Buffalo Palace tb-2

by Terry C. Johnston

  Cooper quickly replied, “Just what the hell are y’ trying to say, Bud?”

  “What if they gone and closed up shop?” Tuttle asked. “What if there ain’t no one there to trade our furs to?”

  “I thought on that too,” Cooper related. “That be the case, then I figger we gotta float on down the Yallerstone a piece.”

  Bass inquired, “H-how much farther you gotta float?”

  “Means we gotta go all the way to the Missouri,” Cooper explained. “On down to the Mandan country.”

  “How far you figger that is?” Titus wondered.

  “A ways above the mouth of the Knife.”

  “That anywhere near Ree country?” Scratch asked. “I heard tell them Rees don’t take to fur men passing through their land.”

  “Don’t y’ worry none—Fort Vanderburgh’s north of Ree country,” Silas said consolingly. “Not nowhere near them black-hearted Rees.”

  Billy agreed, “Ain’t a one of us like going nowhere them red niggers be, Scratch.”

  Scratch turned back to Cooper in the dark. “Awright—so you’re telling me we don’t find no one there at the Bighorn, we got no other choice ’cept to float on down to Mandan country.”

  “That’s right,” Cooper said.

  “Ain’t that a longer trip after all, ’stead of us just heading south to ronnyvoo on horseback?”

  “Longer to ronnyvoo from here,” Silas declared matter-of-factly.

  “And you ’member we ain’t moving near as fast on horseback neither,” Tuttle sized things up. “We can make more miles in a day on the river.”

  “Saying we do decide to make that float,” Titus began after he heard the familiar snort of the mule and it prodded him into thinking, “just saying we up and decide to … what we gonna do with all them critters we’re riding, all them packhorses?”

  “That’s a problem,” Cooper admitted. “But I thought me on that too.”

  “So what you figger we gonna do with all the horses, Silas?” Billy wondered.

  “We leave one of us behind.”

  “One … one of us behind.” Tuttle sounded concerned. “In country like this?”

  “Gonna be Crow land,” Cooper reminded them.

  “Sounds to me like you got this all sorted through, right down to the gnat’s ass,” Bass stated.

  “You can lay your sights to that, Scratch,” Cooper replied. “I even figgered out the best man to trust with the animals.”

  Tuttle was frightened when he asked, “Who—who that be, Silas?”

  Cooper said, “Scratch.”

  Billy asked, “Leave Scratch behind on his lonesome when we take the furs downriver?”

  “He’s got a better head on his shoulders’n Tuttle over there—and Scratch ain’t near as skeered of things as Bud,” Silas explained. “And he’s ever’ bit as good with the critters as you, Billy. Makes sense to me that Scratch be the one to leave behind, don’t you see? ’Sides, he’s got him a lot more sense’n you’ll ever have.”

  “Yep, you’re right at all corners of it, Silas.” Hooks applauded softly. “Bass got lots more sense’n I’ll ever have. He’s the man to trust with the horses, for certain on that! What you say about it, Scratch?”

  “Figger a man’s gotta think on something so ’portant as this be,” Titus confided as he stretched his legs out and leaned back, the better to help his mind to settle on thinking.

  For a long time Titus lay there in the quiet, listening to the nearby animals crop at the grass, hearing the breathing of the others become as quiet as the spring night that settled around them. Finally Bass came to the end of his consideration, sorting through it the best way he knew how.

  “So you’re telling me it might be a short trip of it—”

  “Other side of the pass where we run onto the Yallerstone,” Cooper interrupted, “the four of us’ll make two rafts. I figger that’s all we’ll need.”

  “Won’t take us no time to float down to the Bighorn,” Billy assured. “Trader might even have him some whiskey!”

  Bass said, “But if you don’t find no one there, then it’ll be a longer trip to the Missouri country.”

  “I figger we can meet up with y’ afore ronnyvoo time,” Cooper testified. “We’ll set us a place to join back up, somewhere on down the east front of the mountains.”

  “Closer on to ronnyvoo?” Billy asked.

  Silas said, “Where we can spend all the money we’ll make on whiskey and geegaws for the squaws!”

  Titus waited for their quiet, good-natured laughter to drift off. “You really do got this sorted clear out to the end, don’t you, Cooper?”

  “You damn well all know I been thinking on it since last winter. Long enough to know for damn certain what the hell I’m doing.”

  Rubbing an itch at his nose, Scratch said, “An’ you figger I’m the one to stay with the critters.”

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

  Gazing a moment at Hooks and Tuttle in the dark, Scratch sighed. “I s’pose if’n you boys trust me to see our horses through—”

  “I trust you, Titus Bass,” Cooper interrupted, smiling with deep satisfaction. “Don’t you worry a bit about that, now. These here other two niggers know I’d damn well trust you with ever’thing I own, Scratch … even trust you with my own life.”

  Damn—but that was a lot of plew.

  Titus Bass knelt there on the bank of the spring-swollen Yellowstone as he and Cooper tied off the last of the hundredweight packs in the center of their second of the two crude rafts.

  “Now, don’t you dawdle none,” Bud reminded Scratch as Bass stood, straightened, and stretched a kink in his back.

  Silas stood too, dusting his hands like a man would who’d just finished the difficult task at hand. “He’s right, Scratch. Soon as you get us pushed off here, get those horses strung out in a proper train and come on downriver.”

  “I don’t ’spect I’ll run across you from here on down, will I?”

  Cooper shook his head. “Likely be that we’ll cover at least twice as much ground as you will, riding herd on that cavvyyard.”

  For a moment the four of them stared at the river in silence. How the Yellowstone had filled so that now it ran from bank to bank, flowing all the swifter, deeper too.

  “She’s running good, Silas,” Billy declared.

  The leader said, “Fast enough—and still coming up too. We’ll likely make better time’n we figgered a wready.”

  “I can almost taste some sweet rum,” Billy said, rubbing a hand across his belly like a hungry child.

  Bass stepped up to that grinning, fun-loving, childlike man. “You best pack some back for me, Billy Hooks.”

  “I will. I will most certain!”

  “And we ain’t gonna be paying no stiff-necked trader’s prices for nothing too,” Tuttle reminded. “Not no plew for a plug of burley tobacco—that’s for certain sure.”

  “This here’s gonna work out best all around,” Bass assured as he stepped off the raft and onto the sloping bank where the water lapped at his moccasins. “Silas here come up with the way for us to get top dollar for them skins.”

  One last time he studied those packs of dark, glossy beaver pelts lashed onto the unpeeled cottonwood saplings. At each end of the craft was tied a partially dug-out cottonwood log. While the two rafts represented close to a week’s work for the four men, this second of the two craft had aboard it more beaver than any of the other men had trapped since last summer … more beaver than Billy and Bud put together. Tied down to that second raft were the fruits of his labors for the better part of a year.

  “Grab your rifles, fellas,” Cooper ordered, anxious to set off.

  The other two turned away as Silas flung aboard the two rafts the long poles they had cut and trimmed. While Hooks and Tuttle would man that first, Silas himself would be alone with Scratch’s man
y bales of beaver on the second. That way Cooper had promised to personally watch over that small fortune in plew.

  “You come on down and have a drink with us at the Bighorn, you hear?” Billy said, holding out his big hand to Titus. Dirt, smoke, grease, and blood were caked in the folds of every knuckle, in a pair of dark crescents beneath the nails, and at the cuticles of every finger.

  Tuttle stepped up next, giving his hand to Bass. “If’n we ain’t there, we had to push on.”

  Nodding, Scratch replied, “Means I’ll have to turn south my own self, don’t it?”

  “If’n the Missouri Fur boys don’t still have their post at the Bighorn, we’ll hurry on to Mandan country,” Cooper repeated as he stepped up, then dropped to the damp ground below them, took out his knife, and redrew the map he’d drawn for Titus a dozen times since crossing back over the mountains to strike the Yellowstone.

  “That there’s the Missoura,” Billy said as Cooper scratched a long, meandering line in the damp soil where they had packed the ground underfoot for days now.

  “An’ here’s the Yallerstone,” Cooper said as he drew with the tip of his knife blade. “The Bighorn comes in here.”

  Titus squatted on the other side of the crude map. “From the south, yeah—I remember.”

  With the knife’s tip at that juncture, Cooper said, “We ain’t there, and there ain’t no fort or traders still there—we gone on down to the Missoura.”

  Head bobbing, Billy added, “And Mandan country.”

  “That’s ’bout over here,” Silas said, jabbing at the ground on that Missouri River line.

  Scratch nodded. “When you boys get there and trade off them plews of ours—show me again how you fix on coming back.”

  “Ain’t along the river like we floated down,” Tuttle reiterated.

  “No,” Cooper explained, then started dragging the knife blade from the Upper Missouri on a southwesterly beeline. “What I figger to do is buy us some horses—come cross the country, Scratch. Maybeso take us a few weeks, but you can figger on joining up down here.”

  “Where for sure?”

  Holding the knife upright and twisting the tip into the ground, Silas explained, “I figger the best place for us to meet up is here.”

  “You figger that’s on over that low pass, off torst the west of Turtle Rock?”*

  “On over from the Sweetwater,” Cooper agreed, tapping his knife even farther to the southwest. “On past that Popo Agia stream the Crow talk of.”

  Tapping his own index finger into that dirt map, Scratch said, “If ronnyvoo gonna be here—you figger me to meet you up here … somewhere east of the Uintees?”

  Cooper smiled. “That’s the place where we’ll see y’—on down in that Green River country.”

  “Where General Ashley had him his first ronnyvoo back to twenty-five?” Tuttle inquired.

  Glancing at Bud, Cooper answered, “On down from Henry’s Fork. There’s a good park down there. A high valley, Scratch. Good grazing for all them animals. We’ll meet y’ there with our trade goods and our drinking money.”

  Billy slapped his hands together loudly. “Ready for a spree at Sweet Lake ronnyvoo!”

  As Cooper stood, he said, “We won’t be far from ronnyvoo there, Scratch.”

  “Women and whiskey—right, Titus?” Tuttle said, enthused.

  “Damn shame you boys’ll have a head start on me,” Scratch replied, making the most of what he felt at their leave-taking.

  “You just remember: ain’t but one man I trust to stay behind with my critters,” Cooper said, gazing steadily into Bass’s eyes. “Only one man I figger won’t let ’em get run off by red niggers ’tween now and the time we join back up.”

  Titus nodded solemnly. “I won’t let you down.”

  Silas presented his big paw as he looked down at the shorter man. “I never thought you would, Titus Bass. Not from the first days I laid eyes on you. Allays figgered you was a man to count on doin’ ever’thing you could to live up to my trust in you, saving your hide the way I done more’n once.”

  Bass took a step back as he let go of Cooper’s hand. “Time’s come for me to watch out for my own hide, ain’t it?”

  Smiling, Cooper said, “That’s for certain sure, Scratch. Keep your eye on the skyline.”

  Titus watched Billy and Bud wade over to the first raft with a splash, untie it, and step on board. “Yep—and you boys watch your hair!”

  “Best you keep your nose in the wind, Titus Bass,” Billy called out as he squatted down among the bales of beaver and took up the long rudder pole he planted down in the fork of a stout branch lashed to the back of the raft.

  “I’ll do that, Billy Hooks!” he called out.

  Tuttle took up the long pole and pushed the first big raft away from the shore, poling toward the faster water in midchannel. “We’ll have us a good, long drink together real soon, Scratch!”

  “I’ll count on that, Bud,” he called back, raising his hand to the pair as their craft was nudged by faster water.

  Cooper slipped his big hat off his head and plopped it down on top of those beaver packs Bass had worked so hard to pull out of the icy mountain streams. Taking up his long pole with one hand, Silas gathered some of his stringy, unkempt hair in the other, tugging on it as he sang out.

  “Keep your hair locked on tight, Titus Bass!”

  “Don’t you worry none about me!” Scratch sang back in reply as he started to trot downstream along the grassy bank, watching Cooper’s raft ease into the fast water now, beginning to pull away all the faster. “I’ll watch my topknot!”

  Then Cooper had his back turned and had his long pole reversed, putting the flat paddle end down into the water and the pole itself to rest in the Y-shaped branch they had lashed at the back of the raft. With it he would keep the craft at midriver where the spring runoff ran deepest.

  Glancing downstream, Bass saw the first raft, made out the dim shape of those big bales of fur, and the pair of tiny figures on board—one of them working the crude rudder as the Yellowstone hurried them east toward that Missouri Fur Company post near the mouth of the Bighorn. Then they were swept around a gentle bend in the river and gone from sight.

  He turned back to watch Cooper glide by at a fast clip, watching, watching, watching until the tall, thick-shouldered man was gone around that curve in the Yellowstone too. Then Titus stared at that spot in the river, those tall cottonwoods sixty, seventy feet or taller … as things grew quiet save for the nearby animals cropping at the spring grass, the cry of meadowlarks and the bothersome chatter of a nagging magpie too, the gentle breeze sneaking through the new leaves above him with a faint, reassuring rustle.

  Then for a moment it got so quiet, he could almost hear his heart beat … except for the voice of the river running over its rocky bed, pushing itself against a boulder here and there with a foaming rush.

  So quiet was it, so alone was he again, that Scratch succumbed to the temptation to fill that empty void as he watched that distant spot on the river, there between the wide banks of the Yellowstone where the three had disappeared.

  “Yepper,” he sighed, every bit as quietly as the breeze itself. “I’ll watch my topknot.”

  *Pryor Mountains and Pryor Creek, named for Sergeant Nathaniel Pryor, part of the command who accompanied Lewis and Clark west to the Pacific Ocean

  *Near present-day Livingston, Montana

  ** Bozeman Pass

  *Independence Rock, in present-day Wyoming

  17

  No one was waiting for him there at the mouth of the Bighorn.

  For the better part of two weeks Scratch struggled to keep that cavvyyard together as he marched east to meet up with Silas Cooper and the other two. A lot of work for one man.

  There was watering the critters two at a time every morning before he fried himself his own breakfast. And there was keeping them strung out enough on the trail that they didn’t jam up so close they would bite on one another or tear at one anoth
er’s tails—but not so far apart that they took on unruly notions. Good thing, he thought, these animals were used to being around one another by and large and had made of themselves a good herd. That helped each night when it came time for him to find a place to camp.

  Bass stopped early enough at the end of every one of those lengthening days to water them again two by two by two while the others grazed and rolled, dusting themselves as the mosquitoes and flies came out in springtime clouds to torture man and beast alike. And when the watering was done, Titus would build himself a fire down beneath the branches of the biggest cottonwood he could find along the banks of the river. The leaves and that incessant breeze in the valley of the Yellowstone helped to disperse the smoke rising from his cookfire, as well as hold down the number of tormentors wanting a taste of his flesh, to draw some of his blood.

  After broiling his antelope or venison shot along the trail, Bass would drink his coffee, light up his pipe, and enjoy the temporary warmth of the fire as the night came down and the temperature dropped. Then when the cooking gear had cooled off enough to stuff it away in one of the panniers he could sling back atop Hannah’s back—closing on the time all light was just about gone from the sky, he poured out the dregs of his coffee and kicked dirt into the tiny fire.

  That done, Bass mounted the saddle horse, took up Hannah’s lead rope, and rode over to where the other animals grazed on the tall grass. There he clucked, whistled, and called as he pulled Hannah through their midst. And most times, without much trouble at all, the rest of the horses and mules followed. Two miles, perhaps, sometimes more, on downriver—and when he had found a likely spot for more grazing beneath the stars, a likely spot where a man could roll up in his blankets for a cold, fire-less camp, then he would circle back around the small herd to let them know that here they could stop following and start eating again.

  In country where the Apsaalooke themselves had so many enemies, it would never pay for a man to become too careless. Especially a man with so many horses.

  Not that he feared the Crow. Not Big Hair’s people—now that they knew him. Now that he had spent a winter among them.