That done, the two riders urged their horses ahead, cautiously studying the ground on either side of the spot where Titus Bass stood alone, bringing his smoothbore down from his elbow—clearly leveling it at the approaching horsemen. He watched Harris’s eyes for several moments as the old mountain man and one-time confederate of William Sublette peered about suspiciously.
Suddenly Harris threw out his arm and snagged hold of Hargrove’s elbow. They reined up together.
“Where’s Shadrach Sweete?” Harris demanded sourly as he rolled his longrifle over the head of his hammer-headed cayuse.
“He ain’t here.”
“He ain’t?”
“I ain’t gonna lie to you, Harris.”
The two of them whispered where they sat atop their saddles, just out of earshot.
Then Hargrove spoke, “Why should we trust what you tell us, old man? I figure sneaky back-shooters like you two would lay an ambush for us like this.”
“I ain’t never been a back-shooter,” Titus declared evenly. “Not like your kind.”
“We found the bodies of my men,” Hargrove explained. “Benjamin was shot in the back.”
“Had to be,” Scratch said.
“Then you admit you’re back-shooting murderers?”
“No. Shadrach killed that’un to pull my hash out’n the fire.”
“I stayed outta this all the way down the line!” Harris suddenly shouted to the rocks. “You hear me, Shadrach Sweete? I never had nothin’ to do with any of this killin’!”
“Tol’t’cha, Harris,” he called out to the old trapper. “Shadrach ain’t here.”
“Where is he?” Hargrove demanded.
“Long on his way to Oregon with the rest of that bunch you an’ Hargrove were going to leave ’thout a pilot.”
“Sweete’s guiding them his own self?” Harris asked in disbelief.
“Him … and a feller what’s been out there twice’t awready.”
Hargrove rocked back in the saddle a bit as the first of the wagons came up behind the two riders and noisily pulled up just within earshot. “That makes things, neat and tidy for Burwell’s folks, doesn’t it, Mr. Bass?”
“I s’pose. You take your outfit off to Californy, an’ them others stay on the road all the way to Oregon.”
The train captain grinned. “Sounds like everything is turning out rosy in the end, doesn’t it?”
“’Cept for one thing, Hargrove.”
“Ah … yes,” he sighed as the third wagon clattered to a stop and its driver turned to holler back at the others to halt.
Already the drivers of those first two wagons had clambered down from their seats, dragging their prairie rifles after them, those short-barreled, percussion-capped weapons being manufactured on the borderlands for the new breed of frontiersman coming west. Titus hoped the three family members he had secreted in the rocks would each remember to choose a different target, on their side of the open ground—and keep their rifle trained on their particular target … no matter what happened to him and Hargrove when the shooting started.
“Listen, Hargrove,” Harris said, his eyes narrowing as they bounced over the rocks once more, “I’ve managed to keep my hair for all these winters already … I ain’t gonna lose it to this son of a bitch what wants a piece of your tail.”
The moment Harris attempted to turn his horse away, Hargrove reached out and snagged the reins. “You’re staying. In for a penny, in for a pound, I always say. If I don’t come out of this—you don’t get paid, Harris. Simple as that.”
“This ain’t got nothin’ to do with me,” Harris complained. “Between you an’ him.”
“Let me explain it to you again,” Hargrove growled, dragging the pilot’s horse closer. “The other men that old bastard has killed, they were expendable. Practically speaking, I could count on a certain number of my employees not reaching our final destination with us. That always meant there would be more of the pie to share, don’t you see?”
Hargrove waved one of the riflemen left, the other to the right, both of them stopping just ahead of the two horsemen so that it would be hard for the trapper to swing his weapon far enough from right to left before someone dropped him.
Hargrove cleared his throat dramatically and continued, “Do you get the import of what I’m telling you, Mr. Harris?”
“You figger me to sit here and shoot that man with the three of you?”
“If you want to get paid when we get to California.”
“Th-that ain’t part of being a pilot,” Harris protested. “I kill’t my share of Injuns, an’ I’ve done a helluva lot I ain’t real proud of in my life … but I ain’t ever out-an’-out shot no man for money.”
Hargrove’s jaw set with a jut as he ruminated on that. “Very well. You’ve cast your lot with spineless cowards, Harris—”
“I ain’t no coward!”
But the captain was already waving his pilot off with a disdainful gesture. “Be gone with you. Get out of the line of fire, you coward.”
“Tol’t you—I ain’t no coward!” Harris was starting to fume.
“Move aside and let the real men finish this once and for all—”
Titus interrupted, “You better listen to him, Hargrove. Moses Harris may be a lot of things, but he ain’t ever been no coward. Dead of winter, he’s walked back to St. Louie from the mountains. Not once’t … but twice’t.”
With a sneer, Hargrove shifted his rifle so that it lay along his right thigh, pointed in the target’s general direction. “More myths of your brave breed? So Harris has performed mighty deeds. That still doesn’t alter the fact that he’s grown spineless in his old age.”
“I ain’t spineless—”
Yet Hargrove paid Harris no mind as he continued, “Which is something it appears you still have, old man.”
“A spine?”
“Some backbone, yes.”
Harris leaned forward, reaching down to tear his reins from Hargrove’s grip. “Take your damn hand off my horse!”
The captain did just that, but brought that very fist up so fast and hard beneath Harris’s chin that the pilot’s head snapped backward, his wide-brimmed hat flying off before he slid from the saddle, dazed, spilling onto the sand.
Hargrove tapped heels into his horse, urging it forward at a walk as he brought up the rifle in his right hand. “Which ball will get you, Mr. Bass?”
“Won’t be yours, Hargrove.”
The man gentled back on the reins and halted, still clutching that short-barreled carriage gun on Scratch. “What makes you so sure it won’t be mine?”
“Have to be one’a these other hired niggers,” Titus said as he pulled the hammers back on the big pistol he gripped in the right hand, on the sawed-off trade gun he kept loaded with drop-shot that was in his left.
“My aim is excellent,” he replied to the trapper.
“Not when you can’t even get off a shot,” Scratch declared. “You’re the first’un I’m gonna shoot.”
“You’ll take your chances on these other two?”
Titus quickly appraised them. “Neither one of ’em look like killers to me, Hargrove. I figger you sent the ones what could kill on ahead to get me. If’n either these two had the stomach to cut a man down, you would’ve sent ’em along with Benjamin. But this’un an’ that’un too … I think they like breathin’ a li’l more than you give ’em credit for.”