Buffalo Palace tb-2

by Terry C. Johnston

  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.

  “Well?” Cooper demanded, turning on Bass, seizing Titus’s shoulders in his big hands and squeezing hard. “I asked y’. H’ain’t we friends?”

  “Yes, Silas,” he said, trying not to wince with the pain the big man created in that left shoulder, a hot, deep pain where it had not yet fully healed. At the same time he was determined not to show Cooper, nor the others, just how much he hurt. “We’re friends.”

  “Allays will be?”

  Bass nodded. “Yes, always will be friends, Silas.”

  “Good man!” and Silas pounded Titus on the top of the shoulders. “What say we stuff our gullets full this night, fellas … then each dog-man of us rut ary a squaw dry till mornin’ light when Silas Cooper’s outfit pulls out for the high country!”

  “Womens tonight!” Hooks cheered. “Aye—an’ the high country tomorry!”

  Full as a tick about to burst he was as he waddled back to Fawn’s lodge that night long after moonrise. He cradled the boy in his arms on that walk, then laid the sleeping youngster among the blankets where the widow made a warm nest for the child. Titus stood looking down on them both as she tugged up the buffalo robe, then turned and stood before him.

  There in the red-hued glow of the dying fire, Fawn freed the sash from her worn blanket coat and flung them both to the far side of the lodge, her eyes never leaving his. Then with her left hand she pulled at the ties on her right shoulder, doing the same at her left shoulder, loosening the top of her dress enough to slowly slide the skins down over her arms, tugging the garment on down over her breasts, then down her rounded belly and hips, finally to let it spill off her thighs to lay in a heap around her ankles like that last, old snow withdrawing in a ragged ring around the trunk of every aspen, lodgepole, and patch of sage in the surrounding hills.

  He found his mouth bone dry as he watched what the dim flicker of the last limbs and glowing coals did to the dark hue of her brown flesh. His eyes savored the roundness to her, the full sway of her breasts as she stepped on out of her dress, the soft, full curve of her hips as they molded back to her full bottom.

  Just before she moved into him, Bass gazed down at the dark triangle of hair there where her thighs blended into her rounded belly. Then she pressed herself against him, arms encircling his waist, cheek buried against his chest.

  Pushing her away slightly, Titus hurried out of his coat with a shudder of excitement—then yanked his shirt over his head as she hastened to pull at the buckle, loosening his belt so that breechclout and leggings fell together. She knelt immediately, tugging at his moccasins, eagerly yanking at the leggings in a rush of motion, her eyes crawling up his legs to where his flesh began to throb and grow in anticipation of her.

  Then she stretched up over him like a big cat, pushing him back upon their bed, finally arching herself out to full length atop him, her mouth finding his. The taste of her, wild with red meat simmered until tender with those dried leaves she harvested last summer—again his heart sang with happiness that he had taught her to kiss him back. Their mouths sucking, drawing, savoring one another’s as his hands stroked down that concave valley at the small of her back, then rising onto the rounded knoll of her bottom. Fingertips played over the fleshy fullness of her hips only briefly before his hunger drove him to push her off to the side where he could lick and suck on her breasts, running a hand down to that warm delta where she already grew moist.

  Ready for him on this, their one last night.

  Titus rose above her slowly, then suddenly descended as an animal would pounce while Fawn, the woman, pulled him into her feverishly, fingernails digging like puma’s claws, laying claim to the muscles of his back.

  There in the red glow of the fire’s dying, he wordlessly spoke his good-bye in the one language he was sure she understood—for it was, after all, the same language they had spoken all winter long and into the coming of spring to these high places.

  That language of need. Unspoken words that acknowledged you were taking what you needed from another and in return giving back what you thought the other needed most from you. A ferocious hunger there in the dark as the fire slowly went out.

  Having dozed fitfully beside her that last night, morning came slowly—in some ways not soon enough; in others too long in the coming. When he turned to lift the buffalo robe gently, he found her already awake. She pulled at his wrist, turning Bass toward her so one hand could reach up to touch his face, the other slipping down to encircle the flesh that hardened with the barest of her touch.

  She deserves this, he told himself as he mounted her. She deserves so much, much more than I can give her. So it was that he took his pleasure as she took hers from him, one last time.

  And even before his heartbeat had slowed, he rolled from her and slipped from beneath the buffalo robes. Reaching first for his tradewool breechclout, Titus next pulled on the leggings, then yanked the shirt down over his head. He was aware of how she watched his every move as he bent to tie on his moccasins.

  “I will miss your shadow in my lodge, Me-Ti-tuzz.”

  “Come outside to say good-bye to me,” he said, his back to her still, not brave enough to look at her yet, afraid he would too easily respond to the plaintive sound in her voice.

  “I will dress and bring the boy.”

  After buckling the wide belt around his coat, Titus pushed back the antelope hide Fawn used for a door cover and blinked with the first light of the coming sunrise. From their rope corral he retrieved Hannah, along with his saddle horse and one more pack animal, taking them all to the lodge, where he tied the three to a nearby aspen beginning to show the first signs of budding. Back and forth between the lodge and the mule Bass hefted what he had left in the way of pack goods, then finally his season’s catch: those stiffened round beaver hides lashed together in hundredweight bales.

  It was plain as sun that his animals were anxious, restive, eager to go at last. Somehow they knew this was not to be just another hunting trip—no, not with all three of them going. No, the loads Bass secured to their backs, were too heavy to these trail-wise animals. This departure would mean they would not be returning to this place.

  “Howdy, Titus!”

  Bass turned to find Tuttle walking up in his well-greased dark-brown buckskins.

  Bud pointed behind him at his animals picketed at a nearby lodge. “All loaded, I am.” Some of his sandy-brown hair hung down over his eyes, poking from beneath the wolverine-hide cap he had fashioned for himself. “You ready to pull out?”

  “Just ’bout,” he replied. “Where the others?”

  “They’s loading up,” Tuttle answered. “Light enough to ride, so Silas sent me to fetch you up.”

  Just then Bass heard the movement of the lodge door against the taut, frozen lodge skins and turned. Fawn emerged into the cold morning, holding the young boy on her hip. She set him down on the cold ground, where he stood unmoving, clutching her leg and watching the two white men, little puffs of frost at his lips.

  “I’ll catch up with you in just a bit,” he said, his eyes coming back to look at Tuttle. “Gonna say my farewells.”

  Bud nodded. “Don’t be long, Scratch. Less’n you’re fixin’ to pack that squaw along for your wife—best you just kiss her, pat her on her sweet ass, and tell her thankee for warming your robes last winter … then turn around, never look back, an’ be done with it.”

  Bass grimaced with the sudden, cold feel those words gave his belly. Not that he hadn’t been the sort to just run off and leave the first gal he’d ever poked. Not that he wouldn’t have run away fr
om the Ohio River whore neither—but Abigail had beat him to the door. And then there’d been Marissa … the hardest one to leave, because he had come to realize that if he didn’t run when he did, he’d be there still.

  No, by Jehoshaphat—Titus Bass was no innocent, white-winged angel when it came to running off and hurting folks’ feelings bad. But—just to hear Tuttle put it all to words the way he had, why … it gave a man pause to look back at the thoughtless things he’d done in the past, the sort of things a real man wouldn’t have done.

  Bristling at Tuttle, angry with himself for more than he cared to admit right about then, Titus snapped, “Said I’d be along, Bud. I won’t be no time a’tall.”

  “S’awright by me,” Bud replied with a slight shrug. “Just bear it to mind Silas ain’t one to be waiting on no man.”

  “If’n he’s set on leaving ’thout me, he can go right ahead,” Bass said. “I’ll be on your backtrail shortly.”

  Bass watched Tuttle turn away without another word, heading back to midcamp, where more and more people gathered in a growing congregation around Cooper and Hooks as the sun’s light continued to creep on down the side of the mountain toward the shadowy valley where the village sat.

  Bass sighed, as if steeling himself before he turned round to look at her for the last time. When he did, Bass found Fawn staring at the ground. Only the boy gazed up at him. So much like Amy’s younger brothers and sisters—they reminded him—the wee ones who watched older folk with wide, questioning eyes that bored right through to the core of a person.

  As he came to her, Fawn raised her face to him, cheeks wet. For a moment he started to stammer; then, in frustration, Bass quickly looped his arms about her shoulders and clutched her tight. The feel of her tremble within his grasp was almost more than he could bear.

  Why the hell hadn’t he just saddled up and gone before she ever awoke? he asked himself. Like he’d done before? Damned sight easier that way.

  She quivered against him as she said, “My husband rode away one morning. He never came back.”

  That made him angry—then immediately sorry that his back hairs had bristled. She had every right to speak her heart.

  “Fawn, I am not your husband.”

  Finally she admitted, “You are right. You come here for the winter. Now spring winds blow you on down the trail.”

  “You knew when I came—”

  “Yes, I knew,” she interrupted, squeezing her arms about his waist. “I … I did not count on letting my heart grow so fond of you.”

  “It is because you are so lonely,” Bass explained, gazing down at the child. White Horse looked up at the two of them in wonder.

  Fawn pulled her head back to gaze at him herself. “You were not lonely?” When he did not answer right away, she said, “Tell me that you could spend the winter by yourself—those long nights.”

  “If a man had to, I could do—”

  “How alone would you be with your terrible wounds? Tell me that.”

  With pursed lips he finally nodded. “Yes, Fawn. You are right. I would have been lonely without you for the winter.”

  She pressed into him again. “But you go now. Because you go, it hurts to remember back when my husband went away—and he never came back either.”

  He could feel her quake as she said it, and that almost made his eyes spill. How rotten it made him feel to tell her, “But I never promised you I would return. I came to your lodge for the winter.”

  “Will you ever … will I ever see you again?”

  It was hard to speak the truth. “I don’t know. Chances are, I won’t ever see you or your people again … not for a long time.”

  “You will always be welcome in my lodge, Me-Ti-tuzz,” she said, pulling back from him to arm’s length. “And my robes will always be warm for you.”

  “No, Fawn—you will find a husband to warm you in those robes.” Titus put a hand out on the boy’s head, rubbing it gently. “Someone to help this one grow.”

  “He needs an uncle, one who can name him when he is ready to be a warrior.”

  “Yes, Fawn—this boy will deserve a man’s name.” He turned slightly to look over his shoulder as the noise grew.

  The three others had mounted up and had begun to pull out of the village with their pack animals in tow. Men, women, and especially children reached out to touch the horses, the moccasins and legs of the white men taking their leave. Cooper, Hooks, and Tuttle vigorously waved one arm, then another, shouting back at the clamoring crowd surging along with the trappers’ horses and mules.

  Suddenly Bass turned back to Fawn, gripping her shoulders tightly in his hands. “You will give him a strong name, Fawn.”

  “Yes.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Yes, I promise.”

  “Be sure he remembers my name.”

  “Yes. He will remember you.”

  “One day we may meet again, him and me.”

  “And what of us?”

  “Do not watch the horizon for me, Fawn. No one among all of us can say what tomorrow or that horizon will bring. So don’t watch the horizon and wait on me.”

  Rising on her toes and lifting her chin, Fawn pulled on the collar to Bass’s coat, pressing her mouth against his. She was long and lingering in that kiss.

  “I am glad I taught you how to do that,” Titus told her.

  “I like to touch your mouth,” she said as she stepped back from him a ways, parted the fold of the blanket she clutched about her, and pulled a thong over her neck. Quickly she raised herself on her toes again and dropped it over his head.

  Looking down, he took the small pouch, some four inches long, in his hand. It was nearly empty. “What is this?”

  “A gift.

  “Among my people every young man must find his own special medicine that allows him to become a warrior. A woman of his clan usually makes him a pouch in which that young man can put those special things that give him his power.”

  “This … this is my medicine pouch?”

  Fawn nodded. “Yes.”

  As his fingers rubbed it together gently, Bass could tell the pouch was all but empty. “What have you put in it for me?”

  “Some ashes from our last fire together,” she said, her eyes misting now. “A few petals from the flowers just beginning to bloom in the meadow. You … you will have to fill it the rest of the way, Me-Ti-tuzz.”

  Clutching the pouch in one hand, Bass looped the other arm around her and brought her into a fierce embrace. He kissed her one last time, then kissed the tears streaking her cheeks.

  She backed from him another two steps, putting an arm around the boy to hold him tightly to her side. “I will remember the touch of your mouth always.”

  “I’ll never forget how you and Crane saved my life this winter.”

  “The old man’s medicine helped,” Fawn admitted. “But he said it was your power that kept your spirit from flying off to the Star Road.”

  Nearly choking, Bass sobbed, “I will remember you, Fawn. Always.”

  Turning on his heel before he tarried any longer, Bass hurried over to untie the lead rope to Hannah and the packhorse, released the lash to the saddle horse, and leaped into the saddle without using the stirrup. In one swift motion he brought the horse around in a half circle, not daring to look at her again, then immediately gave the animal his heels.

  Into the middle of that camp he plunged as quickly as he could—the bodies of men, women, and children surging past him and his pony, past the two pack animals like water rending itself around a boulder in midstream. Their wishes, and prayers, and their strong-heart songs rocked against his ears as he parted them, slowed to an agonizing walk as the farewell noise grew in volume.

  At last he reached the outer ring of lodges, pushed on to the willow flats, where he could yank on Hannah’s lead rope and jab his heels into the ribs of that saddle horse. Far up ahead on the sunny slope Bass sighted the others climbing off to the left at an easy angle, beginning
their switchback climb out of this great inner-mountain valley, reaching ever toward the Buffalo Pass.

  He would follow without hesitation, for he needed those three far, far more than they would ever need him.

  And tonight, without her warmth beside him—Titus would need something, anything, even the company of those hard-edged, iron-forged three to hold back the aching loneliness until days, perhaps even weeks, from now he would no longer hurt so keenly as he did at this terrible moment.

  Into the first patch of sunlight creeping down the western slopes he hurried that morning, wondering if saying farewell ever got any easier.

  The wild iris, as deep a purple as the Rocky Mountain twilight itself, stood waving in clusters, bobbing beneath the spring breeze that followed Titus across the meadow. Over his shoulder he lugged the weight of that oiled-leather trap sack he himself had sewn up back in Troost’s Livery.

  Bass stopped, turned, and squinted behind him in the afternoon light. The three had chosen again to move downstream. At camp after camp on their journey a little west of north, Silas and the others always set their traps downstream while Titus deemed to take a different path. Up this creek, like the other streams before it, he pushed on through the saw grass and skirted the leafy willow, past wild blue hyacinth and the brilliant lavender of flowering horsemint, making sure not to step upon the delicate brick-red petals of prairie smoke or those tiny white whorls of redwool saxifrage.

  Except for the distant, mocking shriek of the Steller’s jay or the cheep of the bluethroats singing from the branches of the trees over his head, Scratch marveled at the long stretches of silence when the breeze died. Then it would finger its way back down this narrow valley as the day cooled, soughing through the heavy, tossing branches of blue spruce and hearty fir. Back among the shady places, where a soft bed of rotting pine needles covered the forest floor beneath every evergreen and aspen, poked the sun-yellow centers of the pale-blue pasqueflower crocus, straining their saffron faces toward the falling of the sun.

  It was for these few minutes he had alone, both morning and afternoon, that Titus had come to live. The quiet so deep, he could almost hear his own blood surging through his veins. Then the robber jay flashed its gray wings in a low swoop overhead, crying out with its squawk of alarm at the two-legged creature below it. Other birds rustled into flight, called out the general fright, and all grew quiet once more.