birthday of Titus S. Bass. Shhh—don’t ye ever let no nigger know the
“Here’s to Scratch!” John Rowland cried, shoving some of his bushy, unkempt hair out of his eyes.
And then Hatcher was sputtering again. “Scratch be a man ever’ last one of us can depend on, that’s for sartin—sartin sure. A man made of pure fighting tallow.”
“How the hell old are you?” Solomon Fish wondered, stuffing a hand beneath the gray wolf-hide cap of his, scratching at his blond ringlets.
“Hell if I can figger it out for you right now!” Titus snapped angrily.
“Hush your face, Solomon!” Jack ordered. “Dammit, here I am speechifying on this nigger’s birthday—so ye just keep respectful of this here serious occasion and keep yer ugly yap shut!”
Beneath his sharp hatchet of a nose dotted with huge pores forever blackened with fire soot and dirt, Fish growled, “Your yap uglier’n mine, Hatcher!”
“Bet you don’t know near the purty words Mad Jack here knows!” Elbridge Gray defended.
“Thank ye, child!” Hatcher roared. “Now, all of ye raise your cups to this here ugliest nigger you’re bound to see out to the Shining Mountains! It’s his birthday, by damned! And ain’t none of us likely to see a more flea-bit, skin-chewin’, squar-screwin’, likker-lovin’ coon in near all of God’s natural creations!”
With that Jack swung the fiddle up and jabbed it beneath his chin. Striking a pose, he dragged that old bow across those strings—succeeding in raising every last one of the hairs on the back of Scratch’s neck and grating on Bass like a coarse file dragged across some crude cast iron. If it weren’t for the sharp hammer strikes the whining notes caused in his head, he was sure Mad Jack’s fiddle playing would have made him throw up what he had left in his belly from last night.
Barely cracking his eyes into slits as Mad Jack’s music picked up its pace and the other liquor-crazed trappers set to stomping with one another, Titus spotted the kettle of water nearby. At the moment, he couldn’t remember being thirstier. Grunting with that self-inflicted pain, he lumbered onto his knees shakily, trying desperately to shut out what noise he could from piercing his head with slivers of icy agony, just as if someone were shoving his mam’s knitting needles into both his ears, jabbing them right in behind his eyeballs.
Fighting that cold, stabbing torture, Scratch peered down into the kettle, finding its surface crusted with ice.
As heavy as his head felt, as slow as his leaden legs and arms were to respond to even the little he ordered them to do—this getting himself up and moving off from the fire, to head anywhere away from the raucous merrymaking—it came as a great rush of relief to suck in a chestful of the frightfully cold air. He tramped through the snow, farther, farther still, as the sounds behind him slowly faded and his head no longer throbbed nearly as loud, nor as fitfully as it had. When he was finally able to hear the critch and crunch of his own thick winter moccasins breaking through the icy crust of the old snow, he figured he had come far enough to have himself a peaceful pee.
Yanking open the flaps to his blanket capote, tugging aside the long tradewool breechclout, he let out a sigh and for the moment found himself no longer caring about much of anything else. How very quiet the forest became out here, away from the celebration—a grating, noisome celebration he was nonetheless happy the others were there to share with him. But here it was so utterly quiet, he could hear the faint hiss of his stream as it melted the icy crust. So, so quiet he was sure he could hear the snow falling, hear when each flake tumbled against his wind- burned, hairy face, when each flake spun itself into his long, curly, unkempt hair or landed on the sleeves of his thick wool coat.
Through a narrow crack in the evergreen corduroy of tall trees Scratch found he could stand there in the quiet and look up at the foothills, beyond them at the east face of the Wind River Mountains extending north until their slopes totally disappeared beneath the lowering clouds bringing in this new snow. Those high mountains giving birth to the freshets that trickled down from the alpine snowfields to become the creeks and streams and eventually the rivers, all of which had been good to Hatcher’s bunch that fall. Between the Popo Agie on the southeast and all those little streams that flowed off the slopes of the mountains to feed the Wind River itself, the ten of them had found a virtually untrapped haven. By the time winter began closing in for good and the high creeks were freezing over, they had moved their way northwest across a great stretch of country, just by following the base of the mountains.
Come spring and the first freeing of that icy jam holding back those winter-clogged creeks, the ten promised themselves they would again work back up the Wind’s course, cross on over far upriver, then attack the streams that striped the slopes on the north side of that great horseshoe of a valley. There they were sure they would find a virgin territory in those foothills of the mountains that bordered Crow country on the east and Blackfoot territory on the west. A crossroads of war trails that land was sure to be.
Since taking their leave of the Shoshone and their grand buffalo hunt, the trappers’ cooking pots had never gone empty. As the days shortened and the temperatures dropped, the game slowly moseyed down to lower elevations, called to gather with that seasonal imperative, male and female to satisfy their species’ itch. Pronghorn antelope were the first to busy themselves with this annual ritual of courtship. In short order behind them the mule deer and whitetail began their dance of the seasons as bucks sparred and sought out fertile does. The renewal of life went on.
And then one cold, breathless morning Bass and the others heard that first shrill whistle gradually descending into a snorting grunt. Somewhere higher on the slopes above the stream where they were working, the dropping temperatures had once again stirred the ancient juices in the lordly elk. Just as it was in a time before any man had laid his foot down in these valleys, the young bulls sensed the same urges, were drawn by the same lure, were seduced by the same fragrance on the wind … yet it would not be these males most young and eager who would claim the cows. Instead it was. only the deeper-throated, heavier-antlered bulls who had any chance at all to drive off all pretenders until each harem was secure from all challenge.
It was an exhausting time for these old royals. Their necks swelled up, they were in constant discomfort, and they barely had time to eat. Instead, the herd bulls worked ceaselessly night and day keeping their cows rounded up and under their watchful scrutiny. Yet—that many fertile, fragrant females were sure to cast a scent on the wind guaranteed to draw some young bulls eager enough to take themselves a shot at the reigning monarch.
Lowering their heads to dig up tufts of alpine meadow with their wide-flung antlers, each male shaking and trembling with the hormone flush of impending battle, taunting their challenger by flinging urine and semen across their own hide and that piece of ground they claimed, the bulls began their deadly dance: snorting, whistling, and Anally bugling their intention not to back away from battle.
There had been days this past autumn when Scratch had finished his trap setting, done with skinning out the beaver he caught without fail, and set aside his chores of stretching and fleshing those skins in camp, days when he crept to the edge of a meadow, or sneaked off to overlook a streamside arena from above in an outcropping of granite boulders—there to watch in wonder and listen in silence to this singular song dedicated to the cycle of the seasons—the bugling challenge of a bull elk. Nowhere else on earth did he believe there could be a sound quite like this ages-old call to battle.
Overhead those late-autumn days the great longnecks strained south in wavering vees that pocked the deepening blue of the sky. Loud, raucous honking as the birds flapped on past high mountains and river valleys in their own seasonal quest.
Up these verdant slopes in the darkened timber and down among the rocky bluffs, the bears were consumed with eating their last, stuffing themselves with every bite of plant or animal, anything they could find to last them through the long, cold, deep sleep of their kind.
The leaves dried, some turned golden and others the crimson of bloody, iron arrow points—then hung there waiting until strong winds rushed down from the high glaciers, stripping tree and brush alike as the land finished off these last few pirouettes before it fell into a hush, ready to sleep on through the winter.
While their horses cropped at the last of the dried grasses and grew heavy, shaggy coats for the season on its way, the industrious beaver went about making repairs to their dams and lodges. Those ever-curious beaver who came to investigate when they encountered a strange scent on the wind as the ten made their sets and laid their traps. One by one, Bass, Hatcher, and the rest gathered in the fat, seal-sleek flat-tails, trap-set by trap-set through
