calves and even colts attempted to pull themselves up on their spindly legs, wobbling ungainly before spilling to the ground once more. But here the buffalo calf was, tottering about on its quaking legs sooner than either of those domestic animals Bass had come to know. Again and again the calf heaved this way, then that, before it collapsed in a heap, but was quick to rise again.
Each time the calf managed to stay up longer, long enough to careen about in a crazy circle and finally locate its mother nearby—tottering over to jab its wet nose beneath the cow’s front legs, where it probed with its pink tongue and very little luck. When the cow shifted herself, so did the calf, this time nuzzling along its mother’s belly until it found a teat and latched on. As the calf greedily pulled at the nipple, it was plain to see it had been rewarded with warm milk.
“From now on, li’l one,” Titus said quietly from the side of the ravine, “you’ll know where to go first off, you wanna get fed.”
His own stomach growled of a sudden, reminding him he hadn’t fed it either. Glancing into the west, he got to his feet, sweeping up the bail to the pot and the leather strap nailed to the canteen, saying, “Be dark soon, won’t it, Titus? Ain’t got your supper started. Hell, you ain’t even got yourself a fire to hunker over come full dark.”
Of a sudden he remembered he would be bedding down tonight one horse shy of how he had taken his leave of St. Louis. It might be enough to take the starch out of any man—to cause lesser men to turn back. But Bass vowed he would press on.
Reaching the end of the ravine, he squatted next to the burned-out remnants of his fire and dragged his pouch over, pulling flint and steel from it once more.
“Leastwise that pack animal swum out like I done,” he muttered, trying hard to cheer himself as he blew on the red coal until he could set it beneath another knotted twist of dried grass. “Leastwise I got some of what fixin’s I come out with,” he convinced himself.
But, damn, did he ever hate to walk. Never took too much to that in his life, Titus decided. Even when Kingsbury and the rest of the boatmen were faced with walking back north to Kentucky’s Ohio River country along the Natchez Trace, they had bartered themselves a ride on wagons from New Orleans to the river port of Natchez itself, then walked only until they reached the Muscle Shoals, where the slavers jumped them.
For the rest of that journey north there had been the slavers’ horses for them to ride, keeping a constant and wary eye over their shoulders, ever watchful for that pair of white cutthroats who had escaped the fate of the other slavers there near the Tennessee River when those land pirates had come for Hezekiah Christmas.
A tall, shiny-skinned, bald-headed beauty of a Negro. Not no more’n ten years older than Titus himself. A man Bass soon give his freedom to, set free to go west from Owensboro on his own—a freedman with the whole of a wide-open wilderness to explore.
“Where you now, Hezekiah?” he asked quietly as the limbs caught hold of the flames and Titus finally set the coffeepot to boil.
Tonight he would eat the last strips of his dried venison and go off to shoot his first buffalo come morning.
“You et your first buffalo yet, Hezekiah?” he asked the hills about him. “How ’bout you, Eli Gamble? You find them beaver big as blankets in that upcountry you was yearning to see?”
He shuddered with the coming darkness, feeling smaller as the night came down than he had ever felt before—come here to a monstrous land ruled by these huge beasts. Never had he felt so small. Nor so alone.
Gazing at the stars just peeking into view overhead, Titus asked, “Are you alone, Eli? Like me?”
Then Titus stared at the fire as the nightsounds of the nearby herd drifted in to him. “Naw, I don’t suppose a man like you would ever be alone, Eli Gamble. Not nowhere near as lonely as men like Hezekiah Christmas. Sure as hell not nowhere like Titus Bass his own self right now.”
Plopped down here in the middle of everything he had ever wanted … but without another single living soul to share in the glory of it.
Although he had been awake long before the sun rose, Titus wasn’t ready to go in search of a buffalo to kill until sometime after first light.
For most of the night he had tossed in his blankets. From time to time he either went out to gather more kindling for his tiny fire, or he walked off toward the north bank of the Platte, where he sat for a long time, brooding at the murky river, its rolling surface a glimmering ribbon beneath the dim moonshine. He had remained there until at last he saw the sky had grayed enough to venture out—first to the west, then he walked a wide swing to the north across the night prairie. He had searched for Indian sign. A village of rings, fire pits, and meat racks as he had discovered before. Perhaps to find a herd of their ponies.
Instead, all he found was the bedding grounds of the far-ranging buffalo herd he had run across yesterday afternoon, stretching from horizon to horizon. Assured that the roar of his rifle would pose no danger, perhaps now he could take the chance of hunting his first buffalo. How his heart pounded against his ribs as he dwelt on that one thought all that walk back to his camp, where the packmare awaited him just before sunrise.
The little red-skinned calves were up already by the time he walked along the side of the hills bordering the great, grassy plain near the Platte itself. While the youngest of them still hugged their mothers’ sides, the others, perhaps days and weeks old, scampered about. Some of the oldest calves even butted heads in mock battle.
The sun had fully torn itself from the horizon when Bass sank to the ground, gone weak in the knees again just to stare at all of the countless thousands as the grassland slowly warmed that new day. With gold light the orb painted all the far surrounding hillsides in patches of sandy ocher where the tall green stems refused to grow. A breeze came up as the air warmed, carrying on it the muted sounds of the thousands as they arose from their bellies and ambled off in all directions to graze.
For a long while he studied the biggest ones: monstrous shaggy heads from which protruded a pair of resplendent black horns; those dark chin whiskers that gave the bulls their unique mark; and finally that great hump rising from their shoulders nearly as huge as their massive heads.
Easiest for him to pick out were the smaller cows—not near so large a head and horns, with nowhere near the great hump. Besides, most of the cows either were already mothers that late spring morning, or would be in a matter of hours or days, destined to drop more of the small, playful, impish red calves.
So that left only the fourth group of buffalo he watched in growing excitement to drop one himself at long, long last. They, the yearling bulls. Perhaps nearly as big as some of the older cows, yet distinguished by shortened horns and that straggly beard, not to mention the growing hump. Maybeso a yearling bull or an older cow, he mused, deciding it should be one or the other he would shoot this morning.
Not the calves nor their suckling cows—let the young ones frolic or their mothers breed for seasons to come. Nor should it be one of those old rangy bulls, he brooded. If nothing else, a bull would simply be too big. Far too much meat for him to take with him, he decided, realizing he would feel ashamed to leave so much behind for what predators were sure to feast on such a kill. His grandpap had given Titus that much a legacy: even in times of plenty a man must not be wasteful, for there will surely come times of want.
Was this ever a time of plenty!
It would have been an easy thing for him to seethe in anger at the river once again—to grow saddened as well that Washburn’s Indian pony was gone, for she and the packmare could have carried far more of the buffalo meat he would butcher this morning than the mare could all on her own. But face the truth he did—realizing he sat here in the middle of this foreign land inhabited by strange peoples and stranger animals … knowing he had only the mare to carry everything he called his own, and what meat he would pack along taking his leave of this place.
Then he figured a yearling it would be!
His heart beat all the more fiercely, his mouth gone dry as sand, as he carefully ran his eyes over those buffalo grazing nearby. Praying he would not be disappointed with the meat of so big a creature, Titus swallowed hard, his tongue parched, as he chose the one. Yes—that one would be his first buffalo.
Slowly he rose from his knees and stood, testing the breeze there on the long, lazy slope of the sandy hill. It was good, for the wind came from that portion of the herd dotting the endless valley all the way to the far horizon. He had the breeze in his face, out of the northwest here at sunrise.
Growing all the more cautious when he was some one hundred yards out from the fringe of the herd where the yearling stood cropping the grass with other youngsters, Bass dragged the hammer back to half-cock and flipped the frizzen off the pan. His right hand shook nervously as he sprinkled a few more of the fine grains of black powder into the concave surface of the pan. With the priming horn once more suspended from his pouch strap,
