the weapon. He was just beginning to wheel with it, not anywhere near ready to fire, when he winced the instant Hargrove’s second gun boomed—
But the horseman’s shot went completely wild.
Titus watched the man’s back arch suddenly, a reflex that forced his pistol to fire at the sky. A long moment, then Hargrove peered down at his chest, beginning to gurgle, finding that patch of blood beginning to seep around the bubbling black hole at the middle of his brocade vest. Then, as Hargrove slowly turned around in the saddle and Bass rolled onto an elbow so he too could look behind the man’s horse—they both found smoke curling from the yawning muzzle of that big-bore flintlock held by Moses Harris.
“D-don’t shoot me!” the hired man blubbered repeatedly as he crumpled to his knees, sobbing.
After swallowing his heart back down from his throat, Bass hollered in Crow at the rocks, “No more shooting—hold your fire!”
Mules and oxen were braying and bawling from the echoes of that noisy gunfire behind Hargrove as the train captain brought his red hand away from his chest, stared down at the blood on it, then inch by inch keeled out of the saddle and fell onto the sand. Shrieks erupted from the first women to reach the scene with their men. Children surged forward between grown-ups’ legs, held back by their parents as the crowd swelled up behind Harris, pressing in on one another for a view of the carnage.
As Titus got to his hip, then pushed himself to his feet with that rifle in hand, still uncertain if this had been played completely out or not, Harris lowered the weapon he held in his hands and trudged those few steps that brought him to Hargrove’s body with a sad weariness.
When he stopped to peer down at the wagon master, Harris grumbled, “Idjit son of a bitch.”
Scratch came to a halt on the other side of Hargrove as the captain spewed blood, trying to speak as his half-glazed eyes stared up at Harris; then his head rolled slightly so he could peer at Bass. Dropping to his knee, Titus held his ear close to the blood-covered lips.
Harris asked, “What’s he say?”
Titus looked up. “Said he’d see both of us again … in hell.”
The instant Harris raised his rifle in the air as if he intended to smash it down into Hargrove’s face, Bass knocked it aside with his loaded weapon. Harris took a step back, his dark face hard as slate, glaring at Titus with fury-tinged eyes.
“Leave ’im be to die,” Scratch said quietly. Then watched some of the anger disappear from the old trapper’s face. “Likely he’s right.”
“Right about what?” Harris demanded.
“Chances are, we’ll both see ’im again in hell.”
“Damn this son of a bitch,” Harris growled, his tone one more of disappointment than fury now. “Owes me money, an’ a spree in California too. Senoritas an’ some pass brandy. Damn this dead son of a bitch anyway.”
“I’ll lay you can scratch up some money back there in his wagons,” Titus suggested.
A bright light dispelled the last remnants of darkness in the old trapper’s eyes. “By doggies, you’re right!”
The crowd was inching forward as Scratch said, “Why’n’t you go an’ take these here folks right on to Californy like you was set on doin’ anyway. I figger you’ll be set for quite a spree out with all them Mexican senoreetas.”
With a growing grin, Harris looked down at Hargrove’s wide, unmoving eyes. “S’pose I still could take ’em on to California at that—”
“What’re we going to do without Hargrove?”
Looking up at the new voice, Titus found the face, one of those who had been Hargrove’s biggest backers when it came time for the mutiny by the Oregon company.
“You wanna go to Californy, this pilot gonna take you folks there,” he snapped at the man. “Elsewise, you all can rot right here waiting for Hargrove to raise hisself from the dead.”
“What’m I gonna do now?” the last hired man asked, still frozen in place, his arms raised.
Harris eyed him menacingly.
But it was Titus who spoke, “You ever fire a shot at me or my kin?”
“N-no, I didn’t,” he admitted with a frightened wag of his head.
“Ever you do harm to any of these other folks?”
Again he shook his head. “No.”
Scratch turned on those men and women, and the children clutching their mothers’ skirts, wide-eyed. “This man ever raise a hand to any of you?”
Some hung their heads, others continued to stare at the dead bodies, and a few mumbled their answer.
Turning back to the hired man, he said, “Then I s’pose they might let you stay on with ’em all the way to the end of the trail.”
He could hear the weight of that breath escaping the man’s lungs. Jabbing his head toward Harris, Bass told the young man, “Seems like you can throw in with your pilot now, an’ the two of you have yourselves a grand time. Makes no nevermind to me.”
“Wha’chu gonna do yourself now?” Harris asked as Bass handed him the hired man’s rifle.
“Me? We was headin’ back to Bridger’s post,” he declared, spotting the forms stepping out of the rocks. A woman and a young boy. “Eventual’, we need to be back in Crow country by the first deep snow.”
“Who’s
“Them,” and he pointed to Waits-by-the-Water bringing Jackrabbit toward him, the child’s hand in hers, the long flintlock at the end of the other arm.
Harris turned back to him and said, “You wasn’t takin’ no chances, was you?”
“Onliest way ol’ coons like us got to be so old, Moses. We don’t take scary chances.”
“Them too?” Harris asked.
Titus turned and found Magpie and her brother emerging from the boulders.
“They don’t have to be the best shots in the mountains,” Titus explained. “Just good enough to keep ever’body else busy.”
Harris grinned and wagged his head. “I’ll be damned if you don’t take the circle, Titus Bass!”
Gesturing to Flea, Scratch said, “Get the horses. We’re leaving this place.”
Having turned and started away with his wife and youngest son while the two older children headed off to fetch the animals, Titus was surprised when Harris called out to him. “Don’t you want anything off this son of a bitch?”
He stopped, thought a moment, then shook his head.
“Not his scalp?”
“Only hair I ever raised I took off a proper warrior, Harris.”
“Then you don’t want none of his money?” Harris asked in a loud voice.
“Money?” and he snorted a laugh. “Why, coon—that’s the sort of addle-headed stuff you need out to Californy. What in blazes would I do with money in these here mountains?”
“Suit yourself!” Harris cackled with glee.
“For all I care,” Scratch flung his voice back over his shoulder as he moved toward the horses, “you can keep ever’ damn dollar of it. Man like me won’t ever need money again.”
“You don’t s’pose Shadrach gonna stay out there in Oregon for good, do you?” Jim Bridger asked not long after Titus Bass had hit the ground outside the tall stockade timbers and informed Gabe why Sweete wasn’t along for this return to Black’s Fork of the Green.
“You just never know about that boy,” Titus said as he wiped a droplet of sweat from the end of his nose. “But I don’t figger he’s the sort to put down roots in that country. Lad big as a stalk of corn the way he is needs his sun to grow!”
“Gonna fix us up something special for supper,” Jim proposed. “An’ after we fill your paunch with venison, I’ll lather up your tongue with some barleycorn so you can tell me all ’bout your li’l sashay up to Fort Hall.”
It was a merry return. If not a crowded homecoming, then the best they all could make it. This post wasn’t home, but Gabe and his two children were nonetheless the very best of folks. And the way that Waits-by-the-Water and Magpie dove right in, making themselves comfortable around the place, chattering and giggling too, it did a lot to put the trials of the last few weeks behind him. It had been just like holding a gaunt and hungry wolf at bay …
