“Only natural, ain’t it—”
The loud shriek of the mule interrupted the two of them. In the copse of stunted pine, there amid the jostling mass of pack animals and horses, Bass could see Cooper lunging about, swinging a long tree limb—and each time he connected with a sound audible over the crying wind, one of the mules bawled in a painful bray.
Titus began to step in Silas’s direction. “What the devil do you think—”
But Tuttle leaped out, grabbing Bass’s sleeve, snagging it and stopping Titus in his tracks. “For balls’ sake— don’t! It ain’t none of your business, Scratch.”
“Any man beating his animals, that is my business,” he said as he whipped his arm free of Tuttle’s grip.
As Titus moved this way, then that, to cut a path through the milling stock, which Cooper and Hooks were corralling within a roped-off area strung between that stand of trees, Titus watched Silas work himself into a fury, lashing out, lunging, swinging that long tree limb at the back of the mule mare that reared and scree-hawed in pain and fear, clumsy because only half her packs had been taken from her back. As Bass got closer, he saw the limb snap in half at the back of the mule’s head. Dazed, the animal stumbled sideways, wild-eyed with fear, nostrils throbbing as it tried to swing its haunches around and kick out.
Cooper swung once more with the short half of the limb he clutched like a war club in both hands—but didn’t make contact as the mule lunged aside. His rage boiling over, Silas hurled the limb down into the skiff of snow, where he fought a moment for footing, then dragged his big smoothbore horse pistol from the wide sash that held his blanket coat closed. As the weapon came up, Cooper was cursing above the bawl of the mule and the cry of the wind, dragging the hammer back two clicks to full-cock … then pointed the muzzle directly at the mule’s head, little more than an arm’s length from the frightened eyes that stared at the human, the beast not knowing its next breath would be its last.
Leaping and shoving his way through the anxious, milling, frightened animals, Titus landed next to Cooper, grabbing Silas’s left wrist—and clamped down with all the strength he could muster. All he could remember was how the packmare’s eye stared up at him as he pulled the trigger.
“You weasel-stoned son of a bitch!” Cooper growled as he jerked around to stare right into Bass’s face. “Let go a’me!”.
“Put it away!” Titus snapped, feeling the big man’s arm tremble in fury.
“Gonna shoot you first!”
Struggling to keep the oak-thick arm down and the pistol pointed at the ground, Bass pleaded, “Don’t shoot that mule—damn, please don’t shoot it.”
Cooper’s eyes narrowed, and he immediately quit trying to thrash his arm loose of Bass’s two-handed grip. “The mule? The mule, is it?”
“Don’t kill ’er.”
“That mare ain’t been nothing but trouble since we took ’er on,” Cooper said, his eyes still seething. “Time I got rid of what makes trouble for me. Now, y’ just let go a’me and stand back. I got work to finish—”
“I ain’t letting go,” Bass said resolutely, watching how his words startled the bigger man. “You cain’t go an kill her for no good reason.”
“No good reason?” Cooper shrieked. “I got good reason, Titus Bass … and for nothing more’n the hell of it if’n I wanna.”
Desperate not to watch another animal die with a lead ball in its brain, Titus blurted, “L-lemme have ’er.”
Something came across Silas’s face in that next moment as he stared down at Titus Bass, standing there toe to toe, only inches between them. “Y’ … y’ say y’ want this cantankerous pile of mule shit for yourself?”
“Just lemme have ’er and you won’t have to waste your time no more on the mule.”
Silas wagged his head. “But I awready give y’ a mule to use for packin’ your truck and plews.”
Titus nodded, sensing his arms growing weary as he continued to grip Cooper’s wrist. “I’ll trade you. That’s what we’ll do.”
“A trade.” Finally Silas nodded, then gazed at where Bass held his wrist. “Awright. We’ll work us a fair trade. Now, y’ best let go a’me, Titus.”
He immediately released Cooper’s arm. “You gimme that mule and I’ll give you back the one you gimme that first day you run onto me.”
Cooper rubbed the wrist Bass had held imprisoned for those long, terrifying moments. “Hold on there: it ain’t so easy to trade pack stock. You’re just a dumb pilgrim when it comes to tradin’, ain’cha, Scratch? Y’ see, y’ made the mistake of letting the other man find out just how willing y’ was to be trading—showed me plain just how much y’ wanted what I got to trade.”
“We’re just swapping the mules, one for t’other,” Bass said.
“That’s only fair, Silas,” Tuttle agreed, licking his cracked lips nervously.
“One for t’other. One for t’other,” Billy Hooks repeated with that ready smile of his as he shifted back and forth from foot to foot.
“No,” Cooper snapped. “If’n y’ want this mule so bad, then we’ll trade. But it’s gonna cost y’ more’n just that fly-bait mule I give y’ when I first took you on. That’uns the wust in our hull bunch.”
Bass swallowed. “What’s it gonna cost me?”
Silas appeared to regard that for a long moment as he peered over at the mule carrying all that Bass owned in the world. “Y’ been doing good at trappin’, Scratch.”
“I been catching on what you learned me, yeah.”
“Got better’n Tuttle, y’ have—right off.”
Bud snorted. “That ain’t hard for ary a man to do!”
“And you’re damn near good as Billy Hooks right now.”
Titus said, “I’d wager I
“Maybeso you’re better’n me,” Hooks injected, “but you’ll never be good as Silas Cooper!”
“Maybe I will,” Bass replied, watching those coal-black eyes come back to rest on him. “One day real soon.”
Cooper asked quietly, “Y’ want this here mule, Scratch?”
“You know I do, goddammit,” he snapped, knowing full well it was going to cost him dearly.
“Then I’ll trade y’,” Cooper offered. “For your ol’ fly-bait animal, and half what plews y’ll catch this winter.”
Tuttle gasped. “T-that mean from here on out, Silas?”
“No, that means half of everything Scratch trapped up till now, and half till we reach ronnyvoo come summer.”
Titus seethed inside. “W-what’s ronnyvoo?”
Silas explained, “Where I tol’t you we was gonna barter in our beaver come next summer. Drink some whiskey and poke a squar or two … barter us plunder for next year. Ronnyvoo.”
Bass swallowed hard, knowing he had nowhere to wiggle in the negotiations. “H-half of my hides this winter … till ronnyvoo—”
“You want the mule … or don’cha?”
“I want it,” Bass said squarely.
“Then it’s a deal,” Cooper said, sticking out his bare right hand in that bitterly cold wind.
Bass yanked off his mitten, took the hand, and shook as he gazed up into those marblelike eyes of Cooper’s. “It’s a deal.”
Then he felt Silas slowly start squeezing, bearing down harder, slowly harder as the muscles and bones of his hand cried out in sudden, hot pain. When he looked back up at Cooper’s eyes, they were lit with cold, cold fire.
Behind that big grin of his, Silas said, “And … one more thing, Titus Bass.”
That hand hurt like hell, so much it was hard to speak. “What’s … what’s that, Silas?”
“Don’t y’ ever, ever again lay a hand on me …”
He interrupted, “I don’t figger I’ll have cause to lay a hand on—”
But Cooper snarled, interrupting, “Or the next time y’ll pull back a bloody stump.”
* * *
That mule-for-beaver bargain had been nothing short of mountain thievery.
And for certain there had been times since that very first day when Titus Bass wished he’d let Silas Cooper
