“You stood up to that two-tongued no-good who lied about taking us all the way to Oregon,” Ryder said as he scratched at his gray-flecked whiskers. “I say you showed you got the stuff to be our captain!”
A moment after some of the crowd began to roar its approval, Roman shushed them again and said, “No. I won’t let my name be put in the vote.”
“Why, Roman?”
Burwell turned to the man. “Mr. Truell, I won’t let you vote on me ’cause I know I’m nothing more than a simple farmer. I know I haven’t got the brains to lead this outfit to Oregon.”
That’s when Titus roared, “But you got the heart to do it, son!”
Roman turned and stared incredulously at his father-in-law with something in his eyes that told Scratch that the man was about to loose some tears.
Suddenly Bingham was beside Burwell, saying, “I don’t believe what Roman Burwell says when he tells you he doesn’t have the brains to lead this outfit. But I do believe that Roman has the heart to make a good captain of this Oregon company. I will serve as your captain … but only if Roman Burwell will serve as my coleader!”
The deafening roar of more than two hundred throats drowned out the exasperated cries of the desperate knot of men and women which had tightened around Phineas Hargrove.
“All those in favor!” Bingham called for the vote.
But the noise was even louder still, frightening magpies and jays from their roosts in trees for a full half mile around the cedar breaks.
“Any opposed?” Bingham shouted. “Any ’cept Hargrove’s California Company?”
“But we’re going to the same place!” Hargrove growled as he parted his supporters and advanced on Bingham and Burwell, his hired men in tow. “I will serve out my term as the leader of this whole company—”
Suddenly Roman and Bingham stood shoulder to shoulder before him, more than two dozen friends closing in a phalanx behind their newly elected leaders. That stopped the wagon master and his young muscle in their tracks.
“Unless Hoyt Bingham has something against it,” Burwell announced to the throng, “Phineas Hargrove and his people can travel with us till we get to Fort Hall—but only ’cause the rest of us gonna let them stay.”
“Amen to that!” Bingham cheered. “Out here in this new country we’re gonna build, a man can’t stay leader if the people he leads decide they won’t follow him!”
Burwell drew himself up and looked down at the smooth-faced Hargrove. “It’s a new day, Cap’n. No more are you gonna walk on the rest of us just so you can get yourself and your guns to California.”
The apologetic look that came over Hargrove’s face appeared convincing enough to the crowd.
“I-I can see now where I’ve been a little harsh,” he confessed with downcast eyes. “But, I had a job to do—a job you men of this train elected me to”
“Now you take your people to California,” Roman reminded him.
“Yes,” Hargrove agreed, appearing contrite and duly chastised. “I’d proudly serve as the leader of this train until we reach Fort Hall … but, it appears I must turn over command to your new leaders: Burwell and Bingham.”
The crowd roared again as men pounded the new upstarts on the back. Hargrove reached out his hand, shaking with both of those new leaders as his hired men held back the gathering. That brief formality seen to, the wagon master turned abruptly and disappeared with his men forming a protective ring around him as they took their leave from the low knoll.
Maybeso, Titus thought, things just might be working out for these folks after all.
“You see’d Roman?”
Amanda turned to answer her father early the next morning, “He and Lemuel went down to the hollow to find one of the cows that wandered away last night.”
“Together?” he asked, some small itch nagging him, small but buried deep enough he could not quite find it to scratch.
“Yes,” she replied. “Something wrong, Pa?”
Titus shook his head and lamely tried out a gap-toothed smile on her. “Naw—I just ’spect they’ll blow that trumpet anytime now an’ the train be rolling out.”
“We’re about ready here,” Amanda declared. “Team’s hitched and the milkers are over there with Leah and Annie.”
As she turned away to toss the last of the bedrolls over the rear gate of the wagon, Scratch slowly scanned the cedar breaks that surrounded them on three sides. There wasn’t all that much tall cover, and it sure as hell wasn’t a forest the likes of which you’d find against the foothills. Just some low scrub cedar that ran more than five miles in all directions across the rolling, rumpled landscape. But the thickets were nonetheless tall enough to hide a man on foot, and sure as hell thick enough to conceal a cow that had wandered off in search of a fresh mouthful of grass sometime during the night.
The trumpet blew, a shrill blare on the hot breeze that foretold a scorcher of a day.
And he turned, finding Amanda over by the wagon, wheeling suddenly, her eyes finding him.
The trumpet blew its warning again.
Scratch watched his daughter swallow as she blinked into the distance, smoothing her open hands down the rumpled pleats at the front of her dirty brown dress.
“Ma!”
They both whirled, finding Lemuel trudging out of the cedar breaks, the front of his shirt dark with sweat. This early in the cool of daybreak? As the youth lunged closer, Bass could see how his hair was plastered with dampness, his face glistening.
“Lem!” she cried, starting for him.
“I heard the trumpet!” he gushed breathlessly as he approached the wagon and his mother, who lunged forward to greet him. “Come fast as I could.”
“Where’s your pa?”
“He’s not here?” the boy asked as his dusty boots slid to a halt on the flaky soil. “Didn’t he come back with the cow yet?”
“N-no,” she answered, her voice small, pinched off.
Titus was there immediately, his hands gripping Lemuel’s shoulders, turning the lad toward him. “Where’s your pa?”
“Dunno, Gran’pa,” the boy said, fear starting to show in his eyes.
“Thought the two of you went out after the cow together?”
That third and final call of the trumpet blared brassily over the encampment. Titus turned quickly to the east. Saw how the sun would be rising soon.
Lemuel nodded and swallowed hard after his race to get back to camp. “We did, together. But, it was getting later and later. Pa thought we ought to split up so he could work the other side of the hill from me.”
“You don’t know where he went?”
Turning, the boy pointed. “I come from there. Pa was on the far side of the hill. I figured he or Hargrove’s men’d find the cow afore I got to the end of the draw, then doubled back—like Pa told me to—”
“You say Hargrove’s men?” Titus interrupted, his belly tightening.
With a nod and a gulp, Lemuel answered, “Three of ’em ran onto me. They was riding horses. Asked where Pa was, was he on foot like me. I told ’em we was looking for one of our cows wandered off. They said for me to start on back to the wagons—we was pulling out soon.”
“Where’d they go?” he asked, a little desperation creeping into his voice, that tiny itch grown to a full-blown uncontrollable urge just screaming to be scratched.
“They said they’d find Pa, then headed off the way I told ’em he went,” the boy admitted. “Said they could find the cow better on horseback than Pa could on f—”
“You say they was riding horses?”
“Yes—”
Titus had freed his desperate grip on the boy’s shoulders and was turning away as Hoyt Bingham rode up with Hargrove and three of his hired men on horseback. Shadrach was coming over from the shady spot where his family had slept out the night.