His eyes filling with concern, Daniel said, “They ain’t your only friends, Scratch. Anytime, you just come looking to find us—”
“It’s a wonderful thing for a man to have him such good friends as you,” Bass interrupted, his eyes smiling.
Understanding at last that there no longer was any sense in trying to talk Bass into joining them, Potts pursed his lips and went to the saddle in a hurry, galloping off with Beckwith to catch up with the last brigade on its way out of the valley. In less than an hour the midsummer air grew quiet but for the occasional call of birds and the incessant drone of flies or the whine of bees. No longer could Titus see the telltale smudge of dust there along the horizon. The company men were gone for another year.
All sights ana sounds of that merry gathering were nothing but memories now.
What grass the stock hadn’t eaten had been trampled into pathways by hooves and moccasins. Dry and flaky piles of horse droppings dotted the close-cropped pasturage of the valley floor for as far as the eye could see. The rib-bare skeletons of willow wickiups and leafy bowers built streamside now stood naked in the strong sunlight of high summer. No more were blankets and buffalo robes unfurled in the shady places where men once lounged to swap stories or merely sleep off the terrible effects of Ashley’s potent liquor throughout those long, hot days of summer. Refuse and litter from repairs made to saddles, bridles, and pack harness lay discarded and scattered among what kegs and empty burlap sacking had been carried here from faraway St. Louis.
Clouds of bottle-green deerflies and black-winged horseflies buzzed in annoying clouds over every latrine hole, flitted over every campsite, and blackened every stinking gut-pile. Ants and hard-shelled beetles crawled and scritched through the trampled grass to lay claim to what refuse the robber jays weren’t already picking over— wings flapping and beaks squawking when another bird landed to threaten their bloody morsel. Rings of darkened stones surrounded the countless black circles once fire pits. Butchered, bone-bare carcasses of elk and deer hung numberless like gory sacrifices from the branches of trees where the many had feasted upon the few: men cutting away a ham, or loin, or a fat steak to sizzle over the flames—each fire a gathering place where all came in turn to eat, to drink, or merely to commune with one’s own kind.
In the span of less than two momentous years, a breed was born out here among these rich valleys sheltered and shadowed by the high and snowy places. A novice who was at first content to follow others up the Missouri River to the beaver country, William H. Ashley had ended up fathering a whole new strain of frontiersmen. Unlike their predecessors, those “longhunters” who had roamed the hardwoods forests back east of the Mississippi, these fledgling grandsons were only beginning to tramp across an unfathomable territory much more hostile in both geography and native inhabitants than anything ever before encountered by their eastern forebears.
Unlike their grandfathers had ever done back east, men of this new breed would live their simple existence permanently in the mountains—but without a permanent base. Such rootlessness, such unending wandering, suited this new breed just fine.
This was the dawn of a glorious era.
The mountain man had been born.
Two days after the last brigade pulled out, the morning breeze brought Titus the noise of snorting ponies being rounded up from the far meadows, driven in by pony-boys … the squawking orders of the women tearing buffalo-hide covers from lodgepoles, lashing travois together, and bundling every possession for the coming journey. In what seemed like a matter of minutes, the village was no more and the cavalcade was on its way north.
“Shoulda tasted y’ one, Scratch.”
Titus, watching the Shoshone depart, turned as Cooper and Hooks came up to stand by him. Billy had that indolent, contented look Scratch had come to recognize their winter with the Ute—the look he got when his belly was full, there was no work to be done, and his pecker was well satisfied.
Titus looked at Silas. “Tasted what?”
Cooper licked his lips. “Them Snake gals. Prime poontang—ain’t they, Billy?”
As soon as Silas jabbed him in the ribs, Hooks giggled. His bloodshot-red eyes widened momentarily in remembrance. “Prime. Yessirreebob! Prime poon!”
“Hell, even Bud went off to the Snake camp and dipped his quill in some gal’s inkpot. Didn’t y’, Tut?”
“Ever’ man’s got him a right, Silas,” Tuttle replied smugly. “Ain’t none of us had no women since winterin’ with them Utes.”
“’Cept Titus Bass here his own self.” Silas slung an arm around Bass’s shoulders. “How come you didn’t drop y’ one of them bang-tail Snakes, Scratch? Still fancy that Ute widder?”
For a moment he studied the marble-eyed Cooper. Then Bass slowly unleashed himself from the long, muscular arm. “When you fixing on us to pull up pins and set off?”
A brief look of consternation crossed the tall man’s face. “Say, boys—sounds to me like Scratch here got him a hard-on for one special gal.”
“Yup, it do,” Hooks agreed. “Yessirreebob—a hard-on for one special
Titus glared up at Cooper. “We going today?”
“Why so all-fired ready to trot, pilgrim?”
“There’s miles to put behind us and beaver to trap when we get there.”
It took a moment, but Silas finally grinned a rotten-toothed smile. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “Maybeso that’s why this here greenhorn nigger gonna make a better trapper’n either of you boys.”
“I ain’t no greenhorn no more, Silas.”
Cooper looked him down, then up again. Then the man’s dark eyes slowly went to the horizon where the Shoshone were disappearing beneath a distant cloud of dust. “No—I s’pose y’ ain’t no more at that, Titus Bass.” When his red-rimmed eyes came back to Scratch, they were filled with a begrudging admiration. “Y’ve made a right respectable trapper outta yourself.”
It was closer to praise than anything he’d ever gotten from his pap. Titus swallowed hard, wanting his words to come out even. “Good as you, Silas?”
“Almost,” Cooper conceded. “But y’ ain’t good as me yet. Till that day y’ are, best y’ hang in with us.”
He finally let himself breathe as Silas stepped away, back toward the shade of the tall cottonwoods where the leaves rattled and the flies buzzed. The way it felt, that was about as good a fragment of praise as he was ever going to get, Bass figured.
“You figger we can pull out come morning, Silas?”
Cooper did not speak again until he settled on his blankets and robes, cocking an elbow beneath his head as he sank back onto his saddle. “I s’pose since there ain’t no more of that goddamned Ashley’s likker … and them Snakes has took off with all the spread-leg wenches in this here country … we might just as well see how the country looks up to the Bighorn.”
Scratch’s heart skipped a beat. “Maybeso we go all the way to … the Yallerstone?”
Silas grinned. “Why—don’t tell me y’ heard about the Yallerstone all the way back to St. Lou?”
“I did. Word was it was good beaver country!”
For the moment Cooper appeared interested. “A place where a man might winter up?”
Bass hurried into the patch of shade, kneeling near the other three. “If a man’s to winter up, Silas—might’s well be in country where the spring trapping is its best.”
“Awright, Scratch,” the strap-jawed Cooper eventually replied. “Let’s us just go see for our own selves that there Bighorn country y’ heard so much spoke of.”
Hannah snorted downstream.
High and wheezing.
A sound he’d never before heard come from the mule.
In his chest his breath froze like a chunk of January river ice. Scratch nearly choked trying to swallow down the thumping of his heart.
Then the mule bawled.
Like he was shot out of a cheap Indian-trade fusil, Bass flung the trap onto the bank and lunged out of the stream … but slipped back into the icy water. Angrily flinging himself against the bank again, he dragged his weight onto the frost-slickened grass by jabbing the sharpened float-pole into the ground, then throwing a leg up and onto
