In utter shock Scratch watched a second one, then a third, and finally more white men step up through the gaps between the warriors who held their bows on this quarry they had cornered on the hillside.
“Y-you’re … American!” Scratch stammered with a hoarse croak. “Wh-white men!”
The speaker’s eyes crinkled at their corners as his mouth drew up into a wide, friendly bow that showed a row of overly large teeth browned the color of pin acorns. The tall, stubble-faced man pulled back the cuff on his leather war shirt and studied his forearm a moment, then slapped his thigh with that fur cap, laughing as he sent a small eruption of dust puffing from his legging.
“By bloody damn—but I am that!” he exclaimed, his green eyes merry. “Rest of my outfit too.”
Without turning nor taking his eyes off Bass, the stranger flung his free arm backward to indicate the others, who, although dressed every bit as Indian as did the bow-wielding warriors, were clearly white men as they stepped up for a closer inspection of the stranger. Not a one wore a beard on their severely tanned faces, all of which bore the color of well-soaped saddle leather.
With another step the first stranger came beside Bass, dropping to one knee and extending that arm he had just inspected to certify his skin color. Unable to stop the tears beginning to fill his eyes, Titus rolled onto his left hip and eagerly held out the right hand to shake.
Seizing it securely, smiling warm and genuine, the stranger announced, “Name’s Hatcher, friend. Jack Hatcher.”
“What strange twist of the devil’s tail brings you here, Titus Bass?” Hatcher asked after he had sent some of the warriors off to the nearby coulees to locate some saplings strong enough to construct themselves a pair of travois. He had trudged back up the slope and settled there in the grass alongside Scratch with some of the other white men.
One of them, about as stocky as he was tall, handed Bass a strip of dried meat to chew on. “Take your time with this here,” he warned. “Man’s been without food long as you have, just take ’er easy and chew slow.”
“Thankee,” Bass garbled around that first hunk he tore off the strip, wanting to swallow it near whole. But he knew the sense in the man’s words.
“His name’s Kinkead,” Hatcher announced. “Matthew Kinkead.”
Bass nodded. “Moving north,” he began to explain after he had finished that first strip of jerked venison and Kinkead handed him another. The rest sat nearby, as unperturbed and unhurried as they could be. “I figgered to run onto one of them trapping brigades.”
“Sublette?” Hatcher asked. “That booshway’s already pushed through this country, friend.”
“Him or Fitzpatrick. Didn’t make me no difference.”
“You was with ’em?” asked a new man with about the shaggiest head of unkempt hair Titus had ever seen.
Bass spoke around his jerky. “With who?”
“Fitzpatrick or Sublette?”
“No,” he answered. “I was on my own.”
“My name’s John Rowland,” and he held out his own bony hand. “Don’t think we ever caught your’n.”
“Titus Bass.” How good it was to talk, to look at friendly faces. To hear the sound of voices.
Hatcher’s eyes fell to Bass’s bloody shirt, a large, blackened stain radiating from the bullet hole in its shoulder. After a long moment his eyes came back to Bass’s face, his eyes crinkling warmly. “Prob’ly wouldn’t make no difference what white men ye run onto, Titus Bass. Fitzpatrick, Sublette, any of ’em. But I can tell you one thing for sartin: yer one lucky sumbitch ye run onto us when ye did. Lookit the way Titus here’s wolfing down our meat, boys! How long since last ye et, friend?”
For the life of him Bass wasn’t able to sort it out. The days of sleeping, the nights of riding on the mule, three … or more? Finally Scratch shook his head wearily.
“Longer’n he can remember I ’spect, Jack,” a new voice said as the man came up the slope from the horses and knelt.
Hatcher made the introductions. “This here’s Caleb Wood. Caleb, say your howdy to Titus Bass.”
After they shook, Wood turned to Hatcher to explain, “We ain’t found us much to make us them two travois, so I sent Rufus back with a handful of the Sho’nies to fetch us what we need from the village.”
“V-village?” Bass croaked.
They all turned at Bass’s question. “Snakes,” Jack answered. “Camped up the country a piece. Best ye just rest for now. Solomon—fetch me the man’s blanket off’n the ground there—yonder. And Elbridge, whyn’t ye find something for us to put under his head. We likely got us a bit of a wait here, and Mr. Bass just ought’n have his comfort till we set off to drag him back.”
“Drag? Drag me?”
“How long ye say ye been out here?” Jack inquired, his eyes flicking up and down Bass’s buckskin clothing, clearly Indian made. “An’ ye ain’t never see’d a travois?”
“You’re fixing to drag me back in one of them?”
Rowland said, “Less’n you’re fit to sit a horse.”
In resignation Bass shook his head, then felt his shoulders lifted as the one called Elbridge raised him, stuffing a folded saddle blanket beneath his head and shoulders as Solomon unfurled the dirty red blanket over the length of him.
Kinkead asked, “You warm enough, Titus Bass?”
“I’ll do for now—thankee.” But he shuddered as the wind gusted along the hillside.
“Don’t tell me you’re one of them fool-headed, prideful niggers, now.” Hatcher turned to a knot of the others, saying, “Isaac—I seen ye pack that blanket of yer’n ahind your saddle. Fetch it up for this man’s cold.”
“A good man, if’n he’s a little solemn,” Kinkead confided.
Hatcher stood to fling his voice down the slope. “An’ Isaac—get one of the boys to ride up the valley to fetch us the first hide them Sho’nies pull off.”
“What you figger to use the hide for if I got this fella a blanket for to lay over ’im?” Solomon asked.
“To my way of thinking,” Hatcher explained, squatting to lay a palm flat on the grassy soil beside him, “this here ground ain’t all that warm a place for a ailin’ man to Jay hisself.”
Solomon’s eyes smiled as he rose to his feet and started away. “I’ll make double sure our friend here gets ’nother blanket and his robe too.”
Bass watched the trappers move off toward their horses not far down the slope.
Scooting closer to Bass and crossing his legs, Hatcher explained, “Like I said, we only got to wait till Rufus makes it back. So it be fine for ye get yer rest if’n ye can.”
“Maybe later,” Bass replied quietly. “It’s about all I can do … just that it’s damned good to run onto folks.”
“I’d ’spect it would be, Titus Bass.”
One by one he looked around that circle, the severely tanned faces lined by wind and weather, eyes smiling every one. For a moment he was overcome with such emotion, he could not speak. Finally, “H-how say you fellers go to callin’ me by the name I was first give out here not long back?”
“Ye call me Jack … even Mad Jack,” Hatcher replied, “then I’ll damn well call ye anything ye want me to.”
“Scratch.”
The tall and angular Hatcher scooped up Bass’s right hand again, not shaking it hard at all, more so a tight squeeze. “Pleased be to mee’cha, Scratch. Now—I’ve got me my ears pinned back, and I’m hankering to hear the tale of how ye come to have a hole in ye.”
Rowland nodded. “Where’s the rest of your plunder?”
Bass swallowed hard. “What’s on the mule’s all I got left me in the world.”
“Red-bellies?” asked the blond-haired Solomon.
“Arapaho.”
With a grunt of agreement Hatcher said, “Stands to reason, don’t it? With those sons of bitches … well—they be just ’bout as bad as Bug’s Boys.”
“B-bugs?”
“Bug’s Boys,” Hatcher repeated. “Blackfoot
s.”
“Much as I heard about ’em, ain’t never run onto none of them.”
“And you don’t wanna!” Rowland cried.
“Now, g’won, Scratch,” Hatcher prodded. “We got us a wait to bide our time. What say ye fill it with yer tale?”
Which is just what Titus did, beginning with the death of his last horse in the mountains and the fortuitous arrival of the trio.
“Hol’ on there,” Hatcher demanded. “How ye come to be all on yer lonesome, trapping by yerself in the first place?”
“Maybeso I ought’n tell you how I come out here from St. Louie.”
“First whack—by damn you best start at the beginning.”
So he eagerly went back to his time learning from Isaac Washburn and their plans to come out together along the Platte … then continued by recounting his solitary journey after Gut got himself killed in St. Louis where for a time there it seemed Scratch’s dream had gone up in smoke.
Right on through it all he related the story to Hatcher and the rest, who all scooted close to sit a spell. The lot of them listened in attentively, not a one of the trappers interrupting as Bass told of his first winter with the Ute, and his first scrape with the Arapaho. Then on to his first rendezvous in Willow Valley.
“By jam, we was there!” Isaac Simms commented.
But Elbridge Gray was a little’ more somber in his comment, “Not much likker howsoever.”
“Trader had him likker enough this summer, didn’t he, Jack?” Wood asked.
“Let the man finish his story, boys,” Hatcher scolded.
From rendezvous Bass recounted their fall hunt and how he had begun to bring in more beaver, bigger ones too, than the other three trappers. But he kept to himself how Silas Cooper just up and took what he believed was his rightful share of Titus’s catch—not daring to tell these men how Cooper ended up beating him so badly he came close to asking to die.
“How them Crow to winter with?” Gray asked.
Simms grinned as he inquired, “Them Crow gals good in the blankets as I hear they be?”
“Hush up, now!” Jack chided them. “Mebbe Scratch here didn’t get his stinger wet in none of them Crow gals. G’won—tell us how ye come to be from Crow country down south to ’Rapaho ground.”
Tracing their decision to float the furs downriver and how he discovered there was no post at the mouth of the Bighorn, Bass explained his journey south into Park Kyack, looking to scare up some Ute company—and when he didn’t find any of that, deciding he’d just as well head on over to the place Cooper had chosen for their reunion.
“After I waited some more, long past time for the ronnyvoo at Sweet Lake,” Bass told them, “I set out, figgering I’d run across one outfit or ’nother—an’ trade off some of them horses for what I needed in the way of fixin’s.”
In marching east toward the mountains where he had decided he would turn north, Titus told the hushed circle of attentive trappers about his coming across Injun sign, running onto the painted war party, and how he had come to be left for dead, stripped of weapons and a little less of his hair.
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, every set of eyes flicked up to stare at the blue bandanna.
“What ye done for it?” Hatcher inquired, wagging a finger at the back of his own skull. “That noggin of yer’n?”
“Put me some moss on it—soon’s I was able to drag my bones down to the water.”
Elbridge Gray’s head bobbed in confirmation. “That’s good thinking.”
“Likely it was,” Hatcher added. “How come it was the red bellies didn’t steal yer rifle?”
“Thought they had at first,” Bass said, then explained how he had found it buried in the brush where the weapon had tumbled.
“Lucky nigger you was,” Isaac Simms declared.
“Best luck I ever had was that mule there,” Bass admitted. “No telling for sure—but I imagine I’d been buzzard bait afore now if’n I didn’t have that savvy mule to carry me away from there.”
“And right into this valley filled with buffler!” Wood exclaimed.
“A white buffler at that!” Jack said.
“Lookee yonder,” Gray announced, turning to point.
A band of some ten horsemen had come into sight to the north. Clearly two of the riderless horses dragged the long, crossed poles of travois strapped to their backs.
“Wh-white buffler?” Scratch repeated.
“By the by,” Jack Hatcher replied, “that’s what the second horse drag is for.”
“See that bunch down there still?” Rowland asked.
Horses and warriors, were still knotted around something on the prairie, which Bass could not make out from this distance. “I’ll wager one of the warriors took a spill and got hisself trompled over?”
“Nawww, ain’t had nary a man die this hunt,” Hatcher began to explain. “That other travois be for a special hide … a white-buffler hide.”
Titus whispered in wonderment, “Ain’t never seen one of them.”
Shrugging, Hatcher declared, “Ain’t many men can claim to laying eyes on a white buffler at all, Scratch. But this here bunch of Sho’nies found ’em the critter running in the pack ’long with the others—this morning right after we started our hunt.”
“Something special ’bout a white buffler?” Titus inquired. “Special enough to carry it on its own travois?”
Hatcher said, “That’s right. It’s big medicine, powerful doin’s, Titus Bass.”
“An’ so be you too,” Caleb Wood added.
Titus stammered in astonishment, “H-how’s that?”
Turning slightly, Jack said, “Look down there. See that bunch?”
“They been there long as we been up here,” Scratch agreed.
Hatcher explained, “Been busy there all morning long. Ol’ medicine men and respected warriors—all of ’em been smoking and singing and praying while’st they been at cutting that hide off the critter real careful.”
Bass nodded. “That hide must be something special to em.”
“Damn right it is,” Gray said.
Then Hatcher went on to say, “They’ll take that white hide back on one of the travois—since it be such powerful medicine to these here Sho’nies. Why, they’ll ride back into their village singing and such.”
“Don’t you know they’re all worked up about it awready,” Simms commented as Rufus Graham pointed his horse away from the ceremonial group and began making his way toward the trappers on the slope with Bass.
“They’ll be singing lots of strong-heart songs for ye too,” Hatcher said. “For yer healing, Titus Bass.”
“For … for me?”
“Where ye landed here is right across the valley from where they dropped that white medicine animal,” Jack said. “Don’t ye see?”
Wagging his head, Bass admitted, “I don’t understand.”
For a moment Hatcher looked at a few of the others. Then he said, “Ye be a white man, Titus Bass. And now ye showed up with yer own powerful medicine too.” Hatcher pointed to Scratch’s shoulder. “That bullet wound and all—the ol’ headmen down there already say ye got big medicine.”
Slowly shaking his head in utter confusion, Bass found that to sort through all of this made him weak, and all the more bewildered. “Don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, fellas.”
Hatcher grinned widely with those pin-acorn teeth of his filling fully half of his face. “Listen, the way them chiefs see it: yer the one brung that white buffalo here to bless this bunch of Sho’nies.”
“Me?” he squeaked. “B-bless?”
Nodding, Jack continued. “Way they see it, besides their All Spirit taking care of ’em, yer the one they ought’n be grateful to for bringing ’em this blessing. Now they won’t have no empty bellies, won’t go hungry for buffler—so the old stories go.”
“Stories?”
“’Bout the white buffalo, Scratch,” Kinkead said. “When such a medicine critter comes once in
many generations, the Sho’nie people gonna be blessed with meat and shining times—they’ll stand strong against their enemies … and stand strong, shoulder to shoulder, with all their people.”
Knocking dust and grass from his rump as he rose, Caleb Wood said, “Matthew told you what be the honest truth, Titus Bass. Them chiefs been praying and smoking and such about you.”
“But! I … I didn’t bring no white buffalo here!” Bass protested.
Hatcher smiled, chuckling a moment before he asked, “Just how in hell ye know ye didn’t?” And then he laid a hand gently on Bass’s wounded shoulder. “Ye damn well been out’n yer mind for more’n the last three days, ain’t ye?”
Titus answered, “I s’pose it’s been that long. Yes.”
Hatcher continued, “And that’s how long we’uns with that village been follerin’ the trail of this here herd. Face up to the bald-faced truth of it, Titus Bass: ye just dropped off your mule in one hell of a good spot!”
Shaking his head with how incredible the whole story sounded, Scratch grinned at the circle of trappers and replied, “You ain’t telling me nothing I don’t already know.”
“And that white buffalo calf down there—Titus Bass and it are mighty big medicine to these here folks,” Hatcher repeated, a look of seriousness returning to his face.
So much of it just did not make sense to him. “If’n I got all this medicine power, and you say I’m so damn special to these here Snakes, why the hell them bucks come up here on the jump and pull their bows on me?”
With a shrug Jack replied, “Mebbeso they didn’t know just what ye was at first, Titus Bass.”
Perhaps it wasn’t merely that he was still confused, hungry, and weak, but that he was more than a little afraid, what with all that the trappers were telling him about medicine and white-buffalo hides.
Scratch looked Jack in the eye and asked, “What’s that mean, Hatcher? They wasn’t sure what I was at first?”
“Just look there,” Hatcher said, an arm swinging in an arc to point out the nearby Shoshone warriors, who had put those bows back in their quivers.
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