“That ain’t the least of it, I’d wager,” Jack replied, nodding at the rest of Bass’s gear.
“Damn,” Scratch groaned as he turned to follow Hatcher’s eyes, discovering the mauled tatters of his buffalo-rawhide lariat, the scattered remnants of bridle, hackamore, and cinch, and even the remains of a leather- bound gourd canteen, all of it chewed into hardly recognizable shreds.
“More’n one of ’em done this, Jack!” Isaac Simms called out.
“Likely so,” Hatcher echoed. “They come in here in a pack.”
Titus shook his head as he stared at the firelit debris. “Wolves dare come this close to a man?”
“Hell,” Caleb growled, “likely was a pack don’t know enough to fear a two-legged man yet, Scratch.”
“Cale’s right,” Simms added. “Most wolf packs ain’t had enough run-ins with men to be scar’t off from us.”
“Chances be this pack hasn’t run across any big guns neither,” Hatcher explained.
“So them damned dogs just come waltzin’ in here?” Bass whined. “While’st we was off for supper?”
Rowland roared with laughter, slapping a knee. “And the critters had ’em their supper on your outfit!”
“Lookit all they chewed, Jack,” Simms clucked, wagging his head sympathetically.
“Bass ain’t got him near nothing left what don’t need some fixin’,” Rufus Graham declared.
“In a bad way too,” Titus grumped as he sat there in the midst of what debris remained of his leather tack and gear.
Hatcher knelt beside him. “Where’s yer pouch?”
“Jehoshaphat!” Bass swore as he whirled in a crouch, lunging for the tight roll of his extra blanket where he had secured his rifle and shooting bag before they had strolled over to the supper fires—for no other reason than to guard them from a quick-moving thunderstorm while they were gone from their camp. Yanking at the edges of the blanket, he rolled the weapon free, quickly inspecting the strap and bag, the narrow thongs securing the two powder horns to the strap, finding no damage.
“Ye’re a lucky man,” Hatcher intoned.
“Ain’t that the solemn truth,” Kinkead whimpered. “Look how they got to mine.” He held up what little remained of his bag, spare balls and a ball screw, his bullet mold spilling from the huge, ragged hole gaping in what Matthew had left of his chewed pouch.
“My only pair of spare mocs are gone,” Simms groaned as he picked through his few belongings.
Graham held up his old smoothbore, showing the others those vivid teeth marks deeply scored up and down the shrunken, translucent rawhide wrap where in a time past he had repaired the cracked, weakened wood along the wrist of the stock. “They even tried eatin’ on this here. Just ’cause it’s leather.”
“Shit,” Bass said as he gazed round at the wolf pack’s destruction the others held up for view. “Maybeso this means we ought’n have a man stay in camp all the time, Jack.”
“Hell,” the outfit’s leader snorted, “come ronnyvoo, I don’t know a single man jack of these here yahoos be willing to stay ahin’t while the rest of us go traipsin’ off to have us whiskey, women, and song!”
“Not me!” Wood bellowed. “You ain’t leavin’ me behin’t!”
“Not me neither!” Rowland said. “You each watch over your own outfits!”
Hatcher turned back to Bass. “See. Any other time of the year, a man be willing to stay back to camp for the rest. Be it trapping time, fall or spring—a man don’t mind taking his turn hanging back at a trappin’ camp.”
“Maybeso we ought’n go cross the creek there,” Titus said, pointing. “Go yonder there with them company boys and put our camp with them. That way we ain’t gotta worry ’bout—”
“We don’t have to move camp,” Hatcher interrupted.
Bass couldn’t believe what he had heard. Did these lean and experienced trappers mean to tell him they were willing to take the chances of wild creatures slipping into their abandoned camp, to chew on anything and everything made of leather again in the future?
“S-so you’re telling me we sit and wait for these here wolves to come back and ruin some more?”
As straight-faced as he could say it, Jack stepped up to Scratch and declared, “No … we pee.”
Titus wasn’t sure he’d heard Hatcher clearly. “Did you say … p-pee?”
“Pee. Piss. Spray. Same thing, Scratch.”
“P-pee?” Bass noticed most of the others smiling, some with hands over their mouths, trying to suppress their guffaws.
“Eegod!” Jack roared. “So I gotta show ye how to pee now?”
Hatcher whirled on his heel and stepped away, raising the tail of his long cotton shirt and tugging aside the blanket breechclout as he went purposefully to the bushes at the north end of their camp. Titus stood rooted to the spot, unsure just what he was to do.
“G’won,” Caleb instructed, flinging a hand in Jack’s direction. “Rest of us be right behin’t you.”
Suspicious that he was having his leg pulled but good, Scratch reluctantly followed in Hatcher’s steps, stopping nearby as the outfit’s leader pulled out his penis and began to spray the base of the thick brush with urine as he sidestepped to his left, still spraying a thin stream in the cool dawn air.
“What the hell you peein’ for?”
Hatcher inched away from Bass, doing his best to control the amount of urine he sprayed on the brush, slowly sidling in a wide arc at the far edge of their encampment. “Keeps the wolves away.”
Bass laughed with how ridiculous that sounded. But the moment he began, he noticed that no one else was laughing with him. “How a li’l bit of your piss gonna keep wolves away?”
“Wolf and other dog critters piss here and there to lay out their own ground,” Jack explained as he moved off a bit farther. “They tell others of their own kind what belongs to them, and what don’t.”
“That means when we spray round our camp,” Simms declared, “chances are the wolves won’t come in to bother our gear and truck.”
Wagging his head, Bass said, “But Hatcher ain’t got him enough pee to wet clear round this here camp.”
Jack stood shaking his penis, empty. “Maybe not—but, Caleb, come on up aside me and mark our camp from here.”
Wood stepped up, pulling at the antler buttons on the front of his leather britches to begin peeing right where Hatcher had left off. As Titus watched in amazement, the others began roaring with laughter, hopping drunkenly toward the bushes, where they each took their turn at this duty, circumscribing their camp with the smell of urine, marking off their territory, staking it out as if to declare to the wolves that this was a boundary not to be crossed.
“Ain’t no little bit of your piss gonna make no never mind to no wolf pack,” Scratch snorted cynically as he watched the other eight having themselves far too much fun for him to take this seriously.
“Ye can go piss yer likker away anywhere ye want, Scratch,” Hatcher stated. “Or ye can piss where it just might do all of us some good.”
“Awright—you had your fun with me,” Bass replied lamely. “I’m certain you boys just laughing inside on my count.”
“I’m dead to rights serious,” Jack argued.
“This is one critter to another,” Caleb declared.
“Wolf’ll stay away,” Solomon agreed. “I seen it my own self.”
Kinkead held up the ragged remains of his shooting pouch. “Wish’t we’d done it afore we went off to supper. Where ’m I gonna get me ’Nother bag now?”
“If’n there ain’t one to trade off these company fellers,” Rowland said, “we make you a new one, Matthew.”
Hatcher turned to Bass as the edge of the sun broke over the nearby hills, spreading day’s light into the valley. “Ye gonna pee … or ye gonna stand there gawkin’ at me like a idjit?”
With a gust of easy laughter, Scratch stepped away toward the far bushes, pulling aside his breechclout as he said, “I’ll take my turn at it, Jack Hatcher. Then I’m sleeping out the day.”
A damned good idea that had been: to sleep out the day there in the shade of their grove after last night’s drinking and raucous carousing at the brigade fire.
But near midday another of the company’s brigades hoved into sight along the eastern hills, the noise and excitement electrifying the valley. Among them rode the merry Daniel Potts.
“It’s been two year since last I saw you,” Bass cried with joy as Potts unhorsed himself among the early arrivals.
