The Titans

by John Jakes

  But Joseph was his kola. For that reason, and another even more compelling, the Sioux brave never spoke about disturbing aspects of his friend’s behavior. The reason was Kola’s certainty that Joseph was guided by his own inner voice.

  Every Sioux heeded this most sacred and mysterious of all instructors. It told him where he must go, and how he must behave. It sometimes spoke when a man was awake, but more often it spoke through dreams.

  Even the winkte, the target of so many warrior jests, did no more than follow the promptings of his inner voice when, as a boy, he chose to don women’s clothing and face paint for the rest of his life. Thus every winkte—and they were numerous—was revered as well as scorned. A winkte was often asked to name a newborn so the child would never suffer sickness, for instance. Almost without exception, the inner voice of a human being was wakan.

  So Kola believed that in all things, Joseph was only obeying the inner voice Kola would never hear, just as Joseph would never hear his. The belief made Kola forgiving of behavior he might otherwise have questioned.

  The Sioux, a dark, supple young man wearing only a buffalo skin breechclout and moccasins with bull rawhide soles, glanced at the scorching sun which appeared to be sitting on the rim of the gully. The sun’s glare threw the outline of his large sharp nose across one side of his face and created tiny shadows beside the two puckered scars in the hard flesh above his nipples. At eighteen he had committed himself to the religious frenzy of the gazing-at-the-sun dance, stamping and reeling for hours around the sacred pole until his zeal gave him strength to mortify his own flesh. The wooden skewers inserted under his skin by the shaman had torn free and fallen, bloody at the ends of the braided ropes attached to the pole. The twin scars were testimony to his courage.

  The sun was a fearful and sacred thing to the Indian: another tangible sign of the presence of Wakan Tonka—the Great Mystery, the driving force and spirit of life which was in every place, every person, and every occurrence, though in ways not always discernible. This afternoon, however, the sun had a more practical significance.

  “The time is late, Joseph. The buffalo will move soon to the night bedding place.”

  “Or find a larger herd.” Joseph nodded. Kola had taught him that, in August, when the rutting season began and the bulls and cows grew impatient to breed, the animals tended to gather and migrate together in huge numbers—a thousand, two thousand—which made hunting more difficult. “We’ll get them before they do,” the white man continued. “I’ve already picked out the cow leading them.”

  Kola murmured a syllable to show the pleasure he took from his friend’s confidence. In the spring when they’d first traveled together, Joseph had been unable to distinguish a leader in a herd of massive bulls, smaller cows, and their calves. Out of gratitude, Kola had taught him much. Kola did not hate white men with the ferocity of some of his race. He’d been around forts too long as a youth. And he’d been cast out from his own tribal group because of the wrath and influence of Sweet Summer’s husband.

  Joseph reached down to scratch his right leg just above the boot where he hid his skinning knife. “There are half a dozen bulls, the rest cows. Been through a grass fire not too long ago. Hides look burned on the hindquarters where they’ve shed. Two of the bulls and two of the cows must have had their eyes ruined when they stampeded through the fire.”

  A scowl ridged Kola’s brow. “Four of them do not see?”

  “Practically sure of it.”

  The Sioux digested that. It made what they were about to do more difficult. The bison lacked good vision even when they hadn’t been injured. But they possessed sharp senses of smell and hearing to offset the lack. Blind buffalo—common on the prairie—were even more alert to alien scents and sounds.

  “Is there a hiding place where the wind is right?”

  “Some brush. I have it all laid out.”

  Joseph spoke in a quiet, pleasant voice, slurring, and softening some of his words. Kola had encountered a few whites who talked the same way. Driving small herds of longhorn cattle, they had ridden up from the southern part of the land mass Joseph had frequently tried to describe for him, but whose immensity defied Kola’s imagination. He was also unable to form more than a rudimentary mental picture of the fantastic collections of structures Joseph called cities, that the white man assured Kola were plentiful beyond eastern rivers Kola had never seen.

  A happy curve relieved the severity of Joseph’s mouth as he gestured to his companion. “Let’s unpack the guns.”

  A strong kola, this stranger who had fed and cared for him until he could walk and function again. A kola who handled white men’s weapons well, although with a strange, almost possessive fondness.

  Kola tied the reins of the mules and clambered into the rear of the wagon. He unwrapped the blanket and removed the three loaded rifles, along with a hide cartridge pouch. Kola noticed how perspiration appeared on Joseph’s upper lip and a smile brightened his eyes at the sight of the trio of powerful buffalo killers.

  ii

  Conscious of the lateness of the hour, the two men still exercised caution in climbing from the ravine and working their way in a large semicircle to the brush from which Joseph would attempt to force the small herd into a stand. In fifteen minutes they were in place, both kneeling, the buffalo guns laid out side by side within easy reach of Joseph’s right hand.

  The equipment for the hunt consisted of three single-shot pieces: a rather battered Laidley-Whitney .50 caliber, and two fine Ballard .45s, all three capable of accepting the 70-grain powder charge required to bring down a rampaging bull. Kola didn’t know where Joseph had gotten any of the buffalo killers. The white man was not talkative on the subject, except to say—usually with one of those mirthless smiles—that he wasn’t the original owner of any of the rifles. Kola, however, had shown him how to use them on their proper targets.

  The small herd rested about sixty yards away. The immense bodies were half concealed by the windblown grass. Great jaws moved slowly as the animals chewed the regurgitated grasses they’d cropped during their morning graze. Kola noted the tawny hides of the two calves nestling next to their mothers.

  Joseph wiped a gauntlet across his wet brow and pointed. With a nod, Kola acknowledged and endorsed Joseph’s selection of the presumed leader. Both the bulls and the cows had angry red hindquarters. Their winter protection—long, shaggy hair and thick, woollike undercoats—had been shed or rubbed away. On the flanks of the resting animals Kola could easily discern scorch marks and large sores. At close range he would have seen many more sores; the bare hides attracted swarms of biting insects during the summer months.

  Joseph held out his right hand. Kola passed him the first of the Ballards, then laid out extra cartridges from the pouch. The success of a stand depended not only on the witlessness of the buffalo but upon the speed and accuracy with which the hunter singled out the successive leaders.

  Slowly, Joseph raised the Ballard to his shoulder. There was no sound except the faint murmur of the wind blowing from the direction of the herd. Joseph’s hands lost color as he took a firmer grip and laid his cheek into sighting position.

  All at once, in the ravine behind them, one of the mules brayed.

  Not loudly. But the sound was enough to bring the cow leader to her feet.

  The rest of the herd lumbered up. Kola watched Joseph’s mouth go white and his eyes flick angrily toward the disastrous noise. Then Kola heard another sound from the same direction. The tinkle of bit metal—? He was almost positive.

  He had no time to think of who it might be. The herd was starting to move. Joseph fired.

  The lead cow bellowed, struck exactly where Kola had taught Joseph to hit. Behind the last rib, the point at which a bullet or an arrow would pierce and destroy the air sacs white men called lungs. Kola had not needed to teach Joseph how to shoot. He was an unerring marksman.

  The herd grew frantic as the cow teetered and collapsed on her forefeet, shoulders heavin
g. A blind bull swung toward the source of the shot, then went plunging past the dying leader. Even nineteen bison with two calves trailing set up a formidable rumble in the ground.

  Joseph never took his eyes from the running herd. His tension was betrayed only by the sweat rivering down his cheeks and neck. He thrust the Ballard to the ground. Kola slapped the second one into his palm. In seconds, Joseph was ready to fire.

  But he held his shot while Kola swiftly and expertly re-loaded the first rifle. Joseph was watching the fleeing herd. Letting them go far enough. Fifty yards. Seventy-five—

  Suddenly a lumbering cow separated from the rest, veering north. The others followed. With the new leader identified, Joseph fired. A cry of pain, and she went down.

  The buffalo kept running, widening the distance between themselves and the hunters. Soon the animals would be out of range of the Laidley-Whitney Joseph held ready. But the pattern repeated itself. A new cow charged to the front. Joseph dropped her with a thunderous roar of the gun.

  They waited. The critical moment—

  A blind bull slowed and lowered his shaggy head.

  A calf straggled to a stop.

  A cow dashed on, then turned back.

  After another few seconds, the entire herd, baffled by the loss of three leaders in quick succession, came to a halt. It was the classic stand every hunter hoped for if his timing and his luck were good.

  A smile curled Joseph’s mouth. He swabbed the filthy cuff of his shirt across his forehead. Then, with barely a sound, he climbed to his feet.

  “It was well done, Joseph,” Kola whispered as he finished loading the Laidley-Whitney. There was genuine admiration in his voice.

  “Because I had a fine teacher. Now we can take our time. You’ll have a nice feast tonight.”

  Kola could practically taste the savory brain and small intestine that would be left after the work of slaughtering. His mouth watered, and he thanked the holy spirits for bringing him into the presence of this white man. With a merry glint in his eye, he fell into the routine of loading and passing the buffalo guns to Joseph, who simply stood in place and shot the stupefied buffalo one by one.

  Shadows lengthened on the baking prairie. The wind soon stank of blood and the contents of emptied intestines—to Kola the sweetest aroma on earth. As the last cow dropped and the forlorn calves wandered around the corpses searching for their mothers, the Sioux reminded himself that before he and Joseph moved north to the fire road, he must cut out and scatter the hearts of the dead animals so the herd would regenerate itself.

  The echoes of the last shot went rolling away into the sullen red haze along the western horizon. Joseph relaxed, squatted down, and exhaled loudly. He laid the second Ballard on the ground.

  “Well, my friend, there’s the stake that’ll keep us alive come winter.”

  Kola glanced at the dead buffalo. He was aware of the increasing slaughter of the herds upon which his people depended for food, clothing, shelter, horse gear, weaponry, religious objects—even the hair-stuffed calfskin balls and netted hoops the children used in their games. No useful portion of the animal was ignored. Yet for a dozen summers and more, white hunters had been slaying buffalo in enormous numbers, and wasting most of the precious parts. Now here he was, doing the same. He wouldn’t have done so except for the promptings of his inner voice which had told him he was destined to ride with Joseph. But as he eyed the dead animals, he couldn’t keep a touch a disapproval from his voice.

  “We will sell all of them?”

  “Yes. All.”

  “Keep nothing for ourselves?”

  “Kola, we can buy shirts cheaper than we can skin and sew them. We’ll sell off the hindquarters to the Union Pacific at a dime a pound, just the way that fellow Cody’s doing down south on the line’s other branch. Further east, we should net a dollar and a quarter for every hide, two bits for every tongue. The people back east want fine quality lap robes and delicacies for dinner. If we don’t supply them, others will. We’ll have a stake and some profit left over—wait.”

  Kola saw Joseph’s eyes dart past his shoulder. Back toward the rim of the ravine. He knew it must have been a horse he’d heard, because Joseph’s eyes were wide as he grabbed for the Laidley-Whitney.

  “No!” someone shouted in a loud, rough voice. “You’re covered.”

  Joseph’s fingertips hovered an inch from the buffalo gun. Slowly he withdrew his hand. His lips barely moved. “Three of them. Where in the hell did they come from?”

  “Nothing personal, y’know,” the harsh voice called. “We just want those buffalo. Touch the guns and we’ll blow you down.”

  iii

  Joseph surrendered to the thieves without protest. Their leader announced his terms. They would relieve Joseph and Kola of the wagon, the dead buffalo, and the pony, leaving only the mules. Joseph accepted the statements with a resigned shrug. He even agreed to enjoy the hospitality of a cook fire laid at the rim of the ravine by the trio of tattered, foul-smelling white men. When Kola started to protest, Joseph laid a hand on his arm.

  “Got to eat, don’t we? Might as well be their food as ours.”

  Kola felt betrayed. He had never seen his friend so resigned—or so uncaring. By the time darkness fell, Joseph and the three other whites were seated around a chip fire in the cooling air—exactly as if they were longtime acquaintances.

  To show his pique, Kola squatted several yards away. He was still astonished at the way Joseph had given up their guns and the animals whose sale would have kept them sheltered and fed when the snows drifted on the plains.

  Sullen, Kola watched Joseph amiably accept a cup of coffee and a tin plate of beans from the leader of the thieves, a revolver-toting fellow with a cocked eye, a long, untrimmed gray beard, a gray military overcoat that reached below his knees, and a leaf-crowned hat with a five-pointed star cut out of the felt just above the greasy band.

  “Thank you,” Joseph said as he took the plate. Down in the ravine, the horses belonging to the thieves stamped and fretted. “I’ll need something with which to eat.”

  “Use your hands.” The leader smiled from directly across the fire. “I don’t think it would be prudent to lend you a knife.”

  Kola frowned, trying to grasp an elusive thought hovering in his mind. He couldn’t.

  Joseph’s eyes lingered on the leader’s weather-beaten face. The leader was the only one of the trio who exhibited any sign of strength or character. The thief seated on Joseph’s left was a shivering boy of seventeen or eighteen. He wore a forage cap, a sweat-stained shirt, a blue neck bandana, and a holstered revolver that looked much too large for his frail, nervous hands.

  The thief guarding Joseph’s right was a stubby man in a ripped blue coat. A gold ring shone in the pierced lobe of his left ear. Quietly, he began singing to himself:

  “Oh bury me not in the deep, deep sea,

  Where the dark blue waves

  Will roll over me—”

  “No chanteys, Darlington,” the leader said. “If you’re going to sing that song, use the prairie words. You keep forgetting you’re a landsman now.”

  “Not by choice, mate.” Darlington concentrated on his beans.

  The leader shook his head. “Sorry excuses for hands, aren’t they?”

  Joseph didn’t reply. The man with the earring seemed irritated. He limited his protest to a glance. The leader added, “A man takes what he must.”

  “Including another man’s kill,” Joseph remarked with a frosty smile. “I’m sorry to say I don’t consider than an honorable action, mister—?”

  “Major,” the older man broke in. “Major T. T. Cutright.”

  “Southern, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. I judge the same from your voice. Were you in the war?”

  Joseph’s lids screened his eyes a moment. Kola thought he saw something secretive glimmer there. But he immediately lost interest. He was still outraged by Joseph’s cowardly acquiescence to the demands of the thieves wh
o had ridden up behind them at precisely the wrong moment. As soon as the men were gone, he would separate from his companion. He thought he’d gotten to know him since the spring grass greened. Now he was discovering he hadn’t. And Joseph’s inner voice had abruptly turned him in a new, unacceptable direction.

  “Last with General Hood.” Joseph nodded in reply. “You?”

  Cutright wiped bean juice from his beard with the sleeve of his gray overcoat. “I saw service, but I’d prefer not to say where. There was an unfortunate incident.”

  “What happened?”

  “My commander was yellow. When he ordered a retreat, he took a ball in the back of his head. I was accused.”

  Joseph said nothing. Outright laid his plate aside, reached for his coffee. “You haven’t told me your name, sir.”

  “Kingston. Joseph Kingston.”

  Cutright sat up straight. “Kingston?”

  “That’s right. Something wrong?”

  “Not exactly wrong, but—” Cutright looked a bit more wary. “I come from near Fort Worth. I heard of a Joseph Kingston who shot a crooked monte dealer there last winter, then murdered a peace officer who came to arrest him. That Mr. Kingston fled before he could be apprehended. There’s a bounty on his head. Two hundred dollars.”

  Joseph’s face took on a curious, stony quality. “I’ve never been in Fort Worth. Coincidence, undoubtedly.”

  Cutright uttered a short, wry laugh. “Undoubtedly.”

  Kola stared at his companion, suddenly struck by something he’d forgotten. It had been stirring in his mind ever since Cutright’s reference to a knife. The thieves had taken the three buffalo rifles to add to their own stock of two. But they’d only subjected Joseph to a cursory visual search. They’d completely overlooked the hidden skinning knife.

  All at once Kola grew warm. Could the undiscovered knife be the reason for Joseph’s apparent cooperation? He fervently hoped so. Despite his bare flesh—he hadn’t been permitted to go to the wagon for his shirt and leggings—his entire body felt hot.