some. But I knowed me some hivernants afore runnin’ onto Glass. Man-well Leeza had him a few hired men like that. Men so tough they growed bark right on ’em—like a tough ol’ cottonwood tree. But I gotta admit, Ol’ Glass had him more bark’n any man I ever knowed. Talked ’bout winterin’ up quite a few with the Pawnee—”
“This Glass, he said you ain’t seen very many, eh?”
Washburn jutted out his chin and slapped his chest once with a fist. “‘Many!’ I bellered like a stuck calf back at Glass as we was coming ’cross from the headwaters of the Powder, making for the Platte. ‘That’s right,’ the son of a bitch yest told me quietlike.’ If’n a man wants to see the hull consarned world covered up by buffler, he needs to take hisself on down to the prerra country come spring greenup. It’s there the buff graze and breed, moseying slow as you please afore the winds of the seasons. An’ they cover the hull durn earth from horizon, to horizon, to horizon.’” As he said it, Isaac pointed here, then there, then over there in emphasis. “That’s what he said, the truth of it too. I believe that nigger, Glass.”
“As f-far as a man can see?” Titus asked, incredulous. He had wanted to believe. Then gave up all hope. And now Isaac Washburn was telling him the whole earth was damn near black with them.
“Like a blanket coverin’ ever’thing,” Washburn added, kneeling slowly at Titus’s side. He held his open hands up to the glow in that little stove, rubbed them. “That’s the country I wanna go to see with my own eyes one day soon, Titus Bass. Clear to the moun-tanes.”
“How come you been all the way out there—but you ain’t never got to the mountains?”
“Hol’t on there, Titus,” Isaac corrected. “I been up the mighty Missouri for many a season now, trappin’ beaver for that greaser he-coon named Man-well Leeza. Then of recent I been at work for my friend Andrew Henry. But that don’t mean very many of us got all that close to them moun-tanes. While’st they was raised up all round us, we didn’t ever go to ’em.”
“Never?”
“Not once, no,” Washburn answered, kneeling beside Bass once again. “An’ when I was on my tromp with Ol’ Glass, we sure as the devil didn’t have us the time to go off lollygagging to look for no big buffler herds—man wants to keep his hair locked on, why—he keeps his head tucked into his collar out thar’ in that kentry. If’n he wanders off too much, the Blackfeet or them Rees yest might take a real shine to his skelp.”
“What’re these here Blackfeet, and them Rees?”
Washburn shuddered. “Rees? Damn ’em. Consarn them Blackfeet too! Baddest damn two-legged beasts God ever put Him on the face of the earth. Walkin’, talkin’, killing things is what Blackfeet is. Some time back they struck ’em a bargain with the Englishers to keep our kind out. Over the y’ars they been doing their best to make it hard on fellers like Leeza an’ Henry dealing in the Crow trade.”
“Crow? The bird?”
Washburn guffawed as he rose, his knees cracking. “Crow are Injuns up in that Powder River an’ Bighorn kentry. My, my—them are purty warriors—but a small tribe of ’em. They hate the Blackfeet ever’ bit as bad as we do.” He turned as if to shuffle away, tugging at that greasy blanket coat of his. “Til be off to get your supper.”
“Maybeso you can find us something strong to drink too.”
Washburn’s eyes narrowed. “Ye sure yer up to gettin’ yerself bit by the same dog nearly chawed ye in half last night, Mr. Bass?”
Titus nodded, his head throbbing so—he was desperate, certain that only a little of the hair of that mongrel that had mauled him so badly would truly salve his pain.
“All right,” Washburn replied. “Only ye’ll swaller ye some victuals first. But I’ll vow ye I’ll bring us back some barleycorn. Yessir. Isaac Washburn is due him a spree! Been a few seasons since’t I was last anywhere near me this hull consarn city. The up-kentry whar’ I been winterin’ ain’t much the place fer good barleycorn whiskey and white-skinned women, no sir.” He leaned forward, his face stuck down near Titus’s, aglow with a red shimmer from the stove. “I’m sure a likely young feller like yerself can show Isaac Washburn whar’ I can go to dip my stinger in some white gal’s honey-pot … now, cain’t ye?”
He grinned lamely. “I get myself healed up here, Isaac,” Bass replied, “we’re gonna both go dip our stingers in the finest honey-pots a man can find for hisself right here in St. Louie.”
“Whoooeee!” Washburn exclaimed, slapping the barn wall with a flat hand as he stopped and whirled about there at the door, the bottom of his blanket coat spinning out like a wheel. “Sounds to it like ye damn well better get on the gallop and mend yer own self right quick, Mr. Titus Bass. I don’t ’tend on waiting too long, now that I finally come back to St. Louie arter all these hyar winters of drinking bad-gut likker and wenching with red squaws. I owe meself a spree, young’un: white wimmens and good whiskey. An’ I’m invitin’ ye along fer the ride o’ yer life!”
At the mere thought of swilling down a whole lot more whiskey, his head pounded unmercifully, sharp pins stabbing right behind his eyes. Titus licked his swollen, cracked lips, wanting to feel hopeful about something, desperate to feel hopeful about almost anything—especially … what might lie out there.
Bass asked, “You really fixing to go on out yonder this year?”
“Yonder to them moun-tanes?” He moved into the shadows at the door.
“Wait!” Titus barked with a dry-throated croak, anxious that Washburn was leaving before he got his answer. “It true you’re fixing to light out there, going yonder the way you said you was—just go to the Platte and point your nose west?”
“Cutting my way right through the heart of that buffler kentry,” Isaac answered, then paused.
“Damn, but I allays hoped I could … maybeso one day do that too.”
“Maybeso, Titus Bass,” Washburn eventually replied, his eyes glimmering like twelve-hour coals there in the shadows of that, doorway—staring down at the younger man intently. “Maybe ye nigh well get yer chance, at that.”
22
“There’s some got ’em a name for that hull kentry out there,” Isaac Washburn declared the next day as he chattered on and on, having found him some eager ears. “I heerd some call it the buffler palace.”
Favoring the bruised ribs, Titus turned slowly to the trapper, who always lumbered close at one elbow or the other. “P-palace?”
Swaying in his drunkenness, Washburn shrugged, absently scratching at his long beard. “I s’pose at first it strikes a man as a mite queersome name—but that’s what many of the boys call that prerra land out yonder. Whar’ buffler’s the king. Land whar’ the buffler rule.”
Pumping on the bellows handle with the arm that did not pain him as badly as the other, Titus let that sink in slowly over the next few moments. From what Washburn had been telling him right from last night, that country must surely be what he had dreamed it would be: the land where the buffalo had retreated toward the setting sun—seizing dominion over everything as far as a man’s eye could see, a land from horizon to horizon to horizon ruled by those great, humped, mythical beasts.
“Ye mean fer true what ye said last night?” Washburn asked as he wiped some of the amber droplets from his droopy mustache.
“Said ’bout what?”
“’Bout throwin’ in with me.”
“You told me a man needs him a partner to cross country like that—the Injuns an’ all.”
“Ye figure ye got the makin’s?”
Titus turned, peering at the older man for a long time through his swollen, bloodshot eyes. “Look at me, half-beat to death … and you’re asking me if I got the makings?”
“Damnation—ye sure as hell got enough ha’r in ye, Titus. Enough bottom to make it clear through to the moun-tanes. Yer the sort figgers something out to do, so ye put yer head down and yest go at it. That’s a good thing in a man what wants to step off into the middle of the wilderness. Ain’t no one else’t gonna care for ye then —maybeso a partner if yer lucky enough to have one.”
“You had a partner afore, Isaac?”
“Sure. Had me lots of ’em.”
