“Gone where?” Titus asked as soon as the words registered, afraid the trio had abandoned him, leaving him behind when they rode off for parts unknown.
“To the streams,” she explained. Then, setting the moss scrubber aside, Fawn slapped her two open palms together with a smacking sound to imitate the animal’s own method of signaling a warning. “To catch the flat- tails.”
“Beaver!” he said in English with relief. And let his head sink back onto the buffalo robe beneath him.
“They come back soon,” she continued. “This is good?”
“Yes,” he said in Ute. “This is very good that they come back. I go with them when we leave for the spring.”
“Spring,” she repeated the word, her eyes drifting away. “It comes soon. And you go.”
“Yes.” He cheered himself with the thought. Then because he could not think of the words in Ute, Bass tried hard to explain in English, “To catch beaver in its prime! To mosey easy-like on down to ronnyvoo where the trader will have him whiskey! An’ there’ll be women too!”
In that next moment he suddenly realized what he had said. “Women for all the men what ain’t had a good woman to wrap up in the robes with ’em all winter, Fawn,” he tried to apologize in English.
Clumsily he reached out and took hold of one of the woman’s hands. Again he spoke in Ute, “You know I leave soon. Come spring.”
“Leave Fawn. Yes. Me-Ti-tuzz only a winter guest. Come again maybe next winter.”
“Yes,” he said sadly. “Maybe next winter.”
She pulled her hands from his and turned aside as the old man continued to stuff things away in his shoulder pouch. Bass glanced again at his wounds, finding each of them covered with moistened leaves held down with thin strips of cloth.
“You both help me,” Bass declared to them, watching their faces turn so they could look at him. “I will not forget. I may leave come spring … but I won’t ever forget you both.”
*
9
Imperceptibly at first, the days began ta lengthen.
It happened that Bass realized it was a little brighter in the lodge those mornings when he awoke. Instead of the gray wash to everything just beginning to announce the coming of the sun, the light was already there to greet him each time he opened his eyes beside her.
As well, night was held at abeyance for just a little longer. Twilight seemed to swell about them in that high mountain park, the end of each succeeding day celebrating itself with just a few more heartbeats of gentle glow as the sun eased out of sight. Why, a man would have to be nothing short of blind not to notice that spring was on its way.
It was clear to Titus that the other three realized it too as the snow grew mushy beneath his own thick, fur- lined winter moccasins of buffalo hide. From time to time, yes—snow would fall from those clouds gathered up there near Buffalo Pass, then only from those clouds collared around the peaks to the far north. Eventually, there were no more storms.
As the snow retreated into the shadowed places, so the game retreated farther up the mountainsides. The men traveled higher, stayed out longer, to supply the camp with meat. And the nearby streams were nearly trapped out. Over the last few days Silas Cooper had been forced to take his trappers farther and farther still to run onto a creek where they stood a chance of finding beaver what would come to bait.
Plain as paint, the time was coming to move on.
“Where you set us to go?” Tuttle asked Cooper of an evening just days ago as they had sat in the last rays of the sun, smoking the bark of the red willow mixed with the pale dogwood. Some time back they had finished off the last of Bass’s tobacco.
Silas sighed. “Yonder to the west.”
“Them mountains we come through to get here?” Hooks inquired, digging a fingernail around inside the bowl of his clay pipe. Just then he struck a hot coal, sure enough, and jerked the finger out to suck on it like a child with a precious sliver or some such injury worth nursing.
Cooper quickly glanced round at the other three, then stared off to the high peaks bordering the sundown side of Park Kyack. “That be the direction a man takes him to mosey off to ronnyvoo, ain’t it?”
“Surely it is,” Bud agreed.
Cooper’s gaze landed on Bass. “What say y’ then, Scratch?”
“Say me to what?”
“Where away would y’ lead this bunch, if’n it was you callin’ the tune?”
Pulling the cane pipestem from his mouth slowly, Titus wiped the back of his hand across his lips thoughtfully. “Near as I recollect, there was many a stream in that country where a man would be smart to lay down his traps. Yessir, Silas. No two ways to it—that’s good country yonder for a beaver man.”
Cooper smiled as big as he had ever smiled, here with his plans given such credence. “Damn straight, Scratch. By bloody damn, boys! This here greenhorn pilgrim we come across’t last fall h’ain’t so wet ahin’t his ears no more now.”
“But afore we go and tramp off to this here Ashley’s ronnyvoo,” Scratch replied, “it’s plain to me we best be taking our time through that high country.”
“Take … taking our time?” Cooper asked, all but incredulous.
“Damn, but there’s a ronnyvoo ain’t a one of us wanna miss!” Hooks whined, worry in his eyes.
Titus looked at Billy, then at Tuttle. “You’re cutting a trail through beaver country to reach ronnyvoo, ain’cha?”
Bud nodded, but Billy glanced at the dark-faced Cooper.
Silas said, “So, Scratch—what fur y’ got to rub with me?”
“We’re up there anyways,” Titus began, “so let’s set us some traps. Catch us some beaver on the tramp.”
Hooks grinned, then scratched at the side of his face when he asked, “What you think of that, Silas?”
Warily, the way an animal might react as it kept itself from being backed into a corner, Cooper said, “If’n there’s time, ary a man’d be struck with the stupids what he didn’t try to trap what beaver he could.”
Tuttle picked at a scab on his nose while the light sank out of the sky. “For balls’ sake—ronnyvoo’s still a far piece off. Take our time getting.”
Hooks nodded amiably, saying, “Maybeso we ought’n head there straight off.”
“No,” Tuttle corrected, “plenty of time till ronnyvoo, more weeks’n I care to count.”
Billy’s shoulders sagged in disappointment. “I was hankering for that trader’s whiskey—just to talk of ronnyvoo!”
“Soon enough, Billy,” Silas replied, then turned to Bass. “Just how full was y’ fixin’ to get your beaver packs?”
“Full as I can,” Bass answered. “I go through a piece of country what looks to be crawlin’ with them flat-tails … I say let’s drag what critters we can outta the streams on our way.”
“Boys”—Cooper brightened of a sudden as he called out in his booming voice—“looks to be we took us on a greenhorn last autumn, and now we got us a master trapper as our partner, don’t it?”
“Har! Har!” Tuttle exclaimed. “Scratch is a damn sight better trapper’n me—”
“Wouldn’t take much for that!” Hooks gushed, belly-laughing.
Bud frowned. “An’ I’d care to lay a set that he’s some better’n you, Billy Hooks!”
The wide smile was whisked from Billy’s face as Hooks looked over at Cooper.
Silas said, “I daresay Bud might well be dead center, Billy. Scratch awready got better’n you.”
“Awright,” Hooks replied with a single nod of his head, “then you the only one he ain’t a’bettering—right, Silas?”
