“I been there, twice’t now,” Titus said, turning to address the man. “But, my woman and our young’uns never been. I figger chances be a mite slim I’ll ever make it back down this far south—so I decided to show ’em the fort while we’re this close.”
“You tell William you run onto us,” Bransford said. “He could well use another good man while the rest of us is away.”
Scratch peered over that motley collection of some two dozen former trappers, Frenchmen, half-bloods, and free men. “I ain’t looking for to hire out to no man. Figgered we would camp nearby for a day or so before pushing on north for Crow country.”
“What’s the country like ’tween here and Taos?” Bransford asked.
“Snows blowed clear on most of the road,” Bass declared. “You’ll do well if’n you keep your stock watered and fed.”
“Had only five horses when we started out,” the leader said. “And they was owned by these five free men who decided to throw in with us. Got family down in Taos.”
Bass quickly glanced at the stock they had picketed close by, then asked Bransford, “How’d you come on the rest of your horses?”
“When we left the fort, we put our bedding and supplies in a small company wagon. Figured we’d get our hands on some mounts at the Bent brothers’ ranch aways up the Picketwire.”
“We was hoping them greasers hadn’t already raided and run off the horses afore we got to the ranch,” a voice called out from the group.
“No greasers showed up at all,” Bransford confided. “But a string of government teamsters was already holed up there, afraid to push on south for Taos until word reached ’em that the army had things under control down there.”
“You took the wagon horses from them teamsters?” Titus asked.
“Just the ranch stock,” Garrard said. “But them riding horses was what the teamsters wanted to hold on to, so they’d have something faster to make their escape than on those slow wagon teams.”
“It nearly came to shots fired before those teamsters let us ride off on the ranch horses,” Bransford snorted wryly. “Damn if they weren’t a scared lot. Tried to hold on to horses what belonged to William and Charles Bent in case they had to gallop on outta there with the Mexicans comin’ down on their asses!”
“But look around you, Mr. Bass,” Garrard roared. “Do these men look like the sort to walk off without those horses?” Most of the half-breeds and hard-cases laughed heartily. “Not after what they had been through to get to the ranch on foot!”
Bransford went on to explain how his bunch had been hampered for more than a day when they were forced to take shelter during a howling snowstorm. Later, they hadn’t found much water in the dried-up creekbed of the Timpas—and what little they scratched up was so laced with alkali that even coffee was undrinkable.
“For two nights we were without anything that would burn for firewood,” Garrard explained. “Bill here offered to let me sleep with him and share our blankets—but first we had to convince his damn dog!”
“Back when we reached Hole in the Rock, we thought we had Injuns or Mexicans slipping up on us,” Bransford said. “That’s when my dog here set up a awful bark. Must’ve only been a coyote or some other critter.”
“You fellas gonna find yourselves in greaser country soon enough,” Bass sighed, then blew across the surface of his coffee again. “Keep your ears open and your eyes peeled back—ain’t likely this bunch will lose their hair.”
“Where you leave your family?” the group’s leader asked.
“Back ’round the end of the ridge aways.”
“Go fetch ’em and bring ’em here to spend the night.”
“Naw,” Titus replied, then took a long gulp of the coffee. As he tipped up the coffee tin to drain the last sip, the decorative beads suspended from his long ear wires clinked against the rim of the cup. “Time I get back, them young’uns gonna be sleeping.”
“That’s a shame,” Garrard admitted.
Bass stood and held out his hand to the adventurer. “Grateful for the coffee, and the palaver too.”
“Thanks for your news on Taos,” Bransford said as he stood and they shook. “Maybeso we’ll run onto you up to Bents’ some day.”
Scratch wagged his head and set his empty cup down near the fire ring, then tugged his coyote fur cap down so that it covered the earrings dangling from both lobes. “Don’t figger that’ll happen. Sure enough we’ll stop by there to let my family have a look-see in the next few days, but I can’t think of a thing ever gonna bring me this far south again.”
As Titus Bass started out of the circle of strangers, Bransford called out, “Watch your topknot!”
He stopped, turned, and patted the back of his well-worn coyote fur cap. “I been skelped once’t awready. Got more holes in this ol’ hide than I care to callate. I aim to ride out for that north country, where this nigger won’t have to worry ’bout them what wants to lift his topknot. I aim to live out all the rest of my days up where a man can die at peace, fellas. I reckon I’ll die a old man wrapped up in my buffler robes.”
* Ride the Moon Down
* Death Rattle
* Purgatoire (Purgatory) River
* Term used by Americans during this early time period to refer to anything English.
TWO
Like a great, golden pumpkin the adobe walls of the post glowed in a last glittering benediction of winter’s late light that third afternoon after leaving Bill Bransford to press south with his avengers to put down the Taos rebellion.
Bass pulled back on the old horse’s reins. As the rest of his family came to a halt on either side of the old trapper, he felt his wife’s leg press against his as her pony snorted a gauzy mist.
Waits-by-the-Water tugged the thick woolen scarf below her chin so she could speak, exposing the cheeks scarred with the white man’s pox. She asked, “This is where the seeing was taken from your eye so many winters ago?”*
Leaning off his horse, Scratch rubbed the small of her back a moment, then answered with a thick voice, “Yes. I come here to find Cooper, afore I finished my journey back to you and little Magpie.”
With a flick of her eyes, Waits glanced at their oldest child. “She is not so much a child anymore. Look and you will see!”
He chuckled, then said, “Soon enough Magpie’s father will have to sleep by the door of your lodge with his gun in his lap.”
“Why would you sleep with a gun in your lap, Popo?” Magpie asked as she urged her pony closer.
Instead Waits answered, “To frighten off all the young men who will be strutting around you like noisy mosquitoes on a summer evening.”
The girl’s eyes went to her father’s face. “Do you … you really think the young men will find me … pretty?”
How he laughed at that, his face raised to the sky as he roared, “Magpie! You are as pretty as any woman I have ever seen, in either world I have lived in. Why—you are as pretty as your mother was when she was your age and her own father had to start beating the boys away from their lodge door with a long coup stick!”
“We will be safe here?” Waits asked, the sound of her words more solemn.
His eyes crinkled with reassurance when he recognized the worry on her face. “Yes, we will be safe here. The only reason there was danger here so many winters ago was that I came looking for it.”
“These horses are tired, Popo,” his oldest son reminded. “And they need water too.”
“We’ll take them down to the river and let them drink their fill,” Titus suggested. “Then I’ll take my family into the trader’s mud lodge.”