weight up against the side of the shifting mule with that one lone arm.
When he tried kicking his leg for additional boost, Bass cried out suddenly … and hearing himself, he clamped down on his lower lip, vowing he would not make that mistake again. Instead, he could only groan, gasping for breath with every sharp jab of pain as he pulled. Pulled.
Steady … dear God—steady, girl, he thought as the mule sidestepped again, shifting herself with his additional weight throwing her off balance.
Then he realized he had dragged himself more than two feet off the ground, and not knowing how long he could go on hanging there with the one arm bearing it all … but knowing at the core of him that he would never endure another attempt. This had to be it, or they would be staying right there for the night, perhaps forever if the Arapaho returned.
Grunting, he forced that tingling right hand to seize a loop of knotted rope securing the sheeting over the packs. By rocking to his side Bass let go with his left hand and before his weak right arm failed him—he thrust out with the strong one, securing a new hold and hung there, stunned by the pain and ready to bawl.
Sure that he would weaken and cry out with the torment in that shoulder wound the next time he inhaled, instead Titus bit down on his lip, grunting as he pulled again, dragging his weight a little farther up the side of the mule. She volved her head back to look at him, see what he was doing … then suddenly lowered her neck.
Not waiting for Hannah to change her mind, for her to move—Bass lunged down her far side with the good hand and snatched a third hold, pulling, dragging, hauling himself on over her foreflanks until his waist lay across her withers.
As Hannah’s head and neck came up, he finally gasped for breath, spitting blood from the lower lip he had just bitten hard enough that a warm ooze trickled across his tongue.
“G-good … g-girl,” he stammered in a hoarse croak, the punctured lip already beginning to swell.
As he fought the dizziness and thumping of each heartbeat now clanging in his head with the power of a blacksmith’s hammer, Titus rolled onto his left side and with the numbed right arm yanked on the thick blanket, stuffing it down beneath him. There he knew it would pad him from the mule’s bony withers, here where he lay cradled between her neck and the front of Hannah’s packs.
With each of those violent movements, all that stretching of the shoulder, rotating it—Bass now rested there a moment, sensing the wound on the front of his shoulder seeping. For the first time since he had regained consciousness on the riverbank, the bullet hole had torn away from the inside of his buckskin shirt where the animal hide had crusted itself against the exit wound.
And as he hung there crimped at the waist over the back of the faithful mule, Scratch began to feel a warm trickle at the back of his neck—not sure if it was the river moss still dripping …. or more of his own blood seeping now from the entrance wound in his back.
That, or the scalping.
If he didn’t bleed to death in the next few hours, he damn well might fall off because he couldn’t hold on anymore. No telling how long his strength would last. And when it failed, he would just tumble off the mule’s back. If that happened, Bass knew with rock-hard certainty that he would never get back on her. This was his chance. He’d been given this much by the power that watched over all things. A man had no right to expect any more than that.
This was his one chance. His to do with … or die. It was up to him now. Up to him and the mule.
After a moment more he tugged on the rifle one more time to be sure he could free it from the ropes; then Bass took up the long loop of rawhide rope.
“Awright, Hannah,” he whispered hoarsely. “Get … get us outta here.”
With a slight tug on the rope she started away from the riverbank with him slung over her like so much deadweight baggage. Turning slightly and taking those small steps, Hannah was careful where she placed each hoof, perhaps sensing the heavy burden placed on her. Not just the man’s weight—but his call to her spirit. It was up to her now.
As Hannah turned a step at a time, firmly planting each hoof before she moved another on the uneven, sandy grass of the bank, she turned Scratch’s face toward the west. Slowly, slowly she came around, turning so that he saw downriver. Through the mist of tears he got himself a long look at the sun settling beyond those tall cottonwoods.
How good this was—he suddenly thought, suddenly felt its certainty through his whole body. How damned good it was to watch this sundown.
So simple a thing to him before this day, this matter of the sun’s going down.
As she brought him on around, Bass gradually turned his head and rested it against her powerful, muscular foreflank flexing with each measured step. Resting his cheek against her power when he was now weak. Gazing back at that sunset.
As she plodded forward across the uneven ground, a hoof at a time … he gave thanks for the loyalty of that friend carrying him away from the riverbank there at the end of that day.
Watching the sun ease down past the bushy tops of the far cottonwoods, Scratch vowed his life would not be the same hereafter. This simple matter of a sunset was the powerful radiance of what surrounded his heart with all the more warmth. Not only did he have the mule and his rifle … but he had been given this sunset.
The gift of another day now brought to a close.
Had things been different—had the power that watched over all things not been wanting him to see things through new and different eyes—then, Bass realized, he would not be alive to watch this sun going down behind those cottonwoods … splashing the river’s surface with glittering light.
At the center of him he made a vow to watch each and every sunset, each and every one of those days given him from here on out. Promising to be thankful for each one he had been granted by whatever great force had spared him this day.
Surely it had to be the same, unnamed power that created the beauty of every sunset, painting each day’s with a different hue as the earth slowly turned beneath that radiant, blazing horizon.
As the sun sank lower, out of sight behind the cottonwoods and Hannah carried him up the long slope from the river, Bass vowed with all his heart that he would not fail to watch them all. Given that gift of each day.
Realizing he was not just given his life this day, but given new eyes to see all those sunsets yet to come.
By the time he pushed himself over and off the mule’s back late that first night, it felt like every inch of him had been scalded raw.
Scratch wasn’t sure how much ground they had covered after fleeing the riverbank at sundown: he had passed out. But when he finally became aware that the mule had stopped, the moon itself was resting on the far western edge of that black dome overhead. Slowly coming awake, he realized he had been asleep, maybe more so he had passed out with fatigue, his mind and body giving up the fight against such terrible pain. And he shivered with cold. As warm as the days had been, the nights had been gradually growing colder.
Evidently, she had been standing there patiently waiting for him to awaken, unable or unwilling to take him any farther that night. The only sounds he heard as he came to were the mule’s weary breathing, and the faint trickle of water seeping along its bed, somewhere out there.
As the seconds passed and his heartbeat began to hammer at his ears once more, Bass became all too painfully aware of his body. From head to toe, it felt as if he had been brutalized—not a part of him that did not cry out. While not as horrifying an ordeal as had been climbing on, this pushing himself off the mule’s bare back was nothing short of excruciating torment.
Even the muscles in his good arm and the two strong legs cried out with complaint. Every part of him in agony, Bass heaved himself off his perch, dropping to his legs only to have them give out beneath him so he landed in a heap.
Groaning, Scratch rolled over onto his left shoulder and drew his legs up fetally—fixing to let himself cry as the pain washed over him in a diminishing flood. Sometime later, when he was prepared for what it would take, Bass told himself he had the strength to get back on his feet. Better that than lying on the cold, bare ground at the edge of this stand of trees.
First he struggled to his knees, then rose there beside Hannah, resting against her as his breath slowed until he again heard the faint trickle. With his legs stiff and unused, he gripped on to the mule and stumbled around to
