escarpment or the thick forests themselves. Why, even the high plains rolled and pitched enough, truly a country so crisscrossed with coulee and watercourse that he could count on some echo to accompany most every sound.
But here in this endless desert, every utterance, each small scratch or cough or sneeze, was immediately swallowed up by the land’s utter immensity.
Be it the whicker of a horse too weak to make any more of a sound, or the groans of discomfited men as they lunged to a stop in their tattered moccasins and pitched onto their knees, immediately rolling into a ball in the only shade they could find … maybe no sound louder than the steamy splatter of a man’s piss as it struck the iron-clad hardpan of the desert floor. This was a land violently jealous of its silence.
There were times Scratch chewed on a little of his dwindling reserves of plug tobacco, hoping to stimulate a little saliva. And when that would not work, he dug out a .54-caliber lead ball and slipped it under his swollen tongue. Five days after stumbling past Soda Lake, some of the men opened a vein on their wrists or the backs of their hands, sucking at some semblance of moisture retained by their bodies. A few even tried to drink their own hot, pungent urine. Although Titus understood it was more pure than any water they might stumble across in this hostile country, he could almost puke at the thought of gagging down something so warm from his tin cup.…
Hell, everything was damned hot in this desert.
“Here,” Bill Williams announced as he settled beside Scratch in the skimpy shade of a Joshua tree as the sun slipped off midsky.
Elias Kersey leaned forward on an elbow, peering at what Williams revealed in the upturned crown of his hat. “What’s that?”
“Leaves of a weed* the Injun just give me to pass around.”
“What we s’posed to do with it?” Titus asked as he plucked out a leaf. “Chew on ’em to make our mouths water?”
Williams shook his head. “Lookee there what the Injun’s doing? He told Peg-Leg we was to smoke it.”
“What for?” Scratch inquired.
“Frederico says it helps take away the pain.”
Purcell crabbed over, the first to reach in and pull out enough of the weed to stuff down the bowl of his clay pipe. “Been a long time since I had a smoke anyways.”
It wasn’t long before the two dozen shared a few common sparks that flint and steel ignited on smoldering char until all were sucking at the dried leaves that stung their tongues. Within minutes the men grew more quiet than usual, every one of them soon absorbed with a dreamy reverie brought about by the narcotic effects of the bitter leaves.
Scratch drifted, half dozing as he recalled the gentle rattle of the mountain breeze coursing its way through the cottonwood and quakie, the unmistakable soughing of that first wind of winter fingering its way through the branches of fir or pine, stabbing its way through the thick overcoat of the blue spruce.
For the longest time Titus had the unmistakable impression he was sleeping—despite the fact that he had his eyes open. And those eyes were no longer squinting but growing wider and wider instead as the sun gradually went down, marking the passage of time as twilight loomed around them. Looking to his left, Scratch found their guide loading some more of the dry leaves into his simple Indian pipe crafted from the hollowed-out legbone of a horse. Maybe that red nigger did have something here with smoking these crumbled leaves: how it eased a man’s pain. At least no one was complaining of the nagging, persistent discomfort they suffered from both the thirst and a belly- gnawing hunger.
Time passed and he couldn’t reckon on just how much. While the air cooled, Bass noticed the nearby horses lazily shifting from one exhausted leg to another, observed men rolling from hip to hip seeking to make themselves more comfortable in the windblown sand, or watched nothing more than the changing properties of the light as a shadowy band slid ever so slowly across the grease-hardened wrinkles and fading bloodstains smeared across the tops of his leggings. The last of the day’s light crept over him as if it were an animated creature of the desert itself.
Then he thought of them back in Absaroka. And found himself dwelling on her—on the way she laughed so uncontrollably with how easily he poked fun at himself. Remembering the way her eyes took on a deep intensity when she hungered for him. So he naturally thought of pretty little Magpie and his bright, inquisitive Flea. He yearned to be back for their birthdays … but first he had to get out of this life-robbing desert.
Directly overhead sailed more than a dozen wrinkled-necked buzzards keeping an eye on the trappers and their animals, following their march, picking over the bones of the horse carcasses the raiders left in their wake. Eegod, but it hurt to stare at the sky too long, so he shut his eyes and waited for the pain to pass.
Sometime later he was awakened by a man’s heavy, labored breathing—and realized it was his own. Not daring to breathe deeply of the hot air because it burned his lungs like a blast from a blacksmith’s bellow. Reminding himself to suck it in shallow, shallow.
Upon opening his eyes he discovered the sun had leaked out of that last quarter of the sky, which meant even more time had passed. Quickly glancing at the heavens above them, he found it nearly black with wings. A few buzzards, yes—but even more of some bigger species, their immense wingspans circling overhead in that hot yellow sky.
Floating up there on the rising thermals, patiently waiting for the men to pick up and move on, so they could descend from the sky and pick over the remains of what the men left behind. Any strips of horseflesh clinging to the bones. Squawking and wing-flapping over the putrid gut piles. Sharp, curved beaks fighting off the others so they could peck at the dead, glazed eyes of the horses, feasting on the rotting carrion until there was nothing left but bone to bleach under the sun and course-less winds.
Come dark, they’d have to get out of here, Scratch decided. If they didn’t, those damned birds might well grow bold enough to attack the weaker horses and mules, maybe unto challenging the most defenseless of the men.
Titus closed his eyes again for a few minutes and tried desperately to think of how hell might feel. Could it be any worse than this?
Down in hell did the buzzards and other carrion eaters tear flesh from a man’s body, pick at his eyes … even before he was dead?
In hell did a man simply give up hope of ever seeing her again?
* The Needles, near present-day Needles, California.
* Today’s Marl Springs.
* Present-day Soda Lake.
* Jimsonweed, smoked by the Mojave, as well as their neighbors: the Paiute, Cocopah, and Yuma.
9
The condors and vultures had landed around them as the sun sank. Something more than a hundred of the birds had gathered—first blackening the sky over this daylong bivouac, eventually landing to encircle the parched men and their near-dead animals.
A few of the other raiders were just starting to stir as the shadows lengthened. Titus felt woozy, sick to his stomach, but as soon as he sipped at some of the warm water in his gourd canteen, the feeling started to pass.
“Bill,” he said when his eyes landed on Williams, “we gotta get this bunch moving soon as the sun’s gone.”
The old trapper nodded, slowly rocking onto his knees with a sigh. “The Injun says we should reach water afore morning.”
Just over Williams’s shoulder one of the buzzards fluttered across the sand to nab a sidewinder, its sharp beak striking out to clamp down on the snake, violently tossing its head side to side, then pitching the sidewinder into the air to break the snake’s back in a second place.
“Damn, if that sight don’t give me the willies,” Bill grumbled as he struggled to stand.
