Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  Screeching like a scalded house cat, Bass screwed that saddle horse around in a circle about as tight as if it had been dancing two-legged atop one of Ebenezer Zane’s hogshead barrels of Kentucky tobacco leaf bound south for New Orleans. As he was jabbing heels against the horse’s ribs and slapping the loose end of the rein back and forth across its front flanks, Bass heard the yelps of those four behind him.

  Goddamned Arapaho for sure!

  Couldn’t be no others, he knew. This was Ute country—certain as sun. Only raiders wore paint. And the chances were better than good that where he saw four Arapaho … there would be more.

  Glancing over his shoulder, as the horse bolted off for the open ground some distance from the river, Bass caught a glimpse of the four horsemen reaching the horses and mules. Damn, if his trick was working!

  But in that instant flicker of a look through the sweat in his eyes, Bass could count only three of the four warriors slowing up, mixing in among the pack string he had just released and spooked into motion to cover his retreat.

  Just where in hell that fourth horseman had gone, he could not tell in that heartbeat he gave himself before turning back and kicking hell out of the horse some more.

  Hoofbeats right on nis tail now—so close, it made his skin crawl, knowing that sound signaled the approach of the fourth horseman. Instead of finding a painted warrior when he turned to look over his shoulder, Bass caught a glimpse of the mule, straining with all the bottom she had to keep up with him and the saddle horse on the flat-out.

  “C’mon, you girl you!” he bellowed as loud as he could, feeling nis words ripped away from his lips the second they were spoken. “Get up here, Hannah! Get up! Hep, hep, girl!”

  Again and again he called out, assuring her—reassuring himself that she could keep up with him despite her packs as he put more and more ground behind him, racing back downstream.

  For the longest time, in and out of the brush and trees, up and down one rise after another, across shallow draws and sandy islands when he decided to ford the river itself, Bass glanced over his shoulder—finding the solitary horseman still coming. How the wind pulled at his shiny black hair feathered out behind him the way a raven’s wing would glimmer in sunlit flight. His pony’s bound-up tail bobbing instead of flying loose on the run. Just a glimpse … but it looked to be the warrior carried a bow and a handful of arrows in his right hand, that arm held out for balance most of the time, except when he swept it back and struck the pony on the rear flank—urging more and more speed from the straining animal.

  From side to side Hannah bravely lunged after Titus, laboring under her two packs that bobbed and weaved, pulling her in one direction, then the other. Already he could see the first foamy flecks of lather gathering at her chest harness. Ribs heaving, nostrils slickened, muzzle gulping air as she hung as close as her remaining strength allowed.

  But when he looked back at Hannah the next time, the horseman had disappeared.

  Bass blinked sweat from his eyes, then clumsily dragged his sleeve across his face with the arm that clutched the rifle, bobbing up and down like a Boone County child’s dancing toy. Maybeso it was a trick. He glanced at the nearby hillside, just to be sure the warrior hadn’t taken another route. Then Bass twisted to the other side—and still did not find the horseman.

  But it was plain Hannah had started to fade.

  As much as she tried, strained, lunged into the race, she was falling farther and farther behind him. And that made Scratch afraid the fourth horseman would then be able to capture her as her strength faded. As much as she would try to stay far from the Arapaho—it would likely be a futile effort once all her bottom was gone and she could run no more.

  Then she would be snared just like those other horses and mules….

  And that caused him his first doubt for what he had done in releasing the pack string.

  Dry-mouthed, Bass no more hammered the horse with his heels. No more did he whip the rein back and forth, from side to side and flank to flank. He glanced back. Hannah was dropping behind all the farther.

  He was drenched with sweat as he let the weary horse slow of its own, twisting in the saddle to watch the backtrail where he had been riding along the south side of the river, his eyes moving everywhere at once. He licked his dry lips and gulped. Thirsty as he’d ever been—or perhaps it was just the fear.

  The horse fought him a minute as it slowed all the more, tired of the race and thirsty too. Then Titus brought it around and slowly halted. Hannah came up within moments and stopped, heaving, lather at her halter, foam darkening the leather straps of her pack harness.

  Had they made it out?

  Just he, the mule, and this saddle horse?

  Maybeso it was a good ruse, you savvy son of a bitch, he congratulated himself—still watching the far side of the river from the shadows where he sat on the played-out horse. Hannah snorted in her fatigue.

  But every bit as soon as he was patting himself on the back, he heard the echoes of those doubts. Very little time did he give himself for celebration.

  There was a good chance he had been wrong in freeing the pack string, part of him said. After all, he had done it almost on instinct. And now—able to think more about it, maybeso even to second-guess himself and the consequences of just what he had done—that act of self-preservation might not have been the wisest of choices.

  But what other choices had there been? the other side of him demanded.

  Run or fight. Damn well black-and-white, cut-and-dried. Four-to-one odds, at the outside. Hell, there might have been even more of the red niggers off somewhere. Chances good of that, he told himself—justifying his wheeling about and skedaddling all by his lonesome.

  An Arapaho war party of ary four warriors come to Ute country? Just four of ’em?

  About as likely as one of Annie Christmas’s whores showing up in a Natchez church to preach for Sunday meeting!

  Nawww, he’d made the right decision….

  So why did it feel so wrong down in the gut of him?

  Always have figgered y’ to be the only one ’sides me I could trust with all them critters and the truck the rest of us cain’t take with us on downriver.

  That familiar, booming voice rang inside his head as surely as if Silas Cooper were right there, speaking inches from his ears.

  Someone had trusted him with near everything they owned—save for their weapons they took with them on that float down to a trader’s post. Near everything Silas, Billy, and Bud could tally up as their own in this life … and Scratch had gone and abandoned it back there: horses, truck, plunder—all of it.

  What with the three of them gone off with them packs of beaver to trade high on the upper river before rendezvous, this sure as hell wasn’t feeling the way a man ought to treat the fellas who had saved his life more than once.

  I trust y’, Titus Bass. These here other two niggers know I’d damn well trust y’ with ever’thing I own, Scratch … even trust y’ with my own life.

  Goddammit.

  Slamming his heels back into the reluctant horse’s ribs, Bass reined around toward the river, loping past Hannah, who looked up at him almost humanly—her eyes clearly registering a very big question. If not asking what he was doing and where the hell he was going … then he was certain the mule was asking him just what kind of damned fool he thought he was.

  “Stay or come,” he muttered under his breath after she was left behind and he was urging the saddle mount back into the river crossing. “I figger you’ll do only what you wanna do anyway—you cross-headed, stubborn she-critter.”

  He figured there was no good decision in this, no clear path to take. And that, Scratch knew, always made for a mess of things in the end, he brooded as he came up the far bank and slowed the horse to a walk—moving carefully, quietly as possible, back into what was plainly enemy country.

  If he was lucky, he might just stay out of the way of that solitary warrior long enough for the horseman to give up and tur
n back to rejoin the other three. Then Bass could lay to until the sun began to sink. From there he’d follow their trail to the spot where the Arapaho had gathered up that cavvyyard of horses and taken off with them. Having some idea where they were headed, Titus could track them, even as it grew dark … perhaps even after nightfall.

  One way or the other, odds were better than even that he could draw up to them by the next day. With both belt pistols, his rifle, and a pair of knives, he gave himself a chance at making a stand against the four warriors come the dark, especially if he could And them separated and making camp, gathering firewood, or just off to take a piss in the brush. No matter that it was four to one by the thinking of others, Bass figured he had to try.

  He had been trusted with nearly all that the other three had in the world after all their seasons in the mountains. Wouldn’t they do the same for him? Hadn’t they done damn well the same when they had saved his life?

  He had to try.

  Whether it was coming through the Falls of the Ohio in that sleeting snowstorm with Ebenezer Zane’s boatmen … or helping to fight off that angry band of Chickasaw along the Mississippi—Bass always chose to try. Sometimes the worth of a man wasn’t so much measured in the successes or the failures he tallied … as it was in the simple fact that he had tried.

  And when you stirred up that virtue with that solid notion of having had others put their trust in you—then there really was no decision left him. Really no choice but one. So in the end, if he were to go under before the sun fell any farther in the sky … by damn, he’d make him a good show of it.

  Scratch drew himself up and rode on, ready to trail those horsemen and that cavvyyard until he could steal it back from the red niggers that had been dogging his life since that first winter with the Ute.

  When Hannah snorted again, it near made him jump in his skin—so surprised was he that she was right behind him, loping up on the tail root of the saddle horse as if she’d gotten her second wind. Her wet nostrils flared as she snorted—rolling her eyes. And when Scratch turned back around in the saddle, there he was.

  An Arapaho warrior—as big as life, brassy and bold. Slowly emerging from the timber and brush on the south bank as if he didn’t really expect Bass to bolt on him.

  Then Titus realized this wasn’t the solitary warrior who had stayed on his tail after the other three turned back to round up the pack animals Bass had freed. That horseman had been carrying a bow and handful of arrows in his right hand.

  But this one held what appeared to be a smoothbore fusil—a big-caliber flintlock trade gun. As much as he picked at it for a moment the way a man might scratch at a scab crusting over an itchy wound, Titus could not recall ever seeing many of the Ute, nor those Shoshone at rendezvous, and certainly not any of the Arapaho, carrying firearms. Only bows, lances, war clubs.

  For a heartbeat longer he gazed at the fusil the warrior held in his right hand, the butt resting down on the naked top of his brown thigh, there at the top of his legging where the flesh was exposed. Then as the Arapaho began to O his mouth to holler something, Scratch sawed the reins savagely and almost brought the weary, lathered horse down on a narrow strip of sandy island in the riverbed.

  Collapsing to its knees, the horse struggled to get back up as Titus heard the warning cry turn to screeching behind him. The warrior was calling the other three—perhaps more than three.

  Just as the saddle mount jolted up and sidestepped on the soft sand, fighting its halter and twisting its head violently, Bass felt as if someone struck him on the back of the right shoulder with a huge stone, maybe a heavy war club—something swung with tremendous weight and velocity. So much force that he felt it picking him out of the saddle, sensed the horse being yanked out from under him as sky and sand blurred together and his dizzy head began to hail with stars.

  Just before the black hood of unconsciousness slipped over him, Scratch remembered sensing the brush he tumbled into—knowing somehow that he landed on the riverbank. Then, as he sprawled on the hot, sun-seared sand, his head was no longer dizzy. His shoulder no longer cried out in pain.

  Nothing more than cool, blessed black.

  He felt it on the sand beneath his cheek more than heard.

  The slow, methodical step and scratch of a horse’s hooves on the riverbed pebbles and rocks. Click, click, clack. Click. As much as he tried to open his eyes, everything turned out to be a blur.

  The sound was behind him—coming closer, closer. Down in the shallow end of that dark pool where his mind lay, Scratch realized it was the warrior. Closing his eyes into slits to play possum was easy—his mind wasn’t ready to heft or tussle with anything more than lying there, listening….

  Then the hoof sounds ceased. Except for the breeze nuzzling the leaves overhead, there was no other sound. No other noise … but for the whisper of soft-soled moccasins moving across the dry streambed. Then the hiss of some sound above his head, something whirling toward his head in the space of that single heartbeat.

  Then the lights exploded and even his blurred vision was gone. The cool, blessed blackness cascaded over him again.

  How it hurt for him to start that climb out of the thick, oozy black of unconsciousness.

  Blinking his eyes once more, he found everything blurred with a paste of sand and sweat plastered against the side of his face. He closed them again, wishing—praying—for the sweet nothingness to envelop him once again. Better, so much better, than this searing pain.

  He blinked once more, forcing his one eye open into a slit. Even that made his head throb with pain. Something moved in front of him. He heard it at the same time the wet form in his vision moved in a soggy blur across the harsh light that made him wince.

  Some pain in keeping the eye open forced him to close it groggily—but that pain was nothing near the excruciating nausea that threatened to overwhelm him from the back of his mind. No—more so the back of his whole being.

  He felt his right arm twisted out from his body at a crude angle, his legs lying akimbo … slowly, inch by agonizing inch, becoming aware of the rest of his body—then suddenly the back of his head again. The pain seeped through his skull at first, then was suddenly all-consuming. The rest of his body forgotten, Bass thought his head felt as if it were one open, raw wound. As if he’d slid down a poplar tree as a boy, scraping off a generous slab of hide in the descent. Tender, pink, beginning to ooze with the first tiny bubblets of blood, a wound that began screeching out in pain louder than he could cry out with his voice … that’s the way the head was.

  He dared not open his eyes, for every time he did, it hurt the head worse. Nor could he straighten the arm, numbed, unmoving—completely unresponsive. And his legs felt as if they each weighed more than a thousand pounds, compressed there into the sand and riverbed pebbles.

  Maybe they were broke. Maybe everything on him was broke.

  Again he heard the pony’s hooves scraping the rocks and wondered if the warrior was leaving again. Leaving him alive. Then the hooves stopped and Bass heard the scritch-scritching. A faint intrusion into the other faint sounds of that afternoon: breeze whisper, leaf rustle, sound of pony hooves and Indian breathing so close, and that scritch-scritching.

  With the one eye not plastered shut with sweat and sand, Bass dared it open again. Wanting the warrior to go away, wanting the son of a bitch to take the pain and the bright, excruciating sunlight with him. Just let the shadows and the cool blackness return. Mayhaps, just to sleep. He couldn’t move—so maybe it would be best if he just went back to sleep.

  But as he blinked again, the blur in that eye cleared somewhat, and he made out more than the watery movement of swimming colors. Slowly he figured out what he saw were the warrior’s legs … inches away—squatting so close, down on his haunches, for the most part turned away from Bass. Hunched over.

  Titus blinked some more, trying desperately to raise his head from the hot sand stuck to the side of his face like burning grit. And in blinking a bit more, he
looked across that slow rolling dance of the muscles across the warrior’s bare back, looking farther to make out the movement of the warrior’s bare arms as he crouched over something held in his hands. Working on it. Scraping it with his knife … making that scritch-scritching sound. All that Titus could hear besides the restless hooves of the Arapaho’s pony, and the occasional rustle of breeze.

  Scritch …

  Then he took himself a look at what held the warrior’s attention there on the sandy bank beside the river. Something dangling from his left hand where he pressed it on top of his right thigh. Dangling like … a scalp.

  How he wanted to get a hand up to rub the hot sweat and sand out of his eye, the thick goo he blinked to clear so he could tell-for sure—

  Scratch’s breath seized in his chest, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever breathe again. It hit him as squarely and with as much force as had that blow to his back as he’d wheeled away from the warrior in the middle of the river. Like a stone war club, the realization slammed up alongside his head with its sudden, shocking power. Like a bright, meteoric light coming on inside his skull—shooting shards of hot, icy light in a thousand directions at once.

  It’s … those long brown curls … damn—the son of a bitch has my hair!

  How Titus wanted to cry out, to reach out, to lunge from where he lay. But the very most he could do was to fight off the black cloud a little longer as he grew so very, very weary again. His head grown so damned heavy, he had no hope of holding it up. With a stifled gasp Scratch let it lie on the hot sand—sensing its prickly heat beneath his wet cheek. Gasping for air, so afraid he was about to empty his belly then and there, Bass gulped down the nausea … staring all the time at the warrior crouched over his gory work.

  Leastways, not the whole damn thing, he told himself. It looked small—wasn’t the whole thing from brow to nape.

  Blinking again as the thick, warm ooze ran into the corner of his eye, Bass fought to stay awake long enough to get himself a good look at the warrior … the one who had done this to him. But the Arapaho was turned just so at his work. That bare brown back, the strong young shoulders. And those leggings, with the wide strip of porcupine quillwork down the outer seam—