He’d follow the sonsabitches all winter if he had to.
One thing was for certain: their village couldn’t be all that far away.
And … they were cocky bastards too. They didn’t even give a red piss that they were leaving a good trail for him to follow.
After all, they were on horseback. And they had left him afoot.
Alone, and on foot here as winter deepened its bone-numbing cold, and the horizon far to the west threatened to snow in another day or so.
Whoever they were, the red niggers had stolen in to make off with Hannah and the horses a few hours back. In those last seconds Bass heard them whooping as they swept down on the animals, as he was thrashing his way out of his blankets and robes, grabbing his weapons, and sprinting toward the patch of grass where he had picketed the critters.
Beneath the silvery light of that half-moon he made out four riders, then a fifth as they loped away, driving his three animals ahead of them—still whooping, all flushed with their success.
“Five of ’em, against one stupid, bonehead nigger!” he had grumbled while he watched the dark shadows bob as they faded across the snow, ultimately swallowed by that black of the distant hills themselves.
“Goddamned Blackfoot!”
His heart pounded. And he damn near felt close to tears, ready to bawl in frustration and rage. That hot adrenaline squirting into his veins was no longer enough to keep him warm as he stood there in the snow up past his ankles, the wind cutting at him as it weaved through the trees where he had made his last camp before he would reach the cache sometime around midday tomorrow.
“Hannah!” he suddenly shouted into the darkness, despairing he would lose her.
Only when he could no longer hear the hoofbeats on the hard, frozen ground did he finally think to breathe again. Staring at the half-moon still hanging about three hands over the western ridge, his eyes slowly descended onto the widening vee of trampled snow as the thieves’ trail emerged from the distance.
Just like some roving bunch of Blackfoot. Cocky bastards that they were.
But he swore he’d have ’em—their scalps and their balls too—if it took all winter. If it took all goddamned winter.
Turning on his heel, Scratch lunged back to camp on cold, wood legs. There he knelt at the coals of last night’s fire and laid a few dry limbs upon the ashes. Bending low, he pulled the coyote-fur cap from his head and blew on the dim spots of crimson among the gray. They soon leaped to life, capturing the limbs, licking hungrily along the dry branches.
He rocked back on his haunches and grabbed the old coffee kettle, shaking it. Still enough left in it to reheat, so he set the kettle right against the rekindled flames. Rubbing his hands over the fire, he realized he had but two choices. He could stay here where he would be guaranteed of warmth and commiserate with himself over the loss of his animals, willing to wait until he figured out how to come up with some more animals—which meant he was willing to let the red niggers get away with what was his.
Or he could start moving now: here in the dark, hiding his plunder and furs from roaming eyes, then set off on that trail the thieves left behind.
The gall of it burned in his belly like a twelve-hour coal. They loped off, knowing they had put him afoot, and thinking that he wasn’t about to follow them since he was at a decided disadvantage—either because he was one against a half dozen, or because he was on foot and they were covering ground much faster on horseback.
Dammit! He may well be one against that handful of red thieves, but it didn’t make no never-mind to him that he was on foot against horsemen.
Bass decided they wouldn’t figure a lone white man to be coming after them … so that arrogance just might work in his favor.
From the looks of the moon hanging above those southwestern ridges, he calculated that he might have as much as two more hours before it was light enough to take off after them.
Not that he couldn’t go now, racing off into the snow-covered night. But he was damned suspicious one of the thieves, maybe even two of them, might turn back in the dark, hiding somewhere along the trail left by the others, watching for any possible pursuit from the lone trapper.
Better was it for him to wait until there was sufficient light to see far enough ahead along the thieves’ backtrail.
Besides, he had him plenty to do until the gray of predawn came sliding over the bluffs to hail its first greeting to the Yellowstone valley.
After warming his hands over the flames a moment more, Titus snatched up his small camp ax and turned toward the tall willow clustered along the riverbank. Wouldn’t be long before he’d have a sweat worked up, cutting enough branches to hide his plunder and plews.
More than two weeks ago he had turned south from the Judith basin as the weather grew unbearably miserable. No longer was winter merely dallying with the northern plains. Deep cold left in the wake of a hellish storm descended so quickly upon this country that it left a man no doubt that autumn was long done with. Bass had pushed his luck about as far as any savvy man might, lingering that far north along the Missouri River country, trapping past the time when lesser men might have turned tail and run.
But, damn—weren’t the plews fine!
Big, fat beaver, the sort what wore pelts so large the mountain man called them blankets. And thick? Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat—but they were seal fat and sleek! It was damn near the finest trapping Titus Bass had ever done in the weeks he tarried past the falling of the leaves, the freezing of the smaller creeks and streams, lingering past the first icy glazing to the surface of the Judith and even the mighty Upper Missouri itself.
Battling his way south, back up the Judith until it reached the foothills, he struggled on through the narrow breach between two mountain ranges, eventually crossing the low divide to drop into the valley of the Mussellshell. Scratch plodded south by east only as long as the animals’ strength held up each day, slowly making for his cache on the north bank of the Yellowstone. When he could tell they were close to being all but done in, Titus would be forced to find them someplace to camp where a small patch of grass had been blown clear. If he wasn’t that lucky, Bass would spend the last hour of light each afternoon chopping cottonwood he would peel before throwing the limbs onto his fire. Though it wasn’t the best of fodder for the animals—it had to be better than some of the withered, wind-dried grasses the stock had been forced to eat as the seasons quickly turned against man and beast in this icy land.
This was to have been his last camp before reaching the cache. One last sleep before he would spend a day or so reopening the hole, laying in his high Missouri pelts with what he had already stashed away of the catch from earlier in the autumn. In addition, he had planned to stow away what he knew he wouldn’t need until late in the winter—like the extra weight of his traps, both American and Mexican made—when the streams and creeks and rivers began to open. And before he resealed the cache, he figured he should pull out a little of this and a little of that from his Taos and rendezvous goods: gifts of foofaraw and geegaws for the Crow.
This one last camp before …
After he had slogged back to his plunder with that first armload of brush, Scratch took a few minutes to pull his hands from his blanket mittens and warm them over the fire before turning to the business of dragging the bundles back into the willow near a small stand of cottonwood saplings. Retying each pack, Titus made sure every square inch was covered by the oiled Russian sheeting. Then he dragged up the first of the brush he had cut, working carefully to stuff the limbs down into the ropes on the top and all four sides.
A second trip added more brush to his cover. A third, fourth, and finally a fifth time he trudged down to the riverbank to chop more limbs. By the time the sky to the east turned as red as that afterbirth expelled by a buffalo cow dropping a calf, he stood back and was satisfied he had concealed what he owned.
Now he had to go after the rest of what little he had in this world.
Stuffing his hands back into the mittens after rubbing his flesh over the fire, Bass laid his two buffalo robes one on top of the other. After folding his two blankets, he placed them inside the robes before turning in the edges of the furry hides. With a bundle more than two feet thick, Scratch took the last long braid of rawhide rope and lashed it all together into a pack some four feet long and nearly as wide.
Rising from the cold, blue snow just beginning to turn a pale pink presaging the sun’s arrival, he hurriedly chopped down three of the strongest cottonwood saplings and trimmed them of branches and knots. Crossing one of the long, thin saplings over another, he tied the two together with some short sections of hemp rope. After
