Buffalo Palace tb-2

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Yeah, maybeso you’re right,” Titus agreed, peering into the shimmering distance as the sun secreted itself beyond the western hills. “Looks to be they got pack animals with ’em.”

  Tuttle asked, “How many you make it?”

  Bass counted them off silently, his lips moving as he did. “Least ten. Ten of ’em for sure.”

  “We best us go tell Cooper and Billy we got folks coming in.”

  Silas was a cautious one on occasions such as this, Scratch thought. But, then—it made sense that Cooper would be. After all, why shouldn’t a man who, without guilt or remorse, would take from another white man be suspicious that other white men might just ride on in and steal from him?

  “Get your guns out and ready,” Cooper ordered the other three. “Leave ’em handy. Leave ’em for them niggers to see in plain sight if’n there’s to be trouble.”

  Tuttle tried to tell him, “I’d care to set they only some of Ashley’s men goin’ to ronnyvoo—same as us, Silas.”

  “Don’t matter none to their kind to leave the bones of us’ns to be picked clean by the buzzards right here … an’ take all our plews on in to ronnyvoo for themselves. Y’ think about that, Bud Tuttle—and then y’ tell me y’ don’t figger we ought’n be ready to keep what’s ours.”

  So they stood spread out, the four did, as the ten approached at a walk. Then suddenly Cooper tore the wolf-hide cap off his head and waved it, whooping at the top of his lungs. It surprised Bass so much, he was scared for a moment—especially the next instant when Billy and Bud joined in, wheeling about to seize up their weapons as they cheered and hurrawed to the skies.

  With the first whoop Titus lunged for his rifle, diving to crouch behind a pack of pelts where he would have some protection and a good rest for the weapon when the shooting started. He had no sooner taken cover than the ten riders began to screech and holler, pounding flat hands against their open mouths with a “woo-woo-woo,” and raised their rifles in the air.

  The first of those long weapons boomed with a great puff of gray smoke. Cooper squawked like a raven in reply, pointing his own rifle into the sky, firing it just before a second rider shot his off.

  “What the blue hell?” Bass hollered into the noisy tumult.

  Billy turned slightly, raising his rifle over his head, aiming for the puffy clouds. “It’s a good sign, Scratch! Good medicine! They’s emptying their guns!”

  “That there be a likely bunch of good coons, boys!” Silas hollered. “I see me a couple faces I could lay to being at last summer’s doin’s.”

  In the end all but Bass had fired their rifles by the time the ten came close enough to plainly see the dust caked into the creases on the men’s faces. A double handful of bearded, dirty, sweat-soaked, hard-bitten men who brought their animals to a halt there among the four and peered down from the saddle with widening grins.

  “Been follerin’ your sign for last three days, we have,” the first man spoke.

  He had twinkling eyes and a good smile, Bass decided. Then Titus looked over to fix his study on the second rider: not all that old, really—but it seemed that he, like the first rider, also spoke for the others. Still, he had given the older man at his side the first say.

  “Welcome, boys! Get down an’ camp if you’re of a mind to,” Cooper offered them all with a grand, sweeping gesture.

  “Be much obliged,” that young second rider replied.

  Immediately a third said, “Figger you fellas be hur-ryin’ on to ronnyvoos like us.” He had a round face, that sort of easygoing countenance that naturally put most men at ease. “Bound for the Willow Valley?”

  “Ain’t no two ways of it!” Hooks cheered just before he turned back toward the fire and pushed the coffeepot closer to the flames. “Likker an’ women it’s gonna be for this here child!”

  The second rider slowly eased out of the saddle, his damp flesh squeaking across the wet leather as he slid free. “We hear the general’s bringing him likker out this year.”

  “Bound to be some shinin’ times,” the first rider agreed as he dropped to the ground.

  Bass watched the older one take off his hat and slap it against his legs, stirring up a cloud of fine dust. He can’t be much older’n me, Titus thought. His hair hung long and brown, some of it fair, well-bleached by the sun. For sure the wrinkles were worn there around the eyes, and his skin had long ago turned a shade of oak-tanned saddle leather like all the rest. But there were no creases at the sides of his mouth—he couldn’t be a day over thirty, Titus figured.

  Silas stepped up to the man, asking, “So your bunch making tracks to ronnyvoo now?”

  The man nodded, then motioned off to the north. “The general sent out riders to pass the word that he was getting close.”

  “Close?” Hooks repeated, his voice rising a full octave in excitement.

  That first rider nodded. “We figure him to be no more’n a few days out of Willow Valley.” Then he held out his hand to the tall, slab-shouldered Cooper. “I’m the general’s leader for this band. Name’s Fitzpatrick. Tom Fitzpatrick.”

  That’s when the second rider stepped up to Tuttle, holding out his hand. “An’ my name be Jim Bridger. Outta Missouri.”

  Now, that youngster couldn’t be a day over twenty, Titus thought as Bridger and Tuttle shook.

  At that the last four riders sank to the ground, and the rest of the ten strode up among the rest, shaking hands all round with Cooper’s bunch.

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus exclaimed, bent slightly at the waist to peer closely at the other man, his chin cocked in wonder, his hand suddenly frozen, stopped in midair between them. “You’re … you ain’t a negra, are you?”

  “My pa was a Virginia landowner,” the man said without a hint of shame, glancing at his empty hand before dropping it to his side. “Fortune had it that my mother happed to be one of his slaves. I was borned out to the slave quarters … but my pa brung us both into the house after his first wife died.”

  “Didn’t mean you no offense by nothing I said,” Scratch apologized, shamefaced and offering his hand out firmly before him. “Here. My name’s Titus Bass.”

  The tall mulatto with Caucasian features and coffee-colored skin grinned warmly. “No offense taken. Name’s Beckwith. After my pa. You can call me Jim … Jim Beckwith, of Richmond County, Virginia. But I was brung up in the woods near St. Charles. You know where that is on the Missouri River?”

  “St. Charles? Same village lays north of St. Louie?”

  The tall mulatto nodded, sweeping both his hands down his dust-coated but colorful buckskins in that manner of a genteel horseman settling his clothing upon dismounting. Bass had him figured for a man who liked to cut a dashing figure here among the greasy, rough-shorn, ramshackle hellions he rode in with.

  “My pa figgered to move west, so he brung Ma an’ me there back to O-nine.”

  “Hell, I was still a Kentucky boy back then my own self.”

  Beckwith stood at least six feet tall, perhaps a little more. He grinned, his kind eyes smiling. “Out there in that Lou’siana wilderness, I soon had me twelve brothers an’ sisters.”

  Scratching at his beard, Bass replied, “Don’t sound like you’re no freedman neither.”

  “No, I ain’t. Never needed freeing from my pa.”

  “Knowed me a Negra once’t,” Titus said, remembering. “He was a freedman. But I never knowed what become of him.”

  Beckwith explained, “No need bein’ a freedman: my pa and ma was rightfully married. Means I ain’t never been a slave.”

  “Your pap was well-off, I take it.”

  Shaking his head, Beckwith replied, “Nawww—we wasn’t wealthy, by no means … but my pa had him a good heart, an’ he made sure there was no question that his children was no slaves. Went himself off to a judge at court to declare my emancipation.”

  Confused, Titus tried to repeat the word, “E- … e-man-see—”

  “Means his pa told the world Jim here was a fre
e man,” explained the thickset third rider as he came up and handed Beckwith the reins to a horse. “C’mon, Beckwith. We got us these critters to keer for—then we kin palaver all we want with these boys.”

  The two weren’t a matching pair, by any means, it was plain to see. Whereas the one named Daniel Potts was short and beefy, trail dirty, besides being mud-homely to boot, the mulatto cut quite a figure compared to the rest, what with his colorful buckskins. He was tall too—the tallest there with the exception of Cooper himself—standing an inch or two over Bass and most of the others there on the prairie floor among Fitzpatrick’s brigade. And Beckwith affected a bit of the dandy: wearing his long black hair in a profusion of tight, well-kept braids that hung past his shoulders. As the mulatto started to turn aside with Potts, Titus decided he might just try one of those braids in his own long hair—as handsome as they were on Beckwith.

  With a booming voice Fitzpatrick offered, “Say, Cooper—we have us two elk quarters along we’d offer to lay up by the fire for us all if’n that makes you fellas no mind.”

  “Never make it a habit to turn down good meat,” Silas said. “Bring it on—we’ll likely chaw everything down to the bone this night!”

  Most of the riders dropped their saddles, blankets, and packs onto the prairie near the quartet’s fire, then turned back to see to their horses. After rubbing down their saddle mounts with thick tufts of prairie grass, Potts strode up with his arm around Beckwith’s shoulder. Together they peered at Bass.

  The stubby Potts asked, “Tell me something, mister—we look anywhar’ as dirty an’ bad off as the four of you scurvy niggers?”

  Titus grinned, glancing down at his dusty, greasy, sweat-stained clothing. “I s’pose we do at that, Potts. Mayhaps even worse off.”

  “Call me by my Christian name, will you? It be Daniel.”

  “Sure—an’ my given name’s Titus.”

  Tuttle broke in, slapping Bass on the back and saying, “But he’d sooner answer to his real handle.”

  “What’s that?” Beckwith asked.

  “Scratch,” Titus answered as Bud was getting his mouth open. “They give me the name Scratch some time back.”

  The mulatto asked, “Was it skeeters?”

  Titus shook his head. “Fleas.”

  “Big’un’s too,” Tuttle said before he turned back to the fire, chuckling.

  “Well, now—Scratch,” Potts said, looking wistfully over at the translucent blue of the Bear River nearby, its border of tall emerald willow in full-leafed glory. He slapped Beckwith on the back and declared, “Me an’ Jim here was cogitating that we’uns go find us a pool in that river yonder. Have us two a sit and a soak afore supper.”

  The idea struck Scratch like a fine one indeed. Impulsively he asked, “You mind company?”

  Potts grinned readily. “Why—no. Allays good for a man to have a new face and new ears once’t while. We both got stories Fitz, Frapp, and the other’n’s is tired of hearin’ … an’ I’ll wager you got a few tales to tell your own self.”

  “Yeah!” Beckwith agreed. “Damn right we’ll all go have our own selves a sit in that cold river—either till we cain’t stand the cold no more, or we turn the water to mud!”

  “Likely that Negra boy gonna turn the water to mud, Scratch!” Billy Hooks was suddenly nearby, laughing and wagging his head with cruel sarcasm. “But that brown-assed Negra still gonna be a Negra when he comes out’n that river—no matter how hard the black son of a bitch scrubs hisself!”

  Beckwith was turning on his heel to start for Hooks when the strong and stocky Potts locked his friend’s arm and held the mulatto in place—at just the moment Bass stepped between the mulatto and Billy, staring Hooks in the eye.

  “This man ain’t done nothing to deserve the talk you’re throwing at ’im, Billy.”

  Hysterically laughing, Hooks said, “Just look at him, Scratch! Why, I cain’t hardly believe my own eyes. It’s a Negra—out in these here mountains!”

  Potts growled, struggling to hold Beckwith, “He’s as good a man as any.”

  “If Beckwith here ain’t the kind to walk away from the fight we had us with Blackfoot not long back,” Bridger interrupted them all as he hurried up purposefully, Cooper and Fitzpatrick both scrambling to stay with him, “then he sure as hell ain’t the kind to back off from no fight with you.”

  “Fight?” Cooper repeated as he stepped between the two, grinning from ear to ear, raking his long beard with his fingers, and taking a measure of those standing with the mulatto. “There ain’t gonna be no fight here … will there, now, Billy?”

  “No fight, Silas,” Hooks agreed quickly, then giggled some more like a man willing to rub salt into another’s wounds.

  “Damn ride der’ h’ain’t be no fide here,” declared a swarthy, dark-eyed, much older man as he eased up on the far side of Fitzpatrick, his fists clenched and ready.

  It was plain the trapper had something on the order of twenty years on Bass, maybe as much as a decade older than Cooper. More than a life outdoors had aged his face: many a year on the frontier had clearly left their mark on the man. His accent was thick, throaty, yet something that sang of its own rhythm, an accent Titus could not remember hearing since those youthful days along the Lower Mississippi: maybe Natchez, more likely all the way down to New Orleans, where the Spanish, French, and Creole tongues mingled freely with the upriver frontier dialects.

  “Easy there, Henry,” Fitzpatrick coaxed the German-born Henry Fraeb. “Frapp here gets his blood up pretty quick, but there ain’t no need for cross words, is there, fellas?”

  “We’re all friends here,” Cooper readily agreed. “Right, Billy?”

  Hooks giggled behind his hand, his eyes gleaming with childlike innocence again. “I ain’t never see’d no Negra out here—”

  “Beckwith is the name, not Negra,” the mulatto repeated firmly. It was plain his pride had been wounded. He looked at Hooks steadily and said, “Beckwith. Maybeso you’ll remember it one day.”

  “Why, you gonna be something big up on a stick?” Billy mocked, then suffered himself another fit of laughter.

  “G’won and help them others with their plunder,” Silas ordered sternly, slapping Hooks across the upper arm, plainly made uneasy by the readiness of the others to back the mulatto.

  Cooper waited while Hooks moved off wagging his head, still giggling to himself. “Pay him no mind fellas,” he advised good-naturedly. He tapped a finger to the side of his head, explaining, “Billy’s just … just a bit slow a’times. Why, he finds him some simple joy in most ever’thin’.”

  His eyes angry, Bridger argued, “Being soft-brained don’t give a man no right—”

  “You’re right,” Silas interrupted, nodding at the much younger man. “C’mon now, fellas. What say we forget this trouble … let’s camp!”

  “Man’s right,” Fitzpatrick said grudgingly, eyeing Bridger, Fraeb, and Beckwith with a look that told them all that he expected them to smooth their ruffled feathers and put the matter to rest. “Sun’s down and this bunch ain’t et since morning. ’Sides—we move on to shining times tomorrow.”

  Cooper shouldered in between Fitzpatrick and Bridger as the group moved toward the fire, asking, “You boys figger the general spoke the truth when he tolt us he’d pack likker this summer?”

  Fitzpatrick said, “Ashley’s a man allays done what he said he’d do. If he says there’ll be likker to ronnyvoo—there’ll be likker there, by God.”

  Bass watched the rest gradually settle near the fire with Cooper. But instead of joining them, Potts and Beckwith hung back with Titus.

  “So, fellas,” Scratch finally asked in that uneasy silence, “we still going to have us our soak?”

  The mulatto shrugged dolefully. “S’pose I could use some water.”

  “Damn right you could use some water!” Potts exclaimed suddenly, joyfully, flailing an arm exuberantly at Beckwith. “You’re coming to the river, or you’re dang well stayin’ downwin
d o’ me from here on out!”

  As cold as the water was, nonetheless Scratch plopped himself down in a little pool of it near the sandy bank, just as Potts and Beckwith readily did as twilight put a twinkle to the summer sky. They sat up to their armpits in a little backwater the Bear had long ago cut out of the side of the bank.

  In the last of the real light Titus noticed the dull glimmer of something hung round the mulatto’s neck on a narrow thong. “What’s that you got yourself?”

  Beckwith held it up, gazed down at it again a moment. “A guinea. First pay I ever got. Stamped with the year I was born.” He held it up for Bass to see.

  Leaning over, Titus stared in the fading light at the large round coin, a tiny hole drilled near its top right through the king’s head. There below the nobleman’s neck was emblazoned the date 1800. “You was born six years after me.”

  Potts suggested, “Tell him where you got your coin, Jim.”

  “We never was the best-off folks in Portage des Sioux outside of St. Charles,” he explained. “So my pa set me to work with a blacksmith, learn me a trade.”

  “You don’t say,” Titus replied with happy recognition. “I worked for many a year in Hysham Troost’s place.”

  “There in St. Lou? I heard of it, often,” the mulatto replied. “Casner’s was the blacksmith shop where I apprenticed for some five years.”

  “Then you come out here to the mountains?” Bass inquired.

  “Nawww. Not when I left Casner’s,” Beckwith said. “First I fought Injuns with Colonel Johnson’s expedition up to Fever River when I was released from Casner’s indenture … only nineteen, I was by then. Short time later I figured to take me a ride on down to N’Awlins … where I got yellow fever for my trouble. Barely made it back home alive to my folks at Portage des Sioux, and there I stayed put, healing up, till I learned General Ashley was outfitting him a new brigade for the mountains.”