as quietly as he could upon the thick carpet of spring grass. Lashing the horses to a low-hanging limb, Titus retrieved his rifle and crept toward the side of a low hill a quarter of a mile ahead of him. Hugging the shadows offered by the thick hardwood timber that bordered this southern bank of the Missouri, Bass carefully picked his way around the brow of the knoll. For all he knew, he had made it to Pawnee country and had blundered smack-dab into them—just about the way he had bumped into those Chickasaw warriors while out hunting for Ebenezer Zane’s boat crew.
Dropping to his knees as the wind came full into his face, rank with the sharp tang of woodsmoke grown strong in his nostrils, Titus crept forward, parting the brush with the muzzle of the fullstock flintlock rifle. Yard by yard he pressed until he stopped: hearing the familiar call of birds in the distance, followed by the roll of at least one woodpecker thundering its echo within a nearby glen. Were it an Indian camp, he figured, there sure as hell wouldn’t be such routine noise from the forest creatures.
Swallowing down the dry lump clogging his throat, Bass again parted the branches of the brush and pushed his way forward until he sat at the edge of the clearing. Ahead of him bobbed waves of tall grass that seemed to stretch all the way to the sharp-cut north bank of the Missouri. He dared to raise his head a little higher, catching a glimpse of the river at the foot of that north bank—still not all that certain he wouldn’t see a cluster of Indian wickiups.
Across the river to the south the spring sky was sullied with but a single thin trail of smoke rising from a solitary stone chimney that protruded over the top of a stockade wall. The double gate stood open just wide enough to easily admit a wagon, almost as if expecting visitors.
Quickly glancing left down the south bank, then north, Bass thought it curious he did not lay eyes on any humans. Then he spotted a pair of draft horses picketed just outside the stockade wall, contentedly grazing on the spring grass. He craned his neck to see more of that western side of the stockade. Beyond the pair grazed three more horses.
After all these days without sign of another human—just possibly there was life here.
At first the open gate and no sight of folks had unnerved him—causing him to fear the place had been attacked, its inhabitants killed, and the fort left empty. But it just didn’t figure that Injuns would leave good horseflesh behind.
A voice called out from the woods beyond the fort, surprising him. Bass craned his neck to the east to watch a figure emerge from the line of trees, an ax over one shoulder and his shirt carelessly draped over the other. Again he called back to the timber, and almost immediately two other men burst from the woods to join the first. The heaviest of them, also naked to the waist, tugged at leather braces, slipping them over both arms, then adjusting the belt line of his drop-front britches below his more-than-ample belly. That one mopped his face with a bright- yellow bandanna, then stuffed it into the back of his pants.
As he tried to study the trio, Titus could hear their talk, three distinct voices—but could not make out any words at this distance across the muddy, runoff swollen river. As the three turned the northeast corner of the stockade, Bass realized they all wore the same pants and ankle-high, square-toed boots.
“Soldiers.” Both dust and sweat stained the light-blue wool of those britches as the men turned through the open gate and disappeared from view. Almost as quickly the fat man reappeared, dragging behind him a small two-wheeled cart with a long double-tree attached to the front. It bounced and rumbled across the rutted, pocked ground as he turned the corner of the stockade, headed back toward the timber where the trio had emerged just minutes before.
For some time Titus sat there thinking on it, wondering if these three might well try to keep him from pushing on west to the mountains. At least that’s what Isaac Washburn had proclaimed last year when each night they had laid their plans for their journey to the Rockies. From the Missouri River country on west across the plains, Gut had explained, a man must either be a dragoon stationed at one of the riverside posts, or he had to belong to a licensed fur brigade sent upriver by one of the big companies being outfitted and setting off every spring from St. Louis these past few years.
For the longest time the trade in western furs had all but died off—what with the trouble the British raised among the upriver tribes during the years they waged war on the young country of America; not to mention the losses of men Manuel Lisa suffered at the hand of the Blackfeet high in the northern Rockies. Wary at best, the St. Louis merchants had pulled in their horns, licked their wounds, and confined themselves to doing what trading they could with the Sauk, Fox, Omaha, and the other more peaceable tribes along the lower river.
Then three years ago the Americans recruited by Ashley and Henry again flung themselves at the upper river, against the distant and hostile tribes, against that fabled land so rich in thick, prime fur.
But Titus Bass wasn’t about to join the army—not going to cut wood or dig slip-trench latrines at one of these river posts—hell, no, he wouldn’t do that and be forced to gaze out longingly at all that expanse of open wilderness he would never get to see as long as he was a soldier.
And he sure as hell wasn’t the sort to be a joiner either. Not about to sign on with one of those brigades that promised each man a rifle, traps, and two meals a day … and in return each dumb brute must promise the muscles of his back, his arms and legs, for the grueling labor of warping and cordel ling laden keel boats against the fickle Missouri’s mighty current. No, sir. All that talk he overheard in the St. Louis watering holes and knocking shops sure didn’t sound like much of a life to him: taking commands from some smooth-faced army officer, or from a slick- tongued fur trader bound to grow rich off the labors of others.
Perhaps if he rested right here in the brush and tall grass, watching the small post across the river for a while longer, he might learn for sure if more than those three were quartered at the fort. After all, there were five horses grazing outside the stockade walls. And then he chuckled, imagining the sight of that big-bellied one bouncing along at an ungainly gallop upon one of those horses.
A moment more and Bass slapped his knee, wagging his head for his shortsighted stupidity. As well as he knew horses, Titus chided himself for not seeing it earlier. Those sure as hell weren’t dragoon animals meant to be ridden. They were wagon stock: thick-hipped and high-backed. Which meant this place was peopled with foot soldiers.
It wasn’t long before the thin trail of smoke from that lone chimney became a thick column. One of those soldiers had punched life back into their fire.
That’s when Titus noticed the angle of the shadows and looked into the west to measure the descent of the sun. Those soldiers were done with their fatigue for the day and were preparing their supper. Just thinking of it made his stomach grumble. More than a week and a half ago he had left Boone’s Lick and Arrow Rock behind. He remembered now the last meal cooked by the hand of a woman. She had warmed his belly that evening and, in the darkness of that same night, come to warm his blankets. How he wished Edna Mae well in her search for a husband: a man for her bed, and a father for her children.
Then he gazed at the river, studying the far landing constructed of thick poplar and oak pilings buried into the bank, where river travelers would tie up their craft. To one of the pilings were lashed three crude pirogues carved out of thick-trunked trees, each of them bobbing against the wharf and each other with a rhythmic, dull clunk as the Missouri pushed on past. On the grassy bank itself lay two canoes, upside down, their bellies pointing at the cloudless afternoon sky.
He could well slip on around the post himself, unseen by those soldiers. But sooner or later, Titus realized, he would have to cross the Missouri. Once she pointed her way north—he would have to make his way over to the yonder bank anyway. For more minutes as the sun slipped closer to the far edge of the earth, he brooded on it— whether or not to chance these soldiers and this post. Or to pass them on by.
He racked his memory of all those sober or whiskey-sodden nights spent with Isaac Washburn. Besides Fort Kiowa, where old Hugh Glass had crawled after being mauled by the she-grizz, the only fort his recollections came up with was the one Gut spoke of near the mouth of the Platte—the one called Atkinson. For the life of him, Titus couldn’t remember the old fur trapper warning him of any others. Atkinson was the one Gut vowed they would give wide berth as they made their way west.
But this stockade—what the hell was this post sitting here of a sudden on the south bank of the Missouri?
As the shadows stretched long and the afternoon breeze cooled against his shaggy cheek, Titus wrestled with it the way he had manhandled a piece of strap iron at Hysham Troost’s forge: all fire and muscle. And as the day grew old and evening beckoned out of the east, Bass owned up to what he’d been hankering to do almost from the moment he first set eyes on that stockade across the river.
