Buffalo Palace

“How he know all this?” Wood inquired.

Graham asked too, “Yeah—how this here ol’ man know about us days ago when we ain’t even made it here yet?”

From out of the very air around them, Bass understood. Without the slightest hesitation he quietly said, “I s’pose his spirit helper told him.”

The rest turned toward Scratch—staring, unbelieving, and about ready to scoff until Hatcher asked a question of the shaman in the Shoshone tongue. The old man smiled, his blind eyes pooling with tears as he answered.

Then Jack turned to look up at Titus Bass with great wonder, even stunned amazement, on his face as Scratch leaned across the hide, taking one of the old hands in both of his.

“Tell ’im it’s me, Jack—the one what’s got hold of his hand,” Titus said.

When Hatcher explained, tears spilled from the shaman’s blind, milky eyes onto his wrinkled cheeks.

“The old’un says he knowed about Scratch here—Porcupine Brush calls Titus the white man’s buffler shaman—that he knowed when Scratch needed their help,” Hatcher explained, wagging his head slowly. When he brought his eyes up to look at Titus, Jack said, “Since’t he was the one what the All Powers chose to bring the medicine calf to the Snakes—”

Gray interrupted, “Hold on there—you’re telling us that something tolt him about Scratch and the B-blackfeets coming to jump us?”

“Yup,” Hatcher solemnly answered Gray’s question. “Porcupine Brush says behind his blind eyes he saw all what was to happen to Titus Bass. Says he was told ’bout this four days ago.”

Isaac Simms asked, “Just who in hell told the ol’ man ’bout all of this?”

“Not who tol’t him, Isaac. But what tol’t him,” Jack said as he reached out and laid his hand atop Scratch’s. “Porcupine Brush knew all ’bout it …. ’cause he was tol’t by Titus Bass’s white medicine calf hide.”

TERRY C. JOHNSTON

1947-2001

TERRY C. JOHNSTON was born the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas and lived all his life in the American West. His first novel, Carry the Wind, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books appeared on bestseller lists throughout the country. After writing more than thirty novels of the American frontier, he passed away in March 2001 in Billings, Montana. Terry’s work combined the grace and beauty of a natural storyteller with a complete dedication to historical accuracy and authenticity. He continues to bring history to life in the pages of his historical novels so that readers can live the grand adventure of the American West. While recognized as a master of the American historical novel, to family and friends Terry remained and will be remembered as a dear, loving father and husband as well as a kind, generous, and caring friend. He has gone on before us to a better place, where he will wait to welcome us in days to come.

If you would like to help carry on the legacy of Terry C. Johnston, you are invited to contribute to the

Terry C. Johnston Memorial Scholarship Fund

c/o Montana State University-Billings Foundation

1500 N. 30th Street

Billings, MT 59101-0298

1-888-430-6782

For more information on other Terry C. Johnston novels, visit his website at

http://www.imt.net/tjohnston

send e-mail to

[email protected]

or write to

Terry C. Johnston’s West

P.O. Box 50594

Billings, MT 59105

Turn the page for a special preview of

DEATH RATTLE

a Titus Bass novel

by Terry C. Johnston

Master storyteller Terry C. Johnston again recreates the fearsome and wondrous life of the free trappers of the Rockies in this thrilling sequel to Ride the Moon Down, as his beloved character Titus Bass must watch the end of his mountain man way of life. Death Rattle continues the adventures of Titus Bass as he searches for a way to carve a place for himself and his family on the changing and deadly frontier … and remain one of the untamed breed.

Damn, if this dead mule didn’t smell like a month-old grizzly-gutted badger!

Titus Bass swiped the back of his black, powder-grimed hand under his nose and snorted with the first faint hint of stench strong enough to make his eyes water. Without lingering, he spilled enough grains of the fine 4-F priming powder into the pan, then carefully raised his head over the dead mule’s still-warm rib cage.

The sonsabitches were gathering off to the left, over there by Shad Sweete’s side of the ring. Really more of a crude oval the two dozen of them had quickly formed around this collection of ancient tree stumps by dropping every last one of their saddle stock and pack animals with a lead ball in their brains.

“Don’t shoot till you’re sure!” Henry Fraeb was bellowing again.

He’d repeated it over and over, beginning to nettle the gray-haired Bass. “We ain’t none of us lop-eared pilgrims, Frapp!” he growled back at the trapping brigade leader.

The man they called Ol’ Frapp twisted round on that leg he was kneeling on, spitting a ball out of his gopher-stuffed cheek into his sweaty palm. “Gottammit! Don’t you rink I know ebbery wund of you niggurs?”

“We’ll make ’em come, Frapp!” Elias Kersey shouted from the east side of their horse-and-mulc breastworks.

“Don’t you worry none ’bout us!” another growled from Bass’s right.

“Here they come again!” arose the alarm.

Titus rolled on his hip, gazing behind him at the far side of the narrow oval, where some of the defenders