Wind Walker tb-9

by Terry C. Johnston

  As he shook with Esau, Scratch pulled the tradesman against him. In that tight hug he whispered against the Negro’s ear, “You won’t ever know how much it means to me for you to lead these people west.”

  They parted, still gripping hands. Esau’s eyes crinkled. He looked like a man searching for words to say, till suddenly he asked, “You like my new hat, Titus? Bought it special for the journey.”

  He smiled. “A good’un. Gonna keep the sun outta your eyes.”

  Nervous as he dropped his hand and took the reins Shad passed to him, Esau cleared his throat and said with difficulty, “Till the next time I see you, Titus Bass.”

  “Make the most of your life out to Oregon, Esau,” he declared. “You done a heap for yourself awready.”

  Swiping at an eye, the black man turned aside, leading his horse a few paces away as Shadrach edged up. Around the two of them Titus’s children were jabbering and patting the two small Sweete youngsters on the head. Talking in low tones, their Indian mothers held hands, sobbing and wiping tears, touching one another’s faces with wet fingertips in that way of Indian women taking their leave of one another.

  “Watch your back trail, Titus Bass,” Shadrach choked.

  “You watch your’n, Shadrach Sweete.”

  He dropped the reins to his horse and seized Scratch in a last desperate bear hug. “I’ll see you in the mountains again one day,” he whispered in Bass’s ear.

  “That’d shine, Shadrach. I’ll lay stock on that, ’cause that’d purely shine.”

  When Sweete stepped back, Shell Woman inched away from Waits-by-the-Water, who came to stand beneath Scratch’s arm.

  “You fellas take good care of these farmers,” he said, his voice thick and all but clogged. “There’s new homes waitin’ for ’em out yonder.”

  Esau swung into the saddle and turned his horse away to follow Shadrach and his family as they mounted up.

  Lemuel, Leah, and little Annie suddenly rushed against Titus and Waits, standing by that dead fire pit in a big knot as the five of them embraced.

  “Gran’pa—we’ll see you again,” Lemuel said, his eyes glistening.

  “I know you will, son.”

  Pushing their poke bonnets off their heads so they hung at their backs around their necks, Leah and Annie both surrounded him with their arms at the same time. Little Annie was blubbering and could get nothing said, but Leah’s voice cracked when she spoke, “You made everything a lot better for Mama when Lucas was took from us. I won’t ever forget that about you, Gran’pa.”

  He leaned down and kissed his granddaughter on the forehead, brushing some of the sandy-blond hair out of her eyes. “I won’t ever forget ’bout you girls neither. Both of you make your gran’pa real proud. I’m gonna count on you to help your folks ever’ step of the way, and ’specially when you get to Oregon. The same goes for you, Lemuel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make your pap an’ mam proud of you, ever’ day.” He patted the girls on the head, then shook hands quickly with Lemuel before the children stepped away with their parents.

  Roman waved at the five nearby riders. Bingham raised that tarnished brass horn in the growing light of this new day and blew his martial call. As the two Indian dogs suddenly lunged to their feet, expectant and prepared to move out as they had done many times before, on three sides of Scratch folks began to yell—at their oxen and mules, at their children, or just in an explosion of emotion as they rejoiced to be on their way once more, ready to confront the unmitigated might and power of the great and untamed Snake River. Step by step, mile by mile, day by day, these sojourners would always begin the next eight, twelve, or twenty miles this way. Voices raised as the dust began to stir and animals strained into their harness, lunged against the heavy yokes, whips snapping and milk cows lowing as they were nudged into motion.

  “Ho, for Oregon!”

  Burwell turned back one last time as he and Lemuel put their stock on the move. He touched the shapeless brim of his hat. Scratch held his arm up, steady and still in that coming light of day. Then the man and boy turned back to their duties, this getting on to Oregon.

  Shell Woman was sobbing bitterly now, clutching her youngest against her as their horses moved off. And he felt Waits-by-the-Water quaking against him too as he held her tightly, so tightly against his side. Frozen there on the empty ground between the groups stood the two shaggy dogs, confused why their master was not joining the caravan on its way out of sight, eager to go, prancing nervously, as if seeking to goad him into motion, into catching up with the others.

  Knee to knee with Esau, Shadrach reached Bingham and the four other riders, then wheeled his horse around one last time, ripped the big hat from his head, and waved it high at the end of his arm.

  Titus felt the big, hot tears spill down his leathery cheeks anew as he yanked the hat from his head too and held it aloft.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I’ll lay eyes on you again, my friend.”

  He started to tremble then too, doing his best to contain the grief as he watched till the last wagon disappeared through the curtain of tall green cottonwood. Gone down the Snake. Making for Oregon.

  With those two loyal dogs whimpering and whining in confusion, his three children stepped close, silent, while the creaking and groaning, all the noise of animals and those shouting voices, faded from their ears. Eventually swallowed by the distance stretching out between the here and the yet-to-be-seen there.

  He waited, listening until all sound had been sucked from that dawn-kissed air. Then Titus Bass felt himself shuddering with a terrible sense of loss and held fast to his woman, all things made endurable with her at his side.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Magpie, you take your brothers to those rocks,” he ordered, conscious of keeping the timbre of his voice as steady as possible. “Take them two dogs with you too an’ tie ’em up to the horses.”

  He could feel their eyes riveted to him as he continued to stare into the distance with that long leather-wrapped spyglass. The shimmering, faraway objects danced in the rising waves of heat. Already close enough that he could make out the snaking line of fewer than two dozen canvas-topped wagons, figures on foot plodding on either side of the train, and at least four horsemen riding purposefully out front. Even without the spyglass, a man could see it was Hargrove’s bunch.

  “Now, Magpie.”

  “Popo—”

  “Do as I tell you!” he snapped at her in Crow.

  Despite the uncertainty on her face, she held her ground and demanded, “Popo—you give me a gun to use.”

  He turned to look at her in disbelief, taking the spyglass from his eye.

  “Me too,” Flea supported his sister. “I can shoot a gun good as anyone my size.”

  Blinking, his eyes smarting with pride of them, Titus turned back to the wagons and swiped a droplet of sweat from the lid of his good eye, then fixed his gaze on the riders again. He was able to pick out Moses Harris from his slouch in the saddle. The tall one who sat ramrod straight next to Harris had to be Phineas Hargrove himself. The other two horsemen had to be emigrants … because those who were left of Hargrove’s seven were likely busy at the helm of the first two wagons. That’s where he figured Hargrove would continue to keep his teams and his men: right at the front of the column as they worked their way closer and closer to Fort Hall.

  Did the man actually believe he would ever catch up to Titus Bass and Shadrach Sweete on this road before the trails split? After the train had broken apart and the California-bound emigrants remained behind with Hargrove, the wagon boss had tarried long enough to give the Bingham-Burwell company some berth before they themselves continued on their way to the British post. Somewhere in those next two days Hargrove had dispatched the four riders to catch up to the Oregon party and settle with the two old trappers. With all the confidence in the world, he would have expected Benjamin and the others back with evidence of success in the murders.

  Jehoshaphat! H
ow Titus would have loved to see the look on Hargrove’s face when he came upon those four bodies at Soda Springs!

  Shadrach had wanted to drag them all into the middle of that road cut with hundreds of iron-tired wheels … but from his travois, the wounded Scratch didn’t want any part of it.

  “Just think how that’s gonna make his insides salt up when he sees them four all laid out neat and purty on the road, side by side by side,” Sweete had proposed.

  “No,” he had whispered in pain. “I don’t want Amanda seein’ us do nothin’ of the kind.”

  So they had left the four where each of the hired men had fallen in making his attack. A day or two under the late-summer sun, those bodies would have swollen up quite nicely, beginning to blacken with decomposition. And the stench? Why, if the wind had been from the right direction, that big nose in the middle of Harris’s face would have picked up the scent long before they reached the springs. What a happy night that would have made for Phineas Hargrove and the two remaining guns he had brought west to protect all that he held dear in those wagons of his.

  Come to think of it, without his drivers, what had Hargrove done with that extra cargo he would have had to leave behind? Would he have thrown what he could in the wagons he could bring along? Had he bullied and cajoled others into packing some of his cargo in their wagons? Or would he have offered good money to a few of the unattached men along in return for driving his wagons on to California? From the looks of things, Hargrove hadn’t been forced to stoop to driving a team himself—still riding out front with the pilot, setting himself apart from the rest.

  And just what would the other emigrants have thought when they came upon those bloated corpses? Bass had wondered as he started his family south from Fort Hall, riding for Bridger’s post. Would those who had elected to stay with Hargrove and turn south for California instead of Oregon look at the carnage and finally say among themselves that the murderous feud had come far enough? Had any of them secretly decided that when they reached Fort Hall they would push on in the hopes of catching the Bingham-Burwell party instead of remaining behind with Hargrove’s Californians? Hadn’t any of those farmers and shopkeepers the eggs to stand up to those three bullies and tell Hargrove they wanted no part of him any longer?

  Or would they keep their mouths shut as they had up to that point and figure such bloodshed was nothing more than the way of the wilderness, the price one had to pay for passage through a wild and brutal land? The toll taken in having anything at all to do with such mountain ruffians as those two old trappers?

  “Ti-tuzz,” his wife said at his side.

  Bass pulled the spyglass from his eye and gently nudged its three brass sections together before he tucked it away in his shooting pouch.

  Waits-by-the-Water waited patiently for him before she asked, “Do you want my gun with the children’s weapons?”

  Quickly appraising the ground, he decided where to put the horses, where to position what firepower he had against the many.

  “Magpie and Flea, they will stay in those rocks.” He pointed. The rest turned their heads and looked. “But you, Waits—take Jackrabbit with you into those rocks over there.” Again they all looked in the direction he indicated.

  “That will mean our three guns will be pointed at them,” Flea declared.

  “Four guns. I’ll be right here,” Titus said, gazing into the distance at the approaching column of dust shimmering with the intense, late-morning sun.

  She stepped around in front of him, her sad eyes appealing. “We can get out of their way. Let them pass. There is enough time—”

  “Hargrove an’ me,” he said in English, then thought that he better speak in Crow so there was no question of her understanding. “The wagon chief and me, we both have known we were going to reach this moment of our dance together. He never wanted Shadrach or me along with his group, because he knew that one day the two of us would be the whole reason the others finally showed the courage to stand up to him, the courage to break away from his hold over them. So Hargrove blames Shadrach and me. Now our friend and his family have gone to Oregon, so that leaves me to dance with Hargrove … alone.”

  “But he will not be alone,” she pleaded. “The fur-catcher, he will be another gun—”

  “I don’t think Harris will pull down on me,” Scratch interrupted her with a wag of his head. “That leaves Hargrove and the two who take orders from him.”

  “Three of them,” Magpie counted.

  Flea added, “And we have three guns already pointed at those three men, Popo.”

  “But we don’t have to shoot them!” Waits snapped at her son.

  Taking his wife by the shoulders, Titus said, “This is between me and Hargrove. I pray that the rest of you won’t have to shoot. Keep your guns on the others so they do not make trouble for me.”

  Her eyes smiled first, then she said, “We are getting too old for this, chilee.”

  He held her cheeks and kissed her forehead. “Now help your husband get the horses out of sight.”

  By the time they had the animals hidden in a nearby coulee and the extra guns distributed, they could hear the plodding hooves and the squeaking wheels, the yelling drivers and the lowing of the teams. Titus stepped toward the clearing between the rocky walls where his family crouched in hiding. He stopped at the edge of the well-trampled road and waited as the first horsemen came up over a low rise a little more than a hundred yards ahead of him. Scratch knew they had spotted him when he saw the squatters turn to one another and gesture—pointing on up the trail at the solitary figure. The tall rider turned around in the saddle and appeared to shout some warning to the first wagon as a couple of the horsemen abandoned the others, which left Hargrove and Harris alone at the front of the column.

  That done, the two riders urged their horses ahead, cautiously studying the ground on either side of the spot where Titus Bass stood alone, bringing his smoothbore down from his elbow—clearly leveling it at the approaching horsemen. He watched Harris’s eyes for several moments as the old mountain man and one-time confederate of William Sublette peered about suspiciously.

  Suddenly Harris threw out his arm and snagged hold of Hargrove’s elbow. They reined up together.

  “Where’s Shadrach Sweete?” Harris demanded sourly as he rolled his longrifle over the head of his hammer-headed cayuse.

  “He ain’t here.”

  “He ain’t?”

  “I ain’t gonna lie to you, Harris.”

  The two of them whispered where they sat atop their saddles, just out of earshot.

  Then Hargrove spoke, “Why should we trust what you tell us, old man? I figure sneaky back-shooters like you two would lay an ambush for us like this.”

  “I ain’t never been a back-shooter,” Titus declared evenly. “Not like your kind.”

  “We found the bodies of my men,” Hargrove explained. “Benjamin was shot in the back.”

  “Had to be,” Scratch said.

  “Then you admit you’re back-shooting murderers?”

  “No. Shadrach killed that’un to pull my hash out’n the fire.”

  “I stayed outta this all the way down the line!” Harris suddenly shouted to the rocks. “You hear me, Shadrach Sweete? I never had nothin’ to do with any of this killin’!”

  “Tol’t’cha, Harris,” he called out to the old trapper. “Shadrach ain’t here.”

  “Where is he?” Hargrove demanded.

  “Long on his way to Oregon with the rest of that bunch you an’ Hargrove were going to leave ’thout a pilot.”

  “Sweete’s guiding them his own self?” Harris asked in disbelief.

  “Him … and a feller what’s been out there twice’t awready.”

  Hargrove rocked back in the saddle a bit as the first of the wagons came up behind the two riders and noisily pulled up just within earshot. “That makes things, neat and tidy for Burwell’s folks, doesn’t it, Mr. Bass?”

  “I s’pose. You take your outfit off to Ca
liforny, an’ them others stay on the road all the way to Oregon.”

  The train captain grinned. “Sounds like everything is turning out rosy in the end, doesn’t it?”

  “’Cept for one thing, Hargrove.”

  “Ah … yes,” he sighed as the third wagon clattered to a stop and its driver turned to holler back at the others to halt.

  Already the drivers of those first two wagons had clambered down from their seats, dragging their prairie rifles after them, those short-barreled, percussion-capped weapons being manufactured on the borderlands for the new breed of frontiersman coming west. Titus hoped the three family members he had secreted in the rocks would each remember to choose a different target, on their side of the open ground—and keep their rifle trained on their particular target … no matter what happened to him and Hargrove when the shooting started.

  “Listen, Hargrove,” Harris said, his eyes narrowing as they bounced over the rocks once more, “I’ve managed to keep my hair for all these winters already … I ain’t gonna lose it to this son of a bitch what wants a piece of your tail.”

  The moment Harris attempted to turn his horse away, Hargrove reached out and snagged the reins. “You’re staying. In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say. If I don’t come out of this—you don’t get paid, Harris. Simple as that.”

  “This ain’t got nothin’ to do with me,” Harris complained. “Between you an’ him.”

  “Let me explain it to you again,” Hargrove growled, dragging the pilot’s horse closer. “The other men that old bastard has killed, they were expendable. Practically speaking, I could count on a certain number of my employees not reaching our final destination with us. That always meant there would be more of the pie to share, don’t you see?”

  Hargrove waved one of the riflemen left, the other to the right, both of them stopping just ahead of the two horsemen so that it would be hard for the trapper to swing his weapon far enough from right to left before someone dropped him.