Buffalo Palace

Reining away from Troost’s Livery, Titus Bass gave the jug-headed Indian pony urgent taps of his heels, pointing it down the muddy, rutted ruin of Second Street.

Puddles of rain glittered as the sun continued its leisurely rise, the surface of each tiny pool left behind by last night’s rain reflecting rose light like broken panes of glass scattered here and there among the heaps of wheel-cut ruts and piles of dung gone cold. Shadows still cloaked nearly all of St. Louis, save for the tallest rooftops gently steaming as they warmed.

Instead of heading directly north, he hurried south out of town, downriver some four miles until he reached the shady glen far from the clutter of settlement and folk. Far from the clatter of man’s comings and goings. Someplace far from being underfoot. After all this time Titus was again gratified at the utter peace he sensed there as he halted, dismounted, and tied the two animals off to one of the trees ringing the glade. Plodding quietly in his thick-soled boots across the grassy carpet grown lush already this early spring, he had no trouble locating the mound. Stopping a few feet away, he took it in, finding many of the wildflowers he had transplanted nearly a year before budding once again with renewed life here above the old trapper’s resting place.

Down in this grove the shadows lingered long of a morning. And the damp mist clung in among the trees, wispy among the climbing ivy and grape. Eventually, Titus inched forward, stopping at the foot of the grave.

“Isaac. It’s me: Titus,” he said barely above a whisper, the way a man might first address someone he found sleeping. “I come … come here to tell you my fare-thees, Isaac. I’m bound away—for where the two of us was counting on going together. Out yondering to them prerras and far mountains you told me of again and again.”

Then he realized and suddenly snatched the floppy felt hat from his head, dropping his eyes as if in apology for his discourteous oversight.

“Wish you was going along,” Bass continued. “Probably asking yourself why I ain’t gone already, ain’cha? So let me tell you that you being here—dead and buried—that’s the onliest reason I ain’t gone afore now. There I was, planning all the time on tagging ’long with you … then you go and get yourself kill’t. That was—hell, it felt just like one of them old brood mares I was shoeing for Troost gone and kicked me right in the gut.”

He dropped the hat onto the foot of the grave there among the profusion of newly emerging wildflowers and slowly went to his knees. Placing one palm flat on the grave, Titus continued.

“Took me some time to get over your dying, Isaac Washburn. Pained me like few other things ever pained me afore in my life. I was counting on something so hard—then you go and act the idjit and you’re gone … gone along with my dreams of ever getting to them Shining Mountains you seen with your own eyes.”

He felt that first sting of tears burn, and swiped at his eyes with a single cold finger as a ray of sun burst through the canopy overhead, the first to streak into the glade.

“Took me a long time to get over the loss of you and my dreams both, Isaac. Didn’t get over it till I up and figgered out I could damn well go on my own. I didn’t need you like I figured I did. Got me a fine gun of my own now. The rest of our plunder and truck tied up in them bundles over yonder on them horses. And I’m riding your
pony my own self. Taking it back to the prerra where I figure it belongs.”

Slowly he dragged a sleeve of his blanket coat beneath his dribbling nose and sighed.

“At first I hated what you done to both of us, Isaac. For killing yourself and killing my dream of going to them far mountains by way of the Platte with you. Nursed on that hate for too damn long—so long that I didn’t ever come back here to speak at you … not since I buried you in this pretty place. I’m glad to see you ain’t kill’t the flowers I planted over you, you sour-assed son of a bitch.”

Then he gradually rose to his feet, sweeping up his hat and snugging it down upon his thick; curly brown hair, glancing at the single shaft of sunlight streaming into the glade, slowly marching across the nodding grass toward the grave.

“Best be going now, Gut. Wanted to come to tell you I was on my way out yonder. Don’t know if I’d ever get back this way. And … and I come to tell you I owe you more’n I’d ever be able to pay you. So”—and he swallowed hard, tasting the ball of sentiment at the back of his throat—“so I figure the only way I’ll ever come close to repaying you for what good you done me … is to go on out yonder and live the way your kind was meant to live. The way I callate I was meant to live out my days too.”

Swiping the palm of his hand across his whole face, smearing tears and his blubbering nose, Titus bent quickly and patted the top of the grave mound with a hand, then straightened.

“I’ll fare well, Isaac Washburn,” he whispered, barely above a harsh croak. “Thanks to you, I’ll fare well.”

Hurrying back to the horses, he untied them quickly and vaulted onto the pony’s back, glanced once at the shaft of sunlight just then touching the old trapper’s resting place, the wildflowers grown luminescent with that first blush of dawn’s light.