Positioning the mule beside the big pine’s trunk, Titus slowly clambered up the rotting deadfall until he stood nearly opposite her tail root. Seizing hold of the ropes at the top of her packs, he leaned against her, pulling himself onto Hannah’s rear flanks. Securing a second hold farther up, Titus pulled himself a little farther onto her back. Nestled there between the two bundles that were lashed to her pack frame, he settled himself. Down between them he wouldn’t be near so likely to fall off as she picked her way across uneven ground while he fell asleep.
Which was just what he wanted to do more than anything right then. With his good left arm, Bass dragged the red blanket over his head, nudging it on down over his back so that it covered his legs, flaps draping off either side of the mule’s packs. Now he would be warm, here under the blanket and next to her hide, warm no matter how cold this late summer night would become as Hannah carried him into the coming darkness.
At least he would be warm here, no matter how empty his belly. Warm, though he realized how fast his strength was flagging. Were it not for that nest within the packsaddle, Bass knew he simply didn’t have the strength to stay on her back. Without meat he might not be able to hold on much longer. Without meat he might never be strong enough to climb back on. Hunger was a cruel torturer.
Taking the long lead rope into hand, Scratch raised his chin to search the heavens a moment until he found what he looked for.
Gently reining Hannah around to the right, he told her, “Let’s go, girl. Time to carry me some.”
As he clucked to her with his tongue, Bass guided her toward that great patch of black sky there beneath the North Star. The big handle on that water dipper pointed the way he would go. In only a matter of minutes his eyes grew too heavy for him to hold them open any longer.
“Keep going, girl,” he whispered to her, stroking her withers, patting her neck and mane. “Take us north.”
Hannah moved out faster this evening than she had carried him that first night, perhaps sensing that now he was secured among her baggage. The ofttimes gentle, sometimes jarring rock-a-bye motion of her gait lulled him deeper and deeper as he repeated wearily, “Take us north. Find us … something to eat.”
At times during the night he awoke, lifting his sore, pounding head, and gazing into the starry black blanket overhead. Then he might tug a little this way or that to nudge a correction to their course before he let his head collapse once more and he was asleep again in his warm nest down between those bundles lashed to the crossed arms of the worn sawbuck saddle.
The North Star beckoned the way … suspended far, far ahead of them in the night.
He slept again, knowing that the only way he’d ever follow that star was on the back of this mule.
20
It was cold enough that he could see his breath come in gray streamers against the murky light of predawn, curling up before his eyes, then wisping off on each gentle gust of breeze.
The land rose gently on either side of him as Hannah plodded along. Since awaking he had realized she was beginning to slow—too weary after the night’s march beneath her added burden. He shifted slightly, rolling to his other hip between the sawbucks. And breathed deeply of the cold breeze that gusted against his cheeks. It was good, he told himself. With it in his face he would not be on the downwind of man or animal.
Turning his face to the right, regarding the paling sky, Scratch felt relieved that the mule had been moving him steadily north through another night. Soon enough he would have to tug on her rope, steer her off to one row of these hills or another, hoping there to find a sheltered draw where he could hoist himself off her back and crawl into the brush. Perhaps this morning he would have enough strength to yank back the thick, oiled Russian sheeting and spend the time and strength it would require of him to release the packs from their frame. But as weak as he was, how was he ever going to get the packs reloaded?
How many days now? he asked himself. Had it been two nights? Or three? Two, he decided—which meant she had suffered for the better part of three days without having her burdens removed.
“You’ll want yourself a good roll, won’t you, girl?”
By damn, he knew how she must feel—knowing how he got a’times, ready to back up to a rough-barked tree where he’d strop his back up and down slowly, deliciously, giving himself one hell of a good scratching.
“Find you a good patch of grass where I can sleep and you can eat your fill.”
Just the mention of food caused his stomach to roil like summer’s thunderheads. That little bit of flour hadn’t lasted him long at all. No better than bread for a man who was grease hungry. Lean, red meat … dripping juice as it was just barely seared over an open flame. Enough of it to fill not only his belly, but to satisfy his tongue and teeth and mouth with chewing on something that was a delight to just about all his senses.
Like buffalo.
He couldn’t help it—thinking on the meat again the way he had last night while jabbing his moistened fingers into that flour sack. Dreaming about buffalo was about as natural a thing for a grease-hungry man to do as breathing itself.
Damn—but his imagination was even playing tricks on him! Not only was it making his mouth water and damn near drool with the fancied taste of a slab of buffalo hump ribs … but now his nose was getting in on the act. He could even smell ’em.
God knows Bass would recognize that tang on the wind anywhere. A herd had it a particular fragrance: musky, dank, earthy, too.
So here his nose was joining in with his imagination—both of them conspiring to make him all the more miserable for meat. Why, he’d spent enough time around the herds beginning with that crossing he made of the plains to know exactly how buffalo smelled, enough time downwind from the beasts so that he wouldn’t spook them as he threaded his way on through the heart of mile after blackened mile of the huge creatures that damn well blanketed the rolling hills and gentle valleys.
There simply was nothing else like that scent on the wind. Whether it was the tons of dung they dropped in their grazings and wanderings, or the sweetish-sour stench of the dusty, sweated, tick-and-flea-infested beast itself … there was nothing else like the smell of buffalo.
He vowed he’d have himself a talk to his imagination one day real soon. For it to make his mouth water just thinking about chomping down into a thick pink slab of tenderloin was one thing. But for his imagination to actually make him smell the creatures was something altogether too damn much to take—
And upon opening his eyes his breath clutched in his chest. Finding it hard to swallow as his heart rose with anticipation, Bass whispered, “Hannah, you brung me here a’purpose—didn’t you?”
She gave no answer as he continued to stare at the widening valley ahead of them as they emerged from a neck into the great, grassy bottomland. On either side arose low hills. And from east to west, slope to slope across the bottom, the entire scene was blotted with the black coagulate of grazing buffalo.
Surely this was a dream, he told himself as the mule continued him toward the center of this hallucination. At that moment he heard the first faraway bawl of one of the beasts. Could it be that his ears were tricking him too?
Barely raising his head there beneath the red wool blanket, he stared as she carried him closer and closer to a large, slowly meandering knot of the beasts. Closing his eyes momentarily, Bass drank in their scent, deeply. Then reached out with his right arm to reassure himself the rifle was still there beneath the pack ropes. As tight and sore as was his shoulder and arm, at least it no longer caused him hot flushes of agony to move them.
How would he ever get the rifle butt pressed against that wounded shoulder? And to fear what pain shooting the weapon would cause him … why, he knew he’d flinch and miss his shot. Off would go his one chance at a buffalo, stampeding away into the distance.
But—was there a chance that he could fire his right-handed rifle from his left shoulder? It was about all the shot he would have at it.
/> His ears perked up at the same instant Hannah’s stiffened. The breeze coming into their faces brought the distant sound again. That was a rifle shot. A few harrowing moments later he heard two more shots.
Clearly, more than one gun. Several. Perhaps many. The first had come from farthest away. The second seeming a bit closer. And that third round of shots closer still. A fourth shot, this one solitary, reached his ears as they pounded with the galloping race of his heart. Then, however, the dying of the rifle shot was drowned out, overwhelmed by the distant, steady hammer.
Hannah sidestepped in a lurch, as if frightened by the quaking of the ground beneath her hooves.
The hammer drew every bit closer. As it did, Bass grew more certain of it. The gunfire—that approaching thunder. Whoever was hunting these buffalo had gone and set them stampeding. Just as plain was the fact that they were coming downwind, straight for him and the mule. Blindly. Stupid beasts that they were, the buffalo would continue until they hit a river, or spilled over a cliff, or—more times than not—simply ran out of steam.
He realized he had to get the mule out of the herd’s way, and now.
Already the far northern horizon at the end of the narrow valley was smudged with a thin layer of dust. They were coming, and he had to get Hannah to carry him to safety.
Lifting himself on his elbows, he grabbed for a more secure hold on the lead rope, holding it tightly there just behind her withers as he gazed off to the left. Then to the right. Finally back to the western slope once more. It seemed to offer more of a chance for escape.
“Git—git, girl!” he urged her with a croaking, little-used voice.
Tugging on the short lead, Bass managed to start her moving off at an angle.
“Hup, hup!” he ordered her, watching the dust cloud grow, seeing how those creatures near him were just beginning to turn, to listen, to pay heed to all that noisy thunder upvalley.
Stretched out along Hannah’s spine, he tried to hammer her with his feet as best he could, hoping to urge more speed from the mule. Weary as she was, Hannah nonetheless gave her master all she. had as the blackened knots nearby suddenly burst into a flurry of motion and sound.
Standing there grazing one moment, then raising their hairy, oversize heads to look back to the north the next moment … and suddenly exploding into action without delay or the slightest hesitation. Those creatures closest to him were now compelled to flee, their dull brains ordering them to join in the mindless flight.
In the space of a few seconds the beastly wall of death was coming their way beneath that long, low cloud of dust.
As Hannah reached the base of the long, gradual slope, the thunder of approaching hooves, the bawling and bellows, grew deafening. Just then it felt as if his heart stopped beating: seized with terror in his chest that refused to breathe.
When Hannah faltered on the slope, he sputtered the words, “Hup, girl!”
She heaved and with a bound lurched two more leaps, her back shuddering—shaking the packs and him with them. He began to slip off her hindquarters.
Gripping the tie ropes fiercely, Scratch dragged himself another half foot onto her back. Then a little more, and now he could come close to wrapping his arms down her neck. Bass clutched her, his cheek laid against her withers, crying out to her, the spill of his voice lost in the hammering of the hooves around them. Dragging himself closer to her ears, Bass gave her encouragement, calling out to her urgently, trying to will her up the slope and out of the way of the approaching mass of death.
There beneath the bottom fringe of the dusty cloud, just after the first buffalo appeared—riders emerged, bobbing figures atop their small ponies. He could see how distinct they were from the small-humped cows and their brick-red, yellowish-red, and brownish-hued calves, every last one of the beasts caught up in the single-minded rhythm of the stampede, their heads bobbing up and down in their rolling gait.
Distant riders raced beside the herd like tiny stick figures of mankind painted on hide lodges and winter-count robes.
“Hup! Hup, girl!” he shouted as Hannah faltered, a hoof slipping, her load suddenly shifting.
The thunder reached the ground below them in the next instant. Bass turned his head to look behind at those first cows and summer’s young calves racing by at the head of the stampede—
Then as she stumbled sideways he was sliding off her rear haunches, fingers digging frantically for a grip on something, anything, as the mule went down on her back legs, shuddered with fatigue, then trembled when she attempted to rise beneath her burden. Arms flailing, Scratch tumbled off a flank to the ground on his belly, landing with a crash, then rolling in the tall, dusty, summer-burned grass with a groan, crying out in a yelp that was swallowed by the passing of the herd below him.
Slipping sideways on the steep slope as she regained her balance and got back to her legs, Hannah shifted, stretching the lead rope out to its limit, tugging on Scratch’s belt where he had tied it.
“Dammit!” he screeched in pain as she jerked him to the side, torment shooting through him as she pitched him onto the wounded shoulder.
Spitting dust and brittle grass out of his mouth, rubbing dirt from his eyes with a grimy hand, Bass lunged to snatch hold of the lead rope that had him connected to the mule—and he yanked back.
“C’mere!”
He dared not have her drag him any farther. Feverishly working at the knot with his right hand, while he pulled back on the rope with his left for some slack, Scratch was already well past scared. Frightened, and even terrified, that she would suddenly bolt, dragging him mindlessly along the slope, even down among those thousands of slashing hooves.
But she came to him, prancing, unsure—eyes wide and nostrils flaring, wet. Lather had soaked her pack harness. As she stopped over him, Hannah shuddered, wagging her head slowly while he finished fighting the knot at his belt. When he was free, Bass wrapped the end of the rope around his left wrist and gripped it as he collapsed back in the grass. Closing his eyes still filled with grit, rubbing them savagely as he caught his breath and swallowed down the excruciating torture in his shoulder she had just spilled him on.
Closer came the pop of guns that punctuated the throbbing echo of the stampede, reverberating from one side of the valley to the other. They had guns—these Indians did. Seized with sudden resolve, Bass knew he had to get his. Had to grab the rifle and prepare to sell his life dearly if these were Arapaho.
Chances were good that was just what these buffalo hunters were. After all, he told himself as his tearing eyes watered more as he fought to rub them free of dust, he had no idea where he was west of Park Kyack … except that the tall range of mountains was no longer off to his right. It was somewhere back to the southeast now. Hannah must surely have covered ground for him—but just how far north she had carried him toward the guiding star, there was no way to know.
Just get his rifle …
Rolling onto his left elbow, Bass rose partway out of the grass, blinking his eyes, finally clearing them at last. The forms danced liquidly before him, then snapped into focus.
He froze.
At least six of them, now a seventh he could count, all on horseback as they came up the slope—seven bowstrings were taut, arrows pointed at him.
His mouth went dry as he immediately looked at their leggings, their moccasins. Jehoshaphat—but they were tall men. Yet as his eyes raced over the patterns of quill-and beadwork they wore, there was something more about their look, their dress, the way they fashioned their hair, that convinced him these weren’t Arapaho.
Below them on the valley floor the bulls were passing now, thundering along behind the cows and calves—the last in the great cavalcade. Over the shoulders of some of the warriors Bass caught a glimpse of another dozen or more riders beginning to cross over from the far slope in the wake of the last retreating buffalo. They too were coming his way. And a large group of horsemen moved about on foot there on the nearby ground at the bottom of the slope, thei
r ponies held by others who waited nearby as they gathered in a throbbing knot around something shapeless on the trampled ground.
He wondered if they were gathering around one of the fallen beasts to begin butchering it … then he figured they would not all cluster around one animal in such a way. Perhaps, yes—they were acting as if it was one of their own who had fallen from his pony and gotten himself trampled. Then as the dozen or so riders drew closer, his surprise turned quickly to fear. It seemed with the approach of these horsemen, the first warriors were giving him their total attention.
Maybe they were already blaming him for the stampede—believing he had caused the death of their companion.
All he had was the knife. At least to get it in his hand before too many arrows punctured his hide. Just to know he died with a weapon in his hand.
Down the slope some thirty feet the dozen riders reined up. He figured them to be the band’s headmen. Lots of long hair blowing in the cool breeze of that late-summer morning. Feathers and scalp locks on their war shirts that kept them warm. A sprinkling of graying heads—the old ones, those who commanded respect and likely ruled over this hunt.
Now his back fat was in the fire.
Moving slowly so he wouldn’t attract any attention, he rolled slightly to the right, onto his hip as his left hand gradually let go of Hannah’s lead rope and he inched it toward the small of his back, where he hoped to seize the well-worn skinning knife and yank it from the old scabbard stuffed in his belt.
The warrior closest to his left took a sudden, crouching step forward, drawing his bowstring back even farther and shouting to the other bowmen.
Immediately raising his arm, one of the arriving dozen shouted something Scratch did not understand. Whatever it was that was said, it froze the bowmen in place. There was low muttering among the warriors as the one giving the orders, the one who had called out, stepped right up to Bass, pulling a fur cap from his head.
“Eeegod, boys! If’n it ain’t a white child out here all on his lonesome!” Then he bent forward at the waist a bit to quickly study Bass. “Yep, ye are a white nigger, sure enough!”
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