Billy Hooks burst into the camp clearing on horseback, Tuttle right behind, both of them leading a small herd of horses and mules.
As he dismounted, Hooks cried out, “Blackfoot be the baddest red niggers you’d ever wanna doe-see-doe with, Titus Bass!”
There were more than a dozen of the animals altogether. Some immediately winded the dead horse sprawled on the ground and shied away, others just got wide-eyed, snorting, and pawing.
“Best y’ get them tied off down in that meadow yonder,” Cooper ordered the other two.
“So is this here Titus Bass gonna pick him out a new horse and pack animal this morning, Silas?” Hooks asked as he started to step away, pulling on the lead ropes to a half dozen of the horses.
Cooper turned to look steadily at Bass, the black eyes again reflecting nothing more than good human charity. “S’pose he will for sure, Billy. But first he’s gotta decide if’n he’s gonna throw in with us.”
Over the next few weeks the frequent snows succeeded in pushing the four of them down the mountainsides a little more with each camp as they trapped their way around the southern reaches of the Wind River range.
At their first camp after leaving the carcass of Bass’s mare behind, the three experienced trappers had awakened Titus in the cold, frosty darkness the next morning.
“Rise and shine!” Billy exclaimed, then laughed merrily, his eyes dancing as he tapped at Bass’s toes again.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus grumbled, rubbing some fingers in a gritty eye as he sat upright in his blankets. “What the devil are you three doing? It’s still dark!”
“Damn right it is, Titus Bass,” Silas Cooper replied solemnly. “Time we kick off your l’arning.”
“Learning?”
Billy snorted. “How to be a trapper, Titus.”
“I’m already a trapper,” he groused, more than a little nettled that some man might say he had a lot to learn about trapping—then hawked up some night gather in the back of his throat as he dug at the bothersome itch on the back of his neck.
Cooper said, “Only thing it ’pears y’ catched was a few dumb beaver stupid enough to mosey on by your traps. Lucky is all y’ are.”
“Truth be: lucky we run onto you, yessirreebob,” Hooks added.
“Damn good thing we found you afore any red niggers lifted your hair,” Tuttle chimed in. “C’mon now, Silas gonna l’arn you how it’s done.”
Beneath one irritating armpit Bass dug with his fingernails as he kicked his blankets off his legs; then he dug at the other.
“Varmints,” Billy declared to the others. “Son of a bitch is rotted with ’em, I’ll wager.”
“C’mon, Titus,” Cooper said, starting to turn away into the darkness. “Man what wants to catch hisself some beaver better be up afore the beaver.”
Bass wanted badly to say something about the fact that he had always risen early, as far back as he could remember on his father’s farm, on through his days of work on the wharf at Owensboro and even in Troost’s Livery … but as he started to open his mouth, the three of them turned their backs on him and started trudging out of the timber toward the nearby stream.
“Up before the beaver, my ass,” Titus hissed under his breath as he stood and knew he had to pee in the worst way.
Quickly he unbuttoned the front of his worn and patched wool britches as he stumbled over to a far tree and drained himself with a sigh. The three had disappeared in the dark by the time Bass had on his coat, moccasins, and the wool cap he had fashioned from some blanketing cut from the bottom of his capote. Titus slung the leather trap sack over his shoulder and set off at a trot through the grass and elk cabbage that crackled with frost underfoot with every step. Eventually he caught up with them, following their muted whispers as the three of them stopped, turned about, and waited for the newcomer to join them.
“Thar’s the stream, Titus Bass,” Cooper declared. “What’s to do?”
“Set my traps, natural as you please,” he said, believing he gave the right answer.
“Just like that?” Billy asked.
Bass replied-with a nod, “Just like that.”
“Nigger—are you ever wrong!” Hooks guffawed.
“Hold your goddamned noise down!” Silas snapped. “I declare, Billy—y’ go and run off the beaver with your mouth one more time, I’ll cut out your goddamned tongue my own self!”
Hooks dropped his eyes, contrite and chastened as he pursed his lips into a narrow line of silence.
Bass felt sorry for him as he turned back to look at Cooper. “All right—s’pose you tell me what I do first.”
“Now you’re l’arning, Titus Bass,” Silas said with a faint smile. “Y’ do everything I tell you, the
At first he glanced to the quiet Tuttle, then back to Cooper. “Awright, so tell me.”
The tall leader began to discourse on how a man first inspected a section of stream, looking for beaver slides, dams, or lodges built out in the middle of those ponds the efficient rodents had created in engineering their environment to suit themselves—mostly to protect their kind from four-legged, nonswimming predators. As Cooper had done yesterday afternoon before twilight while the others had established camp, he showed them how a man was to determine where best to set his traps. Silas led the other three into the leafless willow right to the streambank.
“There, Titus Bass,” and he pointed. “Show me what to do now.”
Bass yanked upon the sack’s drawstring and pulled one of the square-jawed iron traps from the leather bag. Setting it upright on the ground, he squatted over it as Washburn had taught him, pushing down on the two jaws with his heels, allowing them to flap down so he could set the pan trigger within the notch filed in the pan arm.
“Whatcha gonna do with it now, Titus Bass?” Hooks asked in a harsh whisper.
“Set it in the water,” Bass replied, hopeful he would get some of this right.
Billy wagged his head. “Not till you got your set made.”
“Set?”
Tuttle explained, “Where you gonna lay it, Titus.”
“How?”
Cooper nudged Hooks forward. “Billy, y’ show him.”
“C’mere, Titus Bass,” Hooks instructed, tugging Bass’s sleeve. “I be the one to show you first whack.”
“First … first whack?” Titus asked.
“Right off. Means I show you right off.” Hooks held out his hand. “Gimme one of your float-sticks. You got float-sticks, don’cha?”
“Here,” and he slapped one down in Billy’s open palm as Hooks pulled the second mitten from his hand by placing it beneath his armpit.
That reminded Bass how much he itched, so he dug fingernails again, not only at his neck and armpits, but also stuffing a hand in there between the folds of his blanket coat where he could get at his groin.
“You do got the varmits, don’t you?” Tuttle replied.
Bass shrugged and said, “They ain’t been troubling me long.”
He didn’t take his eyes off Hooks as Billy knelt on the bank, leaned over, whacked the stick against the thick rime of ice crusted at the surface of the water near the bank, and began digging and scraping beneath the surface with the end of the long float-stick. After a short time he shoved his coat sleeve up his arm, then stuck nearly the whole length of it under the surface.
When he brought the arm out and shook it, Billy stood, saying, “Put your damned hand down there, Titus Bass—and see what I made for your trap to sit itself on.”
Kneeling right where Hooks had, Titus stuffed his arm into the shockingly cold water, a chill that felt all the worse because of the dark at this predawn hour. His fingertips walked down the side of the bank until he felt the underwater shelf Billy had crudely dug out of the bank.
