Buffalo Palace Read online

  “You don’t gotta believe me just how quiet it be,” Gut Washburn said matter-of-factly. “Hell, coon—you’re gonna find out for yerself one day soon.”

  Here he was, for God’s sake! On his way to find out for certain. Had it not been for Washburn showing up at Troost’s Livery that rainy night a year back, Titus himself might well be dead by now and laying in a pauper’s grave. As it turned out, Bass had been the one to lay Isaac to his eternal rest.

  Now he was heading west … alone.

  At St. Charles he had turned southwest with the Missouri. At times the road lay wide in spots, other times it narrowed. Barely enough room through the trees and brush for a single wagon to pass, slashing its iron rims down into the rich black loam. This was plainly a farmer’s land, Titus thought to himself. Good land, this—for a man such as his father, Thaddeus.

  So it was he thought on his mother, back across these many years. Fifteen winters already since last he had seen those gray sprigs in her hair; heard her voice soothing one child or another; felt the sure touch of her hand upon his shoulder, warm at the back of his neck whenever he felt unsteady of himself. After all this time he thought now on those biscuits she had baked that last night and left out for him. And the new shirt just finished for Thaddeus, lying there on the rough-hewn plank table. As certain today as he was that autumn morn as he slipped off from hearth and home—that she had left the shirt out for him to take in his leaving.

  Little settlements, each one, he rode through as the Missouri River Road led him past St. Albans, then Labadie, and after more than a week he put Gasconade behind him. Two days later he passed Bonnots Mill. Eventually the river meandered back to the northwest. By the time he reached the tiny settlement of Rocheport, Titus found himself growing more comfortable with the long stretches of country wherein he did not lay eyes on another human. Each day becoming content with the Indian pony and the dun mare, with the company of nothing more than the sounds of the hardwood forests where he arose every morning and hurriedly ate what was left of the meat he had cooked for last night’s supper. Finding himself content with those nightsounds in the timber—calls of owls and all the tiny animals that hid from those wide-winged predators as the sun went down and the stars winked into view overhead through the leafy branches where the smoke from his fire rose and dispersed.

  Never did he go hungry—in fact, his belly had never been so full with the rich, fat meat of the field. Here in this country of thick timber he encountered more game than he thought possible. Better hunting was it here than it had ever been for him back in Kentucky.

  Then he sorted through to the reason for that: surely there were far fewer people here to stir up the critters, to drive them this way and that, to harry them and deplete their numbers. Clearly this was country where a man could provide for his family, live off the land without ever slashing a plowshare through the earth’s crust. Yet as good as that might be for some, Titus pushed on west.

  For three cents he was ferried across the river to the settlement of Franklin, which sat on the north bank.

  “Right here you’re standing where the Santa Fe Trail begins,” explained the stocky, pockmarked storekeeper. “Takes a man a little south of west, eventual to the land of them greasers.”

  “Greasers?”

  “Mex,” came the reply. “Some of the fellers travel the trail last few trading seasons call ’em sun-grinners. Damn, but from the sounds of what I been told, they’re a people ain’t worth a shit but for their handsome women.”

  Titus swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he thought back on those hungers he had been pushing down, like an aggravating tickle. “W-women.”

  “Dark-skinned they be—so I’m told by them what pass through here bound for Santa Fe.” The man scratched at a two-day growth of patchy whiskers sprouting on his cheeks, eying the slight stranger who stood just shy of six feet on that rough-plank floor. “Greaser women what wear they’s skirts up to the knees, and their shirts clear down to here: so they all but hang right out for a man to see near ever’thing.”

  “This trail you’re talking about,” Titus asked, hopeful, “it go west by way of the Platte?”

  The fat jowls waddled as the man shook his head, eyes squinting as they took measure of the newcomer. Dirt and smoke stained every one of the storekeeper’s deep pockmarks and the crow’s-feet wrinkling both corners of nis bloodshot eyes. “That be too far north of here, mister—the Platte would. Like I tol’t you, Santa Fe Trail takes a man off southwest from here.”

  “Sounds to me that this be the place a man makes up his mind, don’t it?”

  The jowly storekeeper nodded. “Head south to the land of the greasers. Or push on upriver.”

  “And the Platte?”

  “Still upriver a goodly piece.”

  “Was hoping to run onto it afore now,” Titus said with disappointment. “Seems like I been riding forever already.”

  “Something on the order of two hunnert thirty miles.”

  “What’s two hundred thirty miles?”

  The man scratched at his chin absently and replied, “That’s how far you come from the mouth of the Missouri.”

  “Happen to know how long I got to go to reach the Platte?”

  “Hmmm,” the man considered. “That’s a handsome piece.”

  “Farther’n I come already?”

  “Dare say, mister. Yep, a good bit farther’n you come already.”

  That depressing news sank within him like a stone tossed into the swimming pond back in Rabbit Hash, Boone County, Kentucky. For a moment he wondered on another option. “How’s the country lay on that trail to Mexico?”

  With a sudden, broad smile the storekeeper said, “Now, that’s something to show you’ve got a good head about you. I can outfit you for such a trip right handily.”

  “The country. Tell me ’bout the country.”

  “Halfway there, I’m told—you’ll run onto a desert that lasts near the rest of your journey.”

  “A d-desert?”

  “Sand and lizards and sun, mister. All it’s fit for, so they say.”

  “Why would any man wanna go there—if’n that’s all he’s bound to come across?”

  “I told you awready.” The wide-shouldered shopkeeper grinned with teeth the color of hickory shavings. “They set their eye on that greaser country for the womens. Most trade for mules, and bring back the greasers’ gold.”

  “Say a man don’t want none of that. How’s the land lay up in that Platte country?”

  With a shrug the man answered, “Ain’t worth a spit for building—you ask me. Not much timber like we got here.” He pointed. “A feller runs out of trees a bit west of here.”

  Watching the man chew at a fingernail, Titus asked, “Then?”

  “Then you find yourself in nothing but grass. Taller’n your horse’s belly it grows. Miles and miles, and it goes on for longer’n I care to know. Country ain’t fit for a decent man to settle his family in—what with no wood and the Injuns all about.”

  “Pawnee.”

  That caused the shopkeeper to raise an eyebrow. “You heard of ’em?”

  “I heard,” Bass answered.

  “Leave that godforsaken country to the likes of them, I say,” the man snarled sourly. “Ain’t fit for nothing but what Injuns and buffalo out there—all that can live in them parts—”

  “Buffalo?” he interrupted almost too quietly. “B-buffalo, you said.”

  For a moment the storekeeper studied Bass’s face with the first real interest he had shown all afternoon. “You’re looking for to find them buffalo, is it?”

  His head bobbed every bit as eagerly as a young boy’s. “Yes. I aim to see me them herds of buffalo I heard tell was out there on the Platte.”

  “They’re there all right, mister. Them, and the thieving, murdering Injuns too. If I was to do it—I’d lay my sights on greaser country.”

  “Looks to be I’m pushing on north.”

  With a snort of der
ision the shopkeeper said, “To see them buffalo and have your ha’r lifted by the Pawnee?”

  “I figure a fella can watch hisself and stay out of harm’s way.”

  With a sudden, low blat of laughter that reminded Titus of a peal of some faraway thunder, the storekeeper erupted, slapping a flat hand down on the counter so as to rattle a nearby display of tin cups. “If that ain’t some now! Why, from the way you was talking—I’d wager you and your outfit ain’t ever been out in that country off yonder.”

  “Ain’t,” Bass admitted.

  “So how you fellas figure you’re gonna keep from getting sideways with the Pawnee, seeing how you’ll need be crossing so much of it to get to that far country? Best pray there’s a whole bunch of sharp-eyed sonsabitches with y’—”

  “J-just me,” Titus bristled, annoyed at the storekeeper’s amused smirk and downright nosiness. “Ain’t no one else along. Ain’t no outfit of us.”

  Like the passing of a cloud, the pockmarked face went grave as the storekeeper leaned forward on the plank counter, suddenly inches from Bass’s nose. Something of great import rang in the tone of voice as he said, “Tell me now you’re fixed for lead and powder?”

  “Got me all I figure a man ought’n carry on a packhorse.”

  Leaning back with a smug smile, the man suggested, “Might well think about packing you all you can. Where you’re headed, it won’t be no desert trail what’ll kill you with thirst or p’isenous lizards. No, sir—it jest might be them god-blame-ed Pawnee!”

  As the last few words tumbled dramatically out of his mouth, of a sudden the storekeeper went silent, his eyes snapping to the narrow doorway, where Titus watched a middle-aged woman and a brood of children appear out of the sun, shuffling into the cooler shadows of the shanty store.

  “You keep your hands to yourselves, hear me now?” she instructed the young ones as they came to a halt on either side of her, like a brood of chicks clustered around their hen. “Don’t make me scold you again like last time we was here.”

  Titus studied her in that instant: the way she turned aside to one batch of children, then to the others as she instructed them all in a sure tone of voice. Her well-seamed face, tanned to the color of a native pecan even at this early season of the year, showed more than the simple ravage of time. That sallow countenance registered the toll of many live, and a few still, births, reflected the slash of ceaseless wind and the scouring of a life suffered beneath the unrepentant sun—all those countless days spent at her man’s shoulder … the two of them pleading with the ground, the sky, and ultimately to their God again and again to grant them enough of a crop to feed themselves and thereby survive one more year.

  Then, as she finished instructing her flock in those quietly stern directives, the woman looked up at last: her bright, fiery, optimistic eyes seeming to come directly to Titus, dawdling just enough as they halted there to cause him to swallow hard. As a child or man, he’d never been what anyone could dare call handsome—fact was, Bass considered himself firmly on the homely side—so when her eyes appeared to take their measure of him, Bass felt his cheeks redden. He was relieved when the woman’s gaze turned aside to land on the storekeeper.

  “Bailey,” she began in a loud, sure voice she flung across the shabby, low-roofed store, “what’s cornmeal these days?”

  “This time of year it’s twenty-five dollar the hundredweight, Mrs. Grigsby.”

  She drew her lips into a wrinkled purse, licked them quickly in grave thought, then replied, “Gimme ten pounds. Got coffee?”

  “Some come in just last week.”

  The woman asked, “You tried it your own self?”

  “The missus made some for us just this morning.”

  “And?” she prodded, nudging her head to the side, out of the way of some ironmongery hanging from the rafters as she took two steps forward, her brood shuttling hurriedly to stay at the hem of her dress.

  “As fine a cup as I’ve ever had on either side of the river, ma’am.”

  Drawing her shoulders back, Mrs. Grigsby declared, “Should have known you’d claim it was nigh onto being the nectar of the gods, Bailey Henline. How much you want for this grand coffee of your’n?” Then, almost in afterthought, she wagged her head and commented, “’Tis a curse when a woman cain’t seem to wean a man from his coffee.”

  With a smile the storekeeper answered, “Land, but I know he’s a one to drink it morning, noon, and evening too—was it that you had it always brewed for him. Tell you the honest, for this last shipment, I gotta have fifty cents the pound.”

  “Lord bless and preserve me!” she exclaimed, suddenly snagging the wrist of one of the younger children and taking from the hand something the offending youngster had been closely inspecting behind her mother’s back. She replaced the waxed parcel back among the display on the rough plank shelving and turned back to Henline. “Will you see fit to give us five pounds of your coffee on account?”

  He sighed. “I can add it to the books for you, Mrs. Grigsby. You’re good folks—and I’ll stand by honest stock like you and the mister.”

  “No one can say you ain’t stood by us these last two troublesome seasons, Bailey,” she declared with the sort of undisguised gratitude that was hard for a proud woman to let show. “You know we’re good for it. And … if it’s all right, I’d like to get each of the young’uns a little treat out of your jars over here. We don’t get in here much as I’d like—”

  “Go right ahead, ma’am. Let ’em each pick what they want. Ain’t no trouble to just put their treats on the books too.”

  With a meaningful nod she said, “Thank you, Bailey.”

  Bass watched her turn away with her children as she bent her head and murmured to them softly. One by one they began to approach the shelf where rested the immense, odd-colored jars and small wicker baskets filled with rock candy and other sugared delights. Taking a step back toward the counter, Titus grew thoughtful as he cupped the small skin pouch inside the worn blanket satchel slung over his shoulder—fingering what he had left in the way of hard coin.

  Titus cleared his throat, drawing Henline’s attention and said, “Best have me some of that cornmeal and your coffee too my own self.”

  “Good thinking, mister,” the storekeeper replied, rubbing the palms of both hands down the front of his sweat-stained shirt that had likely been the better part of a month without a scrubbing. “’Cepting for the army sutler upriver, this here be the last place you’ll run onto such victuals. What’ll it be of the cornmeal?”

  “Fifty pound,” Bass said, swallowing down the sudden flush of apprehension he felt at spending the last of his money.

  Turning aside to move off, Henline asked, “And your coffee?”

  “Maybe best I have us count what I got left after you get that cornmeal,” Bass replied. “We’ll see how much coffee I can do with.”

  “You have American?” Bailey asked, eying him up and down.

  “Yes. I have American.”

  With an approving nod the storekeeper continued about his chore of scooping cornmeal from a large oaken hogshead into linen sacking.

  It was money, Titus reminded himself as he fretted. Only money. Never had he been captive of it, because his whole life had either been feast or famine: Titus at times had earned all the money he wanted at Troost’s Livery and had survived nicely; while at other times he had none to speak of in his empty pocket, and had survived just as well. Maybe money was just like whiskey and women. All three were the same: when a man had ’em—he best drink up while the drinking was good … lay while the women were spreading their legs for him … or spend that money before it wore a hole in his britches. Many were the times he’d gotten by without the whiskey, or the whores, and more often than not he had survived without coins jangling in his purse.

  Besides, he suddenly decided, like the storekeeper said—west of here there wasn’t but one more goddamned place to spend one’s money anyhow. Why would a man want to carry anything west
when it weren’t going to do him any good out there?

  Then and there a candle’s flicker of impulse made him suddenly decide to empty his purse. This would be the last in the way of hard currency he figured he would see for many a season to come. While some men buried their money away against some greatly feared lean time like squirrels hoarding their store of nuts for the coming winter, Titus no longer saw any need to have the feel of it stitched up in his waistband the way he and the rest of Kingsbury’s boatmen had carted their gold specie north from New Orleans on up the Natchez Trace. And he was surely not the sort who had ever needed the reassuring jangle of coins at his side, the feel of specie caressing his palm.

  Money was to be used, he had come to believe with certainty. Not something to be hoarded. And where he was going, money sure as hell was something a man could not use. This was, he realized of that moment, the very edge of the world as he had known it: the border between all that he had been, and all that he wanted his life to be. Money, like so many other things, was clearly a part of the world he was leaving behind. Best to leave here what little money he had left. Leave it behind with all the rest of his old life he would no longer need take with him.

  They settled up on what Titus owed for the cornmeal and coffee, the three bags sitting there on the dusty counter, in their midst the stack of coin, which now belonged to the storekeeper. The few that remained with Titus he turned over and over in his palm.

  “Something more I can do for you, mister?” Henline asked expectantly, an eyebrow raising.

  He licked his lips, gazing down at the few coins left him. “What you got in the way of tobaccy?”

  The fleshy eyes studied the whipcord-lean wayfarer again, as one might regard a person of questionable sanity. “Don’t wan’cha no powder, or lead? Don’t need you no axes or knives?”

  Shaking his head, Titus declared, “That tobaccy there,” and he pointed to the large cedar crate on the plank counter, the top of which had been pried off to expose the dark carrot twists of dried tobacco leaf. “How much is the asking?”

  “You a chewing man, are you?”