“I don’t wanna kill y’, Titus Bass. But if y’ ain’t l’arn’t today, then your bound to l’arn soon enough—out here in this land each man is a law to hisself. An’ what that means to me is that y’ do and take for only yourself … and the others get what tit’s left over when you’re done. If there’s ’nother man big enough, good enough to kill y’ for what y’ have—then so be it. But for now, I’m big bull in this lick. Y’ remember that, an’ I’ll teach y’ to keep your hair. Y’ don’t l’arn—an’ y’ll be dead as a three-week-ol’ plew.”
As weak as that newborn buffalo calf, Bass whispered, “T-teach me, Silas.”
“ ‘At’s a good lad now, Titus Bass,” Cooper said, patting the arm again and rising once more. “I’ll wager y’ll go far in these here high and terrible places. Y’ just remember who it is teaching y’ to stay alive … and y’ll go far in these here mountains.”
11
Spring was done for by the time they had trapped themselves out of the last of the high country and slowly worked their way down through the foothills. From time to time they set traps along any promising stretch of creek or stream cutting its course through the high benchland that stretched north away to the far mountains where the three first ran across Titus last autumn. This broken, rugged, parched, and high benchland appeared to extend all the way west to the distant, hazy horizon where the roll of the earth still hid the lure of Willow Valley.
There, in the yonder land of Sweet Lake, lay rendezvous.
It was the hive that, in these lengthening days of slow warming of the land, would draw the drones from all points on the compass—just as surely as the queen bee compelled her loyal subjects back with the fruits of their own far-flung labors.
West of north they moved now, beneath the sun sliding off midsky, following the yellowed orb in its western march these days until they reached the branches of a river Cooper said a few others called the Verde. Said it was greaser talk for “green.” Word was that there they might just find more lowland beaver to catch. But no matter if they didn’t end up seeing a single flat-tail … once in that country on the west side of the great continental spine, rendezvous wasn’t but a few more days’ ride on to the west.
This high-prairie country proved to be so different from the foothills, more different still than the mountains the four of them had just abandoned. Every day now they trampled unshod hooves through a warming land where lay carpets of the blue dicks in small flowering trumpets, or past the six open-faced purple blooms of the grass widow.
For the longest time Titus Bass cared little for, nor did he notice anything of, the beauty in that high, rolling wilderness. He was a long time healing. Scratch had hurt for days after that beating. Yet it was a hurt he swallowed down and let no man know.
If there was one small piece of Thaddeus Bass his son had carried away with him from Boone County, it was that a man did not complain of what ills he had brought on himself. No matter that a man might bemoan the unfathomable fates of weather, crop disease, or even the fickle nature of his breeding stock—what suffering a man brought to his own door must always be endured in silence.
For the rest of that horrible morning Titus lay where he had fallen, finding it hard to breathe deep for the sharp pain it caused him in his side and back. Most any change of position brought its instant reminder of the beating Cooper had just given him. It was not until late afternoon when Bass finally decided he was parched enough that he could no longer put off finding himself a drink of water.
Slowly and shakily rising onto his knees and one hand, Titus held the other arm splinted tight against the ribs that made it so hard to breathe, then crabbed inches at a time toward his side of camp, where water beckoned in a kettle—where his blankets lay.
From the corner of his eye he watched the three study him as he dragged himself along less than a foot at a time.
“Lemme help him, Silas,” Hook begged.
“You stay put, Billy,” Cooper warned. “Cain’t y’ see he’s doin’ fine on his own. Both y’ g’won back ’bout your business an’ don’t worry ’bout that’un. He’ll make it where he’s headed.”
No matter how badly his head hurt, the crushing pain in his face and jaw, too—Bass remembered those exact words for days to come. Yes, he thought to give himself the strength needed first to sit, later to stand and then walk, and finally what steel he needed in his backbone to stuff a foot in a stirrup and ride the morning Cooper’s bunch was moving camp. He kept those words in his heart and on his lips in those first days.
He’ll make it where he’s headed.
By damn, I will, Scratch vowed.
There in his blankets, having lapped some water from the kettle into his cupped palm and brushed the sweet wetness against his swollen, bloodied lips, Titus collapsed for the rest of the afternoon. He awoke just after sundown, rubbing a crusty eye where blood had dried it shut, then peered across camp at the other three. While Silas cleaned and oiled weapons there by the fire, Hooks and Tuttle finished the last of their day’s catch—stretching and graining the big blanket beaver.
His eyes found the sun’s last light, his groggy mind determining that evening was now at hand. If he was going to have enough strength to make it to his sets come morning, he needed two things most of alclass="underline" sleep and a little food in his belly.
The first was not a concern; he knew he would easily fall into a cozy stupor once more. But the food—why, just the thought of it twisted his empty belly, caused it to rumble in protest. He had no appetite and doubted he ever would again, but realized that if he was to demand something of his body, then it would soon demand something of him.
When next he awoke, the night was dark and silent—all but for the snores of the others curled up in their blankets upon pine-bough beds and buffalo robes. Stirring painfully, Scratch pushed himself up on an elbow, clutching that set of busted ribs with the other arm, then inched himself over to the water in the kettle once more. He repeatedly dunked his hand into the kettle, licking all he could from his palm and fingers until thirst was no longer his greatest need. Then he thought of Hames Kingsbury’s broken ribs—remembering how Beulah had wrapped them securely and seen the flatboat pilot through his healing.
There beside the kettle lay the fixings left over from his supper more than a day before. Bass pulled a chunk of meat from the pot, blew the dust off it, and brought it to his mouth. Slowly parting his swollen, crusted lips, opening his jaw to slivers of icy pain below each ear, he tore at small threads of the cooked meat, swallowing a little at a time, not sure just how his stomach would accept it.
Shred by shred of that old, crusted meat he forced down, licking water from the palm he dipped into the kettle, sitting there in the midst of those mountains, listening to the nightsounds of men sleeping, the rustle of the breeze whispering through the quakies and the soughing of the pine. When the wind died, he could hear the faint murmur of the nearby creek trickling along its bed.
Above him stood the dark, jagged outline of the high peaks thrust up against the paler, starlit sky—huge, ragged hunks of that sky obliterated by the mountaintops punching holes in the nighttime canopy.
Nowhere else you gonna see anything like that, Titus Bass, he told himself as he chewed slowly against the pain in his jaw and neck. Then remembered a song long ago sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” not come to his recollection in many, many a year:
We are a hardy, freeborn race,