Buffalo Palace (15 page)

“From now on, li’l one,” Titus said quietly from the side of the ravine, “you’ll know where to go first off, you wanna get fed.”

His own stomach growled of a sudden, reminding him he hadn’t fed it either. Glancing into the west, he got to his feet, sweeping up the bail to the pot and the leather strap nailed to the canteen, saying, “Be dark soon, won’t it, Titus? Ain’t got your supper started. Hell, you ain’t even got yourself a fire to hunker over come full dark.”

Of a sudden he remembered he would be bedding down tonight one horse shy of how he had taken his leave of St. Louis. It might be enough to take the starch out of any man—to cause lesser men to turn back. But Bass vowed he would press on.

Reaching the end of the ravine, he squatted next to the burned-out remnants of his fire and dragged his pouch over, pulling flint and steel from it once more.

“Leastwise that pack animal swum out like I done,” he muttered, trying hard to cheer himself as he blew on the red coal until he could set it beneath another knotted twist of dried grass. “Leastwise I got some of what fixin’s I come out with,” he convinced himself.

But, damn, did he ever hate to walk. Never took too much to that in his life, Titus decided. Even when Kingsbury and the rest of the boatmen were faced with walking back north to Kentucky’s Ohio River country along the Natchez Trace, they had bartered themselves a ride on wagons from New Orleans to the river port of Natchez itself, then walked only until they reached the Muscle Shoals, where the slavers jumped them.

For the rest of that journey north there had been the slavers’ horses for them to ride, keeping a constant and wary eye over their shoulders, ever watchful for that pair of white cutthroats who had escaped the fate of the other slavers there near the Tennessee River when those land pirates had come for Hezekiah Christmas.

A tall, shiny-skinned, bald-headed beauty of a Negro. Not no more’n ten years older than Titus himself. A man Bass soon give his freedom to, set free to go west from Owensboro on his own—a freedman with the whole of a wide-open wilderness to explore.

“Where you now, Hezekiah?” he asked quietly as the limbs caught hold of the flames and Titus finally set the coffeepot to boil.

Tonight he would eat the last strips of his dried venison and go off to shoot his first buffalo come morning.

“You et your first buffalo yet, Hezekiah?” he asked the hills about him. “How ’bout you, Eli Gamble? You find them beaver big as blankets in that upcountry you was yearning to see?”

He shuddered with the coming darkness, feeling smaller as the night came down than he had ever felt before—come here to a monstrous land ruled by these huge beasts. Never had he felt so small. Nor so alone.

Gazing at the stars just peeking into view overhead, Titus asked, “Are you alone, Eli? Like me?”

Then Titus stared at the fire as the nightsounds of the nearby herd drifted in to him. “Naw, I don’t suppose a man like you would ever be alone, Eli Gamble. Not nowhere near as lonely as men like Hezekiah Christmas. Sure as hell not nowhere like Titus Bass his own self right now.”

Plopped down here in the middle of everything he had
ever wanted … but without another single living soul to share in the glory of it.

Although he had been awake long before the sun rose, Titus wasn’t ready to go in search of a buffalo to kill until sometime after first light.

For most of the night he had tossed in his blankets. From time to time he either went out to gather more kindling for his tiny fire, or he walked off toward the north bank of the Platte, where he sat for a long time, brooding at the murky river, its rolling surface a glimmering ribbon beneath the dim moonshine. He had remained there until at last he saw the sky had grayed enough to venture out—first to the west, then he walked a wide swing to the north across the night prairie. He had searched for Indian sign. A village of rings, fire pits, and meat racks as he had discovered before. Perhaps to find a herd of their ponies.

Instead, all he found was the bedding grounds of the far-ranging buffalo herd he had run across yesterday afternoon, stretching from horizon to horizon. Assured that the roar of his rifle would pose no danger, perhaps now he could take the chance of hunting his first buffalo. How his heart pounded against his ribs as he dwelt on that one thought all that walk back to his camp, where the packmare awaited him just before sunrise.

The little red-skinned calves were up already by the time he walked along the side of the hills bordering the great, grassy plain near the Platte itself. While the youngest of them still hugged their mothers’ sides, the others, perhaps days and weeks old, scampered about. Some of the oldest calves even butted heads in mock battle.

The sun had fully torn itself from the horizon when Bass sank to the ground, gone weak in the knees again just to stare at all of the countless thousands as the grassland slowly warmed that new day. With gold light the orb painted all the far surrounding hillsides in patches of sandy ocher where the tall green stems refused to grow. A breeze came up as the air warmed, carrying on it the muted sounds of the thousands as they arose from their bellies and ambled off in all directions to graze.

For a long while he studied the biggest ones: monstrous shaggy heads from which protruded a pair of resplendent
black horns; those dark chin whiskers that gave the bulls their unique mark; and finally that great hump rising from their shoulders nearly as huge as their massive heads.

Easiest for him to pick out were the smaller cows—not near so large a head and horns, with nowhere near the great hump. Besides, most of the cows either were already mothers that late spring morning, or would be in a matter of hours or days, destined to drop more of the small, playful, impish red calves.

So that left only the fourth group of buffalo he watched in growing excitement to drop one himself at long, long last. They, the yearling bulls. Perhaps nearly as big as some of the older cows, yet distinguished by shortened horns and that straggly beard, not to mention the growing hump. Maybeso a yearling bull or an older cow, he mused, deciding it should be one or the other he would shoot this morning.

Not the calves nor their suckling cows—let the young ones frolic or their mothers breed for seasons to come. Nor should it be one of those old rangy bulls, he brooded. If nothing else, a bull would simply be too big. Far too much meat for him to take with him, he decided, realizing he would feel ashamed to leave so much behind for what predators were sure to feast on such a kill. His grandpap had given Titus that much a legacy: even in times of plenty a man must not be wasteful, for there will surely come times of want.

Was this ever a time of plenty!

It would have been an easy thing for him to seethe in anger at the river once again—to grow saddened as well that Washburn’s Indian pony was gone, for she and the packmare could have carried far more of the buffalo meat he would butcher this morning than the mare could all on her own. But face the truth he did—realizing he sat here in the middle of this foreign land inhabited by strange peoples and stranger animals … knowing he had only the mare to carry everything he called his own, and what meat he would pack along taking his leave of this place.

Then he figured a yearling it would be!

His heart beat all the more fiercely, his mouth gone dry as sand, as he carefully ran his eyes over those buffalo
grazing nearby. Praying he would not be disappointed with the meat of so big a creature, Titus swallowed hard, his tongue parched, as he chose the one. Yes—that one would be his first buffalo.

Slowly he rose from his knees and stood, testing the breeze there on the long, lazy slope of the sandy hill. It was good, for the wind came from that portion of the herd dotting the endless valley all the way to the far horizon. He had the breeze in his face, out of the northwest here at sunrise.

Growing all the more cautious when he was some one hundred yards out from the fringe of the herd where the yearling stood cropping the grass with other youngsters, Bass dragged the hammer back to half-cock and flipped the frizzen off the pan. His right hand shook nervously as he sprinkled a few more of the fine grains of black powder into the concave surface of the pan. With the priming horn once more suspended from his pouch strap, Titus gently tapped the lock of the rifle to assure that a portion of the pan’s grains slipped through the touchhole where they would ignite the coarser powder packed behind the .54-caliber lead ball.

Should he stand or sit or lie for this first shot he would make at the bull grazing contentedly down the slope? And as quickly he decided he would sit, knees bent, elbows locked within his legs to steady the long-barreled, heavy, iron-mounted rifle.

Now he pulled the graceful curve of the hammer all the way back to full-cock. Bass quickly licked the pad of his right thumb before running the thumb across the sharp, knapped edge of the huge gray flint that lay imprisoned within the screw jaws of the hammer. He brought the thumb away and inspected it, finding a thin, telltale black line of powder flash he had just wiped off the flint. Better that this be no misfire because of powder residue built up on the knapped surface.

Then, as he nestled the full curvature of the butt plate into the crook of his shoulder, Bass let out a sigh.

“Easy now, Titus,” he whispered barely under his breath, aware that he was growing all the more anxious with every pounding beat of his heart.

He hadn’t felt this way but few times before—and
they all came with being close to a warm and scented woman. Even his first back in Boone County. Amy Whistler had been a woman in all respects, he recalled fondly. Not taking herself a husband as early as most girls did on the frontier, she had instead waited for young Titus Bass, pressing him to complete his schooling before he took up the plow to work that portion of the family lands that Titus’s father would turn over to his firstborn son. But she was like Marissa Guthrie, who came to trouble his life a few years later, quickly becoming the one woman he felt he could truly love with all his heart—in the end both women had sought to tie him to the soil when what he wanted most was to wander.

If either had shown any interest in his way of life rather than their fathers’, he likely would have asked one or the other to join him in venturing west. But with both Titus knew better. Neither young woman would have taken to this dangerous, challenging existence the way he had. Truth was, neither woman was daring enough, nor was either of them the sort to take that grave risk this frontier required of all who ventured beyond the pale. Simply put, he had long ago realized that both Amy and Marissa were not the sort to leap into the unknown as he had.

Taking on a woman was pure foolishness, he had determined some time back. To do so was to lash oneself to a single place, to imprison oneself with the land and young’uns and all the shoulds it would take to near suffocate a man. Better that he was alone, he reminded himself now, angrily. Far, far better was it to be here without some woman’s whining cant constantly at his ear.

Slowly he brought the brass front blade down onto the back of the yearling’s front shoulder—suddenly realizing he had no idea where to aim on such an animal. Then quickly Titus convinced himself he would aim as he would at any four-legged: the heart and lights were in there, close behind the leg, after all.

With the front blade held near the midline of the young bull, Bass brought that brass blade down into the crescent of the buckhorn rear sight. Then raised his sight picture even higher on the animal since he was shooting downslope. With the pad of his index finger he gently
pulled on the rear trigger, setting the front trigger to something less than a hair’s response. Then he began squeezing while he held his breath—

The rifle shoved itself back into his shoulder, surprising him as the muzzle spat fire. In that fraction of a moment before the pan and muzzle smoke obscured his view, Bass saw the small puff of dust erupt from the blackish hide—meaning the lead ball had struck the yearling high on the rib cage, above midline.

Quickly he rolled onto his knees, yanking the rifle’s muzzle to his lips to blow down the long barrel as he watched the animal sidestep and thrash its head a few times … then it went back to eating after it had attempted to lick at its side, that long pink tongue darting out against the backdrop of that dark, shaggy coat. It lazily cropped a few more mouthfuls of the tall grass while Titus poured down a measured charge of powder, then sank the ball home within its nest of a greased patch with the long hickory ramrod. Quickly he flipped back the graceful goosenecked hammer, popping forward the frizzen before he sprinkled in more of the priming powder.

Down came the frizzen over the pan, his thumb continuing on back to pull the hammer to full-cock as he brought the rifle up to his shoulder, settling back on his rump.

“By damn, I’ll hold this lady lower on you this time,” he muttered, laying the brass blade down into the notch filed in the bottom of the buckhorn rear sight.

Just at the bull’s midline the second bullet struck the young buffalo—causing him to sidestep again with a grunt, twisting his massive, furry head to the side to inspect his hide where that second ball had made another dusty eruption.

“Shit,” he grumbled as he rocked to his knees and began the reloading process once more, angry with himself for muffing that second shot. It had been too long for him to remember the last time he had needed two shots to drop some game, much less three.

Maybe it was the angle of his shot, he decided as he held once more on the dark creature still standing below him at the base of the slope, grazing as if those half-inch
lead balls had been no more than tormenting mosquitoes slapping him.

This time Titus determined he would hold low, down on the brisket behind the front leg, and squeezed the trigger.

With a shudder the yearling sidled a bit, then collapsed of a sudden, his legs gone out from under him as if all four of them had been cut at the same moment.

“Damn you anyway,” Titus mumbled as he rocked back onto his knees, reloading quickly, keeping his eyes on the fallen beast while he did so.