Hatcher’s taut belly.
“You’ll camp with us?” Solomon Fish pleaded as the rest came up in turn to give Bass a hearty embrace.
“Ain’t no other place I’d rather spread my robes,” Scratch declared, basking in the glow of these friends.
Rufus Graham looked up at McAfferty. “You getting down off that horse, Asa? Or maybeso you don’t figger to camp with your partner here.”
For a fleeting moment Titus glanced at McAfferty. He explained, “Asa and me—well, we reckon to go our own ways for the fall hunt.”
“I’ll be go to hell!” Caleb exclaimed.
Hatcher himself said, “That news s’prises me.”
“Don’t s’prise me none,” Elbridge grumped. “Asa allays been one to go off on his own. Ain’cha, McAfferty?”
Instead of answering, Asa rocked out of the saddle and came to the ground, busying himself with throwing up a stirrup and loosening the cinch.
Hatcher studied Scratch’s face a moment, as if he might divine some clue thereupon. Eventually Jack said, “Asa ain’t never reckoned on pulling away on his own this quick, boys.” He grinned disarmingly as he turned to McAfferty. “Something really must trouble ye ’bout riding with Titus Bass.”
Only then did Asa slowly step around the horse. “Any man be proud to ride with Mr. Bass.”
“Awright,” Hatcher said with a little disgust at not learning what he wanted to know. “Which one of ye niggers is gonna dust off the truth and spit it right out—”
“The two of us,” Titus interrupted, “we had us a couple bad scrapes, Jack.” He glanced over at McAfferty, seeing the appreciation shine in the white-head’s eyes. “Nothing more’n some Injuns tracking us down on the Heely. Then a few Mex soldiers jumped us in a whorehouse when we rode back in to Taos.”
“Any soldiers we know?” Graham inquired with a grin.
“That sergeant what they made a lieutenant.”
Hatcher asked, “Ye get in yer licks afore ye was run out of town, fellas?”
“I kill’t him,” McAfferty admitted flatly.
Caleb whistled low, and Rufus asked, “Ramirez?”
“That’s the truth,” Scratch added. “Him and a bunch of ’em … well, I don’t figger I can head back down to Taos for a few winters.”
“Lordee!” Caleb hooted gustily. “That Mex nigger had it coming!”
“Sounds to me like ye boys got tales to weave and stories to tell round our campfire tonight!” Jack howled. Then he whirled on McAfferty. “So ye gonna throw yer bed robes down with this bunch of bad mothers’ sons?”
Asa looked over at Bass for a heartbeat, then gazed at Hatcher. “Yep, Jack. I’ll camp with my partner, Mr. Bass—right on through till it’s time for us to go our own trails for the fall hunt.”
“He says the Lord’s steering him for the north country,” Bass explained to Hatcher, Wood, and Graham a few days later. “Keeps talking ’bout the Three Forks.”
“Shit,” Jack said, wagging his head. “It ain’t like McAfferty don’t know that’s smack-dab in Blackfoot country.”
“Why would a man up and decide to go there on his own?” Graham asked.
“Sounds to me like a sure way to lose his hair,” Caleb grumbled. “So purty, long, and white—the nigger won’t have it for long he goes up there.”
“There’s a hunnert ways for a man to die in Blackfoot country,” Rufus added grimly.
“I don’t figger he’s worried a nit ’bout Blackfoots,” Bass declared. “Fact is, he wants to run onto ’em.”
Hatcher shook his head, bewildered. “Man’s crazy what goes riding off to the Three Forks and he ain’t worried ’bout Blackfoot raising his hair.”
Nodding slightly, Scratch stated, “Could be you’re not far off the mark there, Jack.”
“Trapping’s real good up there,” Rufus admitted. “But a man’d have to be soft-brained to want that beaver so bad that he’ll risk his hide to get it when there’s plenty ’nough beaver other places.”
“With what I can make out from all he’s said to me—it ain’t for trapping that he’s headed to Blackfoot country, fellas,” Bass said, watching how his declaration brought the others up short with a morbid curiosity.
Jack demanded, “What the hell for, then, if it ain’t for the beaver?”
“I can’t say right now,” he admitted. “I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s got something to do with that Ree medicine man and the bear what jumped me and them evil hoo-doos been following McAfferty last few years.”
With a snort Hatcher said, “I thort Asa had him his Bible to keep off all them evil spirits!”
Dragging the coffeepot toward him to refill his cup that morning, Scratch replied, “You may damn well just put your finger on it, Jack. Asa McAfferty might be coming to think the power of his Bible ain’t near as strong as the evil spirits in these here mountains. Maybeso—not near as strong as that ol’ medicine man’s evil powers.”
Hatcher asked, “Evil for evil, is it?”
“When good ain’t strong enough to protect him,” Bass sighed, “I figure a man will just twist the evil around any way he can.”
On his way west with those wagons, carriages, and cattle, William Sublette’s eighty-one new hands had to kill and eat no more than eight of his small beef herd before they reached buffalo country, supplying them with the meat that would see them on through to the Wind River Rendezvous. Those fourscore greenhorns were immediately set upon by the hordes of veterans hungry for news from the States as the trader opened his mail pouches and cut through the twine tying up bundles of old newspapers. Then Sublette got down to cracking open his kegs of grain alcohol, sugared Monongahela rum, along with heavy bales of blankets, boxes of beads, tacks, and ribbon, as well as hundredweight barrels of sugar and coffee.
It had been enough to make a man’s eyes bug right out of his head, Hatcher told Scratch. Why, with each of those ten high-walled, canvas-topped wagons weighed down with more than eighteen hundred pounds of supplies apiece, all of it valued at some thirty thousand dollars—trader Billy had reached that sixth annual rendezvous with more staples and geegaws to hanker after than any man had ever seen in the mountains!
And there had even been enough left among the “necessaries” for Titus Bass to outfit himself for what was to be the first winter on his own.
A pair of black-striped Indian trade blankets—one red and the other green—went for twenty-five dollars in fur. Coffee and sugar, some salt and a little flour, along with a carefully calculated amount of St. Louis shot-tower bar lead and more of the black coarse-grained English powder.
“Most everything’s been picked over,” apologized a bulb-nosed, weasel-eyed clerk with a warm smile as he placed the items Bass was selecting in a large square wicker basket. “You been waiting to come trade off them furs of yours?”
“Nawww. I happed to come in late for ronnyvoo this year.”
“Sounds like you rode in from far off.”
“North,” he explained as he brought up a handful of the long-spiked brass-headed tacks he could use for repairs, or for decoration on knife scabbard or riflestock. “Been up near the Englishers’ land.”
“That’s a ways for a man to travel for supplies,” the clerk marveled, flashing that genuine smile.
“Ain’t so far,” Scratch explained. “Not when there ain’t but one place for a man to outfit hisself for the coming year. And that be right here.”
The clerk pulled back on his leather braces self-importantly. “This here’s my second trip west with Mr. Sublette.”
Bass looked up from the trays before him, laying a half-dozen hanks of large Crow beads in the clerk’s basket. “Sublette gonna be back next ronnyvoo?”
“Most certainly,” the man replied. “Just because the old company sold out to a new one, Mr. Sublette still has the contract to supply their summer fair. He says as long as he can make a profit for himself and his investors, he’ll be buying up goods each winter and starting out west from St. Louis each spring—just as soon as the prairie’s dry enough for the wagons.”
“Wagons,” Scratch repeated with a snarl, glancing up at those two nearby carriages that came and went almost steadily with company men and free trappers taking themselves rides in the fancy conveyances, roaring with laughter and giddy with the silliness of such vehicles making it all the way to the Rocky—by God—Mountains! “Prefer a good mule my own self.”
“Mr. Sublette says he can get more in a wagon for his money,” the clerk admitted.
