But at least they had been here of a time past.
He sat there in the grass and mud long enough that the Indian pony and mare slogged up to stand near him as the Platte continued its relentless march past them all. Past the skeleton of a creature and time long gone by. Eventually he stood—reluctantly. And touched the bleaching skeleton one last time before sweeping up the rein, stuffing his soaked boot into the stirrup, and mounting.
It was a long time before he grew aware of his leather britches, how they began to chafe as they dried. So long had he been riding, thinking—dwelling on that skeleton and nothing else as the pony carried him west while the sun disappeared and the air grew cool, the mosquitoes rising like vapors along the riverbank where he eventually decided to stop for the night.
That evening, when he finally closed his eyes beside his small fire and pulled the blankets up over his shoulders, Titus could not remember for sure if he had eaten an evening meal, or what had consumed his time that night—only that his thoughts were on the unshakable beyond that lay just past the next hill, on the far side of the next bend in the great Platte River, on yonder through that country he had to endure until he ultimately discovered where the buffalo would be found.
More than myth. More than mere skeleton. Where they were flesh and bone, hide and horn.
How many more days, how many more weeks of riding would it take until he had put the last vestiges of white man’s forts and settlements and civilization far enough behind him … all the distance it would take before he discovered his first living, breathing buffalo? How well had he come to understand that the forts and outlying settlements, the white man himself, all were the greatest enemies to the wild creature he sought.
But it had been so long now, he ruminated as he eventually drifted off to sleep that night—so many weeks and countless miles since he had left the Missouri and the last bastions of white civilization all behind.
When would he ever possess the answers to those questions he had carried inside him for more than half his lifetime?
When would his mortal prayers finally be answered?
Late of the morning two days later he sensed the breeze come up, relishing its cooling touch across his cheek as it swept beneath the wide brim of the low-crowned hat that for the most part protected his face from the unforgiving sun in this open country. Hell, it was about all the shade to be found out here: for the past two days there hadn’t been trees big enough for a man to squat under and get out of the sun. What shade there was, the three of them were making for themselves: right below the horses’ bellies, and right below his hat’s floppy brim.
The pony snorted, jostling him awake with a start. Jehoshaphat—hadn’t it been a good dream too! His nose nestled down between the quadroon’s breasts where the sweat pooled and he could taste the salty earthiness of her coffee-skinned body as he crawled atop the woman in that ramshackle Wharf Street house of pleasure built crib upon tiny crib.
Immediately his hand tightened reflexively around the rifle laid upon his thighs, his eyes blinking as they came open in the late-morning light. Turning his head to the south, he quickly scanned the distant horizon, then turned to the right, studying the abrupt, low bluffs that bordered the river near at hand.
“What the hell you wake me for?” he demanded of the Indian pony as he loosened his white-knuckle grip on the rifle’s stock, slipped the reins into his right hand along with the weapon, then patted the horse along the neck. “I s’pose you caught yourself falling asleep too—that it, girl?”
She seemed to roll her eyes back at him.
“Yeah, I know. Hot as hell, ain’t it? And the way I figger it—this country gonna get hotter afore we get higher and cooler.”
As he said it, Titus cocked his head, peering up from beneath the wide brim of his dark-brown hat to find the offending yellow orb warming him to sleep at the same time it made him more thirsty than he had ever been in his life. Licking his dry, cracked lips, he mentally cursed the sun and its incessant heat, then blinked again and turned away from it, praying for more of that cooling wisp of breeze.
It was then that he saw them. Far off in the distance. Black specks swirling across the blue sky, off to the north and west of him. As the ponies plodded on, he watched, becoming almost hypnotized by the way the flock swooped and dived, then wheeled about and rose in the sky once more. Black specks diverging for but a moment, scattering like water striders on the surface of a Kentucky pond—then suddenly congealing in an ever-darker mass as they came down in a loud fluttering of wings, all of them disappearing from view.
His throat went even drier. That was the first great flock of birds he had seen like that. They must be tiny, for they had no real form at this distance. One of them would have been all but invisible, he decided as he reined the pony gently to the north, toward the river. Maybe even a few of them would still have trouble making themselves visible. But the innumerable masses of them flocking together in that one black cloud across the spring blue was enough to capture any man’s attention.
As he reached the water’s edge and halted the animals, Bass saw the faint puffing of dust rise beyond the bluff, a dirty smudging of the blue horizon far beyond his line of sight.
“Shit,” he grumbled.
Angry at himself, Titus sat there a moment in the saddle, watching those birds rise again, swoop to the north, climb ever higher to the cloudless sky, then sweep back to the south before settling once more behind the bluff.
What stirred that dust? What caused those birds to take to flight like they did—spooked perhaps, then descending to roost once again?
Heart thumping, afraid he had made the last mistake of his life … yes, Bass was angry with himself for all but bumping into the rear of the Indian village after so many days, weeks now, of taking such pains to avoid the Pawnee. So damned many miles during which he had been so very careful that if he had a fire, he built it beneath one of the rare leafy trees where the branches would disperse the smoke, or beneath an overhanging shelf of a ravine where he could again hide himself, the glow of his fire, and his camp for another night. Just enough fire dug down in a hole to boil some coffee.
Still, there had been those nights when something in his gut told him he’d best make it a cold camp: lying up with the horses close enough that he could swing atop the pony and make a run for it if fate dictated that he would be discovered there in the dark beneath the prairie stars. Suspicious enough, even afraid enough too there at times, that he only traveled at night for more than eight days—back there along the Platte after first running across the village site.
Those tepee rings and meat racks and the size of that trail had been enough to scare him. Hell, just such a sight was enough to pucker any thinking man’s bunghole.
He’d seen for himself how the Chickasaw stole in to work over their enemies—night creatures that they were, sneaking on board that flatboat as Ebenezer Zane’s men lay tied up on the far side of the Mississippi. Yes, Titus had seen with his own eyes just how bloody ruthless Indians could be … and from Isaac Washburn’s accounts of his own cross-country trek with Hugh Glass last year, these river Pawnee might well be all the worse than those Mississippi Chickasaw.
There was simply no taking chances. A younger man might, and lose his hair in the bargain. Hell, who was he kidding anyway? If he was dumb enough to pull a stunt like heading out to the far mountains on his own, then he just might be stupid enough to get himself in some big trouble.
“Damn,” he muttered in exasperation, slamming a palm down on the saddle horn as he stared at that rising, swirling dust cloud.