That’s what had happened, he decided. No doubt about it, he had run right up on the rear of that village moseying upriver on the north bank as the season warmed, likely searching for new hunting grounds. And here he was, traipsing right along behind that village until he’d run right smack into them.
Was it run, or turn back?
Turning to look left, then right, he decided this south bank of the shallow river was not the place to hide out the rest of the day. Over there, across the Platte, the bluffs rose, cut by sharp-sided ravines where he might find a place for himself and the animals until nightfall. Only then would he chance recrossing to the south bank and hurrying wide around them. Get in front of those Pawnee where he would not have to worry about bumping into them again.
It sounded as good as any idea he’d ever had as he got down from the saddle, threw up the stirrup fender, and slipped his fingers beneath the cinch. Tugging, he figured it was tight enough still. Likewise he checked the cinch and straps on the mare’s packsaddle. When he had stripped off his clothes and stuffed them under the packsaddle’s ropes, Titus figured he had them all ready for another crossing and remounted.
Nudging the pony upstream, Bass soon found a wide, sandy slope pocked with hundreds of huge prints. It was there he stopped, the horses’ hooves just barely in the water, as he studied the route across the river to the far bluffs more than two hundred yards beyond. Again he looked down at the damp hoofprints embedded in the moist sand. Then again out to the river, studying that brush emerging from sandbars and islands in the middle of the Platte, brush that barely poked its head above the turbulent flow at this season of mountain runoff far to the west.
“Awright,” he said quietly to them. “Let’s go.”
Just get across before anyone spotted them there among the brush and stunted trees on the bank.
They hadn’t gone but a third of the way across when the pony suddenly volved its head around and tried to peer back at its rider, eyes wide as clay mug-bottoms. On all sides around the three of them, the water seemed to boil, alive with silt and stinging sand. Then the pony stumbled on the shifting bottom, going down. It re-emerged from the water with its rider, both of them snorting water, muddy silt gushing from its muzzle. Bass coughed, spitting sand, his eyes gritty.
Then the horse got its footing with a jerk and fought hard at the reins to whirl about in that moment, straining to head back to the south bank rather than to push on any farther, any deeper.
“Goddammit!” he growled, yanking to snub up the rein, sawing on it with all his might as the pony fought against him, twisting nose around into the current.
Water immediately swept over the pony’s head once more. In the next heartbeat it felt as if the bottom came out from under them as the animal lost its footing on the roiling river bottom, legs clawing desperately at nothing but murky water, head bobbing frantically into the muddy current that rushed into its eyes and nostrils, streaming over Titus with a persistent tug that threatened to shove him loose, to unhorse him in the middle of that great river.
As he continued to cuss and grumble, spit and spew—one hand on the rein and the other on the rifle held over his head—Bass’s gut tightened on reflex. He was frightened—not knowing what to do about all that was going on beneath him, around him … unable to do a damned thing for the animal he rode as it fought the bit and refused his commands.
Now it became all he could do to hang on to the pony as the water swept him backward, off the cantle of the saddle. As the animal lunged forward into the murky water, the rifle went under as he clung desperately, that solitary arm straining against the muscular neck as the pony thrashed its head from side to side, fighting to free itself from the watery prison, from this strong eddy that forced the animal ever farther into the muddy current as they sidestepped deeper and deeper into the heart of the river … all while the wild-eyed mare whinnied and neighed behind them—her head bobbing barely above the froth as the Platte’s force heaved against her two great packs, tugging her farther and farther downstream from him.
Sideways in the stream he clung to the Indian pony with one arm around its neck, the long, thick lead rope to the packmare burning that bare hand as the current tugged and hurtled the mare away from him. Stretched across the surface of the mighty Platte, he felt himself swallow more and more of the gritty water, drowning his cries of terror.
God—how he hated deep water!
He had to let go of one or the other … then the decision was made for him as the river’s force pulled his desperate grip from the Indian pony’s mane. He let go the mare’s lead rope next, sensing the relief in his rope-burned hand, his strength failing as he desperately hugged the rifle to his chest, locked within both arms. His head just above water, Titus spun around slowly in the current, capturing one last glimpse of the pack animal as she bobbed out of the brown, frothy current, then went down again as she was wheeled in a tight circle beneath her heavy packs.
“Damn you, now!” he twisted his head to shout at the Indian pony behind him as it clawed for a moment at the air with its two forelegs.
He just might make it to the pony if he could stroke with one arm, try swimming toward the horse—get hold of the animal’s neck. Then he was spun about again. Felt something beneath one foot that must surely be the bottom … but as quickly it fell away again, and he slid under the water with the heavy rifle still gripped in his hand like life itself.
Another man’s words he remembered now as the water took him and the rifle, closing in over him—grit forcing him to clench his eyes tight as he tried again to yell out in numbing terror. Finding he could only sputter with a mouthful of murky, silt-laden water, Washburn had told him about this shirting bottom. Warned him about the quicksands that could spell danger to any man crossing the Platte.
“Try, goddammit!”
The words echoed in his memory, recalling how his pap had hollered to him as a small, skinny youngster that summer afternoon Titus had jumped into a riverside pool too deep for him. Remembering how he caught fleeting glimpses of his father and the others on the Ohio riverbank as Titus bobbed up and down, arms flailing as he fought for air, struggled to stay on the surface.
“You gotta try, goddammit!”
He was crying now—the burn of memory hot in his eyes. Knowing his pap was not there to dive in and drag him out of the Platte as he had been that fateful spring day so many, many years before. The last glimpse Titus had of his pap—watching his father yanking off his big boots and jerking down the galluses from his shoulders as he shucked out of his heavy canvas britches before leaping in after his eldest son.
“Do it your own self, Titus!”
With the one arm he began to stroke, wanting to open his eyes, daring not as the swirling sand slapped and scratched his face.
“I’m coming, boy! I’m coming for you!”
Bass felt something huge and powerful brush against him in the raging current, hurtling him aside—and knocking out what little air he had left in his lungs. Titus rolled over in the water, there just below the surface … but he kept on swinging with that one free arm, feeling his tired muscles grown so damned heavy. Weighing him down, dragging at him from that shifting, sandy, murky bottom where the darkness gathered and the mud conspired to bury him.
With that solitary arm he fought like he had never fought before. And suddenly burst back to the surface for a fleeting moment in time—blinking his stinging eyes against the sand and the foam, feeling the warm wind brush his cheek.
“I’m here, boy!”
Oh, how he had clung to his pap then as Thaddeus had dragged him to the shore. “I’m right here now, son. Just hold on to me and ever’thin’ be awright.”