again. “Till I figured out I didn’t want to tempt fate any longer. Not fair of me to put your mother and you in danger any longer.”
“So that’s why we come to Taos?”
“Like your mother’s told you children: We was already down here for a visit. So you might just say we
It was some time before Joshua spoke again, his throat raspy and raw with the cold, high, dry air. “Pa, you ever regret not going with Mr. Bass when he rode off?”
“Someone had to stay with all you children and the women—”
“No, Pa,” Joshua interrupted. “When Mr. Bass left you behind in Taos. You ever regret not going with him?”
He gazed into his boy’s eyes and knew he could not speak anything but the complete truth. “There were times I missed him, missed the wandering, missed all the not caring. At times my missing that life got so bad it was like a cold stone lay in my belly … sometimes I wanted to be with him so bad it brought tears to my eyes, Joshua.”
“But you stayed.” And Joshua laid his head against his father’s shoulder.
“Yes,” Paddock finally admitted, his throat sour with sentiment. “I stayed for your mother—so she’d never have to fear for her life again. And I stayed for you, hoping you’d have a chance to grow up to grab what you wanted from life. Stayed for the rest of your brothers and sisters too as the years went by.”
Joshua asked, “Sometimes a man makes the decisions he does for the people he loves?”
“Not just sometimes, Joshua,” he replied quietly. “All through his days.”
“I love you, Pa.”
Josiah laid the rifle down against his bent knee and wrapped a second arm around his eldest. “I love you too, son.”
That band of cutthroats they had spotted had to be heading north to hit the Ponil and Vermijo ranches that belonged to Bent, St. Vrain & Company, Paddock figured later that night when he sat crouched by their small fire. Gone to run off all the stock. Maybe even run over to attack the little settlement on Rio Colorado. Every now and then a few Americans took up winter residence there. The Mexican and Pueblo rebels ride through there, the trappers would be hash in no time.
By the seventh day, Paddock could read the worry graying the face of Waits-by-the-Water. After dark that night Josiah squatted next to her by the fire as she cradled a sleeping Jackrabbit in her lap.
“He’ll be back,” Paddock told her quietly, hoping he wouldn’t disturb the others, who were asleep in their blankets.
“If Grandfather Above … he let Ti-tuzz,” she struggled with the English words, “yes—he come back to us.”
“We just have to wait,” Josiah tried his best to soothe.
“Yes. Ti-tuzz come back. He promise.”
Josiah wasn’t sure, but from the look in her eyes, Waits was concealing some deep pain, something more than just the worry, the longing to have him back.
After some moments, he assured her, “What that ol’ man says he’ll do, you can believe he’ll do it.”
The next two days in hiding crawled past. Then Josiah spotted more black figures snaking across the snow at the north end of the valley.
“I see them, Father,” Joshua breathed beside him. “Raiders?”
“Probably the same bunch we saw riding off up north to hit those ranchos,” he growled.
They watched as the dark forms slowly drew closer and closer. From the way the horsemen rode with no formation to their march, Josiah was even more certain these were Mexican and Pueblo raiders returning to Taos from their hit-and-run attacks. But something nagged at him because the group looked smaller, less formidable, than it had when the raiders passed by three days earlier. The closer those horsemen got to his perch, the more Josiah thought the raiders were a ragged, motley bunch.
Of a sudden, something pricked his distant memories about one of those horsemen who rode at the vanguard of the group. The way the man sat a horse, maybe the appearance of that coat he wore, and the fur cap upon his head. Altogether, they caused a tug at a distant, but indelible, memory.
“I ain’t for certain, Joshua,” he said quietly, not even daring his own heart to leap with hope, “but I think Mr. Bass has come back to us.”
33
Sure he promised her he’d never again go anywhere without her and the children … but this was a horse of an entirely different color—a situation reeking with far too much danger to even entertain any thoughts of taking them along with him. There was no question that he could travel faster, with far less sleep, and not have to concern himself near so much with food, if he didn’t have his family along.
Those first miles, those first hours, all through the first three days, Scratch was constantly reminding himself how good a thing it was that he had gone for help alone. Easier to cross a snowy country barren of much timber and cover when he was by himself. To take along a whole cavvyard of folks and animals could only draw the wrong sort of attention. Not only those rebel Mex and their Pueblo henchmen, but Cheyenne or Comanche hunters too. If some warriors caught him out on his own, chances were Scratch could make a good run for it, or stand off a small hunting party by his lonesome. But, with a woman and young’uns along … it just made all the calculations real messy.
In those first hours of darkness after he tore himself away from Waits-by-the-Water, Titus kept dwelling on the expression on of her face as he did his best to explain why he was leaving without her after he had given her his vow. It made him feel all the worse that she hadn’t ranted and stomped in anger. When she accepted his decision, taking his measure with those red-rimmed eyes he feared were ready to pool, it made him feel downright hollow and guilty.
“This ain’t like the horse stealing in California,” he tried his best to make her understand as twilight’s cloak sank in around them. “Back then, you didn’t know where I was going.”
“This is different?”
“Different, yes. Now you know where I’m going and why.”
“Doesn’t make being apart from you any easier.”
He had sighed, “Just remember I’m doing it for you and the children. And for those wives and mothers and children who got butchered back there in Taos.”
“We could make it with you,” she whispered so the children would not hear her plea. “Better than waiting for these enemies to find us in the foothills. Better to keep moving than to die here.”
“It is dangerous everywhere,” he had argued, pulling her against him. “But far more danger waits out there on this journey north. I simply don’t know where the enemy is, how far they’ve roamed, or if they are searching for anyone who might’ve fled the valley.”
“I will wait,” she sighed against his chest in resignation. “Again.”
Kissing the top of her head, Bass whispered, “This time, don’t mourn me before you know I’m dead.”
He nudged her chin up with a finger, gazing into her eyes. She reluctantly smiled.
“No, I won’t cut my hair, or scar my flesh, this time if you are late.”
He promised her, “This time … I won’t be late.”
No matter what became of his ride to the Pueblo on the Arkansas, or even downriver to that mud-walled fortress at the mouth of the Picketwire, he vowed he wouldn’t make any of them wait very long there in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristos.
That first night his horse made good time beneath the guiding stars. For many of those early hours, he kept his mind busy trying to sort out how far it was to the river, to where Americans clustered at the edge of what had been Mexican territory—before the army came and claimed it for the United States, before that army left again and Mexican feelings grew raw and angry at their new overseers. Had to be more than a hundred miles, easily. Probably closer to one hundred fifty.
