Dance on the Wind

23

“Arr! Arr! Arrrggggg! God … goddamn!”

Bass bolted awake with a start at Washburn’s roar.

Isaac thrashed in his blankets, struggling to free his legs—then as suddenly the trapper awoke. Sat up. Drew his legs up against himself and wrapped his arms around them. He began to rock back and forth, staring blankly at nothing while he mumbled.

“You all right, Isaac?” Titus asked, scared at what he saw on the older man’s face.

When Washburn did not reply, Bass inched closer, crawling on his hands and knees across that clay floor where he lived back in the corner of Troost’s livery. Slowly, he reached out, laid his hand gently on the trapper’s shoulder.

Isaac nearly jumped out of his skin at the touch, swinging an arm wildly at Bass. Titus fell back against his own blankets sprawled on the pallet of fresh hay.

“Isaac?”

“What the hell you want?”

“You … it’s me. Titus,” he tried to explain.

“I damn well know who it is,” he snapped, finally turning to look directly at Bass. “What’s the matter with ye—don’t think I know who ye are?”

“You was screaming—sounding wild … wild as you would if’n that grizzly that got Hugh Glass was after you.”

For a moment Washburn tried to glare Bass down, then gave in. The anger, the bravado, drained from his face, and he buried his face in his arms he had looped over his knees.

Titus asked, “You want I get you something?”

“Some of that whiskey maybe,” was the mumble.

From one of the empty cherrywood pails Titus retrieved the green bottle, the glass cold against his skin. Putting the cork in his teeth, he worried it from the neck, then nudged the bottle against Washburn’s hand. Isaac looked up from his arms, recognized the bottle for what it was, and took the whiskey. As Bass turned away to pry open the small stove’s door, he listened as the potent liquid spilled down the old man’s gullet in great, ravenous gulps.

“It were the horse, that goddamned horse again,” Washburn growled low, almost under his breath.

Bass turned from punching up the fire, asking, “What horse?”

“The white one, goddammit!”

Titus tossed a last piece of firewood into the stove and latched the iron door as the tiny cell began to warm almost immediately. A little smoke leaked from that chimney—but he decided he could stuff some more chinking in it come a warm day when the whole of it cooled off enough for him to get up there and work on it.

“I don’t know what white horse you’re talking about, Isaac,” Bass admitted as he settled before the man, watching Washburn’s throat work greedily at the whiskey again. “Slow down on that a minute and tell me ’bout this here white horse of your’n.”

“Same white horse. The one it’s allays been,” he repeated, his tone angry as he swiped amber drops off the hairs of his mustache that hung over his lips like a worn corn-bristle broom.

“Cain’t be your white horse,” Bass said finally, wagging his head slightly in confusion. “That pony you brung in weren’t—”

He whirled his head on Titus to interrupt with a warning growl, “I damn well know that son of a bitch jug- head pony ain’t white. You blamed idjit—I ain’t talking about it, cain’t you see?”

Titus eyed the green whiskey bottle, saw that it was less than half-full already. “Tell me what you want me to see, Isaac.”

Then Bass glanced over at the piggin between their pallets, noticing they had only another two bottles of whiskey out of all of that they had bought last week. They had been drinking a hell of a lot of the stuff, ever since he had been on the mend and Washburn had taken to teaching him all that he knew about life in the Indian country.

“Ain’t ye ever heerd tell of the white horse, Titus? Surely ye have. I tol’t ye ’bout it, ain’t I? Must have—many, many a time.”

“I … can’t rightly remember—”

Isaac’s eyes were glazing already in stupor. “Glass said he seen the horse once’t too. Tol’t me hisself. See’d it fer nights in his dreams afore he bent over to take him that drink at the river.”

Bass started feeling his skin go cold. “On the Grand?”

Washburn nodded. “Saw that thar’ horse in his dreams, he said—many a night afore the sow grizz chawed on him.”

Swallowing hard, Titus watched Washburn gulp down more of the whiskey from the bottle’s dull-green glow in the orange firelight. Titus’s tiny cell smelled of fresh hay and cold sweat—from the both of them. It was the smell of fear. Nothing less than pure fear of the unknown, the unseen.

“Glass saw a white horse in his dreams?”

Washburn took the bottle from his lips, licked them with the tip of his tongue as he stared at Bass with eyes that seemed as black as cinders. Deep circles of liver-colored flesh sagged beneath the man’s eyes. Made them look almost like sockets in a skull. He sucked on that snaggletooth a moment, then said quietly, “I see’d that horse too, Titus.”

“W-when?”

“Yest now,” he whispered, belched, and stared down at the bottle in his hand. It began to tremble at first. Then the more it shook, the more frightened Washburn became until he grabbed hold of the bottle with his second hand and with both of them held it out for Bass to take.

Seizing the whiskey from Isaac, Titus welcomed a chance to swallow some for himself. When he had that satisfying burn coursing all the way down his gullet, Bass finally asked, “This ain’t the first time you seen it neither, is it?”

“Said it wasn’t.”

“Damn,” Bass muttered.

“Damn right, damn” Washburn echoed. “Know what that means?”

What should he say? What could he say? All he did eventually was shrug a shoulder and try to grin as he replied, “Means you and me’ll just have to stay out’n the way of bears, I s’pose.”

Washburn snorted, wagging his head. “It ain’t yest the b’ars, Titus. That white horse … it’s an ol’, ol’ legend. B’ars don’t mean shit in that legend.”

Titus squirmed uneasily, his eyes flicking out to the doorway’s darkness. “All right—s’pose you tell me the legend.”

At first the trapper eased back on his pallet, stretching out on his back, one arm crooked over his forehead, covering his eyes. “A man what sees a white horse in his dream … that man gonna die.”

Bass let it sink in as he stared at Washburn for a long time. Then he eventually tried to cheer his friend. “We all gonna die sometime, Isaac.”

Washburn rolled up on an elbow and glared at Bass angrily. “Means a man’s gonna die soon.” He plopped over onto his back once more.

“Glass didn’t.”

“Didn’t what?”

“He didn’t die,” Bass retorted. “Not after he saw his white horse. Shows that’s just a bunch of bunk.”

For some time it appeared Washburn thought on it; then from beneath his arm he said, “He came no more’n a ha’r away from dyin’, Titus. That close.”

“But he didn’t die, Isaac. So forget the white horse—”

“It’s differ’nt: Glass didn’t die ’cause the Almighty wanted him to take his revenge on them what left him!” Washburn blurted in interruption. “The Almighty’s the only thing what saved Glass from dying when the white horse come to call him out.”

“That what you think you seen? A white horse called you out?”