sure. But they laid upon plew after plew that Scratch had trapped, skinned, and fleshed with Turtle’s help. Bass realized he hadn’t seen the crude forgery at first—how Cooper’s scrawl obscured all Titus’s hard work.
“What the hell are y’ doing in my packs, you weasel-stoned nigger?”
Bass wheeled at the growl, his hair rising on the back of his neck, skin prickling in fear as he stared at Cooper some two rods away. Just behind Silas stood Tuttle and Hooks, looking on—but not in disbelief or shock that Bass would be among Cooper’s belongings … instead, looking at the scene with masks of knowing horror. He realized they knew.
Suddenly the massive Cooper had crossed those last few ten yards, seizing Bass’s coat in one big paw, and hurled him to the ground. “Y’ fixing to steal from me, you tit-sucking son of a bitch?”
“S-steal from you?” Titus’s voice crackled as he rolled onto his knees, then arose slowly. He couldn’t believe he had been accused of theft by the thief himself.
“Looks to me what you’re fixin’ to do!” Cooper spat. His big jaw jutted there in the middle of his wide, sloping shoulders that gave him the look of a man without a neck. Silas flung out his arm, pointing across the fire to Bass’s packs torn apart and in disarray.
Titus wagged his head in disbelief and stammered, “Y-you … you’re the one what’s been—”
“Lookee there, boys!” Cooper interrupted, his long black beard waving on the breeze as he whirled on the other two. “I caught this greenhorn sumbitch fixing to line his packs with
Beginning to shake in utter disbelief, Bass glanced quickly at Turtle. Bud dropped his eyes just as quickly. Then Titus took a deep breath and dared the words, “Silas—you’re the thievin’ son of a bitch!”
Cooper had him again in an instant, flinging the smaller man backward before Bass even realized Silas had snagged the front of his coat again. This time Titus collided with a tree, knocking the wind out of him as he slid down its trunk, the shooting pain in his back so immense that he could taste it. The next time he inhaled it hurt so much he gasped—fighting to catch his breath. Scratch swallowed down his galloping heart and tried to speak as he struggled back to his feet.
Bass’s arm was shaking as he pointed. “F-found my furs in your goddamned packs, Cooper!”
Silas brought the rifle into his right hand, his monstrous thumb drawing back the hammer.
“Silas! No!” Tuttle screeched, lunging toward Cooper, then suddenly remembering that he must not interfere.
The other three watched the rifle shudder in Cooper’s grasp, as if he were tormented to keep from pulling the trigger.
Bass stared down at the muzzle. Never before had he looked at a weapon’s yawning black hole … so damned close.
There beneath the gray-black wolf hide he had sewn into a cap so the pelt spilled over his shoulders and the wolfs face was pulled down to his brow to shade his black eyes, suddenly came an ugly, taunting, vicious look to the giant’s face as he asked, “What … what’d you say ’bout me, Titus Bass?”
“You g-got my hides in your … your, p-packs.”
Hooks took a step closer saying, “Silas ain’t stealin’ your beaver, Titus. He only—”
“Shuddup, Billy!” Cooper snapped, hulking there in that lumbering side-to-side shuffle of his.
Bass watched how Hooks immediately clamped his mouth closed, eyes every bit as wide as Turtle’s, and both pairs of eyes filled with fear, the two men’s faces blanched as they studied Cooper, then Bass, then back to Cooper.
Quietly, Tuttle started, “Maybe Titus don’t under—”
“You shut your yap too, Bud!” Silas growled as he flung an arm menacingly in Turtle’s direction. “This here’s a’tween Scratch’n me. Ain’t it … Titus?”
For an instant Bass let his eyes flick to Tuttle, then to Hooks, and finally back to Cooper with the full realization. “That’s r-right, Silas. A’tween only you an’ me.”
Cooper grinned, that crooked, one-sided smile, big and broad. He looked down at the rifle in his hand, then slowly squeezed on the trigger, lowering the hammer. “Billy.”
Hooks came up as Cooper held the rifle back at the end of his arm. Billy took it from him.
“Bud.”
“Yeah, Silas.” Tuttle stepped forward obediently too, receiving the shooting pouch Cooper pulled over his head without taking his eyes off Titus.
“Now, Scratch,” Silas began, his voice gotten strangely quiet, his eyes narrowing as his iron-strap jaw set firmly in that black beard that reached the middle of his chest. “What y’ gotta say to me, face-to-face? Man to man?”
“Found some of m-my furs in your packs,” Titus repeated, watching Cooper take a step closer.
God, how the man seemed to tower over him. Cooper possessed shoulders wide enough to carry the span of a hickory-ax handle with room to spare.
“Them’s my furs, Titus,” he said, all but in a harsh whisper, taking another yard-long step closer to Bass.
Scratch wanted to back up that same distance. Maintain that much room between him and the big, chisel- faced man. “Had my mark on alla them.”
“Un-uh. All of ’em got
“I can read good as most any man,” he said, his throat gone parched as Cooper came another long step closer. Easing in like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse. Toying. Playing.
This time Cooper’s voice had less of a mocking tone, more of an edge. “So what’d y’ read, greenhorn?”
“Saw wh-where you scratched over my letters … put your own letters on my hides.”
Suddenly Silas snapped his shoulders back, enjoying how that made Bass flinch. He grinned again. “But them ain’t your hides, nigger.”
“I catched ’em, Silas.” Titus wanted one of the others to say something, sure they knew, certain they realized the theft.
“They’re mine, Scratch.”
Bass shook his head slowly, daring that brave gesture as he watched the black cloud cross the big man’s face. His stomach growled with dread as he coughed loose the words, “Them’s my plews, Cooper.”
Although his eyes remained narrowed, his smile now became a wolf-slash of a grin on Silas’s lips while he said, “You ’member when y’ grabbed hol’t of my arm last fall, Scratch?”
His head bobbed once, not sure what meaning Cooper’s question had. “Yeah. I ’member. When you was fixing to kill yourself a mule.”
The grin widened in the black beard as Silas licked his lower lip. “Do y’ recollect what I tol’t you back then ’bout ever laying a hand on me?”
“Never forgot that, Silas,” he said, the furrow between his own eyes deepening in consternation at the confusing direction things were taking. “But I ain’t never laid a hand on you—”
“Y’ go an’ put your hands on what
Without any more warning than that, Bass found himself shrunken in the big man’s shadow, seized, and flung backward with both powerful arms—smashing against the wide trunk of another old pine.
The breath driven out of his lungs a second time, shaking his head free of the mind-numbing stars, Titus remained helpless as Cooper yanked him up, held him out at the end of his left arm, and drew back his right arm.
“Silas!”
Cooper turned at Turtle’s screech.
“Don’t hurt ’im, Silas,” Billy pleaded too. “He don’t know no better. We can teach him. Swear we’ll teach him—Bud an’ me.”
But Silas shook his head, looking back at his two partners. “You can teach him, sure y’ can. I don’t doubt that a bit. But only after I’ve teached him my own self—”
Hanging there in the giant’s grip, Bass flung out a fist, connecting with Cooper’s left temple. God, did that ever hurt his knuckles, he thought … watching Silas turn back to look at him now, his marblelike eyes blinking a few times in surprise. Then flecking over in reddening anger.
