focus, to bring his eyes back to bear on his tormentor.
“That’s better. Now, then—s’pose y’ tell me just who them pelts belong to what’re over yonder in my packs. Whose pelts is they?”
Scratch blinked slowly, how it hurt the bruised eyelids swelling with blood, seeping with tears and coagulate. He swallowed a little more of the hot, thick crimson coating his tongue. “Y-yours,” Titus whispered, able to speak no louder.
God, how it hurt to say those words, to speak anything less than the truth … but it hurt a damned sight less than did the beating he knew would come if he didn’t say just that right then and there.
“That’s right, Scratch,” Cooper declared, victory clearly in his voice. Then he flung his words over his shoulder, louder still. “Y’ hear that, boys? Bass knows his lessons for the day. Say it again, Scratch. All them pelts in my packs—ever’ last one of the sumbitches—who they belong to?”
“You.”
“Say it for me again, Scratch. A little louder so the other boys sure to hear. Tell me the name of the man what owns them pelts.”
“Silas … Silas Cooper.” Heartsick, he wanted to throw up, spewing it then and there.
“And y’ know why, Scratch?”
“Y-you beat me and took ’em—”
Bass didn’t get any more out as the huge fist was driven into the side of his jaw again. How he struggled to hold the warm, wet blackness at bay. He felt the crown of his head hurt where Cooper shook his scalp, his hand tangled in Titus’s long hair.
“They’re mine because y’ owe me, Scratch. So say it!”
“I … I owe you.”
“Y’ owe me them pelts.”
“Yes. Owe you.”
“Very good, son. I damn well coulda kill’t y’ that first day an’ took ever’thing y’ owned, Titus Bass. You know that?”
“Kill’t me. Yeah.”
“But instead—my good nature tol’t me to take y’ on, like I took on these here others. Was my own good heart tol’t me to show y’ the ways of the mountains. If’n I hadn’t, likely some red nigger been wearin’ your hair on his belt by now, Titus Bass. If’ I hadn’t come along, likely your bones be bleaching white under the sun long time ago—like all stupid niggers what come to the mountains and get theyselves kill’t by grizz, or winter snows. Y’ owe me, Bass.”
“I … I owe you, Silas.” Maybe he did, his hobbled head thought. Maybe it made good sense. Perhaps it would make even more perfect sense once he quit hurting. Once he stopped wanting to lay his head down and die right there in the bloody pine needles.
“Yes,” Silas hissed with that smile. “Y’ owe me for savin’ your worthless hide. For not killin’ y’ my own self … for turnin’ y’ into the master trapper you become, Scratch. So them pelts y’ been pullin’ from your traps, why—one in ever’ three is mine.”
“One …”
“That’s right. In ever’ three,” Cooper continued. “An’ y’ be damned glad it ain’t more. Like I might well take me half. Right, Tuttle?”
“Yeah, Silas. Half.”
“But the older I get, Bud—the kinder grows my nature. Scratch here only owes me one in three,” Cooper explained. “You understand all this, Titus Bass?”
With a growing fog clouding his brain, Scratch replied, “I … owe … you.”
“Y’ owe me your goddamned life, Scratch. Ever’ day now y’ live—when a red nigger or a grizz likely kill’t y’—
“Yeah. I owe.”
Eventually Cooper took his fingers out of Bass’s hair, watching Titus slowly keel to the side in exhaustion, his eyes blinking up in the bright sun to try gazing at Silas, as some feral animal, trapped, treed, and cornered would watch the predator closing in.
“Y’ l’arnt good, Scratch. So I s’pect y’ to be at your traps in the morning. You’re good, son. Likely y’ awready got beaver Out there on your line. An’ if y’ got beaver, means I got beaver.” And then Cooper sighed. “Best y’ bring ’em all in, for us both. I got my share, don’t y’ see? Y’ owe me my share for helping you
“Owe you. Yes.”
Then Silas stood, his great bulk throwing a shadow over Scratch’s face at last. He turned to Tuttle. “From the looks of things, Bud—seems to be that Titus here brought in a passel of furs this morning, early on. Best y’ be to getting ’em stretched and grained.”
“I’ll do that, straightaway, Silas.”
“Good man, Tuttle.” Then Cooper looked down at the fallen form at his feet. “Bud’s a damned good man to help y’ out, Scratch. He ain’t never been all that good a trapper—but I keep him alive, and he keeps care of things round camp, don’t he?”
Titus didn’t answer.
“Billy, how ’bout y’ puttin’ coffee on to boil, then havin’ yourself a start in on them pelts we brung in for ourselves?”
When the other two had turned away and moved off to busy themselves with their tasks, Cooper knelt over the bloodied man again. He laid a hand on Scratch’s arm.
“I don’t wanna kill y’, Titus Bass. But if y’ ain’t l’arn’t today, then your bound to l’arn soon enough—out here in this land each man is a law to hisself. An’ what that means to me is that y’ do and take for only yourself … and the others get what tit’s left over when you’re done. If there’s ’nother man big enough, good enough to kill y’ for what y’ have—then so be it. But for now, I’m big bull in this lick. Y’ remember that, an’ I’ll teach y’ to keep your hair. Y’ don’t l’arn—an’ y’ll be dead as a three-week-ol’ plew.”
As weak as that newborn buffalo calf, Bass whispered, “T-teach me, Silas.”
“ ‘At’s a good lad now, Titus Bass,” Cooper said, patting the arm again and rising once more. “I’ll wager y’ll go far in these here high and terrible places. Y’ just remember who it is teaching y’ to stay alive … and y’ll go far in these here mountains.”
11
Spring was done for by the time they had trapped themselves out of the last of the high country and slowly worked their way down through the foothills. From time to time they set traps along any promising stretch of creek or stream cutting its course through the high benchland that stretched north away to the far mountains where the three first ran across Titus last autumn. This broken, rugged, parched, and high benchland appeared to extend all the way west to the distant, hazy horizon where the roll of the earth still hid the lure of Willow Valley.
There, in the yonder land of Sweet Lake, lay rendezvous.
It was the hive that, in these lengthening days of slow warming of the land, would draw the drones from all points on the compass—just as surely as the queen bee compelled her loyal subjects back with the fruits of their own far-flung labors.
West of north they moved now, beneath the sun sliding off midsky, following the yellowed orb in its western march these days until they reached the branches of a river Cooper said a few others called the Verde. Said it was greaser talk for “green.” Word was that there they might just find more lowland beaver to catch. But no matter if they didn’t end up seeing a single flat-tail … once in that country on the west side of the great continental spine, rendezvous wasn’t but a few more days’ ride on to the west.
This high-prairie country proved to be so different from the foothills, more different still than the mountains the four of them had just abandoned. Every day now they trampled unshod hooves through a warming land where lay carpets of the blue dicks in small flowering trumpets, or past the six open-faced purple blooms of the grass
