“Easy there, hoss,” Sweete groaned as Titus grabbed hold and began to straighten the appendage. “That leg hurts fierce.”
“Think it’s froze for now.”
“The bleeding?”
Titus nodded. “Likely I won’t have to cut off your hoof, pilgrim.”
Sweete screwed up half a smile and snorted, “That’s good news to this child. Lookit my shoulder, too.”
Scooting behind Shadrach, Bass rose on one knee to have himself a good look at that broad, muscular shoulder. “Lucky, coon. Damn lucky.”
“Not bad, eh?”
“You got so much there for the critter to bite through—coat and shirt and all. Ain’t any bleeding to it.”
“Tore through my coat good down here,” Sweete said, bringing his arm away from his belly.
“Lemme see.”
As Shad brought his red, glistening hand away from the torn wound, it was easy to see the battered flesh wasn’t going to stop bleeding from the intense cold, much less on its own.
Scratch sighed. “Put your hand back on it and hol’ tight as you can.”
“It bad?”
“We’re gonna get that bleeding stopped.” He turned aside, reaching for his oldest skinning knife at his back.
“Don’t worry ’bout nothin’ else—just get me to Shell Woman.”
“Damn you,” Titus snapped angrily, frustration threatening to overwhelm him. Despair lurked all around them, right out there in the snowy, dancing, swirling coming of darkness. “We ain’t going nowhere till we get that bleeding stopped. I ain’t gonna have you bleed out getting back to the women.”
“You just don’t want them wolves come follerin’ my blood tracks, do you?”
He jerked up to find Shad grinning in the whitish light. “Good thing you can still laugh about spilling all your damn blood, Shadrach. Here, hold tight—right here, like that.”
After he had Sweete’s hand better positioned over the wound, Scratch scooted behind the carcass and butchered free a small rectangle of long, thick fur from the cow’s front shoulder. Then he cut three narrow strips from the rear flank, each more than a foot long and no more than a half inch wide. Quickly wiping the knife off on the cow’s frozen fur, he jabbed the weapon back into its scabbard and returned to Sweete’s side.
“Here now, move your hand,” and he positioned the rectangle of fur over the wounded forearm. “I ain’t gonna take the time to cut the sleeve on your coat and shirt. Time enough for that once we get you to quit bleeding like a gutted hog.”
In a rasp he said, “I love you too, Scratch.”
As he finished wrapping the green, elastic hide around the wounded arm, fur side down, and looked up at his friend’s face, Titus asked, “What you mean by that?”
“Just what I said,” Shad admitted with a little difficulty. “Man does what you’re doing for me—I figger that friend cares something deep for me.”
“Don’t know where you’d ever get that idee, Shadrach,” he grumbled as his eyes smarted hotly in the bitter cold. “Hold down hard on this now,” he snorted as he slowly moved his hands aside, allowing Sweete to grip onto the furry rectangle lapped over the wound.
One at a time, Titus looped the long, narrow strips over the green hide, pulling with all his might on the tough, thick, elastic hide until Sweete grunted in discomfort, if not in outright pain, then knotted each strip in turn over the buffalo fur bandage.
“If’n that don’t stop the bleeding by the time I get back from fetching up the horses, I’m gonna have to tie off the arm, Shadrach.”
For a long moment Sweete stared up at Bass’s grim face while Titus stiffly got to his feet and stood over his friend. Shad finally asked, “You thinkin’ I could lose the arm?”
“Better the arm than you dying right here.”
Shad looked down at the arm. “Damn, I ain’t ready to die … an’ I ain’t ready to lose my arm neither. If I’m goin’ under, you gotta get me to Shell Woman. She’ll know what to do. I swear—she’ll know what to do for me, Scratch.”
“Ain’t much more she could do for you ’ceptin’ what I awready done—”
“Get the horses back here,” Sweete interrupted with a plea. “Leave me one of your guns case them other’ns figger to sneak back in on me ’cause I’m down.”
“There’s four of them bastards left.”
“You leave me one of yours, that makes three guns,” Sweete said, putting on a brave face of it. “For the last’un, I got my knife.”
“Here,” and Bass knelt, laying his pistol in Shad’s lap. “I ain’t gonna be long.”
Sweete looked up into Scratch’s moistening eyes. “I know.”
Without another word, Titus laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder, then turned and lunged into the wind, his bare face suddenly stung by the icy snowflakes hurtled this way and that by the capricious gales.
He knew he could get the horses back to Shad before the man bled out, maybe even get Shad back to where they left the women and children at a warm spot below the ridge, where they were going to build a fire and make camp after the men took off to hunt down some supper. But after that, Scratch didn’t know what the hell to do.
Except for getting the man back to his woman. That was the least he could do for his friend. If Shad wanted to believe Shell Woman could heal her husband, then it was fine by him. Whatever a man wanted to believe in.
At those times when his hands had failed to make a difference in saving a friend’s life, Bass had felt as if he had been brought to his knees—hammered down in frustration, in despair, in anger too. So he didn’t rightly think what he was doing could be called praying, not real church praying, as he lumbered blindly through the stinging snow, making for the mouth of the coulee and their horses.
But if there were some spirits out there watching, or those missionaries’ God hovering up in His heaven right now, then it stirred a fury in Titus Bass that such a powerful being as the First Maker could snatch his friend from him so quick and capriciously.
As much as he had wanted to believe before—just as he had been coming to accept the presence of a power much greater than himself … something always happened to make him doubt in the goodness of a creator or divine being. So if that holy and all-powerful spirit wanted to make itself known to Titus Bass … it damn well better do it now.
FOUR
“You figger I’ll ever use this arm again?”
When Shad Sweete asked that of him, Titus Bass was stunned. He turned to gaze at his friend standing in the shadows of the tall adobe wall at old Fort Vasquez. “What makes you think you won’t be back to wrasslin’ bears and whoopin’ Injuns real soon, Shadrach?”
“It’s been a long time,” he said with a heavy resignation. “Too long.”
“Who’re you to say it’s been too long?”
Sweete shrugged.
So Bass took a step closer to the tall man and asked, “What’s Shell Woman tell you? She ain’t said it’s time to take that sling off.”
“No, she says I ain’t ready for that … not yet.”
“C’mere, Shadrach,” he prodded, gesturing for the big man to walk with him to the center of the plaza at the middle of this small adobe trading post.
Near the western wall Waits-by-the-Water was giving Shell Woman a tour of this once-thriving fur post where Titus and his family had spent the better part of a winter years gone now.* Doing her best to explain this and that to Shell Woman by sign, pointing, and impromptu gestures, she was entertaining the five children to
