The gift of another day now brought to a close.
Had things been different—had the power that watched over all things not been wanting him to see things through new and different eyes—then, Bass realized, he would not be alive to watch this sun going down behind those cottonwoods … splashing the river’s surface with glittering light.
At the center of him he made a vow to watch each and every sunset, each and every one of those days given him from here on out. Promising to be thankful for each one he had been granted by whatever great force had spared him this day.
Surely it had to be the same, unnamed power that created the beauty of every sunset, painting each day’s with a different hue as the earth slowly turned beneath that radiant, blazing horizon.
As the sun sank lower, out of sight behind the cottonwoods and Hannah carried him up the long slope from the river, Bass vowed with all his heart that he would not fail to watch them all. Given that gift of each day.
Realizing he was not just given his life this day, but given new eyes to see all those sunsets yet to come.
By the time he pushed himself over and off the mule’s back late that first night, it felt like every inch of him had been scalded raw.
Scratch wasn’t sure how much ground they had covered after fleeing the riverbank at sundown: he had passed out. But when he finally became aware that the mule had stopped, the moon itself was resting on the far western edge of that black dome overhead. Slowly coming awake, he realized he had been asleep, maybe more so he had passed out with fatigue, his mind and body giving up the fight against such terrible pain. And he shivered with cold. As warm as the days had been, the nights had been gradually growing colder.
Evidently, she had been standing there patiently waiting for him to awaken, unable or unwilling to take him any farther that night. The only sounds he heard as he came to were the mule’s weary breathing, and the faint trickle of water seeping along its bed, somewhere out there.
As the seconds passed and his heartbeat began to hammer at his ears once more, Bass became all too painfully aware of his body. From head to toe, it felt as if he had been brutalized—not a part of him that did not cry out. While not as horrifying an ordeal as had been climbing on, this pushing himself off the mule’s bare back was nothing short of excruciating torment.
Even the muscles in his good arm and the two strong legs cried out with complaint. Every part of him in agony, Bass heaved himself off his perch, dropping to his legs only to have them give out beneath him so he landed in a heap.
Groaning, Scratch rolled over onto his left shoulder and drew his legs up fetally—fixing to let himself cry as the pain washed over him in a diminishing flood. Sometime later, when he was prepared for what it would take, Bass told himself he had the strength to get back on his feet. Better that than lying on the cold, bare ground at the edge of this stand of trees.
First he struggled to his knees, then rose there beside Hannah, resting against her as his breath slowed until he again heard the faint trickle. With his legs stiff and unused, he gripped on to the mule and stumbled around to the far side of her to drag his rifle free. With that crutch Titus started away, following the faint sound.
The tiny freshet proved to be less than five yards away: a narrow creek fed by a high-country snowfield as yet unmelted by summer’s harsh glare and heat. There he went to his knees again, and with the rifle close at hand, Bass dipped his face into the icy flow. Colder than he had imagined it would be—much colder than the river had been—he pulled back, gasping with surprise, his face and beard dripping with black pearls in the darkness.
“Come, girl,” he coaxed the mule behind him. “Get you some.”
When she didn’t move, he tried convincing her again, but instead she only hung her head in exhaustion.
“I know,” Scratch said quietly. “Me too.”
Then, after he slowly dragged his tongue over his parched lips, Bass whistled the best he could.
Her ears perked and her head came up. Wide-eyed, she came over close enough for him to stroke her as he sat up beside the freshet to rub a hand down a foreleg, sensing the powerful muscle that had rescued him from destruction, carried him far from the riverbank attack.
“Drink, girl. You’re gonna need it.”
Gently tugging down on her lead, Titus finally got her to understand. She lapped at the water briefly, then raised her head and backed away.
“C’mere,” he demanded … then whistled.
When she returned to his side, Scratch reached up and snatched hold of the end of the big, thick wool blanket. He wasn’t about to move any farther tonight. Right here would do.
Gazing into the sky for a moment to figure where the sun would come up in the morning, he shuffled over a few yards on his knees to a soft patch of grass within a brushy crescent of tall willow. She followed him, stopped, and hung her head as he painfully, slowly, laid his body down on the double fold of blanket, slid the long rifle between his knees and arms, then brought the other half of the blanket over himself.
It took a few minutes, but much of the pain of moving eventually dissipated, and he was left with nothing but the constant, nagging throb of his wounds, and the deepening of the cold that night.
Sometime later when the sky to the east was graying, Bass awoke, his bladder full and aching. The best he could do was throw off the blanket, push himself onto his knees, then pull his breechclout aside as he made water there and then. With that exquisite relief washing over him, Titus collapsed within his thick red cocoon and quickly fell back to sleep.
There were times during that first day when he grew aware of things around him. Not coming fully awake, not really opening his eyes at all—only occasions when he was slowly brought to realizing the sun was up at one position or another in the sky. Instead of opening his eyes here in the cool of his copse of willow, Bass would smell, his nose telling him that Hannah remained close by. One time he awoke to smell the earthy scent of her dung, another time when she made a puddle of strong, pungent urine nearby.
Late that afternoon he awoke again—and for the longest time he kept his eyes closed, listening to the mule crop at the grass, tearing it off between her teeth, listened to the breeze and the birds and the winged insects droning somewhere close. With no sun on the willow grove now, he figured it to be evening and eventually opened his eyes. Rubbing the grit from them once more, Scratch sat up a little at a time, his belly as hungry as he could remember it had ever been.
For a long time his belly rumbled while he stared down at the front of his right shoulder, slowly volving it to see how much he could move it now, more than a day after the bullet wound. Sore and tender—but he could urge it this way and that more widely than before. Soon, maybe, he would have to see about patching it up, putting some sort of bandage over one or both of the holes. Carefully he tugged at the buckskin shirt with his fingers and was surprised to find that the shirt wasn’t crusted to the front wound again. The hole was coagulating all on its own.
After whistling softly to Hannah, Bass pulled himself up against her, propping himself there to loosen knots on rope and rawhide. After retrieving that tight bundle of buckskin scraps, he blindly dug around in a second rawhide parfleche until his fingers felt the beaver fur. Knowing the glossy hides would do nicely, Scratch pulled out the small wrap of fur. What he saw was not just the dark sheen of the thick scraps of beaver, but tangled in it across his hand lay the blue bandanna.
Slowly sinking again with the buckskin and beaver scraps in his lap, he stared a long time at the blue silk scarf before finally bringing it to his nose. He inhaled deep and long, his eyes barely closing—conjuring up that remembrance of her through the potent power or scent.