Wind Walker

THIRTEEN

Two hours after crossing the gentle loop of Muddy Creek some eight miles north of Fort Bridger, a pair of Hargrove’s hired men came loping back along that path the scattered emigrant wagons were plying. As they huffed past on their dusty horses, the men bellowed their orders to one and all.

“Making camp ahead! Form up for camp! Form up!”

Titus Bass quickly regarded the rocky ground and reminded himself he would have to warn these woodland emigrants, especially his grandchildren, to be vigilant for the rattlers that grew numerous and bold in this high, arid country. The very thought of a white-skinned little one getting bit put a sour, queasy ball in Bass’s stomach.

A little off to his left, Scratch saw Amanda stick her head around the front bow of the canvas top on their long wagon as her eyes searched for him and the family. The faded red gingham of that poke bonnet, which shaded her eyes and much of her face from most of the sun’s cruel burn, was unmistakable even at this distance.

Right from the start, he and Shadrach had chosen to ride their families on the far right flank of the train rather than spend that hot morning, and even hotter afternoon, chewing on the tons of dust spun into the air by the four wheels of every one of those sixty-seven wagons. Where they could, most of the farmers gradually worked themselves into a wide formation rather than suffering the stifling dust in rigid single file. By this point in their journey, these sodbusters-turned-teamsters had learned that some, duties on this overland journey, like guard rotation, required military precision. But this did not. When the land became wrinkled and the coulees sank deep, the procession slowed as one team after another slowly dragged their wagons into line behind the others, a process of crossing each gully one at a time that made for agonizing delays. But when the next mile or so ahead foretold easy going, the emigrants gradually loosened their tight formation and spread across a broad front.

Many were the times that first morning when Scratch and Sweete had stopped their group on a low rise to wait for the train to catch up, or even to allow most of the wagons to pass on by. No matter how fast they could travel on horseback, it made no sense to outstrip the plodding pace of the train. Excruciatingly slow, those teams of oxen preferred by most farmers managed to set one hoof in front of the other with a steadiness that saw that first day waste away by the time they had reached the south bank of Muddy Creek. Far in the advance, Titus watched Moses Harris ride to the east along the bank, then back to the west aways, before the pilot found the approach he most desired and led Hargrove’s first wagon down to the ford of the shallow stream. This time of the year, Bass thought as he watched one after another begin the slow, but noisy, descent down the sharp slope and make the crossing, there wasn’t water enough to worry a man in this narrow creekbed. Yet it was the bottom on these shallow western creeks that should give a man pause: sands shifting almost by the hour—what was solid footing beneath the first wagons, could, by the time the last few teams entered the creek, have turned itself into no more than a bowl of mushy grits beneath the two-inch bands of iron welded around every wagon wheel.

It had taken him most all of yesterday, his last in Bridger’s forge, but he and Roman had managed to swap off those much-worn two-inch-wide iron tires the Burwells had rolled away from Westport on, then hammered and shimmed wider, three-inch rims around their shrunken wooden wheels.

“Wished I’d had these back in May after we got ourselves out on the prairie,” Roman had commented as they were muscling one of the hot tires onto a wheel there in the shade of the awning. “When all them rains come, day after day—a narrow tire sinks faster.”

“Ain’t nothing gonna keep your tires from sinking under a heavy wagon,” Titus had told him, “but out here a wider tire do better crossing creek bottoms and rocky ground too.”

The water in Muddy Creek was turgid and slow, brown as its name and tepid to boot. Only good thing about the stream, he thought as he watched his two oldest urge the pack animals across and up the north bank, was that the Muddy was running so shallow that it hadn’t so much as lapped at the bottom of a wagon box or licked at the bellies of their ponies. Besides, these small western streams weren’t all that wide. It wouldn’t be until these farmers got to the Bear that they would face their first test, a crossing that would prepare them, or weed them out, for the crucial two crossings of the capricious Snake River before they ever reached the mighty Columbia.

There wasn’t much water to speak of in the bottoms around that great grove of cedars where Harris and Hargrove chose to stop the train an hour or so earlier than usual—but then, another hour wouldn’t find them camping at any better a place. Here they would have to hack away at the wind-stunted cedar for firewood, and scratch at the sandy bottoms in the nearby coulees to see if they could pool up any murky water. Bass was sure they could find enough here to satisfy their thirsty stock. But for the dust-choked humans, each wagon had carried along at least one pair of hardwood kegs filled with clear, cool water drawn from Black’s Fork. Water enough to boil their supper and brew their coffee until they camped tomorrow night on the Little Muddy as they neared the rugged north end of the Bear River Divide.

All three women pitched in to get a fire pit dug and a supper fire started, while Flea and Magpie helped Lemuel and Leah lend their father a hand in dropping the heavy cottonwood yoke from the thick necks of the docile oxen. Four teams had managed to make it this far on the westward journey. With an eager dreamer’s foresight, Roman Burwell had started out from Westport with a full six teams. Two of the oxen had fallen dead either of disease or exhaustion back along the trail not far out of Laramie, and Roman had traded a third animal to Bridger for those four new three-inch iron tires Titus had fashioned for him. That left the farmer with nine oxen to get them across the roughest stretch of the road to Oregon. For the present, two of the beasts had the first signs of cracked hooves, but the farmer was doing all he could with salves and plasters to see those wounded creatures through each day’s long, dusty journey. As it was, Burwell carefully, thoughtfully, rotated his teams, so that after one day’s bone-jarring labor each two-ox hitch would have the next three days to rest up, dawdling along under the watchful care of Lemuel and Leah, both of whom herded them along on foot, using lean, seven-foot-long teamster’s whips. And when a long, steep slope was confronted, he could always bring up two or more of the fresher oxen, temporarily chaining them in tandem to drag the heavy wagon to the top of the rise.

Bass came back to camp with a small doe slumped across the front of his saddle about the time the women had a bed of coals built up and their beds spread out for the night beneath the shade of the wagon box, along with a large square of waterproofed Russian sheeting they had strung from the side of the wagon to the nearby clumps of cedar. The venison wouldn’t make a meal fit for kings, but they weren’t about to starve either.

After shooing the too-curious dogs away with a pair of legbones Titus hacked off the carcass with his tomahawk, the two Indian women showed Amanda how to skin out the doe, then bone out the steaks they tossed in the white woman’s two large skillets. While the meat went to frying, they set about showing Amanda how to chop up some of the liver and heart into fine pieces, then sprinkle the cubes with a dusting of flour before they stuffed it inside short sections of slippery intestine. Raking aside some of the gray ash and half-dead embers at the outer extreme of the fire, Waits and Shell Woman laid more than two dozen of their greasy treasures in the hot ashes, then promptly covered them with coals to slowly sizzle while they tended the steaks.

“This ain’t the first you’ve et venison, is it, Lucas?” he asked his grandson.

The boy glanced over at his father. “My pa takes me hunting sometimes.”

“You a good hunter?” Titus asked. “Like your pa?”

“We get some birds and rabbits, a few squirrels sometimes.”

Roman cleared his throat self-consciously. “Don’t always bring down big game. S’pose I ain’t near as good with a gun as you’ve got to be all the years you been out here.”

“Gran’papa gonna teach you how, Pa,” Lucas declared.

A bit self-consciously, Roman reached down and pulled the boy against his leg, tousling his hair. “Yep, I s’pose your gran’pa can teach me ’bout hunting, son.”

He instantly felt a stab of sadness for the man, having his own son point out his flaws and shortcomings to his face. But Lucas didn’t know any better. He was just a sprout, a pup who didn’t know any different, a child who would one day come to realize no man could be all things to his son.

Dropping to his knee, Titus said, “I can teach your pa to hunt in this country, I’m sure, ’cause he pretty damn good at ever’thing else, Lucas. Back where you come from, I know your pa was far better at ever’thing he done than I ever could be. An’, when you get to your new home in Oregon country, your pa’ll be the best at what he’ll do out there too.”

As he stood again, he glanced into Roman’s face, finding deep appreciation written in Burwell’s eyes.

The women had dragged the skillets off the flames to cool and Amanda had just put some water on to heat for cleaning when a trumpet sounded faintly at the far end of the long camp scattered and strung out through the cedar grove.

“What’s that horn for?” Shadrach asked.

“They’re calling the council meeting,” Amanda said as she stood, kneading her hands into her apron, her eyes anxious as she stared into her husband’s face.

Roman said, “That’s the way they let everyone know Hargrove is getting ready to start.”

“Fixin’ to start in on Shad an’ me,” Titus replied.

“Maybeso we should leg on over there,” Sweete suggested. “Since these doin’s got to do with you an’ me.”

“Got everything to do with me too,” Burwell said as he stepped around the edge of the fire pit. “Your families are with mine—so I think I got some say in this vote.”

“Vote?” Titus repeated.

Amanda stepped up to loop her arm inside her husband’s elbow. “Hargrove loves to take a vote on everything.”

“Least he did when we was forming up our company back at Westport,” Roman grumped. “But after he got hisself made captain of this train—”

“And after he got us to vote for all these rules he wanted for the journey,” Amanda Continued, “Hargrove hasn’t had many meetings. And he hasn’t called for any votes since we voted to give the lash to one of the men.”

“The lash?” Shadrach asked.

She turned to him, her cheeks blushing slightly. “One of the married men, they caught him sneaking a look at the women while we was bathing in the Platte, back yonder by the Chimney Rock.”

Titus asked, “So Hargrove give that poor fella some lashes?”

“Mr. Kinsey,” Roman said. “From the look on Hargrove’s face as he laid into Kinsey’s back, I’d say our wagon captain would make a damn good hell-and-brimstone preacher!”

“He didn’t stop till Mr. Kinsey passed right out,” Amanda explained as she smoothed the front of her apron. “That’s when they let Mrs. Kinsey and a couple of her husband’s friends come and untie him from the wagon gate.”

Titus ground his teeth in anger. “Tied the man to a wagon gate an’ whupped him?”

Roman Burwell nodded. “Mrs. Kinsey, she knowed I had some salve along to put on the cuts our oxen or mules get. I give her some for them bad cuts on her husband’s back.”

“They out-an’-out whupped him like a dumb brute?” Scratch growled.

“I know he had some punishment comin’,” Amanda confessed, “but Hargrove didn’t need to cut the man to a bloody ribbon neither.”

Burwell drew in a long sigh. “We all know how you gotta have rules, and how you gotta punish when the rules is broke. But, that was the first time Hargrove whipped anyone.”

Shadrach asked, “He have the whole camp watch the whippin’?”

Roman nodded. “Women and children too.”

With a wag of his head, Sweete commented, “After he cut that poor nigger’s back up with his whip in front of every mother’s child, growed or pup, he sure as hell didn’t have to whip no one else from there on out, I’ll wager.”

“C’mon, Shadrach,” Titus said as he stuffed a second pistol in his belt. “There’s no telling what this Hargrove gonna do with us, if’n he’ll whip a man half to death for sneaking a look at some gals takin’ their bath in the river.”

They took a few steps away from the fire before Scratch stopped and said, “Hol’ on, Amanda. You ain’t comin’ along.”

“You can’t stop me,” she argued. “Every other wife and mother gonna be there to see what goes on.”

“But you can’t vote,” Titus said. “Maybe it’s better you stay here … if’n there’s a li’l trouble.”

“If there’s trouble, that just gives me an even better reason to come along.”

“Titus,” Roman used his father-in-law’s name for the first time, “best you realize you aren’t gonna talk her out of this.”

“I ain’t?”

Amanda wagged her head. “No, you aren’t, Pa.”

He snorted in disgust, but a grin crept onto his face as they started off again. “Lot of respect a father gets around here.”

“Haven’t you figgered it out yet, Pa?” she asked as Titus and Shad waved back at their wives, who were staying behind with all the children.

“Figgered what out?”

Roman jumped in to say, “That your daughter’s just as mule-headed as you.”

Bass smiled at Amanda. “Are you now?”

“Leastways,” Shad said with a chuckle, “the woman’s fortunate she got her mama’s purty looks an’ not your bird-dog face!”

“You best be careful who you call a dogface, Shadrach,” Titus warned, squinting one eye at the tall man as they neared the assembly. “You damn well may need all your friends when you go up against a vote by preacher Hargrove.”

A cool breeze stirred the air as Roman Burwell stepped through the women and children who parted for them. It was clear to Scratch how the lines had been drawn and solidified across the last day of travel. Those who had cast their lot with Phineas Hargrove now tended to cluster close by the wagon captain and his hired men at the right side of the circle, while the majority of the train comprised the other two thirds of that milling ring, with no clear leader to throw the weight of their votes behind. All they had to hold on to was that they knew far, far more about Oregon country than they knew about California. Most every pamphlet and news story published back east, most every backer of emigration, spoke only of Oregon. These settlers had cast their eyes on Oregon. They trusted the dream of place more than they could ever trust the persuasive charisma of that one powerful man and all his money.

As they entered the assembly, more than a dozen men made a point of crowding around Burwell to shake the man’s hand, and that many more nodded or murmured with approval as Bass and Sweete followed Roman around the inner edge of the circle, stopping just short of that spot where Hargrove was holding court among his loyal supporters.

One of the faithful leaned in and whispered something to the captain.

Hargrove turned. “Ah, I see the principals have finally arrived,” he gushed with enthusiasm and a metallic smile. “It’s time we call this council of the Hargrove Oregon Company to order.”

Titus leaned close to Amanda and whispered, “Ain’t gonna be the Hargrove Oregon Company for much longer, is it?”

“Maybe call it the cowards-run-to-California company,” she whispered back to Titus just before she stepped over to her husband’s elbow and squeezed one of his big, rough hands. Just as quickly she inched back through that front row of men until she stood among the other women and children who would serve only as spectators for this rare practice of frontier democracy.

Only adult males possessed the right to vote. Their wives and children did not hold such a privilege. From that outer fringe of this assembly, Amanda could only watch what was guaranteed to have a bearing on her family’s fortunes and its future from here on out, no matter how the vote came down.

Scratch watched his daughter take up her position with the other women, who all looked on in silence. Come what may this warm summer evening as the land finally cooled, he realized that the vote Hargrove would call for would affect his daughter’s family, one way or the other. If Hargrove convinced enough of the emigrants to vote against Bass and Sweete tagging along to Fort Hall, then it was a certainty the two of them would have to push on ahead of the train so they could go through with their plans to help scratch up an old comrade from the beaver days to guide the farmers on down the Snake to the Columbia, on into Oregon country. But if enough of these emigrants turned aside the wishes of their wagon master, there might well be a chance that Hargrove would retaliate against the Burwells for what the wagon master would see as mutiny.

Titus Bass hadn’t lived fifty-three years not to recognize an oily-tongued, snake-bellied, duplicitous bastard when he saw one. Dangerous thing was, Hargrove seemed just the sort of man mean enough to make anyone who turned against him pay for that transgression, and pay dearly. Throughout that day after the long procession had formed up and slowly rambled out of that meadow along Black’s Fork, pushed for Muddy Creek, then dawdled through that easy crossing, Scratch had weighed out the heft of that dilemma.

Would it just be all the better for him and Shad to tell Hargrove that they would turn around and start back for Fort Bridger in the morning, then secretly slip around the far side of the Bear River Divide and march on to Fort Hall on their own—so there would be no more confrontations with the man and his bullies that might end up hurting his daughter and the ones she loved in the long run? Maybeso, the two of them didn’t need to ride on to Fort Hall in any event. Wasn’t it entirely possible that Roman and the others who would not be turned away from Oregon could find someone to pilot them to the Willamette on their own? Did these farmers and settlement folks really need two old hivernants throwing in to see them through to Fort Hall and their digging around for a pilot? Maybe this matter of his tagging along to the Snake River was causing more trouble than all the good he could ever do.

Phineas Hargrove stepped to the center of that open ground surrounded by the men who had selected him to serve as their captain all the way to Oregon, while his seven hired men dispersed among the others. Titus began to cipher how many men there were, how many votes there would be to count when it came down to a show of hands.

“I’m going to assume that most of you don’t have any idea why I’ve heralded this meeting tonight with our trumpet,” Hargrove began, his stentorian voice clear as a clarion bell over the crowd of hundreds.

“You don’t want my father-in-law to ride along to Fort Hall,” Burwell roared as the throng fell quiet. “Him and his friend, both men good on the trail—”

“They did not sign on at our Westport depot, the way the rest of you did,” Hargrove interrupted. “If there is a rule, there must be a good reason for that rule. You all joined our company according to the rules, agreed to abide by the rules, and this wilderness is by far the last place we should be letting those rules slide—not here in the lawless wilderness.”

“What harm does it do to bend a rule this one time?” asked a man at the edge of the crowd.

“I’ll tell you what harm it does, Mr. Bingham. It begins the breakdown in civil order,” Hargrove preached with that booming voice of his.

Another settler asked, “How will they break down civil order?”

Turning, the wagon master said, “Mr. Iverson, all a man has to do is look at these two … two ruffians Burwell wishes to bring along to see that there can be no good come of this to our wagon company.”

“What are you claiming they’re gonna do, Hargrove?”

He turned slightly again to address the new speaker, “Dahlmer, isn’t it? Agreed, we have no idea what men such as these might do to disrupt the law-abiding orderliness of our company. These roughs have been freed of the constraints of civil society for more years than we could ever guess. They have lived without the fetters of responsible, God-fearing men, like the rest of you.”

“How safe are our wives and daughters around these two strangers?” one of Hargrove’s backers prompted.

“Yes, yes,” Hargrove said. “Wouldn’t you fear for your wives and daughters with such lawless, unscrupulous creatures as these ruffians and scoundrels along on the journey?”

“Hold on a minute!” cried a man standing near Burwell. “Why the devil we have to fear for our wives and daughters from these two? You know something about them you ain’t told us?”

Hargrove took two steps toward the doubter. “Just look at them, dressed like Indians, their hair long and unkempt like a pagan savage keeps his hair. Dp you want that specter residing in our camp?”

Off to Bass’s left a man took a step into the ring before he spoke, “So what the blazes do you call that?”

Turning on his heel, the wagon master looked in the direction the farmer was pointing. “What, Ammons? Call what?”

“That pilot you hired back at Fort Laramie.”

With a hearty laugh, Hargrove asked, “Harris? You mean Harris?”

“Yeah,” Ammons responded with a tug on his soiled suspenders. “These two who came along with Burwell don’t look no worse than your handpicked pilot.”

“For God’s sake, the man is our pilot!” Hargrove shrieked.

Roman Burwell snorted, “Sure as the devil looks like he’s your pilot to California, Hargrove!”

“Listen, Burwell,” Hargrove snarled as he whirled on the big farmer, “ever since Laramie, Harris has been our pilot. Each and every one of you trusted in me to engage a pilot when we reached Fort Laramie. This man is our guide. He’s not like those other two who threw in with your family at Fort Bridger.”

“The man’s my father-in-law,” Burwell growled. “An’ the other’n is his good friend. That makes ’em both near kin to me.”

“But we do not have room for any travelers to throw in with this company!” Hargrove said, frustration crimping his features.

A new voice called out, “What’s it hurt?”

He turned on the man, “Why, Fenton—it hurts the rule of law and orderliness here in the wilderness. If we let things slip out here, even a little, then we truly are not bringing God’s order and civilization to our new homes.”

“These two won’t ruin nothing!” another shouted.

Then a voice seconded that opinion, “And I haven’t seen either of ’em coming round my wife and daughter like you claimed they would.”

Hargrove countered, “This is but the first day! There hasn’t been time for these beasts to show their true stripes.”

“Maybeso we oughtta put it to a vote!” called a voice.

“No, Pruett!” cried the wagon master. “We haven’t had our full debate.”

Bingham took two steps away from Burwell and yelled, “We can call for a vote now!”

“No!” Hargrove bellowed his desperation, wheeling to gesture at his supporters. “We haven’t heard anything from the other side!”

“I say let’s vote!” Burwell called.

Titus felt the palpable surge of electricity that shot through the murmuring crowd like a jolt of lightning.

“No—you can’t!”

But Burwell was not distracted. “Those who don’t want my father-in-law and his friend along to Fort Hall—”

“Not yet, you can’t vote yet!”

Yet Burwell continued, “—let’s see a show of hands!”

Immediately those on the far side of the assembly raised their arms—perhaps as many as twenty men, along with Hargrove’s eight hired men, while the train captain began to wave both of his arms frantically.

“No, no—there must be time for more debate!”

Roman Burwell continued, “So we should have a show of hands for those who see nothing wrong with these two men coming to Fort Hall with us.”

Only a blind man without ears would have trouble sorting out which way that vote went. As soon as more than sixty men held their arms in the air, they began a spontaneous cheer of relief, of jubilation, of revolt against the tyranny of the man who had arrogantly turned his back on them and would be making for California, leaving them high and leaderless at Fort Hall.

Burwell turned to Hoyt Bingham and said in a voice just loud enough for those close to hear, “I think it’s time we got this all settled here and now.”

“The new captain?” Bingham whispered.

“Yep. Let’s get this over with so we can toss Hargrove out on his ear.”

Bingham quickly looked at the wagon master shuffling over to his supporters, listened to the noise of their arguing, then pursed his lips and nodded his head once in agreement.

“Friends! Friends! Fellow members of the Hargrove Oregon Company!” Roman bellowed, shaking both arms aloft for silence. “We have an important vote to make tonight. Even more important than the one we just made.”

“Vote?” Hargrove squealed as he wheeled about on his bootheels. “What other vote? You can’t do this without your captain’s permission!”

Burwell took a step toward the center of the ring and told the crowd, “We oughtta vote on a new captain!”

For a long moment the entire assembly fell into a dead hush. Not a sniffle or cough, not one shuffle of a boot on the sandy soil or the murmur of a mother scolding a child—nothing for three long heartbeats. Then all hell broke loose. Hargrove’s supporters and hired men began screaming their objections—which only prompted the man’s detractors to cheer, clap their hands, and stomp their feet on the ground. Which drowned out most all of the naysayers.

Once more Roman was signaling for some quiet; then he yelled, “For our new captain, I throw in the name of Hoyt Bingham!”

“Hoyt B-bingham?” Hargrove yelled.

“I put a second on that vote!” Iverson shouted.

“How ’bout you, Roman?”

Burwell turned to the speaker, who stood at the side of the throng. “Mr. Ryder, I do appreciate your confidence in me an’ all—”

“You stood up to that two-tongued no-good who lied about taking us all the way to Oregon,” Ryder said as he scratched at his gray-flecked whiskers. “I say you showed you got the stuff to be our captain!”

A moment after some of the crowd began to roar its approval, Roman shushed them again and said, “No. I won’t let my name be put in the vote.”

“Why, Roman?”

Burwell turned to the man. “Mr. Truell, I won’t let you vote on me ’cause I know I’m nothing more than a simple farmer. I know I haven’t got the brains to lead this outfit to Oregon.”

That’s when Titus roared, “But you got the heart to do it, son!”

Roman turned and stared incredulously at his father-in-law with something in his eyes that told Scratch that the man was about to loose some tears.

Suddenly Bingham was beside Burwell, saying, “I don’t believe what Roman Burwell says when he tells you he doesn’t have the brains to lead this outfit. But I do believe that Roman has the heart to make a good captain of this Oregon company. I will serve as your captain … but only if Roman Burwell will serve as my coleader!”

The deafening roar of more than two hundred throats drowned out the exasperated cries of the desperate knot of men and women which had tightened around Phineas Hargrove.

“All those in favor!” Bingham called for the vote.

But the noise was even louder still, frightening magpies and jays from their roosts in trees for a full half mile around the cedar breaks.

“Any opposed?” Bingham shouted. “Any ’cept Hargrove’s California Company?”

“But we’re going to the same place!” Hargrove growled as he parted his supporters and advanced on Bingham and Burwell, his hired men in tow. “I will serve out my term as the leader of this whole company—”

Suddenly Roman and Bingham stood shoulder to shoulder before him, more than two dozen friends closing in a phalanx behind their newly elected leaders. That stopped the wagon master and his young muscle in their tracks.

“Unless Hoyt Bingham has something against it,” Burwell announced to the throng, “Phineas Hargrove and his people can travel with us till we get to Fort Hall—but only ’cause the rest of us gonna let them stay.”

“Amen to that!” Bingham cheered. “Out here in this new country we’re gonna build, a man can’t stay leader if the people he leads decide they won’t follow him!”

Burwell drew himself up and looked down at the smooth-faced Hargrove. “It’s a new day, Cap’n. No more are you gonna walk on the rest of us just so you can get yourself and your guns to California.”

The apologetic look that came over Hargrove’s face appeared convincing enough to the crowd.

“I-I can see now where I’ve been a little harsh,” he confessed with downcast eyes. “But, I had a job to do—a job you men of this train elected me to”

“Now you take your people to California,” Roman reminded him.

“Yes,” Hargrove agreed, appearing contrite and duly chastised. “I’d proudly serve as the leader of this train until we reach Fort Hall … but, it appears I must turn over command to your new leaders: Burwell and Bingham.”

The crowd roared again as men pounded the new upstarts on the back. Hargrove reached out his hand, shaking with both of those new leaders as his hired men held back the gathering. That brief formality seen to, the wagon master turned abruptly and disappeared with his men forming a protective ring around him as they took their leave from the low knoll.

Maybeso, Titus thought, things just might be working out for these folks after all.

“You see’d Roman?”

Amanda turned to answer her father early the next morning, “He and Lemuel went down to the hollow to find one of the cows that wandered away last night.”

“Together?” he asked, some small itch nagging him, small but buried deep enough he could not quite find it to scratch.

“Yes,” she replied. “Something wrong, Pa?”

Titus shook his head and lamely tried out a gap-toothed smile on her. “Naw—I just ’spect they’ll blow that trumpet anytime now an’ the train be rolling out.”

“We’re about ready here,” Amanda declared. “Team’s hitched and the milkers are over there with Leah and Annie.”

As she turned away to toss the last of the bedrolls over the rear gate of the wagon, Scratch slowly scanned the cedar breaks that surrounded them on three sides. There wasn’t all that much tall cover, and it sure as hell wasn’t a forest the likes of which you’d find against the foothills. Just some low scrub cedar that ran more than five miles in all directions across the rolling, rumpled landscape. But the thickets were nonetheless tall enough to hide a man on foot, and sure as hell thick enough to conceal a cow that had wandered off in search of a fresh mouthful of grass sometime during the night.

The trumpet blew, a shrill blare on the hot breeze that foretold a scorcher of a day.

And he turned, finding Amanda over by the wagon, wheeling suddenly, her eyes finding him.

The trumpet blew its warning again.

Scratch watched his daughter swallow as she blinked into the distance, smoothing her open hands down the rumpled pleats at the front of her dirty brown dress.

“Ma!”

They both whirled, finding Lemuel trudging out of the cedar breaks, the front of his shirt dark with sweat. This early in the cool of daybreak? As the youth lunged closer, Bass could see how his hair was plastered with dampness, his face glistening.

“Lem!” she cried, starting for him.

“I heard the trumpet!” he gushed breathlessly as he approached the wagon and his mother, who lunged forward to greet him. “Come fast as I could.”

“Where’s your pa?”

“He’s not here?” the boy asked as his dusty boots slid to a halt on the flaky soil. “Didn’t he come back with the cow yet?”

“N-no,” she answered, her voice small, pinched off.

Titus was there immediately, his hands gripping Lemuel’s shoulders, turning the lad toward him. “Where’s your pa?”

“Dunno, Gran’pa,” the boy said, fear starting to show in his eyes.

“Thought the two of you went out after the cow together?”

That third and final call of the trumpet blared brassily over the encampment. Titus turned quickly to the east. Saw how the sun would be rising soon.

Lemuel nodded and swallowed hard after his race to get back to camp. “We did, together. But, it was getting later and later. Pa thought we ought to split up so he could work the other side of the hill from me.”

“You don’t know where he went?”

Turning, the boy pointed. “I come from there. Pa was on the far side of the hill. I figured he or Hargrove’s men’d find the cow afore I got to the end of the draw, then doubled back—like Pa told me to—”

“You say Hargrove’s men?” Titus interrupted, his belly tightening.

With a nod and a gulp, Lemuel answered, “Three of ’em ran onto me. They was riding horses. Asked where Pa was, was he on foot like me. I told ’em we was looking for one of our cows wandered off. They said for me to start on back to the wagons—we was pulling out soon.”

“Where’d they go?” he asked, a little desperation creeping into his voice, that tiny itch grown to a full-blown uncontrollable urge just screaming to be scratched.

“They said they’d find Pa, then headed off the way I told ’em he went,” the boy admitted. “Said they could find the cow better on horseback than Pa could on f—”

“You say they was riding horses?”

“Yes—”

Titus had freed his desperate grip on the boy’s shoulders and was turning away as Hoyt Bingham rode up with Hargrove and three of his hired men on horseback. Shadrach was coming over from the shady spot where his family had slept out the night.

“That’s them, Gran’pa,” Lemuel declared in a quiet voice just behind Bass’s shoulder.

“Who?”

“The three who said they’d find Pa and the cow.”

“Them three ridin’ up behin’t Hargrove?”

“Yessir.”

“Great God, Amanda!” Hargrove bawled as Digger lowered his head and growled. “You haven’t got your yoke of oxen hitched to that wagon yet?”

“We’re … looking for Roman.”

Hargrove acted as if taken aback by that pronouncement. “But, we’re leaving right now. Already put the head of the march on the trail for the Little Muddy.”

“Oh, no, no!” she whimpered. “Roman’s not back—”

“The boy here says these three niggers o’ your’n turned him back from helpin’ his pa look for a missing cow,” Titus interrupted his daughter, instantly snagging the attention of the five riders as he moved toward Amanda beside the wagon. Shad angled around so that he stood behind Bingham and the quartet of horsemen, his double-barreled flintlock smoothbore cradled across his left forearm.

“What about this, Hargrove?” Bingham demanded.

Turning to one of his hired men, Hargrove asked, “Yes, what about that, Corrett? You know where Burwell went?”

Corrett shrugged, pulling at an earlobe. “We run onto the boy out in the thicket, like the old man said.”

Then a second rider explained, “But we never saw hide or hair of him. So we come on back afore we got left behind.”

“No sign of him, Jenks?” asked the ousted wagon master.

That second rider shook his head convincingly. “No, Mr. Hargrove. No sign.”

Turning back to Amanda and Bingham, clearly ignoring Bass, Hargrove crossed his wrists on his saddlehorn and said, “There you have it, Mrs. Burwell. My men weren’t able to find your husband. Perhaps he’s been bitten by a rattler.”

“Oh, Pa—”

Titus looped his arm over her shoulder as she started to sag. He held her up against his side. “We’ll find him, Shad an’ me.”

Worry creased Bingham’s face. “Who’s going to get your wagon moving?” He pointed off at the rest of the wagons, the last of which were rumbling into motion, oxen lowing, mules braying, men barking commands at the animals, and women hollering at their children to catch up. “The train’s on its way.”

“You’ve got to stop them, Hoyt!” Amanda shrieked, trembling fingers at her lips.

Calmly, deliberately, before Bingham could utter a word, Hargrove declared, “We can’t do that. Wagon master Bingham was elected by all the people to get this company through to Oregon. We have these rules for the good of the entire group.”

Scratch had to restrain his daughter as she attempted to lunge forward, sobbing, “But you can’t go off and leave us!”

Bingham started to speak, then wagged his head. “Roman will show up soon enough.”

“One man and one cow cannot stay this company from the miles we must put behind us today,” Hargrove asserted as he leaned back and straightened his spine reflexively. “Your husband should have thought more about you than he did his cow, Mrs. Burwell,” he said, putting a real emphasis on the word Mrs.

“Wh-where you going?” Titus asked as Bingham and Hargrove pulled their horses around in that jumble of hired men.

“Wagon master Bingham has got a train to move one day closer to Oregon,” Hargrove announced with triumph brightening his face.

Then Scratch could only stare at the backs of those five men as they kicked their horses into a lope and shot away, intent on catching the head of the column just then winding its way toward the sagebrush bottoms, raising those first choking spirals of yellow dust for the day.