PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF TERRY C. JOHNSTON
“A good book … Dance on the Wind not only gives readers a wonderful story, but also provides vivid slices of history that surround the colorful characters.”
—Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
“An enthralling drama packed with people, action and emotion. Dance on the Wind is an epic that makes you wish it would never end.”
—Clive Cussler
WINTER RAIN
“Terry Johnston is an authentic American treasure. Winter Rain [is] his strongest entry yet.”
—Loren D. Estleman, author of Edsel
“Some of the finest depictions of Indian warfare I have ever read. Johnston’s romantic vision imbues the early West with an aching beauty that moderns can only dream of.”
—Richard S. Wheeler, author of Two Medicine River
CRY OF THE HAWK
“Will stain the reader with grease, blood, and smoke.”
—Kirkus Reviews
THE SON OF THE PLAINS TRILOGY
“Terry Johnston is the genuine article…. His Custer trilogy is proving this significant point, just as his Indian wars and mountain man books prove it. I admire his power and invention as a writer, but I admire his love and faith in history just as much.”
—Will Henry, author of From Where the Sun Now Stands
CARRY THE WIND, BORDERLORDS and ONE-EYED DREAM
“Rich and fascinating … There is a genuine flavor of the period and of the men who made it what it was.”
—The Washington Post Book World
BOOKS BY TERRY C. JOHNSTON
Cry of the Hawk
Winter Rain
Dream Catcher
Carry the Wind
Borderlords
One-Eyed Dream
Dance on the Wind
Buffalo Palace
Crack in the Sky
Ride the Moon Down
Death Rattle
SON OF THE PLAINS NOVELS
Long Winter Gone
Seize the Sky
Whisper of the Wolf
THE PLAINSMEN NOVELS
Sioux Dawn
Red Cloud’s Revenge
The Stalkers
Black Sun
Devil’s Backbone
Shadow Riders
Dying Thunder
Blood Song
Reap the Whirlwind
Trumpet on the Land
A Cold Day in Hell
Wolf Mountain Moon
Ashes of Heaven
Cries From the Earth
Lay the Mountains Low
with my heartfelt appreciation,
I dedicate this triumphant return of
Titus Bass to the
Bantam sales force
who first took Ol’ Scratch
into their hearts,
then shared him with the world,
nine years ago—
thanks to each and every one of you
for making this the ride
of a lifetime!
The first time I descended the Ohio and Mississippi rivers I left Cincinnati in December 1808 with five flat boats, all loaded with produce. At that time there were but few settlers on the Ohio River, below the present city of Louisville. The cabins on the river below Louisville were few and far between.
—Joseph Hough
An Early Miami (Ohio) Merchant
I have seen nothing in human form so profligate as [boatmen]. Accomplished in depravity, their habits seem to comprehend every vice. They make few pretensions to moral character; and their swearing is excessive and perfectly disgusting.
—James Flint
Letters from America
1
Slick as quicksilver the boy stepped aside when the mule flung her rump in his direction.
Only problem was, he had forgotten about the root that arched out of the ground in a great bow nearly half as tall as he stood without his Sunday-meeting and school-room boots on. The end of it cruelly snagged his ankle, sure as one of his possum snares.
Spitting out the rich, black loam as fine as flour in this bottomland, Titus Bass pulled his face out of the fresh, warm earth he had been chewing up with a spade, blinking his gritty eyes. And glared over his shoulder at the mule.
Damn, if it didn’t look as if she was smiling at him again. That muzzle of hers pulled back over those big front teeth the way she did at times just like this. Almost as if she was laughing at him when here he had just been thinking he was the one so damned smart.
“Why, you …,” the boy began as he dragged himself up to his knees, then to his bare feet in that moist earth chewed by the mule’s hooves and his work with iron pike and spade.
On impulse he lunged for the fallen spade, swung it behind his shoulder in both hands.
“Put it down, Titus.”
Trembling, the boy froze. Always had at the sound of that man’s voice.
“Said: put it down.”
The youth turned his head slightly, finding his father emerging from the trees at the far edge of the new meadow they were clearing. Titus weighed things, then bitterly flung the spade at that patch of ground between him and his father. The man stopped, stared down at it a moment, then bent to pick it up.
“You’d go and hit that mule with this,” Thaddeus Bass said as he strode up, stopped, and jammed the spade’s bit down into the turned soil, “I’d have call to larrup you good, son.” He leaned back with both strong, muscular hands wrapped around the spade handle like knots on oiled ropes. “Thought I’d teached you better’n that.”
“Better’n what?” the boy replied testily, but was sorry it came out with that much vinegar to it.
Thaddeus sighed. “Better’n to go be mean to your animals.”
Titus stood there, caught without a thing to say, watching his father purse his lips and walk right on past to the old mule. Thaddeus Bass patted the big, powerful rump, stroked a hand down the spine, raising a small, stir of lather near the harness, then scratched along the mare’s neck as he cooed to the animal. She stood patiently in harness, hooked by leather and wood of singletree, the quiet murmur of her jangling chains—the whole of it lashed round a tree stump young Titus Bass had been wrenching out of a piece of ground that seemed too reluctant to leave go its purchase on the stubborn stump.
Titus flushed with indignation. “She was about to kick me, Pap.”
Without looking back at his son, Bass said, “How you know that?”
“She was hitchin’ her rump around to kick me,” Titus retorted. “Know she was.”
“How hard you working her?”
Dusting himself off, he replied in exasperation, “How hard I’m working her? You was the one sent me out here with her to finish the last of these goddamned stumps.”
Thaddeus whirled on his son, yellow fire in his tired eyes. “Thought I told you I didn’t wanna hear no such language come outta your mouth.”
He watched his father turn back to the mule’s harness, emboldened by the man’s back, braver now that he did not have to look into those eyes so deeply ringed with the liver-colored flesh of fatigue. “Why? I ain’t never figured that out, Pap. I hear it come from your mouth. Out’n Uncle Cy’s mouth too. I ain’t no kid no more. Lookit me. I be nearly tall as you—near filled out as you too. Why you tell me I can’t spit out a few bad words like you?”
“You ain’t a man, Titus.”
He felt the burn of embarrassment at his neck. “But I ain’t no boy neither!”
“No, you rightly ain’t. But for the life of me, I don’t know what you are, Titus.” Bass laid his arms over the back of the tall mule and glared at his son. “You ain’t a man yet, that’s for sure. A man takes good care of the animals
what take care of him. But you, Titus? I don’t know what you are.”
“I ain’t a man yet?” Titus felt himself seething, fought to control his temper. “If’n I ain’t a man yet—how come you send me out to do a man’s job then!”
“Onliest way I know to make you into a man, son.”
He watched his father turn and survey the stump partly pulled free from the ground, some of its dark roots already splayed into the late-afternoon air like long, dark arthritic fingers caked with mud and clods of rich, black earth.
Thaddeus straightened. “You wanna be a farmer, Titus—the one lesson you gotta learn is take care of the animals gonna take care of you.”
The words spilled out before he wanted them to. “Like I told you before, Pap: it’s your idea I’m gonna be a farmer.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed, the lids all but hiding the pupils as he glowered at the youth. “You not gonna be a farmer like your pap, like your grandpap and all the Basses gone before you … just what in blue hell you figure on doing with your life?”
“I … I—”
“You ain’t got it figured out, do you?” Thaddeus interrupted. “And you won’t for some time to come, Titus. What else you think you can do?”
Titus watched his father step back in among the leather, metal, and wood of the harness, tugging at it, straightening, adjusting the wrap of log chain his son had placed around the resistant stump.
“I like hunting, Pap.”
Without raising his head from his work, Bass said, “Man can’t make a living for his family by hunting.”
“How you so damn sure?”
The eyes came up from the singletree and penetrated Titus like a pair of hot pokers that shamed him right where he stood.
“Sounds like you’re getting a real bad mouth these days, son. Time was, I’d taken a strop of that harness leather to your backsides, teach you to watch your tongue better.”
Titus felt his cheeks burn. No, he wouldn’t let his father raise a strap to him ever again. In as low and deep a voice as he could muster, the boy replied, “You’ll never lay leather on me again.”
For the longest moment they stared at one another, studying, measuring the heft of the other. Then his father nodded, his shoulders sagging a bit wearily. “You’re right, Titus. If you ain’t learned right from wrong by now, it ain’t gonna be me what’s teaching it to you. Too late now for me to try to straighten out what needs to be straightened.”
Titus swallowed, blinking back the tears of anger that had begun to sting his eyes as he stood his ground before his father. Suddenly confused that his father had agreed with him. It was the first time in … He couldn’t remember if his father had ever agreed with a single damned thing he had ever said or done.
Thaddeus Bass patted the mule on the rump and stepped closer to his son. “But you heed me and heed me well: if I ever hear of you using such words around your mam, if I ever catch you saying such things under my roof—then we’ll see who’s man enough to provide for his own self. You understand me, son?”
With that dressing down Titus fumed under his damp collar. “I ain’t never cursed under your roof, and I sure as hell ain’t never gonna curse in my mam’s hearing.”
“Just make sure you don’t, son,” his father replied, stepping back of the mule and taking up the harness reins. “It’d break your mother’s heart to hear you use such talk—what with the way that woman’s tried to raise you.”
Turning, Thaddeus Bass laid the leather straps in his son’s hands. “Now, get back to work. Sun’s going down.”
Titus pointed over at the nearby tree where he had stood the old longrifle. “I been at this all day, and I ain’t had a chance to go fetch me no squirrel yet.”
“It’s fine you go playing longhunter when you get your work done, Titus. That stump comes out’n that ground and gets dragged off yonder to the trees afore you come in to sup at sundown.”
His stomach flopped. “If’n I can’t get the stump up afore the sun goes down?”
His father looked at the falling orb, wagged his head, and said, “Then you best be making yourself a bed right here, Titus.”
Anger was like a clump of sticky porcupine quills clogging his throat with bile. Time and again he tried to swallow as he watched his father’s retreat across the field. Thaddeus Bass never turned as he headed purposefully for the far trees. Above the verdant green canopy beyond the diminishing figure rose a thin, fluffy column of smoke from the stone chimney of their cabin. He wondered what his two brothers and sister were doing right then.
Grinding the leather straps in his hands, Titus seethed at the injustice. He knew the rest of them would eat that night and sleep on their grass ticks beneath their coverlets. While he’d be right here in the timber, sleeping with the old mule and the other critters. Mayhaps that wasn’t all so bad—but his belly was sure hollering for fodder.
Maybeso he could slip off with his old rifle and shoot some supper for himself, bring it back to roast over an open fire—then at least his stomach would be full for the night.
Titus took a step behind the mule, then stopped, staring down at the reins in his hands.
If he set off on his hunt to fill his grumbling belly, just what in blazes would he do with the mule?
“Hell, she ain’t going nowhere,” he reasoned, looking over the harness that bound her to the stump. “Can’t get that stump out, she sure as the devil ain’t running off from here.”
Quickly he tied off the reins to the harness and leaped around the tangle of upturned roots. The rifle came into his hands like an old friend. More like an accomplice who had helped him in hunts without number in these very woods—ever since he was big enough to hoist his grandpap’s longrifle to his narrow, bony shoulder and stride right out the cabin door to disappear within the forest’s leafy green shadows.
Dusk was settling on the woods in just the way the mist gathered in the low places by the time he stopped at the edge of the narrow stream and listened. Titus jerked at the sudden, shrill call from a shrike as it dived overhead and disappeared in the coming gloom of twilight. The forest fell silent once more.
He figured he was too late to catch any of the white-tail coming here to water before slipping off to their beds for the night. Their tracks pocked the damp earth at the bank near the natural salt lick the deer sought out. No matter anyhow. Titus hadn’t really figured when he’d started out from that stump that he would scare up any critter at these riffles in the stream. More than anything, he had come here just to get away from the mule, and the stump, and the work, and his pap.
On the far bank a warbler set up a song as the spring light disappeared from the sky. Another joined in, then they both fell quiet. Far off he heard the cry of a riverman’s tin horn on the Ohio. A boat plying the waters—coming down from Cincinnati, which lay a twisting forty-some miles from where he knelt in the damp coolness of that dark forest glen. Perhaps a big flatboat speeding downriver to Louisville, on down, down to the faraway Mississippi with its rolling ride south all the way to New Orleans. Maybe even one of those keelboats that would eventually point its prow north on the old river to St. Lou. Seemed everyone in nearby Rabbit Hash, here on the Kentucky side of the Ohio, was talking about St. Lou these days.
“The place holds promise,” claimed one of the drummers who came to town regular from Belleview, just five miles upriver.
Thaddeus Bass had snorted and wagged his head as if that was the most ridiculous assertion ever made. “Maybeso for shop-folk like yourself. Not for this family. We be farmers. Work the soil. Worked it since my grandpap come into Kain-tuck and staked himself out a piece of ground he and others had to defend from the Injuns. Naw, let others rush on to St. Lou. They been rushing on west, right on by my ground for three generations already.”
“Opportunity enough for any man, I’d imagine,” the drummer smiled benignly, pulling at his leather gallusses.
“To hell with opportunity,” Bass retorted. “Opportunity’s the ret
reat of a weak-spined sort. Hard work is what makes a man’s life worthwhile. Ain’t no better blessing for a man than to feed his family with the fruit of his sweat and toil.”
Breathing lightly, Titus listened to the nightsounds, cradling the old flintlock, and wondered if he could ever forgive his father for keeping him chained to a mule, mired waist-deep in the muddy fields that surrounded their cabin and barn and outbuildings. Could he ever forgive his father for throwing cold water on his dreams?
“You’ll get over it, son. Every boy does when he grows to be a man,” Thaddeus had explained. “That’s the difference between a whelp like you and a man like your pap here. Feller grows up to do what he has to do for them what counts on him, and he’s a man for it. A boy just got him dreams he goes traipsing off after and he don’t ever come to nothing ’cause dreams is something what cain’t take him nowhere.”
In the rising fog over the surface of the Ohio, the cry of the tin horn faded off. Titus closed his eyes, trying to imagine what sort of boat it was. Oh, he’d seen plenty of those flatboats and broadhorns, keels, and even those ungainly rafts of logs lashed together for the trip downriver, every small craft’s wake lapping the surface of the Ohio against Titus’s bare feet year after year. Summers without count had he wanted to hail a boat over and beg its crew to take him on.
But instead he sat there, listening until that horn was no more in the thickening fog that clogged the valley of the Ohio.
In the quiet that settled around him he heard the faintest rustle of brush. Held his breath. And a moment later his ears itched as something moved off into the night. Whatever critter it was had scented him.
Wind wasn’t right, he decided, easing himself to his feet. Time to be moving off to home.
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