Wood handed him a flat tinned plate. Titus brought the johnnycakes right under his nose and drank in their heavenly fragrance, conjuring up memories of a warm hearth, memories of a long-ago home slowly bubbling to the surface within him like a hearty rabbit stew.
“You ain’t been out here long,” Workman commented.
“Wondered if I’d ever get away from there,” Titus replied as he propped his rifle against a stone wall, pulled the strap from his shoulder so his shooting pouch draped from the long weapon’s muzzle.
“Settlers moving out toward the Santy Fee Trail at Franklin,” the man said. “But I don’t think they’ll ever put down roots on the prairies. Not anywhere near that god-forsook country a man goes through ’tween here and there. Ain’t worth the trouble to plow that ground.”
“Too damn hot, that country,” Elbridge garbled around a hunk of bear, corn soppings dripping into his chin whiskers. “What fool’d dare try to grow something in that desert, I’ll never know.”
As he speared a slab of the dark, lean bear loin onto Bass’s tin, Workman continued. “I ain’t been here much longer’n you, truth be. Got here first of July that year. Me and Matthew,” he said, pointing his butcher knife off in the general direction of town, “the two of us and a third one named Chambers was gonna start us our own still.”
“Ye see just how far Matt got being a whiskey maker,” Hatcher said.
“Door’s still open for him,” Workman said. “You tell ’im I can always use a partner around here again.”
“Ye tell ’im yourself, Willy,” Jack declared. “I figger he’ll be looking for something to do now that he’s give up on the mountain trade for a while.”
“He don’t figger to trap anymore?”
Hatcher replied, “What he’s been saying since spring.”
Turning back to the fire to stab another slice of bear from the huge iron skillet suspended on a trivet over the glowing coals, Workman said, “I’ll lay that he’s off seeing his Rosa.”
“Missed her something fierce,” Solomon said.
“Don’t doubt it,” Workman agreed. “My eye’s landed on a purty Mex gal my own self.”
“Marrying kind?”
“Enough of the marrying kind that I went out and got myself baptized in the Mexican church last June,” their host explained.
“B-baptized?” Hatcher stammered, spewing a mouthful of his meat onto the pounded clay floor.
“By Padre Antonio Jose Martinez,” he said, laying a slice of bear on Caleb’s plate. “In town the folks all call me Julian.”
“Hoo—”
“Julian,” Workman repeated the name for them. “S’pose that’s William in their tongue, eh?”
“My, my,” Hatcher exclaimed, then whistled low and long. “To think of another American getting hisself baptized just so he can get hitched up to a Mex gal.”
“I don’t figger you can ever understand that, Jack … because none of you are the kind ever to settle down in one spot long enough to have a wife, raise some kids, maybeso even have a job that means you don’t have to look back over your shoulder for Injuns.”
“I like my life just the way it is, Willy,” Hatcher said, then corrected himself. “I mean, Julian.”
“Man oughtta be happy with the way he’s living his life,” Workman declared as he scooted back from the fry skillet and got to his feet. “If he ain’t happy, then he ought’n change something so’s he can be happy. Like this new fella here—’pears he left ever’thing behind and come west to the mountains to find what wasn’t back there.”
“Happy? I’ll tell ye what makes that nigger happy!” Jack snorted, pointing his knife at Scratch. “Bass is the sort what ain’t happy less’n he’s making life hard on me!”
Titus chuckled, saying, “It’s for sartin no woman ever want you around long enough to get yourself baptized so you could marry up to her, Hatcher.”
“See what I mean, Willy? This nigger’s nothing more’n a pain in the ass to me.”
Rufus Graham dragged the back of his hand across his lips, belched, then stood to stretch. “When you gonna bring us some lightning?”
“Thirsty?”
“Save for ronnyvoo last two year,” Graham explained, “I been thirsty near all the time, Willy.”
“I’ll fetch us up some,” their host stated, dusting his hands together eagerly.
By the time Workman was back with a clay jug in each hand, the rest had finished the last of their supper and had sopped up all the corn juice and bear grease. Some of the men even tipped up their tinware and licked their plates clean, eyes half-closed, savoring the last of the corn.
“Ain’t gonna be the last meal you have, fellers,” Workman said as he came back into the fire’s light.
“Never know when you’re riding with Jack Hatcher,” Caleb grumbled. “Every meal might be a man’s last —’cause you sure as hell don’t always know when you’re gonna get the next one.”
They laughed together as the jugs clunked to the surface of a thick plank table before their host pulled small, crudely formed clay cups from the two big patch pockets on his short blanket coat.
Bass watched as the man began to pour a clear liquid into each cup, filling them about halfway to the top. When they all had a cup in hand, Workman passed the last to Titus and raised his own.
“A toast—to the new mountaineer,” Workman said. “And his first trip to Taos.”
“Hurraw for Scratch!” Hatcher bawled, slapping Bass on the back of his shoulders.
For a moment he watched the others stuff their clay cups to their hairy mouths, tossing back the cups and their heads at the same time. Then he brought his cup to his lips and tasted. Damn, if it didn’t have the sting of distilled corn itself!
“What you think?” Workman asked.
“G’won, drink up and tell the man what ye think of his lightning,” Hatcher demanded.
Scratch brought the cup from his lips, licking them a moment. “Tastes like John Barleycorn to me.”
“Drink it down and tell me if’n you like it,” Workman suggested, crossing his arms.
He had to admit that he did. Having found that first sip quite to his liking, Bass threw back the cup, letting the rest of the clear, potent liquid tumble back over his tongue, right on down his gullet, where it scorched a wide, fiery path all the way to his belly.
Impatient, Hatcher brought his face close, asking, “Well?”
“M-more,” Bass stuttered, his voice as raspy as a coarse file dragged over crude cast iron. A bare whispery ghost of its former strength.
“I think he likes it!” Caleb declared.
“Lookit his eyes!” Isaac said as he leaned in an inch from Bass’s nose. “This man’s gonna be drunk on his ass afore he knows it—ain’t he, Jack?”
“If that hoss don’t take the circle, Willy!” Hatcher bellowed. “Looks like ye found ’Nother nigger what took to yer likker right off!”
“M-more, I said,” Scratch repeated, his voice a little less raspy this time. Already he was sensing the heat rise in his throat, his face and forehead feeling flushed and feverish.
Workman complied, pouring a full cup this time. Then the others held out their cups as their host made the rounds of that tight circle, dispensing more of the heady grain spirits he had distilled from wheat and corn grown nearby in the Taos valley.
“Now, s’pose you boys tell me all ’bout them scalps I see you have hanging from your belts and pouches,” Workman declared. “And don’t forget to tell me how you come to ride back into Taos with this here whiskey-lovin’ Titus Bass!”
He didn’t remember much about that night, just crumbs of recollection scattered across the empty plate of his consciousness, no more than scraps slowly tumbling round in his aching head as he forced himself out of the blankets before he peed all over himself right then and there.
Someone had put him to bed and covered him up. As he stood unsteadily, Scratch watched the slow spinning of a half-dozen points of light: the flames of low candles reflected against the walls, their pale light fluttering against the dark void surrounding the cave entrance, where an ashy grayness told him dawn was coming soon.
How his head swam as he struggled to stay upright, wobbled, then almost went down, catching himself with a hand against the cold cavern wall. The others lay here and there, all six of them dead for all he could tell. But they weren’t—because somehow they had gotten him back to the cavern from the mill house and stretched him out beneath his blankets.
