go right on ahead and put a lead ball in that mule’s head.
But for all the trouble she’d give him in those days and weeks that would come to pass—besides the pain of having to trade off that half of his beaver plews to boot—Scratch remained steadfastly hopeful that the sorrel mule would one day come around and behave like a decent, docile, and obedient animal … the sort that would prove herself to be a true partner to a man, just like those mules that had faithfully plowed the ground for his pap back in Boone County.
Why, Titus had even named the stubborn, stiff-backed mule—something new for him: Bass had never before named a horse or mule, ever—but feeling this time that to give her a name might not only make it seem she was just that much more special to him, but she might well come to know the sound of her own name, learn to recognize it, and might thereby figure she was pretty damned special to him.
“Hannah,” he had told her aloud the third morning of that storm, after sitting and studying her for the longest time, watching the sorrel’s big eyes study him in turn as she worked on a patch of ground he had cleared of snow. “I’ve always favored that name—for a wife of my own, thought maybeso for my daughter. So I’d like you to have it … Hannah.”
As hard as he was to work in the Weeks to come, hoping that the mule might just one day come around to his way of thinking and try a little to be his friend … well—trouble was, the two of them were still a long, long way off from that glorious day.
The early-winter storm on the pass had indeed continued another three days and nights, dumping an icy snow without stop. In their sheltering ring of trees the four men chopped what firewood they needed from the limbs and branches of that copse of stunted pine. A part of each morning they used their time to scrape and chisel down through the new snow to reach some bare ground for the horses and mules grown weary of digging for themselves with bloody hooves. Most afternoons two of the men ventured out to hunt in relay, going as far off as they would dare—every one of them aware how a man could easily get himself turned around in the endless white blur of a blizzard.
What they managed to bring in for all their effort was hardly enough to keep one man well fed, much less four hearty appetites in that subzero cold: a few snowshoe hares, a handful of blue grouse, and a fat marmot—one more than Titus ever wanted to see again in his life. Nevertheless, that poor fare along with the one bony Indian pony they sacrificed kept those men alive enough so that after five more days, when the weather cleared, they were strong enough to urge their animals on up past timberline, across the loose, shifting talus and shale of that treacherous saddle, then down the far side of the eastern slopes into the trees, where they would surely have more luck hunting what game had been driven down, ever down, to lower elevations by the winter storms.
“That back there be Buffalo Pass,” Cooper announced near twilight of that ninth day as they reached a meadow where the snow had blown clear on the lee side.
“You been up there afore?” Titus asked.
“We have,” Tuttle answered, flicking a glance at Cooper. “But we ain’t ever come this way.”
Turning to Cooper, Titus inquired, “How’d you know what the pass is called?”
“Only know cause I just named it,” Silas admitted. “Look for yourself.”
The three others turned to look up behind them as the gray clouds were beginning to drop, hurrying in to obscure the high granite formations that marked the very trail they had made across the saddle. Stark against the darkening clouds lowering on the pass was one formation in particular that from this side appeared to closely resemble a buffalo bull’s head—horns, chin whiskers and all.
“Buffalo Pass, it be, Silas,” Tuttle agreed as he clambered to the ground, stood a moment rubbing life back into his cold knees and thighs, then started to trudge back to the pack animals. “Scratch, you and Billy get some rope strung out in them trees for a corral, an’ I’ll bring in the cavvyyard.”
“Cawy … cawyyard?” Bass repeated.
“The remuda,” Billy said with that impish grin of his. “The horses … our herd, you idjit!”
“Cawyyard,” Titus repeated again, liking the feel of it on his tongue. “I ain’t never heard it called such—and you called it something else?”
“A remuda.”
“Yeah,” he said. “A remuda.”
“Billy’s picked up all he could of that greaser talk,” Cooper explained.
Hooks defended himself. “Some of them greaser words I really took a shine to, Silas.”
Cooper sneered. “That’s all them greasers good for, Billy—an’ don’t y’ forget it.”
Billy leaned close to Titus, saying, “Silas don’t like him them greasers down south in the Mexican Territory. We run onto a few of ’em trapping with American boys outta the greaser settlements a time or two—so Silas come to hate them people more ever’ time we bump into ’em.”
As he walked past with a horse at the end of each arm trailing behind him, Tuttle said, “Maybeso that’s why this is about as far south as we ever go nowadays, don’t you figger, Billy?”
“Silas’s medicine tells him we best stay in the country somewheres atween the Blackfoots and the greasers,” Hooks continued as Titus tied off one end of a long rope to one of the trees, then began to play out the rope to another tree.
As he wrapped the weathered hemp rope around the tree once, then moved off for the next, Bass inquired, “What’s up there in that north country make a man wanna get troubled by them Blackfoots anyway, Billy?”
“Beaver,” Hooks replied.
“For balls’ sake—big beaver!” Tuttle added as he finished tying off the second horse to the first section of their rope corral.
Cooper moved past with two horses and said, “The biggest beaver a man ever lay his eyes on.”
“That’s it?” Titus asked.
Stopping, Silas regarded Bass a moment, then added, “Beaver big enough—ever’ last one of ’em seal fat an’ sleek, so fine that a man might damn well risk his own hair just to lay down his traps in that country.”
“Three Forks: my, my,” Hooks commented with a cluck of his tongue.
“Fine country,” Tuttle agreed.
“Country just crawling with Blackfoot niggers—yessirreebob,” Hooks replied.
On his way past Titus to fetch another pair of the animals, Cooper slapped Bass on the back of the shoulders. “Maybeso that’s where we’ll take Scratch here come next winter.”
“Blackfoot country?” Titus repeated. How the name of that land ignited images of a forbidden land.
“Beaver pelts nigh big as blankets,” Tuttle said. “Just big enough to bury a man in when those red niggers lift his hair!”
“Bud’s a might squampshus, you understand,” Cooper declared. “He h’ain’t much a trapper, so it don’t seem worthwhile to go up to that country and stick his neck out for the prime beaver.”
“Prime beaver,” Billy repeated in a shrill voice. “Beaver just calling out, ‘Yoohoo! Come an’ get me Bud Tuttle!’ Then ’nother beaver cross the stream hollers out, ‘No, Bud Tuttle—come an’ get
“Sometimes, Billy Hooks,” Tuttle growled, his face flushing with anger, “you’re nothing more’n lucky. A lucky son of a bitch for what little brains you got left, what little ain’t already poured out your bunghole.”
“I may not be smart as you, Bud—but I’m sure as hell a better trapper’n you’re ever gonna be!”
“Right now all I want out o’ the two of you is for all you boys go drag in some timber—since you finished stringing up our corral, Billy.” Silas jumped into the argument as he brought up the last two horses. “Hush up your yammerin’ and get us plenty of wood. It’s fixin’ to get dark on us real quick.”
Tuttle strode up with the last of the mules in tow, asking, “How long you figger afore we’ll make it down to Park Kyack, Silas?”
“The north park? Why, lookee down there, Bud—an’ the rest of you. There it lay. Park Kyack.”
Hook wheeled about on his heel, his smile broadening. “Kyack? Down yonder’s where we’ll winter up with the Yutas?”
Cooper nodded. “That’s right, Billy. Y’ know what that means, don’cha?”
Leaping into the air with a wild, whirling, primal dance, Hooks shook and trembled like an old dog whose master had just returned home from a long, long journey. “Means womens! Womens! And more womens!”
