But for some reason, that extraction didn’t hurt quite as much as the first had. And although he continued to bleed throughout the rest of that day on the trail, his jaw nonetheless felt better than it had for a long time. Maybe two of them, side by side, had gone bad together, he thought. Better to be shet of them both and start healing the poison that had swollen the whole side of his head.
Titus swatted at the tiny buffalo gnats swirling around his sweaty face now and pulled the hat brim down lower to shade his eyes from the midday sun as they plodded southwest down the Green River for Robidoux’s post. Five days gone from Brown’s Hole and Sinclair’s fort already, which by his reckoning should put them close to rendezvousing with Peg-Leg Smith, what with the way this bunch had been licking over the ground.
He and Bill Williams ended up riding off for Fort Uintah with thirteen men in tow. To march right into California with Bill’s brazen plan of sweeping up two thousand or more Mexican horses, Scratch knew they would need more than twenty riders. For the time being, the success of their California expedition rested in the lap of Thomas L. Smith, that fiery redheaded, hot-tempered veteran of both the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and more than one lucrative journey to the land of long-horned ranchos. If Peg-Leg ended up drafting another ten or more recruits, then their foray against the land of the missions would make each of the riders a wealthy man no more than weeks from now.
But if they attempted to punch their way into and out of California with too weak a force—hurled up against not only the vaqueros tending the ranchos but small squads of Mexican
The days had not only been growing longer but hotter too, each night not nearly so cool as they had been. Summer was ready to bloom. The knitting of the stars overhead had taken a definite northward shift, along with that tilt to the path the sun scoured across the sky each day. It glowed hotter every morning, and hung up there longer every afternoon.
Then today they had run across these mists of troublesome buffalo gnats—disgusting little creatures so tiny a man might miss them if it weren’t for the fact that they traveled in clouds that swarmed and swirled around the heads of their horses and pack animals, hovered around every square inch of bare flesh the men had exposed to the galling heat. It was as if the creatures’ very feet were on fire when they alighted on his flesh, even before the gnats began to bite and burrow.
No wonder the shaggy buffalo had long, coarse, matted hair shrouding its eyes. An admirable protection from these annoying insects that zealously followed the herds, or any other warm-blooded, breathing creature who happened to pass close enough that the cloudy swarms sensed the body heat of those other unsuspecting mammals.
By midafternoon when they stopped to let the horses drink, the swarms surprisingly drifted off, theirs a dark mist weaving up the cooler bottom of a coulee as the sun finally appeared committed to falling toward the western horizon that day. Bass knelt on the creekbank, leaned over, and drank alongside the men and animals. Then he freed a second black-silk kerchief where he had knotted it around the strap to his shooting pouch and soaked the cloth in the cold water. After wringing it out, he rubbed it over his face, pulling his long hair aside so he could swab the back of his clammy neck. That done, he crudely knotted it around his long, coarse hair, allowing the damp handkerchief to drip, drip, drip down his backbone as he stood and stepped over to Williams.
“Was just cogitating on somethin’, Bill,” he began.
Williams looked up at Bass. “The heat can damn well swell up a man’s head like that. It’s a fact.”
“I figger you got yourself a damned good reason why you’re heading southwest across the wastes to California this time of year.”
“I do.” And Williams bent over for one last noisy slurp at the creek. Then he stood and explained. “Any other time of the year, this right here would be a problem.”
The leader gestured at the gurgling creek.
“Water,” Titus observed.
“Water,” Williams repeated. “Come late summer, them creeks and springs and seeps down in that country we’re gonna have to ride through will all be drying up—disappearing into dust.”
A few of the other riders were stepping closer as Scratch remarked, “Weather’d be cooler come autumn.”
“But with nary a drop of rain or a flake of snow to refill them waterholes,” Williams declared. “Naw, my friend—you’ll see for your own self that there’s but one time of the year to make this crossing. ’Specially when we’re pushing thousands of horses ahead of us, and every last one of ’em needs a lot of water to make it back to these here mountains.”
“Only gonna get hotter from here on out,” Scratch stated. “South where we’re headed.”
“We ain’t see hot yet,” Williams warned. “Ain’t seen nothing of dry either. I wouldn’t dare try what we’re about to do any other time of the year but here at the end of spring. Turning back by midsummer. Any later’n that —why, our bones might just rot out there in them wastes with the bones of all them Mexican horses we couldn’t get back to the mountains without water.”
With a grin, Bass snorted, “So you claim we ain’t on a fool’s errand?”
“Could be, ol’ friend,” Bill replied, smiling.
“That’s good,” Titus said as he slapped a hand on the older trapper’s shoulder. “I was beginning to wonder if you wasn’t making it sound like this was serious business. Sure as hell glad to hear we’re out on some great lark you dreamed up, Bill! Beaver’s gone to hell and the mountain trade is disappeared like winter breath smoke—why, no better reason we ought’n just have ourselves some fun!”
“Especially if it’s the last thing any of us do in this here life,” Williams said, his grin slowly fading. “Awright, you
The sun had turned every butte and mesa a startling red, so bloodily surreal it seemed as if the entire earth around them were the same burnished copper as were those trinkets and religious objects hammered out by a Mexican craftsman. Then down in that wide bottom he recognized from three years past, Scratch spotted the stockade and the small herds of horses grazing here and there on the low hillsides farther downriver.
They could hear distant voices hallooing and begin to make out telltale shadows of men emerging at the top of the near wall, a few coming out of the stockade on foot to have themselves a look. Across the river from the post stood a scattering of lodges, low and squat. Ute, he suspected.
“That you, Bill?” a voice cried as they approached.
“Peg-Leg?”
One of the figures hobbled away from the rest of those on foot and waved his hat. “You brung a good bunch with you?”
Williams reined to a halt beside Smith, held down his hand, and they clasped wrists. “Not near enough to bring out all them horses I planned on, Peg-Leg.” He straightened in the saddle and sighed. “I’m hoping you done us some good here.”
“Got a few hands, Bill,” Smith admitted. “But I didn’t come up with near as many as we’d hoped would come west with us to the Mexican diggings.”
“Let’s go have us some victuals,” Bass said as he brought his roan to a halt on the other side of Smith.
“Lordee tells. That really Scratch?” Peg-Leg asked as he pivoted on the wooden limb.
“How-do, Thomas,” Titus cheered as more of their bunch came to a halt around them.
For a moment Smith glared hard-eyed at Bass, then suddenly grinned as he held up his hand to the horseman. “Been a long time, Scratch. I see no gol-durned Black-foot’s knocked you in the head and stole what you got left for a mangy skelp.”
“You was hoping my hair would get raised after we stole them horses back from you?”
Smith laughed easy and genuine. “I ain’t never carried me no hard feelings for nothing, Scratch. Less of all, for you and them others coming here to take back them Snake horses.”
“It’s all water gone downhill long ago,” Titus mused.
“Damn sure is,” Smith agreed. “Why—when me an’ Bill left here after that ruckus we had with you an’ Walker, we ended up stealin’ a lot more horses from the Mexicans that year!”
“More horses’n we could’ve stole round here!” Bill roared.
