Buffalo Palace tb-2

by Terry C. Johnston

  “I … I see,” Titus had told her sheepishly, pantomiming for her to continue her killing of the varmints, hammering his fist down on the big rock. “Go ’head on, woman. Kill every last one of ’em for all I care!”

  Again and again she pounded, until she leaned back in exasperation and gazed at him. No matter that he could not understand what words she chattered in disgust at the moment. But clearly there was resolve on her lined face as Fawn wrenched up his shirt and canvas breeches and quickly ducked from the lodge with them in hand.

  “Where you going?” he demanded as the door flap slid back in place, a chilling gust of winter breeze tickling across his bare flesh.

  With a shiver Titus pulled a smoke-scented blanket around his shoulders and scurried out the doorway in a crouch. Squinting in the new day’s light reflected off the snow, he followed her as she stomped off toward a fire several other women were tending that early morning. Holding the shirt out as far as she could at the end of one arm, along with the breeches and his wool longhandles in the other hand, the widow instructed the others to stand back from their work at smoking a large elk hide draped over a tripod of saplings.

  His bare feet began to complain with the cold of the trampled snow as he shrieked in frustration, “Said to you—where in hell you going with my clothes?”

  Turning to look over her shoulder at him, Fawn muttered something in Ute to the others, then without further ceremony hurled the breeches beneath the kettle.

  “Wait!” he hollered, lunging forward, not sure how he was going to rescue the pants from the flames that smoldered, sputtered, then suddenly began to catch hold of the greasy wool fabric.

  “Damn you!” Titus said as he neared the woman.

  But Fawn paid him no mind as she proceeded to fling the shirt atop the breeches—waited a few heartbeats until they began to smoke in kind—then hurled the filthy, faded red longhandles over the flames. Sighing with finality she stepped back, crossing her arms across her breasts, no small degree of self-satisfaction apparent on her face.

  Skidding to a stop at the fire’s side in a flurry of powdery snow, he grabbed a long stirring stick away from one of the other women. She immediately jerked it back from him so he had no choice but to whirl on the widow.

  “What in … what’m I gonna do now?” he roared. “Woman—them’s the only clothes I got me in the whole world! Damn if you women aren’t the most consarned, exasperating creatures! Jehoshaphat—I s’pose you didn’t figger I had to wear nothing more’n this goddamned blanket for the rest of the winter, did you?”

  Behind their hands the women young and old sniggered at him. One of the oldest crones even pointed at his skinny white prairie-chicken legs protruding from the bottom of the pale-blue blanket and giggled, her wrinkled, old crow eyes merry. Titus looked down at his calves and ankles and feet, toes gone numb and turning blue as he stood there on the trammeled snow. Shivering, he realized he must look a sight. Maybe they laughed at just how silly a white man looked in nothing but a blanket, he decided—instead of how embarrassing it was for him that Fawn had thrown his old worn shucks in their morning fire.

  He stood there blue-lipped and trembling inside his blanket with that bunch of women, all of them watching together as the flames consumed the last of his earthly clothing—until the widow turned, shot him a glance as she passed by, headed back to her lodge.

  “Wait up!” he growled, wheeling barefoot in the snow, feeling club-footed with his unresponsive legs struggling to set themselves into motion.

  From the corner of his eye he spotted Billy Hooks poking his head from a distant lodge, and nearby Tuttle came out to stand in the first shafts of winter sunlight, likely drawn by the early-morning commotion.

  “Morning, Scratch!” Bud hollered out merrily, waving in genuine greeting. “How was your weddin’ night?”

  “Simply fine, goddammit!” he grumbled as he stumbled along stiff-legged. “Thanks for asking!”

  Hooks laughed as he waved. “Better you put on some clothes, Scratch—afore you leave out to go calling on your neighbors!”

  “Damn you too, Billy Hooks!” he spat, just about the time Fawn ducked her head and disappeared into the lodge.

  Titus was right behind her.

  Standing there inside the warmth of the lodge, he no longer shivered near as much, realizing just how cold he had been outside. And he tried to figure out what the hell to say to the widow—to tell her how angry he was—dismayed, really—that she had destroyed his clothing. But the more he watched her back as she knelt and started pulling at the laces on a rawhide container, the less he could think of what to say, and how to make Fawn understand just how she had poked a stick into his hornet’s nest.

  With the noise of their return, the child awoke and sat up, calling for its mother. She said something to the boy softly, and he lay back down, his wide, round, black eyes shirting from his mother to stare at the white man still standing near the door.

  After a moment of rustling among the robes, Fawn turned to Bass and stood.

  From her hands hung a large fringed buckskin shirt. She spoke to him, then shrugged, pantomiming that he was to take it. Bass held out one hand, still clutching the pale-blue blanket about him with the other.

  “This for me?” he asked, then tapped his chest with a finger. “For me?”

  With a nod the woman bent again and scooped up some more of the leather he now saw folded within a large, flat rawhide case. In each hand she held a legging as she stood. These too she held out for him to take.

  “You,” she said in poor imitation of his English. “You.”

  “Me?” and he allowed her to lay the two long tubes of buckskin over that arm of his clutching the shirt.

  For a moment she stared at his crotch, then mimed a hand motion from waist to knee, up and down. And finally shrugged. Dropping to her knees again, she yanked her knife from her belt and pulled at a flap of the canvas he had draped over the piles of his possessions. The moment she jabbed the knife’s point into the dirty cloth and began to cut a foot-wide strip from its edge, he howled in dismay.

  “Wait!” and he went to his knees beside her, reaching to stop the knife.

  Fawn pushed him back and frowned at him as he shrank back from her threat when she brought the knife up in front of his face. Bass whimpered as the woman went back to work over the canvas until she had a strip a good seven to eight feet long.

  Standing, she stepped over to the liner rope and retrieved Bass’s belt before returning to stop right in front of him.

  “You,” she repeated.

  Glancing quickly at the boy child, Titus stood obediently. The woman tugged the blanket off one of his shoulders, then waited for him to complete the disrobing. Impatiently she tugged it off his other shoulder and started to pull the blanket from him.

  Embarrassed, he stammered, “W-wait—I don’t know what y-you’re ’bout to—”

  Tugging one last time, she managed to wrench the blanket out of his hands and rip it away from him. Now he stood before her totally naked, dropping his hands down to cover his manhood. Suspicious that this strange, frightening creature of a woman wanted him to poke her right there in front of the child.

  But instead Fawn slipped her hands in behind his forearms and flung the leather belt around his waist, slipped the end through the buckle and latched it loosely over his bony hips. Then she retrieved the long strip of foot-wide canvas at her feet and stuffed one end up through the front of his belt, taking hold of the other end to jab it between his knees. Stunned into stone silence, Bass remained motionless as the widow went deftly about her work.

  Looking over his shoulders, he watched as Fawn pulled the canvas up between his thighs, stuffed it up through the belt at the small of his back, then tugged it down until the end almost reached the back of his knees. Quickly she stepped in front of him and tugged on that end of the cloth until it too hung just at his knees. Only then did she step back and swiftly admire her work.

  Fawn was
soon back in motion. She took the buckskin shirt from where it hung over his arm and spread it over her hands so that she exposed the wide neck hole trimmed with red wool. Quietly she said, “You.”

  He nodded and quietly murmured, “Yeah, me.”

  Bass dipped his head forward for her to slip the shirt over his hair, then brought his two arms up to poke them into the long fringed sleeves. Pulling down on the long bottom of the garment, the widow smoothed the shirt out, stood back a moment, then went to his right arm. There she rolled up the long sleeve into a cuff to shorten it.

  As she began to work the same alteration on the left arm, Titus said, “I s’pose your husband is a … was a bigger man than me.”

  That was plain to see from the way Bass swam in the sheer size of the shirt: the width of it draped across his bony shoulders, the length of the sleeves she had to cuff to shorten for him, and the immense girth of the shirt festooned with ermine skins and finished off with wide strips of colorful decoration.

  As she bent to retrieve one of the leggings from the floor of the lodge, Titus tapped a finger against one of the strips of decoration.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  Instead of answering, the widow knelt before him, tugging at his foot until he grabbed hold of a lodgepole to steady himself and raised the cold foot. She shoved the legging up his leg, pulled his foot down, then pushed up the bottom of the shirt so that she could tie the two straps at the top of the legging in a loop over his belt. With the second legging knotted, the widow brought forth a few pair of moccasins. Again she knelt and pulled up one of is bare feet.

  But as quickly she sat back on her haunches and shook her head. It was plain to see that the white man’s feet were much too small for the moccasins. She flung them back onto the rawhide container, then appraised her work thoughtfully. With his old pair of moccasins and that canvas breechclout, the dead warrior’s clothing would do him for now.

  Then she turned from Titus, sat, and pulled the boy from his blankets as she tugged at the open side of her hide dress to expose a full breast.

  Bass swallowed uncomfortably and sat, trying not to look at the breast. His heart hammered again in his chest as it had last night as he’d tossed and turned—thinking of the woman lying just a matter of feet away in the lodge, yet not knowing the ways of these people, how to approach an Indian woman with any suggestion of their coupling. So here she was, again exposing that soft round breast to him as she began softly humming to the child cradled across her lap in the rumpled blankets as she rocked him while he had his warm breakfast.

  “Titus,” he said finally, quietly—standing there above them.

  She did not look up immediately when he spoke to her from the other side of the small lodge that he feared she hadn’t heard.

  “Titus.”

  When he repeated it, she raised her head and smiled.

  Bass tapped his chest. “Titus.”

  “Ti-tuzz.”

  He nodded. “Me.”

  “Ti-tuzz you.”

  “Yepper. Titus. Me.”

  It grew quiet in the lodge once more as his cold, frozen feet warmed by the fire. Then he asked, “You?” and pointed at her.

  “You. Ti-tuzz.”

  “No,” he replied, and shook his head, then scooted a little closer to them, just near enough to lean forward and touch the top of her arm where the boy’s head was cradled. “You.”

  Her eyes grew all the wider, round and black as berries thick on the hopvines back in Boone County, hard by the Ohio. With them she softly peered at the white man, looking into him; then the tip of her pink tongue licked at her lips before she spoke.

  “Tui-rua-ci.”

  “Titus, me. You, Tui-rua-ci.”

  She nodded, smiling at him with more genuine happiness than he had seen on her face since coming to her lodge the day before yesterday. It was a smile that made him forgive her for burning his clothes, made him forgive the three trappers for bringing him here to such a foreign and frightening place, made him forgive himself for wanting another man’s widow so badly.

  “Tui-rua-ci,” Fawn repeated, then her eyes dropped behind those lashes as she said his name softer than he could ever remember hearing it spoken: “Ti-tuzz.”

  8

  Every few days during the heart of that winter when the weather tempered, the four of them left the village with some of the Ute warriors for a few days of hunting. Not only did they seek game to take back to the hungry mouths awaiting them in the winter camp, but the brownskins also surveyed the countryside for pony tracks, for firesmoke, for any sign of their enemies.

  “’Rapaho?” Titus repeated Turtle’s admonition as the white men came to a halt at the tree line bordering a clearing where the advance warriors had just come across some hoofprints.

  “That’s what these niggers say they was,” Billy Hooks responded instead. “’Rapaho. Good-sized war party of ’em too.”

  As the last of the group halted, most of the warriors dropped to the ground to inspect the tracks.

  Silas Cooper agreed. “More red-bellies—out looking for ponies, h’ar, and coup!”

  “How they so sure what band it were?” Titus asked, intrigued.

  With a shrug Cooper explained, “Maybeso they figger to tell us they know the difference atween ’Rapaho and Shian—but I’ll be damned if I can. C’mon over here with me, fellers—an’ let’s have us a look-see.”

  The three dismounted to join Cooper, dispersing among the Ute, who were carefully moving up and down within the many foot-and hoofprints, each blanket-coated warrior bent over, closely studying the enemy’s spoor. The winter breeze tousled the feathers tied to loose, flowing hair or to those animal skins the warriors had pulled over their heads in the fashion of caps, each one tied with a rawhide string beneath a bare brown chin.

  “That one,” Cooper announced, pointing to one of the warriors, “he says that spot be where one of ’em got off his pony to look at a bad hoof.” Silas bent over and studied the snowy, crusted ground himself. “Yep—I can see it plain my own self too. There be that nigger’s pony prints … and there be where the nigger clumb down afoot.”

  Tuttle commented, “Then you’re telling us these Yutas know what sort of red nigger made them tracks just from the mokerson prints?”

  “That be the how of it,” Cooper replied.

  “Nawww—them could’a been Shian, Silas,” Billy Hooks protested. “Them niggers are in this country alla time too. Kissin’ cousins to them ’Rapaho, yessirreebob!”

  “Maybeso you’re center, Billy boy,” Cooper agreed, then looked over at Bass. “Them Shians do keep close company with the ’Rapaho anyways.”

  “Likely they’d all lift a Yuta scalp if’n any of ’em had their chance, Silas,” Tuttle observed.

  “Not this day,” Cooper vowed with unmasked bravado as he straightened and patted one of the two pistols he carried at his belt. “Them stupid ’Rapaho out hunting ponies and skelps in our part o’ the country … maybeso we ought’n get these here Yutas go with us to hunt down them ’Rapahos.”

  “Skelps and ponies!” Hooks repeated joyfully, clapping his blanket mittens together. “Yessirreebob! Skelps and ponies for us all!”

  But as it turned out, the leader of the hunting party would not be dissuaded from his goal: securing meat for those left behind in the winter camp. He steadfastly told Cooper and the other white men that their first rule was to provide for the village, and only when there was enough meat back in camp would a Ute warrior go traipsing off to follow an enemy trail in hopes of bringing home ponies, scalps, enemy weapons, and war honors.

  Cooper and Hooks grumbled, threatening to pull out and turn back to the village on their own. But in the end they hung in with the meat hunters as the afternoon waned and the day began to grow old. As the horse rocked beneath him and the sun fell below the furry wrinkle of his old coyote-skin cap, Titus found his eyelids growing heavy. His mind drifted back to his first hunting trip out with the Ute warriors�
�the first time he had left Fawn and her son, White Horse, behind.

  The new year itself had come and gone on that hunting trip—the first Titus could recollect not boisterously celebrating among white men. The fact that it might well be the first day of 1826 hadn’t even made no never mind to the other three trappers. No man among them had a calendar anyway—so it didn’t seem vital in the least to celebrate one day’s importance over another. Not a Christmas neither.

  “For balls’ sakes, such doin’s as that be the whatnot and befugglin’ a man’s gotta leave behin’t when you come out here to these mountains,” Tuttle had declared, explaining how the three of them felt about holidays.

  “Only one time a year do a man got him any reason to celebrate, Scratch,” Cooper went on to explain. “That be the summer: time when a man cain’t trap, seein’ how the plew h’ain’t prime no more … an’ seein’ how that’s when the trader says he’ll be back to buy our furs and maybeso have some likker to sell us this time out.”

  “Trader?” Bass inquired, his mind fired. “Likker? You said a trader’d have some likker? Like rum or whiskey? Where in blue hell—”

  “Right here in the mountains—yessirreebob!” Billy exclaimed, his eyes dancing as he licked his lips with the tip of a pink tongue.

  Titus wagged his head in disbelief. “Traders come out here to the mountains? Had me no idea.”

  “First time we heerd about it our own selves was just last winter,” Tuttle declared. “Fellas said a trader named Ashley been out to the mountains with his own company of trappers. Word was Ashley wanted the news spread all over that he was coming back the next summer with trade goods and likker—not just for them fellers what come west with him in the seasons afore, but for all niggers like us what could allays use more powder and G’lena lead, coffee and sugar, all such.”

  “I heard of Ashley, I have,” Titus declared. “He was the high-pockets behind a feller named Henry years back when that Henry feller pushed upriver … the year Hugh Glass got hisself chawed on by a grizzly bear.”