At that moment Amanda appeared at the front of the wagon, her hands gripping the backboard of the seat so tightly her knuckles were white.
“Hargrove!” she screamed accusingly. “You nearly killed my Roman!”
His mouth hung open a moment as the crowd watched in stunned silence. “I only did what any good wagon captain would have done, Mrs. Burwell,” he explained in the most syrupy of tones. “How was I to know that your husband would not be collected within minutes of our departure and you would catch up to us by midday, by last night’s camp at the latest?”
Scratch could see his daughter was near to tears as he urged his horse to the wagon.
She said, “Y-you didn’t give a good goddamn for us, Hargrove! Didn’t send no one back to see about us!”
Standing in the stirrups and reaching out, Scratch grabbed one of her rough, callused hands. “Hush now, daughter. We’ll see to his bunch later.”
“Thank you, sir,” Hargrove exclaimed in his booming voice. “Yes, Amanda—we’ll all see to this matter later. For now, just knowing your husband and family are safe is cause to celebrate! I say we ask the musicians in this outfit to bring out their instruments straightaway!”
The crowd turned back to look at the gray-headed horseman who took off his big hat and wiped the back of a hand across his brow just below the faded, sweat-soaked bandanna. Bass quickly flicked his eyes to Shad, then turned back to the ousted wagon boss.
“Awright, Hargrove,” he said as Amanda disappeared into the wagon, “I say let’s do make us a lot of noise tonight!”
*
* Today’s Bridger Creek.
FIFTEEN
The music and laughter were good and noisy that night after dark, enough celebration to cover a wake for the dead.
Titus and Shad left their wives at the Burwell wagon with extra guns, instructing the women to keep a weapon trained on anyone who came near until Amanda could declare if they were friend or foe. Those dogs he wanted them to tie up would serve as guards too, announcing the approach of any danger. Part of Scratch wanted the women to go right ahead and blow a few holes through some of Hargrove’s men for what they had done to Roman and his family. But, there was an even bigger piece of his heart that desired to take that revenge for himself.
Moonrise would be coming all too soon. With that milky orb only two or three days from filling itself out, the two of them had to be about this bloody business of retribution before the moon came up, shedding its light upon this barren high ground just west of the Bear River Divide.
They didn’t know which three of Hargrove’s seven had been in on the beating of Roman Burwell, which of them had left the farmer strung up for dead. And Titus didn’t figure he could recognize the three who showed up at the wagon with Hargrove the morning Roman was missing … but then, it really didn’t matter. All seven were the same. Just different faces, different names. But like most all scaly critters that slithered through a man’s life, these seven were bad from the first jump.
“’Least two of ’em gonna be out watchin’ Hargrove’s animals,” Titus said as he and Shad moved like whispers on the periphery of the dancing, clapping, jubilant emigrants.
Bitter as he was, Scratch couldn’t blame these simple folk for climbing right aboard when it came to a celebration, so starved were they for music and joy and happy abandon. Besides, with so much gleeful merrymaking, all he and Sweete had to do was show their faces here and there before they slipped into the dark to see about finding a couple of those bullies tending to their employer’s herd of animals. As they walked around the edge of the celebrants, he managed to pick out three more of the hired men. In this group of homespun emigrants, the bully-boys stood out like whores stepping through the doorway of a country church. Most times they were off by themselves, since most of the farmer families did not much want to have anything to do with the single men who eyed their young daughters and never lent a hand with creek crossings, the roundup of strays, or a settler struggling with a troublesome animal when it came time to hitch up for the day.
“Three of ’em,” Bass whispered as they eased back into the dark behind a wagon. “Means Hargrove’s got more’n two men watching his herd tonight, or we ain’t picked out all the weasels back at the hurraw by the fires.”
“That leaves four of ’em out there,” Sweete said. “Two for you, an’ two for me.”
Thirty yards out from the last wagon, they stopped and listened to the night sounds, letting their eyes grow accustomed to the starlit darkness here in the hour just before moonrise.
“Where’s Hargrove camped?” Shadrach asked.
Titus pointed. “I figger his herd be down in that patch of grass by the crik.”
“That’s where we’ll find us some critters to skin.”
He looked up at the tall man in the dark. “Skin? You think we ought’n
“They half skinned Roman,” Shad explained with disgust. “If we ain’t gonna kill ’em, least we oughtta do is skin the yeller bastards.”
“Awright,” he whispered, sensing a little glee surging through him to accompany the hot fire of adrenaline squirting into his veins. “You set on what we’re gonna do?”
Sweete nodded. “I know how your stick floats.”
“Meet you back at the music when you’re done,” Titus said, holding out his right arm between them.
The big man clasped forearms with his old friend, wrist to wrist.
“Save a doe-see-doe for me, Shadrach.”
Sweete turned away with a huge smile and he was gone in the dark. For several moments Scratch listened, straining in the night for the sounds of the tall one’s big moccasins on the dry, flaky ground. Then he himself slipped off to the right, making for the far slope of the hill that would lead him down to the north side of that patch of grass, while Shadrach would make his approach from the south end. As he threaded his way through the dark clumps of sage, Titus remembered how he and Josiah, along with their two wives, had crept up on a war camp of Arapaho back in the Bayou Salade.* Those warriors had been out-and-out killers, come to take the lives of the white trappers and their Indian women. There had been little choice but for the four of them to plunge into that camp swiftly, brutally, and not leave a one of the war party alive.
The more he had thought about it across the last few days, what Hargrove’s hired men had done wasn’t just a beating. The way they left Roman lashed to that tree, half dead when they strung him up, was tantamount to leaving Amanda a widow. Even though only three had been in on the attack, all seven were every bit as guilty. The fact that they hadn’t stabbed Roman with their knives because they didn’t dare make noise with a gunshot didn’t arouse any mercy in Titus Bass either. Far as he was concerned, any of them he got his hands on were as guilty of attempted murder as were those Fort John Frenchmen who had attempted to run off with Magpie guilty of robbery and rape. He’d just as soon gut ’em, every last one, and leave their bodies for the coyotes that sang from the nearby hills this night.
But, Amanda said she and Roman had talked about it—sure and certain were they both that a man like Titus would be eager to right the wrong done them by Hargrove and his help.
“Just like you did back in St. Louis with that fighting dog,” she explained earlier that evening as darkness was coming. “But this don’t have to end in killing, like that night in Troost’s livery did.”
He had studied her eyes a moment, seeing so much of her mother in them. “You never had the stomach for what you done in that barn.”*
Amanda had wagged her head. “What I done was to save you, Pa. I’d do it again for my children. And I’d do it for Roman.”
