ax to the back of his belt beside the knife scabbard, he moved downstream toward his rifle and pouch.
At the sharp-sided bank he hoisted himself onto the grass and sat there dripping, finally settling back against the tree trunk where his rifle leaned.
Too many questions.
He would try listening. Williams had claimed a man might just hear the other side if he listened hard enough. The breeze stirred the leaves around him a moment; then the quakies settled. In that momentary silence he strained to listen. Then felt the air move around him unexpectedly. Almost as if it were something of substance … some one touching his shoulder.
Scratch turned, expecting to find … but there was nothing.
He sighed and went back to listening. The breeze came up again, rustling through the aspen leaves overhead. Stirring all the trees around him as he gazed out upon the floor of the valley. When his eyes began to droop, the wind chuttered among the leaves—murmuring, almost whispering.
“Bass.”
Alert anew, eyes open, Scratch turned this way, then that. Listening. The breeze stirred again.
“Bass.”
Slowly he raised his face to peer overhead into the branches cluttered with tiny, trembling green leaves.
“Bass.”
Only the breeze nudging the leaves just gently enough that he had imagined they were murmuring his name.
When he brought his gaze back down, Scratch spotted them.
Two riders across the valley floor. Not where he would expect to see any of the rest of Hatcher’s outfit. And the two were close enough … for him to see their long, loose hair and the feathers tossing on the breeze that had whispered his name through the branches overhead.
“Bass.”
The hair bristled at the back of his neck with that next chutter of the leaves.
For a moment he studied the sky above the two horsemen, on either side of them, the very air between them. Hopeful he would actually be able to see the ragged tear rent in that filmy curtain between the other world and his. Wondering if he would indeed be able to see for himself that crack in the sky through which these riders had suddenly appeared.
As the riders slowly approached the far bank of the stream, Titus leaned to the side and brought the rifle into his lap—snapping the frizzen forward to assure himself that the pan was loaded. Next he saw to the charge in his pistol, then stuffed its barrel back in his belt. The pair of horsemen stopped when he rose from the ground holding the fullstock rifle at his right hip, his finger gently nudging back the rear set trigger until he felt the sear engage.
Titus stared at them for what seemed like a long time, waiting for the two warriors to declare themselves as friend or foe, ready for when they would plunge off the far bank into the stream and rush him. Then as one of the horses began to paw and bob its head impatiently, a rider spoke, gesturing with his bow.
Bass let him finish what he had to say, then tried to explain, “I don’t know your tongue.”
Scratch put the fingers of his left hand to his lips, moving them directly out toward the warriors as he shook his head vigorously.
Passing the bow over his head, the horseman stuffed it within a quiver half-filled by arrows. With his hands freed, the Indian began to sign.
But those gestures weren’t making any sense, their being this far apart. Bass shook his head.
Apparently frustrated, the sign talker said something to the other, and they both nudged their ponies into motion.
Bass took a step forward, planting his feet as they entered the stream. He brought the rifle up, the cheekpiece braced between his bottom ribs and arm.
“Stop right there!”
Yanking back on their reins, both horsemen halted their ponies near the middle of the stream. Down the creek Titus heard the warning slap of a single beaver near that dam the creatures had been building over the last few days. More tails slapped the surface of the water; then it gradually grew quiet again.
So quiet, he heard the air nuzzle the quaky leaves above him.
“Bass.”
Again the sign talker tried. But now that he was closer, Scratch could see just what the warrior had to say in sign: with only the first two fingers of his right hand extended, the others closed in the palm, the Indian held the hand momentarily in front of his chin, the extended fingers pointing at the sky. Then he slowly moved the hand up until it was about level with the top of his head, slowly bringing them down to point at the white man. Several times he repeated the same gesture while Titus stared quizzically at the two.
“Oh, damn!” he gushed, suddenly remembering.
Bracing the rifle against his hip, Scratch mimicked the sign with his left hand. Then he tapped the rifle with his hand, pointing to himself and making the sign for friend again.
Finally the warrior nodded.
“That’s right, fellers,” Bass murmured to himself. “This here gun’s my friend.”
Scratch formed a fist with his left hand, extending only the index finger, and held it out in front of his body, finger pointing upward.
“What people are you?” he asked aloud.
The two looked at one another and shook their heads. They weren’t understanding. Perhaps he had it wrong.
Then he thought of asking it another way. Again the hand with only the index finger went up, pointing at the sky, but now he brought it downward in a graceful arc, in the path taken by an arrow shot straight into the sky.
“What band are you?”
Through it all he studied the way the riders wore their hair, the feathers, their clothing and horse trappings —anything that might give him a clue. Here in South Park, he realized this pair could be anything from wandering Comanche or Kiowa or Southern Cheyenne come a distance to hunt. But then he realized if they had come from so far away, chances were good more warriors were somewhere close at hand. They didn’t look all that much like Ute, he decided, regarding their hair and the elaborate face painting.
Painted. Maybeso they were from a warrior band foreign to this part of the mountains, come here with a large raiding party, painted for battle. Not some local fellas, out hunting for their families, to take meat and hides back for their village.
Painted.
Locking his eyes on them, Scratch intently studied their faces for any betrayal as to their intentions.
Again he signed slowly, saying aloud the words: “What band are you?”
One of them wagged his head, and the second horseman repeated the sign for “friend.” Again they talked low to one another, both of them gazing this way and that, upstream and down. It began to make him more than a mite nervous, what with the way they peered all around more than look at him … as if they were assuring themselves he truly was alone.
Tapping their heels against the ribs of their ponies, both warriors eased toward the bank, where Bass stood some twenty feet back from the water’s edge.
He licked his lips, feeling his right palm begin to sweat, anxious to put his trigger finger inside the guard. But with the trigger now set to go off at a touch—he knew he must hold the finger there against the trigger guard.
The animals lunged onto the bank, and their riders brought the dripping ponies to a halt less than fifteen feet from the white man.
One made the sign for “friend” again, then both peered upstream and down, their eyes quickly darting into the trees behind the trapper, able to see his saddle horse and the pack mule.
Again he signed “friend” too, his gaze darting back and forth between the two copper-skinned horsemen … making mental pictures of their loose hair, the handful of feathers tied at the crowns of their head. One had his coup feathers arrayed in a cock’s spray at the back of his head; the other tied his so they descended down the side
