And he turned, finding Amanda over by the wagon, wheeling suddenly, her eyes finding him.
The trumpet blew its warning again.
Scratch watched his daughter swallow as she blinked into the distance, smoothing her open hands down the rumpled pleats at the front of her dirty brown dress.
“Ma!”
They both whirled, finding Lemuel trudging out of the cedar breaks, the front of his shirt dark with sweat. This early in the cool of daybreak? As the youth lunged closer, Bass could see how his hair was plastered with dampness, his face glistening.
“Lem!” she cried, starting for him.
“I heard the trumpet!” he gushed breathlessly as he approached the wagon and his mother, who lunged forward to greet him. “Come fast as I could.”
“Where’s your pa?”
“He’s not here?” the boy asked as his dusty boots slid to a halt on the flaky soil. “Didn’t he come back with the cow yet?”
“N-no,” she answered, her voice small, pinched off.
Titus was there immediately, his hands gripping Lemuel’s shoulders, turning the lad toward him. “Where’s your pa?”
“Dunno, Gran’pa,” the boy said, fear starting to show in his eyes.
“Thought the two of you went out after the cow together?”
That third and final call of the trumpet blared brassily over the encampment. Titus turned quickly to the east. Saw how the sun would be rising soon.
Lemuel nodded and swallowed hard after his race to get back to camp. “We did, together. But, it was getting later and later. Pa thought we ought to split up so he could work the other side of the hill from me.”
“You don’t know where he went?”
Turning, the boy pointed. “I come from there. Pa was on the far side of the hill. I figured he or Hargrove’s men’d find the cow afore I got to the end of the draw, then doubled back—like Pa told me to—”
“You say Hargrove’s men?” Titus interrupted, his belly tightening.
With a nod and a gulp, Lemuel answered, “Three of ’em ran onto me. They was riding horses. Asked where Pa was, was he on foot like me. I told ’em we was looking for one of our cows wandered off. They said for me to start on back to the wagons—we was pulling out soon.”
“Where’d they go?” he asked, a little desperation creeping into his voice, that tiny itch grown to a full-blown uncontrollable urge just screaming to be scratched.
“They said they’d find Pa, then headed off the way I told ’em he went,” the boy admitted. “Said they could find the cow better on horseback than Pa could on f—”
“You say they was riding horses?”
“Yes—”
Titus had freed his desperate grip on the boy’s shoulders and was turning away as Hoyt Bingham rode up with Hargrove and three of his hired men on horseback. Shadrach was coming over from the shady spot where his family had slept out the night.
“That’s them, Gran’pa,” Lemuel declared in a quiet voice just behind Bass’s shoulder.
“Who?”
“The three who said they’d find Pa and the cow.”
“Them three ridin’ up behin’t Hargrove?”
“Yessir.”
“Great God, Amanda!” Hargrove bawled as Digger lowered his head and growled. “You haven’t got your yoke of oxen hitched to that wagon yet?”
“We’re … looking for Roman.”
Hargrove acted as if taken aback by that pronouncement. “But, we’re leaving right now. Already put the head of the march on the trail for the Little Muddy.”
“Oh, no, no!” she whimpered. “Roman’s not back—”
“The boy here says these three niggers o’ your’n turned him back from helpin’ his pa look for a missing cow,” Titus interrupted his daughter, instantly snagging the attention of the five riders as he moved toward Amanda beside the wagon. Shad angled around so that he stood behind Bingham and the quartet of horsemen, his double- barreled flintlock smoothbore cradled across his left forearm.
“What about this, Hargrove?” Bingham demanded.
Turning to one of his hired men, Hargrove asked, “Yes, what about that, Corrett? You know where Burwell went?”
Corrett shrugged, pulling at an earlobe. “We run onto the boy out in the thicket, like the old man said.”
Then a second rider explained, “But we never saw hide or hair of him. So we come on back afore we got left behind.”
“No sign of him, Jenks?” asked the ousted wagon master.
That second rider shook his head convincingly. “No, Mr. Hargrove. No sign.”
Turning back to Amanda and Bingham, clearly ignoring Bass, Hargrove crossed his wrists on his saddlehorn and said, “There you have it, Mrs. Burwell. My men weren’t able to find your husband. Perhaps he’s been bitten by a rattler.”
“Oh, Pa—”
Titus looped his arm over her shoulder as she started to sag. He held her up against his side. “We’ll find him, Shad an’ me.”
Worry creased Bingham’s face. “Who’s going to get your wagon moving?” He pointed off at the rest of the wagons, the last of which were rumbling into motion, oxen lowing, mules braying, men barking commands at the animals, and women hollering at their children to catch up. “The train’s on its way.”
“You’ve got to stop them, Hoyt!” Amanda shrieked, trembling fingers at her lips.
Calmly, deliberately, before Bingham could utter a word, Hargrove declared, “We can’t do that. Wagon master Bingham was elected by all the people to get this company through to Oregon. We have these rules for the good of the entire group.”
Scratch had to restrain his daughter as she attempted to lunge forward, sobbing, “But you can’t go off and leave us!”
Bingham started to speak, then wagged his head. “Roman will show up soon enough.”
“One man and one cow cannot stay this company from the miles we must put behind us today,” Hargrove asserted as he leaned back and straightened his spine reflexively. “Your husband should have thought more about you than he did his cow, Mrs. Burwell,” he said, putting a real emphasis on the word
“Wh-where you going?” Titus asked as Bingham and Hargrove pulled their horses around in that jumble of hired men.
“Wagon master Bingham has got a train to move one day closer to Oregon,” Hargrove announced with triumph brightening his face.
Then Scratch could only stare at the backs of those five men as they kicked their horses into a lope and shot away, intent on catching the head of the column just then winding its way toward the sagebrush bottoms, raising those first choking spirals of yellow dust for the day.
FOURTEEN
As he scanned the thick cedar breaks before him, Scratch wondered which of them he would find first: the cow, or his son-in-law.
There was no chance of uncertainty here. In his black-and-white world, there was enough evidence already in hand to assure himself that Hargrove and his cronies had something to do with Roman Burwell’s not getting back to
