against all the elements God or the devil himself could hurl at a puny, insignificantly few bold men … ah, but that was the heady stuff of living!
True freedom: to live or die by one’s own savvy and pluck.
Such was the nectar that lured these bees to the hive. Freedom was the sirens’ song that enticed this reckless breed of men to hurl their fates against the high and terrible places.
Despite the cold and the Blackfoot—despite the odds of sudden death.
After constructing two travois for Kinkead and Bass, the other seven trappers had reloaded their pack animals and pointed their noses south for the Owl Creek Mountains, driving the extra Blackfoot ponies along behind them. Scratch was the first to knit up after their ordeal.
Twice a day one of Hatcher’s men would make a poultice of beaver castoreum mixed with the pulverized roots or pulp of one plant or another, smearing the smelly concoction into the wounds troubling both men. It wasn’t long before Bass could move about camp without tiring out too quickly. But for the better part of two weeks he contented himself by remaining in camp with Kinkead when the others went out to trap—staying busy by fleshing the beaver hides, then stretching them on willow hoops, or untying the packs to dust the plews and check for infestation before rebundling them in their rawhide cords. Eventually the raw, red flesh around his wounds became new, pink skin that he could gently stretch more each day. Inside, however, he was knitting together much slower.
Nowhere near as slow as Kinkead.
For the longest time Matthew continued to cough up bright-red blood, later on bringing up dark, half- congealed phlegm. With as little as the man ate, over the following weeks the others began to notice the gradual change in their friend as his huge face thinned, accentuating the dark, liver-colored bags beneath his eyes.
“I wanna see Rosa,” Kinkead declared quietly one night as the rest joked and laughed around their nighttime fire, that simple plea coming right out of the blue.
The others fell silent immediately, some choosing to stare at their feet or the ground or the fire. Only Hatcher and Bass could look at the man still imprisoned on his travois.
“Natural for a man to wanna see his wife,” Jack consoled as he knelt beside Kinkead.
“W-wife?” Titus asked, surprised. “You married?”
Hatcher explained, “She’s a good woman.”
“She back east?”
Kinkead shook his head. “Taos. She’s a Mexican gal.”
“I’ll be go to hell,” Bass exclaimed. “What the devil you doing trapping beaver up here in the mountains when you got a wife waiting for you down in the Mexico settlements?”
“Don’t make sense no more, does it?” Matthew declared. “One time it did. Now—it don’t make sense to me no more. God, I ache in my bones I wanna see Rosa so bad.”
Scratch did not know what to say—struck dumb just watching the way Kinkead’s eyes filled with tears. “Man has him someone who loves him, someone he loves … I’d sure as hell feel same as you, Matthew—wanting my woman with me if I was healing up.”
Dragging a hand under his nose, Matthew’s voice cracked as he said, “I decided today …”
Hatcher asked, “Decided what?”
Kinkead couldn’t look at any of them. “Figger to quit the mountains.”
“Qu-quit the mountains?” bawled John Rowland.
Hatcher asked, “What ye gonna do if ye plan on staying back in Taos?”
“Rosa and me, we’ll be fine,” Kinkead protested. “I figger I’ll find something.”
“Where you gonna live?” Solomon inquired. “Where the two of you set up home?”
With a shrug Kinkead responded, “I stay with her at her papa’s house when I’m back in Taos. S’pose that’s what we’ll do till we find us some li’l place of our own.”
“Damn,” Caleb Wood sighed. “If that don’t take the circle! I can’t believe you’re quitting the mountains.”
“I’d do it this minute if I could get back down there,” Kinkead complained.
Hatcher explained, “We ain’t tramping that far south till fall hunt’s over.”
“All the way to Taos?” Bass inquired.
Suddenly Matthew’s tired face grew more animated as he turned toward Titus. “That’s prime doings! You’re gonna see Taos shines, Scratch! Purely shines!”
“We got us some more trapping to do afore spring is done,” Jack confided. “And then we’ll be making for ronnyvoo over at Sweet Lake. After that we was planning on moseying down to the Bayou Salade for the fall hunt afore climbing on over to Taos.”
“Where’s this Bayou Sa … Sa—”
“Salade,” Elbridge Gray recited. “Way south of here, Scratch. Not far from the Mexican country itself. Up on the headwaters of the Arkansas it be. Pretty place—and full of beaver too.”
Now Bass turned to Kinkead. “So, nigger … you’re married to this Mexican gal named Rosa.”
He watched how it made Matthew smile.
“Yep, a purty lady she is too.”
“But near as I can callate, you ain’t been back there in more’n a year already.”
Just that saying of it appeared to take some more starch “out of Kinkead. He stared down at himself, lying helpless in that travois. “Makes me hurt more, Scratch—thinking just how long it’ll be till I see her again. That’ll make it near two years by the time I hold her. We left Taos end of winter a year ago.”
“But you knowed we wasn’t going back till this winter,” Caleb said.
“I knowed …” And Matthew’s voice trailed off.
“It don’t matter if he knowed it was gonna be a long time when he left Taos,” Bass said firmly. “Things is different now. The man come close to going under to Blackfoots. Ain’t onreasonable to me for Matthew to be getting so homesick.”
Caleb turned back to the fire, grumbling, “Homesick ain’t no sick for a free man to have.”
“Can I get you anything, Matthew?” Bass asked. “You had enough to eat?”
“Ain’t got me much of a appetite no more,” he replied. “You’re coming with us to ronnyvoo, ain’cha, Scratch?”
“Planned on it.”
Hatcher turned around at the fire to ask, “Ye got plans for the fall hunt, Scratch?”
“Like to see me this Bayou Salade you boys talk of. Yeah, I figger I’d throw in with your bunch.”
“How ’bout Taos?” Kinkead asked, almost breathless with excitement. “You coming there with us when I get back home? Get to meet my Rosa!”
Bass dug his fingernails at his beard. “Taos for the winter, is it?”
Rufus hurrawed, “A man can’t do him no better for winter!”
“Senoreetas and lightnin’,” Hatcher chimed in. “A man can keep hisself real warm down in Taos come winter!”
Titus asked, “Lightnin’?”
“Mexican drink they make down there to the Taos valley,” Caleb Wood explained. “Take the top of your head off like a tomahawk.”
“That ain’t no bald-face lie neither,” Hatcher declared. “So, ye figger to stay on with our bunch till next spring?”
“Winter in Taos?” Bass repeated. “From the sounds of it—a man’d be plumb filled with stupids if’n he passed up the chance to ride into Mexico with this outfit!”
3
“They ain’t gone and pulled out on us awready—are they, Jack?” whined John Rowland.
“I dunno, boys.” Hatcher shook his head in consternation. “That down there’s s’posed to be the place—right where we come together last year.”
“Where the blazes is our ronnyvoo?” Isaac Simms growled as he shaded his eyes and squinted into the
