The others moved aside as Titus clambered to his feet and stepped through them. He stopped at Rowland’s elbow. “Something eating a hole in your belly, ain’t it, John?”
Without looking up, the man answered, “Nothing wrong.”
“He’s been like this last few days,” Caleb explained, coming up at Scratch’s shoulder.
“Man can act any way he wants to,” Rowland snapped.
“We been friends long enough for me to know that something’s kicking around inside you and it won’t give ye no rest,” Hatcher said when he came to a stop on the other side of Titus.
Suddenly Rowland looked at the three of them. Then he blurted out his confession: “I wanna go back to Taos.”
“Go back?” Rufus repeated as he knelt nearby.
“I done decided it,” John declared. “Don’t wanna be up here right now.”
Jack inquired, “What’s pulling ye to give up on these here mountains?”
“You got me wrong,” Rowland protested. “I ain’t saying I’ve give up on the mountains from here on out, Jack.”
Jack settled on a log next to Rowland. “You and me, we fought more’n our share of red-bellies, Johnny. I figger ye can tell me what’s on yer mind.”
“I-I really dunno what this is all about,” Rowland admitted. “I ain’t never … never had me a feeling like this, Jack.”
“You had a hole cut outta your heart,” Bass explained quietly, sympathy flooding up inside him. “When you lost your Maria—it cut out a big hole from your heart.”
When Titus said it, Rowland looked up. Wagging his head, he said, “Ain’t none of this the same no more, Scratch. Not like it was before: when I didn’t have me no woman. Not like it was when I had Maria waiting for me back in Taos.”
“You turn back for the south, what you aim to do?” Solomon asked.
With a shrug Rowland admitted, “Don’t rightly know for now. Something’ll come by that I can do.”
“Sure of that,” Hatcher agreed. “A likely man such as you can do most anything he puts his mind to.”
“Maybe I can watch some sheep, do some hunting for other folks too,” John replied. “Pay for my keep till I get all this sorted through.”
“Maybe you figger you ain’t done with the mountains?” Bass inquired.
“No,” and John shook his head. “I don’t figger I’ll stay outta the mountains for the rest of my days. Just that … for now—I ain’t a damn bit of good to none of you.”
Hatcher clamped a hand on Rowland’s knee. “Johnny, ye damn well know we’ll ride with ye come what may. Not a man here gonna say ye gotta go out and trap when ye’re nursing that hole in yer heart. Don’t make me no never-mind if ye stay back to camp and watch over our plunder and the stock while the rest of us go set traps. You just do what ye can till things get better, and we’ll stay together till they—”
“I don’t know when things’ll get better, Jack,” he interrupted. “Don’t know … if they’ll ever get better.”
Hatcher glanced up at the others when Rowland went back to staring at the fire. “Awright, Johnny. All I’m gonna ask of ye is ye leave us yer license.”
“Sure,” Rowland said. “I’m the only one of us with a license to trap in these parts since Matthew ain’t along this time out. Might be you could use it when you bring some fur back to Taos.”
“Won’t be till winter after next, I ’spect,” Jack declared.
“One of you gonna have to be me,” Rowland explained, rubbing his palms down the tops of his thighs in that manner of a man who has come to a difficult decision. “Now that I be a Mexican citizen, they call me Juan Roles. Who’s gonna be me?”
“I will,” Rufus volunteered as he squatted near Rowland.
“You’ll do,” John replied, trying out a weak smile, then gazed at the flames.
After a long, uneasy silence Hatcher asked, “Tomorrow, Johnny?”
“Don’t see me no reason to hang on when I’ve made up my mind to go.”
Caleb said, “Want some whiskey, for saying our fare-thee-wells tonight?”
“You fellers go right on,” Rowland answered. “I don’t much feel like drinking. I found out whiskey just don’t kill this hurt no more.”
“Come a time,” Bass said, “you’ll be back in these hills with us. Back to skinning beaver and fighting Injuns. Come a time when you’re ready to get on with the living.”
“Right now it don’t feel like I’ll ever wanna do much of anything ever again,” Rowland declared. “Thing of it is: a man what don’t care much if he goes on living … that man sure as hell gonna end up dead lot sooner’n he should.”
14
The sun was content to hide its rise the following morning as the seven of them bid their melancholy farewell to John Rowland. Clouds had gathered through the night, blotting out the last shimmer of starshine as they stirred in the cold gloom, kicked life back into the fire, and went about seeing off one of their own.
No longer were there ten.
Joseph Little lay in a shallow grave scraped from the forest floor high in the Wind River Mountains.
Matthew Kinkead had stayed behind, vowing he’d had him enough of the wandering and the womanlessness, choosing instead a life among his Rosa’s people in Taos.
And now Rowland—turning back himself, unable to salve his grief among these good friends in these mountains. His final hope might be to find a healing to those deep wounds of his heart among Maria’s people.
That was just what Bass wished for him when it was Scratch’s turn to step up and fling his arms around another old friend in farewell. Quickly he whispered, “Johnny, I pray your feet’ll take you back where you can be happy once more.”
Rowland inched back in their embrace and looked into Bass’s eyes. “I find me what makes me happy again— I’ll be back to these here mountains. Lay your set on that.”
“Just make sure our trails cross afore too long,” Titus replied, slapping John on the shoulder and stepping back.
“Count on it, Scratch.”
By the fire’s light in the last hour before dawn that murky, gray morning, they had seen to it that Rowland was outfitted with what he would need to see him through the passes and down the high side all the way back to the valley lying at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos.
“I ain’t gonna listen to none of yer back talk, John Rowland: ye’ll take yer rightful share,” Jack Hatcher had declared when he had the rest begin to divide out Rowland’s portion.
“Ain’t right that I take more than I need to make it back,” John protested, laying a hand on Hatcher’s arm before his eyes touched those of the others. “I’ll be fine once I get there.”
For a long moment Jack did not move, nor did he speak. Then, with a voice clogged with regret, he said, “Yes, Johnny Rowland. I figger you will be fine once ye get back to Taos.”
So they had split off only what Rowland himself said he would take, everything else spread among those friends he was leaving behind, split among those men who one day soon would push on north themselves for rendezvous on the Popo Agie. And then Rowland had climbed into the saddle, waved as he turned his mount and packhorse, then never looked back as he reined out of the trees.
As the seven stood watching the man and animals grow smaller and smaller against the immensity of the Bayou Salade, the sky slowly began to seep … a gentle, cold spring rain. And with the way the weeping clouds continued to lower down the mountainsides around them, Bass sensed they were in for a long day of it.
As empty as his belly was that morning, Scratch hadn’t been hungry enough to eat like the others as they huddled over their tins of coffee at their smoky fire. Coffee was all he wanted to warm his gut that morning until he figured he could put it off no longer. Taking Hannah’s lead rope, Bass mounted up and rode off across the valley toward his half-dozen sets placed along a stretch of narrow stream that spilled into a wider creek tumbling toward the valley floor.
