as hot as the sun’s own scorchy breath. He stood there, leaning on the handle of that shovel, helpless to stop its pain from rising within him like the black, bubbling tar in those pits over on the Wind River, north from the mouth of the Popo Agie. Hot, thick, rising bubbles of pain that threatened to gag him with the bitter taste of clabbered gall.
Below him lay a child fresh and dewy at life, innocent of pain and evil, ignorant of betrayal … a child Titus was just coming to know. A grandson with a soul so beautiful—remembering how the boy held out his hand to shake with a grizzled stranger who wore beaded earbobs, or looked his grandfather squarely in the eye to ask a why to almost everything, or bounded upon the old man’s knee for a story of grizzly bears and Indian warriors and rendezvous glories too … it nearly chewed away a hole inside the old man there beside the child’s unmarked grave. A gaping void he didn’t know how he’d fill … or where … or with who.
Amanda had her head buried in her forearms looped across her knees, where they were tucked against her breast as he returned to the shade. She looked up as he approached.
“Oh … Pa,” she whimpered, her eyes still full as he dropped the shovel and collapsed in exhaustion beside her. “How am I ever going to remember where Lucas is buried?”
Enfolding her in his arms, he cradled her and said, “You will. You’ll remember the Soda Springs, and remember how we done ever’thing we could to keep him safe.”
Shaking her head, Amanda pushed back from him. “I shouldn’t have let them bury him. Roman and me—we should take him on with us. And bury him there—”
“No,” he interrupted her, again pulling his daughter against him gently, reassuringly. “Allays best to leave a body where he’s been took from the living. It’s the most fitting thing.”
“I can’t bear to leave without him,” she confessed. “Don’t know how Roman was able to go from this place.”
“You can too,” he vowed. “Because you’re gonna take Lucas with you when you leave this place behind.”
Her red eyes studied his a moment. “How?”
“You’ll take the memory of him from this place, Amanda. Allays remember his smile. Remember the way that shock of his yellow hair fell in his eyes an’ he had to keep pushin’ at it? Take that with you to Oregon now. Keep the memory of your boy Lucas with you.”
She pressed her face against his chest and murmured, “When I come back here I won’t be able to remember where we laid him, Pa.”
Gently raising her chin, he wanted to convince her she never would return to this place … but instead he wiped some of the tears from her dust-streaked face and said, “Yes, you will remember, daughter. Look there, at them hills. See that cone where the water bubbles up. Then lookit the cut in that ridge yonder.” He turned her slightly. “See that saddle there, and the sharp rise of that butte. Look here now where the creek makes that horseshoe … an’ you’ll remember where we made camp here. You’ll remember where we put ’im to rest.”
She nodded confidently. “Yes, I will remember when I come back to see him again, real soon I’ll come back —”
“No, Amanda,” he finally admitted it as he held her tightly. “Once you get to that Oregon country with the memory of your li’l boy, there won’t ever be no need of comin’ back here again. Just keep the memory of Lucas in your heart … an’ let his body, this place, an’ this long, hard road to your new home be nothing but a distant memory. Once we turn our backs on this place, it’s gonna be up to you to keep him alive in your heart, an’ forget this place. There’s nothin’ here for you to ever come back for—”
The profane smack of a lead ball against the tree trunk reached him an instant before the low grumble of the gunshot from a distant rifle.
Immediately throwing himself across Amanda, Titus quickly searched to find where he had propped his rifles, laying both pistols across the shooting pouch he left at the base of the same bush before he had picked up the shovel and—
A second ball sliced through the branches right above them, and the weapon’s roar floated overhead on the hot breeze.
Two shots, too close together for it to be one shooter. There were at least a pair of them.
“C’mon!” he cried as he rose to a crouch, counting off the seconds they had before that first attacker could reload, aim, and fire again.
Grabbing Amanda at the back of her collar, Titus dragged his daughter in a crouch toward the low boulders to their left, snatching up the pouch and one of the pistols on the way past the brush—
A third shot rang out … kicking up a spurt of dust near his hand—coming too quickly for that first shooter to have reloaded.
“Get in!” he ordered as he shoved her through a cut in the scattered rocks that stood about knee-high.
As Scratch was turning around he pushed Amanda down against the ground, slinging the pouch and powder horn against her shoulder. “You know how to load a rifle?”
She looked up at him dumbly, but nodded her head.
“Good,” he said, and patted her on the shoulder. “All I gotta do now is go out there to them guns of mine and get back in here ’thout getting shot.”
“I-I can help, Pa.”
“I ain’t lettin’ you go out there—”
“Will you listen to me?” she said, scooting up on her hip. “Man like you, seems you’re always attracting trouble like flies to syrup.”
He snorted, flicked a glance at the open ground between them and the sound of those guns, then looked at her. “Awright, what you got in mind?”
“I can shoot, Pa.”
“Pistol?”
“I can hold it.”
He squinted a moment at her. “Maybeso you give me a break to get them guns, Amanda. Here,” and he pressed the big horse pistol into her hand. “When I bust outta these rocks, they’re gonna aim at me real quick. So when I start movin’, I want you to count to three while you’re aiming off there at them trees—”
“That where they are?”
“I think so, but I ain’t for sure,” he admitted. “You count to three, then you shoot that pistol at the trees. That oughtta make ’em flinch a wee bit. Mayhaps gimme time to grab them rifles an’ get ’em back in here.”
“If you don’t get back here with them?”
“Then you reload that pistol from my pouch,” he said, staring her hard in the eyes, “an’ you keep it cocked till they come real … real close—so you can stop one of ’em.”
“You think they’re comin’ for me?”
He shook his head. “I hope it’s me they’re comin’ for. Now, cock that hammer an’ tell me when you’re ready to start countin’.”
“I’m ready.”
Quickly touching her cheek with his fingertips, Titus crouched in the gap between rocks, then rasped, “Start countin’!”
He was counting himself as he exploded from cover. While his mind roared with the number one, a gun thundered from that copse of trees off to the south. Too quick a shot, indicating he had caught them by surprise. The ball went wild as he reached the rifle’s on the count of two. And turned, scooping up the pistol and stuffing it in his belt as he kept moving in a half circle. Three—
Her pistol barked. Immediately answered by a rifleman she must have scared a shot out of, for that man’s ball went wild too.
Scratch was thinking he was going to make it back to the rocks with his weapons, scuffing through the sage on that sandy ground when he slipped and spilled onto a knee. A ball cut a furrow across his hip, pitching him into the brush with a grunt.
“Reload, Amanda!” he cried as much in anger at himself as in pain.
“Pa—”
He started to gather the rifles against him again, painfully, when he interrupted her, “Reload!”
