Free Buffalo Palace by Terry C. Johnston Page A

them fur men what go upriver don’t ever come back down, leastwise with their hair still on. Them I hear what does come back got ’em lots of ghosty stories to tell of that country and the Injuns running things out there.”
    Rising to his feet again, Titus bristled at the challenge. He boasted, “I ain’t scared of them mountains, not the Injuns neither. And I damn well don’t believe in no man’s ghosty stories. I’ve heard my share of windbags and Sunday-blowers to know what to lay stock in and what not. Can’t think of a damned thing gonna turn me aside from what I’ve been fixing on doing for a long time now.”
    “Where you headed?” Clayton inquired as the civilian turned away from the trio.
    Grumpily he said, “Off to my blankets.”
    “But the night’s still early, Bass!” Culpepper cheered.
    Titus stopped and turned to explain, “Not when I’ve got more miles to put under me tomorrow. If it’s all the same to you fellas, I’ll make me my bed right over here where I dropped my truck.”
    “Anywhere you lay your head be fine by me,” Clayton declared. “Just as long as you don’t settle down on thespot there in the corner where you see I laid me my tick and blankets.”
    No matter that there were only four of them in that whole fort—Titus Bass still felt cramped.
    By the time the sky grayed, he was already wide-eyed and awake, anxious to be gone from this place. To go at last where he would be troubled by no man, rubbed against, and questioned. Maybeso to leave white folks behind wouldn’t be all that bad for a while.
    Then Bass worked hard to think back on the last time he had been truly on his own. More than a decade it had been since the Mississippi flatboat crew had set him afoot on the west bank of the river, where he had taken off north to St. Louis—alone until he came across Able Guthrie’s barn and that warm, inviting hay where he lay his weary self down. Even longer still since he had run off from home and spent those first nights in the woods on his own. Alone and growing all the hungrier until he presented himself at Ebenezer Zane’s night fire, joining the pilot’s Kentucky boatmen.
    Two of the soldiers snored close by in the thinning darkness. Each of them grumbling, gurgling, snorting at times. This fort room smelled damp with the seepage from last night’s rain. The timbers grown sodden and dank. How well he knew places like this took on a rank smell after man had been there too long.
    Titus sat up quietly and pulled aside his blankets. After dragging on his old boots he slipped from the door, leaving it partially open rather than make more noise in closing it. From side to side he dodged the patchwork of puddles in the open compound left by last night’s rain, then passed by the tall, forlorn fur-press when he saw the Indian pony turn at the sound of his approach. The mare raised her head and stomped a hoof expectantly as well.
    Aswirl with moisture, the air felt heavy to breathe here in the moments just before dawn. Light drops fell to prick the surface of each puddle and rut as he untied both orses from their hitching rings and moved off toward the gate. There he dragged aside the heavy wooden hasp and heaved back on one side of the gate until it swung open wide enough to let him slip out with the animals.
    The goatsuckers were still out in the graying light, winging this way and that over the tall grass that stretched endlessly toward the timber on three sides of the stockade: several different species of birds that fed on moths and gnats—whippoorwills and nighthawks mostly, all swooping, diving, and feeding here in the cold, damp dawn.
    Following a well-worn footpath, Titus led the two horses away from the walls toward the timber south of the fort. After two hundred yards he found the spring Lancaster had described. He released the animals and went to his knees, rocking forward over the surface of the water, where he could lap its cold with his tongue. Renewed, and