Hannah must surely have covered ground for him—but just how far north she had carried him toward the guiding star, there was no way to know.
Just get his rifle …
Rolling onto his left elbow, Bass rose partway out of the grass, blinking his eyes, finally clearing them at last. The forms danced liquidly before him, then snapped into focus.
He froze.
At least six of them, now a seventh he could count, all on horseback as they came up the slope—seven bowstrings were taut, arrows pointed at him.
His mouth went dry as he immediately looked at their leggings, their moccasins. Jehoshaphat—but they were tall men. Yet as his eyes raced over the patterns of quill-and beadwork they wore, there was something more about their look, their dress, the way they fashioned their hair, that convinced him these weren’t Arapaho.
Below them on the valley floor the bulls were passing now, thundering along behind the cows and calves—the last in the great cavalcade. Over the shoulders of some of the warriors Bass caught a glimpse of another dozen or more riders beginning to cross over from the far slope in the wake of the last retreating buffalo. They too were coming his way. And a large group of horsemen moved about on foot there on the nearby ground at the bottom of the slope, their ponies held by others who waited nearby as they gathered in a throbbing knot around something shapeless on the trampled ground.
He wondered if they were gathering around one of the fallen beasts to begin butchering it … then he figured they would not all cluster around one animal in such a way. Perhaps, yes—they were acting as if it was one of their own who had fallen from his pony and gotten himself trampled. Then as the dozen or so riders drew closer, his surprise turned quickly to fear. It seemed with the approach of these horsemen, the first warriors were giving him their total attention.
Maybe they were already blaming him for the stampede—believing he had caused the death of their companion.
All he had was the knife. At least to get it in his hand before too many arrows punctured his hide. Just to know he died with a weapon in his hand.
Down the slope some thirty feet the dozen riders reined up. He figured them to be the band’s headmen. Lots of long hair blowing in the cool breeze of that late-summer morning. Feathers and scalp locks on their war shirts that kept them warm. A sprinkling of graying heads—the old ones, those who commanded respect and likely ruled over this hunt.
Now his back fat was in the fire.
Moving slowly so he wouldn’t attract any attention, he rolled slightly to the right, onto his hip as his left hand gradually let go of Hannah’s lead rope and he inched it toward the small of his back, where he hoped to seize the well-worn skinning knife and yank it from the old scabbard stuffed in his belt.
The warrior closest to his left took a sudden, crouching step forward, drawing his bowstring back even farther and shouting to the other bowmen.
Immediately raising his arm, one of the arriving dozen shouted something Scratch did not understand. Whatever it was that was said, it froze the bowmen in place. There was low muttering among the warriors as the one giving the orders, the one who had called out, stepped right up to Bass, pulling a fur cap from his head.
“Eeegod, boys! If’n it ain’t a white child out here all on his lonesome!” Then he bent forward at the waist a bit to quickly study Bass. “Yep, ye are a white nigger, sure enough!”
In utter shock Scratch watched a second one, then a third, and finally more white men step up through the gaps between the warriors who held their bows on this quarry they had cornered on the hillside.
“Y-you’re … American!” Scratch stammered with a hoarse croak. “Wh-white men!”
The speaker’s eyes crinkled at their corners as his mouth drew up into a wide, friendly bow that showed a row of overly large teeth browned the color of pin acorns. The tall, stubble-faced man pulled back the cuff on his leather war shirt and studied his forearm a moment, then slapped his thigh with that fur cap, laughing as he sent a small eruption of dust puffing from his legging.
“By bloody damn—but I am that!” he exclaimed, his green eyes merry. “Rest of my outfit too.”
Without turning nor taking his eyes off Bass, the stranger flung his free arm backward to indicate the others, who, although dressed every bit as Indian as did the bow-wielding warriors, were clearly white men as they stepped up for a closer inspection of the stranger. Not a one wore a beard on their severely tanned faces, all of which bore the color of well-soaped saddle leather.
With another step the first stranger came beside Bass, dropping to one knee and extending that arm he had just inspected to certify his skin color. Unable to stop the tears beginning to fill his eyes, Titus rolled onto his left hip and eagerly held out the right hand to shake.
Seizing it securely, smiling warm and genuine, the stranger announced, “Name’s Hatcher, friend. Jack Hatcher.”
“What strange twist of the devil’s tail brings you here, Titus Bass?” Hatcher asked after he had sent some of the warriors off to the nearby coulees to locate some saplings strong enough to construct themselves a pair of travois. He had trudged back up the slope and settled there in the
One of them, about as stocky as he was tall, handed Bass a strip of dried meat to chew on. “Take your time with this here,” he warned. “Man’s been without food long as you have, just take ’er easy and chew slow.”
“Thankee,” Bass garbled around that first hunk he tore off the strip, wanting to swallow it near whole. But he knew the sense in the man’s words.
“His name’s Kinkead,” Hatcher announced. “Matthew Kinkead.”
Bass nodded. “Moving north,” he began to explain after he had finished that first strip of jerked venison and Kinkead handed him another. The rest sat nearby, as unperturbed and unhurried as they could be. “I figgered to run onto one of them trapping brigades.”
“Sublette?” Hatcher asked. “That booshway’s already pushed through this country, friend.”
“Him or Fitzpatrick. Didn’t make me no difference.”
“You was with ’em?” asked a new man with about the shaggiest head of unkempt hair Titus had ever seen.
Bass spoke around his jerky. “With who?”
“Fitzpatrick or Sublette?”
“No,” he answered. “I was on my own.”
“My name’s John Rowland,” and he held out his own bony hand. “Don’t think we ever caught your’n.”
“Titus Bass.” How good it was to talk, to look at friendly faces. To hear the sound of voices.
Hatcher’s eyes fell to Bass’s bloody shirt, a large, blackened stain radiating from the bullet hole in its shoulder. After a long moment his eyes came back to Bass’s face, his eyes crinkling warmly. “Prob’ly wouldn’t make no difference what white men ye run onto, Titus Bass. Fitzpatrick, Sublette, any of ’em. But I can tell you one thing for sartin: yer one lucky sumbitch ye run onto us when ye did. Lookit the way Titus here’s wolfing down our meat, boys! How long since last ye et, friend?”
For the life of him Bass wasn’t able to sort it out. The days of sleeping, the nights of riding on the mule, three … or more? Finally Scratch shook his head wearily.
“Longer’n he can remember I ’spect, Jack,” a new voice said as the man came up the slope from the horses and knelt.
Hatcher made the introductions. “This here’s Caleb Wood. Caleb, say your howdy to Titus Bass.”
After they shook, Wood turned to Hatcher to explain, “We ain’t found us much to make us them two travois, so I sent Rufus back with a handful of the Sho’nies to fetch us what we need from the village.”
“V-village?” Bass croaked.
They all turned at Bass’s question. “Snakes,” Jack answered. “Camped up the country a piece. Best ye just rest for now. Solomon—fetch me the man’s blanket off’n the ground there—yonder. And Elbridge, whyn’t ye find something for us to put under his head. We likely got us a bit of a wait here, and Mr. Bass just ought’n have his comfort till we set off to drag him back.”
“Drag? Drag me?”
“How long ye say ye been out here?” Jack inquired, his eyes flicking up and down Bass’s buckskin clothing,
