compound, soaping the animals down. At another corner a blacksmith worked to reshoe a glossy, majestic black. Across the yard stood what appeared to be a low, one-story barracks. The roofs of a pair of buildings rested at either side of the double-wide gates, which stood open. Titus had no clue what those rooms were.
All the way at the rear of the huge compound stood a two-story building, a wide porch running across the full width of the structure, with a balcony across the width of the second floor. Several windows and two doors broke up the expanse of adobe on both floors.
Felix Warren let go a low whistle. “That’s a heap of Mexicans down there.”
Bass quickly turned to Frederico,
At first the Indian shrugged, then his face went serious and he began flipping his fingers into his palms.
“What’s he doin’?” Frank Curnutt demanded.
“I think he’s ciphering how many’s the lodge,” Titus replied.
“It don’t really matter, does it, Scratch?” Williams asked.
Bass said, “Sorry, Bill—I don’t catch the drift.”
“If’n there’s twenty of ’em, or if there’s eighty of ’em down there … we still know what we gotta do.”
“Y-you can’t be serious ’bout our outfit fighting all them Mex soldiers!” Frank Curnutt scoffed. “Why don’t we just ride right on around ’em and they won’t be none the wiser.”
Williams argued, “But Smith give his word to the Injun here.”
“Shit!” Warren snorted. “What’s your damn word to a Injun? That’s like shoveling fleas in a barnyard!”
“The Injun brung us here just like he said he would,” Williams said heatedly, his eyes narrowing on the trapper.
“Let the Injun go raise hell with the soldiers if he wants,” Curnutt argued. “It ain’t gonna chap my hide to leave this red nigger to go his own way.”
“You ain’t listening to Bill,” Titus growled. “He told you the way it’s gonna be.”
Curnutt’s eyes closed into dangerous slits as he squinted over Williams’s shoulder at Bass. “A white man’s word to a Injun ain’t but a piss in the wind.”
“Bill and Peg-Leg both told the Injun what we’d do if he got us through that desert—”
Interrupting, Curnutt snarled, “Don’t mean we gotta fight them soldiers. Hell, them two sisters of his nothin’ better’n Mex whores now anyway—”
Springing onto his knees, Bass vaulted past Williams and snagged hold of the front of Curnutt’s colorful serape before the other two could react. Jerking his leg up, Titus pressed a knee down on the right hand that Curnutt was attempting to wrap around his knife. “You heard Bill. We give our word to the—”
“I didn’t give
“Get off him,” a voice warned at his back.
Williams tensed, rolling onto his hip to peer behind Titus and said, “Put the knife down, Warren.”
Bass immediately twisted to look over his shoulder, finding Felix Warren rocking onto his knees, his big skinning knife out before him. Slowly and out of sight beneath his serape, Titus inched his fingers toward one of the two knives at the back of his belt.
“You figger on doing something stupid with your sticker,” Scratch warned, “Curnutt here gonna be a dead man for it.”
“Tol’cha: Get off ’im, Bass.”
Williams tucked his legs under him into a crouch now, slowly pulling his belt pistol into view. Although he did not raise it enough to point its muzzle directly at Warren, it would have been apparent to a blind man that this was no veiled threat. “You’re goin’ again’ my word, Warren.”
“Just tell ’im get off Frank.”
“Maybe I will,” Williams said. “But not till you put that skinner away.”
Bass shook his head emphatically. “I ain’t gonna get off this son of a bitch till he shuts his meat hole ’bout helping the Injun.”
Felix Warren just started to inch forward, saying, “Then you’re a dead man—”
Then Williams brought the pistol up, raked his arm forward, and jammed the muzzle against Warren’s ribs. “This here’s gonna make a damn big hole in you by the time the ball comes out your back.”
Warren’s eyes widened, nearly crossing when he peered down at the pistol and the brown hand holding it.
“It’s your play, Felix,” Bill explained.
Bringing his eyes up to glare into Williams’s, Warren started pulling the knife back toward his belt, saying, “I’ll put it away … then you get that bastard off Frank.”
“Get off him, Scratch,” Bill ordered as Warren’s knife slid into the scabbard.
“Not till the bastard tells you he won’t go running against your grain, Bill.”
Williams dragged the pistol away from Warren’s rib cage and said, “I think Curnutt understands who’s booshway of this here horse raid—don’t you, Frank?”
“You are, Bill.”
“I s’pose you can crawl off him now, Scratch.”
The instant Bass took his weight off the man’s arms, Curnutt spun out from under him, rubbing the wrist where Titus’s bony knee had pinned it against the ground. He shrugged his shoulders to settle the serape back into place, glowering at Bass.
“I want you boys stay away from each other,” Williams ordered. “We got horses to steal. You understand, Scratch?”
“Soon as the horses is stole,” Bass said low, the words rattling at the back of his throat, “I got some business to see to, soon as the horses is stole.”
“Your time’s coming,” Curnutt warned with a sneer.
Titus wagged his head as he slid backward off the skyline and got to his feet. “Won’t be by the likes of you two.”
“That’s right, Frank,” Warren snorted with a wide grin. “We wouldn’t wanna go an’ spoil Thompson’s li’l fandango with this son of a bitch.”
* Mojave River
* San Bernardino Mountains
* Cajon Pass, aptly given the Spanish word for “box.”
10
When did the mountains roll over on themselves? Who was the first to pit white man against white man?
Oh, sure—there’d always been John Bull’s boys working for Hudson’s Bay Company, poking around over in Snake River country where they didn’t belong. And there’d been those years while Rocky Mountain Fur Company did everything it could to hold the high country against Astor’s mighty American Fur Company brigades probing the mountains from forts along the Missouri River. But … how did it ever come to pass that when the beaver business went to hell it became every man for himself?
Or, had things always been that way and Titus Bass was just one stupid nigger who failed to read the sign?
Maybe while he hadn’t been looking, that unspoken code between men had broken down. Time was, a man came into the mountain West, he accepted the certainty of a few immutable laws. You took care of those who stood at your back. You didn’t steal what furs another man busted his hump to earn. And you stood by those Indians who had taken you in … God knows there were already enough red niggers out here willing to part a child from his hair at the blink of an eye.
It all had to do with knowing who your friends were, and who weren’t. So, when did Scratch’s whole world heave over on itself? When did these mountains start filling up with men who couldn’t give a good goddamn for the
