“Yep!” And the stranger chuckled heartily. “Maybeso ye do got some ha’r in ye after all, mister—if’n ye can bark at me while’st yer all tore up the way ye are.”
“Ain’t no use in a fella feeling sorry for hisself,” Titus replied, working hard to focus on the stranger with his blood-rimmed eyes.
“Yer some, mister blacksmith. Think I yest might like gettin’ to know ye.”
“Don’t matter none to me if you do or if you don’t,” Bass snapped, immediately sorry he had. “I … I don’t have me many friends.”
The stranger crawled over and slowly knelt near Bass, the gamy aroma of him washing over Titus.
“Me neither, mister,” the man explained quietly. “Not … not many friends no more.” Then he suddenly reared back and slapped both palms down atop his thighs, rising to his feet. “Ye still hungry—I’ll run off an’ fetch ye some victuals.”
“I better eat,” Bass admitted. “If only to give me something for my belly to toss right back up.”
“Yer meatbag paining ye, is it?” He held down his hand to Titus. “Name’s Isaac Washburn. Isaac—with two a’s. What’s yer’n?”
“Titus Bass.” He struggled some to roll off his right side, but he eventually got the arm freed and gripped the stranger’s hand. “Where was it you said you was from, Isaac Washburn?”
“God’s kentry, Titus Bass. Up the Missouri—land of the Blackfeet, Ree, an’ Assiniboin. Seen me Mandan and Pawnee kentry too. Land whar’ them red niggers take yer ha’r if’n you don’t keep it locked on tight. Kentry where the moun-tanes reach right up to scrape at the belly o’ the sky, an’ the water’s so cold it’ll set yer back teeth on edge.”
Electrified at that announcement, Bass anxiously fought to prop himself on both elbows when Washburn released his hand. The older man clearly had a secure grip on Titus’s attention.
“You … you been out … out there?” Bass asked.
Isaac grinned, knowingly. “Out thar’?” And he pointed off into the distance. “Damn right I been out thar’. Seen yest ’bout ever’thin’ thar’ is fer a nigger to see north on the upriver.”
“Then … you had to seen ’em?”
“Seen what? Injuns? Yest tol’t ye: I see’d more Injuns’n I ever wanna see again in my hull durn life—”
“No,” Bass interrupted. “Have you see’d the buffalo?”
“Buffler?” Washburn reared back, snorting a great gust of laughter that showed Bass the underside of that great tooth all but sticking straight out of his upper gum. “Titus, I see’d buffler so thick at runoff time their rottin’, stinkin’ carcassees dang near clog the Missouri River her own self. From that river I see’d them critters moseying off to the north, goin’ round to the south, likely to gather up in herds so big they’d cover the hull kentry far as a feller could see.”
“Then you … you really see’d ’em!” he exclaimed under his breath, wide-eyed and aghast. Bass’s heart hammered mercilessly in his chest, every bit as hard as his temples throbbed. How he hoped this was his answer. “Damn, here I am talking to a man what’s see’d buffalo for real.”
Washburn looped a four-inch-wide belt around his blanket coat, securing it in a huge round buckle. “My friends call me Gut.”
Quickly his red eyes shot down to the stranger’s belly. Nothing there that in any way remotely appeared to be a gut on the man. He was about as lean as a fella could be. Made of strap leather and latigo, most likely, Bass decided.
“Why they call you
Isaac laughed. “No—not ’cause of my belly. Others laid that handle on me some time back—up in them Three Forks, y’ars ago it were—I s’pose fer it be my favorite food.”
“You eat … eat gut?”
“Not gut rightly.
“Bou-dans,” Titus repeated, trying out the sound of it on his tongue bitten and swollen from the beating.
“Yessirree, my friend. I’ll fix ’em for us sometime while’st I’m hyar in St. Louie. Plant myself down fer a short time afore I feel the needs be pushing upriver once more.” He stared off for a moment before saying, “Lord, but for once I’d love to see how a man could do getting hisself west foilering the Platte.”
“The Platte,” Titus repeated. He had heard something of it.
Washburn pointed off with a wide jab of his arm. “Runs right out to the moun-tanes. One of them rivers what comes in off the prerra.”
“All the way in from far away on the prairie?” He had seen rivers long and wide and wild. But to think of a river bringing water down from mountain snows, all the way here to St. Louis!
Washburn smacked his lips loudly, his eyes gleaming now that he had the younger man’s rapt attention. “Like I said it, Titus: that water comes all the way from them moun-tanes. What moun-tanes I see’d up north in the Missouri River kentry, them moun-tanes even down south of the Powder—they was still some ways off west from the criks and rivers I was trappin’ or trompin’. Word is, them moun-tanes on the headwaters of the Platte scratch the belly of the sky … an’ go all the way south to greaser kentry.”
He wagged his head in disbelief, trying to conceive of any range so high, any range that extended that great a distance. “S-same mountains?”
Washburn nodded in the dim fire’s light. “Same. North, to south—far as a man can travel in a month of Sundays.”
“Naw,” Bass scoffed, suddenly suspicious the older man was making sport of him. Titus had seen mountains, back east. That Kentucky and Cumberland country. He damn well knew there could be nothing near as big as Isaac Washburn was claiming. “I cain’t believe there’s mountains what run from the Missouri where you was all the way south that far.”
Squinting, the disheveled, greasy man gazed down at Bass incredulously. “Ain’t ye heard, lad? Right north of St. Louie not far from hyar, a man can foller the great Missouri north to trap or trade. Goin’ upriver, that man’ll run onto more’n a handful of big rivers, ever’ damn one of ’em coming in from the far, far moun-tanes.”
“I know ’bout the beaver trade on the upper river. Been making traps for years now,” Titus snapped a little impatiently. “What’re they called … them mountains you set eyes on?”
Isaac visibly rocked back on his heels. “Called … the Rockies. The High Stonies. The Shining Moun- tanes.”
“S-shining mountains?”
He nodded matter-of-factly. “’Cause they allays got snow on ’em, Titus. Even in the summer.”
“You seen them mountains shine for yourself?”
“Sure as hell have! I stared right up at ’em fer my first time near fifteen year ago when I was with Andy Henry on the Three Forks. Then I got me a close look again coming down the Powder this last winter with Glass’s outfit; saw ’em off thar’ to the west. Bigger’n yer gran’ma’s titties. Why, Titus—they’re even bigger’n what I ever figgered ’em to be in all my dreams growin’ up back to Albermarle County.”
“Where’s that?”
“Virginny.”
This was all coming too fast, too damned fast. He sucked in a big breath and let his answer gush forth like a limestone spring. “And the buffalo—then you’re telling me them herds is real?”
For a moment Washburn stared impassively at the injured man atop his blankets in the hay. “Damn tootin’ they’re real, Titus. Whatever give ye the idee buffalo wasn’t real?”
He wagged his head a moment, trying to find words that would describe the gut-wrenching despair suffered these long years. “I just … well, maybe ’cause I ain’t never seen one myself—”
“I see’d enough in that north kentry along the Missouri River, up to the mouth of the Yallerstone, even round the Musselshell, and down to that Powder River kentry—I see’d ’em with my own eyes.”
“Lots of ’em?”
Isaac clucked a moment on that snaggled fang, then said, “I see’d so many I thought my eyes gonna bug out … but then Ol’ Glass—he’s a friend of mine I tromped through some kentry with this’r past winter—he a way ol’t hivernant from way back … he told me I ain’t see’d all that many.”
“A
“Feller what’d spent him his first winter in the far kentry. Back ago Glass was one to live with the Pawnee
