“Seems there’d be Nepercy and some Flathead over yonder,” Sublette explained. “Those Injuns a little friendlier than the folks up there in Blackfoot country.”
“Where you bound for this winter?” Fitzpatrick asked.
“Crow land,” he had said. “Rotten Belly’s band. Not till the creeks is froze.”
Early the following morning a few of the young, green hands who had come up from Taos with Fitzpatrick had thought to have themselves a bit of fun ribbing Bass and Fraeb about being too old to muster the mountains.
“Lookit them ol’ gray-heads, will you?” one had roared as Scratch had tightened the last of the ropes on Hannah’s packs.
“Lucky Ol’ Frapp’s got us along to take keer of him when times get lean or we run onto some Injuns!” a second cried, eliciting more wild laughter that Fraeb and Bass did their best to ignore.
But the third made the mistake of saying, “Lookee there! What ’bout that other’n we run onto yestiddy? Looks to be this man’s fixing to ride off on his own like some crazy ol’ coot what wouldn’t know no better.”
Titus had slowly turned on the three young tormentors. “You young pups figger me for old?”
At which the trio of greenhorns had busted out with so much guffawing that he was sure they liked to bust a belly seam.
“Listen to this ol’ bastard!”
“Not so old I can’t pin your ears up a’hint your ass, son,” he growled, slowly pulling his pistol from his belt to stuff it under one of the pack ropes.
“Watch out, now!” one of the trio cried in laughter.
“We better not move too fast for ’im!”
The third shouted, “What the hell’s one ol’ man gonna do against the three of us?”
And that hired hand got to laughing so hard that he fell right over and rolled on the cold ground. Titus figured he had taken about all he was going to take—even if these were Bridger’s men.
Lunging for the one laughing uncontrollably and rolling on the ground beside the fire, Scratch seized the young man at the collar and by the belt, and with that strength most often stoked by the fires of anger, he hurled the greenhorn off the ground and flung him into the other two. With arms and legs flailing, the young man went crashing into the first greenhorn, but the second and larger of the pair managed to sidestep and immediately rushed for Bass, both thick arms swinging with wild, windmill haymakers.
Scratch ducked to the side, tripping the young man as he rushed by, sending him sprawling onto his belly. Whirling about, Bass landed on the man’s back, knocking off his hat and yanking back on the greasy hair with his left hand at the same time he was pulling his knife from its scabbard with his right. He pressed the blade against the taut, outstretched neck just hard enough that a little blood began to bead along the razor-sharp metal.
“Scratch … Scratch,” Bridger cooed the moment he reached the scene.
“Get this crazy ol’ man off me, Bridger!”
A few yards away the other two tormentors were bellowing and bawling like newborn calves until Fraeb told them to shut up.
Calmly, Scratch said, “I figger to show this brassy young’un how a old man whips a ignernt greenhorn, Jim.”
Bridger replied, “Shame of it is, Bass—we need ever’ man we got. Now that American Fur’s come to the mountains—”
“Even this’un what don’t know his own asshole from a badger den?”
“Maybeso we can teach this’un something afore he gets his hair raised,” Sublette said as he came up, doing his best to stifle a laugh.
“Cut ’im, I say,” Fraeb grumped. “The young nigger’s got it coming, boys. He was rawhiding me and Bass here.”
And Scratch added, “Said we was too old for the mountains—”
“You ain’t! You ain’t too old!” the greenhorn whimpered there beneath the veteran mountain man.
“Damn well knocked all three down, did you?” Bridger asked as he stroked his beard.
“I did, Jim. But I was fixing to kill only one of ’em.”
Bridger walked over slowly, thoughtfully cupping his chin in one hand as he stared down at the greenhorn. “Being old back east where you come from is one thing, mister.”
“Y-yes,” the man whined plaintively with wide, frightened eyes as Bass tugged back on his hair again, exposing more of the young man’s white flesh and maintaining the blade’s pressure against the neck.
Then the booshway knelt at the young man’s head. “Don’t look to be you got far to go till you kill ’im quick, Bass,” Bridger said, peering at the knife first this way, then that. “Where you got it now, you’ll cut right through his windpipe slick as crap through a goose if I know how sharp you keep your knives.”
“It’s sharp, Jim. Damned sharp.”
By now the greenhorn sobbed. “P-please, Bridger.”
The booshway gazed down at the newcomer to the mountains. “Are you paying attention to what this here cast-iron mountain nigger’s teaching you?”
“I’m t-trying!”
“Like I said—being a old man back east is one thing, son,” Jim said as he stood slowly and rubbed his knees. “But any old man you run onto out here got him the hair of the bear in him. There’s a damned good reason he’s got old out here in these mountains while a lot of li’l young shits like you gone under and got themselves rubbed out.”
Sublette said, “You ever again run onto a man old as Titus Bass here—you best figger that son of a bitch has managed to live all those years out west cause he’s tough enough to take all what the mountains can throw at him.”
For a moment the greenhorn’s eyes rolled back toward Scratch. “Yes, sir, Mr. Titus Bass, sir.”
Scratch wobbled the knife blade back and forth a little more against the flesh of the neck. “You got something to say to me, son?”
“I-I … I’m sorry I talked bad ’bout you being old—”
With such swiftness that it startled the youth, Bass pulled the knife away, releasing the youngster’s hair so suddenly that his chin smacked the ground. Scratch stood, taking his knee from the middle of the young man’s back.
Slowly rolling onto his hip and rising onto his knees, the greenhorn rubbed his neck with his hand, then held that hand out before him to stare at the blood on his palm.
“You damn well could’ve killed me!”
“I was fixin’ on it—but you pulled your own hash from the fire.”
Looking up at Bridger, the youngster gasped, “Awright. I figger I didn’t have no room to be talking like that to this fella—”
“Like I told you: one thing you’re gonna learn out here,” Bridger explained as he pulled on his woolen mittens, “if you don’t know who you’re talking to, or you don’t know what the devil you’re talking about … you bloody well better keep your goddamned mouth shut and your ears open.”
“Otherwise,” Milt Sublette added, “your scalp might soon be hanging on some red nigger’s lodgepole.”
With a snort Henry Fraeb growled, “Or better yet—your hair be hanging from some ol’ man’s belt!”
Spring had mellowed as Bass wandered south, hankering to have himself another look at Park Kyack. Maybeso to run onto that band of Ute after all these years. See if Fawn had found herself a man.
Lord, but that was a good woman what deserved a decent man to see after her.
But he hadn’t found the Ute, hadn’t run across any bands of Shoshone either when he turned around and headed back north toward that country where the Crow roamed. Horse thieves that they were, in the end they had always done right by him.
Climbing across the foothills of the Wind River range late that spring, he had fashioned a hat out of the fur of a kit beaver caught in one of his traps down on the Popo Agie. Nowhere big enough to warrant a man’s trading it at the coming rendezvous planned for Pierre’s Hole, Scratch dug out the sinew he kept among his possibles and made himself a respectable replacement for the rubbed and worn coyote-skin cap that had seen him through many a winter.
By the time he found himself at the southern end of the Wind Rivers, turning west to make for the far side of the Tetons, Titus had attracted a trio of troublesome coyotes who followed him whenever he left camp to see to his
