“Where you lay your sights?”
“I hear there’s money to be had in California.”
“That’s a long ride just to find you some Mexicans. What can you do in California you can’t do down to Taos or Santy Fee?”
Williams’s eyes shimmered bright as Mexican tinwork in the flickering firelight. “Ain’t what we’re gonna do, Titus Bass … it’s what we’re gonna bring back.” Then his whole face lit up with a merry smile. “Horses.”
Taking a long sip at his coffee, Bass was surprised to sense a surge of unexpected excitement ignite within him. He had to admit it had been a long, long time since he had felt this particular tingle of unbounded adventure. Since he had felt this sort of keen, sharp-edged tang stirring deep in his very soul, sensed this craving to be gone to far valleys and new dangers.
“You want me to go steal horses in California with your bunch?”
Bill Williams nodded eagerly, rocking up on his knobby knees so he could lean close. “I’d ride anywhere if I had a man like you at my back, Titus Bass.”
For a long moment Scratch stared at those flames licking along the split limbs in the fire pit, realizing the anticipation was licking its way through him in much the same way with its own undeniable passion.
“Awright,” Bass finally relented with a rasp to his voice, his throat constricting with unbridled eagerness. “I’ll be at your back when we ride into California to steal a few Mexican horses.”
“I ’spect I better tell you it ain’t gonna be stealing them horses that’s the mean trick, Scratch,” Williams confessed, both his face and tone of voice gone solemn of a sudden. “It’s getting back out of California with them horses … an’ our hides too.”
*
*
*
* Fort Uintah, in present-day northeastern Utah.
4
What Ol’ Bill Williams had in mind wasn’t to merely ride into California and ride back out with a few Mexican horses and mules.
No … he was instead consumed with a burning vision of leading the biggest, grandest raid ever: returning to the Rockies with a herd that would number in the thousands.
South by west from the Popo Agie the two of them pushed hard across the next six days, starting when it grew light enough to pick their way into the dawn, remaining in the saddle until they grew so weary they no longer dared to grope through the darkness, sinking to the cold ground to spend another fireless night.
Dried meat and creek water was all the fare this pair allowed themselves as they plodded across the great saddle of the Southern Pass, dropped over to the Sandy, continuing down to the Green. South from there to the narrow valley trappers had christened Brown’s Hole where they reined up outside the walled stockade of Fort Davy Crockett. Near the mouth of Vermillion Creek the two picketed their horses and lashed a wide strip of oiled canvas between three old cottonwoods to protect their pelts and supplies before moseying over to the post to see who might be about.
The first peal of thunder leaped from a bank of dark, distant clouds rumbling out of the west. Already the dry, crackling air smelled heavy with the portent of rain. The breeze had picked up and the clouds were lowering by the time Bass and Williams approached the front wall. Titus pulled back on the thick strap of rawhide that had been nailed to the cottonwood logs, dragging open the narrow gate on its squeaky iron hinges. More than a dozen men, women, and children gathered in the courtyard turned with the noise.
“That really you, Bill Williams?” one of the men cried out as he stood.
“Gloree, if it ain’t Jack Robinson!” Williams answered the call. “Heard you was off with Carson.”
“Didn’t neither of us do no good,” Robinson replied as the two stepped up. “So Kit’s sashayed on down to Taos to see ’bout some
“A dangerous mix that’ll be for li’l Kit,” Williams replied. “I didn’t figger he’d stay a hunter for the Bents very long.”
“I ’member you too,” Robinson said as he turned to Bass. “You’re the one they call Scratch.”
With a wide grin Titus replied, “I’m sure as sin folks call me a lot of things!”
“In that time we spent together,” Robinson explained, “Kit told me how you helped him in his duel with that parley-voo bastard named Shunar.”
“That does take me back a ways,” Titus remarked a bit wistfully as many of the others were drawing close. “Seven—no, eight—summers it’s been.”
“Don’t none of you coons go getting down in the face since there ain’t no more ronnyvooz,” Williams growled, slapping Bass on the back. “I figger we’re ’bout to raise some serious hell and put a chunk under it our own selves!”
“Bill Williams!” A voice rose from the far side of the small compound. “An’ I’ll be go to the devil if it ain’t Titus Bass with him!”
Scratch shouted, “Billy Craig, get your skinny pins on over here!”
The group of strangers parted slightly as Craig stepped through, extending his hand to the newcomers. Quickly glancing over the group, Williams laid his bony paw on Craig’s shoulder and said, “You’ve gathered a good bunch, from what I see, Billy. All old hands, that’s for sure.”
“Wish’t I had more for to go with you, Bill,” Craig declared.
“Any more fellers still to come in?”
Craig wagged his head. “No one else who wants in on our ride.”
“That be a shame,” Williams answered. “They’ll miss out on the best summer since the ronnyvoo of thirty- seven when we shot up that bunch of murderin’ Bannocks!”
“Some of the rest who turned me down say they don’t wanna come because it’s a crazy idea of yours and Smith’s,” Robinson explained.
Williams glared at him in disbelief. Then turned to another trapper as he said, “Didn’t you and Mitchell here tell ’em what we found in California that first time we went?”
With an eager nod, Levin Mitchell said, “Horses and mules for the taking!”
“After we get done having us a doe-see-doe with them see-nor-reetas!” snorted Jack Robinson.
“I was hoping for to have at least twenty men, Billy,” Williams admitted.
“Maybe Peg-Leg’s gonna find some down at Fort Winty for us,” Craig observed.
“That where the one-legged nigger’s gone?”
His head bobbing, Craig said, “Smith’s gone on ahead to see to getting the broodmares.”
“There some Snake camps about?”
Robinson explained, “Not a sign nearby. That’s why Peg-Leg put out for Robidoux’s post. Word was, there’s Yutas camped down there.”
“What you want from the Yutas?” Titus asked. “Figger to get a few of them bucks to come along on your trip to Californy?”
“What we need to buy or trade off them Yutas is a half dozen or so wet mares.”
“W-wet mares?” Scratch responded. “I thought you’d get all the horses you wanted from the Mexicans.”
“Told you we was going back for some big doin’s this time, didn’t I?” Williams said. “We callated the best way we can strip that many head of horses off them Mexican ranchos and back across the desert to these here mountains was to take us some wet mares along.”
“Mare what are nursing foals?” Bass still could not comprehend. “Them li’l’ foals only gonna slow you down.”
“We ain’t taking the foals,” Williams announced. “Gonna leave ’em behind.”
He started to glimpse the masterful plan of it slowly materializing, just the way he would gently adjust the sections of his telescope to bring a distant object into focus.
