Wind Walker

ELEVEN

“Ain’t you glad to see me, Scratch?” Shadrach Sweete roared.

Bass felt troubled as he peered southwest across the valley of Black’s Fork. “It ain’t that I’m not happy to have you back,” he explained with a little irritation, watching the big man rein up beside him and slide out of the saddle. “I spotted the dust from your travois and them animals—figgered it was my daughter comin’.”

“Magpie?” Sweete snorted as he approached, leading his horse. “That li’l gal can’t raise much dust by her own self.”

They clasped forearms and shook, pounding one another on the shoulder there on the flat some forty yards outside the main gate at Fort Bridger. “Ain’t Magpie I was meaning. I got another daughter.”

Sweete inched back. “I never knowed.”

He grinned with pride. “Name’s Amanda. She come in yestiddy with the last train down from the ferry.”

“How’d she know her pa was here?”

Titus shook his head. “Didn’t. Bound away for Oregon with her husband. Got four li’l ones of her own too.”

“Then she ain’t a young’un herself,” Shad commented as they started moseying toward the post walls. “When’s last time you see’d her?”

“Late winter of thirty-four.”

Sweete looked over at Bass with a moment of study, then asked, “You still recognize her after all that time?”

“She come found me,” he declared. “Was in the store yonder when she heard Bridger give my name to some fella from the train what needed a li’l smithy work. Come over to see for herself if I was the one.”

Sweete laid his big hand on the shorter man’s shoulder. “You really her pa?”

“I am, Shad.” It was then they stopped short of the gate and Titus turned to stare at the distance, his one good eye moving across the distant trees. “Thought she’d be back with ’em by now.”

“Who?”

“Amanda an’ her family. They was coming to dinner.”

Sweete cleared his throat thoughtfully, then said with a sympathetic tone, “Maybe her husband ain’t the sort to wanna sit down for no dinner with Amanda’s pa.”

He studied Shad a moment, a new worry intruding on his plans for a happy evening. “Why you say that: He won’t wanna eat with me?”

“I dunno. Here this fella’s been married to your daughter all these years—who knows if she ever told him her pa was still livin’, or where you was in the first place, even when they started out for Oregon. Maybe your Amanda just let it out of the bag on him today real sudden, an’ it took him by surprise. Some folks are a mite touchy like that, you see?”

Titus shrugged a shoulder, not wanting to believe it. He wagged his head, saying, “Not likely. What she told me, the fella seems like a good enough sort.”

Shad peered at his friend’s face. “Sounds like you don’t got a thing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry ’bout,” Bass repeated, unconvinced. “Just wanna know why they ain’t showed up.”

“What say we head on over to the camp, have ourselves a look? You an’ me.”

“I’ll get a horse while you tell Shell Woman why you won’t be helping her set up the lodge,” Titus said in a gush as he started to turn aside. “Tell her she can fetch Waits-by-the-Water to give her a hand! Them two need a time to talk after all the weeks Shell Woman’s been away at the ferry.”

“I’ll wait right here for you!” Sweete hollered back.

Bass suddenly dug in his heels and skidded to a halt. “By the by, tell Shell Woman you an’ the young’uns are invited to a special feed tonight in the fort!”

Shad swiped at the sweat trapped at the back of his neck beneath the long, matted mane of hair. “What’s so special ’bout tonight?”

“My family’s sittin’ down to dinner with my daughter an’ my four grandkids,” he roared back at Sweete as he bolted away again, beaming anew. “That’s what makes this evenin’ shine for this here child!”

The two of them and that pair of rascal dogs were no more than a half mile from the emigrants’ camp when they realized something out of the ordinary was afoot among these Oregon-bound travelers. Usually these camps were a bustling beehive of activity at this time of the day: young men and boys watering the hundreds and hundreds of animals, women and girls bent over fires as they prepared the evening meal, others of all ages moving about, going here and there on one mission or another now that the train was not rolling and they had these precious hours before darkness fell. Repairs to wagons, wheels, guns, or equipment. Medication administered and healing words spoken to those become sick or injured along the last few days of their journey. Older children assigned to watch over the youngest, noisiest, and quickest of foot in camp.

But even those few youngsters Titus spotted on the fringes of the gathered crowd seemed oddly quiet at this time of day; at long last they were allowed to run and play and burn off all that energy they had bottled up through the interminable hours of sitting still in those jostling wagons.

“Somethin’ ain’t … right ’bout this,” he said to Shadrach.

“Looks to be a meeting to me,” Sweete said, pointing out the large gathering near the bank of Black’s Fork.

Most of the emigrants stood, some seated in the grass beneath the shade of a thick copse of overhanging cottonwoods. Men, women, and their children too.

As their horses carried them closer, Titus picked out one voice after another, some raised louder than others to drive home a point. Although he could not make out most of what was being bandied about, he could nonetheless tell from the tone that he had not come upon a lighthearted occasion. Drawing up to the outskirts of the crowd, the two old trappers momentarily caught the attention of the first emigrants to turn, then nudge their neighbors to have themselves a look. In heartbeats most of the hundred-plus people had given the horsemen a quick look of disapproving appraisal before they turned their attention back to what was clearly some grave business at hand.

As Bass peered quickly over the crowd he spotted Amanda peeling herself away from a nest of women and children standing behind an inner cordon of their menfolk. But it wasn’t until she had reached the outer fringe of the crowd that he saw she wasn’t alone. Her hand gripped that of a young boy, a barefoot child, who shuffled along through the dusty grass to keep pace with his mother’s long strides. She turned and leaned down slightly to say something to the child as they circled around the gathering. In response the boy brought his tiny hand to his brow and peered into the distance at the two buckskin-clad horsemen. He still had his hand shading his eyes as Titus kicked out of the saddle and landed on the ground, only a moment before Amanda stopped before him.

“This is my daughter Amanda,” Scratch announced as she held out her empty arm for her father. “Amanda, this here’s my good friend, Shadrach Sweete. Him an’ me, we’ve been through a lot together over the years—”

“Oh, Pa!” she interrupted him, pain in her voice. “Our train’s breaking up!”

He took her shoulder in one strong hand and quickly glanced at the heated argument taking place nearby at the center of the crowd. “That why you was late comin’ for supper?”

Amanda’s eyes pleaded. “I’m sorry, for we got all caught up in this trouble—trying to sort out what we’re gonna do.”

“How’s your train falling apart?” Sweete repeated.

“We got to Laramie with our company captain,” she began to explain. “We elected him at Westport, mostly because he had a little experience on the plains. Last year he’d come out to Fort Laramie on his own to ride part of the trail for himself. Mostly, he got himself elected because he had more money than the rest of us … and that meant he had more wagons and guns for our protection, and some hired men along too. But, they weren’t family men like the rest of us. Just single fellas, going out to start over in Oregon on the captain’s pay.”

The fear he read in her eyes made Titus bristle. “Now the rest of you got trouble with some of ’em?”

“Yes … well, no,” she responded with a frustrated shake of her head. “The captain, his name is Hargrove—back at Laramie he ran onto a pilot who says he knows the country from here on out. Says he’s been out to Oregon a half dozen times. Was a mountain trapper too, he claims.”

“What’s his name?” Sweete demanded suspiciously.

“I can’t rightly remember,” she answered, her face gray with concern. “Only that Hargrove said he was our Moses,” she admitted.

“He here?” Titus asked.

She nodded.

“Point ’im out to me.”

Amanda turned with the child still clutching her hand and stepped away to the right where the three of them would have a better view of the central actors in this dramatic dispute taking place beside Black’s Fork.

“There he is,” Amanda announced, bitterness in her voice pointing quickly. “That’s him. Got a full beard like yours, and he’s wearing those skin clothes—like yours, Pa.”

Peering through the anxious crowd shifting from one foot to the other, Titus trained his good eye on the figure who was turned slightly away from him for the moment. Then the tall man addressing the group took a step forward, and Scratch easily made out the pilot.

“Harris,” Sweete whispered it like a curse.

“That nigger gets drunk at the drop of a hat—an’ when he does, he ain’t leading no one nowhere,” Bass grumbled in agreement of Shad’s sentiment.

“No, he hasn’t made any trouble with his drinking,” Amanda argued. “Problem is, the pilot’s going off with Hargrove and his wagons.”

“Off where?”

“Taking them to California,” she said with exasperation and a shake of her head.

Scratch turned from glaring at Harris to look down at his daughter. “Thought you said your train was bound for Oregon?”

Amanda pursed her lips, then said, “Back at Westport we was formed as a company for Oregon Territory. That’s where most of us still want to go. But late this afternoon Hargrove sent around his men, calling a council meeting.”

“Hargrove?” Shad echoed.

She explained, “When we got here a little while ago, he started off telling us he and his hired men would stay on with us till we reached Fort Hall. That’s where Hargrove said he was turning off for California.”

“An’ your captain is taking your new pilot with him to Californy,” Bass completed the dilemma.

“That’s right,” she answered, reaching out to gently squeeze his hand. “After that we won’t have us our company captain and all his guns along. And we won’t have our pilot to get us from Fort Hall to the Willamette.”

Without turning to look at his tall friend, Scratch glared at the tall, well-dressed speaker named Hargrove and said quietly, “Let’s go have us a listen, Shadrach.”

Leading their horses, the pair inched forward on foot to the outer edges of the crowd. It was there that Titus whispered, “I didn’t see him my own self earlier this summer, but them Marmons Gabe an’ me run into on the Sandy said they come across Harris at Pacific Springs in the pass. Coming from Oregon hisself, he told ’em. When Brigham Young said he had no need to hire him to lead his bunch into the valley of the Salt Lake, Harris said he’d push on to Fort John—where he claimed there’d be plenty of trains what’d hire him to pilot them through.”

“No-good bastard found him some work, he did,” Sweete responded in a whisper so sharp that it made a few of the nearby emigrants turn their heads and flick a disquieting look at the pair in buckskins.

Bass leaned over and whispered to Amanda, “That’s your Moses, all right. His name’s Moses Harris. Sometimes, that nigger goes by the name o’ Black Harris. His cheeks burned so dark the skin shines like burnt powder. How he come by that name.”

With an involuntary shudder, she declared, “I’d just as soon he go off a different way, Pa. Never did like the way he looked at me or any other woman with the train. Them eyes of his all over me—makes my skin tremble like I was cold and had spiders crawling on me at the same time.”

“From what I recollect, that’un’s a coward … less’n he’s got a bellyful of John Barleycorn,” Shad observed.

“Shshshsh!” One of the emigrants turned and pressed a finger to her lips at the two old mountain men.

“—which means all of you are free to follow me to my new home in California,” boomed the tall man who towered over the stockier Harris, “or, you can make your own way to Oregon without our help.”

“I recall this company elected you our captain,” protested a tall, wide-shouldered man as he stepped from the edge of the crowd, tugging at one of his frayed suspenders that threatened to slip off his shoulder. He was clearly growing agitated. “Back at Westport, before we ever headed out, we elected you, Hargrove—because you said you was gonna lead us to Oregon.”

“A man has a right to change his mind,” Phineas Hargrove argued now with a winning smile. “Between leaving Westport behind and the Green River crossing, I’ve come to believe California is where my fortunes lie.”

Another, heavier man lunged from the inner edge of the gathering to growl, “But we was formed around you to take us to Oregon. That’s where we all wanna go! We’re a Oregon company!”

Hargrove turned to the shorter man with that look of disdain written upon his face. “And you’re all free to follow your dreams from Fort Hall,” he reminded them. “But any of you who want to see what California has to offer, I repeat that Mr. Harris here has agreed to lead us south and west from Fort Hall, to the Humboldt and on to northern California.”

That’s when the tall man with the thick neck that disappeared into the collar of his shirt took three more steps that brought him onto the open ground at the center of the great circle where Hargrove and Harris held court. Amanda raised herself on the toes of her boots and whispered into her father’s ear, “That’s Roman.”

“Roman?” Titus repeated, appraising the man. “Your husband?”

She nodded.

As Roman Burwell came to a sudden halt before Hargrove, three of the captain’s hired men stepped protectively closer to their employer, their flinty gazes full of intimidation for the farmer who said, “There was something about you, Hargrove—right from when I first laid eyes on you at Westport. Something slick and oily from the start.”

“I got you this far, Burwell,” the captain sneered down his long, patrician nose. “I can’t nurse the rest of you all the way to Oregon. You’ll have to get there on your own.” With an amused grin, Hargrove stepped away from his hired men and walked around Burwell tauntingly. “Why, the rest of you could even elect Burwell here as your new captain!”

But that suggestion met with a strained, awkward silence while Hargrove waited for someone to speak up.

Instead, it was Burwell himself who shattered the silence, “Ain’t no one gonna choose me for to be the captain, Hargrove. I ain’t got the makings of a train captain. Just a simple man. I could never pretend to be nothing I ain’t. But that’s just what you done to the rest of us.”

Hargrove ground to a halt and he leaned in at the side of the farmer’s face. “What’s that mean, Burwell?”

The big sodbuster struggled to keep his beefy hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching his fists. “One thing I can’t abide by is a man saying he’s one thing, when he’s lying through his teeth at me. I brung my family all the way here—hell, we all got our families with us. We was bound for Oregon, following a man who said he was gonna lead us to the Willamette River … and now we find out that man’s a damned liar!”

The short, black quirt suspended from the end of Hargrove’s wrist flew out in a blur, the two ends of the horsewhip catching Burwell high across one cheekbone. It stunned the farmer as he stumbled back a step more in shock than pain, bringing his hand to his face. When he brought the fingertips away and looked down at the trickle of blood the whip had opened in his flesh, a gasp escaped from those emigrants close by. Amanda took one step into the crowd before Titus seized her arm and yanked her back, where he could lay an arm over her shoulder.

“Your husband don’t need you making more trouble for him,” he whispered sternly, then he and Shad shared a look that both men understood immediately. He leaned down, tousling his grandson’s hair, then whispered to Amanda, “Daughter, you keep the boy here with you.”

Then Scratch took a step away from her, stopped, and turned back to whisper, “Don’t you move from this spot, Amanda. Chances are, you’ll only make things a mite messier.”

“No one … no one at all, calls me a liar, Burwell,” Hargrove bellowed at the crowd. He held the short whip at the end of his arm menacingly, slowly dragging it around the crowd in an arc.

The farmer wiped his bloodied fingers on his worn canvas britches, then suddenly pointed at some children inching toward him. “Lem, you keep your sisters back.”

The twelve-year-old boy obeyed instantly, putting his hand on the shoulders of his two younger sisters and nudging them back against the fringe of the crowd.

Burwell stood for a moment, as if he were a big, dumb brute working up a fighting lather, his eyes gone to slits as he flexed those fists open and closed, open and closed. “No man’s ever gonna hit me ’thout me hittin’ him back!”

But the farmer lunged no more than two steps in Hargrove’s direction when he lurched to an ungainly halt, jerking back as he stared down at the pistols those three hired men had pulled out of their belts, their wide muzzles only a matter of feet from Burwell’s belly.

Dramatically, Hargrove dragged the leather strands of his horsewhip through his open left palm. “The rest of you have got to understand, I am not doing this to hurt any one of you. I am not that sort of man. I simply have my own interests to see to. My own dreams to chase. And those dreams beckon me from California now. I will nonetheless bring you all the way to Fort Hall—”

“Where you’re gonna take our pilot from us,” Burwell grumbled, staring down at those three pistols. “And take your extra guns with you too.”

“Why shouldn’t I, Burwell?” Hargrove asked. “Have I been paid by this company to lead you to Oregon?”

“You asked us to elect you!” a voice cried from the crowd.

“We elected you to take us to Oregon!”

“But I’m not going to Oregon now,” Hargrove argued. “And, this company of poor farmers never contracted to pay me any money to get you there—”

“Never was any talk of pay,” the big farmer reminded. “You put your own name up for captain, said you wanted to lead us to Oregon … so you was chose as captain to take these people to Oregon.”

“Mr. Harris here says the chances are better than good you’ll find someone at Fort Hall who knows the road and can pilot the rest of you to Oregon,” Hargrove suggested with a flippant gesture of that horsewhip.

A woman’s voice cried out, “But we won’t have us no captain neither!”

“You can elect a man to serve when you embark from Fort Hall. Till then, I will dutifully serve as your company captain. And as captain, my orders are that we move at dawn day after tomorrow.” Drawing in a long breath, Hargrove quickly said, “Since I hear no other business, this meeting of the Hargrove Company is adjourned.”

Some of the crowd stood rooted in their places, whispering among themselves. Others began to wander away from the shady banks of Black’s Fork, slowly starting back toward their wagons laid out in an orderly pattern across the grassy meadow. Hargrove leaned close to Burwell and said something to the farmer that no one else could have heard, then turned away with his men and the pilot.

“Harris!” Scratch hollered as the crowd before him splintered into whispering knots. He gave Shad another nod, and they started toward their old compatriot.

“Shadrach Sweete! If this ain’t a joy for these old eyes!” Harris bellowed after he had stopped and turned on his heel, recognizing the tall man coming his way through the dispersing crowd.

Curious, Hargrove and his hired men halted as well, forming a crescent behind the pilot.

“Finally talked yourself into leading a train I see!” Bass said as he came to a stop in front of the old trapper. “Don’t know me, do you?”

Harris wagged his head. “I s’pose to?”

“Naw. I never run with Bridger an’ Sweete,” he grumbled as his eyes peered into Hargrove’s face, taking a quick measure of the captain. “I was a free man, Harris.”

Without a word of reply to Bass, Harris turned to Sweete. “Thought I see’d ye workin’ for Jim Bridger at his Green River ferry when we come across the Seedskeedee.”

“I was,” Shad said.

“Ain’t got no job? Maybe ye’re hankerin’ to find a li’l work with some emigrants, are ye?”

“I got work if I want it, right here at Bridger’s post,” Sweete declared.

That’s when Bass interrupted, “Shadrach, you ’member how they had to tie this here nigger to a tree till Doc an’ Joe got started off from ronnyvoo for Oregon a few years back?”

Harris’s eyes glared like those of a diamondback rattler ready to strike as they instantly shifted to Titus Bass. “What kind of bullshit—”

“You was a no-good snake belly back then,” Scratch continued as Amanda rejoined her husband, several yards away at the edge of the trees. “An’ it looks like you’ve hooked up with your own no-good kind again, Harris.”

“Are you referring to me?” Hargrove demanded as he strode up beside Harris, about half a head taller than either the pilot or the old trapper.

His eyes flashed to Hargrove’s. “Way you side-talked these folks, you’re a slick’un, you are.”

“Who the hell is this, Harris?”

“Never met ’im. So I dunno—”

“Far as you need to know,” Titus said, glaring at Hargrove, “I’m just a nigger what hates bald-faced liars even more’n that sodbuster you hit with your—”

Scratch’s left arm shot up and out, his forearm cracking against Hargrove’s wrist as the captain brought up his horsewhip. Bass immediately rolled his hand and seized the man’s forearm, which compelled the three hired men to bring up their pistols, each muzzle pointed at Bass.

Hargrove snarled, “Best you let me go, mister.”

“I ain’t ’bout to let you go till these lizard-hearted bastards of yours put their pistols away in their pants.”

Hargrove snorted a chuckle. “And if they don’t? I figure they can put three balls in you before you even begin to reach for your pistol. Now—for the last time—take your hand off me.”

“Maybeso these three cowards can shoot one man,” Bass admitted after a moment of reflection. “But if I know my ol’ partner, he’s got his pistol pointed at you right now. So no matter what happens to me, you’re the first’un to go down after them three cowards of your’n shoot me. No matter what, you die where you’re standin’.”

Titus didn’t know for sure what Sweete had done behind him. Or if he had done anything at all. The only thing he could do was count on his old friend to be there at his back. And from that look in Hargrove’s eyes when the captain glanced at Shadrach, Titus could plainly see there was reason enough to give Hargrove pause.

“No man calls me a liar and gets away with it,” he hissed at the trapper.

“Seems to me there’s more’n a hunnert folks here who believe that’s just what you are, a low-down liar,” Titus declared, sensing some of the building fury cause the captain’s arm to tremble. “Best you cipher this too—I ain’t one of your farmers, Hargrove. I don’t cotton to no whippin’s, an’ I figger any man what’s gotta sashay around with the likes o’ these here hired snake bellies, why—that man’s no more than a coward.”

Hargrove attempted to yank his arm free. “Maybe I should shoot you myself,” he growled as he rested his left hand on the butt of his pistol protruding from the front of his belt.

“Go right ahead,” Scratch prodded. “You’ll never get it out afore Shadrach kills you dead where you stand.”

Harris’s face was painted with worry as he took a step closer to Hargrove. “The big’un—he can do it, Cap’n.”

“Damn right he can, Harris,” Titus said, watching Hargrove’s eyes fill with concern. “The man what got his pistol aimed at you ain’t no peach-faced farmboy bully like these three you got pointing guns at me. Tell ’im, Harris. Tell ’im how Shadrach’s killed Injuns from the Musselshell clear down to the Arkansas, some of ’em with his bare hands too. These snot-nosed bully-boys of your’n ever done anything more’n jump on some poor farmer, three to one?”

“Lemme shoot him,” one of the trio growled at Hargrove, his crimson face flushing with anger. “Benjamin can shoot the big one got a gun on you—”

“No!” Hargrove shouted, then repeated it softer, “No. There’s no need for any shooting. If this man will release my arm, the four of us will be on our way. There’s no sense in shedding any blood, boys. We’ll be gone from here day after tomorrow. On our way to Fort Hall and California. Right, Mr. Harris?”

“That’s right.” Harris took a step closer to Bass.

“Maybe someone ought’n tie you up to ’nother tree, Harris,” Scratch warned. “Leave you out there to die.”

The pilot’s face went hard as stone. “No one ever gonna tie me up to no tree again—”

“Hard to show these fellas all the way to Californy,” Bass said, “if’n you’re tied to a tree somewhere out there in the hills.”

“I got lots o’ friends now, so there ain’t no chance of that,” Harris snorted.

Scratch said, “Leastways, till you go an’ get drunk.”

“About time you let go of me,” Hargrove repeated.

Slowly Titus began to open the fingers on his left hand, while he inched his hand toward the pistol stuffed in the front of his belt. The captain quickly yanked his arm free, slapping the calf of his leg with the wide leather strands of that horsewhip as he lunged a step backward. His eyes went back and forth between the two trappers.

Then Hargrove said, “You’ll keep an eye out for these two, won’t you, Harris? Let me know if you see them coming around again—between now and the time we’ll pull out for Fort Hall.”

“He’s your lookout boy now?” Titus asked.

“I’ll come let ye know,” Harris growled.

“You allays was a good bootlicker,” Sweete finally spoke, for the first time in minutes. “Didn’t have much good sense of your own—but you was awright when your booshway told you where to shit an’ how to wipe your ass.”

“Damn you—” Harris started toward Sweete but stopped suddenly as he watched Shad shift the direction of his pistol.

“G’won now, train boss,” Scratch suggested. “Better you an’ your coward bully-boys go see what trouble you can cause other folks. I won’t let you cause no trouble for this here family.”

He watched Hargrove’s head turn as the captain regarded the farmer with his family gathered nearby. “What concern are they of yours?”

Bass said nothing, but as Amanda was opening her mouth to speak, Titus shook his head.

“You related to her somehow?” Hargrove asked. “That it? That dumb farmer Burwell can’t fight his own battles—he’s got to bring in his missus and her relations to stand up for him.”

“Thought you was goin’,” Scratch said.

“I am.”

Hargrove got four steps away before he stopped and turned around. “I don’t know your name, or what any of this has to do with you … but, I want to suggest you stay out of our camp, and out of our way until we depart day after tomorrow.”

“Why’s that?”

The captain wore a half grin on his face. “Just a suggestion. You’d be wise not to let any of my men catch you around my camp.”

Bass watched the man move off, trailed by Harris and those three hired toughs who reminded Scratch of the sort of thugs who peopled every riverport town along the Ohio and lower Mississippi. Amanda moved up with her husband and children at the same time.

“I didn’t need none of your help,” growled the big farmer who stomped up to stop before the trappers.

That caught Scratch by surprise. From the looks of Burwell’s red face, the man was mad as a spit-on hen at most everyone in general right now. And he recalled how Amanda had spoken of her husband being proud to a fault. “I sure didn’t mean to step into your business none—”

“It is my business,” Burwell snapped. “And it’ll please me if you stay out.”

“Roman,” Amanda said at his side, “I’m the one you ought to blame.”

He twisted around and glared at her. “You?”

“I saw them come up to the meeting, went over to tell my pa why we hadn’t come for supper. So if you’re going to blame anyone for helping you stand up to Hargrove, blame me.”

His jaw jutted, the ropy muscles below the temple flexing as the big farmer worked her confession over and over in his mind. “I … I got my pride,” he said quietly.

Bass thought that as good an apology as the farmer could bring himself to utter. “If there’s one thing I unnerstand, it’s pride, son. You don’t owe me no more words to explain. You don’t want my help, I’ll stay clear o’ your troubles.”

“I can accept that,” Burwell replied, the harshness suddenly gone from his eyes. He watched his children, two boys and a pair of girls, happily rubbing the bony backs of those two lanky dogs for a moment, then turned to ask, “You really Amanda’s pa?”

“Proud to say I am.” He held out his hand. “She said your name was Roman. Awright I call you that?”

Burwell grinned as if all that bristling uneasiness of their first meeting was forgotten as he brought up his big paw that easily swallowed the old trapper’s hand. “My friends back to home always called me Row. That’d be fine by me, for Amanda’s father to call me Row.”

Shad cleared his throat for attention.

“Shame on me,” Scratch scolded himself. “Where’s my manners? Get over here, Shad. This here’s my good friend, Shadrach Sweete. An’ that’s my oldest child, Amanda.”

“Should I shake your hand, ma’am?” Shad inquired as he stuffed his pistol back in his belt.

Amanda grinned a little, saying, “Of course it’s all right.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” Sweete replied as he stuck out his big arm and quickly bent at the waist. “Been a while since I been in the company of a proper white lady.”

She winked at her father. “I’m no proper lady, Mr. Sweete. But thank you for your manners anyway.”

“Be pleased to have you to call me Shad—like all my friends do.”

As Roman and Sweete shook hands, Amanda held out her left arm for her eldest son. “Pa, this here’s Lemuel.”

“You look old enough to shake hands, son.”

Lemuel Burwell said, “I turned twelve this past spring, just before we set off from Westport.”

“Likely you’re a big help to your pa, ain’cha?” Titus asked.

Roman said, “He does ever’thing he can to help out on the road to Oregon.”

“Who are these pretty girls?” Titus inquired.

The oldest nodded slightly, clearly self-conscious. “Leah,” she said in a modest voice.

“Leah, that’s such a purty name,” he said. “How old are you?”

“Just turned ten.”

“You really our grandpa?” asked the other girl as she sidled forward beside the oldest sister.

Bass said. “Would that disapp’int you—to find out a feller like me is your grandpa?”

“My, no!” she exclaimed. “Just wish I could take you to school back at home to show you off to the other’ns.”

He laughed at that. “Good idee from such a li’l girl. What’s your name?”

“I’m Annie,” she replied. “Sometimes my mama calls me Spitfire Annie.”

Quickly flashing a look up at his daughter, Titus asked the girl, “Why your mama call you that?”

“I dunno for sure. Maybe ’cause I get in trouble, Mama?”

With a grin, Amanda nodded. “That could be, Annie.”

Annie never took her eyes off her grandfather. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Titus, Titus Bass,” he replied. “But my friends like Shadrach here, they all call me by a name what was give to me many winters ago when I first come to these here mountains. Like you’re called Spitfire.”

Lemuel asked, “What name is that?”

“Scratch.”

“You want we should call you Scratch?” Annie inquired with a devilish grin.

“No, I want you to call me by a name no one else ever called me afore,” he declared as he reached up and stroked the child’s cheek with his callused fingertips. “Want each of you young’uns … to call me Grandpa.”

Amanda bent over and whispered something into the smallest boy’s ear. As she straightened, the youngster gazed at Bass with unerring and questioning eyes.

“Mama said to call you Gran’papa.”

Dropping to one knee, which caused the dogs to bounce over to sit beside him, Titus held out his hand and said, “That’s what I am—your grandpa.”

For a long moment the boy stared down at that big, scarred hand, then brought his tiny fingers up and Titus gently enfolded the hand in his. Finally the youngster retracted his arm and took a step backward against his mother’s skirt.

“He ain’t afraid of me, is he, Amanda?”

She wagged her head and said, “I don’t think he’s afraid of anything, Pa. Sometimes he scares me so, what he’ll do and where he’ll go if he takes a notion. No, he ought not be afraid of you.”

“You ain’t afraid of these here ugly dogs, are you, son?”

The boy glanced up at his mother, then back to the old trapper, when he finally shook his head, but just barely.

Bringing his eyes to bear on the boy, Titus said, “That’s good. Boys an’ dogs just go together natural. What’s your name, son?”

With the tiny tip of his pink tongue, the youngster licked his dry lips and said in a strong, unwavering voice, “Lucas, mister. But you can call me Luke, ’cause you’re my gran’-papa.”

“That what your mama calls you?”

He glanced up at his mother, then touched eyes with his grandfather again. “No, she calls me Lucas.”

With a chuckle, Titus declared, “Then, that’s what I’ll call you too—Lucas.”

The boy caught them all by surprise when he suddenly asked, “Why you got them wires hanging from your ears?”

That question took him from his blind side, but after a moment’s reflection Scratch answered, “I s’pose I wear my earbobs ’cause I like ’em, Lucas. I think these here shiny rocks an’ beads are purty. What you think?”

Tilting his head one way, then the other, the child seriously studied both copper ear wires strung with tiny pieces of azure-blue turquoise and blood-red glass beads, then peered into the old trapper’s eyes and announced, “I think they’re pretty too.”

“Thankee, Lucas” and he wanted to say more—

But the boy was already turning his head to look up at his mother and ask, “Mama, can I get some earbobs like Gran’papa’s got?”

Even though she clamped her hand over her mouth, there was no disguising the merry laughter in her eyes at her son’s innocent request. When she had finally gained her composure, Amanda quickly glanced at her father, then at her husband, and finally at the boy once more, saying, “I’m sure your grandpa didn’t get those earbobs put in his ears till he was much, much older than you are now, Lucas. You can wait.”

“That true, Gran’papa?”

With an impish grin, Titus replied, “Yes, Lucas—I was real ol’t afore I got my ears poked with a sharp awl an’ these here wires put in.”

His little face scrunched up with concern. “Did it hurt?”

“Something fierce, it hurt.”

Lucas deliberated on that for a moment, then said, “I’m not afraid of a fierce hurt, Gran’papa. But I’ll wait like my mama says I gotta wait—till I’m older.”

“That’s a good lad,” he said to his grandson.

“And maybe then I can even come help you out here in the mountains,” the boy continued to everyone’s surprise. “Mama told us you work making wagon tires and such. Maybe when I get older you can teach me an’ I’ll be your helper. I’m good at learning.”

“There’s plenty of time for l’arnin’, Lucas. A lot of l’arnin’ your hull life through. But I ’spect your pa here’s got a passel of things to teach you his own self,” he said, patting the child on the shoulder as he rose to his feet. Bringing his eyes to Amanda’s face as he stood once more, Scratch explained, “Like I was saying—we was getting worried ’bout your family makin’ it for dinner. Figgered I’d come see what was keeping you.”

“Hargrove,” Roman said with utter sourness. “Him and his trouble was keeping us.”

“But we can come now,” Amanda said. “I’m sure we’re all real hungry, aren’t we?”

Lucas craned back his head to stare up at his grandfather. “My mama got any brothers and sisters like I got brothers and sisters?”

Immediately Titus asked, “I’ll bet you’re a lad likes to ride on your pa’s shoulders?”

“Oh, yes—I do!”

“Here,” and Bass swept up the boy, swinging Lucas into the air and turning him just before he plopped the boy down on his shoulders. “There now. That’s where you’re gonna ride till we go fetch up our horses and you can ride mine back to the post.”

“You didn’t answer Luke’s question,” Leah stated as she hustled to walk alongside her grandfather.

“What question was that?”

“My mama got any brothers or sisters?”

“Yes, young lady. Your ma got two brothers an’ a sister.” Then he looked at Amanda and smiled. “An’ ’nother one gonna be here sometime deep in the winter.”

“How old are they?” Annie demanded to know.

“How old are you, girl?”

Annie said, “Gonna be eight in a few weeks, my pa tells me.”

“Well, now—the oldest after your mother, she’s thirteen winters now.”

“W-winters?” young Lemuel repeated.

“That’s how we count age out here, son,” he replied. “So she’s a li’l older’n you. An’ then there’s my oldest boy—he’s ten winters. But my youngest boy—for now—he’s only four summers old.”

“They’re really my mama’s brothers and sister?” Annie asked, a furrow between her eyes.

“Your mama was born a long, long time afore I come out here an’ … an’ got married to ’nother woman.”

From his shoulder-high perch, Lucas tapped his grandfather on the top of the head and asked, “Can your children play with me?”.

“I figger they’ll think it purely shines to play with you, Lucas.”

Reaching the horses, Titus hoisted the boy onto his saddle, then bent to untie the reins from the foreleg where he had ground-hobbled the animal.

He straightened and the horses lunged to their feet. Together, he and Shad led their horses, with the Burwell family scattered around them. Bass turned to Roman and asked, “How many of them hired men that Hargrove fella got along?”

“Seven. Eight now, if you count that pilot, Harris,” Burwell answered. “Why?”

After covering some distance on their walk back to the walls of Fort Bridger, Scratch finally admitted, “I was making my own tally of the sort of trouble there was in your camp now. The sort of trouble it sounds like most men don’t dare to bite off.”

Amanda looped her arm around her husband’s waist as they moved along. “I don’t want no more trouble in our lives, Roman. We’ve had enough already. So we’re gonna stay far away from trouble as we can now.”

“I think you’re right, ma’am,” Shad replied as he glanced over at Titus. “A smart man wouldn’t be stirring up trouble for himself.”

“Less’n trouble just drops right outta the sky an’ into that man’s lap,” Scratch remarked.

“You don’t figger it’s smart just to stay outta that wagon camp and not to bite off trouble on your own?” Sweete wagged his head with a wry grin. “Like Hargrove told us?”

“I was just askin’ how many guns Hargrove’s got working for him, s’all,” Titus replied. “It sours my milk, Shadrach—bullies like that wagon cap’n an’ his sort. I had my craw filled up to here with their kind. American Fur bully-boys an’ all the rest, strangled things for the li’l man.”

“There’s Hargrove, and eight others, like I said,” Burwell repeated.

“Why you wanna know, Scratch?” Shadrach asked.

“Only need to see what trouble I’m bitin’ into,” Titus explained, “so I can figger how long it’s gonna take for me to chew it up an’ spit it back out again.”