Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Yes,” she repeated in English. “Are you hungry?”

  He thought a few moments—then understood—assessing the way he felt there on the robes, and finally answered, “No. Not right now. Maybe later.” He had said it in English, but when he shook his head slightly, she seemed to show some understanding.

  “The old one came to guide you through the land of darkness, Me-Ti-tuzz.” He remembered that was what she called him as Fawn signaled to the man. The old one came close enough for Bass to see once more.

  “You …,” and then Scratch struggled to remember the Ute words, how to put a few of them together. “Two … help … me … no more fire?”

  “No more fire,” the old man repeated in his native tongue. “No more walk on the dark path.”

  “No more fire,” Bass echoed confidently, remembering only tattered fragments of the fevered convulsions, how hot and wet he had been, how he had thrashed about.

  Slowly, painfully, he raised his head to look down at himself. Surprised, he found upon his bare chest the smeared and many colors of patches and stripes of earth paint. Mystical symbols. Potent signs. And farther south on his belly were smeared what appeared to be dry, flaky powders, crude lines raked across his flesh by fingertips in some simplistic pictograph.

  “This?” he asked weakly.

  “You are better now,” the old man said, then turned to Fawn. “Wash off the paint, woman.”

  Using that same clump of moss, she dipped cool water onto his flesh and gently scrubbed off the dried earth paint.

  As she finished, the old man asked, “Should we tell the others with him?”

  “They are gone,” Fawn replied.

  “Gone where?” Titus asked as soon as the words registered, afraid the trio had abandoned him, leaving him behind when they rode off for parts unknown.

  “To the streams,” she explained. Then, setting the moss scrubber aside, Fawn slapped her two open palms together with a smacking sound to imitate the animal’s own method of signaling a warning. “To catch the flat-tails.”

  “Beaver!” he said in English with relief. And let his head sink back onto the buffalo robe beneath him.

  “They come back soon,” she continued. “This is good?”

  “Yes,” he said in Ute. “This is very good that they come back. I go with them when we leave for the spring.”

  “Spring,” she repeated the word, her eyes drifting away. “It comes soon. And you go.”

  “Yes.” He cheered himself with the thought. Then because he could not think of the words in Ute, Bass tried hard to explain in English, “To catch beaver in its prime! To mosey easy-like on down to ronnyvoo where the trader will have him whiskey! An’ there’ll be women too!”

  In that next moment he suddenly realized what he had said. “Women for all the men what ain’t had a good woman to wrap up in the robes with ’em all winter, Fawn,” he tried to apologize in English.

  Clumsily he reached out and took hold of one of the woman’s hands. Again he spoke in Ute, “You know I leave soon. Come spring.”

  “Leave Fawn. Yes. Me-Ti-tuzz only a winter guest. Come again maybe next winter.”

  “Yes,” he said sadly. “Maybe next winter.”

  She pulled her hands from his and turned aside as the old man continued to stuff things away in his shoulder pouch. Bass glanced again at his wounds, finding each of them covered with moistened leaves held down with thin strips of cloth.

  “You both help me,” Bass declared to them, watching their faces turn so they could look at him. “I will not forget. I may leave come spring … but I won’t ever forget you both.”

  *Cache Valley, on the present-day Utah-Idaho border

  9

  Imperceptibly at first, the days began ta lengthen.

  It happened that Bass realized it was a little brighter in the lodge those mornings when he awoke. Instead of the gray wash to everything just beginning to announce the coming of the sun, the light was already there to greet him each time he opened his eyes beside her.

  As well, night was held at abeyance for just a little longer. Twilight seemed to swell about them in that high mountain park, the end of each succeeding day celebrating itself with just a few more heartbeats of gentle glow as the sun eased out of sight. Why, a man would have to be nothing short of blind not to notice that spring was on its way.

  It was clear to Titus that the other three realized it too as the snow grew mushy beneath his own thick, fur-lined winter moccasins of buffalo hide. From time to time, yes—snow would fall from those clouds gathered up there near Buffalo Pass, then only from those clouds collared around the peaks to the far north. Eventually, there were no more storms.

  As the snow retreated into the shadowed places, so the game retreated farther up the mountainsides. The men traveled higher, stayed out longer, to supply the camp with meat. And the nearby streams were nearly trapped out. Over the last few days Silas Cooper had been forced to take his trappers farther and farther still to run onto a creek where they stood a chance of finding beaver what would come to bait.

  Plain as paint, the time was coming to move on.

  “Where you set us to go?” Tuttle asked Cooper of an evening just days ago as they had sat in the last rays of the sun, smoking the bark of the red willow mixed with the pale dogwood. Some time back they had finished off the last of Bass’s tobacco.

  Silas sighed. “Yonder to the west.”

  “Them mountains we come through to get here?” Hooks inquired, digging a fingernail around inside the bowl of his clay pipe. Just then he struck a hot coal, sure enough, and jerked the finger out to suck on it like a child with a precious sliver or some such injury worth nursing.

  Cooper quickly glanced round at the other three, then stared off to the high peaks bordering the sundown side of Park Kyack. “That be the direction a man takes him to mosey off to ronnyvoo, ain’t it?”

  “Surely it is,” Bud agreed.

  Cooper’s gaze landed on Bass. “What say y’ then, Scratch?”

  “Say me to what?”

  “Where away would y’ lead this bunch, if’n it was you callin’ the tune?”

  Pulling the cane pipestem from his mouth slowly, Titus wiped the back of his hand across his lips thoughtfully. “Near as I recollect, there was many a stream in that country where a man would be smart to lay down his traps. Yessir, Silas. No two ways to it—that’s good country yonder for a beaver man.”

  Cooper smiled as big as he had ever smiled, here with his plans given such credence. “Damn straight, Scratch. By bloody damn, boys! This here greenhorn pilgrim we come across’t last fall h’ain’t so wet ahin’t his ears no more now.”

  “But afore we go and tramp off to this here Ashley’s ronnyvoo,” Scratch replied, “it’s plain to me we best be taking our time through that high country.”

  “Take … taking our time?” Cooper asked, all but incredulous.

  “Damn, but there’s a ronnyvoo ain’t a one of us wanna miss!” Hooks whined, worry in his eyes.

  Titus looked at Billy, then at Tuttle. “You’re cutting a trail through beaver country to reach ronnyvoo, ain’cha?”

  Bud nodded, but Billy glanced at the dark-faced Cooper.

  Silas said, “So, Scratch—what fur y’ got to rub with me?”

  “We’re up there anyways,” Titus began, “so let’s set us some traps. Catch us some beaver on the tramp.”

  Hooks grinned, then scratched at the side of his face when he asked, “What you think of that, Silas?”

  Warily, the way an animal might react as it kept itself from being backed into a corner, Cooper said, “If’n there’s time, ary a man’d be struck with the stupids what he didn’t try to trap what beaver he could.”

  Tuttle picked at a scab on his nose while the light sank out of the sky. “For balls’ sake—ronnyvoo’s still a far piece off. Take our time getting.”

  Hooks nodded amiably, saying, “Maybeso we ought’n head there straight off.”

  �
��No,” Tuttle corrected, “plenty of time till ronnyvoo, more weeks’n I care to count.”

  Billy’s shoulders sagged in disappointment. “I was hankering for that trader’s whiskey—just to talk of ronnyvoo!”

  “Soon enough, Billy,” Silas replied, then turned to Bass. “Just how full was y’ fixin’ to get your beaver packs?”

  “Full as I can,” Bass answered. “I go through a piece of country what looks to be crawlin’ with them flat-tails … I say let’s drag what critters we can outta the streams on our way.”

  “Boys”—Cooper brightened of a sudden as he called out in his booming voice—“looks to be we took us on a greenhorn last autumn, and now we got us a master trapper as our partner, don’t it?”

  “Har! Har!” Tuttle exclaimed. “Scratch is a damn sight better trapper’n me—”

  “Wouldn’t take much for that!” Hooks gushed, belly-laughing.

  Bud frowned. “An’ I’d care to lay a set that he’s some better’n you, Billy Hooks!”

  The wide smile was whisked from Billy’s face as Hooks looked over at Cooper.

  Silas said, “I daresay Bud might well be dead center, Billy. Scratch awready got better’n you.”

  “Awright,” Hooks replied with a single nod of his head, “then you the only one he ain’t a’bettering—right, Silas?”

  Cooper regarded Bass a moment. “For now, Billy. For now I’m still the best in this here trappin’ outfit.”

  Hooks inquired, “What haps when Scratch gets better’n you, Silas?”

  His eyes narrowing, Cooper chewed over that a moment, then replied, “It don’t mean a thing’s gonna change, Billy, This here still be my outfit—no two ways about it. No man take it from me. Y’ understand that, Bud?”

  Turtle’s eyes hugged the ground. “I figger I know how your stick floats, Silas.”

  Cooper continued. “Good. Might’n be some man pull more beaver’n me outta the water … but that don’t mean he’s man ’nough to lead my outfit.”

  Hooks grinned all over again, like he had come up with it in the first place. “You ain’t got balls enough to lead this outfit, Scratch! Not man enough to take it ’way from Silas!”

  “Never said I was,” Bass defended. “Silas asked me a question, and I tolt him I was fixin’ to trap me a bunch more beaver on the way to ronnyvoo.”

  “Your packs is damn near the heaviest there is right now!” Tuttle exclaimed.

  “Hush up, now!” Cooper ordered, slapping a hand down on Turtle’s forearm. “If’n we find we got more packs’n we can carry—then we just get us more animals to carry ’em.”

  “More animals from where?” Billy asked.

  “These here Yutas,” Cooper said with a grin. “Afore we pull out come morning, what say we buy us some more ponies?”

  “Good idea, Silas,” Tuttle said. “You always was the thinkin’ man in this outfit.”

  “An’ I allays will be, Bud. Don’t you ever forget that.” Cooper’s eyes left their faces as he peered over their shoulders. “Now, what y’ suppose these ol’ fellers got on their minds?”

  The three turned, finding more than a dozen of the tribal elders and revered warriors headed their way, each of the Ute wrapped in a painted buffalo robe or in a blanket to which wide strips and rosettes of porcupine quills had been added.

  By the time the old men came to a stop before the trappers, more of the village was gathering behind them. A lone man’s voice began to sing out, startling Bass. Other men quickly joined in the song, and women trilled their tongues.

  “What’s goin’ on, Bud?” Scratch whispered to Tuttle.

  “Dunno,” he answered with a shrug.

  “I’d lay we’re big men to this here village,” Silas boasted as the song was coming to an end. “Something big up a stick to them.”

  “Yessirreebob! Gonna have to come back one day soon to visit that li’l squaw again,” Hooks added, rubbing his groin with a grubby hand. “Been a fine thing, dipping into that honey-pot!”

  When the last note of the song had drifted off toward the aspen and lodgepole pine surrounding their camp, the leader of the hunting party stepped forward. He gestured, wanting the four white men to stand.

  As all four got to their feet, the crowd inched in even more tightly. Looking about him curiously, Titus studied the faces until he found Fawn, her young son, White Horse, clinging to her back, his little arms clamped around her neck. She smiled. And that went a long way to easing his apprehension.

  One man after another began to speak in excited tones, some waving their weapons, others rattling a shield; then the hunting-party leader waved forward the old man Titus remembered from his delirium.

  “That one says he knows y’,” Cooper said, translating some of what was being said as the wrinkled one began to speak haltingly.

  “I recollect he does,” Bass said. “Name is Crane. Him and Fawn got me through the fever of my wounds.”

  Cooper turned an ear toward the talk. “Y’ recollect any of what he said to y’ when you was took with fever?”

  “Nary a thing,” Titus admitted.

  “Seems to me this bunch figgers you was the big bull in that scrap,” Cooper explained.

  “I heard some talk of it my own self,” Bass said. “Understood part of it—but it don’t make no sense to me.”

  The old man pointed at Titus, waving him forward.

  “G’won, now, Scratch.” Tuttle prodded him with a shove of his hand.

  As the old one started to speak again, he carefully removed two scalps from the pouch he wore slung over his shoulder. With one held aloft in each hand, the pair tied together with one long whang of leather, he began to tell the story of the hunt for food to fill the hungry bellies in their village, a hunt where they discovered sign of enemy Arapaho once again come trespassing on Ute land.

  “There was no time to prepare for battle,” the old man known as Crane explained, telling the crowd what must surely have been a well-known story by then. “No time for paint. No time to smoke one’s pipe, only enough time to sing a prayer—before the Arapaho came down upon us.”

  Wild shouts erupted from the full ring of onlookers. Men yelped and women keened until the old man shook the scalps again, ordering quiet.

  “In the battle that took four of our friends, uncles and nephews to us all—one man among our hunting party displayed great bravery!”

  Again they raised their voices in shouts of joy.

  “Now at last the time has passed for mourning,” the wrinkled one declared. “We can celebrate the courage of our friends who helped save our people. Their guns helped win the day for our people!”

  As more cheers rolled over the trappers, men and women alike leaned forward to pound the four white men on the backs and shoulders in congratulation.

  “Yet there is one among them who showed more bravery than all the rest in the face of those enemy when they attacked us from behind!”

  Now the crowd grew strangely quiet as the old man turned slowly, slowly about, the scalps still held at the end of his outstretched arms.

  “He is the only warrior that day to take two enemy scalps! Two!”

  Suddenly Bass found the pair of scalps held before his face as the old man shook them violently.

  “This is the hair of our enemy!” Crane cried out to the crowd in his quavery voice—answered by great shouts leaping from more than a hundred throats. “Two enemy warriors are naked of hair in the beyond land now!”

  Wheeling, the old man dropped the leather thong over Bass’s head so the two scalps hung around his neck, high on either side of his chest.

  “The courage of this white man saw his feet through on his terrible journey into the dark country, so deep were his wounds. He returned to us, granted life by the life-giver of us all. We give our thanks that he was spared for us: a true friend of the Ute, and sworn enemy of the Arapaho!”

  Now again the leader of that hunting party stepped forward and put his arms around a stunned Titus Bass
, hugging him once before he turned to address the crowd.

  “As we planned, this is to be a night of celebration. Women! Bring out the meat! Children! Open a path for the men of this camp! Come, everyone! Celebrate tonight, for our white friends depart in the morning!”

  As some in the crowd surged close and began to nudge the trappers along toward the center of the village, Cooper leaned close to Titus. “Y’ get all of that, Scratch?”

  “Maybeso enough.”

  “You’re some big coon to these here red niggers,” Silas grumbled.

  “A big, big shit!” Hooks echoed with that ready grin of his.

  “Ain’t done nothing special,” Bass replied, trying to make less of this spontaneous celebration in his honor.

  “Y’ something big up a stick to them,” Cooper argued. “But mind y’—don’t ever go figgering you be as savvy as me, hear? Don’t ever y’ figger y’ can outtrap, outfight, outsquaw Silas Cooper! Y’ got that, ‘Rapaho-killer? Y’ got that?”

  “I … I don’t aim to take nothing away from you—”

  “Tell me, Bass! Right here an’ now,” Cooper interrupted. “Don’t y’ ever try to stand head to head with me like y’ done once.”

  “Silas always give a man one chance to show his stupids,” Hooks proclaimed. “What Silas always says: give ever’ man one chance to show he can be a dead fool.”

  “Billy’s right, Scratch,” Cooper reminded. “And y’ done had your chance back up there near Buffalo Pass when y’ laid your hand on me.”

  Bass flinched with another look into Cooper’s cold black eyes. Almost a good head taller than Bass, and with some eleven or twelve years on him too. “I understood you, then, Silas. An’ I don’t fix on ever giving you cause to raise a hand to me. Not among friends.”

  “That’s right, ’Rapaho-killer!” Cooper roared, flinging his long arm over Titus’s shoulder so suddenly that it surprised Bass as they came to a halt at the center of camp with the others. “We’re friends, ain’t we? Friends allays take good, good care of each other!”

  The tight ring about the trappers loosened as women and men alike began to throw down blankets and robes, seating themselves around the huge fire ring as women came forward bearing rawhide platters heaped with boiled meat and roasted marrow bones, sections of stuffed elk gut and minced slices of raw liver one could dip into tiny bladders filled with tangy yellow gall. Everywhere folks began to talk at once, laugh together, sing out in merriment and exultation.