setting traps among the streams that watered the Yellowstone north of what would one day soon come to be known among the mountain men as Colter’s Hell.
“Billy ain’t tellin’ y’ no bald-face, Scratch,” the black-bearded man agreed. There flashed one of those exceedingly rare twinkles of good humor in the marblelike eyes. “That’s for sartin. Y’ see’d yourself through your second winter: now, that makes a man a hivernant, or I don’t know poor bull from fat cow.”
“Ol’ Scratch,” Bud Tuttle repeated it now, grinning as he clearly took some pleasure in that coronation. “It’s purely some for a man’s companions to start callin’ him Ol’ this or Ol’ that. Hell, Titus—these here bastards don’t even call me Ol’ Bud!”
“Plain as your own ugly mug that y’ ain’t earned yourself that name the way Scratch here has,” Cooper sniped. “He’s come to be twice the trapper y’ are.”
Tuttle pursed his lips and nodded. “I cain’t argee with y’ there, Silas. Scratch’s better’n both Billy an’ me—so why you call Billy Ol’ Billy and y’ don’t call me Ol’ Bud?”
Cooper slowly pulled the ramrod out of the long fullstock’s barrel, doubled the small oily patch back over, and drove it back into the muzzle, shoving it all the way down to the breech as he swabbed burned, blackened, sulfurous-stinking powder out the barrel. “True enough Scratch is better’n the two of you at bringing them flat-tails to bait. But the reason I likely ain’t ever gonna call you Ol’ Bud is you ain’t never gonna be half the mountain man Billy is. An’ Scratch here,” Silas said as he dragged the ramrod out of the barrel and pointed it at Bass, “why—he’s already got Billy beat way up on that stick.”
Instead of protesting, Hooks merely took that appraisal in stride. Looking over at Bass, Billy said, “I figger Silas got that right, Scratch. After two winters with us’ns, you already come to be near good as Cooper.”
With a faint grin cracking his black beard, Cooper looked up at Bass and replied, “Near good as me, Scratch.”
“You got you a long head start on me, Silas,” Titus conceded, self-effacing and aware that he must never put himself in a class with their forty-five-year-old leader.
Into the fire Cooper tossed the small round patch of cloth, well-lathered with bear oil and blackened powder from the grooves of his rifle. Landing on a blazing limb, where it spat and sizzled a moment before the edges began to turn black, Silas declared, “And there h’ain’t no use in you figgerin’ y’ll ever catch up to me neither. Makes no matter that you’re a dozen years younger’n this nigger. No matter neither how good y’ figger to get at trappin’ or trackin’ or nothin’, Scratch.”
“I ain’t ever tried to be better’n—”
Cooper interrupted, “Because y’ don’t stand a whore’s chance at Sunday meeting of ever outriding, outfighting, outpokin’, or outkillin’ me.”
With a shrug Bass admitted, “Plain you be a better man’n all of us, Silas.”
“Damn right I am,” Cooper declared as he wiped an oily patch up and down the browned barrel of his rifle. “An’ there h’ain’t nothin’ the three of you can ever do what can change that.”
Bobbing his head, Hooks said, “You’re the booshway of this here outfit, Silas Cooper! Big bull in this here lick!”
Chuckling a moment, Cooper finally said, “But don’t go getting the idee that means none of y’ can let up on trying to outtrap the other fellas, now. This nigger wants to have us more plew to trade than any four men rightly should.”
“Ought’n make that Ashley trader’s eyes shine to see all the packs we’ll have to trade ’im come summer— right, Silas?” Tuttle exclaimed.
Cooper’s face turned grave as he explained, “Lately I been thinkin’ of just where we go come summer.”
“Wh-where we go?” Serious concern crossed Billy’s face as he continued sputtering, “Ain’t w-we headin’ down to Sweet Lake to m-meet them company boys for ronnyvoo?”
With a shrug of a shoulder and scratch at his chin, Silas replied, “Once’t I got it all worked out up here in my noggin’, then I figger it’s time to tell y’ three the way it’s gonna be for summer trampin’.”
“Trader’s likker and all them niggers joinin’ up after a long winter of it,” Tuttle mused. “Ronnyvoo is what I been thinkin’ on more an’ more ever’ day my own self, Silas.”
“G’won now an’ don’t none of y’ worry a lick ’bout it,” Cooper confided with that mouthful of big yellow teeth. “When I figger out just what we’re gonna do—I s’pect my idee’ll damn well make sense to the hull durn lot of y’.”
So it was that the three continued to let the one do their thinking for them. Where to go for the beaver, and when to move on to the next camp. Which bands to winter with and what Injuns to avoid. All the trails and passes, every inch of the routes they had traveled, moseying down one stream and wandering up the next, all across this last year and a half—how quickly Titus had learned that Billy and Bud left nearly everything requiring a decision squarely in Cooper’s lap.
And that’s how they had come to spend this past winter with the tall and haughty Crow, a season known among that tribe as
From that mountain valley where Titus learned all he ever cared to know about grizzlies last autumn, the white men had continued easing their way on north, down into the fertile lowlands, where many of the streams draining the high country were dammed here and there, the timbered and sheltered places converted into deep ponds where the industrious flat-tails constructed their beaver lodges. There, too, late one autumn day, they had spotted the first Indian they had seen since rendezvous.
It had started off snowing earlier that morning, no more than an inch or two of fine, dry flakes. Nothing at all like the heavy, wet, icy snow that Titus had known back east. By afternoon, as the four of them saddled up once more and set out to check their traplines, the thick charcoal blanket of clouds had even begun to scatter and lift. A few shafts of brilliant light touched the valley here and there with gold, shimmering against the new, pristine snow.
“How far you figger it is till we reach this here Yallerstone country we aimin’ for?” Hooks asked as the horsemen eased up out of the willows and onto the flats again, across the narrow creek from their campsite.
Cooper wagged his head, staring off. “Got no idea how much farther it be. Just that it still lays north some.”
“A handful of days,” Bass offered abruptly with such conviction that he even surprised himself. It took a moment before he noticed the way the other three had turned to regard him in wonder. A bit self-conscious, he added, “No more’n a week.”
“That true, Silas?” Tuttle inquired, eyeing suspiciously.
“How the hell’d I know? I never come through this way!” Cooper snapped; then he glared at Bass. “So tell us just how the hell y’ think y’ know.”
“Don’t,” Bass answered. “Not for certain. Just feels like it ain’t all that far.”
Turning back around in his saddle, Silas grumbled, “I s’pose we’ll just have to see about—”
“L-lookee there, Silas!” Hooks interrupted with a sputter.
The other three looked where Billy was pointing. Off to the north on the brow of a hill sat a half-dozen horsemen, something on the order of a mile away, maybe a little more. They sat there motionless as statues, as if they had always been there on the crest of that rise.
Tuttle whispered hoarsely, “W-where’d they come from?”
“Keep moving,” Cooper said, his voice gone quiet despite the great distance between the two parties.
“We just let ’em know we see ’em, eh?” Bud asked.
“I s’pose that’s the make of it,” Cooper agreed.
Billy dragged the greasy wool of his capote sleeve across his lower face and asked, “What you make ’em to be, Silas?”
“They ain’t Blackfoot,” Titus declared instead.
Flicking the younger man a glare, Cooper answered, “They ain’t Blackfoot—that’s as plain as paint.”
Tuttle asked, “How come you say not?”
“Blackfoot wouldn’t let us see ’em,” Silas replied.
To which Bass added, “Damn right: Blackfoot’d just sit off somewhere and watch us, maybeso wait to lay onto us somewhere up the trail.”
“You figger it that way, Silas?” Hooks said, turning to Cooper for confirmation.
“I figger this young’un here might be right on that, first whack.” Then for a moment Cooper studied the
