“She’s running good, Silas,” Billy declared.
The leader said, “Fast enough—and still coming up too. We’ll likely make better time’n we figgered a wready.”
“I can almost taste some sweet rum,” Billy said, rubbing a hand across his belly like a hungry child.
Bass stepped up to that grinning, fun-loving, childlike man. “You best pack some back for me, Billy Hooks.”
“I will. I will most certain!”
“And we ain’t gonna be paying no stiff-necked trader’s prices for nothing too,” Tuttle reminded. “Not no plew for a plug of burley tobacco—that’s for certain sure.”
“This here’s gonna work out best all around,” Bass assured as he stepped off the raft and onto the sloping bank where the water lapped at his moccasins. “Silas here come up with the way for us to get top dollar for them skins.”
One last time he studied those packs of dark, glossy beaver pelts lashed onto the unpeeled cottonwood saplings. At each end of the craft was tied a partially dug-out cottonwood log. While the two rafts represented close to a week’s work for the four men, this second of the two craft had aboard it more beaver than any of the other men had trapped since last summer … more beaver than Billy and Bud put together. Tied down to that second raft were the fruits of his labors for the better part of a year.
“Grab your rifles, fellas,” Cooper ordered, anxious to set off.
The other two turned away as Silas flung aboard the two rafts the long poles they had cut and trimmed. While Hooks and Tuttle would man that first, Silas himself would be alone with Scratch’s many bales of beaver on the second. That way Cooper had promised to personally watch over that small fortune in plew.
“You come on down and have a drink with us at the Bighorn, you hear?” Billy said, holding out his big hand to Titus. Dirt, smoke, grease, and blood were caked in the folds of every knuckle, in a pair of dark crescents beneath the nails, and at the cuticles of every finger.
Tuttle stepped up next, giving his hand to Bass. “If’n we ain’t there, we had to push on.”
Nodding, Scratch replied, “Means I’ll have to turn south my own self, don’t it?”
“If’n the Missouri Fur boys don’t still have their post at the Bighorn, we’ll hurry on to Mandan country,” Cooper repeated as he stepped up, then dropped to the damp ground below them, took out his knife, and redrew the map he’d drawn for Titus a dozen times since crossing back over the mountains to strike the Yellowstone.
“That there’s the Missoura,” Billy said as Cooper scratched a long, meandering line in the damp soil where they had packed the ground underfoot for days now.
“An’ here’s the Yallerstone,” Cooper said as he drew with the tip of his knife blade. “The Bighorn comes in here.”
Titus squatted on the other side of the crude map. “From the south, yeah—I remember.”
With the knife’s tip at that juncture, Cooper said, “We ain’t there, and there ain’t no fort or traders still there—we gone on down to the Missoura.”
Head bobbing, Billy added, “And Mandan country.”
“That’s ’bout over here,” Silas said, jabbing at the ground on that Missouri River line.
Scratch nodded. “When you boys get there and trade off them plews of ours—show me again how you fix on coming back.”
“Ain’t along the river like we floated down,” Tuttle reiterated.
“No,” Cooper explained, then started dragging the knife blade from the Upper Missouri on a southwesterly beeline. “What I figger to do is buy us some horses—come cross the country, Scratch. Maybeso take us a few weeks, but you can figger on joining up down here.”
“Where for sure?”
Holding the knife upright and twisting the tip into the ground, Silas explained, “I figger the best place for us to meet up is here.”
“You figger that’s on over that low pass, off torst the west of Turtle Rock?”*
“On over from the Sweetwater,” Cooper agreed, tapping his knife even farther to the southwest. “On past that Popo Agia stream the Crow talk of.”
Tapping his own index finger into that dirt map, Scratch said, “If ronnyvoo gonna be here—you figger me to meet you up here … somewhere east of the Uintees?”
Cooper smiled. “That’s the place where we’ll see y’—on down in that Green River country.”
“Where General Ashley had him his first ronnyvoo back to twenty-five?” Tuttle inquired.
Glancing at Bud, Cooper answered, “On down from Henry’s Fork. There’s a good park down there. A high valley, Scratch. Good grazing for all them animals. We’ll meet y’ there with our trade goods and our drinking money.”
Billy slapped his hands together loudly. “Ready for a spree at Sweet Lake ronnyvoo!”
As Cooper stood, he said, “We won’t be far from ronnyvoo there, Scratch.”
“Women and whiskey—right, Titus?” Tuttle said, enthused.
“Damn shame you boys’ll have a head start on me,” Scratch replied, making the most of what he felt at their leave-taking.
“You just remember: ain’t but one man I trust to stay behind with my critters,” Cooper said, gazing steadily into Bass’s eyes. “Only one man I figger won’t let ’em get run off by red niggers ’tween now and the time we join back up.”
Titus nodded solemnly. “I won’t let you down.”
Silas presented his big paw as he looked down at the shorter man. “I never thought you would, Titus Bass. Not from the first days I laid eyes on you. Allays figgered you was a man to count on doin’ ever’thing you could to live up to my trust in you, saving your hide the way I done more’n once.”
Bass took a step back as he let go of Cooper’s hand. “Time’s come for me to watch out for my own hide, ain’t it?”
Smiling, Cooper said, “That’s for certain sure, Scratch. Keep your eye on the skyline.”
Titus watched Billy and Bud wade over to the first raft with a splash, untie it, and step on board. “Yep—and you boys watch your hair!”
“Best you keep your nose in the wind, Titus Bass,” Billy called out as he squatted down among the bales of beaver and took up the long rudder pole he planted down in the fork of a stout branch lashed to the back of the raft.
“I’ll do that, Billy Hooks!” he called out.
Tuttle took up the long pole and pushed the first big raft away from the shore, poling toward the faster water in midchannel. “We’ll have us a good, long drink together real soon, Scratch!”
“I’ll count on that, Bud,” he called back, raising his hand to the pair as their craft was nudged by faster water.
Cooper slipped his big hat off his head and plopped it down on top of those beaver packs Bass had worked so hard to pull out of the icy mountain streams. Taking up his long pole with one hand, Silas gathered some of his stringy, unkempt hair in the other, tugging on it as he sang out.
“Keep your hair locked on tight, Titus Bass!”
“Don’t you worry none about me!” Scratch sang back in reply as he started to trot downstream along the grassy bank, watching Cooper’s raft ease into the fast water now, beginning to pull away all the faster. “I’ll watch my topknot!”
Then Cooper had his back turned and had his long pole reversed, putting the flat paddle end down into the water and the pole itself to rest in the Y-shaped branch they had lashed at the back of the raft. With it he would keep the craft at midriver where the spring runoff ran deepest.
Glancing downstream, Bass saw the first raft, made out the dim shape of those big bales of fur, and the pair of tiny figures on board—one of them working the crude rudder as the Yellowstone hurried them east toward that Missouri Fur Company post near the mouth of the Bighorn. Then they were swept around a gentle bend in the river and gone from sight.
He turned back to watch Cooper glide by at a fast clip, watching, watching, watching until the tall, thick- shouldered man was gone around that curve in the Yellowstone too. Then Titus stared at that spot in the river, those tall cottonwoods sixty, seventy feet or taller … as things grew quiet save for the nearby animals cropping at
