Bringing it off his lap in that left hand, standing it up, Bass propped himself against the rifle and rose. Now he could hobble about, using it as a crutch. Shuffling over to the mule, he pointed the muzzle down at an angle and worked the barrel beneath those ropes securing the right side of her packs. There, he figured, he could pull it out quickly if need be. With no pistols, nothing but the old skinning knife he had stuffed into the back of his belt—Titus lovingly stroked the heavy-barreled rifle. It, like the mule, were gifts granted him this day, which might well have been his last.
Steadying himself with an arm around the mule’s neck, Bass hobbled beneath her head. It took a little doing, but with the sheeting finally draped back over that off side of the load, and the thick red blanket folded just so and laid over the top of the packs, Bass took up Hannah’s long rawhide lead again. Looping it over her neck halfway between ears and withers, he hobbled a single step so that he could grip his left arm around her jaw.
It was an embrace she struggled against at first—perhaps not sure what he intended to do—then, as he continued to coo and pat and stroke, she settled—allowing him to hug her fiercely.
“You’re all I got now, girl,” he croaked, his voice breaking and his eyes filling with tears, spilling out on the blood dried and caked on his cheeks. “You gotta do for me … w-what I can’t do for myself.”
Laying the side of his face along her jaw for a moment, Bass eventually pulled himself away and hobbled back to her foreleg again. This was it—the test to see if they would be able to get themselves out of there.
Hell, he told himself—she could. That wasn’t the question at all. What he was about to endure was the test of his own grit. Perhaps one of the most supreme trials he had ever confronted. And here he was alone. No one to help. No one to know. Just him, and the mule. The friend who had come back for him.
Damn near the only friend he now had in life.
“Help … help me,” he whispered there at her ear as he reached over her withers as far as he could with his good left arm. “S-steady,” he coaxed, already wincing with the pain, tears clouding his eyes.
Bass said no more. He could not. His teeth were clenched too damned tight to utter a word. But sounds came out nonetheless as he raised himself off the ground a matter of no more than inches at first, struggling to pull his weight up against the side of the shifting mule with that one lone arm.
When he tried kicking his leg for additional boost, Bass cried out suddenly … and hearing himself, he clamped down on his lower lip, vowing he would not make that mistake again. Instead, he could only groan, gasping for breath with every sharp jab of pain as he pulled. Pulled.
Steady … dear God—steady, girl, he thought as the mule sidestepped again, shifting herself with his additional weight throwing her off balance.
Then he realized he had dragged himself more than two feet off the ground, and not knowing how long he could go on hanging there with the one arm bearing it all … but knowing at the core of him that he would never endure another attempt. This had to be it, or they would be staying right there for the night, perhaps forever if the Arapaho returned.
Grunting, he forced that tingling right hand to seize a loop of knotted rope securing the sheeting over the packs. By rocking to his side Bass let go with his left hand and before his weak right arm failed him—he thrust out with the strong one, securing a new hold and hung there, stunned by the pain and ready to bawl.
Sure that he would weaken and cry out with the torment in that shoulder wound the next time he inhaled, instead Titus bit down on his lip, grunting as he pulled again, dragging his weight a little farther up the side of the mule. She volved her head back to look at him, see what he was doing … then suddenly lowered her neck.
Not waiting for Hannah to change her mind, for her to move—Bass lunged down her far side with the good hand and snatched a third hold, pulling, dragging, hauling himself on over her foreflanks until his waist lay across her withers.
As Hannah’s head and neck came up, he finally gasped for breath, spitting blood from the lower lip he had just bitten hard enough that a warm ooze trickled across his tongue.
“G-good … g-girl,” he stammered in a hoarse croak, the punctured lip already beginning to swell.
As he fought the dizziness and thumping of each heartbeat now clanging in his head with the power of a blacksmith’s hammer, Titus rolled onto his left side and with the numbed right arm yanked on the thick blanket, stuffing it down beneath him. There he knew it would pad him from the mule’s bony withers, here where he lay cradled between her neck and the front of Hannah’s packs.
With each of those violent movements, all that stretching of the shoulder, rotating it—Bass now rested there a moment, sensing the wound on the front of his shoulder seeping. For the first time since he had regained consciousness on the riverbank, the bullet hole had torn away from the inside of his buckskin shirt where the animal hide had crusted itself against the exit wound.
And as he hung there crimped at the waist over the back of the faithful mule, Scratch began to feel a warm trickle at the back of his neck—not sure if it was the river moss still dripping …. or more of his own blood seeping now from the entrance wound in his back.
That, or the scalping.
If he didn’t bleed to death in the next few hours, he damn well might fall off because he couldn’t hold on anymore. No telling how long his strength would last. And when it failed, he would just tumble off the mule’s back. If that happened, Bass knew with rock-hard certainty that he would never get back on her. This was his chance. He’d been given this much by the power that watched over all things. A man had no right to expect any more than that.
This was his one chance. His to do with … or die. It was up to him now. Up to him and the mule.
After a moment more he tugged on the rifle one more time to be sure he could free it from the ropes; then Bass took up the long loop of rawhide rope.
“Awright, Hannah,” he whispered hoarsely. “Get … get us outta here.”
With a slight tug on the rope she started away from the riverbank with him slung over her like so much deadweight baggage. Turning slightly and taking those small steps, Hannah was careful where she placed each hoof, perhaps sensing the heavy burden placed on her. Not just the man’s weight—but his call to her spirit. It was up to her now.
As Hannah turned a step at a time, firmly planting each hoof before she moved another on the uneven, sandy grass of the bank, she turned Scratch’s face toward the west. Slowly, slowly she came around, turning so that he saw downriver. Through the mist of tears he got himself a long look at the sun settling beyond those tall cottonwoods.
How good this was—he suddenly thought, suddenly felt its certainty through his whole body. How damned good it was to watch this sundown.
So simple a thing to him before this day, this matter of the sun’s going down.
As she brought him on around, Bass gradually turned his head and rested it against her powerful, muscular foreflank flexing with each measured step. Resting his cheek against her power when he was now weak. Gazing back at that sunset.
As she plodded forward across the uneven ground, a hoof at a time … he gave thanks for the loyalty of that friend carrying him away from the riverbank there at the end of that day.
Watching the sun ease down past the bushy tops of the far cottonwoods, Scratch vowed his life would not be the same hereafter. This simple matter of a sunset was the powerful radiance of what surrounded his heart with all the more warmth. Not only did he have the mule and his rifle … but he had been given this sunset.