bank.
“Right here you’re standing where the Santa Fe Trail begins,” explained the stocky, pockmarked storekeeper. “Takes a man a little south of west, eventual to the land of them greasers.”
“Greasers?”
“Mex,” came the reply. “Some of the fellers travel the trail last few trading seasons call ’em sun-grinners. Damn, but from the sounds of what I been told, they’re a people ain’t worth a shit but for their handsome women.”
Titus swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he thought back on those hungers he had been pushing down, like an aggravating tickle. “W-women.”
“Dark-skinned they be—so I’m told by them what pass through here bound for Santa Fe.” The man scratched at a two-day growth of patchy whiskers sprouting on his cheeks, eying the slight stranger who stood just shy of six feet on that rough-plank floor. “Greaser women what wear they’s skirts up to the knees, and their shirts clear down to here: so they all but hang right out for a man to see near ever’thing.”
“This trail you’re talking about,” Titus asked, hopeful, “it go west by way of the Platte?”
The fat jowls waddled as the man shook his head, eyes squinting as they took measure of the newcomer. Dirt and smoke stained every one of the storekeeper’s deep pockmarks and the crow’s-feet wrinkling both corners of nis bloodshot eyes. “That be too far north of here, mister—the Platte would. Like I tol’t you, Santa Fe Trail takes a man off southwest from here.”
“Sounds to me that this be the place a man makes up his mind, don’t it?”
The jowly storekeeper nodded. “Head south to the land of the greasers. Or push on upriver.”
“And the Platte?”
“Still upriver a goodly piece.”
“Was hoping to run onto it afore now,” Titus said with disappointment. “Seems like I been riding forever already.”
“Something on the order of two hunnert thirty miles.”
“What’s two hundred thirty miles?”
The man scratched at his chin absently and replied, “That’s how far you come from the mouth of the Missouri.”
“Happen to know how long I got to go to reach the Platte?”
“Hmmm,” the man considered. “That’s a handsome piece.”
“Farther’n I come already?”
“Dare say, mister. Yep, a good bit farther’n you come already.”
That depressing news sank within him like a stone tossed into the swimming pond back in Rabbit Hash, Boone County, Kentucky. For a moment he wondered on another option. “How’s the country lay on that trail to Mexico?”
With a sudden, broad smile the storekeeper said, “Now, that’s something to show you’ve got a good head about you. I can outfit you for such a trip right handily.”
“The country. Tell me ’bout the country.”
“Halfway there, I’m told—you’ll run onto a desert that lasts near the rest of your journey.”
“A d-desert?”
“Sand and lizards and sun, mister. All it’s fit for, so they say.”
“Why would any man wanna go there—if’n that’s all he’s bound to come across?”
“I told you awready.” The wide-shouldered shopkeeper grinned with teeth the color of hickory shavings. “They set their eye on that greaser country for the womens. Most trade for mules, and bring back the greasers’ gold.”
“Say a man don’t want none of that. How’s the land lay up in that Platte country?”
With a shrug the man answered, “Ain’t worth a spit for building—you ask me. Not much timber like we got here.” He pointed. “A feller runs out of trees a bit west of here.”
Watching the man chew at a fingernail, Titus asked, “Then?”
“Then you find yourself in nothing but grass. Taller’n your horse’s belly it grows. Miles and miles, and it goes on for longer’n I care to know. Country ain’t fit for a decent man to settle his family in—what with no wood and the Injuns all about.”
“Pawnee.”
That caused the shopkeeper to raise an eyebrow. “You heard of ’em?”
“I heard,” Bass answered.
“Leave that godforsaken country to the likes of them, I say,” the man snarled sourly. “Ain’t fit for nothing but what Injuns and buffalo out there—all that can live in them parts—”
“Buffalo?” he interrupted almost too quietly. “B-buffalo, you said.”
For a moment the storekeeper studied Bass’s face with the first real interest he had shown all afternoon. “You’re looking for to find them buffalo, is it?”
His head bobbed every bit as eagerly as a young boy’s. “Yes. I aim to see me them herds of buffalo I heard tell was out there on the Platte.”
“They’re there all right, mister. Them, and the thieving, murdering Injuns too. If I was to do it—I’d lay my sights on greaser country.”
“Looks to be I’m pushing on north.”
With a snort of derision the shopkeeper said, “To see them buffalo and have your ha’r lifted by the Pawnee?”
“I figure a fella can watch hisself and stay out of harm’s way.”
With a sudden, low blat of laughter that reminded Titus of a peal of some faraway thunder, the storekeeper erupted, slapping a flat hand down on the counter so as to rattle a nearby display of tin cups. “If that ain’t some now! Why, from the way you was talking—I’d wager you and your outfit ain’t ever been out in that country off yonder.”
“Ain’t,” Bass admitted.
“So how you fellas figure you’re gonna keep from getting sideways with the Pawnee, seeing how you’ll need be crossing so much of it to get to that far country? Best pray there’s a whole bunch of sharp-eyed sonsabitches with y’—”
“J-just me,” Titus bristled, annoyed at the storekeeper’s amused smirk and downright nosiness. “Ain’t no one else along. Ain’t no
Like the passing of a cloud, the pockmarked face went grave as the storekeeper leaned forward on the plank counter, suddenly inches from Bass’s nose. Something of great import rang in the tone of voice as he said, “Tell me now you’re fixed for lead and powder?”
“Got me all I figure a man ought’n carry on a packhorse.”
Leaning back with a smug smile, the man suggested, “Might well think about packing you all you
As the last few words tumbled dramatically out of his mouth, of a sudden the storekeeper went silent, his eyes snapping to the narrow doorway, where Titus watched a middle-aged woman and a brood of children appear out of the sun, shuffling into the cooler shadows of the shanty store.
“You keep your hands to yourselves, hear me now?” she instructed the young ones as they came to a halt on either side of her, like a brood of chicks clustered around their hen. “Don’t make me scold you again like last time we was here.”
Titus studied her in that instant: the way she turned aside to one batch of children, then to the others as she instructed them all in a sure tone of voice. Her well-seamed face, tanned to the color of a native pecan even at this early season of the year, showed more than the simple ravage of time. That sallow countenance registered the toll of many live, and a few still, births, reflected the slash of ceaseless wind and the scouring of a life suffered beneath the unrepentant sun—all those countless days spent at her man’s shoulder … the two of them pleading with the ground, the sky, and ultimately to their God again and again to grant them enough of a crop to feed themselves and thereby survive one more year.
Then, as she finished instructing her flock in those quietly stern directives, the woman looked up at last: her
