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along the west wall.
    “Soon you will see, my son.”
    As they turned their horses at the far corner, he spotted a nesting of some three dozen lodges erected back among the riverbank cottonwood several hundred yards from the fort. More than two hundred ponies pawed at the frozen ground between the camp and the mud walls—
    Suddenly an iron bell began to clang inside the fort, and a head appeared over the top above them. The man’s face disappeared as quickly.
    “The Mexicans are here too?” Waits asked him. “This bell rings for their holy meetings?”
    He knew she was referring to how the Taosenos followed the dictates of the great iron bell rung in its tall church steeple. He said, “I don’t figger we’ll find many greasers here now.”
    “No holy meeting?” she repeated.
    Wagging his head, Scratch said, “That bell rings only to announce the evening.”
    “Why, Popo?” Flea inquired. “I can look at the sun falling, and know for myself that it is evening!”
    Halfway on down the mud wall three men suddenly belched from the wide gate and halted as soon as they spotted Bass’s party. One of them waved an arm to the others, ordering the two on toward the small wheeled cannon while he stayed in place, shading his eyes as he inspected the new arrivals, calling out, “Howdy, stranger!”
    “Ho, your own self!”
    “What Injuns you brung with you, mister?”
    “My family—wife and young’uns.”
    That man turned away and trudged over to the cannon the other two had begun tugging back toward the wall. As he helped pushing on one of the huge wheels, he inquired, “You folks fixing on staying inside for the night?”
    Bass cleared his throat. “I reckon—if’n there’s room.”
    “Just barely,” he replied. “Got us more’n two dozen sick soldiers getting nursed.”
    Titus brought his horse to a halt as the man stopped pushing the cannon. Together they watched the other two heave the weapon on through the open portal toward the inner plaza.
    “Who’s nursin’ them soldiers?” Titus inquired as his family halted their horses around him. “Charlotte Green her own self?”
    The man twisted suddenly and squinted up at Bass. “How you know Charlotte?”
    “I been here years ago,” he confessed, quickly glancing at his pair of dogs sniffing along the base of the mud walls for interesting scent. “Meeted her and husband Dick back then. Good folks. Bought these here two dogs off Charlotte—back when they was wee pups. That was just afore I got skinned by Savary. He here—Savary?”
    “Naw,” the man explained. “St. Vrain’s been off to Santa Fe—gone last fall. I figger he’s in the thick of things in Taos by now.”
    “Who’s trader here?”
    “Goddamn Murray. You hear of him?”
    “Hell if I ain’t!” Bass replied. “Did a piece of business with him that fall I come in here with some Mex horses from Californy. He’s a square man.”
    “You was with the bunch what come in with Bill Williams back in forty-two?” the man asked, stepping right over to Scratch’s knee to peer up at the white-bearded man, the old trapper’s ruddy face all but hidden beneath the coyote fur cap.
    “That was a time,” Bass sighed. “Mex soldiers chased us down to the desert, then the Diggers up and spooked our whole herd.” *
    “Story was you fellas lost more’n half them horses on the way here.”
    Titus glanced at his wife, then grinned down at the stranger. “The things a man won’t do when he’s young and full of vinegar.”
    “My name’s Haney Rankin,” and he held his hand up. “I’m Murray’s segundo while most of the fort hands are off with Bransford—gone to fight the greasers in Taos. You can head ’round to the east wall. You remember that corral over there?”
    “I do recollect. There a gate on that side?”
    Rankin nodded. “Bring your family on inside that smallcorral. Sun’s down so we’re bolting these here gates for the night. I’ll meet you over to the