“We gotta do something,” Mathew said.
“What ’bout Turley?” Fisher asked.
Bass dug at his cheek whiskers with a dirty fingernail still crusted with a dark crescent of the doe’s blood. “Last I saw of the Arroyo Hondo, the greasers and them Pueblo niggers was shootin’ up his place. ’Less any of Turley’s men got out right when they was jumped, I don’t figger they stood a chance again’ so many.”
Joseph Manz moaned, “Turley too!”
One of the faces stabbed forward into the firelight as the stranger said, “Leastways, the governor hisself was down to Santa Fe. When he hears what they done to his half-breed young’uns, he’ll be riding right out front of them dragoons!”
“That’s right!” a new voice cheered. “Governor Bent will see ever’ last one of them niggers hang for what they done!”
“Charles Bent was in Taos,” Bass told them.
The crowded room fell to an awestruck hush.
“Ch-charlie Bent too?”
“Don’t know for certain,” Titus declared. “But that was the plan Sheriff Lee heard tell of. The greasers was waitin’ till the governor was back in Taos afore they let the wolf out to howl.”
The quiet was oppressive again, for the longest time. So quiet, Bass could hear one of the Mexicans calling out from the tiny fur room on the far side of the quadrangle, begging for his life, whimpering and sobbing, while one of the other prisoners cursed his cowardice.
“Someone’s gotta ride down the river and tell William ’bout his brother,” Kinkead said softly.
Pounding his fist on the table, surprising them all, Manz said, “Maybe there’s enough fellas down there!”
“Damn right! They can meet us on the trail,” Kinkead replied.
“None of you realize what you’re goin’ up against,” Titus declared. “There ain’t ’nough of you here, not near ’nough down there at the Picketwire. Shit!” he exploded with exasperation, slinging his arm to the side, sweeping the half-empty pewter plate from the table where it clattered into a corner by the adobe fireplace. Hushing them all.
Bass let his head collapse into his hands, miserable. “I never should’ve left ’em. Why in hell did I ever think comin’ up here was gonna do any good?”
Kinkead had his arm across his old friend’s shoulder. “I’m going, Scratch. My wife’s got family down there. I owe it to her to find out what’s happened.”
“You’ll get yourself kill’t,” Scratch said as he raised his head and looked around the room. “All of you. Go ride in there and that mob of angry niggers cut you into pieces with their farm tools.”
Kinkead angrily seized the front of Bass’s buckskin shirt in one fist. “What the hell you come to tell us this news of killing in Taos if we wasn’t supposed to do nothing ’bout it?”
Bass locked his gnarled hand around Mathew’s wrist and gently tugged it from his shirt. “Only thing you can do, is be down there—waitin’—when them soldiers come marching up from Santy Fee.”
Kinkead spread his big bear paw of a hand on Titus’s cheek, apologizing with his eyes for exploding. Scratch smiled, saying quietly, “ ’S’all right, Mathew. I know just how you feel when you ain’t sure how the hell to do right by your family. When you don’t know which way to turn.”
In the end, they decided to hurry down for the valley of the San Fernandez … where they’d wait in the hills for more of their number to ride down from Bents Fort. All of these frontiersmen and traders vowed to keep watch south of the village for the expected approach of the army.
With a young courier bundled against the frightening temperatures and carrying a satchel of dried meat to sustain him on his way, word was dispatched to William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain downriver at their adobe fortress. Then efforts turned to preparing for their own march south into the land of the rebellion.
“The Mormons ain’t coming,” Fisher explained to those in the
“We’ll do what we can with what we got,” Kinkead vowed grimly.
At sunup they moved out for the valley of San Fernandez de Taos.
And by the late afternoon of the third day, halting only to rest the horses for a few of those darkest hours each night, that pitifully small posse from the Pueblo was within striking distance of the Mexican settlements, when Bass spotted two riders coming down the slope of the foothills. When one of the horsemen tore off his hat and began to wave it at the end of his arm, Scratch was no longer unsure.
“That Paddock?” asked Kinkead.
“An’ I bet that’s Joshua with ’im. The boy’s growed into a fine lad.”
Mathew reached over and clamped his mitten on Titus’s forearm. “That means your family’s safe, Scratch. They’re all safe.”
Bass turned to gaze at Kinkead. Knowing how Mathew had suffered through the loss of a wife. His own eyes began to brim so much he had to blink hot tears away to see clearly as those two distant horsemen kicked their animals into a lope, hooves spewing up high, cascading rooster tails of snow as they hurried down the slope toward the motley party of rescuers.
“I ain’t never coming back to Mexico, Mathew,” Scratch vowed, gazing beyond those two distant riders, searching the foothills where his family was hiding. “I ain’t never setting a foot down here again.”
Both of those mongrel Indian dogs yipped and howled at his return, jumping and leaping around the feet of his horse until Scratch finally vaulted out of the saddle and caught all three of his children in his arms at once.
Oh, how good they felt against him, especially the way little Flea placed his tiny hands on his father’s cheeks and said in uncertain English, “I know you come back, Popo. I know you come.”
That’s when Scratch’s eye climbed over the small child’s head, finding his wife patiently waiting, wrapped in her blanket, tears streaming down her soot-smudged cheeks. He stood among his children, then lunged toward her, enfolding his wife in his arms. Both of them breathless at this reunion.
“I always knew I’d make it back to you,” he declared in a whisper.
Her cheek against his neck, Waits-by-the-Water said, “I always knew you would make it back to me. But … the days and nights—they don’t grow any easier without you here.”
Around them now the trappers, frontiersmen, and traders from the Pueblo were dismounting noisily. That big bear, Mathew Kinkead, wrapped up the Paddock children two at a time in his fierce embrace before he came over to kneel in front of the three youngsters he did not know.
He said, “You must belong to Titus Bass.”
“Ti-Tuzz, yes,” Magpie repeated in her father’s unfamiliar tongue.
As Scratch and Waits stepped up, Mathew ripped off his mitten and took the girl’s small hand in his big paw, caressing it. “What is your name?”
She started to speak it in Crow, then stopped and said it in English.
“Magpie,” Kinkead repeated. “That’s a pretty name for such a pretty young lady. Do you know you were born in my house?”*
“You are Mateo?” she asked haltingly, her eyes flicking to her parents.
“Yes. I am Mateo Kinkead.”
“I am Magpie,” she said again in English, with more certainty now. “Born in Mateo’s lodge, in Ta- house.”
Kinkead stood, resting a hand on Flea’s shoulder. His eyes touched Bass’s. A lone tear slipped from one eye. “I remember that night … a long time ago, Magpie. In a time and a Taos long, long ago.”
Behind the hills far across the valley the sun was easing its way down on the hills with winter’s aching quickness.
Titus turned and stepped over to Paddock, putting his arm around his old friend’s shoulder. “You have ’nough meat here to feed all these new mouths tonight?”
“I think so,” Josiah answered. “Joshua’s become a pretty good shot over the last few days.”
“Just like his pa,” Titus said. “You give a lad a chance, and he’ll show you the man he’s made of, Josiah.”
That night at their fire Scratch told again of his journey north on horseback and on foot until he stumbled onto
