life again. So, I’ve got a feeling this can’t be the last I lay eyes on you. If it ain’t out to Oregon, maybe sometime back here in your mountains.”
As he shook with Esau, Scratch pulled the tradesman against him. In that tight hug he whispered against the Negro’s ear, “You won’t ever know how much it means to me for you to lead these people west.”
They parted, still gripping hands. Esau’s eyes crinkled. He looked like a man searching for words to say, till suddenly he asked, “You like my new hat, Titus? Bought it special for the journey.”
He smiled. “A good’un. Gonna keep the sun outta your eyes.”
Nervous as he dropped his hand and took the reins Shad passed to him, Esau cleared his throat and said with difficulty, “Till the next time I see you, Titus Bass.”
“Make the most of your life out to Oregon, Esau,” he declared. “You done a heap for yourself awready.”
Swiping at an eye, the black man turned aside, leading his horse a few paces away as Shadrach edged up. Around the two of them Titus’s children were jabbering and patting the two small Sweete youngsters on the head. Talking in low tones, their Indian mothers held hands, sobbing and wiping tears, touching one another’s faces with wet fingertips in that way of Indian women taking their leave of one another.
“Watch your back trail, Titus Bass,” Shadrach choked.
“You watch your’n, Shadrach Sweete.”
He dropped the reins to his horse and seized Scratch in a last desperate bear hug. “I’ll see you in the mountains again one day,” he whispered in Bass’s ear.
“That’d shine, Shadrach. I’ll lay stock on that, ’cause that’d purely shine.”
When Sweete stepped back, Shell Woman inched away from Waits-by-the-Water, who came to stand beneath Scratch’s arm.
“You fellas take good care of these farmers,” he said, his voice thick and all but clogged. “There’s new homes waitin’ for ’em out yonder.”
Esau swung into the saddle and turned his horse away to follow Shadrach and his family as they mounted up.
Lemuel, Leah, and little Annie suddenly rushed against Titus and Waits, standing by that dead fire pit in a big knot as the five of them embraced.
“Gran’pa—we’ll see you again,” Lemuel said, his eyes glistening.
“I know you will, son.”
Pushing their poke bonnets off their heads so they hung at their backs around their necks, Leah and Annie both surrounded him with their arms at the same time. Little Annie was blubbering and could get nothing said, but Leah’s voice cracked when she spoke, “You made everything a lot better for Mama when Lucas was took from us. I won’t ever forget that about you, Gran’pa.”
He leaned down and kissed his granddaughter on the forehead, brushing some of the sandy-blond hair out of her eyes. “I won’t ever forget ’bout you girls neither. Both of you make your gran’pa real proud. I’m gonna count on you to help your folks ever’ step of the way, and ’specially when you get to Oregon. The same goes for you, Lemuel.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make your pap an’ mam proud of you, ever’ day.” He patted the girls on the head, then shook hands quickly with Lemuel before the children stepped away with their parents.
Roman waved at the five nearby riders. Bingham raised that tarnished brass horn in the growing light of this new day and blew his martial call. As the two Indian dogs suddenly lunged to their feet, expectant and prepared to move out as they had done many times before, on three sides of Scratch folks began to yell—at their oxen and mules, at their children, or just in an explosion of emotion as they rejoiced to be on their way once more, ready to confront the unmitigated might and power of the great and untamed Snake River. Step by step, mile by mile, day by day, these sojourners would always begin the next eight, twelve, or twenty miles this way. Voices raised as the dust began to stir and animals strained into their harness, lunged against the heavy yokes, whips snapping and milk cows lowing as they were nudged into motion.
“Ho, for Oregon!”
Burwell turned back one last time as he and Lemuel put their stock on the move. He touched the shapeless brim of his hat. Scratch held his arm up, steady and still in that coming light of day. Then the man and boy turned back to their duties, this getting on to Oregon.
Shell Woman was sobbing bitterly now, clutching her youngest against her as their horses moved off. And he felt Waits-by-the-Water quaking against him too as he held her tightly, so tightly against his side. Frozen there on the empty ground between the groups stood the two shaggy dogs, confused why their master was not joining the caravan on its way out of sight, eager to go, prancing nervously, as if seeking to goad him into motion, into catching up with the others.
Knee to knee with Esau, Shadrach reached Bingham and the four other riders, then wheeled his horse around one last time, ripped the big hat from his head, and waved it high at the end of his arm.
Titus felt the big, hot tears spill down his leathery cheeks anew as he yanked the hat from his head too and held it aloft.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I’ll lay eyes on you again, my friend.”
He started to tremble then too, doing his best to contain the grief as he watched till the last wagon disappeared through the curtain of tall green cottonwood. Gone down the Snake. Making for Oregon.
With those two loyal dogs whimpering and whining in confusion, his three children stepped close, silent, while the creaking and groaning, all the noise of animals and those shouting voices, faded from their ears. Eventually swallowed by the distance stretching out between the here and the yet-to-be-seen there.
He waited, listening until all sound had been sucked from that dawn-kissed air. Then Titus Bass felt himself shuddering with a terrible sense of loss and held fast to his woman, all things made endurable with her at his side.
TWENTY-ONE
“Magpie, you take your brothers to those rocks,” he ordered, conscious of keeping the timbre of his voice as steady as possible. “Take them two dogs with you too an’ tie ’em up to the horses.”
He could feel their eyes riveted to him as he continued to stare into the distance with that long leather- wrapped spyglass. The shimmering, faraway objects danced in the rising waves of heat. Already close enough that he could make out the snaking line of fewer than two dozen canvas-topped wagons, figures on foot plodding on either side of the train, and at least four horsemen riding purposefully out front. Even without the spyglass, a man could see it was Hargrove’s bunch.
“Now, Magpie.”
“Popo—”
“Do as I tell you!” he snapped at her in Crow.
Despite the uncertainty on her face, she held her ground and demanded, “Popo—you give me a gun to use.”
He turned to look at her in disbelief, taking the spyglass from his eye.
“Me too,” Flea supported his sister. “I can shoot a gun good as anyone my size.”
Blinking, his eyes smarting with pride of them, Titus turned back to the wagons and swiped a droplet of sweat from the lid of his good eye, then fixed his gaze on the riders again. He was able to pick out Moses Harris from his slouch in the saddle. The tall one who sat ramrod straight next to Harris had to be Phineas Hargrove himself. The other two horsemen had to be emigrants … because those who were left of Hargrove’s seven were likely busy at the helm of the first two wagons. That’s where he figured Hargrove would continue to keep his teams and his men: right at the front of the column as they worked their way closer and closer to Fort Hall.
Did the man actually believe he would ever catch up to Titus Bass and Shadrach Sweete on this road before the trails split? After the train had broken apart and the California-bound emigrants remained behind with Hargrove, the wagon boss had tarried long enough to give the Bingham-Burwell company some berth before they themselves
