Cooper explained, “Some winters back Missouri Fur boys built ’em a fort there, right on the Yallerstone.”
Immediately Bass grew enthused, saying, “Just down the river a ways?”
“Like I said: near the mouth of the Bighorn,” Cooper said. “Bud—you recollect what they called that place … Bentley … Bentling—”
Tuttle said, “Fort
“But wait a minute: we was in that Bighorn River country,” Titus said, his suspicions tingling. “Crow country —last winter. Whyn’t we ever go on down to that post for a visit?”
“Hell, Scratch,” Cooper replied with a big grin, “mouth of the Bighorn was too far a piece from where we was with them Crow. Way off yonder to the northeast.”
“All right,” Bass conceded, working over the direction of rivers and mountain ranges in his mind, “if’n them Missouri Fur Company fellers still got a post there—”
“They call it Fort Benton,” Tuttle reminded.
Bass nodded at the interruption, then continued, “Benton … then I s’pose it do make damned good sense to trade to them early—afore they start trading with the tribes in the area.”
“A right handy post,” Cooper stated. “Close at hand, it be.”
“You been there, ain’cha?” Titus asked.
“We been there awright,” Hooks declared.
“But we ain’t been over to that country in some time, Silas,” Tuttle reminded.
Cooper quickly replied, “Just what the hell are y’ trying to say, Bud?”
“What if they gone and closed up shop?” Tuttle asked. “What if there ain’t no one there to trade our furs to?”
“I thought on that too,” Cooper related. “That be the case, then I figger we gotta float on down the Yallerstone a piece.”
Bass inquired, “H-how much farther you gotta float?”
“Means we gotta go all the way to the Missouri,” Cooper explained. “On down to the Mandan country.”
“How far you figger that is?” Titus wondered.
“A ways above the mouth of the Knife.”
“That anywhere near Ree country?” Scratch asked. “I heard tell them Rees don’t take to fur men passing through their land.”
“Don’t y’ worry none—Fort Vanderburgh’s north of Ree country,” Silas said consolingly. “Not nowhere near them black-hearted Rees.”
Billy agreed, “Ain’t a one of us like going nowhere them red niggers be, Scratch.”
Scratch turned back to Cooper in the dark. “Awright—so you’re telling me we don’t find no one there at the Bighorn, we got no other choice ’cept to float on down to Mandan country.”
“That’s right,” Cooper said.
“Ain’t that a longer trip after all, ’stead of us just heading south to ronnyvoo on horseback?”
“Longer to ronnyvoo from here,” Silas declared matter-of-factly.
“And you ’member we ain’t moving near as fast on horseback neither,” Tuttle sized things up. “We can make more miles in a day on the river.”
“Saying we do decide to make that float,” Titus began after he heard the familiar snort of the mule and it prodded him into thinking, “just saying we up and decide to … what we gonna do with all them critters we’re riding, all them packhorses?”
“That’s a problem,” Cooper admitted. “But I thought me on that too.”
“So what you figger we gonna do with all the horses, Silas?” Billy wondered.
“We leave one of us behind.”
“One … one of us behind.” Tuttle sounded concerned. “In country like this?”
“Gonna be Crow land,” Cooper reminded them.
“Sounds to me like you got this all sorted through, right down to the gnat’s ass,” Bass stated.
“You can lay your sights to that, Scratch,” Cooper replied. “I even figgered out the best man to trust with the animals.”
Tuttle was frightened when he asked, “Who—who that be, Silas?”
Cooper said, “Scratch.”
Billy asked, “Leave Scratch behind on his lonesome when we take the furs downriver?”
“He’s got a better head on his shoulders’n Tuttle over there—and Scratch ain’t near as skeered of things as Bud,” Silas explained. “And he’s ever’ bit as good with the critters as you, Billy. Makes sense to me that Scratch be the one to leave behind, don’t you see? ’Sides, he’s got him a lot more sense’n you’ll ever have.”
“Yep, you’re right at all corners of it, Silas.” Hooks applauded softly. “Bass got lots more sense’n I’ll ever have. He’s the man to trust with the horses, for certain on that! What you say about it, Scratch?”
“Figger a man’s gotta think on something so ’portant as this be,” Titus confided as he stretched his legs out and leaned back, the better to help his mind to settle on thinking.
For a long time Titus lay there in the quiet, listening to the nearby animals crop at the grass, hearing the breathing of the others become as quiet as the spring night that settled around them. Finally Bass came to the end of his consideration, sorting through it the best way he knew how.
“So you’re telling me it might be a short trip of it—”
“Other side of the pass where we run onto the Yallerstone,” Cooper interrupted, “the four of us’ll make two rafts. I figger that’s all we’ll need.”
“Won’t take us no time to float down to the Bighorn,” Billy assured. “Trader might even have him some whiskey!”
Bass said, “But if you don’t find no one there, then it’ll be a longer trip to the Missouri country.”
“I figger we can meet up with y’ afore ronnyvoo time,” Cooper testified. “We’ll set us a place to join back up, somewhere on down the east front of the mountains.”
“Closer on to ronnyvoo?” Billy asked.
Silas said, “Where we can spend all the money we’ll make on whiskey and geegaws for the squaws!”
Titus waited for their quiet, good-natured laughter to drift off. “You really do got this sorted clear out to the end, don’t you, Cooper?”
“You damn well all know I been thinking on it since last winter. Long enough to know for damn certain what the hell I’m doing.”
Rubbing an itch at his nose, Scratch said, “An’ you figger I’m the one to stay with the critters.”
“Always have figgered you to be the only one ’sides me I could trust withall them critters and the truck the rest of us cain’t take with on downriver.”
Gazing a moment at Hooks and Tuttle in the dark, Scratch sighed. “I s’pose if’n you boys trust me to see our horses through—”
“I trust you, Titus Bass,” Cooper interrupted, smiling with deep satisfaction. “Don’t you worry a bit about that, now. These here other two niggers know I’d damn well trust
Damn—but that was a lot of plew.
Titus Bass knelt there on the bank of the spring-swollen Yellowstone as he and Cooper tied off the last of the hundredweight packs in the center of their second of the two crude rafts.
“Now, don’t you dawdle none,” Bud reminded Scratch as Bass stood, straightened, and stretched a kink in his back.
Silas stood too, dusting his hands like a man would who’d just finished the difficult task at hand. “He’s right, Scratch. Soon as you get us pushed off here, get those horses strung out in a proper train and come on downriver.”
“I don’t ’spect I’ll run across you from here on down, will I?”
Cooper shook his head. “Likely be that we’ll cover at least twice as much ground as you will, riding herd on that cavvyyard.”
For a moment the four of them stared at the river in silence. How the Yellowstone had filled so that now it ran from bank to bank, flowing all the swifter, deeper too.
