Crying out with a low sob now that the horse’s death was real, vivid, and immediate, Bass carefully slid from beneath the pony’s muzzle and dragged his muddy legs under him. At the animal’s side he struggled with the twisted, mud-caked cinch in frustration until he finally freed the strap. After several attempts Titus finally succeeded in tugging the saddle from the dead horse’s back. Followed by the heavy, soggy blanket, he dragged both up the bank and flung down in utter exhaustion.
As if she somehow understood the fate of the pony, the mare tossed her head, then inched closer to lower her nose, sniffing at the saddle. She snorted and turned away, returning to browse among the leafy brush.
Again he heaved the wet saddle and blanket, dropping them farther up the bank near his rifle, then collapsed himself to the damp grass in the bright midday light. He sat there for a long time, barely able to move until he realized his skin was beginning to burn.
With agonizing slowness he went to the mare and found only his shirt had survived the tug and pull of the river. No leather britches nor his boots. In exasperation he yanked loose the ropes and let the last heavy pack drop to the ground, where he fell upon it—tearing it apart until he found his old pair of wool britches and three pair of Isaac Washburn’s moccasins.
Then he remembered—the dust. The Pawnee close at hand. Scrambling through the packs, he found the tin of powder kept dry in the river crossing. In another pouch he found Washburn’s pair of old pistols. Tearing rags from his patching material, Bass hurriedly began pulling the loads in his heavy weapons: dragging out the heavy lead balls with sheer muscle and a rifleman’s screw he set in the end of his ramrod, replacing powder, too, after carefully drying the pans and reoiling the barrels.
He was surprised to find that little effort sapped a lot of what he had left for strength. So he sat there a long time with the rifle and pistols at hand, listening for sounds of approaching enemy, staring at the muddy river that had stolen so much from him—yet in the end that river had spat out both him and the packmare. Was he to be angry … or grateful?
Remembering those memories of drowning. Sensing the same tug of warring feelings for the man who had fathered him, pulled him from the Ohio. Resentful of both Thaddeus and the Platte. Yet finding himself so grateful that in the end both had spat him free to carry on as he alone chose to carry on.
It was sometime later as the sun slipped out of midsky when he became aware of the swooping, noisy flock of birds once more. Perhaps they had always been there at the corner of his vision and he just did not pay heed and notice them. Was it their distant squawking cries, or the great ripples they made upon the aching blue overhead, or even the shadows they made of themselves winging back and forth across the land beyond those first hills?
Whatever it was, he watched now—aware that time had slipped past him as he sat regarding the river like time itself: there, then suddenly here at hand right before him, but gone immediately.
“C’mere, girl,” he called out as he wearily rose to his feet.
Dragging up the saddle blanket, he wrung it out best he could, kneeling to knead what water he could from it before flinging it atop the mare’s packsaddle. With a lot of effort he redistributed what he had left into two small packs and lashed them to the horse’s back. Finally Bass nestled the old saddle down into the vee between the packs and untied the long lead rope from the willow.
“Let’s go.”
Through the tall grass he led the mare, their hooves and moccasins dragging against the thick, sturdy stalks. Heading upstream once more. This time on the north bank, angling a bit into the first line of hills—from time to time adjusting his course as he kept himself between the Platte and a line where he would intersect those flocks of tiny black birds.
The sun had nearly dried his clothes, and no longer did they chafe him that late afternoon as he trudged through the low hills, beginning to think on making camp in some ravine out of sight of any wandering Pawnee … beginning to dwell too much on his empty belly and curling up for the night in what must still be damp blankets lashed back there on the packmare. The slope was long as he ascended the sandy hillside, casting a long shadow behind him, hoping from the top he would spot some likely campsite, perhaps in the brush beside a narrow creek that fed the mighty Platte. There he could hide, and sleep.
With just a matter of another two steps to the top of the rise, he prepared to catch his breath and blow, the same way horses blew after an exhausting climb. He blinked into the falling sun—missing his hat even more already. And waited those few seconds for the mare to come up behind him. With the sun’s bright glare he blinked some more as the ground in the middistance seemed to undulate, quiver—just the way of Tink’s skin would ripple when you gave her a particularly good scratching.
For a moment more he stared, not sure … not taking a breath. Not even daring to.
The great flocks of tiny black birds swept from right to left, then south back to north—all but directly overhead now. He became suddenly aware of their incessant racket, those tiny throats and flapping wings, whereas it had seemed so deathly silent for so, so long. Then heard the snorting and bellowing, the lowing of huge animals.
Slowly, Titus Bass became aware of the great hump-backed beasts that blackened the endless miles of what rolling prairie lay before him.
5
Titus hadn’t moved for the longest time the rest of that afternoon—watching the knotted herd of buffalo below him as the packmare contentedly cropped at the grassy hillside nearby.
For what must have been hours he did nothing more than sit and watch how the great beasts moseyed this way, then that, before ambling off in a different direction just as slow as you’d please, flowing together like coagulate, then gradually splitting apart as individuals and small bunches went their own way in grazing the hillsides and prairie floor. He was content to do nothing more than watch the great, hump-backed creatures … all the while trying to control the hammering of his heart, trying desperately to remember to breathe in his excitement.
As the sun began to fall into the western hills, Bass got to his feet and gathered up the long lead rope, taking the packmare from the crest of the knoll where he had remained mesmerized for so long. Angling to the south, he kept to the far fringes of the herd until he found a suitable ravine deep enough for him to make camp for the night. By the time he had pulled the mare into the upper reaches of the ravine, the sky had begun to dim and shadows had grown as long as they would ever be.
After freeing the two smaller packs and dropping them into the tall grass one at a time, Bass slapped the mare on the rump and sent her off to have herself a roll. Next came the task of spreading the still-damp blankets over the nearby brush to finish drying while he gathered up what dead limbs he could find. Making tufts of some dead grass after he had scraped out a small hole at the bottom of the ravine, Titus struck his evening fire, then took up the bail to his coffeepot and headed over to the nearby creek. At the top of the ravine, which put him level with the rest of the prairie, he turned round to gaze back at the campsite—anxious that no wandering eye should spot the smoke from that small fire.
After a trip that led him back toward the Platte, Titus found a clear-running stream, where he dipped both the blackened pot and his wooden canteen. Quickly yanking off his clothes, Bass swabbed as much of the mud as he could wash off—then, shivering, jumped back into the wool shirt and britches. After tying his moccasins, he sat there at the creek a few minutes, drinking his fill once more, realizing just how this arid country dried him out, made him more thirsty than he thought possible. How good the water tasted to his parched tongue.