Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  In the sudden cold vacuum that she left, he felt sorry for leaving her and this place. Then he felt an even deeper remorse for having decided to stop over. But as he yanked on his clothes, Titus decided what was done was done. Some unseen hand had guided him here, perhaps. And there was no denying that he might well have needed her as much as she had needed him.

  Edna Mae was putting an end to something.

  What with Titus Bass standing at the precipice of the adventure of his lifetime.

  Maybeso they had both been fated to cross paths just when they needed each other the most.

  By the time he had the blankets rolled up and ready to lash onto the mare, he heard the scrape of the door across its jamb. Turning, he found the settler emerging from the cabin, a steaming china cup in each hand as he stepped off the narrow porch and onto the dewy grass.

  “Promised you coffee, Titus,” he said as he presented the cup to Bass.

  Self-consciously, he took it from the man. “Smells damned good.” Nervously twisting inside as he took that first steaming sip, Titus figured the settler couldn’t help but know.

  Eyes not touching, they drank in silence for some time, savoring the quiet of the morning as the gray turned to bluish-purple off in the distance—back to the east where both of them had left a life behind them.

  “You’re ready to be off … it appears to me,” the man said to break that stillness of time.

  “Dallied long enough,” he replied, then hated himself for saying it. Making it sound the way he did, what with the man knowing about Edna Mae creeping off to the lean-to.

  The farmer asked, “You a breakfast man?”

  “A’times, I am.”

  “Maybe you’ll stay on while I rustle us up some—”

  “I—I feel the pull to be on my way,” Titus interrupted, feeling the embarrassment bordering on shame all the way down to the soles of his feet.

  “I could have the missus wrap up some of the leavin’s from supper—”

  “I thankee for your kindness and all,” Bass broke in again. “But—I’ll do just fine.”

  Taking a step closer to Titus, the settler looked Bass squarely in the eye, and with an even voice he said, “She needed you … so there ain’t no reason to feel ashamed for it.”

  “Damn,” he sighed with disgust at having his fears confirmed. “I shouldn’t have got myself—”

  “Listen here, Mr. Bass,” the man interrupted this time with a doleful wag of his head. “Edna Mae is her own woman. Allays has been. I figure she knows her own mind too, and I don’t hold you on account for that. She’s a widow now. Been one too damned long for my way of thinking. True enough, she may’ve been my brother’s wife, but likely you done her what she needed.”

  “Look here—I swear I didn’t come out here for none of that to happen.”

  He held his empty hand up as if to silence Bass and pursed his lips a moment before he said, “Like I said, chances are you done her what she needed. And … for that, I can thank you.” He switched the coffee cup to his left hand and held out the right. “I wish you God’s speed, Mr. Bass.”

  Eagerly he accepted the man’s big, muscular, dirt-imprinted hand, and they shook. “I thankee for all you done.”

  As he accepted the empty cup from Titus, the settler asked, “You’ll be careful out yonder now?”

  Taking up the rein to the Indian pony, Bass turned and stuffed a foot into the stirrup. “Didn’t get near this old ’thout watching out for my own hide.” He rose to saddle, settled, and said, “Time was I didn’t figger I’d see my thirtieth year. But”—and he leaned back with a sigh—“look at me now. Here I’ve put that thirtieth year ahind me, and I’m on my way to the Rocky Mountains.”

  “Likely so it’s the right time for you.”

  “Believe it is,” Titus responded, then nodded toward the cabin, where he was sure he saw at least two small faces pressed against the smudged isinglass panes on that solitary window. “You’ll tell Edna Mae I took leave of here wishing her all the best fortune to come her way.”

  “I will do that.”

  “You tell her again I ain’t got a fear one she ain’t gonna find a good man to care for her and the young’uns.”

  “I’ll tell her.” And he took a step back, flinging the coffee from his own cup, then looping both cup handles over the fingers of one hand as he shoved some unruly hair back from his eyes.

  “You’re the kind to take care of all of them, ain’t you?”

  The man gazed up at Bass. “If that’s what the Lord calls upon me to do.”

  With a smile Titus replied, “Then you’re just the sort like my own kin … my own pap. I’m glad all of them here got you to depend on.”

  And before the settler could utter another word, Bass tapped his heels into the pony’s ribs and yanked sharply on the mare’s lead rope.

  Moving off in a hurry, with the newborn sun rising at his back.

  He didn’t see a human or smell firesmoke for something close to another two hundred river miles.

  Then of a sudden, on the warming midday breeze, he drew up, catching that first whiff of burning wood. As much as he strained his eyes to see beyond the thick timber clustered along the hillside, Titus could not make out a puff, much less a column, of smoke. The thick, stinging gorge rose in his throat—remembering so many years before having been caught flat-footed along the Mississippi by a Chickasaw hunting party.

  It would not happen again, he swore under his breath.

  Quickly he urged the animals toward a thick copse of leafy green and hurled himself out of the saddle, landing as quietly as he could upon the thick carpet of spring grass. Lashing the horses to a low-hanging limb, Titus retrieved his rifle and crept toward the side of a low hill a quarter of a mile ahead of him. Hugging the shadows offered by the thick hardwood timber that bordered this southern bank of the Missouri, Bass carefully picked his way around the brow of the knoll. For all he knew, he had made it to Pawnee country and had blundered smack-dab into them—just about the way he had bumped into those Chickasaw warriors while out hunting for Ebenezer Zane’s boat crew.

  Dropping to his knees as the wind came full into his face, rank with the sharp tang of woodsmoke grown strong in his nostrils, Titus crept forward, parting the brush with the muzzle of the fullstock flintlock rifle. Yard by yard he pressed until he stopped: hearing the familiar call of birds in the distance, followed by the roll of at least one woodpecker thundering its echo within a nearby glen. Were it an Indian camp, he figured, there sure as hell wouldn’t be such routine noise from the forest creatures.

  Swallowing down the dry lump clogging his throat, Bass again parted the branches of the brush and pushed his way forward until he sat at the edge of the clearing. Ahead of him bobbed waves of tall grass that seemed to stretch all the way to the sharp-cut north bank of the Missouri. He dared to raise his head a little higher, catching a glimpse of the river at the foot of that north bank—still not all that certain he wouldn’t see a cluster of Indian wickiups.

  Across the river to the south the spring sky was sullied with but a single thin trail of smoke rising from a solitary stone chimney that protruded over the top of a stockade wall. The double gate stood open just wide enough to easily admit a wagon, almost as if expecting visitors.

  Quickly glancing left down the south bank, then north, Bass thought it curious he did not lay eyes on any humans. Then he spotted a pair of draft horses picketed just outside the stockade wall, contentedly grazing on the spring grass. He craned his neck to see more of that western side of the stockade. Beyond the pair grazed three more horses.

  After all these days without sign of another human—just possibly there was life here.

  At first the open gate and no sight of folks had unnerved him—causing him to fear the place had been attacked, its inhabitants killed, and the fort left empty. But it just didn’t figure that Injuns would leave good horseflesh behind.

  A voice called out from the woods beyond the fort, su
rprising him. Bass craned his neck to the east to watch a figure emerge from the line of trees, an ax over one shoulder and his shirt carelessly draped over the other. Again he called back to the timber, and almost immediately two other men burst from the woods to join the first. The heaviest of them, also naked to the waist, tugged at leather braces, slipping them over both arms, then adjusting the belt line of his drop-front britches below his more-than-ample belly. That one mopped his face with a bright-yellow bandanna, then stuffed it into the back of his pants.

  As he tried to study the trio, Titus could hear their talk, three distinct voices—but could not make out any words at this distance across the muddy, runoff swollen river. As the three turned the northeast corner of the stockade, Bass realized they all wore the same pants and ankle-high, square-toed boots.

  “Soldiers.” Both dust and sweat stained the light-blue wool of those britches as the men turned through the open gate and disappeared from view. Almost as quickly the fat man reappeared, dragging behind him a small two-wheeled cart with a long double-tree attached to the front. It bounced and rumbled across the rutted, pocked ground as he turned the corner of the stockade, headed back toward the timber where the trio had emerged just minutes before.

  For some time Titus sat there thinking on it, wondering if these three might well try to keep him from pushing on west to the mountains. At least that’s what Isaac Washburn had proclaimed last year when each night they had laid their plans for their journey to the Rockies. From the Missouri River country on west across the plains, Gut had explained, a man must either be a dragoon stationed at one of the riverside posts, or he had to belong to a licensed fur brigade sent upriver by one of the big companies being outfitted and setting off every spring from St. Louis these past few years.

  For the longest time the trade in western furs had all but died off—what with the trouble the British raised among the upriver tribes during the years they waged war on the young country of America; not to mention the losses of men Manuel Lisa suffered at the hand of the Blackfeet high in the northern Rockies. Wary at best, the St. Louis merchants had pulled in their horns, licked their wounds, and confined themselves to doing what trading they could with the Sauk, Fox, Omaha, and the other more peaceable tribes along the lower river.

  Then three years ago the Americans recruited by Ashley and Henry again flung themselves at the upper river, against the distant and hostile tribes, against that fabled land so rich in thick, prime fur.

  But Titus Bass wasn’t about to join the army—not going to cut wood or dig slip-trench latrines at one of these river posts—hell, no, he wouldn’t do that and be forced to gaze out longingly at all that expanse of open wilderness he would never get to see as long as he was a soldier.

  And he sure as hell wasn’t the sort to be a joiner either. Not about to sign on with one of those brigades that promised each man a rifle, traps, and two meals a day … and in return each dumb brute must promise the muscles of his back, his arms and legs, for the grueling labor of warping and cordel ling laden keel boats against the fickle Missouri’s mighty current. No, sir. All that talk he overheard in the St. Louis watering holes and knocking shops sure didn’t sound like much of a life to him: taking commands from some smooth-faced army officer, or from a slick-tongued fur trader bound to grow rich off the labors of others.

  Perhaps if he rested right here in the brush and tall grass, watching the small post across the river for a while longer, he might learn for sure if more than those three were quartered at the fort. After all, there were five horses grazing outside the stockade walls. And then he chuckled, imagining the sight of that big-bellied one bouncing along at an ungainly gallop upon one of those horses.

  A moment more and Bass slapped his knee, wagging his head for his shortsighted stupidity. As well as he knew horses, Titus chided himself for not seeing it earlier. Those sure as hell weren’t dragoon animals meant to be ridden. They were wagon stock: thick-hipped and high-backed. Which meant this place was peopled with foot soldiers.

  It wasn’t long before the thin trail of smoke from that lone chimney became a thick column. One of those soldiers had punched life back into their fire.

  That’s when Titus noticed the angle of the shadows and looked into the west to measure the descent of the sun. Those soldiers were done with their fatigue for the day and were preparing their supper. Just thinking of it made his stomach grumble. More than a week and a half ago he had left Boone’s Lick and Arrow Rock behind. He remembered now the last meal cooked by the hand of a woman. She had warmed his belly that evening and, in the darkness of that same night, come to warm his blankets. How he wished Edna Mae well in her search for a husband: a man for her bed, and a father for her children.

  Then he gazed at the river, studying the far landing constructed of thick poplar and oak pilings buried into the bank, where river travelers would tie up their craft. To one of the pilings were lashed three crude pirogues carved out of thick-trunked trees, each of them bobbing against the wharf and each other with a rhythmic, dull clunk as the Missouri pushed on past. On the grassy bank itself lay two canoes, upside down, their bellies pointing at the cloudless afternoon sky.

  He could well slip on around the post himself, unseen by those soldiers. But sooner or later, Titus realized, he would have to cross the Missouri. Once she pointed her way north—he would have to make his way over to the yonder bank anyway. For more minutes as the sun slipped closer to the far edge of the earth, he brooded on it—whether or not to chance these soldiers and this post. Or to pass them on by.

  He racked his memory of all those sober or whiskey-sodden nights spent with Isaac Washburn. Besides Fort Kiowa, where old Hugh Glass had crawled after being mauled by the she-grizz, the only fort his recollections came up with was the one Gut spoke of near the mouth of the Platte—the one called Atkinson. For the life of him, Titus couldn’t remember the old fur trapper warning him of any others. Atkinson was the one Gut vowed they would give wide berth as they made their way west.

  But this stockade—what the hell was this post sitting here of a sudden on the south bank of the Missouri?

  As the shadows stretched long and the afternoon breeze cooled against his shaggy cheek, Titus wrestled with it the way he had manhandled a piece of strap iron at Hysham Troost’s forge: all fire and muscle. And as the day grew old and evening beckoned out of the east, Bass owned up to what he’d been hankering to do almost from the moment he first set eyes on that stockade across the river.

  3

  “Sergeant!”

  At that cry from the south shore Bass’s head bobbed out of the muddy water, his eyes blinking, immediately landing on the open gates, where one of the soldiers stood turned half-around to hurl his voice into the stockade.

  “Pull, girl!” he called out to the mare dragging him against the Missouri’s strong current. He gripped her tail as firmly as he had ever held on to a woman at that moment of blissful union. “That’s it—pull!”

  As he did his best to hold the rifle high overhead and out of the water, the mare fought the strong current, pulling them slowly toward that south bank where a second soldier appeared, joining the first. Eventually the big-bellied one hurried up to complete the trio about the time the Indian pony’s hooves touched bottom beside the mare. Together both animals struggled to find their footing on the slick river bottom, stumbled and shifted, both nearly going down as they continued to fight for a foothold. As the river surged against them, the mare managed to keep her head fully above water while all he saw of the pony in that instant was its nostrils. Then the pony was back up, eyes as big as tea saucers, ears slicked back in both fear and the effort she was giving her swim across the frothy current as the bottom of the sun’s orb sank onto the far western prairie with an audible sigh.

  At the moment the mare nearly jerked him free of her tail, Bass’s bare feet scraped across the muddy, brush-choked bottom some fifty yards below the wharf where the pirogues continued to clunk together. All three soldier
s moved down together to stand some twenty yards up the grassy bank, just past the two upside-down canoes as Titus finally got his legs under him, slapping the rump of both animals as they clawed their way out of the Missouri, clattering onto dry land.

  He stood gasping, eyeing the trio as both horses shimmied beneath their loads, then turned their big eyes to regard the naked, white-skinned human with something bordering on a warning never to repeat such a crossing, if not outright contempt. Glancing at the big soldier who held a Harpers Ferry musket pointed his way, Titus clambered a little farther up the slope and collapsed to his knees on the grass.

  “Just who the hell are you?”

  Rubbing some of the river’s grit from his eyes, he felt his breathing slow, then replied, “Name’s Bass. Up from St. Louis.”

  The thinnest one of the three took a step forward, a large-bored pistol hanging at the end of his arm, which he quickly waved at the two horses audibly tearing off shoots of the new grass. “There any more of you coming across?”

  He wagged his head, slinging water from his shoulder-length hair. The breeze prickled his naked skin, and he grew chilled as he glanced back at the north bank. “Nary a soul. Just me.”

  When Bass turned to step toward the mare, the thin one snapped, “Stand your ground, stranger!”

  For that silent moment his teeth chattered, his eyes flashing over the three of them and the muzzles of those two pistols that had joined the fat man’s musket in staring back at him.

  “J-just getting m-my shucks.” He gestured to the top of the mare’s packs, where he had stuffed his clothing beneath the ropes.

  “Your shucks?” asked the third man, clearly the oldest of the lot.

  “My clothes,” Titus replied, wrapping his arms around himself, shuddering with the breeze that seemed to pick up speed and muscle as the sun continued to sink in the west. “Wasn’t about to get ’em wet in making that crossing, you see. Now, if you fellas’ll just let me get back in my warm clothes.”