The short, black quirt suspended from the end of Hargrove’s wrist flew out in a blur, the two ends of the horsewhip catching Burwell high across one cheekbone. It stunned the farmer as he stumbled back a step more in shock than pain, bringing his hand to his face. When he brought the fingertips away and looked down at the trickle of blood the whip had opened in his flesh, a gasp escaped from those emigrants close by. Amanda took one step into the crowd before Titus seized her arm and yanked her back, where he could lay an arm over her shoulder.
“Your husband don’t need you making more trouble for him,” he whispered sternly, then he and Shad shared a look that both men understood immediately. He leaned down, tousling his grandson’s hair, then whispered to Amanda, “Daughter, you keep the boy here with you.”
Then Scratch took a step away from her, stopped, and turned back to whisper, “Don’t you move from this spot, Amanda. Chances are, you’ll only make things a mite messier.”
“No one … no one at all, calls me a liar, Burwell,” Hargrove bellowed at the crowd. He held the short whip at the end of his arm menacingly, slowly dragging it around the crowd in an arc.
The farmer wiped his bloodied fingers on his worn canvas britches, then suddenly pointed at some children inching toward him. “Lem, you keep your sisters back.”
The twelve-year-old boy obeyed instantly, putting his hand on the shoulders of his two younger sisters and nudging them back against the fringe of the crowd.
Burwell stood for a moment, as if he were a big, dumb brute working up a fighting lather, his eyes gone to slits as he flexed those fists open and closed, open and closed. “No man’s ever gonna hit me ’thout me hittin’ him back!”
But the farmer lunged no more than two steps in Hargrove’s direction when he lurched to an ungainly halt, jerking back as he stared down at the pistols those three hired men had pulled out of their belts, their wide muzzles only a matter of feet from Burwell’s belly.
Dramatically, Hargrove dragged the leather strands of his horsewhip through his open left palm. “The rest of you have got to understand, I am not doing this to hurt any one of you. I am not that sort of man. I simply have my own interests to see to. My own dreams to chase. And those dreams beckon me from California now. I will nonetheless bring you all the way to Fort Hall—”
“Where you’re gonna take our pilot from us,” Burwell grumbled, staring down at those three pistols. “And take your extra guns with you too.”
“Why shouldn’t I, Burwell?” Hargrove asked. “Have I been paid by this company to lead you to Oregon?”
“You asked us to elect you!” a voice cried from the crowd.
“We elected you to take us to Oregon!”
“But I’m not going to Oregon now,” Hargrove argued. “And, this company of poor farmers never contracted to pay me any money to get you there—”
“Never was any talk of pay,” the big farmer reminded. “You put your own name up for captain, said you wanted to lead us to Oregon … so you was chose as captain to take these people to Oregon.”
“Mr. Harris here says the chances are better than good you’ll find someone at Fort Hall who knows the road and can pilot the rest of you to Oregon,” Hargrove suggested with a flippant gesture of that horsewhip.
A woman’s voice cried out, “But we won’t have us no captain neither!”
“You can elect a man to serve when you embark from Fort Hall. Till then, I will dutifully serve as your company captain. And as captain, my orders are that we move at dawn day after tomorrow.” Drawing in a long breath, Hargrove quickly said, “Since I hear no other business, this meeting of the Hargrove Company is adjourned.”
Some of the crowd stood rooted in their places, whispering among themselves. Others began to wander away from the shady banks of Black’s Fork, slowly starting back toward their wagons laid out in an orderly pattern across the grassy meadow. Hargrove leaned close to Burwell and said something to the farmer that no one else could have heard, then turned away with his men and the pilot.
“Harris!” Scratch hollered as the crowd before him splintered into whispering knots. He gave Shad another nod, and they started toward their old compatriot.
“Shadrach Sweete! If this ain’t a joy for these old eyes!” Harris bellowed after he had stopped and turned on his heel, recognizing the tall man coming his way through the dispersing crowd.
Curious, Hargrove and his hired men halted as well, forming a crescent behind the pilot.
“Finally talked yourself into leading a train I see!” Bass said as he came to a stop in front of the old trapper. “Don’t know me, do you?”
Harris wagged his head. “I s’pose to?”
“Naw. I never run with Bridger an’ Sweete,” he grumbled as his eyes peered into Hargrove’s face, taking a quick measure of the captain. “I was a free man, Harris.”
Without a word of reply to Bass, Harris turned to Sweete. “Thought I see’d ye workin’ for Jim Bridger at his Green River ferry when we come across the Seedskeedee.”
“I was,” Shad said.
“Ain’t got no job? Maybe ye’re hankerin’ to find a li’l work with some emigrants, are ye?”
“I got work if I want it, right here at Bridger’s post,” Sweete declared.
That’s when Bass interrupted, “Shadrach, you ’member how they had to tie this here nigger to a tree till Doc an’ Joe got started off from ronnyvoo for Oregon a few years back?”
Harris’s eyes glared like those of a diamondback rattler ready to strike as they instantly shifted to Titus Bass. “What kind of bullshit—”
“You was a no-good snake belly back then,” Scratch continued as Amanda rejoined her husband, several yards away at the edge of the trees. “An’ it looks like you’ve hooked up with your own no-good kind again, Harris.”
“Are you referring to me?” Hargrove demanded as he strode up beside Harris, about half a head taller than either the pilot or the old trapper.
His eyes flashed to Hargrove’s. “Way you side-talked these folks, you’re a slick’un, you are.”
“Who the hell is this, Harris?”
“Never met ’im. So I dunno—”
“Far as you need to know,” Titus said, glaring at Hargrove, “I’m just a nigger what hates bald-faced liars even more’n that sodbuster you hit with your—”
Scratch’s left arm shot up and out, his forearm cracking against Hargrove’s wrist as the captain brought up his horsewhip. Bass immediately rolled his hand and seized the man’s forearm, which compelled the three hired men to bring up their pistols, each muzzle pointed at Bass.
Hargrove snarled, “Best you let me go, mister.”
“I ain’t ’bout to let you go till these lizard-hearted bastards of yours put their pistols away in their pants.”
Hargrove snorted a chuckle. “And if they don’t? I figure they can put three balls in you before you even begin to reach for your pistol. Now—for the last time—take your hand off me.”
“Maybeso these three cowards can shoot one man,” Bass admitted after a moment of reflection. “But if I know my ol’ partner, he’s got his pistol pointed at
Titus didn’t know for sure what Sweete had done behind him. Or if he had done anything at all. The only thing he could do was count on his old friend to be there at his back. And from that look in Hargrove’s eyes when the captain glanced at Shadrach, Titus could plainly see there was reason enough to give Hargrove pause.
“No man calls me a liar and gets away with it,” he hissed at the trapper.
“Seems to me there’s more’n a hunnert folks here who believe that’s just what you are, a low-down liar,” Titus declared, sensing some of the building fury cause the captain’s arm to tremble. “Best you cipher this too—I ain’t one of your farmers, Hargrove. I don’t cotton to no whippin’s, an’ I figger any man what’s gotta sashay around with the likes o’ these here hired snake bellies, why—that man’s no more than a coward.”
Hargrove attempted to yank his arm free. “Maybe I should shoot you myself,” he growled as he rested his left hand on the butt of his pistol protruding from the front of his belt.
“Go right ahead,” Scratch prodded. “You’ll never get it out afore Shadrach kills you dead where you stand.”
