Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  The wind shifted. And the stench of it came to Bass, smacking him in the face. He’d never smelled anything like this before. Danger—pure and simple. Something feral, wild, beastly.

  Hannah cried out, head twisting, her eyes rolling to find him. She shifted her stance, plowing up more of the loose turf made fragrant and heady by the bed of decomposing pine needles under her hooves. The instant he started her way, Bass saw a flicker of some movement in the trees beyond her. There just beyond the edge of the timber … it moved again. Like a chunk of black light torn off the corduroy of shadow that was the forest itself at this early hour as day splintered night into giving way to a reluctant dawn.

  With his next step, and the shadow’s answering grunt—he knew.

  Not that Bass had ever seen one himself since coming to the mountains. Lucky, he’d always figured. But he knew nonetheless. Something instinctive, perhaps. After all, he’d seen enough black and brown bears back east in those Kentucky woods.

  “D-damn,” he muttered under his breath as the beast rose from its exertions.

  How Bass had ever missed the elk carcass when he’d led Hannah there earlier in the dim light of false dawn, he had no idea.

  But there stood that huge, hunch-backed behemoth, busy uncovering its carrion. Tearing away at the dirt, rotting pine needles, branches, and saplings it had scraped over the huge partially eaten carcass the day before. Likely an elk, Titus figured—for the size of what was left of it.

  Standing rooted to the spot, Titus found himself marveling at the sheer size of that animal intent over its next meal.

  Hell, out here he was no longer surprised to find everything bigger than he had ever let his imagination run. Even though Isaac Washburn had told him over and over again the tale of how the sow grizzly cuffed and mauled and chewed on old Hugh Glass up by the Grand River— never had Scratch expected the animal to turn out to be so huge, come this close, near face-to-face.

  With its returning to its recent kill just moments ago—was the beast’s own feral stench carried on the wind to Hannah’s sensitive nose? Had she winded the deadly silver-haired creature, attempted to flee, and cried out in terror when she found herself prisoner? Is that why the monster had grunted? Was it threatened by the mule?

  Up the slope far to the right came a new snort. Followed by a series of grunts slowly fading in volume.

  Hannah bawled anew, high and plaintive.

  Dropping to one knee, Bass reluctantly took his eye off the shadow-ribboned silvertip just long enough to squint into the patchwork of light and dark farther up the nearby hillside.

  This close to it, he felt the ground tremble. Bass jerked back to the left, finding the grizzly jumping up and down-on all fours beside its carrion, massive muzzle pulled back to expose the rows of huge teeth, giant fore-paws tearing at the ground, wagging its massive head from side to side. It too sniffed the air, then roared again with that sound completely new and foreign to Bass. A challenge. A lure. A call to battle.

  Wau-au-au-au-gh-gh-gh!

  From the hillside came its answer.

  Wau-au-au-au … gh-gh-gh!

  To Bass’s left the grizzly stood on its hind legs.

  As it rose to full height, Scratch felt himself shrink inside. Although it was giving its full attention to the nearby hillside, nonetheless Titus felt dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the beast as it balanced on its two hindquarters, clawing at the air as if shadowboxing. Long, curved claws tore shreds of reflected sunlight: glistening, honed razors slashing at the end of each heaving swipe, rending what wisps of cold mist remained among the black timber.

  They were snorting at one another nonstop now. One roar answered almost immediately by the other, and both drowning out the feeble bray of the frightened mule. The grizzly he could see whirled about on its haunches and dropped to all fours, quickly circling the elk carcass, savagely flinging dirt and pine needles back onto its kill in some feeble attempt to hide it from the approaching challenger.

  Considering what to do in that instant as the forest’s terror was now suddenly doubled, Bass wondered if he should dash over and release Hannah. What with the way she rolled her eyes at the grizzly, then danced back in that confining arc to roll her eyes at him—bawling with that high-pitched squeal of hers. But if he did, his instincts told him … he’d be left on foot.

  Hannah would wheel and run, yanking the rope from his cold, bare hands, likely bowling him over in her eagerness to flee as far away from there as she could. Maybe not stopping until she made it back to camp upstream, perhaps even into the next valley, where they had trapped out just about everything with a flat-tail on it before moving here yesterday.

  How he’d come to rely on her, trust her, cantankerous and contrary as a mule could be, yet coming to respect her as he never had respected such a stubborn animal while a youngster made to work with mules, together tearing long furrows in the dark, loamy soil of Boone County. But there was something entirely different about this animal.

  Through the past winter and into his productive spring hunt, then as the seasons turned to summer’s rendezvous and finally their moseying into the Wind River range, trapping and tramping, easing north all the more … Bass had come to care for the young mule, more than he had ever cared for an animal. A time or two he had even allowed himself to believe the mule cared for him too.

  So it had surprised him—as suspicious as he was about mules from those long-ago days on his pap’s land in Rabbit Hash—when Hannah would slip up behind him without a sound, with no warning, as he was going about some camp chore, suddenly swinging her thick muzzle into that hollow between his bony shoulder blades. Knocking him down, sprawling into the dirt that first time. Heels over head a second time. Sent skidding on his rump a third time—just starting to twist about with the faintest sound of her approach.

  Always careful to pick her time and place, Hannah grew more crafty as the months rolled by. It became her own private way to play him the fool—this stunt she loved to pull on him. The mule never seemed to tire of it. Nor did she seem to take much heed of the way he scolded her, shook his finger at her as he clambered off the ground and brushed himself off, his cheeks crimson with embarrassment at the way the other three trappers gushed with laughter, snorting at how boneheaded he was to allow the mule her folly with him when he should either whack her upside of the head, or shoot her.

  Each time she succeeded in sneaking up on him—he figured it was nothing more than a knot not being tight enough … but this time she was held fast. In that instant he decided he wouldn’t free her.

  Not just yet, he wouldn’t—not when she’d likely bolt off and leave him stranded. Scratch wasn’t about to try outrunning a grizzly. Not from all that he’d heard tell of the beast. Not from what common sense told him was purely a fool’s errand. No mere, mortal man could dare outrace a behemoth like that on all fours. It made no matter that it would be an obstacle course, darting in and out among the trees, lunging over deadfall, ducking branches, and avoiding those slick, icy patches of winter’s first snow still tucked way back in among the dark, sunless places. No matter that he would be on two feet and this monster on four.

  Something feral, wild, and untamed within him told Titus that the surest way for a man in his predicament to throw his life away was to try fleeing. From where that spark of wildness came, he knew not. Only that it rested at the deepest marrow of him—and enough had transpired in his nearly thirty-three years that proved to him he should listen to the flicker of its voice.

  Was it something in his lineage, in the breeding, in that Scottish ancestry that harkened back to all those generations among the lowlands, clan ancestors stealing down from the misty hills and out across the foggy moors to relieve the arrogant lords and the British army of so many of their horses? Was it all those centuries of Basses pilloried and tortured by fire, all those Basses hung at the end of short ropes, Basses torn apart by four stout draft horses each whipped in four different directions, all at the hands of the ki
ng’s servants … or was it something given birth on this continent in recent generations? Some feral otherworldly sense born in the blood of his grandpap, who as a young man had fought in the wilderness against the French and their Indians, then so soon thereafter chose to make his family’s stand on the Ohio River frontier against the English and their Indians, as the colonials tore themselves apart from the Tories and Loyalists and George III himself?

  If that wildness was truly something passed down in the blood—then how did one explain Thaddeus? If this uncanny savvy was sunk so to the core of Titus, then why was his own pap content to carve settlement out of wilderness, to domesticate and till and build where only the untamed beasts and half-naked savages had roamed?

  Was that why he was here among these great mountains and high valleys, after all? Titus had asked himself many a time.

  Had he ventured far, far past the last outpost of settlement, leaping past the final vestiges of civilization, just so he could find himself as far from everything that was his father … if only to prove that the blood that had driven his grandpap to hack out a path through the wilderness to seek out a new home was still the blood that ran hot and thick in Titus’s own veins? Was he more the grandson? Or had he come here to these far places to prove to himself, if to no one else, that he was not Thaddeus Bass’s eldest son?

  Wau-au-au-ghghghgh!

  With the soul-shattering roar from the nearby grizzly, Bass jerked about. The stench from both creatures was unbelievably raw, primal, deadly.

  Waugh-ngg-ngg-ngg-ngg!

  In that moment the second grizzly burst into view on the slope above him. Every bit as big as the first, it might well weigh even more.

  Now it bounced up and down on its four paws, then lumbered clumsily onto its hindquarters. With its fore-claws slashing at the air, it reared its head back, the slobbery muzzle pulled away to bare its yellowed teeth, shaking the massive skull that seemed to rest momentarily on the huge hump between its shoulders.

  Crashing back onto alt four legs, the second monster continued its march out of the shadows toward the first grizzly, who was pacing about his carrion territorially, putting himself between the carcass and the intruder. He clawed the ground savagely, tearing up huge clumps of the moist, partially frozen forest floor with his six-inch claws, black clods of earth spraying here, sailing there. Now and again for but a moment he would stop to growl at the interloper before returning to his bristling, defensive behavior.

  At the same time the newcomer would halt after every few steps, roaring his challenge, bouncing a bit on all fours and wagging his head as he exposed his rows of teeth, jaws slobbering in anticipation of his meal. Then he continued down the gentle slope through the timber toward his opponent.

  And that carcass that had lured him here from miles away.

  More closely related to the hog family than anything else, the bear used its keenest sense to locate food and avoid danger. From far downstream, miles away at the mouth of another valley, the interloper had whiffed his first, faint hint of that rotting meat. And as he had turned into the wind to investigate that telltale dawn breeze, the seductive stench grew stronger and stronger. On and on he had come—until he also began to pick up the smell of one of his own kind.

  Yet what truly confused him for a moment was the odor of two other creatures he could not identify … not with his dim eyesight as he studied the two-legged and then the frightened four-legged only briefly from this distance. But that smell of blood and sundered flesh quickly recaptured his attention each time his thoughts wandered to the other creatures. That, and the challenge raised by one of his own kind standing guard over the feast that had brought him from so, so far.

  Already with the first snowfall come to these high slopes and deep valleys, the ancient clocks were ticking within these creatures as autumn aged, as winter crept farther down from the high places, a great cold racing all the faster out of the north. Something ageless and without rationale had instructed both of these boars to spend the long days of their short summer months feasting on the rich, nutritious plants of this high country. But as the temperatures began to drop, especially after that first heavy snowfall that had taken days to melt off from the exposed slopes, some new biological imperative had taken over within the beasts. As the grizzly neared its time for hibernation, it no longer was satisfied with leaves and stems and roots. Now as the weather turned cold—the grizzly needed meat.

  A terrible season for these boars as they hunted the meat they craved, while at the same time the calendar within them also aroused the ancient itch to mate, to rut, to satisfy that which can be quenched only by coupling with a sow. So it was that in these last days before the deep sleep of winter, the boars roamed their valleys in search of meat and females, their temperament constantly on edge, easily irritable—more than ready for battle or the long sleep that would relieve them of their hungers and their itches.

  So first the interloper had to find out if the protector was a sow.

  When he reached a spot some twenty-five feet from the carcass, he raised his nose into the air again, sniffing everything he could while the protector rumbled his defiance.

  No—the interloper decided: there wasn’t a hint of a female here. No rich, heady aroma that heretofore told him a sow was indeed in heat and ready to accept what he needed to scratch. With a disgusted snort of disappointment he lowered his head, chin almost to the ground as he lumbered side to side, wagging that head he had drawn defensively back into the huge hump to make himself appear all the bigger.

  There would be no rutting this day. But there just might be a free meal … if he could drive off this other boar with a few measured cuffs of his massive paws, given deadly execution by his powerful shoulders.

  As soon as the interloper turned its full attention back to the protector, Scratch began his sidelong creep, slowly inching his way toward Hannah. She continued her keer-rawwing without stop, even though she kept flicking her eyes from those silver-tipped monsters to her owner, back and forth, over and over. Little chance she was relieved to see her master coming her way. He was all too slow.

  While the protector backed up a few feet, he was in reality rocking back on all fours, as if cocking himself, preparing to launch his bulk right into his enemy. He crouched there, snarling, huge jaws frothing in anticipation, his body shuddering with uncontrollable passions. The same juices that prepared him to fight also readied him for coupling with a sow. And for now—the hot fire of those juices shooting through his veins and heaving muscles brought nothing but frightening confusion.

  A few yards off the interloper lunged back, rising onto its hind legs, a forepaw ripping bark from a nearby pine tree. Shards of blackened bark exploded off the trunk in all directions, exposing the deep yellow wounds that would soon ooze with pitch.

  Shuddering at the vicious explosion, Bass sank back on his haunches near the line of willows. Glanced at Hannah. Then swallowed hard as he turned his attention back to the two monsters. By damn, if a griz could do that sort of damage to the tough, hardened bark of an old pine tree, just think of what the beast could do against mere flesh and sinew.

  Then the protector rose on his hind legs, head brought forward as far as he could out of the hump, jaws open wide, but only momentarily, until he began snapping them, clawing at the air, growling loud enough that the sound of both boars rocked back from the valley walls in a never-ending cascade of reverberation.

  With a blur of silver-tipped shadow, the two bears lunged, closed, arms swinging, clawing, clutching their enemy at last. Snapping their muzzles ferociously, both tried repeatedly to sink fangs into the other—groping for an ear, biting the muzzle, sinking teeth into the tip of the nose or that thick slab of protective ridge of brow bone over an eye socket.

  Then down they tumbled in a heap. Something akin to a frightened yelp burst from one of them as they flew apart, shaking their tough, thick hides … then wheeled quickly to relocate the adversary—charging on all fours.

&nbs
p; When they collided again, the ground beneath Bass shook even more than it had before. As the grizzlies locked themselves together, their bodies rippled and shook with the strain of muscles tested to the maximum. Over and over one another they tumbled, smashing against the trunks of great trees and careening over saplings that snapped like kindling wood, four hind legs flailing, akimbo as each fought for balance, to seize the upper hand.

  Then the protector found a soft, vulnerable target in the other boar’s snout—and clamped down with his mighty jaws.

  Squealing just like a scalded hog, the interloper struggled this way, then that, to free himself. But in the end he flung the protector off only by pitching his opponent over his shoulder against an old pine that shuddered with the tremendous force of the blow as the protector spilled to the ground, having released his grip on the enemy. Shaking his head in a daze, the protector sat there a moment.

  Sat there too long.

  The bloodied interloper was upon him that quickly, sinking his teeth into the back of the protector’s neck, one front paw yanking the opponent’s jaws back as he raked and raked with the long claws, biting again and again, filling his huge mouth with the neck tissue there at the rise of the great hump.

  Twisting to his left, then twisting to his right, the protector tried vainly to snap at the enemy who had its teeth sunk into his neck, long claws slashing at his vulnerable throat, hindquarters raking along his back. Blood glistened the protector’s coat from muzzle to rump as the boar rolled over, slamming its enemy against the tree. Still the interloper would not release his grip.

  Groaning, growling, whining in pain and dismay, the huge protector nailed away at nothing more than thin air, unable to land a paw on his adversary stuck like a spring tick on his back. Meanwhile the interloper snorted each time he sank a more secure hold on the tough, thick hair and hide of the protector’s neck—a grunt of impending victory. He drew his head back slightly, eyes wild, taking measure of where next to plant his powerful jaws.