Ride the Moon Down tb-7 Read online

  Ride the Moon Down

  ( Titus Bass - 7 )

  Terry C. Johnston

  The time of the mountain man is coming to an end...but some--like Titus Bass will not exit gently. A brilliantly exciting and thoroughly researched novel of the end of the dream that was the unmapped and virgin wilderness in the American West starring the king of the mountain men, Titus Bass.

  PRAISE FOR

  THE NOVELS OF

  TERRY C. JOHNSTON

  CRACK IN THE SKY

  “Johnston offers memorable characters, a great deal of history and lore about the Indians and pioneers of the period, and a deep insight into himan nature, Indian or white.”

  —Booklist

  “Mastery of the mountain man culture in all its ramifications, a sure grasp of the historical contect, and the imagination of a first-rate novelist combine to make Crack in the Sky a compelling, fast-paced story firmly anchored in sound history.”

  —Robert M. Utley, former chief historian for the National Park Service and author of A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific

  BUFFALO PALACE

  “Rich in historical lore and dramatic description, this is a first-rate addition to a solid series, a rousing tale of one man’s search for independence in the unspoiled beauty of the old West.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Terry C. Johnston has redefined the concept of the Western hero…. The author’s attention to detail and authenticity, coupled with his ability to spin a darned good yarn, makes it easy to see why Johnston is today’s bestselling frontier novelist. He’s one of a handful that truly knows the territory.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  DANCE ON THE WIND

  “A good book … not only gives readers a wonderful story, but also provides vivid slices of history that surround the colorful characters.”

  —Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

  “Packed with people, action, and emotion … makes you wish it would never end.”

  —Clive Cussler

  WINTER RAIN

  “Terry Johnston is an authentic American treasure…. Winter Rain [is] his strongest entry yet.”

  —Loren D. Estleman

  “Some of the finest depictions of Indian warfare I have ever read. Johnston’s romantic vision imbues the early West with an aching beauty that moderns can only dream of.”

  —Richard S. Wheeler, author of Two Medicine River

  CRY OF THE HAWK

  “This novel has the epic sweep of the frontier built into it.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Will stain the reader with grease, blood, and smoke.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  THE SON OF THE PLAINS TRILOGY

  “Terry Johnston is the genuine article…. His Custer trilogy is proving this significant point, just as his Indian wars and mountain man books prove it. I admire his power and invention as a writer, but I admire his love and faith in history just as much.”

  —Will Henry, author of From Where the Sun Now Stands

  CARRY THE WIND, BORDERLORDS, and ONE-EYED DREAM

  “Johnston’s books are action-packed … a remarkably fine blend of arduous historical research and proficient use of language … lively, lusty, fascinating.”

  —Gazette Telegraph, Colorado Springs

  “Rich and fascinating … There is a genuine flavor of the period and of the men who made it what it was.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  OTHER BOOKS BY TERRY C. JOHNSTON

  Dance on the Wind

  Buffalo Palace

  Crack in the Sky

  Carry the Wind

  Border Lords

  One-Eyed Dream

  Cry of the Hawk

  Winter Rain

  Dream Catcher

  SON OF THE PLAINS NOVELS

  Long Winter Gone

  Seize the Sky

  Whisper of the Wolf

  THE PLAINSMEN NOVELS

  Sioux Dawn

  Red Cloud’s Revenge

  The Stalkers

  Black Sun

  Devil’s Backbone

  Shadow Riders

  Dying Thunder

  Blood Song

  Reap the Whirlwind

  Trumpet on the Land

  A Cold Day in Hell

  Wolf Mountain Moon

  Ashes of Heaven

  For more than a decade now he has opened doors and joined me across the miles, not just selling my books but showing me how much he believed in me. With admiration and respect, I dedicate this book to

  HAL SCHLEGEL,

  my friend in Washington.

  Here is the hardy mountain veteran who has ranged these wilds for more than thirty years. Pecuniary emolument was perhaps his first inducement, but now he is as poor as at first. Reckless of all provision for the future, his great solicitude is to fill up his mental insanity by animal gratification. Here is the man, now past the meridian of his life, who has been in the country from his youth, whose connections and associations with the natives have identified his interests and habits with theirs.

  —Philip Edwards,

  missionary to Oregon in 1834

  1

  The baby stirred between them.

  She eventually fussed enough to bring Bass fully awake, suddenly, sweating beneath the blankets.

  Without opening her eyes, the child’s mother groggily drew the infant against her breast and suckled the babe back to sleep.

  Titus kicked the heavy wool horse blanket off his legs, hearing one of the horses nicker. Not sure which one of the four it was, the trapper sat up quiet as coal cotton, letting the blanket slip from his bare arms as he dragged the rifle from between his knees.

  Somewhere close, out there in the dark, he heard the low, warning rumble past the old dog’s throat. Bass hissed—immediately silencing Zeke.

  Several moments slipped by before he heard another sound from the animals. But for the quiet breathing of mother and the ngg-ngg suckling of their daughter, the summer night lay all but silent around their camp at the base of a low ridge.

  Straining to see the unseeable, Bass glanced overhead to search for the moon in that wide canopy stretching across the treetops. Moonset already come and gone. Nothing left but some puny starshine. As he blinked a third time, his groggy brain finally remembered that his vision wasn’t what it had been. For weeks now that milky cloud covering his left eye was forcing his right to work all the harder.

  Then his nose suddenly captured something new on the night wind. A smell musky and feral—an odor not all that familiar, just foreign enough that he strained his recollections to put a finger on it.

  Then off to the side of camp his ears heard the padding of the dog’s big feet as Zeke moved stealthily through the stands of aspen that nearly surrounded this tiny pocket in the foothills he had found for them late yesterday afternoon.

  And from farther in the darkness came another low, menacing growl—

  Titus practically jumped out of his skin when she touched him, laying her fingers against his bare arm. He turned to peer back, swallowing hard, that lone eye finding Waits-by-the-Water in what, dim light seeped over them there beneath the big square of oiled Russian sheeting he had lashed between the trees should the summer sky decide to rain on them through the night.

  He could hear Zeke moving again, not near so quietly this time, angling farther out from camp.

  Bass laid a lone finger against her lips, hoping it would tell her enough. Waits nodded slightly and kissed the finger just before he pulled it away and rocked forward onto his knees, slowly standing. Smelling. Listening.

  Sure enough, the old dog was in motion, growling off to hi
s right—not where he had heard Zeke a moment before. Yonder, toward the horses at the edge of the gently sloping meadow.

  Had someone, red or white, stumbled upon them camped here? he wondered as he took a first barefooted step, then listened some more. Snake country, this was—them Shoshone—though Crow were known to plunge this far south, Arapaho push in too. Had some hunting party found their tracks and followed them here against the bluff?

  Every night of their journey north from Taos, Bass had damn well exercised caution. They would stop late of the lengthening afternoons and water their horses, then let them graze a bit while he gathered wood for a small fire he always built directly beneath the wide overhang of some branches to disperse the smoke. Waits nursed the baby, and when her tummy was full, Bass’s Crow wife passed the child to him. If his daughter was awake after her supper, the trapper cuddled the babe across his arm or bounced her gently in his lap while Waits cooked their supper. But most evenings the tiny one fell asleep as the warm milk filled her tummy.

  So the man sat quietly with the child sleeping against him, watching his wife kneel at the fire, listening to the twilight advancing upon them, his nostrils taking in the feral innocence of this land carried on every breeze. With all the scars, the slashes of knife, those pucker holes from bullets and iron-tipped arrows too, with the frequent visits of pain on his old joints and the dim sight left him in that one eye … even with all those infirmities, this trapper, fondly named Scratch, nonetheless believed Dame Fortune had embraced him more times than she had shunned him.

  Every morning for the past twenty-five days they loaded up their two packhorses and the new mule he had come to call Samantha, dividing up what furs Josiah Paddock had refused to take for himself, what necessaries of coffee, sugar, powder, lead, and foofaraw he figured the three of them would need, what with leaving Taos behind for the high country once more. By the reckoning of most, he hadn’t taken much. A few beaver plews to trade with Sublette at the coming rendezvous on Ham’s Fork where he would buy a few girlews and geegaws to pack off to Rotten Belly up in Absaroka, Crow country—when Bass returned Waits-by-the-Water to the land of her people for the coming winter.

  Josiah. Each time he thought on the one who had been his young partner, thought too on that ex-slave, Esau, they had stumbled across out in Pawnee country,* on the others he had left behind in the Mexican settlements … it brought a hard lump to Scratch’s throat.

  For those first few days after bidding them that difficult farewell, Titus would look down their backtrail, fully expecting to find one or more of them hurrying to catch up, to again try convincing him to remain where it was safe, maybe even to announce that they were throwing in with him once more. After some two weeks he had eventually put aside such notions, realizing he and Josiah had truly had their time together as the best of friends, realizing too that their time lay in the past.

  Time now for a man to ride into the rest of his tomorrows with his family.

  One of the ponies snorted in that language he recognized as nervousness edging into fear. Whoever it was no longer was staying downwind of the critters.

  Kneeling, Bass swept up one of the pistols from where he’d laid them when he’d settled down to sleep. After stuffing it into the belt that held up his leggings and breechclout, Scratch scooped up a second pistol and poked it beneath the belt with the first.

  Gazing down at the look of apprehension on the woman’s face, he whispered in Crow, “Our daughter needs a name.”

  He stood before Waits could utter a reply and pushed into the dark.

  The babe needed a name. For weeks now his wife said it was for the girl’s father to decide. Never before could he remember being given so grave a task—this naming of another. A responsibility so important not only to the Crow people, but to him as well. The proper name would set a tone for her life, put the child’s feet on a certain path as no other name could. Now that his daughter was almost a month old, he suddenly realized he could no longer put this matter aside, dealing each day with other affairs, his mind grown all the more wary and watchful now that there were these two women to think of, to care for, to protect.

  More than his own hide to look after, there were others counting on him.

  No one was going to slink on in and drive off their horses—

  Suddenly Zeke emitted more than a low rumble. Now it became an ominous growl.

  One of the ponies began to snort, another whinnying of a sudden. And he could hear their hooves slam the earth.

  Where was that goddamned dog? Zeke was bound to get himself hurt or killed mixing with them what had come to steal their horses. In his gut it felt good, real good, to know that he wasn’t going into this alone. The dog was there with him. Bass quickened his pace.

  As that strong, feral odor struck him full in the face, Scratch stepped close enough to the far side of the meadow to see their shadows rearing. The struggling ponies were frightened, crying out, straining at the end of their picket pins right where he had tied them to graze their fill until morning.

  He stopped, half crouching, searching the dark for the intruders, those horse thieves come to run off with his stock—

  A dim yellow-gray blur burst from the tree line. His teeth bared, Zeke pounced, colliding noisily with one of the thieves just beyond the ponies.

  There had to be more, Scratch knew—his finger itchy along the trigger. With Zeke’s roar the thieves had to expect the owner of the horses to be coming.

  But as Bass looked left and right, he couldn’t spot any others. Perhaps only one had stolen in alone.

  Then in the midst of that growling and snapping Scratch suddenly realized the dog hadn’t pounced on a horse thief at all. It was another four-legged. A predator. A goddamned wolf.

  “Zeke!” he roared as he bolted forward toward the contest. Remembering that dog fight Zeke was slowly losing in front of the waterfront tippling house back in St. Louis when Scratch stepped in and saved the animal’s life.

  The damned boneheaded dog didn’t know when he was getting the worst of a whipping.

  Three of the ponies whipped this way and that, kicking and snorting at the ends of their picket ropes where he had secured them. Dodging side to side, Bass rushed into their midst, ready to club the wolf off Zeke when the battle-scarred dog tumbled toward him under the legs of a packhorse, fighting off two of them.

  Two goddamned wolves!

  At that moment Samantha set up a plaintive bawl, jerking him around as if he were tied to her by a strip of latigo.

  Again and again she thrashed her hind legs, flailing at a third wolf that slinked this way and that, attempting to get in close enough to hamstring her.

  He’d fought these damned critters before, big ones too, high in the mountains and on the prairies.

  Taking a step back as Samantha connected against her attacker with a small hoof, Scratch jammed the rifle against his shoulder, staring down the long, octagonal barrel to find the target. Then set the back trigger.

  As the predator clambered back to all fours and began to slink toward the mule once more, Scratch shut both eyes and pulled the front trigger. With a roar the powder in the pan ignited and a blinding muzzle flash jetted into the black of night.

  On opening his eyes, Titus heard the .54-caliber lead ball strike the wolf, saw it bowl the creature over.

  Whipping to his left, the trapper upended the rifle, gripping the muzzle in both hands as he started for the mass of jaws and legs and yelps where Zeke was embroiled with two lanky-limbed wolves, getting the worst of it. Slinging the rifle over his shoulder and preparing to swing the buttstock at one of the dog’s attackers, a fragment of the starlit night tore itself loose and flickered into the side of his vision.

  Landing against Scratch with the force of its leap, a fourth wolf sank its teeth deep into the muscle at the top of his bare left arm. Struggling on the ground beneath the animal as it attempted to whip its head back and forth to tear meat from its prey, Bass yanked a pistol from his belt
as the pain became more than he could bear—fearing he was about to lose consciousness at any moment.

  He fought for breath as he rammed the pistol’s muzzle against the attacker’s body and pulled the hammer back with his thumb, dragging back the trigger an instant later. The roar was muffled beneath the furry attacker’s body, nonetheless searing the man’s bare flesh with powder burns as the big round ball slammed through the wolf and blew a huge, fist-sized hole out the attacker’s back in a spray of blood.

  Pitching the empty pistol aside, Scratch pried at the jaws death-locked on his torn shoulder, savagely tearing the wolf’s teeth from his flesh. He rolled onto his knees shakily, blood streaming down the left arm, finding Zeke struggling valiantly beneath his two attackers, clearly growing weary. Bass pulled the second pistol from his belt and clambered to his feet. Lunging closer, praying he would not miss, he aimed at the two darker forms as they swarmed over their prey.

  The moment the bullet struck, the wolf yelped and rolled off the dog, all four of its legs galloping sidelong for a moment before they stilled in death. The last wolf remained resolutely twisted atop Zeke. The dog had one of the attacker’s legs imprisoned in his jaws, but the wolf clamped down on Zeke’s throat, thrashing its head side to side in its brutal attempt to tear open its prey, assuring the kill.

  Rocking down onto his hands, Bass frantically searched the grass for the rifle knocked from his grip, tears of frustration stinging his eyes. By Jehoshaphat! That dog was a fighter to the end. He had known it from the start back there in St. Louis when Zeke hadn’t run out of fight, even when he was getting whipped—