Buffalo Palace

20

It was cold enough that he could see his breath come in gray streamers against the murky light of predawn, curling up before his eyes, then wisping off on each gentle gust of breeze.

The land rose gently on either side of him as Hannah plodded along. Since awaking he had realized she was beginning to slow—too weary after the night’s march beneath her added burden. He shifted slightly, rolling to his other hip between the sawbucks. And breathed deeply of the cold breeze that gusted against his cheeks. It was good, he told himself. With it in his face he would not be on the downwind of man or animal.

Turning his face to the right, regarding the paling sky, Scratch felt relieved that the mule had been moving him steadily north through another night. Soon enough he would have to tug on her rope, steer her off to one row of these hills or another, hoping there to find a sheltered draw where he could hoist himself off her back and crawl into the brush. Perhaps this morning he would have enough strength to yank back the thick, oiled Russian sheeting and spend the time and strength it would require of him to release the packs from their frame. But as weak as he was, how was he ever going to get the packs reloaded?

How many days now? he asked himself. Had it been two nights? Or three? Two, he decided—which meant she had suffered for the better part of three days without having her burdens removed.

“You’ll want yourself a good roll, won’t you, girl?”

By damn, he knew how she must feel—knowing how he got a’times, ready to back up to a rough-barked tree where he’d strop his back up and down slowly, deliciously, giving himself one hell of a good scratching.

“Find you a good patch of grass where I can sleep and you can eat your fill.”

Just the mention of food caused his stomach to roil like summer’s thunderheads. That little bit of flour hadn’t lasted him long at all. No better than bread for a man who was grease hungry. Lean, red meat … dripping juice as it was just barely seared over an open flame. Enough of it to fill not only his belly, but to satisfy his tongue and teeth and mouth with chewing on something that was a delight to just about all his senses.

Like buffalo.

He couldn’t help it—thinking on the meat again the way he had last night while jabbing his moistened fingers into that flour sack. Dreaming about buffalo was about as natural a thing for a grease-hungry man to do as breathing itself.

Damn—but his imagination was even playing tricks on him! Not only was it making his mouth water and damn near drool with the fancied taste of a slab of buffalo hump ribs … but now his nose was getting in on the act. He could even smell ’em.

God knows Bass would recognize that tang on the wind anywhere. A herd had it a particular fragrance: musky, dank, earthy, too.

So here his nose was joining in with his imagination—both of them conspiring to make him all the more miserable for meat. Why, he’d spent enough time around the herds beginning with that crossing he made of the plains to know exactly how buffalo smelled, enough time downwind from the beasts so that he wouldn’t spook them as he threaded his way on through the heart of mile after blackened mile of the huge creatures that damn well blanketed the rolling hills and gentle valleys.

There simply was nothing else like that scent on the wind. Whether it was the tons of dung they dropped in their grazings and wanderings, or the sweetish-sour stench of the dusty, sweated, tick-and-flea-infested beast itself … there was nothing else like the smell of buffalo.

He vowed he’d have himself a talk to his imagination one day real soon. For it to make his mouth water just thinking about chomping down into a thick pink slab of tenderloin was one thing. But for his imagination to actually make him smell the creatures was something altogether too damn much to take—

And upon opening his eyes his breath clutched in his chest. Finding it hard to swallow as his heart rose with anticipation, Bass whispered, “Hannah, you brung me here a’purpose—didn’t you?”

She gave no answer as he continued to stare at the widening valley ahead of them as they emerged from a neck into the great, grassy bottomland. On either side arose low hills. And from east to west, slope to slope across the bottom, the entire scene was blotted with the black coagulate of grazing buffalo.

Surely this was a dream, he told himself as the mule continued him toward the center of this hallucination. At that moment he heard the first faraway bawl of one of the beasts. Could it be that his ears were tricking him too?

Barely raising his head there beneath the red wool blanket, he stared as she carried him closer and closer to a large, slowly meandering knot of the beasts. Closing his eyes momentarily, Bass drank in their scent, deeply. Then reached out with his right arm to reassure himself the rifle was still there beneath the pack ropes. As tight and sore as was his shoulder and arm, at least it no longer caused him hot flushes of agony to move them.

How would he ever get the rifle butt pressed against that wounded shoulder? And to fear what pain shooting the weapon would cause him … why, he knew he’d flinch and miss his shot. Off would go his one chance at a buffalo, stampeding away into the distance.

But—was there a chance that he could fire his right-handed rifle from his left shoulder? It was about all the shot he would have at it.

His ears perked up at the same instant Hannah’s stiffened. The breeze coming into their faces brought the distant sound again. That was a rifle shot. A few harrowing moments later he heard two more shots.

Clearly, more than one gun. Several. Perhaps many. The first had come from farthest away. The second seeming a bit closer. And that third round of shots closer still. A fourth shot, this one solitary, reached his ears as they pounded with the galloping race of his heart. Then, however, the dying of the rifle shot was drowned out, overwhelmed by the distant, steady hammer.

Hannah sidestepped in a lurch, as if frightened by the quaking of the ground beneath her hooves.

The hammer drew every bit closer. As it did, Bass grew more certain of it. The gunfire—that approaching thunder. Whoever was hunting these buffalo had gone and set them stampeding. Just as plain was the fact that they were coming downwind, straight for him and the mule. Blindly. Stupid beasts that they were, the buffalo would continue until they hit a river, or spilled over a cliff, or—more times than not—simply ran out of steam.

He realized he had to get the mule out of the herd’s way, and now.

Already the far northern horizon at the end of the narrow valley was smudged with a thin layer of dust. They were coming, and he had to get Hannah to carry him to safety.

Lifting himself on his elbows, he grabbed for a more secure hold on the lead rope, holding it tightly there just behind her withers as he gazed off to the left. Then to the right. Finally back to the western slope once more. It seemed to offer more of a chance for escape.

“Git—git, girl!” he urged her with a croaking, little-used voice.

Tugging on the short lead, Bass managed to start her moving off at an angle.

“Hup, hup!” he ordered her, watching the dust cloud grow, seeing how those creatures near him were just beginning to turn, to listen, to pay heed to all that noisy thunder upvalley.

Stretched out along Hannah’s spine, he tried to hammer her with his feet as best he could, hoping to urge more speed from the mule. Weary as she was, Hannah nonetheless gave her master all she. had as the blackened knots nearby suddenly burst into a flurry of motion and sound.

Standing there grazing one moment, then raising their hairy, oversize heads to look back to the north the next moment … and suddenly exploding into action without delay or the slightest hesitation. Those creatures closest to him were now compelled to flee, their dull brains ordering them to join in the mindless flight.

In the space of a few seconds the beastly wall of death was coming their way beneath that long, low cloud of dust.

As Hannah reached the base of the long, gradual slope, the thunder of approaching hooves, the bawling and bellows, grew deafening. Just then it felt as if his heart stopped beating: seized with terror in his chest that refused to breathe.

When Hannah faltered on the slope, he sputtered the words, “Hup, girl!”

She heaved and with a bound lurched two more leaps, her back shuddering—shaking the packs and him with them. He began to slip off her hindquarters.

Gripping the tie ropes fiercely, Scratch dragged himself another half foot onto her back. Then a little more, and now he could come close to wrapping his arms down her neck. Bass clutched her, his cheek laid against her withers, crying out to her, the spill of his voice lost in the hammering of the hooves around them. Dragging himself closer to her ears, Bass gave her encouragement, calling out to her urgently, trying to will her up the slope and out of the way of the approaching mass of death.

There beneath the bottom fringe of the dusty cloud, just after the first buffalo appeared—riders emerged, bobbing figures atop their small ponies. He could see how distinct they were from the small-humped cows and their brick-red, yellowish-red, and brownish-hued calves, every last one of the beasts caught up in the single-minded rhythm of the stampede, their heads bobbing up and down in their rolling gait.

Distant riders raced beside the herd like tiny stick figures of mankind painted on hide lodges and winter-count robes.

“Hup! Hup, girl!” he shouted as Hannah faltered, a hoof slipping, her load suddenly shifting.

The thunder reached the ground below them in the next instant. Bass turned his head to look behind at those first cows and summer’s young calves racing by at the head of the stampede—

Then as she stumbled sideways he was sliding off her rear haunches, fingers digging frantically for a grip on something, anything, as the mule went down on her back legs, shuddered with fatigue, then trembled when she attempted to rise beneath her burden. Arms flailing, Scratch tumbled off a flank to the ground on his belly, landing with a crash, then rolling in the tall, dusty, summer-burned grass with a groan, crying out in a yelp that was swallowed by the passing of the herd below him.

Slipping sideways on the steep slope as she regained her balance and got back to her legs, Hannah shifted, stretching the lead rope out to its limit, tugging on Scratch’s belt where he had tied it.

“Dammit!” he screeched in pain as she jerked him to the side, torment shooting through him as she pitched him onto the wounded shoulder.

Spitting dust and brittle grass out of his mouth, rubbing dirt from his eyes with a grimy hand, Bass lunged to snatch hold of the lead rope that had him connected to the mule—and he yanked back.

“C’mere!”

He dared not have her drag him any farther. Feverishly working at the knot with his right hand, while he pulled back on the rope with his left for some slack, Scratch was already well past scared. Frightened, and even terrified, that she would suddenly bolt, dragging him mindlessly along the slope, even down among those thousands of slashing hooves.

But she came to him, prancing, unsure—eyes wide and nostrils flaring, wet. Lather had soaked her pack harness. As she stopped over him, Hannah shuddered, wagging her head slowly while he finished fighting the knot at his belt. When he was free, Bass wrapped the end of the rope around his left wrist and gripped it as he collapsed back in the grass. Closing his eyes still filled with grit, rubbing them savagely as he caught his breath and swallowed down the excruciating torture in his shoulder she had just spilled him on.

Closer came the pop of guns that punctuated the throbbing echo of the stampede, reverberating from one side of the valley to the other. They had guns—these Indians did. Seized with sudden resolve, Bass knew he had to get his. Had to grab the rifle and prepare to sell his life dearly if these were Arapaho.

Chances were good that was just what these buffalo hunters were. After all, he told himself as his tearing eyes watered more as he fought to rub them free of dust, he had no idea where he was west of Park Kyack … except that the tall range of mountains was no longer off to his right. It was somewhere back to the southeast now. Hannah must surely have covered ground for him—but just how far north she had carried him toward the guiding star, there was no way to know.

Just get his rifle …

Rolling onto his left elbow, Bass rose partway out of the grass, blinking his eyes, finally clearing them at last. The forms danced liquidly before him, then snapped into focus.

He froze.

At least six of them, now a seventh he could count, all on horseback as they came up the slope—seven bowstrings were taut, arrows pointed at him.

His mouth went dry as he immediately looked at their leggings, their moccasins. Jehoshaphat—but they were tall men. Yet as his eyes raced over the patterns of quill-and beadwork they wore, there was something more about their look, their dress, the way they fashioned their hair, that convinced him these weren’t Arapaho.

Below them on the valley floor the bulls were passing now, thundering along behind the cows and calves—the last in the great cavalcade. Over the shoulders of some of the warriors Bass caught a glimpse of another dozen or more riders beginning to cross over from the far slope in the wake of the last retreating buffalo. They too were coming his way. And a large group of horsemen moved about on foot there on the nearby ground at the bottom of the slope, their ponies held by others who waited nearby as they gathered in a throbbing knot around something shapeless on the trampled ground.

He wondered if they were gathering around one of the fallen beasts to begin butchering it … then he figured they would not all cluster around one animal in such a way. Perhaps, yes—they were acting as if it was one of their own who had fallen from his pony and gotten himself trampled. Then as the dozen or so riders drew closer, his surprise turned quickly to fear. It seemed with the approach of these horsemen, the first warriors were giving him their total attention.

Maybe they were already blaming him for the stampede—believing he had caused the death of their companion.

All he had was the knife. At least to get it in his hand before too many arrows punctured his hide. Just to know he died with a weapon in his hand.

Down the slope some thirty feet the dozen riders reined up. He figured them to be the band’s headmen. Lots of long hair blowing in the cool breeze of that late-summer morning. Feathers and scalp locks on their war shirts that kept them warm. A sprinkling of graying heads—the old ones, those who commanded respect and likely ruled over this hunt.

Now his back fat was in the fire.

Moving slowly so he wouldn’t attract any attention, he rolled slightly to the right, onto his hip as his left hand gradually let go of Hannah’s lead rope and he inched it toward the small of his back, where he hoped to seize the well-worn skinning knife and yank it from the old scabbard stuffed in his belt.

The warrior closest to his left took a sudden, crouching step forward, drawing his bowstring back even farther and shouting to the other bowmen.

Immediately raising his arm, one of the arriving dozen shouted something Scratch did not understand. Whatever it was that was said, it froze the bowmen in place. There was low muttering among the warriors as the one giving the orders, the one who had called out, stepped right up to Bass, pulling a fur cap from his head.

“Eeegod, boys! If’n it ain’t a white child out here all on his lonesome!” Then he bent forward at the waist a bit to quickly study Bass. “Yep, ye are a white nigger, sure enough!”

In utter shock Scratch watched a second one, then a third, and finally more white men step up through the gaps between the warriors who held their bows on this quarry they had cornered on the hillside.

“Y-you’re … American!” Scratch stammered with a hoarse croak. “Wh-white men!”

The speaker’s eyes crinkled at their corners as his mouth drew up into a wide, friendly bow that showed a row of overly large teeth browned the color of pin acorns. The tall, stubble-faced man pulled back the cuff on his leather war shirt and studied his forearm a moment, then slapped his thigh with that fur cap, laughing as he sent a small eruption of dust puffing from his legging.

“By bloody damn—but I am that!” he exclaimed, his green eyes merry. “Rest of my outfit too.”

Without turning nor taking his eyes off Bass, the stranger flung his free arm backward to indicate the others, who, although dressed every bit as Indian as did the bow-wielding warriors, were clearly white men as they stepped up for a closer inspection of the stranger. Not a one wore a beard on their severely tanned faces, all of which bore the color of well-soaped saddle leather.

With another step the first stranger came beside Bass, dropping to one knee and extending that arm he had just inspected to certify his skin color. Unable to stop the tears beginning to fill his eyes, Titus rolled onto his left hip and eagerly held out the right hand to shake.

Seizing it securely, smiling warm and genuine, the stranger announced, “Name’s Hatcher, friend. Jack Hatcher.”

“What strange twist of the devil’s tail brings you here, Titus Bass?” Hatcher asked after he had sent some of the warriors off to the nearby coulees to locate some saplings strong enough to construct themselves a pair of travois. He had trudged back up the slope and settled there in the grass alongside Scratch with some of the other white men.

One of them, about as stocky as he was tall, handed Bass a strip of dried meat to chew on. “Take your time with this here,” he warned. “Man’s been without food long as you have, just take ’er easy and chew slow.”

“Thankee,” Bass garbled around that first hunk he tore off the strip, wanting to swallow it near whole. But he knew the sense in the man’s words.

“His name’s Kinkead,” Hatcher announced. “Matthew Kinkead.”

Bass nodded. “Moving north,” he began to explain after he had finished that first strip of jerked venison and Kinkead handed him another. The rest sat nearby, as unperturbed and unhurried as they could be. “I figgered to run onto one of them trapping brigades.”

“Sublette?” Hatcher asked. “That booshway’s already pushed through this country, friend.”

“Him or Fitzpatrick. Didn’t make me no difference.”

“You was with ’em?” asked a new man with about the shaggiest head of unkempt hair Titus had ever seen.

Bass spoke around his jerky. “With who?”

“Fitzpatrick or Sublette?”

“No,” he answered. “I was on my own.”

“My name’s John Rowland,” and he held out his own bony hand. “Don’t think we ever caught your’n.”

“Titus Bass.” How good it was to talk, to look at friendly faces. To hear the sound of voices.

Hatcher’s eyes fell to Bass’s bloody shirt, a large, blackened stain radiating from the bullet hole in its shoulder. After a long moment his eyes came back to Bass’s face, his eyes crinkling warmly. “Prob’ly wouldn’t make no difference what white men ye run onto, Titus Bass. Fitzpatrick, Sublette, any of ’em. But I can tell you one thing for sartin: yer one lucky sumbitch ye run onto us when ye did. Lookit the way Titus here’s wolfing down our meat, boys! How long since last ye et, friend?”

For the life of him Bass wasn’t able to sort it out. The days of sleeping, the nights of riding on the mule, three … or more? Finally Scratch shook his head wearily.

“Longer’n he can remember I ’spect, Jack,” a new voice said as the man came up the slope from the horses and knelt.

Hatcher made the introductions. “This here’s Caleb Wood. Caleb, say your howdy to Titus Bass.”

After they shook, Wood turned to Hatcher to explain, “We ain’t found us much to make us them two travois, so I sent Rufus back with a handful of the Sho’nies to fetch us what we need from the village.”

“V-village?” Bass croaked.

They all turned at Bass’s question. “Snakes,” Jack answered. “Camped up the country a piece. Best ye just rest for now. Solomon—fetch me the man’s blanket off’n the ground there—yonder. And Elbridge, whyn’t ye find something for us to put under his head. We likely got us a bit of a wait here, and Mr. Bass just ought’n have his comfort till we set off to drag him back.”

“Drag? Drag me?”

“How long ye say ye been out here?” Jack inquired, his eyes flicking up and down Bass’s buckskin clothing, clearly Indian made. “An’ ye ain’t never see’d a travois?”

“You’re fixing to drag me back in one of them?”

Rowland said, “Less’n you’re fit to sit a horse.”

In resignation Bass shook his head, then felt his shoulders lifted as the one called Elbridge raised him, stuffing a folded saddle blanket beneath his head and shoulders as Solomon unfurled the dirty red blanket over the length of him.

Kinkead asked, “You warm enough, Titus Bass?”

“I’ll do for now—thankee.” But he shuddered as the wind gusted along the hillside.

“Don’t tell me you’re one of them fool-headed, prideful niggers, now.” Hatcher turned to a knot of the others, saying, “Isaac—I seen ye pack that blanket of yer’n ahind your saddle. Fetch it up for this man’s cold.”

“A good man, if’n he’s a little solemn,” Kinkead confided.

Hatcher stood to fling his voice down the slope. “An’ Isaac—get one of the boys to ride up the valley to fetch us the first hide them Sho’nies pull off.”

“What you figger to use the hide for if I got this fella a blanket for to lay over ’im?” Solomon asked.

“To my way of thinking,” Hatcher explained, squatting to lay a palm flat on the grassy soil beside him, “this here ground ain’t all that warm a place for a ailin’ man to Jay hisself.”

Solomon’s eyes smiled as he rose to his feet and started away. “I’ll make double sure our friend here gets ’nother blanket and his robe too.”

Bass watched the trappers move off toward their horses not far down the slope.

Scooting closer to Bass and crossing his legs, Hatcher explained, “Like I said, we only got to wait till Rufus makes it back. So it be fine for ye get yer rest if’n ye can.”

“Maybe later,” Bass replied quietly. “It’s about all I can do … just that it’s damned good to run onto folks.”

“I’d ’spect it would be, Titus Bass.”

One by one he looked around that circle, the severely tanned faces lined by wind and weather, eyes smiling every one. For a moment he was overcome with such emotion, he could not speak. Finally, “H-how say you fellers go to callin’ me by the name I was first give out here not long back?”

“Ye call me Jack … even Mad Jack,” Hatcher replied, “then I’ll damn well call ye anything ye want me to.”

“Scratch.”

The tall and angular Hatcher scooped up Bass’s right hand again, not shaking it hard at all, more so a tight squeeze. “Pleased be to mee’cha, Scratch. Now—I’ve got me my ears pinned back, and I’m hankering to hear the tale of how ye come to have a hole in ye.”

Rowland nodded. “Where’s the rest of your plunder?”

Bass swallowed hard. “What’s on the mule’s all I got left me in the world.”

“Red-bellies?” asked the blond-haired Solomon.

“Arapaho.”

With a grunt of agreement Hatcher said, “Stands to reason, don’t it? With those sons of bitches … well—they be just ’bout as bad as Bug’s Boys.”

“B-bugs?”

“Bug’s Boys,” Hatcher repeated. “Blackfoots.”

“Much as I heard about ’em, ain’t never run onto none of them.”

“And you don’t wanna!” Rowland cried.

“Now, g’won, Scratch,” Hatcher prodded. “We got us a wait to bide our time. What say ye fill it with yer tale?”

Which is just what Titus did, beginning with the death of his last horse in the mountains and the fortuitous arrival of the trio.

“Hol’ on there,” Hatcher demanded. “How ye come to be all on yer lonesome, trapping by yerself in the first place?”

“Maybeso I ought’n tell you how I come out here from St. Louie.”

“First whack—by damn you best start at the beginning.”

So he eagerly went back to his time learning from Isaac Washburn and their plans to come out together along the Platte … then continued by recounting his solitary journey after Gut got himself killed in St. Louis where for a time there it seemed Scratch’s dream had gone up in smoke.

Right on through it all he related the story to Hatcher and the rest, who all scooted close to sit a spell. The lot of them listened in attentively, not a one of the trappers interrupting as Bass told of his first winter with the Ute, and his first scrape with the Arapaho. Then on to his first rendezvous in Willow Valley.

“By jam, we was there!” Isaac Simms commented.

But Elbridge Gray was a little’ more somber in his comment, “Not much likker howsoever.”

“Trader had him likker enough this summer, didn’t he, Jack?” Wood asked.

“Let the man finish his story, boys,” Hatcher scolded.

From rendezvous Bass recounted their fall hunt and how he had begun to bring in more beaver, bigger ones too, than the other three trappers. But he kept to himself how Silas Cooper just up and took what he believed was his rightful share of Titus’s catch—not daring to tell these men how Cooper ended up beating him so badly he came close to asking to die.

“How them Crow to winter with?” Gray asked.

Simms grinned as he inquired, “Them Crow gals good in the blankets as I hear they be?”

“Hush up, now!” Jack chided them. “Mebbe Scratch here didn’t get his stinger wet in none of them Crow gals. G’won—tell us how ye come to be from Crow country down south to ’Rapaho ground.”

Tracing their decision to float the furs downriver and how he discovered there was no post at the mouth of the Bighorn, Bass explained his journey south into Park Kyack, looking to scare up some Ute company—and when he didn’t find any of that, deciding he’d just as well head on over to the place Cooper had chosen for their reunion.

“After I waited some more, long past time for the ronnyvoo at Sweet Lake,” Bass told them, “I set out, figgering I’d run across one outfit or ’nother—an’ trade off some of them horses for what I needed in the way of fixin’s.”

In marching east toward the mountains where he had decided he would turn north, Titus told the hushed circle of attentive trappers about his coming across Injun sign, running onto the painted war party, and how he had come to be left for dead, stripped of weapons and a little less of his hair.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, every set of eyes flicked up to stare at the blue bandanna.

“What ye done for it?” Hatcher inquired, wagging a finger at the back of his own skull. “That noggin of yer’n?”

“Put me some moss on it—soon’s I was able to drag my bones down to the water.”

Elbridge Gray’s head bobbed in confirmation. “That’s good thinking.”

“Likely it was,” Hatcher added. “How come it was the red bellies didn’t steal yer rifle?”

“Thought they had at first,” Bass said, then explained how he had found it buried in the brush where the weapon had tumbled.

“Lucky nigger you was,” Isaac Simms declared.

“Best luck I ever had was that mule there,” Bass admitted. “No telling for sure—but I imagine I’d been buzzard bait afore now if’n I didn’t have that savvy mule to carry me away from there.”

“And right into this valley filled with buffler!” Wood exclaimed.

“A white buffler at that!” Jack said.

“Lookee yonder,” Gray announced, turning to point.

A band of some ten horsemen had come into sight to the north. Clearly two of the riderless horses dragged the long, crossed poles of travois strapped to their backs.

“Wh-white buffler?” Scratch repeated.

“By the by,” Jack Hatcher replied, “that’s what the second horse drag is for.”

“See that bunch down there still?” Rowland asked.

Horses and warriors, were still knotted around something on the prairie, which Bass could not make out from this distance. “I’ll wager one of the warriors took a spill and got hisself trompled over?”

“Nawww, ain’t had nary a man die this hunt,” Hatcher began to explain. “That other travois be for a special hide … a white-buffler hide.”

Titus whispered in wonderment, “Ain’t never seen one of them.”

Shrugging, Hatcher declared, “Ain’t many men can claim to laying eyes on a white buffler at all, Scratch. But this here bunch of Sho’nies found ’em the critter running in the pack ’long with the others—this morning right after we started our hunt.”

“Something special ’bout a white buffler?” Titus inquired. “Special enough to carry it on its own travois?”

Hatcher said, “That’s right. It’s big medicine, powerful doin’s, Titus Bass.”

“An’ so be you too,” Caleb Wood added.

Titus stammered in astonishment, “H-how’s that?”

Turning slightly, Jack said, “Look down there. See that bunch?”

“They been there long as we been up here,” Scratch agreed.

Hatcher explained, “Been busy there all morning long. Ol’ medicine men and respected warriors—all of ’em been smoking and singing and praying while’st they been at cutting that hide off the critter real careful.”

Bass nodded. “That hide must be something special to em.”

“Damn right it is,” Gray said.

Then Hatcher went on to say, “They’ll take that white hide back on one of the travois—since it be such powerful medicine to these here Sho’nies. Why, they’ll ride back into their village singing and such.”

“Don’t you know they’re all worked up about it awready,” Simms commented as Rufus Graham pointed his horse away from the ceremonial group and began making his way toward the trappers on the slope with Bass.

“They’ll be singing lots of strong-heart songs for ye too,” Hatcher said. “For yer healing, Titus Bass.”

“For … for me?”

“Where ye landed here is right across the valley from where they dropped that white medicine animal,” Jack said. “Don’t ye see?”

Wagging his head, Bass admitted, “I don’t understand.”

For a moment Hatcher looked at a few of the others. Then he said, “Ye be a white man, Titus Bass. And now ye showed up with yer own powerful medicine too.” Hatcher pointed to Scratch’s shoulder. “That bullet wound and all—the ol’ headmen down there already say ye got big medicine.”

Slowly shaking his head in utter confusion, Bass found that to sort through all of this made him weak, and all the more bewildered. “Don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, fellas.”

Hatcher grinned widely with those pin-acorn teeth of his filling fully half of his face. “Listen, the way them chiefs see it: yer the one brung that white buffalo here to bless this bunch of Sho’nies.”

“Me?” he squeaked. “B-bless?”

Nodding, Jack continued. “Way they see it, besides their All Spirit taking care of ’em, yer the one they ought’n be grateful to for bringing ’em this blessing. Now they won’t have no empty bellies, won’t go hungry for buffler—so the old stories go.”

“Stories?”

“’Bout the white buffalo, Scratch,” Kinkead said. “When such a medicine critter comes once in many generations, the Sho’nie people gonna be blessed with meat and shining times—they’ll stand strong against their enemies … and stand strong, shoulder to shoulder, with all their people.”

Knocking dust and grass from his rump as he rose, Caleb Wood said, “Matthew told you what be the honest truth, Titus Bass. Them chiefs been praying and smoking and such about you.”

“But! I … I didn’t bring no white buffalo here!” Bass protested.

Hatcher smiled, chuckling a moment before he asked, “Just how in hell ye know ye didn’t?” And then he laid a hand gently on Bass’s wounded shoulder. “Ye damn well been out’n yer mind for more’n the last three days, ain’t ye?”

Titus answered, “I s’pose it’s been that long. Yes.”

Hatcher continued, “And that’s how long we’uns with that village been follerin’ the trail of this here herd. Face up to the bald-faced truth of it, Titus Bass: ye just dropped off your mule in one hell of a good spot!”

Shaking his head with how incredible the whole story sounded, Scratch grinned at the circle of trappers and replied, “You ain’t telling me nothing I don’t already know.”

“And that white buffalo calf down there—Titus Bass and it are mighty big medicine to these here folks,” Hatcher repeated, a look of seriousness returning to his face.

So much of it just did not make sense to him. “If’n I got all this medicine power, and you say I’m so damn special to these here Snakes, why the hell them bucks come up here on the jump and pull their bows on me?”

With a shrug Jack replied, “Mebbeso they didn’t know just what ye was at first, Titus Bass.”

Perhaps it wasn’t merely that he was still confused, hungry, and weak, but that he was more than a little afraid, what with all that the trappers were telling him about medicine and white-buffalo hides.

Scratch looked Jack in the eye and asked, “What’s that mean, Hatcher? They wasn’t sure what I was at first?”

“Just look there,” Hatcher said, an arm swinging in an arc to point out the nearby Shoshone warriors, who had put those bows back in their quivers.

Bass saw how the bowmen still kept a respectful distance from him, their eyes nonetheless fixed on him nearly all the time, most of those dark eyes filled with undisguised awe.

“Mean to tell ye these here bucks is likely real scared of ye—that’s what it all tracks,” Hatcher explained. “From the looks of things, they prob’ly still good and scared of ye too.”

“Don’t make them no never-mind if’n you and I both know you can’t get up on your feet and fight ’em off by hand, flat on your back the way you was,” Wood declared candidly.

“That’s right,” Hatcher added. “To them, they just figger ye be a shaman what can use yer heap-powerful medicine right where ye was.”

He had gone in search of the buffalo, and found them.

Not once, but twice now. That first had been a journey that had brought him out of the old frontier of Kentucky, across the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and to the realm of the buffalo at long, long last.

Now he had pointed Hannah north, something in him praying, something in him trusting. Gone in search of the buffalo again.

But this time Bass ended up with more than he ever could have dreamed. If it was true what Hatcher and the old men were saying, that white buffalo calf had come to him special. And in the end that sacred animal not only had just saved the Snake from their hunger, but had saved Scratch as well.

That first time he went in search, Titus found the buffalo on the Great Plains just when his doubt had been at its deepest. And now he had found them again—and the white buffalo calf had come—just when his need was at its greatest. A need not just to rescue his body from dying of hunger … but to save his spirit and cause it to thrive.

“That buck says he’s seen ye afore,” Hatcher told Bass as the trappers dragged the wounded man through the Shoshone village toward the stand of trees where the white men had erected their blanket and canvas shelters.

Bass looked again at the young warrior, trying to remember where he had first seen the face. “When I laid eyes on him back there—I had me the same feeling,” Scratch admitted.

Jack explained, “And he told me where it was: over to what them Ashley boys call the Willow Valley. Summer before last winter, he said it was. He told me he saw ye at the place where all the white men sing and dance together.”

“Ronnyvoo.” Bass sighed with some fond remembrance.

“Yeah—ronnyvoo, all right.” There was a look of immense and fond remembrance on Hatcher’s face too.

The warrior walked right behind the travois where Titus lay, having taken it upon himself to follow close at hand with Hannah. Ever since the moment they had left the narrow valley where the white buffalo calf had been killed, the young Shoshone had been leading the mule behind his pony. Once the procession reached the outskirts of their village, however, all the men dismounted, leading their ponies and pack animals through the crowded camp on foot.

Once the hunters had been spotted approaching from the distance, a long gauntlet had begun to form, two long rows of old people singing their prayers, men and women chanting their praises, children shrieking and whistling in joy. Not all that long after Rufus Graham’s band of hunters had returned to find the travois, word spread through the camp like a prairie fire. Just as soon as the spotters on the hill announced that they had seen the cavalcade coming, everyone had not only turned out to see for themselves that pale, curly hide of the sacred white buffalo calf, but jostled and shoved to get themselves a good look at the hairy white man with the powerful medicine who was responsible for bringing the sacred calf to the Shoshone people.

Lying there in his travois as the village folk pressed in to take a close look at him, Titus saw how Hannah danced and bobbed, straining against the young warrior who acted as her handler. She hesitated, snorted, swung her rump about each time some of the crowd got too close. Then the villagers fell back from the excited animal.

Maybe it was a good thing, after all, he thought as the Shoshone studied him in his passing, a good thing that Hannah did not particularly take to the smell of Indians. Just the way he’d heard some tell that Indian ponies didn’t take all that well to the scent of a white man.

Far as he was concerned, Scratch really couldn’t smell a bit of difference. But, then, he figured, critters like horses and mules were just naturally born with better noses. Still, he had been around enough Indians himself, especially the squaws for long periods of time—sleeping, eating, coupling, arguing, and embracing—to say with some measured degree of certainty that neither the Ute nor the Crow smelled any different from any man Bass had bumped up against in all his wanderings.

The same should hold true for these Snake, he thought. Truth be, except for the sometime stench of the bear grease gone rancid on their hair, the Indians he had come across were a lot cleaner folk than were any white trappers out here to the mountains. Simply put, while the Indians bathed in rivers during the warm seasons and endured steam baths in sweat lodges during the winter … why, most ary white men he’d met out here shunned scrubbing and water as if it were poison to the skin.

Onto the framework lashed to the bottom of those two travois that Rufus Graham and the Shoshone hurried out to what the Indians were now calling “The White Buffalo Valley,” the hunters took the time to lay green buffalo hides they had just skinned off the dead animals left in the wake, of their successful hunt. On one of those hides would rest the white buffalo calf robe. On the other would rest the man responsible for bringing the buffalo to the Shoshone people.

As these older tribal leaders were at their work in the valley, preparing for their triumphant return with the sacred skin, more and more people showed up as news of the hunters’ success spread through the village—many travois were needed to carry the butchered meat and tongues, to haul back to camp the heavy green hides that would be staked out on the ground, stretched and scraped, then tanned and smoked for lodge hides and warm bedding, protection against the winds that would howl with the coming of winter.

As soon as they turned all those horses and drags around to begin their trip north from the valley, the long cavalcade had stretched out far behind. Scratch. But in front of him, leading them all, was the horse and its travois bearing the white calf hide. Ceremonially skinned by the old-man priests, the entire hide had been carefully removed, including that peeled from the skull, clear down to the nostrils, all the way back to most of the fur covering the four legs, complete with the tail.

“Small as it was,” Hatcher had explained as he set off for the camp, riding beside Bass’s travois, “likely the calf was born this last spring’s drop. Mebbeso no more’n four months old.”

“Just a babe,” Wood agreed from the far side of the travois.

“But that calf being a cow makes for some strong medicine, Scratch,” Hatcher continued. “Means a special power been give to these people. Power not just to feed themselves on the buffler, but power for these people, to have many children—so the tribe grows strong.”

Never had Titus seen such celebrating: not among the Ute nor among the Crow, even at the Boone County Longhunter Fair. At twilight, fires were lit in front of each lodge not long after hunters returned to the village. There the women and children sliced and roasted meat not just for their own family, but for any visitor who came by. There was singing, with and without the many drums that throbbed in every quarter of the village, pounding along, with the hundreds of feet that hammered the earth as evening swept the day aside and presaged the night.

While the temperature continued to drop, Elbridge Gray and Isaac Simms dragged Bass’s travois over to one of the closest fires where the singing was the strongest. Here by the dancing, leaping flames Bass found it was warm, the chill air convincing him that summer must surely be dying, autumn on its way. Up there in the mountains the first snows would soon be falling, and with those first cold days the elk would begin to gather and bugle—always a sound that made his heart leap and the hair stand at the back of his neck. Then, as sure as sun, the cycle would turn a little more and the snows would begin their creep on down the mountainsides as the beaver repaired their lodges and prepared for their ponds to freeze over—each and every one of the big bucktoothed rats putting on an extra layer of fat beneath their sleek, shiny fur. Under those long guard hairs would lie the downy felt that protected the animal’s skin itself from the cold of water and wind. That sought-after beaver felt was highly coveted by hatters who constructed the fine waterproof “tiles,” those tall, stiff top hats for gentleman types back east of the Mississippi River.

As he lay watching the joyous celebration there by the fire, the women brought him food. Not just the jerked, dried venison Hatcher’s men had given him earlier, but juicy, half-cooked pink meat kissed by the sizzling flames, every last chunk of it dripping grease and juice down his lips, into his beard, and onto his buckskin shirt as he ate, and ate, and ate. And sweet, cool water too. As much as he wanted, gulping huge drafts of it to wash down the meat until he found his belly full and warm, and his eyes grown heavy.

Scratch would awaken from time to time that night and always find someone near: a Shoshone woman or two, along with at least one of Hatcher’s men—folks staying their vigil by his travois to bring him more to eat, more sweet water to drink, or a trapper to help him hobble off into the shadows so he could relieve himself.

Always he would return to his blankets and sleep. No matter the singing and drums, no matter the dancing feet and the laughter in those happy voices. Bass slept. And ate. Then slept some more.

Morning slipped up quiet and cold before the sun came to chase back the chill. Slowly, through slits, he found the gray light did not assault his eyes. No more the drums and dancing. No more laughter and singing. Here in that last cold hour before dawn, the Shoshone had gone off to their lodges and shelters—this village on the move, a migratory people who had been hunting the buffalo for hides and meat to hold back the hoary beast of winter.

So still was the camp and the horseshoe of trees where the tribe had raised their lodges two days back that Bass easily heard the snore of more than one of the men bundled on the ground at the nearby fire. At least a dozen of them in all, wrapped in robes and blankets, their feet close to the coals like the spokes of a wheel. One—it looked to be Rufus Graham—lay sprawled flat on his back, wheezing like the bellow of a two-stack river steamboat, what with missing his four front teeth, both top and bottom. On either side of him lay Shoshone warriors wrapped up like woolly caterpillars in their furry buffalo robes, sleeping despite Graham’s noisy serenade. Beyond, over near one of the other trappers, lay a warrior curled in a tight ball, having nothing more than a heavy saddle blanket to cover himself from shoulder to hip.

Bass sighed, closed his eyes, and went to press his cheek back against the thick fur of the stiffened green buffalo hide beneath him when he heard the quiet footsteps. Out of the murky gray of predawn shadows between the far lodges emerged a tall figure wrapped in a blanket coat, his hood pulled up so that it hid most of his face. A bundle of firewood he dropped beside the fire pit before he swept back the hood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. Ti—tus.”

“Ti—tuzz.”

“Good. Now say, Ti—tus Bass.”

“Ti-tuzz Bezz.”

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

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

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

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

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

“He don’t know no American?”

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

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

“Stick yer hand out to him.”

“What? Why the hell I wanna—”

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

“Shake hands?”

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

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

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

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

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

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