“Something on the order of two hunnert thirty miles.”
“What’s two hundred thirty miles?”
The man scratched at his chin absently and replied, “That’s how far you come from the mouth of the Missouri.”
“Happen to know how long I got to go to reach the Platte?”
“Hmmm,” the man considered. “That’s a handsome piece.”
“Farther’n I come already?”
“Dare say, mister. Yep, a good bit farther’n you come already.”
That depressing news sank within him like a stone tossed into the swimming pond back in Rabbit Hash, Boone County, Kentucky. For a moment he wondered on another option. “How’s the country lay on that trail to Mexico?”
With a sudden, broad smile the storekeeper said, “Now, that’s something to show you’ve got a good head about you. I can outfit you for such a trip right handily.”
“The country. Tell me ’bout the country.”
“Halfway there, I’m told—you’ll run onto a desert that lasts near the rest of your journey.”
“A d-desert?”
“Sand and lizards and sun, mister. All it’s fit for, so they say.”
“Why would any man wanna go there—if’n that’s all he’s bound to come across?”
“I told you awready.” The wide-shouldered shopkeeper grinned with teeth the color of hickory shavings. “They set their eye on that greaser country for the womens. Most trade for mules, and bring back the greasers’ gold.”
“Say a man don’t want none of that. How’s the land lay up in that Platte country?”
With a shrug the man answered, “Ain’t worth a spit for building—you ask me. Not much timber like we got here.” He pointed. “A feller runs out of trees a bit west of here.”
Watching the man chew at a fingernail, Titus asked, “Then?”
“Then you find yourself in nothing but grass. Taller’n your horse’s belly it grows. Miles and miles, and it goes on for longer’n I care to know. Country ain’t fit for a decent man to settle his family in—what with no wood and the Injuns all about.”
“Pawnee.”
That caused the shopkeeper to raise an eyebrow. “You heard of ’em?”
“I heard,” Bass answered.
“Leave that godforsaken country to the likes of them, I say,” the man snarled sourly. “Ain’t fit for nothing but what Injuns and buffalo out there—all that can live in them parts—”
“Buffalo?” he interrupted almost too quietly. “B-buffalo, you said.”
For a moment the storekeeper studied Bass’s face with the first real interest he had shown all afternoon. “You’re looking for to find them buffalo, is it?”
His head bobbed every bit as eagerly as a young boy’s. “Yes. I aim to see me them herds of buffalo I heard tell was out there on the Platte.”
“They’re there all right, mister. Them, and the thieving, murdering Injuns too. If I was to do it—I’d lay my sights on greaser country.”
“Looks to be I’m pushing on north.”
With a snort of derision the shopkeeper said, “To see them buffalo and have your ha’r lifted by the Pawnee?”
“I figure a fella can watch hisself and stay out of harm’s way.”
With a sudden, low blat of laughter that reminded Titus of a peal of some faraway thunder, the storekeeper erupted, slapping a flat hand down on the counter so as to rattle a nearby display of tin cups. “If that ain’t some now! Why, from the way you was talking—I’d wager you and your outfit ain’t ever been out in that country off yonder.”
“Ain’t,” Bass admitted.
“So how you fellas figure you’re gonna keep from getting sideways with the Pawnee, seeing how you’ll need be crossing so much of it to get to that far country? Best pray there’s a whole bunch of sharp-eyed sonsabitches with y’—”
“J-just me,” Titus bristled, annoyed at the storekeeper’s amused smirk and downright nosiness. “Ain’t no one else along. Ain’t no outfit of us.”
Like the passing of a cloud, the pockmarked face went grave as the storekeeper leaned forward on the plank counter, suddenly inches from Bass’s nose. Something of great import rang in the tone of voice as he said, “Tell me now you’re fixed for lead and powder?”
“Got me all I figure a man ought’n carry on a packhorse.”
Leaning back with a smug smile, the man suggested, “Might well think about packing you all you can. Where you’re headed, it won’t be no desert trail what’ll kill you with thirst or p’isenous lizards. No, sir—it jest might be them god-blame-ed Pawnee!”
As the last few words tumbled dramatically out of his mouth, of a sudden the storekeeper went silent, his eyes snapping to the narrow doorway, where Titus watched a middle-aged woman and a brood of children appear out of the sun, shuffling into the cooler shadows of the shanty store.
“You keep your hands to yourselves, hear me now?” she instructed the young ones as they came to a halt on either side of her, like a brood of chicks clustered around their hen. “Don’t make me scold you again like last time we was here.”
Titus studied her in that instant: the way she turned aside to one batch of children, then to the others as she instructed them all in a sure tone of voice. Her well-seamed face, tanned to the color of a native pecan even at this early season of the year, showed more than the simple ravage of time. That sallow countenance registered the toll of many live, and a few still, births, reflected the slash of ceaseless wind and the scouring of a life suffered beneath the unrepentant sun—all those countless days spent at her man’s shoulder … the two of them pleading with the ground, the sky, and ultimately to their God again and again to grant them enough of a crop to feed themselves and thereby survive one more year.
Then, as she finished instructing her flock in those quietly stern directives, the woman looked up at last: her bright, fiery, optimistic eyes seeming to come directly to Titus, dawdling just enough as they halted there to cause him to swallow hard. As a child or man, he’d never been what anyone could dare call handsome—fact was, Bass considered himself firmly on the homely side—so when her eyes appeared to take their measure of him, Bass felt his cheeks redden. He was relieved when the woman’s gaze turned aside to land on the storekeeper.
“Bailey,” she began in a loud, sure voice she flung across the shabby, low-roofed store, “what’s cornmeal these days?”
“This time of year it’s twenty-five dollar the hundredweight, Mrs. Grigsby.”
She drew her lips into a wrinkled purse, licked them quickly in grave thought, then replied, “Gimme ten pounds. Got coffee?”
“Some come in just last week.”
The woman asked, “You tried it your own self?”
“The missus made some for us just this morning.”
“And?” she prodded, nudging her head to the side, out of the way of some ironmongery hanging from the rafters as she took two steps forward, her brood shuttling hurriedly to stay at the hem of her dress.
“As fine a cup as I’ve ever had on either side of the river, ma’am.”
Drawing her shoulders back, Mrs. Grigsby declared, “Should have known you’d claim it was nigh onto being the nectar of the gods, Bailey Henline. How much you want for this grand coffee of your’n?” Then, almost in afterthought, she wagged her head and commented, “’Tis a curse when a woman cain’t seem to wean a man from his coffee.”
With a smile the storekeeper answered, “Land, but I know he’s a one to drink it morning, noon, and evening too—was it that you had it always brewed for him. Tell you the honest, for this last shipment, I gotta have fifty cents the pound.”
“Lord bless and preserve me!” she exclaimed, suddenly snagging the wrist of one of the younger children and taking from the hand something the offending youngster had been closely inspecting behind her mother’s back. She replaced the waxed parcel back among the display on the rough plank shelving and turned back to Henline. “Will you see fit to give us five pounds of your coffee on account?”