continued on their way to the British post. Somewhere in those next two days Hargrove had dispatched the four riders to catch up to the Oregon party and settle with the two old trappers. With all the confidence in the world, he would have expected Benjamin and the others back with evidence of success in the murders.
Jehoshaphat! How Titus would have loved to see the look on Hargrove’s face when he came upon those four bodies at Soda Springs!
Shadrach had wanted to drag them all into the middle of that road cut with hundreds of iron-tired wheels … but from his travois, the wounded Scratch didn’t want any part of it.
“Just think how that’s gonna make his insides salt up when he sees them four all laid out neat and purty on the road, side by side by side,” Sweete had proposed.
“No,” he had whispered in pain. “I don’t want Amanda seein’ us do nothin’ of the kind.”
So they had left the four where each of the hired men had fallen in making his attack. A day or two under the late-summer sun, those bodies would have swollen up quite nicely, beginning to blacken with decomposition. And the stench? Why, if the wind had been from the right direction, that big nose in the middle of Harris’s face would have picked up the scent long before they reached the springs. What a happy night that would have made for Phineas Hargrove and the two remaining guns he had brought west to protect all that he held dear in those wagons of his.
Come to think of it, without his drivers, what had Hargrove done with that extra cargo he would have had to leave behind? Would he have thrown what he could in the wagons he could bring along? Had he bullied and cajoled others into packing some of his cargo in their wagons? Or would he have offered good money to a few of the unattached men along in return for driving his wagons on to California? From the looks of things, Hargrove hadn’t been forced to stoop to driving a team himself—still riding out front with the pilot, setting himself apart from the rest.
And just what would the other emigrants have thought when they came upon those bloated corpses? Bass had wondered as he started his family south from Fort Hall, riding for Bridger’s post. Would those who had elected to stay with Hargrove and turn south for California instead of Oregon look at the carnage and finally say among themselves that the murderous feud had come far enough? Had any of them secretly decided that when they reached Fort Hall they would push on in the hopes of catching the Bingham-Burwell party instead of remaining behind with Hargrove’s Californians? Hadn’t any of those farmers and shopkeepers the eggs to stand up to those three bullies and tell Hargrove they wanted no part of him any longer?
Or would they keep their mouths shut as they had up to that point and figure such bloodshed was nothing more than the way of the wilderness, the price one had to pay for passage through a wild and brutal land? The toll taken in having anything at all to do with such mountain ruffians as those two old trappers?
“Ti-tuzz,” his wife said at his side.
Bass pulled the spyglass from his eye and gently nudged its three brass sections together before he tucked it away in his shooting pouch.
Waits-by-the-Water waited patiently for him before she asked, “Do you want my gun with the children’s weapons?”
Quickly appraising the ground, he decided where to put the horses, where to position what firepower he had against the many.
“Magpie and Flea, they will stay in those rocks.” He pointed. The rest turned their heads and looked. “But you, Waits—take Jackrabbit with you into those rocks over there.” Again they all looked in the direction he indicated.
“That will mean our three guns will be pointed at them,” Flea declared.
“Four guns. I’ll be right here,” Titus said, gazing into the distance at the approaching column of dust shimmering with the intense, late-morning sun.
She stepped around in front of him, her sad eyes appealing. “We can get out of their way. Let them pass. There is enough time—”
“Hargrove an’ me,” he said in English, then thought that he better speak in Crow so there was no question of her understanding. “The wagon chief and me, we both have known we were going to reach this moment of our dance together. He never wanted Shadrach or me along with his group, because he knew that one day the two of us would be the whole reason the others finally showed the courage to stand up to him, the courage to break away from his hold over them. So Hargrove blames Shadrach and me. Now our friend and his family have gone to Oregon, so that leaves me to dance with Hargrove … alone.”
“But he will not be alone,” she pleaded. “The fur-catcher, he will be another gun—”
“I don’t think Harris will pull down on me,” Scratch interrupted her with a wag of his head. “That leaves Hargrove and the two who take orders from him.”
“Three of them,” Magpie counted.
Flea added, “And we have three guns already pointed at those three men, Popo.”
“But we don’t have to shoot them!” Waits snapped at her son.
Taking his wife by the shoulders, Titus said, “This is between me and Hargrove. I pray that the rest of you won’t have to shoot. Keep your guns on the others so they do not make trouble for me.”
Her eyes smiled first, then she said, “We are getting too old for this,
He held her cheeks and kissed her forehead. “Now help your husband get the horses out of sight.”
By the time they had the animals hidden in a nearby coulee and the extra guns distributed, they could hear the plodding hooves and the squeaking wheels, the yelling drivers and the lowing of the teams. Titus stepped toward the clearing between the rocky walls where his family crouched in hiding. He stopped at the edge of the well-trampled road and waited as the first horsemen came up over a low rise a little more than a hundred yards ahead of him. Scratch knew they had spotted him when he saw the squatters turn to one another and gesture— pointing on up the trail at the solitary figure. The tall rider turned around in the saddle and appeared to shout some warning to the first wagon as a couple of the horsemen abandoned the others, which left Hargrove and Harris alone at the front of the column.
That done, the two riders urged their horses ahead, cautiously studying the ground on either side of the spot where Titus Bass stood alone, bringing his smoothbore down from his elbow—clearly leveling it at the approaching horsemen. He watched Harris’s eyes for several moments as the old mountain man and one-time confederate of William Sublette peered about suspiciously.
Suddenly Harris threw out his arm and snagged hold of Hargrove’s elbow. They reined up together.
“Where’s Shadrach Sweete?” Harris demanded sourly as he rolled his longrifle over the head of his hammer- headed cayuse.
“He ain’t here.”
“He ain’t?”
“I ain’t gonna lie to you, Harris.”
The two of them whispered where they sat atop their saddles, just out of earshot.
Then Hargrove spoke, “Why should we trust what you tell us, old man? I figure sneaky back-shooters like you two would lay an ambush for us like this.”
“I ain’t never been a back-shooter,” Titus declared evenly. “Not like your kind.”
“We found the bodies of my men,” Hargrove explained. “Benjamin was shot in the back.”
“Had to be,” Scratch said.
“Then you admit you’re back-shooting murderers?”
“No. Shadrach killed that’un to pull my hash out’n the fire.”
“I stayed outta this all the way down the line!” Harris suddenly shouted to the rocks. “You hear me, Shadrach Sweete? I never had nothin’ to do with any of this killin’!”
“Tol’t’cha, Harris,” he called out to the old trapper. “Shadrach ain’t here.”
“Where is he?” Hargrove demanded.
“Long on his way to Oregon with the rest of that bunch you an’ Hargrove were going to leave ’thout a pilot.”
“Sweete’s guiding them his own self?” Harris asked in disbelief.
“Him … and a feller what’s been out there twice’t awready.”
Hargrove rocked back in the saddle a bit as the first of the wagons came up behind the two riders and noisily pulled up just within earshot. “That makes things, neat and tidy for Burwell’s folks, doesn’t it, Mr. Bass?”
