“Hold on there, you men!” he roared as he jerked the animal into a sitting position. “You heard him say he’s a white man.” Then he turned and flung his voice to that side of the camp where the shadow emerged from the brush at the base of the ridge. “How many are with you?”
Bass stopped and started to grin. With a shrug he held out his arms and replied, “Jus’ me. Ain’t no others.”
Lowering his smoothbore, the leader said, “C’mon over here.”
Less than two dozen men quickly surrounded Bass and the leader, who yanked the mitten off his right hand. “My name’s Bill Bransford.” The dog growled at the newcomer, so Bransford snapped, “Hush!” then peered at Bass. “We met before?”
“Not that I know of,” Titus said, stuffing his right hand under his left armpit and yanking off his thick blanket mitten. They shook. “My name’s Bass. Titus Bass.”
“I heard tell of you,” Bransford replied with a grin. “Sometime back, you was over to the big fort on the Arkansas with some other fellas and a big herd of horses you was sellin’.”
“You’re good at ’memberin’, Mr. Bransford.”
“Hell, I was a junior clerk back then. Brought my dog here out from St. Louis when I come to work at the fort years ago. So I well remember how you dickered on every last dollar for your horses, and ended up riding off with a couple of Charlotte’s puppies too.”
The remembrance of those fat, furry pups made him smile as another man stepped up. “Your name’s Bass?”
Titus instantly turned on the speaker, intrigued at something naggingly familiar in the clip to the stranger’s words, and replied, “Titus Bass.”
“You’re the one I heard who’s called Scratch?”
“That’s right. And what be your name?”
“Lewis Garrard.”
“Ever you spend time on the Ohio River?”
“Born in Cincinnati,” Garrard responded with a grin. “How’d you know?”
“I come from the Ohio River country my own self,” Titus explained. “Boone County, Kentucky. Thort I heard the ring of that country in your words.”
“I’ve come west looking for a little adventure,” Garrard remarked.
He asked Garrard, “How you get hooked up with these pork-eaters?”
“I was with William Bent, trading out to the Big Timbers, when word of his brother’s death reached us.”
Bass looked at Bransford again, eyeing the man up and down. “Knowed Hudson’s Bay had Fort Hall across the mountains, but I didn’t think John Bull’s boys ever come this far south. How come Hudson’s Bay got hooked up with them Bent brothers?”
Bransford spoke up defensively, “We ain’t no Hudson’s Bay!”
“So you claim you ain’t a John Bull* outfit?” Titus inquired.
“No,” Bransford answered, looking mystified. “What made you think we was?”
“Laying out there in the dark, I was listening to them Frenchies palaver over yonder at that fire. Just figgered with them parley-voos along you was Hudson’s Bay.”
“William has him some Frenchmen working for him,” Bransford explained. “A few of ’em are hard workers. Like this bunch.”
“Where away you bound, headin’ south for the pass?” Titus asked. “You know there’s trouble south of here now.”
Garrard rubbed his hands together eagerly. “Just the sort of adventure I came west to find.”
Bransford motioned Bass to join them at the closest fire and said, “You’ll soon get all of the adventure you’re wanting, come the day we reach Taos, Garrard.”
“Taos?” Bass echoed in surprise. “So your bunch is headed for Taos?”
The leader turned on his heel and glared at Bass. “Sounds to me you know something of the bloodbath down that way.”
“I carried news of those doin’s all the way north to the Pueblo,” Titus declared sourly. “Kinkead and Fisher, the rest of ’em too, they set out with me the next day.”
“What are you doing up here if you returned to Taos?” Garrard asked.
“Decided it ain’t my fight.”
Garrard snorted. “Isn’t my fight either—but it’s bound to be one helluva time!”
Bransford leaned forward. “Why you wandering around out here by your lonesome?”
“Taking my family to Bents’ big lodge. Afore we push on north for Crow country.”
“Your family with you?” Garrard asked.
“That’s why I ain’t making that scrap in Taos my fight.” He pointed to the coffeepot at the edge of the fire pit. “You got something hot to drink?”
“Pour this cold man a cup,” Bransford ordered. “We’re on our way to Taos, maybeso to help the soldiers and those fellas from Fisher’s fort put down this revolt.”
Scratch watched the hot liquid hiss into a tin cup he held out, steam rising into the cold air. “Ain’t much any of you can do,” he explained quietly. “By now them murderers gone and butchered every white person in the area. They wiped out Turley’s mill.”
“Turley’s mill too?” one of the strangers repeated.
He nodded as he took a first sip of the hot coffee. “I’ll lay as how them greasers got their work done awready. No one left to save now.”
“William Bent wanted us to try,” Bransford declared.
“Bent hisself?” Bass echoed. “So Louy Simmons did make it after all.”
“Like Garrard told you,” Bransford nodded solemnly. “Simmons reached William when he was off trading at Big Timbers.”
Then Garrard spoke up. “I was right there with William, and old John Smith too—when Simmons came riding in with word that Charles was murdered.”
Titus turned back to Bransford and asked, “What’s this Big Timbers?”
“Place on the Arkansas—lots of cottonwoods—where William Bent’s wife’s folks, Cheyenne they be, where them Cheyenne camp out of the wind of a winter,” Bransford explained. “William rode right in the forty miles to the fort, ’thout stopping, soon as he heard tell of the revolt in Taos.”
He tucked the long, slender braid he wore in front of the left side of his face behind his ear and took another sip of the scalding coffee, then asked, “Bent’s gone an’ rode on ahead of you fellas?”
The leader shook his head. “Lord knows he wanted to—if only to find out ’bout his brother, how Charlie died. But when Frank De Lisle came in with the company wagons from the company camp on the Picketwire, sure as hell that a greaser army was right behind him—Captain Jackson and his soldiers convinced William he should stay put at the fort to protect it against an invading mob. Jackson’s got him a small company to begin with—and now there’s a score or better of his soldiers too sick to stand for service. There’s less’n a dozen able-bodied men to guard them walls now that we’re marching for Taos.”
“Protect the fort? Ain’t no greasers gonna come this far north,” Bass snorted and savored the warmth of the coffee tin between his hands. “How ’bout them Cheyennes he married into? Didn’t them Injuns at the Big Timbers offer to whoop it on south and wipe out them greasers what kill’t Charlie Bent?”
“Damn right, them chiefs volunteered their warriors to do just that,” Bransford explained. “But William turned ’em down cold. Told the Cheyennes it was a white man’s problem, and the white man’d put it right.”
“Maybeso that’s square thinkin’,” Bass said quietly. “White folks caused the problem in Mexico—it’s right that white folks should fix things down there.”
“So you’re going to find safety in Bents’ Fort?” Garrard asked.