Titus’s eyes quickly shot to where his rifle stood against a tree, and where the pistol lay beyond it. These had to be white men, he told himself as he ran his tongue around the inside of his dry mouth, suddenly surprised that it had the texture of sand. After all, they spoke his tongue, didn’t they?
Then it struck him: Why, he hadn’t heard the sound of a human voice other than his in … in a damned long time. Damn, but why was these white fellas in Injun clothes?
“How—howdy, fellas … whyn’t all of you g’won over there by my fire and have yourselves a sit,” he called out in a croak, the words emerging squeaky from that dry throat.
The tall hooded one stretched out his arms, a gesture that immediately slowed the two wild dancers. With a booming voice he said, “By damn, boys—’pears we got us an invite to help that son of a bitch rock his horse to sleep!”
“You sure he ain’t no dangerous Injun killer, Silas?” the third voice finally asked.
The second man’s face lit up with mirth as he asked, “How the bejesus can this pilgrim be a Injun killer when he ain’t got him no gun?”
Again Bass glanced at his weapons across the small clearing, there among his bedding. All he had here at hand was the belt knife.
“He won’t do us no harm,” the nearest one said inside the shadow of his hood.
Suddenly there was the face of the man who had spoken. Bass jerked his head up, watching the figure step closer, yanking back on the hood to his blanket coat then and there in the murky shadows as snow fell into the camp clearing. Damn near as tall as any man he’d ever seen, damn near as big as Hezekiah Christmas. And Hezekiah was the biggest man he’d ever laid his mortal eyes on.
“Don’t figger we need to cover him no more, eh?” the second man said as he stepped out of the shadows no more than twenty feet away.
Then some needles snapped behind Titus. He twisted his head around to watch the third man advance into the camp clearing.
“He ain’t got a gun on him,” this third one said. “Don’t figger he’s about to kill none of us by axe-see-dent.”
The big man in the center came a step closer. Titus studied the way he carried his rifle captured in the crook of his left arm and a pistol ready, there in his right hand. Now the tall one began to wave that pistol at the second man.
“Billy—punch that fire so I can warm my ass.”
“Helluva way to go and wake a man up,” Bass grumbled, angry at himself for feeling embarrassed at being caught flat-footed and unarmed.
The tall man watched his eyes flick over to the rifle again. “One thing y’ll learn, son—y’ best keep your guns at your side. No matter you’re taking a shit”—and that made the second man guffaw with a great gust of laughter—“or y’ be rolled up with nothing more’n your own dreams to keep y’ warm at night.”
“Just who … who the blue blazes are you?” Bass inquired.
Pounding the pistol barrel against his chest, the big man replied, “Me? Why, hell—my name’s Silas Cooper.”
“He’s the big bull in this lick, he is—that Silas. Yessirreebob!” the second man said, his head nodding in emphasis.
Cooper came a bit closer, his eyes narrowing. “So who might be you?”
Bass’s eyes went back to Cooper’s. “Titus … Titus Bass.”
“Where you come from?” the third man demanded as he came around to a spot where Bass could see him without turning his head. He looked a tarnal mess with his long, unkempt beard.
“St. L-louis,” he answered with that croaky voice.
“This here’s Bud Tuttle,” Cooper introduced the third man, pointing at him with his pistol.
“Ain’t my first name, but everyone calls me Bud.”
“’Cause he don’t like Hyrum none!” the second man gushed with a wild giggle.
“That’s right,” Tuttle replied. “My name’s Bud.”
Just as Titus began to nod his head to the third man, ready to ask the last man his name, Cooper began to move off to the right, stuffing his pistol into the wide, colorful sash he had tied about his waist. The tall man asked, “How long y’ been up here in these parts, Titus Bass?”
“Since end of summer.”
“That long, eh?” Cooper asked as he neared the mare’s rear flanks, sniffing, wrinkling his nose up at the strong stench.
“Ain’t had you much luck trapping, have you?” the second man asked.
“Was going out this morning—when the horse here was took with sand colic,” Bass explained.
“Damnation,” Cooper said with a sigh as he settled some distance back from the horse’s tail and studied the ground around the mare’s hind end.
“What is it, Silas?” Tuttle asked.
“G’won now, Billy,” and he looked up at the second man. “Y’ get yourself introduced proper, then get that fire punched.”
With an open-faced grin that second man snagged the fur cap off his head and bowed slightly from the waist, showing that he kept his long hair tied back in a long queue. He flashed a handsome, gap-toothed smile, announcing, “Name’s Hooks, mister. Billy Hooks.”
“So now y’ know us all. Silas be my name,” Cooper repeated as he looked up from the moist ground he had been inspecting near the horse’s flank, “that’s Billy y’ just met, and him over there is Bud.”
“Pleased,” Bass replied, reaching up to scratch at the incessant itch there at his collar, “pleased to meet you all.”
“Bet y’ are,” Cooper growled. “Better us’n some half-starved red niggers out for hair or coup.”
“K-koo?”
The tall man slipped his wide-brimmed felt hat off the back of his head, grabbed a gob of his own long black hair in one hand, and pulled it straight up while his other hand whipped out his belt knife and dragged the back of the blade showily across his throat—while he made a scratchy, wheezing sound.
“Meaning the red bellies gonna slit your goddamned pilgrim, idjit, pork-eater throat, the sonsabitches would,” Silas grumbled, stuffing the knife away and pulling the hat back over his head.
“I … I don’t eat no pork,” Titus explained sheep-faced. “Don’t eat no more Ned.”
“Then y’ have the makings of a good man, Titus Bass,” Cooper declared with a sudden smile. “There be enough god-blamed Frenchie pork-eaters in these here mountains awready!”
Billy gushed with that easy laughter of his as he came over from the fire to squat near Titus, grinning as if he’d just made himself a new friend for life.
“What you think, Silas?” Turtle asked as he came up to stand behind Cooper, peering down at the horse’s hind end.
“Black water—ain’t no two ways about it,” Silas clucked, then shook his head one time for emphasis.
“B-black water?” Titus repeated. “Nawww. She’s just got her a li’l case of colic. Likely it be the sand colic—”
“I said it was black water, Titus Bass,” Cooper snapped, rising to point down at the remains of the dark, murky liquid the mare had spewed on the ground behind her. “Come see here for your own self.”
“Ah right. Black … black water,” Titus repeated, not daring to move, not daring to show Cooper he doubted him. He felt cold in his belly of a sudden. Looking down into the mare’s one eye staring wildly up at him. If it was black water, then there wasn’t much a man could do. Not much time neither. “I was … hoping it was the colic.”
“Bet y’ walked her, didn’t you?” Cooper asked.
How helpless he felt, maybe having a hand in killing his only horse. “Yes … well—I thought it was the colic!”
“It’s awright, son,” Silas said, suddenly sounding almost fatherly so soon after he had been downright snarly. “Most folks don’t know how to tell the black water until it’s too late.”