no two ways to say this to ye, Scratch. Ye figger to hunt flat-tails this fall up in that high country … I’m thinking ye should join up with me and the boys.”
For a few moments Titus was stunned, purely astounded at the offer. When he finally found words, he said, “Jack—I ain’t g-got much to put up.”
“Ye got a few traps, and a damn good gun, nigger,” Hatcher said with a grin, coming over to pick up the bail to the coffee kettle in one hand. “But even more important than that is what ye got in here.” Jack tapped his heart. “Any man what can ride out of ’Rapaho country with a bullet hole showing daylight right through him, why—more dead’n alive and hanging on the back of a ornery mule like he was a tick stuck fast and sure to some ol’ bull … then I figger that man can ride to the high country with me any season of the year.”
How full his heart felt at that moment! “You … you certain about this?”
“Sartin as it’s gonna snow on-the high places, Scratch.”
“Maybeso you should talk it over with the others.”
The voice came from behind Titus. “We awready talked it over all we need to.”
Twisting his head around, Scratch found Caleb Wood there. Behind him stood the others: Elbridge Gray, Solomon Fish and Joseph Little, Issac Simms and Rufus Graham, John Rowland and Matthew Kinkead.
Hatcher repeated, “We all want you to join up.”
“But,” Rufus grumped, “you gotta vow you stop this laying around, goddammit. Man fixin’ to light out for the high country—he ought’n be up an’ around, don’t you think, fellers?”
“By God—Rufus is right!” Fish roared. “Let’s us get Titus forked over a horse this very morning.”
The rest started toward him as Elbridge Gray turned back for a pair of saddle horses tied nearby. Lord, was Scratch ever ready when they helped steady him as he pushed himself up and off that travois. Then, slowly, the others stepped back to let Titus stand alone.
“Lookee there, Mad Jack!” Kinkead cried as Hatcher stepped up, flinging the blanket off his shoulders.
“Yer ready?” Jack asked.
Bass nodded, watching Gray lead one of the horses up to the group. “This your’n, Elbridge?”
Gray glanced at Hatcher a moment.
Jack nodded once. “Go ’head.”
Then Elbridge said, “No. It ain’t mine, Scratch. We’uns—well … we all pitched in some and traded for to get a saddle pony from these here Snakes for you.”
He had trouble swallowing as the others stepped close to circle him and the horse. “I … I … I don’t—”
“Ain’cha gonna climb up?” Jack proposed.
“Steady him now, boys,” Rowland instructed when Bass went to stuff a left foot in the stirrup. “Help him on up there.”
Fish and Simms, stocky men both, helped Titus boost himself onto that big, carved cottonwood stirrup— getting the other leg kicked over the high cantle and eased down as Rufus guided Titus’s right foot into the other hand-carved stirrup.
Scratch asked, “Who’s saddle this be?”
“Yer’n,” Hatcher replied. “It’s Injun. All we had us— but … from the looks of how ye sit it, gonna work out just fine for ye till we can get to ronnyvoo next summer and fix ye up with one of the trader’s American saddles.”
Titus shifted this way and that on the rawhide-covered wooden tree with the high pommel in front and its high, wide cantle in the back.
“Damn if it won’t do, fellas,” he said quietly, having a little trouble getting the words out.
“See? Told ye he’d like it,” Hatcher proclaimed.
“Man got himself a rifle, a good horse, saddle, and a mule to pack along a few traps,” Bass said, his eyes stinging as he looked down on the six of them gathered around his new pony, “why—that man got hisself just about all he’ll ever need.”
Hatcher grabbed Bass’s wrist and said, “That, and a few friends along too when he points his nose for the highlands.”
“Yes,” Titus choked. “Man can make do anywhere, no matter what—if’n he’s got him a few friends … f-friends like you fellas.”
He could cotton to a little more riding each day—so before another eleven days had passed, Scratch felt ready to sit the saddle long enough for them to take up the trail north.
Three times in more than two weeks while he was with them, the Shoshone moved camp, following the herds south as the remains of summer faded and autumn first kissed the cottonwood along the creeks, spinning gold of the trembling aspen that dotted the timbered slopes above the valleys where the buffalo grazed. The village had been shooting and butchering and fleshing hides for many days now, every member of the tribe involved with these preparations for winter before they would turn north and make their way into a valley sheltered from the harsh winds and the deep snows. There they would find respite from the raiding Arapaho to the south, the wide- ranging Blackfoot slipping down from the north.
Whenever a harsh winter took its toll on the northern herds and times grew lean on the far northern prairie, that great confederation of Gros Ventre, Piegan, and Blood tribes were more likely to roam farther to the south in search of game and hides come spring. Never had they hesitated if their roamings took them into the land of an enemy.
So it was that for many generations the Shoshone had come to regard these as their buffalo. Each year they followed the herds migrating north in the spring, then south again before winter, a people moving before the wind. And with the first snow they would turn away from the buffalo and seek shelter in the lee of the Wind River Mountains, where they would pass the winter beneath the hides they had harvested for shelter, wrapped warm in the robes they had tanned and smoked, their bellies filled with the meat they had dried in anticipation of those lean days to come with the cold, cold time.
“They got ’em more hunting to do,” Jack explained.
“Not just buffler,” Caleb added. “Goats too.”
Antelope skins—some of the softest of hides used in making the finest of garments. In this country below South Pass, the Shoshone could always count on encountering numerous herds of the pronghorn goats.
Scratch asked, “That why they ain’t yet heading north?”
Hatcher nodded. “They got hides for to hunt. And we got beaver waiting for us up yonder.”
Bass tugged one last time on the single horsehair cinch, then flipped down the big cottonwood stirrup. “Where away you figger us to go?”
“We can find flat-tails just about anywhere north,” Jack replied. “Where ye take a notion to go?”
Bass shrugged and grinned. “To the high country.”
“Best we go there afore winter sets in hard,” Caleb Wood declared.
Elbridge Gray’s head bobbed. “Easy ’nough from them foothills up north to work our way down to the Popo Agie.”
“Been on that river afore my own self,” Bass replied as they all turned to watch the approach of a sizable crowd on foot.
Hatcher winked and leaned close to whisper, “Be different this time, Scratch—ain’t gonna be none of this here outfit getting the damn fool notion of floating your furs down to some burned-out post in Injun country.”
“That was a heap of plew,” Bass recalled in a hush as the procession of older men came to a stop before the trappers and the small herd of their animals, loaded and preparing to depart.
Behind the chiefs and headmen stood the ranks of young warriors. On either side of them the women formed the horns of a great crescent. And among their legs jostled the small children scooting this way and that to get themselves a good view.
Goat Horn stepped forward slowly, leading the ancient blind one whose eyes were covered with a milky covering. Over his shoulders he wore that sacred calf skin taken in the White Buffalo Valley, its forelegs tied at his neck with a thong.
“Many summers ago,” Hatcher quietly translated, “our brave warrior uncle could see no more. Something cut the magic cord between his eyes and his heart.”
Titus watched the old man nod, blinking his blind eyes as Goat Horn spoke.
“Ever since,” Jack continued his translation, “Porcupine Brush has see’d things none of the rest of us can see
