“I’ve got to see him!” she begged, gazing up at the tall man in the saddle.
“Can you ride?”
“I can ride.”
As he began to turn, prepared to have his wife fetch up one of their saddle horses, Amanda pulled herself up atop that packsaddle frame to which he had lashed the improvised travois. “You ever ride ’thout a saddle?”
“No,” she answered with determination. “But, I’ve never had my husband near get himself killed neither. Let’s go.”
As soon as Shad and Amanda had neared the scene, Titus watched her pull back on the reins of that packhorse and leap off, her skirts a’swirl as she bounded to the ground and started leaping over the sage, dodging around the wind-stunted cedar.
“Pa! Pa!” she cried, her cheeks streaked with moisture as she came sliding to her knees beside him. “Oh … Roman.”
Gently, Titus pulled himself out from under Burwell and held Roman’s head up while she fit herself beneath his bare, bloodied shoulders. Bass got to his feet, feeling the cramped muscles protest in one leg where they had gone to sleep while he did what he could to shade his son-in-law from the cruel midsummer sun.
“Here,” Shad called, then tossed Scratch an old oak canteen. “I brung that for Roman.”
In turn Titus handed it over to Amanda and stepped back as he watched her drag up the end of her dress, then the bottom of her dirty petticoat. Onto a corner of this she carefully poured some water from the canteen, then dabbed it on the first of his cuts and puffy bruises.
“How far they ahead of us, by the time you got back?” Scratch asked.
“Can’t see nothin’ of ’em no more,” Sweete admitted.
Titus wagged his head, all the more angry for it. “Hargrove gonna make sure he covers ground today.”
“Make it so we can’t catch ’em today, fast as he’s driving ’em,” Shad agreed.
With a nod of recognition, Bass took a step toward Amanda, but Sweete caught his elbow and dragged him back.
“Stay here with me awhile, Scratch. Ain’t nothing you can do for ’im right now.”
“You’re right. But these hands what wanna choke those bastards need somethin’ to do,” Titus explained. “We need to be tying up a travois for Roman.”
As they bent over their work repositioning the cross members, then started tying on the cradle of a double thickness of buffalo robes in which they would place the injured man, Sweete confessed, “I wanted to keep you over here, where your daughter couldn’t hear.”
“Hear what?”
“Hear us talk on what we’re gonna do about Roman an’ Hargrove, an’ them badger-eyed bastards done this to your daughter’s husband.”
His hands stopped working at the series of knots and he stared at Sweete. “You’re in for making ’em pay for what they done to Roman?”
“Even if I wasn’t your friend, I’d throw in with you just to have a chance to see their faces when they realize they ain’t getting away with treatin’ folks like this.”
Bass grinned hugely. “While you was gone, I was thinkin’ my own self.”
“Your notion gonna happen tonight?”
“Soon as we get these three families caught up to the train.”
Shad wagged his head. “That’ll take some doing.”
“Then we’ll do it tomorrow night.”
It was all but dark when they had to admit that the oxen just weren’t going to be goaded into any more speed, any more miles that day. Reluctantly, they made camp as the stars winked into view and the women scrambled around to build a fire there beside the Little Muddy. At least they had some water. And some scrub oak, cedar, and sage for their fire—enough to last out the night.
Amanda steadfastly remained inside the wagon with Roman, day and night. She and Lucas budged from the wounded man’s side only to trudge into the brush and relieve themselves, once they crawled into the crowded box and settled in beside him. Mercifully, the farmer hadn’t come to as the travois bounded and jostled over the sage on the way back to the wagon, or as the two trappers hoisted the big man onto the tailgate. Burwell had grunted a time or two, and groaned in some misery, but he never did awaken that first day, even though his eyelids fluttered from time to time as he was jostled about. Waits-by-the-Water brought Amanda a half-full bucket of water and a dipper. Toote brought them a kettle of her hot soup.
Not long after the moon came up and Titus had Lemuel put his little brother and two sisters to bed beneath a low awning strung from the side of the wagon, Waits came to find her husband talking with Shad as the two sat just outside that ring of light given off by the flames.
“Ti-tuzz,” she said softly as she approached the two men.
He turned, seeing her, and smiled. “Your soup was good,” he said in English.
“Toote make,” she responded in his tongue. “Come now.”
“Come?”
She pointed back at the wagon. “Call for you. Amanda.”
“She needs me to come?”
Waits nodded. “Tell you come—Roman, he awake.”
Bass scrambled to his feet quickly. “Stay here and keep a sharp ear to the night, Shadrach.”
“I’ll be right here.”
Then Titus stopped and stood there a’swell with feelings and all fumble-footed. “Shad—I … I …”
Sweete bolted to his feet and held open his arms. They briefly pounded one another on the back. Shad said, “It’s good news. Him awake an’ all.”
With a nod, Scratch pulled away from their embrace and said, “Tomorrow night, we’ll cull a few outta Hargrove’s herd for what they done to Roman.”
Hurrying with Waits back to the wagon, he handed her his rifle and stepped to the rear pucker hole, pulling aside the curtain and peering over the tailgate. In a whisper Titus asked, “He awake?”
Amanda turned, smiling at her father. “Yes, Pa,” she whispered, yet with some undisguised excitement in her voice. Then she leaned over her husband. “Roman, my pa’s here.”
Bass could hear the soft murmur of words but could not make any of them out as Amanda raised his head slightly from the pillow and propped his shoulders against her side.
“He says thank you, Pa.”
That tugged at his heart something fierce. “You tell ’im that’s what we do for family, Amanda.”
“Before you got here, he said something about the sun,” she continued, then put her ear down to Roman’s mouth again. “Said you kept his face outta the sun for a long time this morning. That what you did till I got there?”
“Yeah.”
Burwell murmured more, then she explained. “He said to thank you for that, but the sun really did feel good when it touched his face after he’d been so cold.”
Titus took a deep breath, then asked her, “He tell you … anything how they come to leave him out there?”
“No,” she answered. “He hasn’t said anything about what happened. I decided I would have to ask you what state you found him in.”
All the better to take some time afore that, was what he thought, but “Good” was what he said to her. “I’ll tell you ’bout it soon. Tell Roman get his rest now. We don’t want him lollygagging around much more’n he’s done awready.”
“Goodnight, Pa,” she said quietly.