“Nawww—them could’a been Shian, Silas,” Billy Hooks protested. “Them niggers are in this country alla time too. Kissin’ cousins to them ’Rapaho, yessirreebob!”
“Maybeso you’re center, Billy boy,” Cooper agreed, then looked over at Bass. “Them Shians do keep close company with the ’Rapaho anyways.”
“Likely they’d all lift a Yuta scalp if’n any of ’em had their chance, Silas,” Tuttle observed.
“Not this day,” Cooper vowed with unmasked bravado as he straightened and patted one of the two pistols he carried at his belt. “Them stupid ’Rapaho out hunting ponies and skelps in our part o’ the country … maybeso we ought’n get these here Yutas go with us to hunt down them ’Rapahos.”
“Skelps and ponies!” Hooks repeated joyfully, clapping his blanket mittens together. “Yessirreebob! Skelps and ponies for us all!”
But as it turned out, the leader of the hunting party would not be dissuaded from his goal: securing meat for those left behind in the winter camp. He steadfastly told Cooper and the other white men that their first rule was to provide for the village, and only when there was enough meat back in camp would a Ute warrior go traipsing off to follow an enemy trail in hopes of bringing home ponies, scalps, enemy weapons, and war honors.
Cooper and Hooks grumbled, threatening to pull out and turn back to the village on their own. But in the end they hung in with the meat hunters as the afternoon waned and the day began to grow old. As the horse rocked beneath him and the sun fell below the furry wrinkle of his old coyote-skin cap, Titus found his eyelids growing heavy. His mind drifted back to his first hunting trip out with the Ute warriors—the first time he had left Fawn and her son, White Horse, behind.
The new year itself had come and gone on that hunting trip—the first Titus could recollect not boisterously celebrating among white men. The fact that it might well be the first day of 1826 hadn’t even made no never mind to the other three trappers. No man among them had a calendar anyway—so it didn’t seem vital in the least to celebrate one day’s importance over another. Not a Christmas neither.
“For balls’ sakes, such doin’s as that be the whatnot and befugglin’ a man’s gotta leave behin’t when you come out here to these mountains,” Tuttle had declared, explaining how the three of them felt about holidays.
“Only one time a year do a man got him any reason to celebrate, Scratch,” Cooper went on to explain. “That be the summer: time when a man cain’t trap, seein’ how the plew h’ain’t prime no more … an’ seein’ how that’s when the trader says he’ll be back to buy our furs and maybeso have some likker to sell us this time out.”
“Trader?” Bass inquired, his mind fired. “Likker? You said a trader’d have some likker? Like rum or whiskey? Where in blue hell—”
“Right here in the mountains—yessirreebob!” Billy exclaimed, his eyes dancing as he licked his lips with the tip of a pink tongue.
Titus wagged his head in disbelief. “Traders come out here to the mountains? Had me no idea.”
“First time we heerd about it our own selves was just last winter,” Tuttle declared. “Fellas said a trader named Ashley been out to the mountains with his own company of trappers. Word was Ashley wanted the news spread all over that he was coming back the next summer with trade goods and likker—not just for them fellers what come west with him in the seasons afore, but for all niggers like us what could allays use more powder and G’lena lead, coffee and sugar, all such.”
“I heard of Ashley, I have,” Titus declared. “He was the high-pockets behind a feller named Henry years back when that Henry feller pushed upriver … the year Hugh Glass got hisself chawed on by a grizzly bear.”
Tuttle asked, “Washburn tol’t you ’bout Glass?”
“Yepper.”
Cooper said, “We heard of this here Glass.”
“Last summer was some doin’s, weren’t it, fellers?” Hooks said with that ready, contagious smile.
“We was up to those hills where we run onto you,” Cooper explained. “Run onto a band of Ashley’s boys what tol’t us ’bout the plans to rendezvous come that summer.”
Billy’s face grew most expressive as he recalled, “Just like they told us to, we moseyed on over to a place called Horse Creek on the Green, where we pitched camp with more trappers’n I see’d in all my days.”
“More’n a hunnert!” Tuttle claimed. “And some three dozen more added in.”
Cooper jumped into the recollection. “Few days later some Hudson’s Bay come rollin’ in. There was a bunch of Injuns tagging along with ’em—women and young’uns too. But, damn, if Ashley wasn’t one to keep his trade packs closed till all
“ ‘Ceptin’ tobaccy,” Hooks complained. “That was all he traded for till the last of his own moseyed on in.”
Silas nodded. “Still had us a merry time of it—didn’t we, Billy?”
Hooks dragged the back of a blanket mitten across his dry lips, eyes dancing. “Eatin’, spinnin’ tales … and, oh—them womens!”
“Long as it lasted,” Tuttle grumbled. “Ashley had the beaver out of our packs and into his inside of two days afore he was turning back for St. Louie! Two goddamned days!”
“After all that waiting,” Billy chimed in, “we wasn’t about to sleep through none of it, Scratch! A man stayed awake through it all!”
Titus asked, “So you got yourselves good and drunk?”
“Shit—Ashley didn’t have him a drop of likker!” Hooks groaned.
Cooper slammed a fist down into his palm. “And that son of a honey-fugglin’ booshway give the best dollar for beaver to his own boys!”
“Three dollar the pound he paid ’em!” Tuttle exclaimed.
Hooks bobbed his head, saying, “An’ for us he give only two.”
“Said we was free trappers,” Silas added. “Like we was something what didn’t belong out here. Tol’t us our kind wasn’t bound to no man … so he wasn’t bound to give us no more’n what dollar he damn well felt like giving us!”
“You took two dollar the pound?” Titus asked.
“Hell if we did!” Cooper spouted, his chest puffing. “Our packs was filled with prime plew—seal fat an’ sleek. When he saw what we had to trade, why—that trader’s eyes bugged out to see what we brung us into that Horse Creek camp.”
“Ashley give us four dollar on some!” Tuttle boasted. “An’ on some o’ Cooper’s fur he give Silas five dollar the pound!”
“No shit?” Scratch gasped, going dry-mouthed to think of what his own winter’s catch might bring. “F-five dollar the pound?”
“Damn bet he did,” Tuttle said. “Then we traded for what powder and coffee and sugar we needed to winter up to make it round for next summer—’stead of us having to head east to the Missouri to barter our provisions.”
“Trader says he’s bound to bring him some likker out this year,” Billy announced. “Then this child will have it all—womens and some whiskey!”
“Now, y’ reckon why summer be the only time a mountain trapper got him to celebrate, Scratch?” Cooper asked.
“Ronnyvoo do surely shine,” Tuttle added wistfully himself. “Hope that trader be true at his word—comin’ back this summer.”
Cooper gazed off wistfully. “Ashley took his caravan off to the north. Headed down the Bighorn to the Yallerstone. On to Missouri to float home to St. Louie.”
Tuttle spoke up. “Seems a likely way for a man to go what has him a lot of furs, Silas.”
Cooper nodded, speaking softly, dramatically. “Might be at that, Bud. Makes all the sense in the world.”
Titus remembered how he had sensed the leap of tiny wings within his stomach when he asked, “We going to ronnyvoo this summer?”
“Come green-up,” Silas assured. “When the plews stop being prime and sleek … four of us take off for Willow Valley,* where Ashley promised he’s to show up by the middle o’ summer.”
“You know how to find this Willow Valley?” Bass inquired.
“We’ll find it,” Cooper claimed.
“H-how we know when it gonna be the middle of summer?” Titus asked, anxious. “Ain’t none of us keep no calendar stuffed away in his plunder!”
