“Shit, Hatcher. Man can’t leave the damned things stuck in there, can he?”
Wagging his head, Jack sought to explain. “Listen, Scratch: there’s a right way to set a trap, and a wrong way too. So there’s a way to get them ticks off your hide ’thout things turning out the way they did for Little.”
“How so?”
“Man’s gotta get hisself something hot and touch them sumbitcnes on the ass.”
“Something hot?”
“Like yer knifeblade ye heat up over the fire,” Jack continued. “Just touch them ticks on the ass, and they’ll come backing right on out.”
“Come out’n a man’s hide—just like that?”
“Ye gotta do it that way, Scratch,” Hatcher explained. “Wait till they pulled themselves out, then ye grab ’em and toss ’em in the fire.”
“Can’t just pick ’em off.”
“Joe did that,” Jack said gravely.
Bass nodded. “And now he’s gonna die.”
“’Cause when he pulled them ticks off him, the heads rip off then and there, and them heads stay buried there in a man’s hide.”
“What of it—them heads?”
“That’s the wust of it, Scratch,” Hatcher declared. “Them heads is what got the poison in ’em.”
“So it’s that poison gonna kill Joe?”
“He can’t last more’n two, three days now.”
“We staying here?”
Jack nodded, staring off into the distance. “We’ll trap. And in the by and by let the man die in peace. Give him a decent folk’s buryin’.”
“Least we can do for a friend,” Scratch said.
“The least I’d do for any man what rode with me,” Hatcher replied as he started to rise. “C’mon. Sun’s down. Time we got back and done ourselves up some supper. First light comes early—and we got traps to set.”
Titus clambered down the boulders behind Jack, thinking on just how rare was this breed of man he had cast his lot with—these men with Hatcher, even Joe Little as he lay his final hours beside a fire tucked far back into the wilderness. Theirs was a special breed cut for a special place where few survived. Fire hardened on the anvil of blistering heat and soul-numbing cold. Beaten and pounded under relentless watchfulness, forged by adversity and quenched in that joy of truly relying on no man but their own kind. Theirs was truly a breed of its own.
As he settled at the fire near the blankets where Little trembled, Bass felt those first stirrings of a sense of belonging to something bigger than himself. It had taken him three seasons, but now he felt as if he was a part of the lives these men shared one with another. Among them, out here in this wilderness, there existed few rules if any—and what rules there were existed for the sake of the living. Those rules were learned, and practiced, solely for saving a man’s hair and hide.
And there was a code of honor too—one that dictated that a man’s friends do what was decent when it came time to bury him, to speak their last farewell and leave ’hat old friend behind. As simple as that code was, Bass realized he had already sworn to it before taking his leave of St. Louis. He had done what was right by Isaac Wash-bum—then come west to live out the life the old trapper would never live again for himself.
How temporal and truly fragile life had turned out to be, Bass brooded. No matter that these were a hardy breed of men, the toughest he had ever known—tougher than any plowman, tougher still than any riverboatman— the men of this breed lived for what time was granted them, then accepted death as surely as they had come to accept life on its own terms. Each man in his own way wanting no more out of life than was due him.
They were quiet around their fire that night as the nine ate, for the most part deep in their own thoughts as they chewed on half-raw pieces of a cow elk shot that morning. While the coffee brewed, they filled themselves on lean red meat and gulped down the boiled onions Gray had scrounged from the creekbanks.
For eating, a man used his knife only, no matter how big the cut of meat. Holding one end of a reddish piece of steak between his teeth, Bass pulled the other end, then sawed his skinning knife neatly through the outstretched portion, feeding himself chunk after mouth-filling chunk. Before he poured himself some coffee, Titus chopped up a well-done piece of elk into small pieces that Little just might swallow without the trouble of chewing. These he dropped into a second tin cup set before the dying trapper, next to his cup of water.
When he had plunged his knife blade into the hot coals and left it there to set a moment, Scratch poured a cup of steaming coffee, its aroma wild and heady. Not wanting the knife to become too hot, he pulled it from the fire, wiping it quickly across the thigh of his leggings, back and forth over the buckskin until its sheen had returned, cleansed of blood and gristle so he could nest it back in its scabbard.
He was struck with a sudden thought. “Where’s ronnyvoo to be this year?”
“That’s right—you wasn’t one to make it last summer,” Caleb Wood replied.
“Got hisself jumped by the Araps,” Simms reminded them.
“Then ye’ll have yerself a second go-round for Sweet Lake,” Hatcher announced.
Titus inquired, “Where you met up with the traders last summer?”
“The same,” Fish replied.
“Ah—ronnyvoo,” Mad Jack sighed as he leaned back on his saddle and blankets, one hand laid lovingly on his battered fiddle case. “Damn near what a man works for all year long, don’cha figger, Titus Bass?”
“I callate ronnyvoo is the prize what any of us gambles his hide for.”
“Likker and lovin’,” Caleb added. “By damn, for every man what comes to ronnyvoo, give ’im the wust of the likker and the best of the lovin’!”
Near moonrise Little began muttering and mumbling. As he lay shivering in his blankets, sweating from his rising fever, Joe rapidly slipped into a delirium. No longer did he experience any lucid moments, nor did he respond to the men who went to his side with water.
It was hard for any of them to turn away and sleep that night.
Sometime in that last hour before sunrise, the noisy muttering and thrashing quieted and Little finally fell silent. Taking his rotation at guard, Solomon Fish was the man up to hear when everything went quiet with Joe.
“Hatcher,” Fish whispered loudly, and he clambered to his feet. “C’mere!”
As the others slowly sat up in their blankets, watching in silence, Jack joined Solomon at Little’s side. Hatcher first held his hand just above Joe’s face. Then laid his ear over the man’s mouth. And finally Jack touched Little’s cheek, his forehead, then the front of Joe’s throat as he pulled back the blankets.
“He … he dead?” Caleb asked.
Instead of answering immediately, Hatcher laid his ear against Little’s chest and listened for what seemed like a good piece of eternity to Bass.
When he raised his head, Jack pulled the top blanket over Joe Little’s face. “Rufus, want you and Scratch start digging a hole.”
“He dead awready?” Simms asked.
“Fever took him quick,” Hatcher replied.
“Merciful heavens,” Wood whispered, grabbing that beaver-skin cap off his head. “Damn good thing it was quick.”
“No man deserves to die slow,” Graham muttered as he kicked off his blankets and stretched as he got to his feet. “C’mon, Scratch. We got us a burying hole for to dig.”
The two of them found a patch of ground at the distant edge of the tree line where they didn’t figure they would run across too many rocks as they worked their way down into the soil with the crude, stubby-handled shovels. As they were approaching four feet, Jack showed up. The sun was just easing off the ridge to the east.
“Deep enough,” Hatcher declared as he bent quickly to glance into the hole. Turning, he waved an arm in the air and brought the others—four of them carrying the body on a shoulder.
When Graham and Bass scrambled out of the hole, Hatcher ordered, “Put ’im in.”
Titus could see that they had lashed Joe inside one of the huge blankets wrapped round and round with hemp rope for a secure funeral shroud.
“Any of you know some proper burying words?” Caleb asked as Hatcher stared down at the body.
