Buffalo Palace (72 page)

“One what sings in the rain be a coyote what was once’t a Injun,” Hatcher said patiently. “Kill’t by a enemy while’st his medicine was still strong.”

“You’re trying to tell me all that howling’s from a dead warrior?”

Wood nodded eagerly. “I do believe he’s getting it, Jack!”

“Wait a shake here,” Bass protested. “If’n his medicine’s so strong, how come he gets hisself kill’t?”

“’Cause the spirits want that warrior and his powers,” Hatcher replied.

“Why them spirits want the Injun for if he’s been killed by a enemy?”

“Them spirits change the Injun to a coyote critter,” Hatcher continued, “so’s it can take some revenge for some wrong done those spirits.”

Titus swallowed unconsciously, sensing a heaviness to the air about him as the coyote took up its cry once more. The rain continued to hammer the branches of the trees and the half-dozen nearby sections of canvas and Russian sheeting they had stretched over their bedding. Drops hissed into their fire pit that struggled to maintain its warmth.

“So maybe there’s buffler near-abouts,” Scratch finally broke the long silence. “If’n that’s a buffler coyote.”

“Don’t mean there’s buffler about at all,” Jack said. He pointed with the
appolaz
in the general direction of the coyote’s howl, then poked his finger at his browning meat. “All it means is that spirit critter got something the spirits want told to one of us niggers here.”

“Now for sure I don’t believe you.”

“It be the truth,” John Rowland testified.

Bass wagged his head. “That coyote wants to tell something to one of us?”

Jack tried biting into his meat, finding it still too raw, returning it to the flames. “Way I got it figgered—you was the only man here what didn’t know ’bout such spirit doin’s, Titus Bass.”

“So I’m the one that coyote wants to talk to, eh?”

Scratch waited a moment while the others fell silent, figuring that if he was patient enough, there was sure to come some gust of laughter that would prove to him the others were having their fun at his expense. But, instead, as he looked from face to face to face, the others stared into the fire, or regarded their supper, faces grave and intent.

Finally Scratch said, “All right, you all heard that spirit critter afore. And if … if I’m the only one what didn’t know nothing ’bout such a thing till now—what you figger such a spirit critter’s got to tell me?”

Hatcher shrugged slightly and said, “I ’spect we’re going to find out soon enough what all his song means.”

With the first days of spring they had abandoned that country and slogged north by west, following the Wind River itself, then slowly worked their way through those mountains
*
they followed north as the days lengthened and the land began to bloom. Across carpets of alpine wildflowers they slipped over the passes—feasting mostly on the elk fattening themselves up as the herds migrated to higher elevations, following the season’s new grasses ever higher. Overhead flew the undulating black vees of the white-breasted honking longnecks and their smaller canvas-backed, ring-necked, or green-crowned cousins, heading back to the north. Late each afternoon it seemed the sky would reverberate with the racket of beating wings as the flocks passed low, circled, then swooped in—beginning to congregate near every pocket of water, there to feed by the thousands and rest those hours until morning when again they would take to the sky in a deafening rush of wings.

As he watched the monstrous vees disappear to the north, slowly spearing their way across the springtime blue, the carrot-topped Caleb Wood always grumbled. “Headed to Blackfoot country—just over them peaks.”

Wood’s sourness always made Jack Hatcher laugh, which invariably caused the legs of that badger cap he wore to shake on either side of his face. “Damned birds make fools out of us, don’t they, Caleb? Travel free an’ easy while’st we watch the skyline, made to keep our eyes on our backtrail—scared for losing our hair! All while them goddamned birds go flying off to see what haps with them Britishers up north come ever’ spring … then on the wing back here to spy on us come the autumn!”

Running his dirty hand through hair so auburn it had a copper glow to it, Rufus Graham sighed. “Up there in that Three Forks land I hear tell beaver’s so thick, you just walk up and club ’em over the head, Jack.”

“I got close enough to know that’s the certain truth,”
Bass replied with a nod. “Beaver big and glossy—more of ’em on every stream than I’d ever see’d.”

“A damned cursed country, that be!” Hatcher snapped. “A country I’ve vowed I’ll never set foot in for all the grief it’s caused my poor grievin’ ma.”

All winter Solomon Fisn had been working on cultivating a beard with blond ringlets in it to match his flowing mane that reached the middle of his back. Turning to Bass, he agreed with Jack. “There be a reason why that Three Forks country crawls with beaver.”

“An’ their name be Blackfoots!” Hatcher snarled.

Elbridge Gray was the first out of the saddle that afternoon at the edge of a meadow where they planned to camp. With the beginnings of a potbelly starting to slip over his belt, he was constantly tugging up his leather britches. “By God, I’m a man what values his hair more’n all the beaver what’s in Chouteau’s warehouse!”

Proud of his considerable mane, Solomon roared, “And my hair more’n all the beaver in the hull of St. Louie!”

As the men slipped to the ground, the horses and mules began switching their tails and flicking their ears all the more. One by one the trappers began to slap at the back of a hand, swatted their neck or cheek—some tender and exposed domain of juicy flesh.

Graham quit removing his saddle, his hands on the cinch. “Dammit, Hatcher—I say we find us a better camp!”

“Skeeters bound to eat us up alive!” Gray agreed.

“Ye two just get the fire started,” Jack commanded. “Smear some goober on—then haul out our sack of buffler wood.”

“Why us?” Graham grumped, swatting at the insects buzzing right at the end of his nose.

“It’s your night to tend fire, ain’t it?” Caleb asked.

As he watched Rufus and Elbridge turn back to their packs, Bass stepped up to Hatcher, swatting at those tormentors that hovered around his face. “What’s this goober?”

“Some calls it milk,” Fish replied.

“Same thing,” Hatcher stated. He reached for the cherrywood vial hanging on his belt, untied it, and removed
the antler stopper before he brought it beneath Scratch’s nose.

“That’s beaver bait!” Titus exclaimed, making a face and scrunching up his nose with the awful tang.

“Damn right it is,” Hatcher said, pouring a little of the thick milky-white substance into the palm of one hand. “That’s the goober a man puts on where he don’t want no skeeters biting at him.”

In surprise Bass watched Jack, then Solomon and the others in the group, all busy themselves with smearing the potent, rancid, smelly discharge on their exposed flesh: face, neck, backs of hands—everywhere the mosquitoes might be tempted to land and begin their biting torment.

“Best ye try some skeeter medicine,” Hatcher suggested. “Where’s yer bait?”

“In my plunder. Hell if I’d figger to need it till we was setting traps.”

Caleb asked, “Don’t skeeters trouble you none?”

“Damn right they do!” Bass replied. “I just allays done my best to kill as many of ’em as I could.”

“Here,” Jack said, handing his bait bottle over to Titus. “Get that there smeared on ye, and quick, afore them critters ea’cha alive! We’ll have us a buffler-wood fire going soon enough to take care of most o’ them pesky varmits. G’won—do it, ye stupid idjit—or yer bound to be pure misery by morning.”

Reluctantly Titus took the cherrywood vial from Jack, its antler stopper hanging by a narrow thong from the neck of the bottle. Trying to hold his breath, Bass poured a little of the thick goo into a palm and brought it to his cheek. Wrinkling his nose and breathing through his mouth so he would not have to smell the stench, Scratch smeared the substance over his forehead, cheeks, down his throat and the back of his neck.

“Gonna need more’n that, ain’t he, Jack?” Wood suggested.

“Lather that goober on, Scratch,” Hatcher declared. “Gots to be enough to drive them skeeters off!”

The nauseating repellent came from two glands that lay just beneath the skin near the hindquarters of the beaver. That castoreum was valued almost as highly as the animal’s pelt itself. Milking each of the glands from
trapped beaver into his bait bottle, the trapper used the thick whitish castoreum to draw even more beaver to future trap-sets. It was that scent of an unknown rival that brought the curious, jealous, or territorial-guarding beaver to its iron-jawed fate.

“Do like Jack told-you,” Caleb instructed as the rest of the band went about unsaddling the animals and making camp. “Smear that beaver milk on good.” He started away on camp chores himself. Long in torso and short in leg, Wood was a man who swayed so much when he walked that from behind, it looked as if he hobbled.

By the time Bass finished smearing his skin good, he found he could better tolerate the stink, almost enough to stand being around himself. Jamming the antler stopper back into the bait bottle, he took it over to Hatcher. Jack squatted next to Joseph Little, who sat propped against a tree, not looking good at all.

“Thankee, Scratch.” Hatcher took the bottle from Titus, opened it, and began to smear some on Little’s face. “Joe here says he ain’t feeling too pert. Mebbeso yer belly’s all bound up.”

“Ain’t … ain’t my belly,” Little said, his glassy, fevered eyes half-open as Hatcher smeared goober on his mottled, grayish face.

“Gotta be what it is, Joe,” Jack said. “Yer hide feels to be burning up. And yer wet as hell with fever.”

“I been sweating like this near all day, Jack,” Little replied with a hoarse rasp. It was clear he was scared. “What you think it be?”

“Don’t have me no idee,” Hatcher answered, flicking Bass a questioning look. “But I’m sure it ain’t nothing to fret yerself over.”

Titus shrugged slightly as he knelt beside the two. The moment he touched Little’s mottled cheek, he pulled his fingers back, alarmed at the heat of the man’s fever. Little’s skin looked pale, almost translucent, save for the reddish splotches dotting his face and neck.

“He ever get sick like this afore?” Bass inquired.

“N-never,” Little answered for himself. “You g-get me some water? One of y’?”

Scratch got to his feet and hurried off to fetch a kettle. By the time he returned from the nearby stream, having
walked through clouds of buzzing tormentors, Hatcher had Little dragged over near the fire pit where Gray and Graham had their kindling going-well enough to begin work with what the mountain trapper called “buffalo wood.” Each took a dried buffalo chip from the rawhide sack where the band of free trappers stored this precious commodity, breaking the chips into small pieces, which they patiently fed to the flames.

“Here, ye feed him some water, Scratch,” Hatcher stated as he stood. “I’ll haul over his blankets and we’ll get ’im covered up.”

Little protested, pulling at his own damp shirt, struggling to get the sticky buckskin off his arms, over his head, as if he were suffocating in it. He muttered feverishly, “Goddammit! Cain’t y’ idjits see I’m burning up! Don’t want no damned blankets!”

“Brung you some water—like you asked me,” Bass said, holding out a cup to Little.

With his sweat-soaked shirt still crumpled over one shoulder and at his neck, Joe snatched the cup away like a man gone four days in the desert without a drink. His shaking hands brought it to his lips, where he managed to spill more than he drank before handing it back to Bass for more. He drank and drank, cup by cup from the kettle, and while he did, Scratch noticed the tiny red mounds there beneath Little’s arms every time the man raised them to gulp from the tin cup. Far more of the same small, angry welts dotted the pale flesh near his belt line.

“Jack?” Scratch tried to say without alarm.

When Hatcher had resettled beside Scratch at Little’s side, Titus said, “You got any idee what them be?”

“These here red spots?” Joe asked instead, looking down at his own belly. “I got more.” He tugged back his belt where the breechclout hung and the buckskin leggings were tied.

“Damn,” Hatcher said under his breath. “Ye know what them is, don’cha, Joe?”

“They was t-ticks,” Little replied, his eyes half-closed as he keeled over to the side wearily, propping his head on an elbow.

As Scratch dragged over another blanket and put it
beneath Little’s head, Jack inquired, “Ye telling us ye knowed they was ticks?”

“Yup.”

“What happen’t to them ticks, Joe?” Jack asked.

Slowly wagging his head, Little answered, “I got rid of ’em. All over me. But I got rid of ’em.”

“How?” Hatcher demanded, his voice growing in volume and alarm. “How’d ye get rid of ’em?”

“P-pulled ’em out,” Little said, quaking with a sudden tremor. He drew his legs up fetally, groaning. “Now, g’won and lemme sleep some. I’m tired and cold.”

Jack pulled the blanket over Little’s shoulders, then motioned Bass to follow as he got to his feet. When the two of them stopped some yards away, the others came up to join them in a hushed circle.

“Something he et?” John Rowland asked.

“Ticks.”

Several of them turned and looked at the quaking figure lying huddled in the blankets beside the fire.

“He’ll go under, won’t he, Jack?” Caleb asked.

It took a moment before he answered; then Hatcher said, “I ’spect he will.”

“Damn,” Isaac replied, his eyes frightened as he pulled at his whitish beard stained with dark yellow-rown streaks.

Wood added, “With the ticks, fellers—it only be a matter of time.”

“Didn’t he know no better?” Gray asked, pulling off that cap he had made himself from a scrap of old wool blanket, sewn complete with two peaks on either side of it to resemble wolf ears.

“Said he pulled ’em all out,” Hatcher replied.

“S’pose one of you tell me what you’re talking about,” Scratch finally demanded. “What you mean, he’s got ticks?”

Kinkead scratched at his big red nose. “Like Hatcher said, Joe’s got ticks.”