Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  Yet repeatedly Bird in Ground had warned Scratch: the Blackfoot came raiding as the spring winds grew warm. Just as the River Crow would go riding off to raid Blackfoot country. Ponies and scalps … and if the opportunity presented itself—the Crow would always bring back an infant or a young child. Such stolen treasures would one day grow up to be Apsaalooke, no longer the enemy. After all, Bird in Ground had explained, there were never enough Apsaalooke, would never be enough when it came to defending their homeland against the powerful enemies who had Absaraka surrounded.

  Perhaps it was true that Akbaatatdia did watch over his people, the Crow, protecting them from all those who outnumbered them.

  Perhaps that powerful spirit that Bird in Ground called Grandfather Above had watched over Titus Bass, as well, while he was in Absaraka. Not that Scratch had ever been one to particularly believe in the naming of spiritual forces, as others, both white and red, were wont to do. Those who believed in such things had always seemed to be the sort to turn their lives over to such spirits rather than trusting in themselves, he figured. Whether it was the white man’s God, his Lord of Hosts, even the Archangel Michael and ol’ Lucifer himself—or the simple, unadorned beliefs of an honest man like Bird in Ground, who explained that the Grandfather Above was present in all things, and the closest spirit the Crow had to the white man’s devil could only be the playful practical joker called Old Man Coyote.

  So perhaps it was that trickster who was toying with Titus Bass right now as he forded the Bighorn near its mouth, swatting his arms at clouds of mosquitoes and big green deerflies that hovered above the sweating backs of every one of the horses and mules as they splashed up through the brush on the east bank.

  There simply was no fort on either side of the Bighorn River.

  In angry frustration he lashed Hannah’s lead rope to some willow, knowing the other animals would not wander far, then remounted and pushed the saddle horse down the bank, fording the swollen Yellowstone. Riding an arc of more than two miles from east to west along that north bank, Scratch found no fur-company buildings nor pole corrals, no sign of any white men. Only some two dozen old lodge rings and fading black fire pits on this side of the river. Sign that was likely more than a year old. That, and a lot of buffalo chips scattered among the hoof-pocked ground.

  In utter, all-consuming disappointment he swam the horse back over late that afternoon, redressed into his dry clothing, then got the animals moving east once more, growing more confused and concerned for his partners.

  Perhaps they hadn’t made it, he began to fear. Maybe some accident had befallen them back yonder between here and the great bend of the Yellowstone. Worse still—attacked. But, no—he tried to shake off that nagging uncertainty as he pushed on east away from the Bighorn itself, resolutely.

  After all, he’d come down the Yellowstone behind them. Wouldn’t he have seen some sign of a fight if the other three had been jumped by a Blackfoot raiding party that chanced onto the trappers? Wouldn’t he have seen one of the rafts pulled up to the bank, or if it had been set adrift, wouldn’t he have seen it snagged in some of the driftwood piles the Yellowstone itself gathered every few hundred yards when running full and frothy the way it did in spring?

  Wouldn’t there be a chance he’d seen a body trapped in the same downriver driftwood piles?

  Unless the Blackfoot dragged ’em off, he convinced himself. Half-alive. Tall and gory were the tales of how the Blackfoot loved to torture a man….

  And then Bass told himself that he could have missed all sign of the trio’s destruction, because he had only come down the north bank of the Yellowstone until reaching the mouth of the Bighorn—and he hadn’t hugged right up to the bank, at that. What with picking the easiest country to cross with all these animals, Titus hadn’t always stayed in constant sight of the riverbank. Could be he’d missed something. Could be there’d been some sign on the south side of the river, and he’d passed it right on by.

  But he hadn’t come far from the east bank of the Bighorn—the certainty of what had befallen the others looming all the larger with every step—when he spotted the ruins squatting on a small thumb of high ground not far ahead.

  After dismounting nearby and leaving the saddle horse to graze with the rest, Scratch hurried to the burned and overgrown ruins of the small log post—hopeful that he would find where the trio were to leave him their notice. At least now he knew for certain there was no Missouri Fur Company post here where the trio could trade their plews for goods and liquor. And that meant that now he knew the three would have to push on down the Yellowstone, on down the Upper Missouri until they got close to the Knife River … but where was the word from them they had promised to leave him?

  Perhaps an angry band of Indians had burned down the fort’s cabins and stockade in some long-ago season past … or maybe the white traders had done it themselves when they’d abandoned the post. Maybe the Crow trade wasn’t all that profitable for the company, he mulled. Not any longer, since men like Ashley had come to the mountains with skin trappers of their own to strip a piece of country bare. Maybeso the fur companies that had of a time ruled on the northern rivers no longer could survive the competition.

  Stepping over the burned hulk of a cottonwood wall now collapsed into the soil where the stockade and cabin ruins were being overgrown year after year by grass and weed and the blooming purple crowns of wavyleaf thistle, Titus remembered how Cooper said the traders were operating their post not all that long ago.

  “Twenty-one,” Bass said to himself, scratching at his bearded cheek. “Maybe twenty-two it was.”

  But Silas and the rest said they had been here not long after the fort had been constructed and manned … just like the Spaniard Manuel Lisa had raised his own fort somewhere nearby more than ten years before that.

  Back of the ruins rose a soft-sloped knoll he hurried to on foot, climbed, then carefully appraised the surrounding country. How he wished now that there was some high point of rimrock the likes he had discovered back upriver a ways, some great flat-topped promontory where a man could see for himself a good stretch of country.*

  But from up here on this low knoll, and from his explorations back by the mouth of the Bighorn itself, Scratch could see no indication of another stockade. Too much time had passed since Lisa and Henry had abandoned the northern country.

  “Mayhaps a dozen years or more,” he reminded himself quietly, despair sinking in atop that hill.

  After all those winters and summers, there simply wouldn’t be much left of an abandoned stockade and some dirt-roofed cabins, a post burned down by those who sought to leave nothing behind for the brownskins. Too many seasons for the ground itself to reclaim any ruins, grass too tall for him to spot anything, anyway.

  He sighed, sure there was no chance that Silas and the rest had left him some notice, some sign, some indication they had been there and were heading on downriver. For a moment there his hope had soared: if not at the Missouri Fur Company post, then likely the trio had left all important word at the earlier Bighorn post Isaac Washburn had spoken of during Lisa’s day on the upper rivers.

  Damn.

  But in gazing west at the path of the falling sun, he realized he didn’t have time to mourn and brood about it now. Time he should be working on filling his belly with what was left of that antelope he’d shot two days back. And some coffee to keep him warm until he rode off to find himself a likely place for a cold camp farther downriver.

  But as he descended the knoll and walked past the ruins, his belly didn’t feel all that hungry. Just empty and cold—a feeling he thought for a moment was something he could remedy with a juicy steak and some strong coffee. Yet no matter how much he tried to feed his belly, what bothered him would not be satisfied until he knew what had become of the three.

  Call it fear. Call it doubt. Call it what he would—Scratch figured he was smart enough to realize that until he knew for sure, then there would be plenty of room in his imagination for all s
orts of possibilities.

  And that scared him down to his roots.

  Rising from the bank of the river with his coffee kettle among the broad-leafed cattails and slogging out of the water lapping against the shore, he told himself he did not want to believe anything but the best in people. Despite what others older and perhaps much wiser than he might believe—Titus simply wanted to give every man the sake of the doubt. Far better was it for him to fear the worst that could befall the trio than to think the worst of them. Far, far better to believe that some terrible fate had rubbed them out than to allow himself to believe that he had been taken advantage of.

  Alone again … but Scratch would simply not allow himself to even begin to consider anything but that Lady Fate’s terrible and capricious ways had robbed him of the notice they were going to leave at this post if they found it abandoned. If it had been something scrawled on a scrap of canvas with a bit of fire-pit charcoal and then hung loosely at the corner of the ruins … perhaps the wind might be the playful culprit. Or Old Man Coyote.

  That evening as he waited for his coffee to come to a boil and he hung the thick antelope steak from a sharpened stick over the flames to drip huge drops of fragrant grease into his cookfire, Bass grappled with it until he decided there was no other way but to backtrack along the south bank of the Yellowstone. He could remember the last of the trio’s campsites he had run across as he’d marched downriver. Back there on the north bank—and a hell of a distance back up the Yellowstone.

  So somewhere between here and there he would likely have his answer. To find where they had pulled over to the bank, tied up their rafts, and built their night fire. If not a campsite, then he would likely find evidence of their ruin. His worst fears conjured up images of discovering one of the rafts crushed and broken against some boulders, perhaps one of their scalped and mutilated bodies tangled in the driftwood. And all those plews—a rich man’s ransom in beaver—gone to the bottom of the swollen river.

  That evening as the light began to fade slowly from the summer sky, Scratch ate slowly, chewing each bite deliberately but without any real enjoyment, sipping at his coffee without relish. There wasn’t enough antelope or thick coffee to fill the yawning hole of his doubt, the chasm that was his fear.

  After cooling the small coffee kettle so he could repack it among his camp plunder, Bass walked over to the grazing animals. Thinking he ought to try cheering himself as he threw the blanket onto the back of the saddle horse, Titus began to whistle notes of some tune that he quickly recalled as a song the boatmen sang. It helped to think back on how Ebenezer Zane’s and Hames Kingsbury’s crew had held together—one for all—men he could put his faith, trust, and loyalty in. Scratch’s whistle became a bit merrier at the remembrance.

  Then, as he bent over to retrieve the saddle and rose with it suspended across both arms, he was shoved from behind.

  Dropping the saddle as if it were a hot coal, Scratch wheeled, yanking at the big pistol stuffed into the wide sash at his waist—his heart in his throat as he yanked back the hammer with the heel of his left hand.

  Surprised now more than scared—he wagged his head and stuffed the pistol away, swallowing down the hard lump of instant fear that had choked him.

  “D-damn, girl,” he said with relief as the mule moved closer, her head bobbing up and down as if she acknowledged that term of address he often used around her. “Don’t you go scaring me like that.”

  Quickly rubbing her muzzle, Titus turned away and went back to whistling the riverboatman’s song as he bent to pick up the saddle. Again she jabbed her nose right between his shoulder blades, shoving him forward clumsily. He stumbled a couple of steps, lunging against the saddle horse that sidestepped out of his way.

  “Damn you!” he growled this time. “You need to stop that, Hannah. I got work to do here.”

  Again he turned his back on the young mule and stepped toward the horse. Not realizing, he went back to whistling the merry tune and had just managed to throw the saddle up onto the animal’s back and was bending over to reach under the horse’s belly for the far half of the cinch when out of the corner of his eye he saw Hannah coming for him.

  “You stay right there,” he warned with a wag of his finger. “I ain’t in no mood to be putting up with no pranks you done learned on your own.”

  Yanking up on the cinch, he twisted to keep an eye on her as his hands completed the task, and went back to whistling … watching her bob her head up and down as she came for him again.

  “Why … I’ll be go to hell right here,” he said quietly as she moved up close enough. He scratched that forelock between her ears. “And be et for the devil’s tater.”

  Maybe she wasn’t being a devilish, cantankerous, playful sort when she came up and tried to get his attention in her own way. Perhaps he was just too dumb to notice at first. Scratch decided he’d just have to prove it to himself, here and now before they went off to find a cold camp where they would bed down.

  Stepping over to the far side of the horse, he waited the few minutes until Hannah went back to her grazing. As soon as her head lowered and she began to tear off the tops of the tall stems of porcupine and bluegrass, Titus quietly moved away, taking a roundabout route as he made for the walls of the abandoned post.

  Reaching the ruins, he sat down on the collapsed corner of the burned logs where the grass and weeds and the wavyleaf thistle had knotted themselves over the charred stumps, then waited a few minutes more to be sure she wasn’t paying him any attention.

  Then he wet his lips with the tip of his tongue and whistled. The same sort of whistle he had used to call their old hound, Tink, in from the timber at the family’s farm, or back to his side when they’d been out hunting together. Not the boatman’s song he had been whistling slightly out of tune—but the sort of notes a man would string together to bring an animal …

  By gloree! She raised her big jug-head, perked up her ears, and promptly headed his way without the least hesitation.

  What with the way she was coming right over, Scratch felt he should give her a reward … but as he stood, Bass realized he had nothing to give the mule. When she stopped before him there by the ruins, he swiftly bent and tore up a handful of the long porcupine grass and held it out in an open palm.

  Hannah sniffed it, nuzzled it a moment with the end of her nose, then snorted—blowing the grass stems off his palm so she could rub her nose on his hand. As he stood there in surprise, the mule craned her neck so she could work her head back and forth beneath his hand the way she might scratch herself on a branch of convenient height. Yet … he saw this as something different.

  She was wanting something more than just a soothing scratch. She was wanting his touch.

  As Bass cooed to her, he rubbed her ears and forelocks and muzzle the way he knew she enjoyed it. At times she would rock her head over against his shoulder, lay it momentarily against his chest, then cock one of her dark, round eyes up at him—as if studying the man very, very closely. This man she was coming to know, this man she was learning to give her affection to.

  “We best get moving off for the night,” he finally said some time later when he again became aware of just how little light was left in that late-spring sky.

  As long as the days were lasting at this time of the year, he wasn’t all that sure if it might not be the first part of summer already. And now he had the prospect of losing another week or more in backtracking on his trail here to assure himself he hadn’t missed any evidence that disaster or ambush had befallen the trio on their trip downriver.

  After climbing atop the saddle mount, he led Hannah around and through the rest of the stock as they grazed contentedly in the bluestem, pushing aside the thistles’ purple globes. It took a third trip through, with his growing a bit frustrated and slapping a rawhide braided lariat against his leg, grumbling at them all to get the herd moving. Reluctant were they to leave when it seemed they had just begun to settle in for the night.

  He d
id not end up taking them far at all—less than a couple of miles on east of the post ruins, he noticed a spot along the bank where the bulrushes and spear-leafed cattails naturally parted wide enough to allow a man to water his stock come morning. Twisting in the saddle, Scratch looked back toward the ruins in the distance, calculating just how far he had come, then glanced at the sky, still a much paler hue in the west.

  Settling himself back around, he figured that he hadn’t come far enough to elude any horsemen who might be watching, needed to push on a little farther—when he spotted the large circle of trampled grass there among the overhanging branches of the tall and stately cottonwoods. Near the center of the trampled grass sat a blackened circle. Several charred limbs lay within the pile of ash. No ring of rocks had they used to circle their fire, nor had they dug a pit for it. Nothing more elaborate than gathering up their kindling and starting their fire then and there with flint and steel.

  Quickly yanking both feet out of the broad stirrups and kicking his right leg over the saddle horn, Scratch dropped to the grass and hurried alone to the site. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the large circle some forty feet across, studied it for a moment more—then lunged ahead to the circle of ash. Squatting there, he held a hand no more than a breath over the charred limbs. No heat.

  Now he stuffed his fingertips into the ash. Still no heat. Swirling his fingers around m the fire heap, he could find no telltale warmth of a single coal still glowing deep among the ash.

  His nose helped him locate the bone heap nearby where they had butchered the doe—cutting out the steaks and hams and other juicy morsels without dismembering the carcass. They would have eaten their fill for supper, breakfasted on what had been cooked and left over the night before, then taken the rest with them when they’d pushed off.

  Standing abruptly, he scooted over to that wide parting in the bulrushes and cattails. There at the bank where the foxsedge grew he saw their moccasin prints. Saw where they had scraped the ends of the crude rafts, carving scars into the muddy bank. Found the rope burns where they had lashed the two craft on up the bank, tying them off around a pair of cottonwood. Through their single night at this spot, the long ropes had brushed back and forth across the bank’s vegetation as the rafts had bobbed here in the quiet eddy of the Yellowstone’s current.