He nodded only, struck a little numb in remembrance of sweet, round, warm Rosa Kinkead who had helped deliver his first child. “She’s … an’ my young’uns, they’re all up to Absorkee. Ain’t see’d ’em since early spring.” Then Scratch wagged his head. “Can’t hardly believe it—not when Fisher said Kinkead was here with his wife and daughter.”
“That’s Teresita,” Kinkead explained. “We got us a daughter too, just like you.” He sighed, then said, “How long’s it been, my friend?”
“Late spring,” Bass answered, “thirty-four.” In so many ways—made all the sweeter in staring at his old friend’s face—it seemed as if only a season or two had passed them by, instead of more than eight long, intervening years.
What with that sudden, sad news about Kinkead’s Rosa, Titus was reluctant to ask …
“Mathew,” he said quietly, gripping the big man’s wrist in his bony claw, “wh-what become of Josiah?”
Quickly, Kinkead’s face brightened. “Josiah Paddock, you say?” And he snorted with laughter. “Now there’s a nigger made hisself a home in Taos!”
“He—he’s still alive?”
“Alive? Damn certain that tall drink of water’s still alive,” Mathew declared. “Leastways he was the picture of health last time I see’d him early in the summer.”
With that flutter of excitement winging through his belly, Titus asked, “You saw him down to Taos?”
“The goods we brung north for our trade room here, some of ’em we bought off Josiah, Scratch.”
Titus felt his whole body smiling. “You saying—he’s made himself a place as a trader down to Taos, Mathew?”
“Strike me deaf and dumb if he ain’t made a damned good trader down at San Fernando.” Kinkead laid a big hand on Bass’s shoulder. “Just the way you made it possible for him right before you lit out for the mountains. Y-you ain’t ever been back down to Taos since you come back from Saint Louis, come back from settling things with Cooper?”*
Scratch shook his head, “No, I ain’t been back down there.” A surge of pride was sparkling its way through his chest with this grand, grand news about his old friend. “Mathew … what of his Flathead woman? And that li’l boy of his, Joshua was his name?”
Kinkead’s head rocked back on his massive shoulders as he laughed. “Looks Far Woman talks Mex good as any greaser now! An’ Josiah’s been keeping her big with child nigh every year. Near as I callate, young Joshua got him least four brothers and sisters!”
Impulsively, Scratch threw his arms around Kinkead again, squeezing mightily in the pure joy brought of good news.
Mathew asked, “That where you’re headed? See Josiah down to Taos after all this time?”
He took a step back from the big man to explain. “Your news will have to do for now. We’re on the tramp for Bents Fort with some horses to trade.”
“I know it’d make the lad truly happy to lay eyes on you again, knowing the way he mourned your going when you pulled up stakes and headed back to the mountains.”
“Make me a happy nigger to set my eyes on him again too,” he sighed.
Kinkead offered, “If’n you want, I’ll ride south with you—”
“Maybe one day soon,” Bass interrupted, torn between two regrets. “But too long I’ve been gone from my woman, and our young’uns. Too long. It’s time I point my nose for Absorkee afore Winter Man blows down on that north country. Tramping south for Taos gonna have to wait for ’nother day, Mathew.”
“Truth be,” Kinkead admitted, “I didn’t much take to the notion of setting foot in the Taos valley again myself, Scratch.”
Bass studied the doleful look on his old friend’s face for a moment before he asked, “You ain’t the kind to have no trouble with the greasers. So why you skeedaddle?”
Kinkead shook his head as he toed the ground beneath a moccasin. “Just ain’t the same place it was of a time years ago.”
“The Mex?”
“Them, yeah,” Kinkead replied. “Them Pueblos too. The Injuns just outta town.”
“Josiah and his family—they ain’t in danger?”
“Hell no,” Mathew said reassuringly. “Them Mex look most favorable on Paddock, most favorable. Why, the lad’s a real pillar of that community.”
Titus measured the way Kinkead grinned and puffed out his chest appropriately while he spoke those soothing words. It gave his heart no little pride to learn how well his old partner had carved out a life for himself in Taos. Why, of a time many winters ago, Scratch even looked upon Josiah as that younger brother he left behind in Boone County, Kentucky. And, when he owned up to it, there had been those times when, in many ways, he felt as if Paddock could well have been like a son.
Natural to feel as if he could bust his own buttons with pride in what young Paddock had accomplished in the intervening years. Had Titus not convinced Josiah to remain behind in Taos back to thirty-four, no telling what might well have become of the lad: fallen to the Blackfoot when they rode to avenge the death of Rotten Belly or Whistler, even took by smallpox had he been along for that desperate chase to reclaim his family from the Bloods, or killed in his first running skirmish against the Sioux.*
As it was, Josiah would likely die an old man’s death now, his gray, hoary head resting on a goose-down pillow as he drew his last breath there in his fine Taos home, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. The lad had stretched Lady Fate’s patience as far as any man had the right to do. Any man … save for Titus Bass.
If ever there was a man who realized he would never pass over the Great Divide peacefully stretched out on a feather tick, surrounded by weeping loved ones … it was Titus Bass. Lady Fate simply didn’t hold anything of the sort in the cards for him. No quiet passing would be his legacy.
Scratch swallowed the lump of sentiment clogging his throat and said, “Damn fine to hear Josiah’s made a life for hisself. Just the way it ’pears you done right here for yourself too, Mathew.”
“Had us a place on up the Arkansas ’bout six miles for almost a year,” Kinkead explained. “Started raising buffier calves to sell.”
“Buffler calves?” he snorted in disbelief.
“Just like milk cows,” Mathew said proudly. “I’d tromp east onto the plains a ways, steal a few li’l red ones from their wet-teat mamas, and drag ’em back here.”
“How the hell—”
“Had ’em nurse a milk cow, Scratch,” Kinkead explained. “I had me a few good cows took over feeding them li’l calves. And come next spring, Teresita gonna put in her garden again—raise some corn and beans, just like we did upstream. Eat some and sell the rest.”
“Who the devil you gonna sell your corn to?”
“Bents allays buy good,” Mathew said. “But the reason I moved down here and throwed in with these others is so we could be here for overland travelers.”
Bass chuckled lightly. “Now I know you’re pulling my leg, Mathew! Raising yourself buffler calves and selling corn to—what’d you call ’em?”
“They’re overland travelers, Scratch. Folks moving up and down the front of the mountains now. Our day’s gone, don’t you see. It’s a differ’nt time awready. Country’s changing.”
“Travelers? You mean traders—like Vaskiss and Sublette. Got ’em that post up on the South Platte—”
“Settler folks, Scratch.” And Mathew laid a thick arm across Titus’s shoulder as he swept the other arm in a half circle. “We just got the post finished last week, and lookee what’s here awready. Damn, if it ain’t got the makin’s of a real settlement right where we stand. Atween the lot of us, got chickens and cows and goats too, ’long with my buffler calves. Too late of the season to put in the fields now, but come spring we’ll be plowing up that meadow there, and turning that’un over there too.”
Bass’s eyes followed the sweep of Kinkead’s arm. Dark-skinned women and children, along with a mess of domesticated animals. Same as it would be down to San Fernando de Taos. Damn near how it was back east at Westport where the Santa Fe traders began their journey to the Mexican settlements. No, this here wasn’t like a nomadic village of the Crow or Snake, Ute or Arapaho. What Mathew Kinkead and the others were doing here was putting down roots. Deep and abiding roots.
Here in a country that of a time had known only the hoofbeats and grunts of migrating buffalo, along with the
