Buffalo Palace

4

The sheer size of the abandoned Indian camp was the first thing that struck him as he cautiously ventured in on foot, wary and watchful … having hidden the horses back downriver when he came across the first flurry of tracks.

But he found the village empty, deserted.

Now Bass could swallow down the lump of fear at last. His lungs felt as if he were taking his first breath in more than an hour. Titus forced his heart back down and finally emerged from the brush at the river’s edge to stare across the Platte at what some band of Pawnee had left behind. Then quickly he decided he’d best backtrack and fetch up the animals. No sense swimming the river on his own.

An hour later, dripping naked in the sun after another crossing, he dismounted on the north bank among the small rings of river stone he discovered near the center of each elliptical circle of pounded grass and hardened ground. For the most part the entire camp formed a great horseshoe, the horns of its crescent opening back to the east whence he had come.

Finding a good patch of grass near the trees along the bank, Bass ground-hobbled the horses and turned back to explore this wondrous, frightening place.

More than fifty circles and all that foot-pounded earth plainly showed where this band of Indians had camped for some time this spring. At the western extent of the site Titus came across the wide trail of tracks and pole scrapings that led off to the west. They were wandering upriver.

“Maybeso they move off come the summer,” he said quietly in the silence of that big country as he turned about and stepped back into the camp crescent itself.

Here the land lay painfully silent. As quiet as anything he had ever experienced in those eastern forests growing as thick as quills on a porcupine’s back, as those forests he had come to know flatboating down the great waters of the Ohio and Mississippi, or walking north along the Natchez Trace.

More than two weeks had passed now since he had given wide berth to the dragoons and their Fort Atkinson. The day before he came in sight of the distant stockade, Bass had run across more and more signs of man’s passing: shod hoof prints, the heel stamp of soldiers’ boots, the crude cut of a wagon’s iron tires slashing down into the fragile earth. Trail and scent and sign that warned he was drawing close enough to that cluster of white mankind.

Turning abruptly, Titus had pointed his nose to the west—intending to ride two, maybe three days at the most in a roundabout to give himself plenty of room around the soldier post. But late that second day after cautiously leaving the Missouri behind and striking out overland, he was surprised when his westward path brought him right into a great, wide loop in the Platte River itself before it eventually gentled him back to the north. Surprised was he to discover as well that so shallow a river could enjoy such a formidable reputation among those frontiersmen who returned to St. Louis—men like Isaac Washburn.

Had the old trapper been yanking on his leg with all his bawdy tales of everything being bigger, or faster, or just plain wilder out here in the great beyond? Or dare he consider that he had not yet reached the Platte, that this was some minor river? Yet something innate within him told Titus he could not be mistaken on it—fact was that the big dragoon’s post did lay at the mouth of the Platte.

Shallow indeed, yet every bit as wide here as Washburn had claimed. So for the first time that afternoon, Titus had looked off to the west, gazing toward the river’s far source away yonder among the distant, yet unseen mountains that gave birth to these waters. On the south bank he had knelt in the mud and grass beside the river, cupped his hands, and pulled forth a little of that mountain water. Bass looked down into it with something bordering on reverence, then brought it prayerfully to his lips.

As silt laden as it was, how much sweeter did it taste knowing he was that much closer to those high mountain snows giving birth to these waters! He drank his fill that day before turning west along the south bank of the river he knew would one day deliver him to the buffalo country, the great course of the Platte that allowed a man to pierce the kingdom of black, shaggy beasts Washburn guaranteed him ruled a great, rolling wilderness out there. How good its taste lay upon his tongue, this water from the Platte that was really all the more than a river: a magical road that would lead him to and through the buffalo ground, then ultimately deliver him to the high and terrible places few if any had ever seen.

Following the south bank another few days, Bass found the river led him back in a huge, sweeping curve to the south of west. Damn! but these western rivers could confuse and exasperate a man, he brooded. Every bit as disconcerting as a fickle woman who could turn back on herself just as soon as a man began to think he had her figured out!

First he had followed its bank into the west. Then the Platte led him north. And now it was wandering off to the south. And after all this meandering, just where in hell were those mountains that gave birth to this river, after all? A part of him prayed again that Washburn wasn’t as crazed as Hysham Troost had warned Titus the aging fur trapper would prove himself to be.

Oh, the many times he had yearned to strike out due west, leaving the Platte behind—resenting himself for having to depend on the river, forced to rely on a dead man’s guarantee. Now that he had come to stand beside this fabled Platte himself, he had no reason not to believe he shouldn’t catch his first glimpse of the mountains rising just beyond the next stand of hills. If not them, perhaps those hills just beyond.

Indeed, Titus had left the hardwood forests behind some days back, emerging almost of a sudden onto a plain where he reined up, then slowly dropped from the saddle to stand in utter awe at the rolling immensity of what lay before him. From that point on it was clear the trees no longer grew in great mats of thick, meandering forest blanketing hillside and valley alike. Instead, the green lay in clusters dotting the great tableland, confined to pockets and ravines wrinkling the countryside, the emerald-green vegetation for the most part tracing the path of streams and creeks and what narrow, gurgling rivers fed the flat, shallow expanse of the Platte itself.

At that night’s fire Titus had sensed he had just crossed an even more indelible border than was the barrier of the Missouri River itself. Oh, with his own sixteen-year-old eyes he had marveled as the great eastern forests had given way to rolling delta while the riverboat crew steered their craft past the Walnut Hills and old Fort Mc-Henry, floating down the lower reaches of the Mississippi. Yet, for the most part, the immense trees and timbered forests still predominated those riverbanks and the high bluffs where great-winged birds took flight from wide, stately branches bedecked with long gray beards of Spanish moss.

But out here the trees no longer grew as tall, no more were their trunks as big around. No more did he recognize the familiar leaf of the elm, the maple, the varieties of oak. Almost as if this harsh and difficult land stunted what was allowed to grow upon its own breast.

“Water,” he had decided.

It was all because of water. Or more so the want of it. Back east vegetation grew in abundance—a green, leafy, shady profusion. But out here the brush and trees struggled for want of water, sending roots deep to penetrate the sands for what moisture the land had captured during the passing of spring thunderstorms.

So as he had stood there at that margin of immense hardwood forest thinning itself to become the borderland that would take him on west into his yondering quest, Titus found himself liking this land best. Far better than that to the east and south was it. Back there he found it hard to see long distances, so thick did the vegetation grow. But here—yes, from here on out—a man could gaze so far that he just might see halfway into tomorrow itself.

Beneath the floppy brim of his old beaver-felt hat, Titus had stared across the distance, determining that to survive in such a land he would have to train his eyes to take in more. A man back east, why—he didn’t have to concern himself with more than a few rods of open ground … the distance across a glen or meadow, before he plunged back into the tangle of thick and verdant forest.

But out here a man had to accustom his eyes to measuring the heft of great distance. He must teach himself to read all manner of things from far off. The course of rivers and streams recognized only by their dim green outline disappearing at the distant horizon. Too, a man had to better read the game he would pursue across great distances—startling the whitetail out of the brush and across the open ground, the turkey and quail that roosted where they found shade and protection along the water courses. And he reminded himself he must make certain his eyes always moved from one point of the compass to the next. Constantly—for there were other men who traveled this wild, open country too, seeking game, horses, plunder, and scalps.

Readily did he see that in a land such as this, a man must be vigilant in assuring that he did not stand out against the horizon, against the country itself.

Then it had struck him. How did he ever come to know such a startling fact of life and death?

That core of him that had been honed, ground to a fine edge in the eastern forests of his youth—then all but ignored, lying fallow and forgotten there in St. Louis beside the Mississippi all those years—he sensed that core of him had been pricked, aroused, enlivened anew in his arrival at the edge of such a vast wilderness. Again, something within him gave thanks to that same force that traced out the course of rivers, the comings and goings of the wild animals with each season, the force that strummed some nerve with a responsive chord, awakening something buried within him after so long a time of mute deafness.

In looking about him then, as if to weigh the presence of that force far greater than mere man would ever be, Titus squinted—studying distance. Hefting the sheer meaninglessness of time out here in all that abundance of space. Realizing that he feared. Knowing that his fear was the selfsame as that of the wild things.

Indeed, his instincts told him this was a far more dangerous place than that eastern land of the Shawnee, Mingo, and Chickasaw. For here there might be no place for a man to hide.

At the root of him, a tiny part of Titus had yearned for the protection of those thick forests, those great bulking shoulders of gray limestone jutting from the red earth where one might take cover, there to lie in wait for game or man. And he remembered the smell of that country. Damp enough that a woodsman could come to know the scent of saltpeter caves—homing in on them with nothing more than his nose, there to gather some of that mineral for making his own gunpowder.

Bass had trembled slightly, staring out at this vastness he did not know, a space and wilderness that he did not understand. Back there, in those eastern forests, he had grown up learning what it took to live well. He knew which was the chestnut oak a man gathered for its tan-bark: that wood containing the yellowish tannin he could use in curing the hides of the creatures he shot and skinned. A man likewise knew to look for white oak, harvested for barrel staves.

A child spent his youth back there among the hemlocks dotting the ripple-walled sandstone quarries lying among the canebrakes. On the high ridges of the pine forests, cedar jutted from the pale limestone walls. A world of many colors that was made for a child: yellowing poplars reaching for the sky among the opalescent yellow of hickory and chestnut and beech, the red and gold of maple and sweet gum, the deep bloody crimson of black gum and dogwood. Even the leafy oaks, his favorite, often lingered until spring, their color gradually changing from autumnal red, to bronze, and then to the brown of decay as they clung to their branches.

But out here an endless plain of green lay stretched beneath that forever blue of the sky. Across it—the scar that marked the Pawnees’ route west.

All around him in this abandoned camp stood the remnants of their meat-drying racks and the litter of slender shreds of hides crusted with hair. He knew what they had been doing here: scraping the skins of animals to remove all the excess fat and flesh as close as they could to the edge of each hide, that narrow border left raw, then trimmed away and discarded. Small animals—deer and antelope. Now that winter had released this land, the people living upon it would no longer have to survive on the small creatures.

Now they would hunt the shaggy beasts.

For some distance around the camp Bass could see how the ground was trampled, the grassy swales cropped by a herd of ponies he figured were filling their own bellies on the new green shoots after a long, long winter. Then he turned to look at the two animals delivering him there. While the mare ate and ate every bit as much as did the Indian pony, she did not appear to flourish on her diet of spring grass. Not that she had noticeably weakened, but beneath the packsaddle his fingertips had begun to discern the emerging ridge of backbone, the faint corduroy of the old girl’s ribs.

And in staring out at the wide scar of trampled ground that disappeared over the rolling hills to the west, Titus wondered how smart he would be in following that Indian trail carved beside the Platte. What with the grass eaten down, perhaps not so wise a choice for feeding his hungry animals.

Yet something primal told him to follow their trail … for these Pawnee most surely were gone in search of the same shaggy beasts they had hunted ever since a time long forgotten.

That afternoon, not long after leaving the abandoned village, good sense convinced Bass to recross to the south side of the river, where he pushed on ever more cautiously, his eyes searching the ground that lay before him, hoping to find a knoll tall enough that would allow him to locate the Indian village on the march somewhere out before him. How far ahead of him were they? How long had it really been since they had passed through this piece of country?

Growing frustrated, he admitted he did not know. Then cursed himself for not knowing how to know. Surely there must be some means by which a man would tell from the age of the hoofprints on that wide trail, from the dryness of the limbs used to build their meat-drying racks, from the depth and age and texture of the ashes in those half-a-hundred fire pits lying at the center of those rings of trampled ground.

There must be some way to learn—there had to be … before a man was forced to learn his lessons all too late. The way he had learned about Chickasaw warriors all too well back in his sixteenth summer. Learning all he had ever wanted to know.

But he was nearly twice as old now. And that angered him: what had he learned in those intervening years that was of any good to him now? How to get a Kentucky flatboat and its crew of randy, hardy men down the great Mississippi with its cargo, which could be sold for a rich man’s ransom in the bustling, multihued seaport of New Orleans? How to love a woman who warned him not to—a woman who one day left without warning, without a word of explanation? How to build a barn, from cutting down the trees for lumber to seating the pegs a man used instead of iron nails on the frontier? All that and a little something of the black art of fire and iron, of sweat and muscle? Perhaps that most of all: from Able Guthrie and Hysham Troost, he had come to know how to bend metal to his will, fashion it to the task at hand.

Yet in the end Titus had learned best just how deeply satisfied a man could become in a job done well. For its own sake. Not for the faint, fleeting praise of others. But the true value of his toil, his effort, his devotion to the task.

Out here, he realized, there were no others to judge him. As well, there were no others to depend upon. Very simply, if he was to make it, it was up to him alone to feed, clothe, and protect himself from the elements … from the savage men who roamed this savage wilderness.

With his realization Bass sensed his own personal power grow as he put mile after mile behind him, as the east and everything of it fell farther and farther at his back. But in this great test of solitude and oneness with himself, he knew he had to come to terms with and control the loneliness. There were, after all, times in his life when he could recall wanting company so badly that … that it hurt more than he cared to remember.

Just as he was fleeing all the hold the east had on him, so was Titus attempting to escape that need in him to depend upon others, that loneliness so keen it often caused him great pain. So it was he realized he needed to keep his mind out of those dark places that made him long for any of what had been abandoned back there, to yearn for any of those left behind.

Those days seeped one into the next like the spring storms that he watched approaching out of the west, clouds tumbling one over the other as they drew nigh—clouds gone white to gray and gray to black. Yet despite the storms, each new day the air warmed that much more, and the land gently rose beneath him.

One morning birthed so clear, so quiet, the entire prairie seemed a bell jar of silence—no other living thing in sight but him and the two horses, no birds above nor four-legged critters bounding off through the tall, waving grass, no stir of life down among the water courses that lay in the land-wrinkles lying against the sides of every hill.

For the life of him, it appeared the country was changing, evolving again. Not near as abruptly as the land had converted itself from thick forest to open plain where the trees clustered here and there only … but as he turned to gaze back, he was all the more sure the land now became something unto itself. Land only now, denied of forests and thick stands of timber. Forgotten by all but the hardiest of narrow streams and shallow rivers. Cast here essentially alone beneath the great pale-blue dome of sky, the land came to exist of and for itself. Beyond him the hills rolled up in the distance to abruptly become striated bluffs topped with the waving feathers of the tall grass. He felt himself shrinking in all that vastness—this sudden compression suffered here beneath the endlessness of the sky as it and the land stretched on and on, and on.

Like nothing he had ever seen before back there. Like nothing he could have prepared himself for.

The infinite quality of it permeated him all the more because his pace seemed so agonizingly slow when measured against the vastness of the landscape. There were days when it felt as if he had barely moved from morning get-up, coffee and breakfast, until he chose a campsite that night where he curled up in blankets as the stars winked into view overhead. For more than two weeks now he put at least twenty-five, sometimes more than thirty, miles behind him in a day. Yet in country such as this, that sort of travel often left a man to turn around and look back upon reaching his evening’s camp—able to see some feature of the land that showed where he had crawled from his bed that very morning.

So open and without borders was this kingdom. So utterly vast that few landmarks really existed. Little was there beyond the Platte and the endless river bluffs to excite his attention, to prick his interest. Then the land became monotonous enough to lull him to sleep in the saddle as the pony gentled him west, always keeping the south bank of the muddy, meandering Platte in sight. From time to time he would open his eyes into slits, staring off this way and that to assure that he was the only thing moving in all that vastness, then let his eyelids droop once more as he continued to rock in that old saddle he had repaired for Isaac Washburn.

The afternoon was aging a handful of days later—the sun fallen enough that it had just slipped beneath the brim of his hat to where it scoured his face as it continued its descent into the west. He had been dozing lightly, off and on mostly, as the pony’s gait kept him nestled in sleep.

Yet now he awoke, aware of the dryness in his mouth, and tried to swallow. And found his tongue so parched, he could barely force any spit down his throat.

Water was all that consumed his thoughts.

Titus kicked his right leg over the saddle horn, landing on the left side of the pony even before it stopped—both of them having reached the banks of the Platte at the same time. As he collapsed to his knees and dunked his head under the murky water, Bass could not remember ever being any thirstier. When he brought his head out, gasping for air, the packmare stood up to her fetlocks in the river on his left, lapping at the water. The pony drank at his right shoulder.

Stuffing his face back into the Platte, Titus drank until his belly ached, then plopped back on his rump there in the water, surveying what lay around him. A horse on either side, the animals lapped their fill, stirring the murky bottom. As he squinted into the late-afternoon sun, he spotted it.

For a moment Titus just stared at the bleached skeleton lying akimbo on the nearby riverbank, upstream. Stared at the way the sun slanted through the huge prison bars of its rib cage, the sheer bulk of its massive backbone. What had to have been a monstrous creature of immense weight.

Finally he convinced himself to move from that spot, almost afraid the skeleton would prove to be nothing more than some heat mirage that would disappear should he attempt to move in its direction. Slowly rising from the cool water of the Platte, Bass stood and slogged upstream more than ten yards—his eyes locked hypnotically on the skeleton. The closer he got, the more he could see of the length of it. Surely, the creature had fallen here a long, long time ago—so white, so sun bleached were its bones. Its final resting place lay far enough up the sharp bank of the river that the Platte had not been able to claim that fallen creature, nor its skeleton, even with the capricious spring floods.

So here it had lain just inches above the river’s surface, now only an arm’s length away as he came to a stop. As the Platte continued to lap around his knees, Bass reached out a hand, his breathing became shallow, his heart hammering as he took in the sheer size of the skull, the immense span between the horn tips. Oh, he had seen oxen before that might well have a wider spread of horn from tip to tip—but never had Titus laid eyes on a skull so large. Great, gaping eye sockets, one of which stared blankly back at him from its riverbank grave.

From the back of that skull his eyes marveled at the vast sweep of the backbone, then slowly traced the immense amalgamation of vertebrae that began to diminish in size over the rear flanks and finally into the tail root. It was then he discovered his mouth had gone dry again, and he found himself trembling.

At the bank he squatted beside the bones—touching, running his fingers over the huge plates of skull, tracing the horn core, down the snout, then back over the rise and fall of its massive backbone. Could this … could this be?

And he looked up at the far bank, finally staring off in the direction both he and the sun were headed that afternoon. Were they out there, somewhere close at hand?

Titus looked back at the skeleton, positioned so that its head pointed down toward the water, lying on its right side. The massive legs stilled in death. How he wanted to believe. Enough to reach out and hold the one horn core, gripping it in fear of his hope’s disappearing like a desert mirage.

Nothing else could it be. What other monstrous, four-legged creature was there? Even this bare skeleton was more impressive than his dreams of it had ever been.

Buffalo.

At one time they had been right here, Titus told himself. Right where he sat, stilled to utter wonder.

Perhaps he would find they had been driven farther west now by the creeping advance of white settlement. Oh, how he cursed those in places like Franklin—it was just as he had always feared: to lay eyes on the buffalo would mean a man had to travel far toward the setting sun.

But at least they had been here of a time past.

He sat there in the grass and mud long enough that the Indian pony and mare slogged up to stand near him as the Platte continued its relentless march past them all. Past the skeleton of a creature and time long gone by. Eventually he stood—reluctantly. And touched the bleaching skeleton one last time before sweeping up the rein, stuffing his soaked boot into the stirrup, and mounting.

It was a long time before he grew aware of his leather britches, how they began to chafe as they dried. So long had he been riding, thinking—dwelling on that skeleton and nothing else as the pony carried him west while the sun disappeared and the air grew cool, the mosquitoes rising like vapors along the riverbank where he eventually decided to stop for the night.

That evening, when he finally closed his eyes beside his small fire and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders, Titus could not remember for sure if he had eaten an evening meal, or what had consumed his time that night—only that his thoughts were on the unshakable beyond that lay just past the next hill, on the far side of the next bend in the great Platte River, on yonder through that country he had to endure until he ultimately discovered where the buffalo would be found.

More than myth. More than mere skeleton. Where they were flesh and bone, hide and horn.

How many more days, how many more weeks of riding would it take until he had put the last vestiges of white man’s forts and settlements and civilization far enough behind him … all the distance it would take before he discovered his first living, breathing buffalo? How well had he come to understand that the forts and outlying settlements, the white man himself, all were the greatest enemies to the wild creature he sought.

But it had been so long now, he ruminated as he eventually drifted off to sleep that night—so many weeks and countless miles since he had left the Missouri and the last bastions of white civilization all behind.

When would he ever possess the answers to those questions he had carried inside him for more than half his lifetime?

When would his mortal prayers finally be answered?

Late of the morning two days later he sensed the breeze come up, relishing its cooling touch across his cheek as it swept beneath the wide brim of the low-crowned hat that for the most part protected his face from the unforgiving sun in this open country. Hell, it was about all the shade to be found out here: for the past two days there hadn’t been trees big enough for a man to squat under and get out of the sun. What shade there was, the three of them were making for themselves: right below the horses’ bellies, and right below his hat’s floppy brim.

The pony snorted, jostling him awake with a start. Jehoshaphat—hadn’t it been a good dream too! His nose nestled down between the quadroon’s breasts where the sweat pooled and he could taste the salty earthiness of her coffee-skinned body as he crawled atop the woman in that ramshackle Wharf Street house of pleasure built crib upon tiny crib.

Immediately his hand tightened reflexively around the rifle laid upon his thighs, his eyes blinking as they came open in the late-morning light. Turning his head to the south, he quickly scanned the distant horizon, then turned to the right, studying the abrupt, low bluffs that bordered the river near at hand.

“What the hell you wake me for?” he demanded of the Indian pony as he loosened his white-knuckle grip on the rifle’s stock, slipped the reins into his right hand along with the weapon, then patted the horse along the neck. “I s’pose you caught yourself falling asleep too—that it, girl?”

She seemed to roll her eyes back at him.

“Yeah, I know. Hot as hell, ain’t it? And the way I figger it—this country gonna get hotter afore we get higher and cooler.”

As he said it, Titus cocked his head, peering up from beneath the wide brim of his dark-brown hat to find the offending yellow orb warming him to sleep at the same time it made him more thirsty than he had ever been in his life. Licking his dry, cracked lips, he mentally cursed the sun and its incessant heat, then blinked again and turned away from it, praying for more of that cooling wisp of breeze.

It was then that he saw them. Far off in the distance. Black specks swirling across the blue sky, off to the north and west of him. As the ponies plodded on, he watched, becoming almost hypnotized by the way the flock swooped and dived, then wheeled about and rose in the sky once more. Black specks diverging for but a moment, scattering like water striders on the surface of a Kentucky pond—then suddenly congealing in an ever-darker mass as they came down in a loud fluttering of wings, all of them disappearing from view.

His throat went even drier. That was the first great flock of birds he had seen like that. They must be tiny, for they had no real form at this distance. One of them would have been all but invisible, he decided as he reined the pony gently to the north, toward the river. Maybe even a few of them would still have trouble making themselves visible. But the innumerable masses of them flocking together in that one black cloud across the spring blue was enough to capture any man’s attention.

As he reached the water’s edge and halted the animals, Bass saw the faint puffing of dust rise beyond the bluff, a dirty smudging of the blue horizon far beyond his line of sight.

“Shit,” he grumbled.

Angry at himself, Titus sat there a moment in the saddle, watching those birds rise again, swoop to the north, climb ever higher to the cloudless sky, then sweep back to the south before settling once more behind the bluff.

What stirred that dust? What caused those birds to take to flight like they did—spooked perhaps, then descending to roost once again?

Heart thumping, afraid he had made the last mistake of his life … yes, Bass was angry with himself for all but bumping into the rear of the Indian village after so many days, weeks now, of taking such pains to avoid the Pawnee. So damned many miles during which he had been so very careful that if he had a fire, he built it beneath one of the rare leafy trees where the branches would disperse the smoke, or beneath an overhanging shelf of a ravine where he could again hide himself, the glow of his fire, and his camp for another night. Just enough fire dug down in a hole to boil some coffee.

Still, there had been those nights when something in his gut told him he’d best make it a cold camp: lying up with the horses close enough that he could swing atop the pony and make a run for it if fate dictated that he would be discovered there in the dark beneath the prairie stars. Suspicious enough, even afraid enough too there at times, that he only traveled at night for more than eight days—back there along the Platte after first running across the village site.

Those tepee rings and meat racks and the size of that trail had been enough to scare him. Hell, just such a sight was enough to pucker any thinking man’s bunghole.

He’d seen for himself how the Chickasaw stole in to work over their enemies—night creatures that they were, sneaking on board that flatboat as Ebenezer Zane’s men lay tied up on the far side of the Mississippi. Yes, Titus had seen with his own eyes just how bloody ruthless Indians could be … and from Isaac Washburn’s accounts of his own cross-country trek with Hugh Glass last year, these river Pawnee might well be all the worse than those Mississippi Chickasaw.

There was simply no taking chances. A younger man might, and lose his hair in the bargain. Hell, who was he kidding anyway? If he was dumb enough to pull a stunt like heading out to the far mountains on his own, then he just might be stupid enough to get himself in some big trouble.

“Damn,” he muttered in exasperation, slamming a palm down on the saddle horn as he stared at that rising, swirling dust cloud.

That’s what had happened, he decided. No doubt about it, he had run right up on the rear of that village moseying upriver on the north bank as the season warmed, likely searching for new hunting grounds. And here he was, traipsing right along behind that village until he’d run right smack into them.

Was it run, or turn back?

Turning to look left, then right, he decided this south bank of the shallow river was not the place to hide out the rest of the day. Over there, across the Platte, the bluffs rose, cut by sharp-sided ravines where he might find a place for himself and the animals until nightfall. Only then would he chance recrossing to the south bank and hurrying wide around them. Get in front of those Pawnee where he would not have to worry about bumping into them again.

It sounded as good as any idea he’d ever had as he got down from the saddle, threw up the stirrup fender, and slipped his fingers beneath the cinch. Tugging, he figured it was tight enough still. Likewise he checked the cinch and straps on the mare’s packsaddle. When he had stripped off his clothes and stuffed them under the packsaddle’s ropes, Titus figured he had them all ready for another crossing and remounted.

Nudging the pony upstream, Bass soon found a wide, sandy slope pocked with hundreds of huge prints. It was there he stopped, the horses’ hooves just barely in the water, as he studied the route across the river to the far bluffs more than two hundred yards beyond. Again he looked down at the damp hoofprints embedded in the moist sand. Then again out to the river, studying that brush emerging from sandbars and islands in the middle of the Platte, brush that barely poked its head above the turbulent flow at this season of mountain runoff far to the west.

“Awright,” he said quietly to them. “Let’s go.”

Just get across before anyone spotted them there among the brush and stunted trees on the bank.

They hadn’t gone but a third of the way across when the pony suddenly volved its head around and tried to peer back at its rider, eyes wide as clay mug-bottoms. On all sides around the three of them, the water seemed to boil, alive with silt and stinging sand. Then the pony stumbled on the shifting bottom, going down. It re-emerged from the water with its rider, both of them snorting water, muddy silt gushing from its muzzle. Bass coughed, spitting sand, his eyes gritty.

Then the horse got its footing with a jerk and fought hard at the reins to whirl about in that moment, straining to head back to the south bank rather than to push on any farther, any deeper.

“Goddammit!” he growled, yanking to snub up the rein, sawing on it with all his might as the pony fought against him, twisting nose around into the current.

Water immediately swept over the pony’s head once more. In the next heartbeat it felt as if the bottom came out from under them as the animal lost its footing on the roiling river bottom, legs clawing desperately at nothing but murky water, head bobbing frantically into the muddy current that rushed into its eyes and nostrils, streaming over Titus with a persistent tug that threatened to shove him loose, to unhorse him in the middle of that great river.

As he continued to cuss and grumble, spit and spew—one hand on the rein and the other on the rifle held over his head—Bass’s gut tightened on reflex. He was frightened—not knowing what to do about all that was going on beneath him, around him … unable to do a damned thing for the animal he rode as it fought the bit and refused his commands.

Now it became all he could do to hang on to the pony as the water swept him backward, off the cantle of the saddle. As the animal lunged forward into the murky water, the rifle went under as he clung desperately, that solitary arm straining against the muscular neck as the pony thrashed its head from side to side, fighting to free itself from the watery prison, from this strong eddy that forced the animal ever farther into the muddy current as they sidestepped deeper and deeper into the heart of the river … all while the wild-eyed mare whinnied and neighed behind them—her head bobbing barely above the froth as the Platte’s force heaved against her two great packs, tugging her farther and farther downstream from him.

Sideways in the stream he clung to the Indian pony with one arm around its neck, the long, thick lead rope to the packmare burning that bare hand as the current tugged and hurtled the mare away from him. Stretched across the surface of the mighty Platte, he felt himself swallow more and more of the gritty water, drowning his cries of terror.

God—how he hated deep water!

He had to let go of one or the other … then the decision was made for him as the river’s force pulled his desperate grip from the Indian pony’s mane. He let go the mare’s lead rope next, sensing the relief in his rope-burned hand, his strength failing as he desperately hugged the rifle to his chest, locked within both arms. His head just above water, Titus spun around slowly in the current, capturing one last glimpse of the pack animal as she bobbed out of the brown, frothy current, then went down again as she was wheeled in a tight circle beneath her heavy packs.

“Damn you, now!” he twisted his head to shout at the Indian pony behind him as it clawed for a moment at the air with its two forelegs.

He just might make it to the pony if he could stroke with one arm, try swimming toward the horse—get hold of the animal’s neck. Then he was spun about again. Felt something beneath one foot that must surely be the bottom … but as quickly it fell away again, and he slid under the water with the heavy rifle still gripped in his hand like life itself.

Another man’s words he remembered now as the water took him and the rifle, closing in over him—grit forcing him to clench his eyes tight as he tried again to yell out in numbing terror. Finding he could only sputter with a mouthful of murky, silt-laden water, Washburn had told him about this shirting bottom. Warned him about the quicksands that could spell danger to any man crossing the Platte.

“Try, goddammit!”

The words echoed in his memory, recalling how his pap had hollered to him as a small, skinny youngster that summer afternoon Titus had jumped into a riverside pool too deep for him. Remembering how he caught fleeting glimpses of his father and the others on the Ohio riverbank as Titus bobbed up and down, arms flailing as he fought for air, struggled to stay on the surface.

“You gotta try, goddammit!”

He was crying now—the burn of memory hot in his eyes. Knowing his pap was not there to dive in and drag him out of the Platte as he had been that fateful spring day so many, many years before. The last glimpse Titus had of his pap—watching his father yanking off his big boots and jerking down the galluses from his shoulders as he shucked out of his heavy canvas britches before leaping in after his eldest son.

“Do it your own self, Titus!”

With the one arm he began to stroke, wanting to open his eyes, daring not as the swirling sand slapped and scratched his face.

“I’m coming, boy! I’m coming for you!”

Bass felt something huge and powerful brush against him in the raging current, hurtling him aside—and knocking out what little air he had left in his lungs. Titus rolled over in the water, there just below the surface … but he kept on swinging with that one free arm, feeling his tired muscles grown so damned heavy. Weighing him down, dragging at him from that shifting, sandy, murky bottom where the darkness gathered and the mud conspired to bury him.

With that solitary arm he fought like he had never fought before. And suddenly burst back to the surface for a fleeting moment in time—blinking his stinging eyes against the sand and the foam, feeling the warm wind brush his cheek.

“I’m here, boy!”

Oh, how he had clung to his pap then as Thaddeus had dragged him to the shore. “I’m right here now, son. Just hold on to me and ever’thin’ be awright.”

One yard at a time Titus dragged the arm through the thickening water, back under the surface as the river rolled him over onto his side … praying to feel the air at his cheeks once more—beginning suddenly to catch glimpses of that big, shady clearing back in Boone County, scenes so frighteningly clear and vivid behind the eyelids he clamped shut so fiercely that he knew he was dying. Quick little vignettes of his old hound, Tink … the copper-muzzled mule his pap used to pull stumps … those elusive gray squirrels he hunted whenever he dared run away … the dark, deep grave where they laid his grandpap to the old man’s final rest. Remembering suddenly how that had been the very first time he ever remembered thinking on this thing called death. So afraid of it then as a youngster.

So terrified that it finally had him now.

Then he burst into the wind. Spewing dirty, murky water in a gush from his lungs that screamed out—sucking in air as he bobbed back down into the current, blinking his eyes … and catching a glimpse of the far bank.

There was no one there. Not his pap. Not his mam. Not none of the others that day so long, long ago. It was not the Ohio. This was the bank of the Platte—bare, but beckoning. Urging him on.

Clumsily switching the rifle to his left hand below the. surface, Titus began to stroke with the right arm—by far his stronger—pulling himself yard by yard toward the north bank, shoved relentlessly downriver, until he felt the sandy bottom drag beneath his toes.

With that first attempt to stand on the slowly shifting bottom, he slipped and nearly went under again. But on his second try he managed to lunge up on his hands and knees, suddenly heaving forward—vomiting dirty water.

Again and again … then at last he emptied his belly, coughed painfully with that gritty sting at his throat, and struggled to his feet, something beyond him compelling Titus to slog the rest of the way out of the churning Platte all crouched over, his stomach in spasms, chest gasping still, coughing up even more of the river’s grit.

At the edge of the water Titus collapsed, clutching the rifle against him as he slowly regained his breath. As he rolled over on his side his stomach brought up a last heave of the bile and sand. Dragging a hand across his messy bearded chin, Titus caught sight of the packmare’s head far downstream as she fought her way within the grasp of the river, bobbing now and then in the roiling current.

Pushing himself up from the sandy, grassy bank, his elbow slipped as he struggled to rise, spilling down on his knees again. Bass grumbled a curse as he hauled himself back up, coughing and spitting as he used the rifle as a crutch to stand. His legs felt so weary, they almost did not respond to his commands as he swung his bare arms, hacking away at the brush, fighting his way through the tangle of undergrowth to struggle up the side of the bank, where he immediately turned to hobble downstream.

Desperation pulled him onward when his muscles threatened to fail. From time to time he caught a brief glimpse of the mare through the maze of leafy brush as the current drew her closer and closer to the north bank, swimming with all her might against the river that pushed downstream faster than she was making any headway toward the north bank.

For only a moment did he stop, parting the brush with a hand and the long fullstock rifle, peering upstream and down for some glimpse of the Indian pony. Squinting against the harsh sunlight glittering from the frothy, muddy surface, Bass could not find a clue to what happened to the horse … then he heard the distant whinny. His attention snapped back to the packmare far, far downstream now.

Through the brush that clawed at his face and the backs of his hands, raking his bare white flesh … in and out of the thick, soggy mud that relentlessly pulled at each one of his feet, dragging each foot out with a sucking sound as he struggled on, Titus hurried despite the strain ing wheeze in his chest, the terrible, fiery pain in his weakening legs. He heard the packmare cry out again.

No more could he see her, desperately fearing she had whinnied that one last time before the river had conquered her final shred of strength and pulled her under. All that weight in those packs. And she already so old.

But perhaps he could … dare he hope? Trusting to nothing but luck? Maybe he would find her carcass snagged on some river debris downstream and from the packs take what he needed to somehow survive in this open, endless, unforgiving land. He pushed on through the brush that clawed bloody welts along every inch of his flesh—downriver, downriver …

When at last he spotted her, the mare lay with her rump still in the river. One side of her packs had torn loose, the ropes floating on the Platte’s surface like leafless grapevine. Sensing the coming of even greater despair, Titus told himself that at least he had some of his plunder. No animals, but he wouldn’t be entirely naked, completely destitute here in the wilderness. It was cheering enough to help him lunge through the brush onto the sandy bank. To get his hands on what he had left—now things would not be all so bad—

She lifted her head wearily and stared at him with one big eye a moment, causing him to jerk to a sudden halt there on the sand. As he watched, the mare struggled to drag her rear legs beneath her and strained forward, then back, grueling work to rise on her forelegs. In utter shock he stood frozen, staring down the sharp-cut bank at the horse, unable to speak as the tears welled up in his eyes and streaked the mud on his cheeks as they tumbled into his sand-caked beard and mustache.

How she had survived … hell—how he had survived! Erupting into action, he heaved himself off the grassy bank to the muddy sand where she fought to stand on the uneven, soggy ground. Titus snatched hold of the lead rope, tugging on it, calling out to her, offering what encouragement he could—then he burst back along her side to heave against the last of the two packs that had to be weighing her down.

Wearily she got the hind legs under her and stood, shuddered in sheer fatigue, then obediently plodded up the bank, leaving Bass behind to stand in wonder at her.

To that moment he had considered her nothing more than an aging plodder—a good and gentle horse for children to ride, perhaps for nothing more strenuous than a slow carriage through the countryside surrounding St. Louis. But now he marveled at her strength and resolve, how she turned slowly at the top of the bank to look back at him there with the Platte River lapping at his ankles, mud splattered from his toes to his armpits.

There she shuddered again and tossed her head from side to side, flinging muddy phlegm from her nostrils and shaking gritty water from her coat and the one pack clinging to her back that made her stand off balance.

As soon as he joined the mare on the sunny bank, Bass looped an arm over her neck, patting the great, graceful animal he had given up for lost beneath her burden as the river seized them all.

“You s’pose we lost the Injun pony?” he whispered near the mare’s ear.

Then he sighed and turned away slightly, the pain of it all threatening to overwhelm him. “Maybeso we ought’n go have ourselves a look to be certain.”

Wearily he shifted the one pack so that it sat more squarely atop her broad back, then took up the lead rope as she turned about to plod back downstream behind Bass.

After something on the order of two miles he found the carcass. The Indian pony lay snagged in a quiet pool the Platte had formed near its northern bank after the spring runoff had laid up a tangled dam of drift timber and snags. After tying off the mare, Titus plunged into the shallow water, coming to a halt by the pony’s head—still hopeful that the pony would somehow be alive, just as he had found the mare. Slowly he dragged the head around so he could look into its eyes. And lost all hope when he found them already glazing in death.

Crying out with a low sob now that the horse’s death was real, vivid, and immediate, Bass carefully slid from beneath the pony’s muzzle and dragged his muddy legs under him. At the animal’s side he struggled with the twisted, mud-caked cinch in frustration until he finally freed the strap. After several attempts Titus finally succeeded in tugging the saddle from the dead horse’s back. Followed by the heavy, soggy blanket, he dragged both up the bank and flung down in utter exhaustion.

As if she somehow understood the fate of the pony, the mare tossed her head, then inched closer to lower her nose, sniffing at the saddle. She snorted and turned away, returning to browse among the leafy brush.

Again he heaved the wet saddle and blanket, dropping them farther up the bank near his rifle, then collapsed himself to the damp grass in the bright midday light. He sat there for a long time, barely able to move until he realized his skin was beginning to burn.

With agonizing slowness he went to the mare and found only his shirt had survived the tug and pull of the river. No leather britches nor his boots. In exasperation he yanked loose the ropes and let the last heavy pack drop to the ground, where he fell upon it—tearing it apart until he found his old pair of wool britches and three pair of Isaac Washburn’s moccasins.

Then he remembered—the dust. The Pawnee close at hand. Scrambling through the packs, he found the tin of powder kept dry in the river crossing. In another pouch he found Washburn’s pair of old pistols. Tearing rags from his patching material, Bass hurriedly began pulling the loads in his heavy weapons: dragging out the heavy lead balls with sheer muscle and a rifleman’s screw he set in the end of his ramrod, replacing powder, too, after carefully drying the pans and reoiling the barrels.

He was surprised to find that little effort sapped a lot of what he had left for strength. So he sat there a long time with the rifle and pistols at hand, listening for sounds of approaching enemy, staring at the muddy river that had stolen so much from him—yet in the end that river had spat out both him and the packmare. Was he to be angry … or grateful?

Remembering those memories of drowning. Sensing the same tug of warring feelings for the man who had fathered him, pulled him from the Ohio. Resentful of both Thaddeus and the Platte. Yet finding himself so grateful that in the end both had spat him free to carry on as he alone chose to carry on.

It was sometime later as the sun slipped out of midsky when he became aware of the swooping, noisy flock of birds once more. Perhaps they had always been there at the corner of his vision and he just did not pay heed and notice them. Was it their distant squawking cries, or the great ripples they made upon the aching blue overhead, or even the shadows they made of themselves winging back and forth across the land beyond those first hills?

Whatever it was, he watched now—aware that time had slipped past him as he sat regarding the river like time itself: there, then suddenly here at hand right before him, but gone immediately.

“C’mere, girl,” he called out as he wearily rose to his feet.

Dragging up the saddle blanket, he wrung it out best he could, kneeling to knead what water he could from it before flinging it atop the mare’s packsaddle. With a lot of effort he redistributed what he had left into two small packs and lashed them to the horse’s back. Finally Bass nestled the old saddle down into the vee between the packs and untied the long lead rope from the willow.

“Let’s go.”

Through the tall grass he led the mare, their hooves and moccasins dragging against the thick, sturdy stalks. Heading upstream once more. This time on the north bank, angling a bit into the first line of hills—from time to time adjusting his course as he kept himself between the Platte and a line where he would intersect those flocks of tiny black birds.

The sun had nearly dried his clothes, and no longer did they chafe him that late afternoon as he trudged through the low hills, beginning to think on making camp in some ravine out of sight of any wandering Pawnee … beginning to dwell too much on his empty belly and curling up for the night in what must still be damp blankets lashed back there on the packmare. The slope was long as he ascended the sandy hillside, casting a long shadow behind him, hoping from the top he would spot some likely campsite, perhaps in the brush beside a narrow creek that fed the mighty Platte. There he could hide, and sleep.

With just a matter of another two steps to the top of the rise, he prepared to catch his breath and blow, the same way horses blew after an exhausting climb. He blinked into the falling sun—missing his hat even more already. And waited those few seconds for the mare to come up behind him. With the sun’s bright glare he blinked some more as the ground in the middistance seemed to undulate, quiver—just the way of Tink’s skin would ripple when you gave her a particularly good scratching.

For a moment more he stared, not sure … not taking a breath. Not even daring to.

The great flocks of tiny black birds swept from right to left, then south back to north—all but directly overhead now. He became suddenly aware of their incessant racket, those tiny throats and flapping wings, whereas it had seemed so deathly silent for so, so long. Then heard the snorting and bellowing, the lowing of huge animals.

Slowly, Titus Bass became aware of the great hump-backed beasts that blackened the endless miles of what rolling prairie lay before him.