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 long 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 his 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 in 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 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 back-trail, 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 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 laid them when he settled down to sleep. After stuffing it in 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 important to him as well. The proper name would set a tone for her life, put the child’s feet on a certain path like 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 full 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 treeline. 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
“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 bone-headed 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, he 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 up-ended 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.
