Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Bet y’ walked her, didn’t you?” Cooper asked.

  How helpless he felt, maybe having a hand in killing his only horse. “Yes … well—I thought it was the colic!”

  “It’s awright, son,” Silas said, suddenly sounding almost fatherly so soon after he had been downright snarly. “Most folks don’t know how to tell the black water until it’s too late.”

  “Too late?”

  “Listen, Titus Bass,” Cooper said as he came over to kneel beside Titus, “this critter’s in some terrible pain. And when a body’s in pain—it’s allays best to put it right outta its misery, ain’t it?”

  Lord, he fought not to sob, especially when Cooper leaned over to put an arm around his shoulder, just the way his grandpap used to do. Bass could feel the tears sting as they started to well in his eyes.

  “Y’ll get along just fine—won’t he, Bud?” Silas offered.

  “That’s right, Titus,” Tuttle replied, pushing some of his long sandy-blond hair back out of his eyes. “Where’s your other horses?”

  “Other … other horses?” Bass asked dumbly.

  Cooper asked, “Y’ got mules?”

  “I ain’t got no other’ns.”

  Billy shrieked with sudden unrestrained belly laughter, clamping a hand over his mouth when Cooper shot him a stern, disapproving look.

  Then Silas was tugging Titus up. “Bud, gimme a hand getting Titus up on his feet. Here, son—that’s it, Titus … y’ don’t wanna go down like your only horse there, now—do you?”

  As much as Titus tried to think of speaking, of what to say, of what the hell to do, his mouth just wagged wordlessly.

  “Y’ mean to bald-face tell me you come out here to the mountains with one horse only?” Cooper inquired.

  “Started off with two from St. Louie,”

  Tuttle asked, “So what happed to the other’n?”

  “Lost it—crossing the Platte.”

  “Spring flood?” Billy asked, that big grin brightening his face.

  With a shake of his head Titus shrugged and replied, “Don’t know—bottom just gone out from under us and we … this mare and me, we barely swum ourselves out.”

  “Y’ ever find the other horse?”

  He looked at Cooper and nodded. “Dragged the saddle off’n it. Was a Injun pony.”

  “Injun pony?” Tuttle asked, concern on his face. “What sort of Injun pony?”

  “Don’t rightly know. Just that it come down from Fort Kiowa with a friend of mine.”

  “Friend?” Billy asked.

  “Isaac Washburn. The Injun pony was his.”

  “And this here mare’s yours?” Silas said.

  Bass looked down at the horse. She flailed that rear leg about again, only this time with a much more feeble movement. “She was give me by a man in St. Louis.”

  Cooper flung his long arm around Titus’s shoulder, saying, “A good horse this was, Titus Bass, weren’t it?”

  “She got me here—all the way here.”

  Then he felt what Cooper suddenly pressed into his belly. Slowly he looked down and saw the pistol pushed against his blanket coat. Fear knotted cold in his gut.

  “Take it, Titus Bass,” Cooper demanded. “Finish off the god-blamed animal, y’ idjit. Cain’t y’ see she’s in some awful pain?”

  “F-finish?”

  “Shoot her!” Billy cried. “She’s dying anyways—so, shoot her now!”

  “I … ain’t there nothing can be done?” he begged of Cooper, turning toward the tall man, trying to push away the pistol the tall man shoved into his belly.

  “Not when a critter’s gone and got black water,” Cooper said quietly, his big, beautiful eyes gone sad and limpid. “Once a horse goes down with black water—that critter ain’t never getting up on his legs again. Y’ cain’t be squampshus about it. Time for y’ to do the decent thing, Titus Bass.”

  “I can’t shoot her,” he pleaded. “Don’t have me no other horse. This here’s the only one—”

  “Gimme the goddamned pistol, y’ weasel-stoned pup!” Cooper growled angrily as he yanked the weapon from Bass’s hand and dragged back the hammer.

  “No!” Titus bellowed, hurling himself at the man’s long, powerful arm. “No—don’t you see if it’s to be done, I’m the one gotta do it?”

  Cooper looked down at him with those long-lashed, limpid eyes of his that Bass was sure could hypnotize lesser men. “That’s right, Titus Bass. Now you’re showing a lick of good sense: see that you’re the one what’s gotta do it—if’n you’re man enough.”

  “The nigger ain’t man enough!” Billy cried, sidestepping a little jig in eager anticipation. “Ain’t man enough!”

  “Shuddup, Billy!” Tuttle ordered. “Leave ’im be.”

  With gratitude Bass glanced at Bud Tuttle and found there in the man’s homely face something that said he understood Bass’s reluctance—something that said he just plain understood.

  “I’ll do it … if’n there’s no other way,” Bass reluctantly said.

  Cooper and the others backed away a few steps. Then Silas said, “She’s been good to y’. Now’s time for y’ to return that good, Titus Bass. Take her outta her misery.”

  With two trembling hands he pulled the hammer back to full-cock, brought the muzzle down to aim at a spot behind her ear.

  “Y’ might miss there,” Cooper advised. “Go up on her head,” and he jabbed with one long finger at a spot midway between the eyes—up between the eyes and the ears. “Horse got it a little brain … y’ don’t put that ball into it just right, y’ gonna cause the mare all the more pain, Titus Bass.”

  Still trembling, he moved the muzzle to that new target, trying to hold it on the spot Cooper described.

  “Nawww—hold it again’ her head,” Silas instructed. “Now, y’ want one of us to go and do—”

  “No! I’ll … I’ll do it,” he interrupted, forcing down the stinging bile that gathered at the back of his throat as he brought the muzzle squarely against the mare’s forehead. Titus glanced one more time into that one wild, bloodshot, pain-crazed eye, then closed both of his and pulled back on the trigger.

  The pistol leaped in his hand, and he sensed the immediate splatter of warm blood across his bare flesh as he keeled backward with instant regret—not wanting to look, not daring to open his eyes until he had turned away. Bass held the pistol out at the end of his arm, loosely in his grip—hoping one of them would take it.

  Cooper swept the weapon out of the hand before it dropped, looping his other arm over Bass’s shoulder. He almost cooed, saying, “Y’ done good by her, Titus Bass. I allays said a man’s only as good as he is to his animals. And y’ done right by your mare.”

  “Tough thing you did—but the right thing,” Tuttle added.

  “Weren’t nothing to laugh at, Titus,” Billy said. “Sorry I am I laughed at you.”

  “The world’s a merry place to Billy Hooks,” Silas replied. “Y’ just gotta understand him is all, Titus Bass.”

  He peeled himself from under Cooper’s arm and trudged over to his rekindled fire. There he squatted on his hands and knees, feeding the coals until he had more warmth from the flames.

  “Whyn’t you two go fetch up the animals?” Cooper instructed somewhere behind him.

  “Sure, Silas,” Tuttle replied. “C’mon, Billy. Let’s go fetch up the horses.”

  Hooks came bounding up on foot to stop near Bass’s shoulder as he asked, “Silas—ain’cha gonna give one of our Injun ponies to this here Titus Bass feller?”

  “I s’pose it’s the thing to do, don’t y’ figger?”

  “Yessirreebob!” Billy replied. “I do figger so. He needs him a horse, and we got alla them what we took off them red niggers few days back.”

  “R-red niggers?” Titus repeated, looking up to the faces of the three standing over him.

  “Injuns, Titus Bass,” Tuttle replied. “C’mon, Billy.”

  “Dirty, thieving red sonsabitches what tried to
steal our ponies, our plews, and our scalps too!” Cooper growled as the other two started off into the shadows. The snow gathered on the shoulders of his blanket coat, lying there so stark against the gleaming black of his long hair that spilled over his shoulders, tangled in with his long, dark beard.

  “Where?” Titus asked, feeling his palms sweat.

  “North o’ here,” Cooper replied, then squatted to help break off some more branches for the fire. “Likely they was Blackfeet, though they call themselves Blood Injuns. Part of the same sonsabitches anyways. Don’t make me no never mind to kill any of ’em.”

  “F-far from here?”

  “We been riding six days since,” Silas answered. “Why, now—do I see me that y’ got yourself skairt of Injuns?”

  “Nawww,” Bass said with feigned bravado. “Fought me Injuns afore.”

  “Where?”

  “Mississippi,” Bass replied. “Chickasaw, they was.”

  “Chickasaw.”

  “Yep.”

  Silas shook his head. “Them ain’t real Injuns no more.”

  “They was real Injuns when I fought ’em,” Titus explained. “My first Injun scrap. Fifteen winters ago. Took my flatboat pilot. A friend of mine.”

  “So y’ was a riverman afore y’ come to the mountains?”

  “For a short time,” he admitted, then knew he ought to admit it. “One trip, then I come up the Natchez Trace for that one and only walk back to the Ohio River country.”

  “That make y’ a Kentucky man?”

  Bass nodded. “Boone County.”

  “I hail out of what they’re calling the Illinois now,” Cooper explained. “Them other two: Billy’s from down around the Cape on the Missouri—”

  “Cape Girardeau?”

  “Y’ know of it?” Silas asked.

  “Sure as hell do,” Bass said with some of the cold departing his stomach as he rubbed his cold hands over the flames. “Spent me many years in St. Louis.”

  Cooper continued. “And, Bud there—he’s a Pennsylvania man. Don’t rightly know if he’ll ever make a trapper howsomever. Them Pennsylvania folk are slow on the take-up—leastways every one of ’em I’ve run onto. Trapping don’t seem to be Turtle’s calling.”

  “Why’s he stay out here?”

  “Hell,” Cooper snorted, “he’s like the rest of us what stayed on out here after those early days with Lisa—ain’t got much left for us back—”

  “Lisa?” Titus interrupted, his voice rising, turning suddenly to look at Cooper beside the fire. “Manuel Lisa?”

  “Y’ heard of that thieving Spanee-yard, have y’?”

  “You mean you fellas worked for him?”

  “Damn if he didn’t make all of us bust our humps for him—and some of us died for it too!”

  “Then you’ll know … maybe you’ll know a man—fella by the name of Eli, Eli Gamble?”

  For a moment there was nothing more than a blank look on Cooper’s face; then the eyes started to crinkle. “Ol’ Eli. Yes, I remember Gamble, I do. A good man—”

  “What become of him?”

  “Y’ be a friend of his?”

  Titus shrugged, gazing back down at the fire again, rubbing his hands that refused to get warm as the snowflakes spat into the fire with a hiss. “Knowed him once. Of a time I shot against him in a rifle match. Just ’bout beat him too.”

  Squinting one eye in appraisal of Bass, Cooper commented, “Always heard Eli was some with a rifle. A man what could shoot straight and hit center, Gamble was. Y’ say you just ’bout beat him?”

  “I’d a’beat him,” Titus grumped. “But I was young back then.”

  Silas looked Titus up and down with a widening grin. “I should say you was young then! That had to be many a summer ago!”

  “I was sixteen,” he said proudly. “And I beat every other man ’cept Eli Gamble.” Then Titus had to snort with a grin, “Sly son of a bitch wasn’t even from Boone County neither—not like the rest of us shooting that day!”

  “Pushing west, weren’t he?”

  “Tol’t me he was fixing to join up with Lisa’s brigade,” Titus explained. “Lisa been crossing all that country north of the Ohio for to get fellas to sign on—”

  Nodding, Cooper interrupted, “We all of us signed on in just such a way.”

  “Then all of you know Gamble?”

  “Might say we knowed of him, Titus,” he answered, his eyes narrowing. “He was in that bunch went over to the Three Forks with Major Henry. We was sent off to work other country.”

  Bass itched for an answer. “W-what become of Gamble?”

  Cooper shrugged a shoulder, then turned at the sound of the others’ approach. “Don’t rightly claim to know, Titus Bass.” He stood slowly, turning his rump to the fire and rubbing warmth back into it. “There was too many a good man we never knowed what become of up there in that Blackfoot country.”

  “Blackfoot? Like that bunch you say you run onto a few days back?”

  Billy Hooks burst into the camp clearing on horseback, Tuttle right behind, both of them leading a small herd of horses and mules.

  As he dismounted, Hooks cried out, “Blackfoot be the baddest red niggers you’d ever wanna doe-see-doe with, Titus Bass!”

  There were more than a dozen of the animals altogether. Some immediately winded the dead horse sprawled on the ground and shied away, others just got wide-eyed, snorting, and pawing.

  “Best y’ get them tied off down in that meadow yonder,” Cooper ordered the other two.

  “So is this here Titus Bass gonna pick him out a new horse and pack animal this morning, Silas?” Hooks asked as he started to step away, pulling on the lead ropes to a half dozen of the horses.

  Cooper turned to look steadily at Bass, the black eyes again reflecting nothing more than good human charity. “S’pose he will for sure, Billy. But first he’s gotta decide if’n he’s gonna throw in with us.”

  Over the next few weeks the frequent snows succeeded in pushing the four of them down the mountainsides a little more with each camp as they trapped their way around the southern reaches of the Wind River range.

  At their first camp after leaving the carcass of Bass’s mare behind, the three experienced trappers had awakened Titus in the cold, frosty darkness the next morning.

  “Rise and shine!” Billy exclaimed, then laughed merrily, his eyes dancing as he tapped at Bass’s toes again.

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus grumbled, rubbing some fingers in a gritty eye as he sat upright in his blankets. “What the devil are you three doing? It’s still dark!”

  “Damn right it is, Titus Bass,” Silas Cooper replied solemnly. “Time we kick off your l’arning.”

  “Learning?”

  Billy snorted. “How to be a trapper, Titus.”

  “I’m already a trapper,” he groused, more than a little nettled that some man might say he had a lot to learn about trapping—then hawked up some night gather in the back of his throat as he dug at the bothersome itch on the back of his neck.

  Cooper said, “Only thing it ’pears y’ catched was a few dumb beaver stupid enough to mosey on by your traps. Lucky is all y’ are.”

  “Truth be: lucky we run onto you, yessirreebob,” Hooks added.

  “Damn good thing we found you afore any red niggers lifted your hair,” Tuttle chimed in. “C’mon now, Silas gonna l’arn you how it’s done.”

  Beneath one irritating armpit Bass dug with his fingernails as he kicked his blankets off his legs; then he dug at the other.

  “Varmints,” Billy declared to the others. “Son of a bitch is rotted with ’em, I’ll wager.”

  “C’mon, Titus,” Cooper said, starting to turn away into the darkness. “Man what wants to catch hisself some beaver better be up afore the beaver.”

  Bass wanted badly to say something about the fact that he had always risen early, as far back as he could remember on his father’s farm, on through his days of work on the wharf at Owensboro and even in Troos
t’s Livery … but as he started to open his mouth, the three of them turned their backs on him and started trudging out of the timber toward the nearby stream.

  “Up before the beaver, my ass,” Titus hissed under his breath as he stood and knew he had to pee in the worst way.

  Quickly he unbuttoned the front of his worn and patched wool britches as he stumbled over to a far tree and drained himself with a sigh. The three had disappeared in the dark by the time Bass had on his coat, moccasins, and the wool cap he had fashioned from some blanketing cut from the bottom of his capote. Titus slung the leather trap sack over his shoulder and set off at a trot through the grass and elk cabbage that crackled with frost underfoot with every step. Eventually he caught up with them, following their muted whispers as the three of them stopped, turned about, and waited for the newcomer to join them.

  “Thar’s the stream, Titus Bass,” Cooper declared. “What’s to do?”

  “Set my traps, natural as you please,” he said, believing he gave the right answer.

  “Just like that?” Billy asked.

  Bass replied-with a nod, “Just like that.”

  “Nigger—are you ever wrong!” Hooks guffawed.

  “Hold your goddamned noise down!” Silas snapped. “I declare, Billy—y’ go and run off the beaver with your mouth one more time, I’ll cut out your goddamned tongue my own self!”

  Hooks dropped his eyes, contrite and chastened as he pursed his lips into a narrow line of silence.

  Bass felt sorry for him as he turned back to look at Cooper. “All right—s’pose you tell me what I do first.”

  “Now you’re l’arning, Titus Bass,” Silas said with a faint smile. “Y’ do everything I tell you, the way I tell you, and when I tell you to do it—y’ll be a master trapper in no time … and we’ll get along fine.”

  At first he glanced to the quiet Tuttle, then back to Cooper. “Awright, so tell me.”

  The tall leader began to discourse on how a man first inspected a section of stream, looking for beaver slides, dams, or lodges built out in the middle of those ponds the efficient rodents had created in engineering their environment to suit themselves—mostly to protect their kind from four-legged, nonswimming predators. As Cooper had done yesterday afternoon before twilight while the others had established camp, he showed them how a man was to determine where best to set his traps. Silas led the other three into the leafless willow right to the streambank.