Wind Walker (28 page)

That’s when the tall man with the thick neck that disappeared into the collar of his shirt took three more steps that brought him onto the open ground at the center of the great circle where Hargrove and Harris held court. Amanda raised herself on the toes of her boots and whispered into her father’s ear, “That’s Roman.”

“Roman?” Titus repeated, appraising the man. “Your husband?”

She nodded.

As Roman Burwell came to a sudden halt before Hargrove, three of the captain’s hired men stepped protectively closer to their employer, their flinty gazes full of intimidation for the farmer who said, “There was something about you, Hargrove—right from when I first laid eyes on you at Westport. Something slick and oily from the start.”

“I got you this far, Burwell,” the captain sneered down his long, patrician nose. “I can’t nurse the rest of you all the way to Oregon. You’ll have to get there on your own.” With an amused grin, Hargrove stepped away from his hired men and walked around Burwell tauntingly. “Why, the rest of you could even elect Burwell here as your new captain!”

But that suggestion met with a strained, awkward silence while Hargrove waited for someone to speak up.

Instead, it was Burwell himself who shattered the silence,
“Ain’t no one gonna choose me for to be the captain, Hargrove. I ain’t got the makings of a train captain. Just a simple man. I could never pretend to be nothing I ain’t. But that’s just what you done to the rest of us.”

Hargrove ground to a halt and he leaned in at the side of the farmer’s face. “What’s that mean, Burwell?”

The big sodbuster struggled to keep his beefy hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching his fists. “One thing I can’t abide by is a man saying he’s one thing, when he’s lying through his teeth at me. I brung my family all the way here—hell, we all got our families with us. We was bound for Oregon, following a man who said he was gonna lead us to the Willamette River … and now we find out that man’s a damned liar!”

The short, black quirt suspended from the end of Hargrove’s wrist flew out in a blur, the two ends of the horsewhip catching Burwell high across one cheekbone. It stunned the farmer as he stumbled back a step more in shock than pain, bringing his hand to his face. When he brought the fingertips away and looked down at the trickle of blood the whip had opened in his flesh, a gasp escaped from those emigrants close by. Amanda took one step into the crowd before Titus seized her arm and yanked her back, where he could lay an arm over her shoulder.

“Your husband don’t need you making more trouble for him,” he whispered sternly, then he and Shad shared a look that both men understood immediately. He leaned down, tousling his grandson’s hair, then whispered to Amanda, “Daughter, you keep the boy here with you.”

Then Scratch took a step away from her, stopped, and turned back to whisper, “Don’t you move from this spot, Amanda. Chances are, you’ll only make things a mite messier.”

“No one … no one at all, calls me a liar, Burwell,” Hargrove bellowed at the crowd. He held the short whip at the end of his arm menacingly, slowly dragging it around the crowd in an arc.

The farmer wiped his bloodied fingers on his worn canvas britches, then suddenly pointed at some children inching toward him. “Lem, you keep your sisters back.”

The twelve-year-old boy obeyed instantly, putting his hand on the shoulders of his two younger sisters and nudging them back against the fringe of the crowd.

Burwell stood for a moment, as if he were a big, dumb brute working up a fighting lather, his eyes gone to slits as he flexed those fists open and closed, open and closed. “No man’s ever gonna hit me ’thout me hittin’ him back!”

But the farmer lunged no more than two steps in Hargrove’s direction when he lurched to an ungainly halt, jerking back as he stared down at the pistols those three hired men had pulled out of their belts, their wide muzzles only a matter of feet from Burwell’s belly.

Dramatically, Hargrove dragged the leather strands of his horsewhip through his open left palm. “The rest of you have got to understand, I am not doing this to hurt any one of you. I am not that sort of man. I simply have my own interests to see to. My own dreams to chase. And those dreams beckon me from California now. I will nonetheless bring you all the way to Fort Hall—”

“Where you’re gonna take our pilot from us,” Burwell grumbled, staring down at those three pistols. “And take your extra guns with you too.”

“Why shouldn’t I, Burwell?” Hargrove asked. “Have I been paid by this company to lead you to Oregon?”

“You asked us to elect you!” a voice cried from the crowd.

“We elected you to take us to Oregon!”

“But I’m not going to Oregon now,” Hargrove argued. “And, this company of poor farmers never contracted to pay me any money to get you there—”

“Never was any talk of pay,” the big farmer reminded. “You put your own name up for captain, said you wanted to lead us to Oregon … so you was chose as captain to take these people to Oregon.”

“Mr. Harris here says the chances are better than good
you’ll find someone at Fort Hall who knows the road and can pilot the rest of you to Oregon,” Hargrove suggested with a flippant gesture of that horsewhip.

A woman’s voice cried out, “But we won’t have us no captain neither!”

“You can elect a man to serve when you embark from Fort Hall. Till then, I will dutifully serve as your company captain. And as captain, my orders are that we move at dawn day after tomorrow.” Drawing in a long breath, Hargrove quickly said, “Since I hear no other business, this meeting of the Hargrove Company is adjourned.”

Some of the crowd stood rooted in their places, whispering among themselves. Others began to wander away from the shady banks of Black’s Fork, slowly starting back toward their wagons laid out in an orderly pattern across the grassy meadow. Hargrove leaned close to Burwell and said something to the farmer that no one else could have heard, then turned away with his men and the pilot.

“Harris!” Scratch hollered as the crowd before him splintered into whispering knots. He gave Shad another nod, and they started toward their old compatriot.

“Shadrach Sweete! If this ain’t a joy for these old eyes!” Harris bellowed after he had stopped and turned on his heel, recognizing the tall man coming his way through the dispersing crowd.

Curious, Hargrove and his hired men halted as well, forming a crescent behind the pilot.

“Finally talked yourself into leading a train I see!” Bass said as he came to a stop in front of the old trapper. “Don’t know me, do you?”

Harris wagged his head. “I s’pose to?”

“Naw. I never run with Bridger an’ Sweete,” he grumbled as his eyes peered into Hargrove’s face, taking a quick measure of the captain. “I was a free man, Harris.”

Without a word of reply to Bass, Harris turned to Sweete. “Thought I see’d ye workin’ for Jim Bridger at his Green River ferry when we come across the Seedskeedee.”

“I was,” Shad said.

“Ain’t got no job? Maybe ye’re hankerin’ to find a li’l work with some emigrants, are ye?”

“I got work if I want it, right here at Bridger’s post,” Sweete declared.

That’s when Bass interrupted, “Shadrach, you ’member how they had to tie this here nigger to a tree till Doc an’ Joe got started off from ronnyvoo for Oregon a few years back?”

Harris’s eyes glared like those of a diamondback rattler ready to strike as they instantly shifted to Titus Bass. “What kind of bullshit—”

“You was a no-good snake belly back then,” Scratch continued as Amanda rejoined her husband, several yards away at the edge of the trees. “An’ it looks like you’ve hooked up with your own no-good kind again, Harris.”

“Are you referring to me?” Hargrove demanded as he strode up beside Harris, about half a head taller than either the pilot or the old trapper.

His eyes flashed to Hargrove’s. “Way you side-talked these folks, you’re a slick’un, you are.”

“Who the hell is this, Harris?”

“Never met ’im. So I dunno—”

“Far as you need to know,” Titus said, glaring at Hargrove, “I’m just a nigger what hates bald-faced liars even more’n that sodbuster you hit with your—”

Scratch’s left arm shot up and out, his forearm cracking against Hargrove’s wrist as the captain brought up his horsewhip. Bass immediately rolled his hand and seized the man’s forearm, which compelled the three hired men to bring up their pistols, each muzzle pointed at Bass.

Hargrove snarled, “Best you let me go, mister.”

“I ain’t ’bout to let you go till these lizard-hearted bastards of yours put their pistols away in their pants.”

Hargrove snorted a chuckle. “And if they don’t? I figure they can put three balls in you before you even begin to reach for your pistol. Now—for the last time—take your hand off me.”

“Maybeso these three cowards can shoot one man,” Bass
admitted after a moment of reflection. “But if I know my ol’ partner, he’s got his pistol pointed at
you
right now. So no matter what happens to me,
you’re
the first’un to go down after them three cowards of your’n shoot me. No matter what, you die where you’re standin’.”

Titus didn’t know for sure what Sweete had done behind him. Or if he had done anything at all. The only thing he could do was count on his old friend to be there at his back. And from that look in Hargrove’s eyes when the captain glanced at Shadrach, Titus could plainly see there was reason enough to give Hargrove pause.

“No man calls me a liar and gets away with it,” he hissed at the trapper.

“Seems to me there’s more’n a hunnert folks here who believe that’s just what you are, a low-down liar,” Titus declared, sensing some of the building fury cause the captain’s arm to tremble. “Best you cipher this too—I ain’t one of your farmers, Hargrove. I don’t cotton to no whippin’s, an’ I figger any man what’s gotta sashay around with the likes o’ these here hired snake bellies, why—that man’s no more than a coward.”

Hargrove attempted to yank his arm free. “Maybe I should shoot you myself,” he growled as he rested his left hand on the butt of his pistol protruding from the front of his belt.

“Go right ahead,” Scratch prodded. “You’ll never get it out afore Shadrach kills you dead where you stand.”

Harris’s face was painted with worry as he took a step closer to Hargrove. “The big’un—he can do it, Cap’n.”

“Damn right he can, Harris,” Titus said, watching Hargrove’s eyes fill with concern. “The man what got his pistol aimed at you ain’t no peach-faced farmboy bully like these three you got pointing guns at me. Tell ’im, Harris. Tell ’im how Shadrach’s killed Injuns from the Musselshell clear down to the Arkansas, some of ’em with his bare hands too. These snot-nosed bully-boys of your’n ever done anything more’n jump on some poor farmer, three to one?”

“Lemme shoot him,” one of the trio growled at Hargrove,
his crimson face flushing with anger. “Benjamin can shoot the big one got a gun on you—”

“No!” Hargrove shouted, then repeated it softer, “No. There’s no need for any shooting. If this man will release my arm, the four of us will be on our way. There’s no sense in shedding any blood, boys. We’ll be gone from here day after tomorrow. On our way to Fort Hall and California. Right, Mr. Harris?”

“That’s right.” Harris took a step closer to Bass.

“Maybe someone ought’n tie you up to ’nother tree, Harris,” Scratch warned. “Leave you out there to die.”

The pilot’s face went hard as stone. “No one ever gonna tie me up to no tree again—”

“Hard to show these fellas all the way to Californy,” Bass said, “if’n you’re tied to a tree somewhere out there in the hills.”

“I got lots o’ friends now, so there ain’t no chance of that,” Harris snorted.

Scratch said, “Leastways, till you go an’ get drunk.”

“About time you let go of me,” Hargrove repeated.

Slowly Titus began to open the fingers on his left hand, while he inched his hand toward the pistol stuffed in the front of his belt. The captain quickly yanked his arm free, slapping the calf of his leg with the wide leather strands of that horsewhip as he lunged a step backward. His eyes went back and forth between the two trappers.

Then Hargrove said, “You’ll keep an eye out for these two, won’t you, Harris? Let me know if you see them coming around again—between now and the time we’ll pull out for Fort Hall.”

“He’s your lookout boy now?” Titus asked.

“I’ll come let ye know,” Harris growled.

“You allays was a good bootlicker,” Sweete finally spoke, for the first time in minutes. “Didn’t have much good sense of your own—but you was awright when your booshway told you where to shit an’ how to wipe your ass.”

“Damn you—” Harris started toward Sweete but stopped suddenly as he watched Shad shift the direction of his pistol.

“G’won now, train boss,” Scratch suggested. “Better you an’ your coward bully-boys go see what trouble you can cause other folks. I won’t let you cause no trouble for this here family.”

He watched Hargrove’s head turn as the captain regarded the farmer with his family gathered nearby. “What concern are they of yours?”

Bass said nothing, but as Amanda was opening her mouth to speak, Titus shook his head.

“You related to her somehow?” Hargrove asked. “That it? That dumb farmer Burwell can’t fight his own battles—he’s got to bring in his missus and her relations to stand up for him.”

“Thought you was goin’,” Scratch said.

“I am.”

Hargrove got four steps away before he stopped and turned around. “I don’t know your name, or what any of this has to do with you … but, I want to suggest you stay out of our camp, and out of our way until we depart day after tomorrow.”

“Why’s that?”

The captain wore a half grin on his face. “Just a suggestion. You’d be wise not to let any of my men catch you around my camp.”

Bass watched the man move off, trailed by Harris and those three hired toughs who reminded Scratch of the sort of thugs who peopled every riverport town along the Ohio and lower Mississippi. Amanda moved up with her husband and children at the same time.

“I didn’t need none of your help,” growled the big farmer who stomped up to stop before the trappers.