Oregon. Thought of putting every mistake and misstep behind us, thinking of the fresh start we’d make out there. But the farther we got into this land, the more I lost hold on the words I can use to tell you why I brung Amanda and the four of … these three children on this long road. This far from our old home, and this close to our new land—I don’t have words no more I can use to make anyone understand. …”
As the farmer’s words dropped off and he seemed at a loss, Titus said, “Maybeso you might just be doin’ the right thing, for the right reason after all, son.”
Sweete came loping up on his horse. “The women got a good spot picked out down by the bank. Cool and shady. Feel up to getting down on your legs an’ walking over there with me?”
“If I never see the inside of one of these God-infernal wagon bellies again,” he grumped as he hobbled around and started toward the back pucker hole at the rear gate, “it’ll be too damn soon!”
“Thought you was comfortable, Pa,” Amanda sent her voice in after him.
He stopped, looked back over his shoulder at her, saying, “You made me a plenty good bed, daughter. Soft as I ever laid myself on. Only trouble is—your pa’s a man rather be sittin’ on a horse when he goes through new country.”
“Good,” she sighed with relief. “Here I was thinking you weren’t comfortable … when it was only a matter of you being grumpy!”
“Wouldn’t want you to think anything else of me, Amanda dear.”
Her face suddenly appeared at the rear gate. “I love you anyway, grumpy.”
He stopped short in surprise, looking down at her dusty face and shiny eyes filled with the mist of sentiment. Bass felt his pooling too as she and Roman pulled the iron bolts from their hasps and lowered the gate for him.
“Amanda,” he said softly. “N-no matter where your grumpy ol’ pa goes here on out, or what he does with hisself … I’ll always love you.”
That evening Scratch asked his wife to accompany him on a walk to the fort walls and see who was about.
“Someone who remembers your friend, the man who is no longer here?” she asked in Crow, using that term of highest respect for the departed by not speaking their name.
“Yes, maybe someone here knew him, worked with the man back in better days.”
They had reached the point where he would turn back with his family once the Bingham-Burwell Oregon Company started across the Snake River. Maybe Phineas Hargrove would arrive with his California bunch by then, and the two of them would have it out here in the shadow of this fort. Come what may in the next few days, Scratch felt at peace about Roman Burwell and where the farmer was taking his family. He was proud of the man Amanda had chosen to cling to. No matter that Roman could not dredge up the words to explain his feelings about why he was transplanting his family into that yonder territory. The look in his eyes was good enough for Titus Bass.
If Roman moved on to Oregon, if he never did return to these mountains with Amanda and their children, then the man had for a heartbeat in time been unable to put words to something that really had no words to describe it. After all, how could any man wrap his mind, his thoughts, his plain and simple vocabulary around this great and terrible wilderness Titus Bass himself had come to love so deeply? He had decided long ago that some things were indeed best left unexplained. Best not to attempt to put the artificial boundaries of gussied-up words around the now, around the being here. Once a man tried to express that sort of thing, why—a little of the utter freedom of this land couldn’t help but leak out. So let the promoters, land speculators, and shysters put their snake-oil words on that yonder country, fancy words to sell the territory to the dreamers who had been waiting to find a dream. As sure as sun, attaching those foofaraw words to Oregon put a claim on the land, and somehow made it already tame.
But that frightened him to the quick. How long could he keep this used-to-be country wild before someone much smarter than he found the words to tame it? Titus Bass knew he wanted his bones to be bleaching in the wind and the sun long before any folk ever came north to lay claim to what he alone had known.
Even though he supported himself with a stout limb, the two of them moved slow, deliberate, as he put weight on injured muscle, stretching the leg for the first time in four days. Both of the dogs quickly grew tired of the snail’s pace and darted off for the riverbank to investigate something far more interesting. Although she was curious about the fort, Waits was in no hurry to be anywhere, content to walk beneath his arm, one step at a time, as they ambled toward the fort walls while the sun bled from sight.
“Your traders still around?” he asked of a dark-skinned half-breed who was pushing a cart of firewood toward the main gate.
“Traders,
As they stepped inside the trade room, a man behind the long counter had his back to them, his fingers pulling through a bolt of cloth, measuring out one arm length at a time. “Be with you shortly. Make yourself comfortable and look about for what you might need.”
“Would like to see some pretties for my woman and my daughter too,” he explained to the man’s back. “’Sides a few earbobs and shinies, I was wonderin’ if this here still a Hudson’s Bay post.”
“It is for certain, sir.”
“How long you been workin’ for ’em?”
The man turned and studied Titus a moment before he answered, “It will be twelve years come December.”
Before he spoke again Scratch let the man pull out a large wooden tray divided off with various ornaments and jewelry in each small section. As his wife went to touching and studying every new eye-catcher, Titus asked, “Ever you know a man named Jarrell Thornbrugh?”
That caused the trader’s hands to halt his work at a new bolt of cloth. “You are American?”
“Time was, yes.”
“I knew Jarrell, well enough that I called him my friend. How is it you would know of him?”
“Met him on the Columbia of a time long ago,” Bass declared wistfully. “We rode down that river to Fort Vancouver where I come to meet the doctor.”
“McLoughlin?”
“That’s the one. Tall man—wild white hair like a bald-headed eagle. Eyes like a pair of white stones too.”
“You said you’re American?”
“Was,” Titus admitted. “Ain’t no more.”
It was clear the trader didn’t understand. “I … don’t see—”
“Me and mine, we live in the Rocky Mountains. They ain’t American. Don’t belong to your English either.”
“When was the last time you saw Jarrell?”
Scratch dug at his chin whiskers, sorting through the rendezvous. “Don’t rightly remember the year. Only was told the next summer he’d got took by the ague. Fell sick and died quick.”
“It’s been long enough now I haven’t heard his name for many a year. Not till you walked in here and spoke it out loud.” The trader held out his hand. “I’m Hanratty. Pleased to make your acquaintance … Mister … ?”
“Bass, Titus Bass.”
“Bass, is it?” Hanratty declared with a rising note of interest. “Odd that is, for there’s a colored man, a Negro, who works about the fort, come from the States of America. Has the name of Bass too. Is it a common name where you come from?”
“Never met another soul out here this side of the Missouri River had my name,” Titus declared. “A colored?”
“Yes, what your countrymen call Negroes.”
“Neegras,” he repeated. “Knowed a few good’uns in my time. You say this one’s named Bass?”
The trader nodded. “He came up from the Mexican provinces some years back.”
His chest tightened. “Could it been Taos he come from?”
Hanratty shrugged apologetically. “Never did pay much attention to his wild stories.”
“Where’bouts can I run onto him?”
