where the horses and men both grew breathless from their struggle into the high country. From that narrow saddle,* they dropped over to the eastern slopes where the raiders got their first glimpse of the narrow, winding ribbon of the upper Arkansas as it was gathering steam in its headlong race to the Mississippi far, far across the plains.
From here on they had only to follow the river out of the mountains.
Thirteen days later Titus caught sight of the low adobe walls raised around a cluster of poor adobe buildings when the raiders crested the top of a low rise. “What the hell are those?” he asked in surprise.
“I’ll be go to hell,” Williams said in a low voice filled with marvel. “They gone and done it for certain.”
“You know who that is down there, Bill?”
He gave Bass a sideways grin and asked, “You ain’t been down in this country for a long spell, have you?”
Bass shook his head, his eyes dancing over the mud-and-wattle hovels squatting inside the fort walls and out. Off to one direction a few cattle grazed on grass already smitten brown with autumn’s first frost. Two dozen sheep, along with a handful of goats, cropped the gentle slope directly behind the settlement. Even a few chickens pecked at insects near the gate.
“What’s this post called?”
“Ain’t rightly a trading post,” Williams answered. “Leastways, no one man owns it. Only thing I heard it called is the Pueblo. Story goes, Jim Beckwith and a few others come up here from Mexico to get things started.”
Titus scratched a louse out of his beard. “Beckwith—the darkie what was a Crow chief?”
“That’s him.”
Scratch crushed the tiny louse between a thumb and fingernail. “Bet these here fellas didn’t figger they’d have to go head-on with the Bent boys!”
“I heard they was coming here to do just that.”
“If that don’t take the circle!” Titus exclaimed. “You s’pose these niggers be interested in some Californy horses?”
The horsemen scattered the chickens and some goats as they started off the hillside more than a half mile from the crude settlement. After rounding the herd back on itself and bringing the weary horses to a halt, the dust- caked weary raiders made camp a good mile up a wide creek from the Pueblo. As they came out of their saddles, Bill guaranteed every man his opportunity to spend time in the settlement that night, or the following day—since they would be laying over before pushing on. Then he assigned a rotation of guards to watch over the herd before he signaled Bass to mount up and accompany him.
“Let’s go pay us a visit,” Bill suggested. “See who’s about.”
For the most part, the breeze drifted downhill, carrying with it the settlement’s stench. But every now and then as they approached, the wind would momentarily shift—and the odors of human waste, rotting carcasses, not to mention cow and goat dung, would all conspire to slap them in the face. Not that this wasn’t exactly how an Indian village stank after several weeks being rooted in the same spot. But then, the tribes always migrated when it came time to move on. From the looks of things, these white squatters had decided to stay put, no matter the stink.
“Ho!” called out a thin figure stepping from the shadow of that bastion erected at the corner of the eight- foot-high adobe wall as the two riders approached in the late-afternoon light.
Williams and Bass reined up. Bill held down his hand, “William S. Williams, Master Trapper.”
“Bill Williams hisself,” the thin one replied, admiration spread across his face. “I’m Robert Fisher. And who you be?”
“Titus Bass.”
“I’ll be damned. You’re the one what wears the scalp of the nigger took your hair, ain’t that it?”
Patting the back of his head, Bass said, “How come you know of me?”
“Partner of mine says he knowed you,” Fisher announced.
Scratch’s curiosity was pricked, “Who that be?”
“Said he trapped with you some years back,” Fisher explained. “Name’s Kinkead.”
“Yep.” And Fisher squinted up at Bass, his head twisting round on his neck so he could stare at the back of the horseman’s faded bandanna.
“Mathew ain’t living down to Taos no more?”
“Not for some time now.”
“Kinkead bring anybody with him from Taos? Family?”
“His woman, and they got ’em a daughter—”
“No,” he interrupted with a snap, flush with a skin-prickling excitement that made him squirm in his saddle. “I wanna know if Mathew brung any other fellas with him from Taos—
Robert Fisher thought mightily on that a moment, as if muscling over a great block of quarried marble in his mind before he answered. “No, I’m sorry. Don’t recollect him having no American—”
“Where’s Kinkead now?” he demanded impatiently.
The man turned slightly and pointed, “Last I saw of him earlier, Mathew was down by his buffalo pens.”
“B-buffler pens?” Williams squeaked, high-pitched and scratchy as a worn fiddle string.
Fisher nodded. “Where he keeps his buffalo calves.”
“This I gotta see, Scratch!” Williams roared.
“Saw all them horses you fellers was bringing down out of the hills from a ways back,” Fisher stated, stepping up to pat the dirty, sweat-caked neck of Bass’s pony. “Less’n you robbed horses from the hull Yuta nation … just where the hell you fellas run onto so goddamned many?”
“Californy,” Titus declared.
Now it was Fisher’s time to sputter. “C-california … these Mex horses? All of ’em?”
“We run most of ’em off California ranchos,” Williams admitted.
“Some was wild,” Bass said proudly. “They joined up on our way east over the mountains.”
Bill added, “I figger most of them wild ones made it cross the desert.”
“Lookit all of ’em!” Fisher gushed with astonishment, staring at the hillside.
“What you see is less’n half what we took right under their noses,” Titus boasted.
“Wait’ll the rest of the fellers see this!”
“We’re camped up the creek a ways, mile or so,” Williams announced, pointing down the slope at the mouth of the nearby Fountain, where the creek flowed into the Arkansas on that broad valley floor. “We’ll graze our horses on what grass there is above you on that big flat.”
“I’ll go fetch up the others,” Fisher offered. “Let ’em know you boys come—”
“Don’t think you’ll have to,” Bass said as he spotted more than two dozen figures emerging from the fort gate, headed their way on foot, another ten to fifteen women, children, and a few men clambering out of a handful of buffalo-hide lodges pitched close to the post’s adobe walls. “Truth be … I think I see ol’ Mathew Kinkead’s ugly face coming now.”
There wasn’t a thing that could compare with the strong embrace of an old friend, a companion who had ridden the high country with you, stood at your back time after time against great odds, a man you had trusted with your life.
Scratch gazed at Kinkead’s face through damp, misty eyes, his cheeks wet with happiness as they slapped each other on the back and danced, danced, danced.
“Easy now, easy,” the large bear of a man huffed as he lumbered to a stop. “Ain’t as y-young as we was back when we could pound each other to a frazzle, Scratch.”
“I heard Rosa’s here with you,” he said, a little breathless too.
The wide, toothy grin drained from Kinkead’s face. “Rosa … no. She’s gone.”
“G-gone? Wh-where?”
“Was took quick and merciful two winters after your Crow woman had that girl of your’n. Where’s she? You still packing that squaw?”
