saddled, and were preparing to separate.
“I don’t know that I ever asked nothing of the Lord,” Bass had told Tremble. “Never been much of a one to pray.”
With that hard-boned and angular face of his, the preacher replied, “You yourself told me last night that for a long time you’ve been praying to get to St. Louie.”
“Maybe you misunderstood me. I ain’t never
“But you’ve hoped, and dreamed, and done all that you could to get there.”
“And I am getting there on my own.”
A smile wrinkled the lined face. “You’re getting there because God is answering your prayer.”
Of a sudden Titus had felt most uneasy, thrown there upon strange ground. Frightened again that he might just be in the presence of something far, far bigger than himself. “I don’t know nothing about that, sir.”
Removing his old felt hat from his head and dipping in a little bow, Tremble said, “I certainly hope that what you pray for, Titus Bass—will not become a yoke locked about your shoulders.”
Minutes later, not all that far downstream, Bass came across the tracks of a single horseman. The prints turned in front of him; then those pony’s hoofprints left the bank and entered the water. Now there were three, he confided to himself, brushing the grip on the flintlock pistol he had stuffed into the sash at his waist. Reassurance. The sort he got when he squeezed down, locking his grip around the rifle laid across the tops of his thighs. And turned to glance behind him. Hannah. All the rest behind her.
Three of them on the other side of the river now. He realized he’d have to keep his eyes moving back and forth along that south bank. It wouldn’t do to have himself surprised.
In bewildered silence twelve years back Titus had watched Tremble turn the big animal away and move off into the cold, frosty, autumn stillness of the forest. Before he climbed atop Able Guthrie’s old plow horse, Titus cautiously placed a hand upon one shoulder, as if to feel for any invisible weight there. Then touched the other shoulder in the same way. Still not satisfied, he shook his shoulders as if to rock loose anything perchance resting there. Then Bass decided it was all a little ghosty and superstitious of him to believe any preacher knew what he was talking about.
To think of it! Him, praying! Why, Titus knew he’d never prayed a prayer one in his entire life—leastways ever since he stopped going to church hand in hand with his mam.
A man had to provide for himself.
Just as he always had, Titus had figured.
Anything else was nothing more than superstition.
But—by damned—the hair went up on the back of his shaggy neck when after less than another mile he came upon the sign of a fourth horseman coming in from the east, turning down the bank to cross the river just as the others had. And the only way possible he thought to quell his growing fear was to talk out loud. Hardly a whisper, but still so he could be heard. Whatever it was that others believed in, that which was greater than himself—Bass spoke to it now.
“Just show me the way outta this,” he whispered, his hand sweating on the reins and the lead rope strung back to Hannah.
“You know damn well I ain’t ever been one for going down on my prayer bones and taffying up to you … but you show me the way outta this here fix right now … I swear I’ll be one to look for your sign and heed, no matter what.”
With the back of a leather sleeve, he swiped across his sweaty face. Then added, “I vow I’ll pay heed and listen too.”
Hannah snorted.
Twisting around in the saddle, he watched her bob her head, jerking back on the lead rope.
He listened too.
She snorted again, her ears perked, pointing stiffly at the sky. And her glistening nostrils flared as wide as the eye sockets on a buffalo skull.
Damn, if that weren’t sign enough. The mule had winded Injuns.
What with them horses coming up behind her, Bass didn’t have time to stop and take account of much. Instead he tugged on Hannah’s lead rope and nudged the saddle horse in the ribs with his heels, reining it off into the trees that lined the narrow river. There at the edge of the cottonwood and brushy willow, Titus kept the horse at a slow walk, his eyes moving constantly, his ears eager for any suspicious sound. Yard by yard, they covered what must have been a mile, then a second mile. How much farther would they have to cover ground at this snail’s pace? he wondered.
Better to be slow, careful, and quiet? Or to jump and get the hell on out of the country—to make a race of it then and there?
He was squeezing down hard on his memory right then, trying to dredge up what it was Isaac Washburn had told him he had done coming east with Hugh Glass and two others along the Platte when they found themselves butting squarely up against an Arikara war party come down to do some raiding in the middle of Pawnee country. But all he could remember of the tale was that the two others went under—leaving Hugh and Isaac to hide for their lives in a riverbank hole.
From there they traveled by night, hid by day.
It caused him to glance up at the sun then and there. Way up high did it hang that hot summer day. A long time till sunset, longer still until it would be slap dark. If he could keep from making a sight of himself, keep all these animals from stirring up too much noise at all … then maybeso that old preacher’s God was one to listen to a man’s vow—
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” he bawled as the saddle horse carried him slowly around a left-hand bend in the river.
Four of them … bold as brass—spread out across some twenty yards of a small, open patch of grassy ground not cluttered with trees and brush. He yanked ack on the horse’s rein and jerked to a halt, Hannah coming up on their tail roots.
Four horsemen all right—naked to the waist. Their brown skin glistening with sweat beneath the hot sun. Black hair tossing in the rare breeze, a feather or two stirring among them. And they were close enough for Bass to make out the dull smear of earth paint across cheeks and brows, noses and chins.
It didn’t savvy to get no closer, or to try hand-talk with those red niggers—not the way they was decked out to fill their dance card at the widow-maker’s ball!
Not taking his eyes off the four sitting still as statues just staring at him a moment, Bass yanked on Hannah’s rope, bringing the mule alongside him. There he pulled loose the knot securing the lead rope to the next horse and flung it far aside.
Then he hurled Hannah’s rope off onto her packs, slapping her on her neck and saying, “You’re on your own, girl! Best you cover ground … now—git!”
Screeching like a scalded house cat, Bass screwed that saddle horse around in a circle about as tight as if it had been dancing two-legged atop one of Ebenezer Zane’s hogshead barrels of Kentucky tobacco leaf bound south for New Orleans. As he was jabbing heels against the horse’s ribs and slapping the loose end of the rein back and forth across its front flanks, Bass heard the yelps of those four behind him.
Goddamned Arapaho for sure!
Couldn’t be no others, he knew. This was Ute country—certain as sun. Only raiders wore paint. And the chances were better than good that where he saw four Arapaho … there would be more.
Glancing over his shoulder, as the horse bolted off for the open ground some distance from the river, Bass caught a glimpse of the four horsemen reaching the horses and mules. Damn, if his trick was working!
But in that instant flicker of a look through the sweat in his eyes, Bass could count only three of the four warriors slowing up, mixing in among the pack string he had just released and spooked into motion to cover his retreat.
Just where in hell that fourth horseman had gone, he could not tell in that heartbeat he gave himself before turning back and kicking hell out of the horse some more.
Hoofbeats right on nis tail now—so close, it made his skin crawl, knowing that sound signaled the approach of the fourth horseman. Instead of finding a painted warrior when he turned to look over his shoulder, Bass caught a glimpse of the mule, straining with all the bottom she had to keep up with him and the saddle horse on the flat-
