one by one, and in twos as well. Until there was a crude oval of carcasses and what baggage the men could tear off the pack animals and throw down in those gaps between the big, sweaty bodies that would begin stinking before this day was done and night had settled upon them all.
Twenty-four of them pitted against half a thousand Sioux and Cheyenne. Not to mention a hundred or more Arapaho who showed up not long after the whole shebang got kicked off with the first noisy, hoof-rattling charge. They must have been camped somewhere close and come running with all the hurraw and the gunfire.
Titus grinned humorlessly and pushed aside the one narrow braid that hung at his temple. The rest of his long, graying hair spilled over his shoulders like a shawl. Tied down with a faded black silk bandanna, holding a scrap of Indian hair over that round patch of naked skull from long ago. He thought on the bunch that had caught him alone many, many summers before—and stole his hair. Remembering how he eventually ran across the bastard who had taken his topknot—and lifted that small circle of hair from the crown of the warior’s head. Recalling how good it had felt to take his revenge.
So he grinned: maybeso some of the bastard’s relatives were in that bunch watching the Sioux and Cheyenne have at the white man’s corral. And pretty soon those Arapaho would figure it was time to grab some fun of their own.
Glancing at the sky, Bass found the blazing sun and figured it was not yet midmorning. That meant they had a long, long day ahead behind these packs and stinking carcasses. And with the way the first of the women were bristling along the crest of that hilltop yonder, the warriors weren’t about to ride off anytime soon, not with the whole village showing up to chant and sing them, on to victory, on to daring feats of bravery, on to suicidal charges that would leave the body of one warrior after another sprawled in the grass and dust of that no man’s land all around the white man’s corral. Bodies too close to the rotting breastworks for other riders to dare reclaim.
Titus blinked and wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the sleeve of his faded, grease-stained calico shirt. And saw the flecks of blood already dried among the pattern of tiny flowers. The mule’s blood. Bass glanced quickly at the sun once more, wondering if this was the last day he would ever lay eyes on it.
Would he ever see the coming sunset, as he had promised himself summers and summers ago when he rode away from that scalping, a half-dead shell of a man clinging to Hannah’s back? Would he ever see another black mountain night with its brilliant dusting of stars as he lay by the fire, staring up at the endlessness of it all, Waits- by-the-Water’s head nestled into his shoulder after they had just coupled flesh to flesh? Would he ever again see the children when they awoke each morning, clambering out of their blankets and tottering toward him as he fed the fire and started the coffee—eager to fling their little arms around his neck and squeeze him with what he always took to be utter joy in having another day to share together.
Together.
How he wished he was with the three of them now.
How thankful he was that he had compelled Waits to remain behind with the little ones. If the three of them were here with these twenty-four fated men now …
With the breakup of that last pitiful gathering of a few holdouts in the valley of the Green River, Bass had watched old friends disperse on the winds. Some just gave up on the mountains and pointed their noses back east to what they had been. Others, like Meek and Newell, set a new course for Oregon Country, where the land was fertile and free. But a hardy few had determined they would hang on, clinging to the last vestige of what had been their finest days. What had been their glory.
No more would the big companies dispatch their trapping brigades into the high country. There was no money to be made in trading supplies for beaver pelts at a summer rendezvous on the Wind, the Popo Agie, or some fork of the legendary Green. Bridger and Fraeb formed a new partnership and brought out that last, undersized packtrain from St. Louis. Afterward, while Bridger led a small band of trappers north, Fraeb and Joe Walker started for California with a few men.
Bass had marched his family north with Gabe’s undermanned bunch. And when Bridger turned off for Blackfoot country, Bass had steered east for Absaroka and the home of the Crow. There would always be beaver in that country—even if he had to climb higher, plunge deeper into the shadowy recesses than he had ever gone before. And, besides, traders like Tullock were handy with their post over at the mouth of the Tongue. He’d continue to trap close to the home of his wife’s folk, trade when he needed resupply, and wait for beaver to rise.
The way beaver had before. The way it would again.
They had a fair enough winter—cold as the maw of hell for sure, but that only meant what beaver he brought to bait were furred up seal-fat and sleek. When the hardest of the weather broke, he took a small pack of his furs down to Fort Van Buren, only to find that Tullock couldn’t offer him much at all. So Titus bought what powder and lead he needed, an array of new hair ribbons for his woman, a pewter turtle for Magpie to suspend around her neck, and a tiny pennywhistle for Flea.
How Bass marveled at the way that boy grew every time he returned to the village. At least an inch or more for every week Titus rode off to the hills. Even more so when he returned from the long journey to the Tongue. He was four winters old now, his beautiful sister to turn seven next spring, looking more and more like her mother with every season.
When it used to break his heart at how Waits-by-the-Water first hid her pox-ravaged face,* it now gave him comfort that she had made peace with what the terrible disease had cost her: not only the marred and pocked flesh, but the loss of her brother. Every time Bass returned from the hills, came back from the wilderness to his family, he quietly thanked the Grandfather for sparing this woman, the mother of his children. And he never neglected to thank the All-Maker for the days they had yet to share.
With the coming of that spring following the last rendezvous, he decided to mosey south, taking a little time to trap, if the country looked good—but with the primary intention of being in the country of the upper Green come midsummer, when Bridger planned to reunite with Fraeb. Last year, before going their separate ways, there had been serious talk of erecting a post of their own.
Damn, if that news didn’t stir up a nest of hornets! Old hivernants the likes of Gabe and Frapp ready to give up on trapping beaver, them two turning trader!
Bass chose trapping and hunting over the mindless chores of a cabin-raising sodbuster. He figured he’d pounded enough nails and shingled enough roofs to last him the rest of his days.† So when Henry Fraeb’s twenty- two rode out for the Little Snake, Titus went along. He reckoned on sniffing around some country he hadn’t seen much of since he lost hair to the Arapaho. Might just be a man might find a few beaver curious enough to come sniffing at his bait.
Besides … among the old German’s outfit were some of the finest veterans still clinging to the old life in the mountains. This hunt into the coming fall might well be the last great hurraw for them all.
The long days of late summer seeped slowly past. There wasn’t much beaver sign to speak of, and where the men did tarry long enough to lay their traps, they didn’t have much success. The hunting wasn’t all that fair either. Game was pushed high into the hills. Bass and others figured the critters had been chivied by the migrations of the Ute and Shoshone.
Turned out the game was driven away by the hunting forays of this huge village of wandering Sioux and Cheyenne, not to mention that band of tagalong Arapaho.
The sun had been up a good three hours that morning when one of Fraeb’s outriders spotted a half-dozen horsemen on the crest of the hill across the Little Snake.
“If’n they was Yuta, them riders be running down here first whack,” Jake Corn snorted. “Begging for tobaccy or red paint.”
“Snakes too,” Rube Purcell added. “Poor diggers they be.”
“Ain’t either of ’em,” Elias Kersey growled. “That’s for certain.”
“Lookit ’em,” Bass remarked. “Just watching us, easy as you please. Ain’t friendly-like to stare so, is it, Frapp?”
The old German hawked up the last of the night-gather in his throat and spat. “Trouble is vhat dem niggers lookin’ at.”
Fraeb picked four men to cross the river ahead of the rest, making for the far slope and those unfriendly horsemen. Then the rest started their animals into the shallow river just up the Little Snake from the mouth of a narrow creek. The trappers had the last of the pack animals and spare horses across right about the time the first muffled gunshot reached them.
