Then he wet his lips with the tip of his tongue and whistled. The same sort of whistle he had used to call their old hound, Tink, in from the timber at the family’s farm, or back to his side when they’d been out hunting together. Not the boatman’s song he had been whistling slightly out of tune—but the sort of notes a man would string together to bring an animal …
By gloree! She raised her big jug-head, perked up her ears, and promptly headed his way without the least hesitation.
What with the way she was coming right over, Scratch felt he should give her a reward … but as he stood, Bass realized he had nothing to give the mule. When she stopped before him there by the ruins, he swiftly bent and tore up a handful of the long porcupine grass and held it out in an open palm.
Hannah sniffed it, nuzzled it a moment with the end of her nose, then snorted—blowing the grass stems off his palm so she could rub her nose on his hand. As he stood there in surprise, the mule craned her neck so she could work her head back and forth beneath his hand the way she might scratch herself on a branch of convenient height. Yet … he saw this as something different.
She was wanting something more than just a soothing scratch. She was wanting his touch.
As Bass cooed to her, he rubbed her ears and forelocks and muzzle the way he knew she enjoyed it. At times she would rock her head over against his shoulder, lay it momentarily against his chest, then cock one of her dark, round eyes up at him—as if studying the man very, very closely. This man she was coming to know, this man she was learning to give her affection to.
“We best get moving off for the night,” he finally said some time later when he again became aware of just how little light was left in that late-spring sky.
As long as the days were lasting at this time of the year, he wasn’t all that sure if it might not be the first part of summer already. And now he had the prospect of losing another week or more in backtracking on his trail here to assure himself he hadn’t missed any evidence that disaster or ambush had befallen the trio on their trip downriver.
After climbing atop the saddle mount, he led Hannah around and through the rest of the stock as they grazed contentedly in the bluestem, pushing aside the thistles’ purple globes. It took a third trip through, with his growing a bit frustrated and slapping a rawhide braided lariat against his leg, grumbling at them all to get the herd moving. Reluctant were they to leave when it seemed they had just begun to settle in for the night.
He did not end up taking them far at all—less than a couple of miles on east of the post ruins, he noticed a spot along the bank where the bulrushes and spear-leafed cattails naturally parted wide enough to allow a man to water his stock come morning. Twisting in the saddle, Scratch looked back toward the ruins in the distance, calculating just how far he had come, then glanced at the sky, still a much paler hue in the west.
Settling himself back around, he figured that he hadn’t come far enough to elude any horsemen who might be watching, needed to push on a little farther—when he spotted the large circle of trampled grass there among the overhanging branches of the tall and stately cottonwoods. Near the center of the trampled grass sat a blackened circle. Several charred limbs lay within the pile of ash. No ring of rocks had they used to circle their fire, nor had they dug a pit for it. Nothing more elaborate than gathering up their kindling and starting their fire then and there with flint and steel.
Quickly yanking both feet out of the broad stirrups and kicking his right leg over the saddle horn, Scratch dropped to the grass and hurried alone to the site. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the large circle some forty feet across, studied it for a moment more—then lunged ahead to the circle of ash. Squatting there, he held a hand no more than a breath over the charred limbs. No heat.
Now he stuffed his fingertips into the ash. Still no heat. Swirling his fingers around m the fire heap, he could find no telltale warmth of a single coal still glowing deep among the ash.
His nose helped him locate the bone heap nearby where they had butchered the doe—cutting out the steaks and hams and other juicy morsels without dismembering the carcass. They would have eaten their fill for supper, breakfasted on what had been cooked and left over the night before, then taken the rest with them when they’d pushed off.
Standing abruptly, he scooted over to that wide parting in the bulrushes and cattails. There at the bank where the foxsedge grew he saw their moccasin prints. Saw where they had scraped the ends of the crude rafts, carving scars into the muddy bank. Found the rope burns where they had lashed the two craft on up the bank, tying them off around a pair of cottonwood. Through their single night at this spot, the long ropes had brushed back and forth across the bank’s vegetation as the rafts had bobbed here in the quiet eddy of the Yellowstone’s current.
Back near the fire he could see where they had bedded down, those grassy places near the fire more flattened than the rest of the bluestem and porcupine grass that was barely beginning to recover. Where the trio had laid out their bedding and blankets for the night—the grass was broken, discolored, and entirely crushed.
From all the sign he could make out in the failing light as summer night surrounded him, Scratch reassured himself they had been there. At least they had come this far—and, like him, had discovered the post to be abandoned, burned, and fallen to ruins. If there had been at least the shell of a cabin left standing, then they likely would have pulled over then and there, spending the night within the shelter of the log stockade, he decided. But instead the three of them had seen no walls rising on that narrow thumb of high ground, and therefore had no reason to stop where they said they would leave him word of their passing.
He stood, anxious, looking this way and that.
So why wouldn’t they leave him some sign—a scrap of old canvas with their marks on it—hanging here? If not at the post site, then why not here? Had they forgotten? he wondered. Or, as he slid closer to fearing, was it just a case of not giving a damn about what they had promised him?
And if they cared so little about the promise of leaving him a message at the mouth of the Bighorn River … then … then could the three have come to care nothing about the other promises made him?
Finally he wagged his head, steadfastly refusing again to take this as evidence of the worst. Better to keep on believing the best. Billy was a simpleminded man, but good enough at heart. And Tuttle was smarter than Hooks, so he’d remember what they’d promised Titus Bass. So it really didn’t matter what he might fear at the core of him about Silas Cooper … because Scratch believed that come hell or high water, in the end Cooper would do exactly as he had promised: trade their furs and return for another winter season in the mountains, and another after that, and another after …
Scratch believed in that strongly because of what he knew he meant to Silas Cooper. There was no two ways of Sunday about it: Titus Bass was the best trapper of the four of them. And as long as Silas was getting his healthy cut of Scratch’s catch, then Cooper would do everything to protect his best trapper.
Wasn’t no way in hell Silas would break his bond with Bass, not by a long chalk!
Sighing, Scratch looked about again as the light faded. He decided he would sleep here and turned back to the saddle horse and Hannah. After securing them for the night near his bed, Titus stretched out and gazed up at the black dome flecked with a wide trail of dusty stars. Wondering if the three of them were looking up at much the same sky right then too.
At least they’d come this far. So chances were good they’d make it from here on down to that Mandan post just above the mouth of the Knife River. Silas, Bud, and Billy had come this far, he reminded himself … and that was good enough to convince Scratch that they would likely make it the rest of the way. Without accident, without attack.
Far, far better was it for him to believe in that—than to go on nursing doubt any longer. Better to hang his hope on the fact they’d been right here, ate and camped and slept right here on this ground … better to hope than allow any misgivings to creep in and ambush him. Always better to trust in someone than to let doubt and uncertainty nibble away at the faith he wanted to have in the three.
Best that he protect what kernel of loyalty remained than to allow something to fester inside him … no matter what.
No matter how long it took.
High summer was daily baking the central Rockies the way his mother had baked her double-sweetened corn bread in the Dutch oven in their river-rock fireplace, scooping hot coals onto the top of the cast-iron kettle.
In the heat he tried now to remember the fragrance of that rising bread, the surface of the cornmeal turning golden. But Titus could not remember.
Instead he rubbed his nose, finding it caked and crusted again with the dry dust of this open, unforgiving
