Buffalo Palace

2

“That trader man was wrong, mister.”

With the sudden sound of the child’s voice, Titus turned where he stood at the edge of the muddy, rutted path that passed for a main street here in Franklin. It was the oldest girl among that woman’s brood wanting hard candy back in the mercantile. Bass continued stuffing the first of the cornmeal sacks into the bundles lashed on either side of the mare’s back.

“Oh?” he asked absently. “What was he so wrong about?”

“This’r ain’t the last place you run onto.”

“It ain’t.”

“No, mister. It ain’t.”

Jabbing the second sack down into the bundle on the far side of the mare’s packs, Titus figured he was being goaded into asking. He sighed with a little exasperation, then glanced again at the gangly girl who appeared about to enter her adolescence—and the impatience drained from him. She so reminded him of his oldest sister. Every day slowly rounded out those hard angles on her body now that she was ready to flower into womanhood.

“All right,” he said. “S’pose you tell me what you come to tell me.”

“See: this’r ain’t the last place there’s white folks.”

“Just what the devil that mean to me?” He growled it more than he had wanted it to come out, turning away because he was angry at himself—in that moment remembering how he had marveled at the way another young girl’s bony form rounded itself into a woman’s body back in Rabbit Hash.

“Means there’s white folks on yonder,” the girl declared, then pointed, turning away with a gesture to the north. “Mama said for me to come tell you that.”

His fingers stopped their tying of the canvas lashes. “Your mama in there … she told you come tell me that?”

With a nod the girl replied, “Our place is up to Boone’s Lick. I figger she’s due for a vis’tor. Ever since’t my da took sick and died sudden-like late last summer—we ain’t had all that much in the way of company. Mama ain’t much of a talker, but I knows she tires of us’ns—”

“Your … father died?”

She nodded again. “Mama took it real hard.”

“You mean she’s caring for you young’uns on your place all by herself?”

“No. We got my uncle and his wife with us. But Mama works out to the fields like Da used to, and my auntie cares to us chirrun and the meals.”

He stared off to the north. “Just up to Boone’s Lick, you say?”

“Yes, mister.”

“That a town?”

“Not likely, it ain’t. Just a bunch of folks settled nearby to one ’nother and give the place a name years back.”

“After Dan’l Boone, I’ll wager.”

“Truth be, I dunno.”

“Likely they done so, girl,” he replied as he yanked on the last knot. “Same Boone what they named the county for where at I was born and raised up.”

“Where’s that?”

“Kentucky,” he finally said, the word hard to come out at first, fraught the way it was with so many memories both good and bad—like more strands of a sticky spider’s web than he could ever free himself from.

“So, mister—you come see us?”

He looked back at the girl again, mystified by the invitation … although he understood. Many were the folks who lived their lives set apart from others, only to gather at Sunday services, for funerals and weddings and baptisms—along with the annual Longhunter Fair. Theirs was the lone and hardy stock who took great pleasure in the infrequent passerby who carried news of distant people and places.

Titus asked, “That what your mama told you come ask me?”

Openmouthed, she nodded. “Said you got our welcome to come by on your way upriver.”

Glancing over the girl’s shoulder, for the first time he noticed two of the younger children standing in the store’s open doorway, watching the stranger and their sister. “You’re on your way back to home now?”

“Mama said to tell you be ahead on your way and we’d come along shortly.”

“You riding?”

The girl giggled quickly behind her hand, her eyes twinkling as she answered, “Hell no.” Then her faced flushed in embarrassment. “Y-you won’t tell Mama I cursed, w-will you?”

With a smile and a wag of his head, Titus loosened the packmare’s halter, then reached for the rein to the Indian pony. He bent his head down to whisper, “That’s our secret. I swear it.”

“Just that … all we got left us is that one ol’ mule,” and she pointed across the rutted path at the animal. “Does all our plowing, and we bring it to town with us for to carry home all what we take out on barter from Mr. Henline in there.”

His heart felt a tug at that moment, staring at the old mule, the way it hung its head and kept weight off one of its legs. Clearly, the hock was swollen with spavin. Easy enough to see that it wouldn’t be long before the mule came up lame on them. “You sure your mama wants me to stop by?”

“She said so for me to tell you.”

“I can’t be stopping off every place I go by now,” he grumbled, suddenly perturbed at the intrusion on his journey. Bass jabbed his left foot in the stirrup of the worn saddle.

“Mama said to tell you she figured you look like’n you needed a home-cooked meal.” The girl prodded, taking a step forward as Titus rose onto the back of the pony. “Likely you ain’t had none such in quite a time.”

He opened his mouth to snap back at her about no longer needing no home-cooked meals … then decided better. Why, it did sound good. But, just the same, he had some new victuals of his own—so he wasn’t all that bad off. Best to keep pushing on.

“I got me a long, long way to go, girl. You tell your mama—”

“Last place a body gets to talk with civil white folks,” she blurted in.

Impatient to be on his way, Titus was on the verge of tapping heels into the pony’s ribs when he stopped and brooded on that. “No other place on yonder from you? Now, I can’t believe that.”

“There’s the forts upriver,” and she flung an arm in that general direction. “Soldiers, traders. Men come down from upriver. But there ain’t no more plain white working folk after us. Mama thought you’d like to have yourself a hot meal and maybe some man talk with my uncle.”

Slowly he turned to gaze at the doorway once again. A third small face had poked itself around the jamb—watching expectantly.

“All right,” he answered, not all that sure of his resolve, “You go tell your mama I’m most grateful for her kindness … and tell her I’ll feel better riding along home with your bunch. Now, be off with you and have your mama finish up inside so we can get on our way. Gonna be getting dark soon enough as it is.”

Twilight was just beginning to squeeze the last light of the day from the sky when the girl and her oldest brother led the lot of them up a wide path into the yard surrounding four squat buildings and a half-dozen rickety pole lean-tos. After introductions the flush-faced aunt announced that supper was simmering over the fire and ready soon as everyone washed up and sat themselves down.

“Your belly ready for that home-cooked meal I promised you?” the widow asked Titus, her dark-gray eyes finally meeting his again for the first time since they began their walk north from Franklin.

The eyes softened as he gazed back at them … and the voice was nice enough too. “I’m always ready, yes, ma’am.”

Night came down easily, and the breeze had kicked up by the time Bass shoved himself away from the long, crude table and rose from his half-log bench, its legs scraping across the puncheon floor. The woman’s brother-in-law got to his feet along with Titus, turning to retrieve a pipe and tobacco pouch from the stone mantel above the fireplace, which provided the only light for the low-roofed room besides a dozen or more candles and Betty lamps filled with oil he figured could only have been rendered from a bear.

“Let’s us use my tobaccy,” Bass suggested. “Find some way to pay you back for that meal.”

“No paying back necessary,” the widow replied from across the table as she rose, her hands filled with wooden trenchers. “You already done that at Bailey Henline’s shop.”

Plainly needled, the man kept his eyes on Titus as he asked his sister-in-law, “What you go and get yourself in debt with Bailey for now?”

“She don’t owe nobody nothing,” Bass quickly intervened, putting his hand up as the widow was about to protest. “I had me a little something extra after trading with the man. And them young’uns was just having ’em a gander at the hard candy. I paid for ’em to have a sweet treat. Didn’t amount to nothing.”

“An’ you have y’ some of Henline’s tobaccy?”

Bass nodded. “Mine now. I’ll be off to fetch it.”

The two of them settled out front beneath the narrow porch awning on half-log stools, leaning back against the rough-log wall chinked with Missouri clay, and slowly sucked down more than one bowlful apiece that evening. While the settler dragged out as much news as he could about what all was happening downriver in St. Louis and beyond, Titus pried out as much information as he could on what lay upriver.

“Fort Osage be a fella’s next stop,” the man declared. “South bank. But—you cain’t count on soldiers and folks allays being there.”

“They closed the fort down?”

“Not all the time.”

“How far?” Bass inquired.

With a shrug he answered, “Only been up that way once afore. Can’t really say. It’s a piece.”

“How many days you figure?”

“You ain’t got no ragtag along and can keep your horses on the scat—I’d figure a little better’n a week.”

“That long?” And he watched the settler nod, drawing on his pipe, then dropped his eyes to peer into the bowl the way the man did after nearly every puff.

“Fine tobaccy, this,” the man offered after a moment of silence between them.

“You know anything of what’s north of Osage?”

“Next place be Atkinson’s post. If, like you said, you’re hankering to foller the Platte west, I hear that’s where you pick up the river what’ll take you all the way to them far mountains.”

The sound of that distant country made his mouth dry then and there. It seemed like he’d journeyed so damned far already. Fifteen winters it was—as far back as 1810 … as far east as Kentucky in the great bend country of the Ohio River. And lately it seemed everyone he ran into was telling him he’d only begun his journey. From what he’d seen, maybeso those folks were right.

Back east on the Ohio and the great Mississippi, in those forests and along the trails and traces—things weren’t really all that spread out and far apart. Even in traveling the wilderness along the Natchez Trace, a man knew he would come across a stand—a wayside inn—with some frequency. But from what he had seen out here already … not only was a man running out of folks and settlements, it was as if the land itself damn well seemed to be growing all the bigger on him the farther west he set his feet down.

While the sky domed overhead, endlessly stretching to the western horizon, the country itself he was crossing appeared to swell with every mile he put behind him. And more than once he had come near scaring himself to the marrow, just to think that by some underhanded jigger-pokey magic the land puffed itself up beneath him like a lister, making it so those far mountains arose farther and farther away the faster he rode to find them, the harder he yearned to have that first glimpse of them.

“Yes,” Titus finally answered the settler, and stared down into the bowl of his pipe. His tobacco had gone out, and it had grown quieter inside the main house behind them as well as the children’s quarters nearby, connected to the squat cabin by a roofed dogtrot.

With a sigh the settler rocked forward and knocked his pipe against the side of his nankeen britches slick and shiny with age and wear. A small black dollop dropped from his clay pipe bowl. Then he peered squarely at the visitor. “I don’t s’pose there’s any use of a feller to try talkin’ you into staying put right here, is there?”

He looked at the plea in the man’s eyes for a polite moment before he answered. “No. I’m sorry. Was a time I figgered there’d be nothing for me but to stay on my own place back to Kentucky. But—I found out I ain’t the kind to stay on.”

With sad resignation the man nodded and said, “Coulda used a hand. You look to be a likely sort for work.”

Titus watched the settler twist and turn the small clay pipe in his big hands, the dirt scored into every wrinkle and crevice the way indigo ink would highlight a seafarer’s tattoo. “I’m sure the woman’s trying to give all she can.”

“It was hard enough at times afore my brother passed on,” he admitted. “Yes—I know Edna’s trying. Just that … this is a man’s work and she ain’t got no business …” Then his voice faded off as he looked up at Bass’s eyes and saw no softening there. “God knows it ain’t a woman’s lot to do what that woman does on this place.”

“She don’t seem the sort to shy at hefting her share of the load.”

With a doleful wag the settler explained, “Edna ain’t never shied away from her share of the work.”

“I figure she does what she has to for her young’uns,” Titus replied, whacking his pipe bowl against the sole of his worn boot.

“Time and again I tried to send her and them all back to her family.”

After waiting while the settler paused, he asked, “And?”

“And she wouldn’t have nothing of it. Said this was where my brother counted on setting down roots and making his stand. Said that’s why she was staying. Said she would stay close by where he was planted—right out yonder we laid him … and she wanted to be planted right next to him come her time to pass on to the great by-and-by.”

“How long’s it been?”

“Last summer,” he answered quietly. Then he wagged his head and stared at the tiny pipe in his big, rough hands. “She stayed with him all those days till the end while my woman saw to the young’uns. Then of a early morning when Heber died, just afore sunup, Edna cleaned him, put some fresh clothes on him while I dug his grave—and we buried him that very day. But what got to me was the way she shuffled the kids off to the house here when we was walking back from the grave. Told ’em to go with their auntie and mind her. Said she had work to be doing out with me.”

“That when she went to work with you in the fields yonder?”

“The very afternoon we buried my brother. She went in and put on a old pair of his britches, cinched ’em up with some twine, and told me we had us work to be doing out to the fields. And … she ain’t grieved a bit since then, what I know of.”

“She ain’t cried none?”

“Not since she walked away from Heber’s grave.”

“That’s a strong woman,” Titus ventured, not sure if it were strength or not that kept a body from grieving.

“Thought so my own self at first,” the man replied eventually. “But now … I just wonder if she ain’t in trouble.”

“What you mean—trouble?”

Rocking forward on his half-log stool again, the settler rose to his feet and kneaded the back of one thigh before he spoke. “A body’s gotta grieve the loss of a love, Mr. Bass. Edna ain’t yet grieved proper. She holds it all in—no telling how it’ll eat away at her.”

At last Titus quietly offered, “A strong woman like that—one what helps you to the fields and pulls her own weight, never asking for any slack in the rope—she’ll come through her grieving in her own way. And she’ll be fine.”

He looked at Bass a moment, then replied, “I ain’t got no choice but to trust in just that, mister. Hope is that Edna will grieve in her own way, and not keep it all tied up inside her like a bag full of knots.”

Titus watched the man turn and move off, stopping at the doorway.

The settler asked, “You’ll make do over there at the lean-to you picked out for yourself?”

“I’ll be fine. Thankee much.”

“I’m up afore light, Mr. Bass. So I’ll see we have coffee together afore you pull out.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

For several minutes Titus waited there on the porch, listening to the soft sounds of people moving quietly about inside the main cabin, thinking he might have himself another bowl of that tobacco—then the place got quiet and he decided to be off to quiet himself. He slowly rocked himself up off the stool and stood to regard the stars dusting the sky above him, just beyond the edge of the slightly sagging porch roof.

The last Titus remembered was that he had crossed the rutted, hoof-pocked yard and squatted in the dim starlight below the slant of his log and brush lean-to, yanked off his boots, then kicked the blankets over himself and laid his head atop his coat he had folded over his old saddle. Closing his eyes, he faded off to sleep thinking about that far land where the mountains scraped the sky and the buffalo blackened the earth.

“Shhh,” the voice whispered to him in his dream. “Lemme in there with you. It’s cold out here.”

Beyond the lip of the shelter, the sky still hung inky black as he blinked his eyes open, sensing the hands lifting the blankets, fluffing them back over them both as the press of a body came against his. His hand tightened on the pistol between his knees as he came more awake. Rigid and wary.

“Lay still,” the woman’s voice husked against his ear. “We both stay warmer that way.”

Swallowing hard, Bass lay as still as a stalk of grass on a windless day, while he felt her screwge herself against his back, draping an arm over him. Her gasps of breath teased the long hair curled at the collar of his linen shirt, warming him.

“Ed-Edna?”

As quickly as he uttered her name, the woman brought her hand up and laid two fingers on his mouth.

“It’s me. Now shush an’ lay quiet aside me.”

He was afraid he already knew the answer to his question before he asked it. “What you doing here?”

“I’ll swear. Back to Bailey Henline’s place in Franklin you didn’t strike me as a man so thick in the head not to know what I’m here for.”

“I s’pose I ain’t so thick I can’t figger things out in the middle of the night,” he whispered, starting to roll on his side toward her. But the woman clamped her arm around Titus, stopping him. He lay perfectly still for a moment, then said quietly, “Long as I can remember, you womenfolk been the biggest of mystery to me. I don’t mind owning up to this here being a mystery to me too.”

For a long time she did not speak. Then, “It’s been a long, long time since’t I laid with a man.”

That sweet tang of prickly anxiety rose in him like an awakening. He even felt the stir in his flesh as her fingers came away from his lips and traced their way down his chest to his belly, where she pulled and jerked at the tail of his shirt to free it from his button-front leather britches. As her fingers lightly brushed across the skin of his bared belly, Bass sensed himself growing. Enjoying it. Yet afraid of what was to come.

“We ought’n not t-to …,” he started with a bit of a stammer as her fingers no longer stroked his skin lightly but began to knead the flesh and muscle at the waistband of his britches. “I c-can’t.”

“Why?” she whispered huskily in his ear. “Ain’cha been with a woman?”

“I have—”

“You ain’t no boy,” she interrupted, pulling her hand away suddenly. “Could tell that right off there in Bailey Henline’s store. You had a look about you. I knowed you was the kind what’d had you many a woman. Likely a lot of whores too.”

He felt her shuffling the blankets behind him, tugging more at his shirt until she had the back tail out and yanked up nearly to his shoulders.

“Ain’t gonna deny none of that,” he answered at last.

“But I never took you for the kind what didn’t know the difference twixt a whore … and a woman in need.”

“In … in need?”

“Bad in need of you,” Edna answered. “Been a long time, Mr. Bass. And though the thought’s crossed my mind a time or two, I ain’t about to go to my own husband’s brother with my … need.”

As she said it, the woman came against him once more with her body heat. And this time he was sure he sensed more of that warmth, now that she had raised his shirt—now that she had her breasts pressed against his bare back.

“Someone gonna hear us,” he whispered, suddenly aware of how quiet the night had become around them. “Your young’uns. Maybe your brother—”

“No one gonna hear us,” she breathed at his ear, reaching around him again and taking one of his hands in hers. “Less’n you’re one what likes to scream when he climbs atop a woman.”

“I ain’t … no, never did I scream.”

“Just shush then and feel what I’m giving you this dark, cold night.”

Her hand tightened on his, guiding it over his hip to hers. Surprised, he froze the briefest of moments, finding her hip bare. Leading his hand up and down her thigh, then sweeping it back over her buttock, Edna began to groan, low and feral. Her hand left his as Titus continued to explore on his own.

“You didn’t wear nothing at all?” he asked.

Huskily, she replied, “Just a ol’ coat I shimmied out of.”

By now he felt himself become fully erect as she grabbed hold of his hand again and led it directly between her thighs, locking it where she was the warmest. He sensed a shudder shoot through the woman as his fingers explored, finding her moist.

“Y-you’re a widow woman—”

“That don’t mean nothing.”

Starting to roll toward him, Edna immediately had her fingers at the buttons of his britches, sitting up slightly so she could get both hands working to yank at the front of his pants. The blankets slid off her shoulder. In the dim starshine he got his first good look at her bare neck, a shoulder where the coat had slipped down her arm, and then her breasts.

Her hand hungrily grabbed his rigid flesh as the front of his britches opened. Up and down she toyed with him, first squeezing about as hard as she could, then lightly brushing a single finger up, then down. “You’re ready for me, ain’cha, Mr. Bass?”

“Get out of your coat,” he ordered hungrily, his eyes flicking a last time across the starlit yard toward the small buildings. There were no second thoughts now.

“Just soon’s I get you outta your shucks,” she said, yanking, pulling, tearing at his canvas pants.

At the same time, he was tearing his shirt the rest of the way over his head and off his arms, flinging his clothing to the side in a careless heap.

As she leaned back to slip off the coat that lay open, he leaned forward, taking one of her breasts into his mouth and began to kiss, fondle, suck. A tremor shot through her body and she moaned once more, hurriedly shaking the coat from her arms. The instant it was off, she had a hand encircling his rigid flesh once more while at the same time collapsing to her back beside him there.

He found himself between her legs as he brought the blankets over them, the cold night wind sharp as freshly stoned knife against their flesh. Impatiently, Edna guided him with the one hand, her other insistent, pressing at the small of his back, urging him forward. After several moments of lunging against her in vain, Edna’s warmth eventually wrapped itself around him as he drove himself up to the hilt.

Now as one they began to rock there beneath the stars on that moonless night as the earth spun toward dawn. The closer he got to spending himself within her, it seemed the larger his penis grew. And the more Edna whimpered. Low and sporadic at first, now she tangled her fingers in his long hair, pulling him down, holding him there so that she could press her lips against his ear as he continued to thrust himself against her with a growing urgency.

Then a high-pitched, staccato, and almost silent screech escaped her throat as she shook volcanically beneath him in those seconds Titus finished inside her. Her scream quickly became a whimper, then a raspy, breathless whisper at his ear as he collapsed fully atop her. Spent, as weak as a newborn calf.

“You sleep for ’while now, Mr. Bass.” Her words brushed his flesh as she nestled her head against his neck. “Then I’ll be rousing you well afore first light another time. That way I can be back with the young’uns and no one’s the wiser come morning.”

She was true to her word, Edna was.

It seemed like no time at all until he was nudged awake. Bass found her kissing on his neck and down his chest, her hands busy as ever stroking him, her small breasts brushing and tantalizing against his shoulder, his arm, his belly as she shifted beside him.

Then, just as she had promised, after that second feral coupling the woman rolled herself away from him, peeled her coat from the jumble of his blankets, and wrapped herself within it before she leaned over him.

“Mr. Bass,” she whispered, her lips almost against his, her eyes staring right into him. “I ain’t no young woman no more. And I ain’t got a damn prospect one way out here where Heber brought us for to find his dream. So I’m telling you to take what I give you of Edna Mae Grigsby and ride off come morning. I damn well know you’re gonna ’member the smell of me when you’re out there fighting off them Pawnee or any them other nasty Injuns. An’ then maybeso you’ll wanna come riding back here to me, to what you had you a taste of this night.”

The guilt rose in him like an underground spring. “I … I don’t want you getting the wrong idea—”

“Don’t have me no idea a’tall, Mr. Bass,” she interrupted. “Fact is, you’ll likely not ever be back. But if you’ve got yourself a hankering for a good woman to spend out your days with—just remember I’m here.”

“Edna.” He said it in such a way that she already knew.

Apologetically.

And the woman put her fingers on his lips to silence any more rejection of her. Edna drew her face back from his as he fought to find the words to explain.

“Then go, Mr. Bass,” she whispered. “I figger we both got what we wanted here tonight. You’re on your way out there for something. And I got what I been needing—needing for the better part of a year since my Heber gone and left me with young’uns to raise and fields to plow.”

“But you ain’t never cried,” he said. “That’s what—”

“No I ain’t,” she admitted, her lip stiffening. “But likely I will one of these days soon, Mr. Bass. At first, I only got dead inside when Heber died. It hurt so bad him going that I made myself go all dead inside, like a dried-up autumn leaf. Then I tol’t myself another man be coming along and want the pleasure I could give him for the rest of his days. Didn’t know if’n it’d be you …” She wagged her head as she leaned back. “So be it.”

The look on her face, the sag in her shoulders—it caused him such pain inside. “I didn’t tend to hurt no one, Edna.”

“Hush now. Ain’t you caused me the hurt,” she said, brushing her fingers down the side of his face, her eyes pooling, shiny in the inky starlight. “I figger leastways now I can go on and shed myself of these tears.”

Feeling the first of them spill hot upon his chest, Titus pulled the woman against him, nestling her head in the crook of his neck as she began to sob. He cradled her there as Edna cried after all those months, her body shaking harder than it had when she twice rocked beneath him. Then her sobbing grew quieter, and it seemed she drifted off to sleep there within his embrace.

Out east on the horizon the sky was graying when he came awake himself, one of his arms gone to sleep, tingling beneath the woman.

Suddenly he smelled the woodsmoke, rising slightly to gaze across the yard at the cabin where he realized a fire had been lit and coffee set to boil.

“Edna!” he whispered down at her sharply.

She came awake immediately, rubbing at her eyes and realizing. “I best go,” she said in a small voice, throwing back the covers, slipping out, then carefully tucking them back against his naked body.

Titus asked, “You … things gonna be all right with you?”

With a sad smile she leaned close to him again. “I’ll make out just fine.”

“You’ll make some man a handsome wife again one day real soon.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bass. Thank you.” She bent over his face, kissed him lightly, then rose to her knee, pulling the long flaps of the wool coat about her bare legs. “You don’t find what you’re looking for out there, you come riding on back here and look for me.”

He couldn’t help but grin. “That’s a awful tempting offer, Edna Mae.”

“It’s a offer only a crazy man like you’d turn down, ain’t it?”

Remembering what he had told the Franklin shopkeeper, Titus leaned forward, kissed her forehead. “I am a bit crazy. But—a man never knows what the future holds for him.”

“Ever’ now and then … you remember me, won’cha?”

“Said I was crazy,” he replied with a wide grin. “Not no idjit what can’t remember the feel of a good woman. And you are a good woman.”

Reluctantly she got to her feet. “Good-bye, Mr. Bass.”

“Good-bye, Edna Mae.”

He watched her turn and quickly sprint across the grassy yard, her feet slicked with dew until she was lost in the dark shadows of the dogtrot, where she would slip back into her cabin, to wait out the minutes until sunrise with her children.

In the sudden cold vacuum that she left, he felt sorry for leaving her and this place. Then he felt an even deeper remorse for having decided to stop over. But as he yanked on his clothes, Titus decided what was done was done. Some unseen hand had guided him here, perhaps. And there was no denying that he might well have needed her as much as she had needed him.

Edna Mae was putting an end to something.

What with Titus Bass standing at the precipice of the adventure of his lifetime.

Maybeso they had both been fated to cross paths just when they needed each other the most.

By the time he had the blankets rolled up and ready to lash onto the mare, he heard the scrape of the door across its jamb. Turning, he found the settler emerging from the cabin, a steaming china cup in each hand as he stepped off the narrow porch and onto the dewy grass.

“Promised you coffee, Titus,” he said as he presented the cup to Bass.

Self-consciously, he took it from the man. “Smells damned good.” Nervously twisting inside as he took that first steaming sip, Titus figured the settler couldn’t help but know.

Eyes not touching, they drank in silence for some time, savoring the quiet of the morning as the gray turned to bluish-purple off in the distance—back to the east where both of them had left a life behind them.

“You’re ready to be off … it appears to me,” the man said to break that stillness of time.

“Dallied long enough,” he replied, then hated himself for saying it. Making it sound the way he did, what with the man knowing about Edna Mae creeping off to the lean-to.

The farmer asked, “You a breakfast man?”

“A’times, I am.”

“Maybe you’ll stay on while I rustle us up some—”

“I—I feel the pull to be on my way,” Titus interrupted, feeling the embarrassment bordering on shame all the way down to the soles of his feet.

“I could have the missus wrap up some of the leavin’s from supper—”

“I thankee for your kindness and all,” Bass broke in again. “But—I’ll do just fine.”

Taking a step closer to Titus, the settler looked Bass squarely in the eye, and with an even voice he said, “She needed you … so there ain’t no reason to feel ashamed for it.”

“Damn,” he sighed with disgust at having his fears confirmed. “I shouldn’t have got myself—”

“Listen here, Mr. Bass,” the man interrupted this time with a doleful wag of his head. “Edna Mae is her own woman. Allays has been. I figure she knows her own mind too, and I don’t hold you on account for that. She’s a widow now. Been one too damned long for my way of thinking. True enough, she may’ve been my brother’s wife, but likely you done her what she needed.”

“Look here—I swear I didn’t come out here for none of that to happen.”

He held his empty hand up as if to silence Bass and pursed his lips a moment before he said, “Like I said, chances are you done her what she needed. And … for that, I can thank you.” He switched the coffee cup to his left hand and held out the right. “I wish you God’s speed, Mr. Bass.”

Eagerly he accepted the man’s big, muscular, dirt-imprinted hand, and they shook. “I thankee for all you done.”

As he accepted the empty cup from Titus, the settler asked, “You’ll be careful out yonder now?”

Taking up the rein to the Indian pony, Bass turned and stuffed a foot into the stirrup. “Didn’t get near this old ’thout watching out for my own hide.” He rose to saddle, settled, and said, “Time was I didn’t figger I’d see my thirtieth year. But”—and he leaned back with a sigh—“look at me now. Here I’ve put that thirtieth year ahind me, and I’m on my way to the Rocky Mountains.”

“Likely so it’s the right time for you.”

“Believe it is,” Titus responded, then nodded toward the cabin, where he was sure he saw at least two small faces pressed against the smudged isinglass panes on that solitary window. “You’ll tell Edna Mae I took leave of here wishing her all the best fortune to come her way.”

“I will do that.”

“You tell her again I ain’t got a fear one she ain’t gonna find a good man to care for her and the young’uns.”

“I’ll tell her.” And he took a step back, flinging the coffee from his own cup, then looping both cup handles over the fingers of one hand as he shoved some unruly hair back from his eyes.

“You’re the kind to take care of all of them, ain’t you?”

The man gazed up at Bass. “If that’s what the Lord calls upon me to do.”

With a smile Titus replied, “Then you’re just the sort like my own kin … my own pap. I’m glad all of them here got you to depend on.”

And before the settler could utter another word, Bass tapped his heels into the pony’s ribs and yanked sharply on the mare’s lead rope.

Moving off in a hurry, with the newborn sun rising at his back.

He didn’t see a human or smell firesmoke for something close to another two hundred river miles.

Then of a sudden, on the warming midday breeze, he drew up, catching that first whiff of burning wood. As much as he strained his eyes to see beyond the thick timber clustered along the hillside, Titus could not make out a puff, much less a column, of smoke. The thick, stinging gorge rose in his throat—remembering so many years before having been caught flat-footed along the Mississippi by a Chickasaw hunting party.

It would not happen again, he swore under his breath.

Quickly he urged the animals toward a thick copse of leafy green and hurled himself out of the saddle, landing as quietly as he could upon the thick carpet of spring grass. Lashing the horses to a low-hanging limb, Titus retrieved his rifle and crept toward the side of a low hill a quarter of a mile ahead of him. Hugging the shadows offered by the thick hardwood timber that bordered this southern bank of the Missouri, Bass carefully picked his way around the brow of the knoll. For all he knew, he had made it to Pawnee country and had blundered smack-dab into them—just about the way he had bumped into those Chickasaw warriors while out hunting for Ebenezer Zane’s boat crew.

Dropping to his knees as the wind came full into his face, rank with the sharp tang of woodsmoke grown strong in his nostrils, Titus crept forward, parting the brush with the muzzle of the fullstock flintlock rifle. Yard by yard he pressed until he stopped: hearing the familiar call of birds in the distance, followed by the roll of at least one woodpecker thundering its echo within a nearby glen. Were it an Indian camp, he figured, there sure as hell wouldn’t be such routine noise from the forest creatures.

Swallowing down the dry lump clogging his throat, Bass again parted the branches of the brush and pushed his way forward until he sat at the edge of the clearing. Ahead of him bobbed waves of tall grass that seemed to stretch all the way to the sharp-cut north bank of the Missouri. He dared to raise his head a little higher, catching a glimpse of the river at the foot of that north bank—still not all that certain he wouldn’t see a cluster of Indian wickiups.

Across the river to the south the spring sky was sullied with but a single thin trail of smoke rising from a solitary stone chimney that protruded over the top of a stockade wall. The double gate stood open just wide enough to easily admit a wagon, almost as if expecting visitors.

Quickly glancing left down the south bank, then north, Bass thought it curious he did not lay eyes on any humans. Then he spotted a pair of draft horses picketed just outside the stockade wall, contentedly grazing on the spring grass. He craned his neck to see more of that western side of the stockade. Beyond the pair grazed three more horses.

After all these days without sign of another human—just possibly there was life here.

At first the open gate and no sight of folks had unnerved him—causing him to fear the place had been attacked, its inhabitants killed, and the fort left empty. But it just didn’t figure that Injuns would leave good horseflesh behind.

A voice called out from the woods beyond the fort, surprising him. Bass craned his neck to the east to watch a figure emerge from the line of trees, an ax over one shoulder and his shirt carelessly draped over the other. Again he called back to the timber, and almost immediately two other men burst from the woods to join the first. The heaviest of them, also naked to the waist, tugged at leather braces, slipping them over both arms, then adjusting the belt line of his drop-front britches below his more-than-ample belly. That one mopped his face with a bright-yellow bandanna, then stuffed it into the back of his pants.

As he tried to study the trio, Titus could hear their talk, three distinct voices—but could not make out any words at this distance across the muddy, runoff swollen river. As the three turned the northeast corner of the stockade, Bass realized they all wore the same pants and ankle-high, square-toed boots.

“Soldiers.” Both dust and sweat stained the light-blue wool of those britches as the men turned through the open gate and disappeared from view. Almost as quickly the fat man reappeared, dragging behind him a small two-wheeled cart with a long double-tree attached to the front. It bounced and rumbled across the rutted, pocked ground as he turned the corner of the stockade, headed back toward the timber where the trio had emerged just minutes before.

For some time Titus sat there thinking on it, wondering if these three might well try to keep him from pushing on west to the mountains. At least that’s what Isaac Washburn had proclaimed last year when each night they had laid their plans for their journey to the Rockies. From the Missouri River country on west across the plains, Gut had explained, a man must either be a dragoon stationed at one of the riverside posts, or he had to belong to a licensed fur brigade sent upriver by one of the big companies being outfitted and setting off every spring from St. Louis these past few years.

For the longest time the trade in western furs had all but died off—what with the trouble the British raised among the upriver tribes during the years they waged war on the young country of America; not to mention the losses of men Manuel Lisa suffered at the hand of the Blackfeet high in the northern Rockies. Wary at best, the St. Louis merchants had pulled in their horns, licked their wounds, and confined themselves to doing what trading they could with the Sauk, Fox, Omaha, and the other more peaceable tribes along the lower river.

Then three years ago the Americans recruited by Ashley and Henry again flung themselves at the upper river, against the distant and hostile tribes, against that fabled land so rich in thick, prime fur.

But Titus Bass wasn’t about to join the army—not going to cut wood or dig slip-trench latrines at one of these river posts—hell, no, he wouldn’t do that and be forced to gaze out longingly at all that expanse of open wilderness he would never get to see as long as he was a soldier.

And he sure as hell wasn’t the sort to be a joiner either. Not about to sign on with one of those brigades that promised each man a rifle, traps, and two meals a day … and in return each dumb brute must promise the muscles of his back, his arms and legs, for the grueling labor of warping and cordel ling laden keel boats against the fickle Missouri’s mighty current. No, sir. All that talk he overheard in the St. Louis watering holes and knocking shops sure didn’t sound like much of a life to him: taking commands from some smooth-faced army officer, or from a slick-tongued fur trader bound to grow rich off the labors of others.

Perhaps if he rested right here in the brush and tall grass, watching the small post across the river for a while longer, he might learn for sure if more than those three were quartered at the fort. After all, there were five horses grazing outside the stockade walls. And then he chuckled, imagining the sight of that big-bellied one bouncing along at an ungainly gallop upon one of those horses.

A moment more and Bass slapped his knee, wagging his head for his shortsighted stupidity. As well as he knew horses, Titus chided himself for not seeing it earlier. Those sure as hell weren’t dragoon animals meant to be ridden. They were wagon stock: thick-hipped and high-backed. Which meant this place was peopled with foot soldiers.

It wasn’t long before the thin trail of smoke from that lone chimney became a thick column. One of those soldiers had punched life back into their fire.

That’s when Titus noticed the angle of the shadows and looked into the west to measure the descent of the sun. Those soldiers were done with their fatigue for the day and were preparing their supper. Just thinking of it made his stomach grumble. More than a week and a half ago he had left Boone’s Lick and Arrow Rock behind. He remembered now the last meal cooked by the hand of a woman. She had warmed his belly that evening and, in the darkness of that same night, come to warm his blankets. How he wished Edna Mae well in her search for a husband: a man for her bed, and a father for her children.

Then he gazed at the river, studying the far landing constructed of thick poplar and oak pilings buried into the bank, where river travelers would tie up their craft. To one of the pilings were lashed three crude pirogues carved out of thick-trunked trees, each of them bobbing against the wharf and each other with a rhythmic, dull clunk as the Missouri pushed on past. On the grassy bank itself lay two canoes, upside down, their bellies pointing at the cloudless afternoon sky.

He could well slip on around the post himself, unseen by those soldiers. But sooner or later, Titus realized, he would have to cross the Missouri. Once she pointed her way north—he would have to make his way over to the yonder bank anyway. For more minutes as the sun slipped closer to the far edge of the earth, he brooded on it—whether or not to chance these soldiers and this post. Or to pass them on by.

He racked his memory of all those sober or whiskey-sodden nights spent with Isaac Washburn. Besides Fort Kiowa, where old Hugh Glass had crawled after being mauled by the she-grizz, the only fort his recollections came up with was the one Gut spoke of near the mouth of the Platte—the one called Atkinson. For the life of him, Titus couldn’t remember the old fur trapper warning him of any others. Atkinson was the one Gut vowed they would give wide berth as they made their way west.

But this stockade—what the hell was this post sitting here of a sudden on the south bank of the Missouri?

As the shadows stretched long and the afternoon breeze cooled against his shaggy cheek, Titus wrestled with it the way he had manhandled a piece of strap iron at Hysham Troost’s forge: all fire and muscle. And as the day grew old and evening beckoned out of the east, Bass owned up to what he’d been hankering to do almost from the moment he first set eyes on that stockade across the river.