at my mistake—”

“Sha … sha?”

“I’m very, very embarrassed, sir,” Beaubien admitted.

“You talk like you’ve got a helluva lot more education than most every man in this room, son,” Titus declared.

“I’ve been east, to the States, at college, Mr. Bass. I clearly should have known better. I meant no trouble to you or to Magpie. When I arrived, I quickly realized she was one of the few guests of my own age here—so I naturally went over to introduce myself and engage her in conversation. I thought it would be polite to welcome her to the Taos valley—”

“You apologized enough, son,” Scratch interrupted with a sigh. “I’m sure my daughter enjoyed your flattery.”

“I meant no harm by talking to her—”

“No offense taken,” Bass replied. “Now that I understand.” He looked at Josiah. “The Mex folks, don’t they have a custom of chaperons?”

Paddock’s face brightened. “They surely do, Scratch.”

Titus turned back to the young man. “If you wish to talk to. my daughter, please do it when her mama’s around—like in the kitchen there, with the both of ’em together.”

“Oh, no, sir—she’s too … far too young for me to consider courting,” Beaubien explained. “I’d have to wait three or four years until I would court your daughter.”

“You’ll have to ride a long, long ways to do that in three or four years, young fella,” Titus stated.

Beaubien said, “I don’t understand, sir. Don’t you plan on making Taos your new home now that this territory belongs to America?”

With a wag of his head, Titus declared, “No. Soon as winter’s done, I’ll be taking my family back where we belong.”

In that heavy silence, Beaubien nervously presented his hand to Bass again. “It was a pleasure to meet you, sir. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding with your daughter.”

Scratch watched the young man shoulder his way into the crowd, headed for another part of the house.

Grabbing Titus’s upper arm, Josiah said, “All that just made me remember something I should have told you before you rode off from Taos years ago.”

“What’s that?”

Paddock confessed, “When I look back on our years together, I remember you showing me how I was angry at everything and everybody. What you taught me was I could trust someone again, ol’ man. If I hadn’t learned to trust—truth is, I’d been dead inside of a few weeks of when I run onto you.”

“You was a hardy lad,” Bass said, feeling a bit self-conscious himself. “Chances were, you’d made your way without me—”

“No,” Josiah interrupted in protest, leaning his face close. “Don’t you see what I owe you, ol’ man? If you hadn’t helped me sort through all that drove me from Saint Louis, if you hadn’t taken me back there with you to face up to what I’d done—likely I wouldn’t be standing here today … wouldn’t have the life I do for my family.”

Patting the younger man on that spot where his neck met the muscular shoulder, Titus said quietly, “Maybeso, in your own way, Josiah—you helped save my life too.”