mountains.”
“Snow from the
“We must be getting close to that valley now, ain’t we?”
Pointing east with his left arm, Hatcher replied, “Right over them high peaks.”
“You figger we’ll climb over them?”
“Nawww,” Caleb finally spoke. “Too much work on the animals.”
Hatcher pointed south, down the long, narrow valley crimped between the two ranges. “We follow the Arkansas down till we reach the foot of the hills on our left. Ride right around ’em and we’re in the south end of the Bayou Salade.”
“Some of the best trapping a man can do him,” Isaac Simms said as he patted the neck of his horse.
“Best trapping anywhere in all the Rockies,” Rufus Graham added.
Scratch asked, “Even good as the Three Forks country?”
Nodding, Hatcher said, “I’ll put this country up agin’ that’un any day, Titus Bass. Ye ain’t been where we’re going—so I’ll ’How ye’re just plain ignernt about the Bayou. But the beaver ye’ll pull out of the streams yonder, right over them peaks … those beaver some of the best a man can trap hisself anywhere south of English country, or north of Mexico.”
“They shine, that’s the bald-faced truth,” gushed Elbridge Gray.
“Worth the trip, are they?”
“The trip?” Hatcher echoed Bass. “This bunch gonna winter down to Rancho Taos—so South Park is right on our way.”
Caleb declared, “And South Park gonna be right on our way north come spring green-up.”
“When the flat-tails be some, so seal fat and sleek!” John Rowland crowed.
Hatcher said, “Come spring, them big water rats gonna have ’em a winter plew knock yer eyes out, Titus Bass!”
“Swear on my own heart! Way you niggers are talking,” Scratch observed, “makes a fella want to lift his tail up and get high behind to ride on over there right now!”
“Titus is right, boys,” Hatcher said. “Let’s cover ground while we still got light.”
Perhaps it was only the air’s tingle hinting at the arrival of autumn, but his skin goose-bumped as they all whooped, hollered, and cheered, urging the animals south downslope along those headwaters of the Arkansas, no more than a matter of days now from their goal. Up here so close to the sun, Bass found himself in awe once more how warm were the rays caressing his bare skin, how cool was every breeze that whispered out of the thick timber.
His anticipation grew over the next week, what with the way the others talked every night of the Park, glorying on the promise of its beaver, on the herds of buffalo, elk, and deer said to blanket the valley floor. Just to sense the rising excitement within the other men as they crossed to the east bank of the Arkansas, each day hoping to reach the end of the mountain range where they could finally sweep around the foot of the hills and drop into the Bayou Salade.
Of one golden afternoon, with the high sunlight gently kissing each early-autumn breeze, Bass slipped away into that place a man goes with his thoughts when he really isn’t thinking of a thing. They had been pushing hard since the first gray light of predawn, squeezing every mile they could out of the day. While all of them had been quiet for the most part, each man off in his own thoughts that afternoon like so many gone before, Scratch suddenly became aware of a change coming over the others. Gradually the men appeared to grow restless, shifting in the saddle, unsettled and anxious. Eventually some of them began to murmur to one another, tugging at their sweaty clothing, resettling their shapeless old hats atop their heads. It reminded him of a bunch of Kentucky schoolboys in those last few moments before the schoolmaster called for midday recess, or in those last breathless heartbeats every afternoon before the entire schoolhouse was freed at the end of the day—
“Lookee yonder, Scratch. This be the end of the hills!” Hatcher exclaimed, pointing as they eased up the side of the slope toward a low saddle fringed with dark emerald timber. “Other side lays the Bayou Salade.”
Feathers suddenly took swirling flight within his belly, like the flapping beat of huge wings. Sudden whoops startled him as John Rowland and Matthew Kinkead burst past him, hooves hammering by on either side as they drove their horses the last few yards to the top of the saddle there between stands of blue spruce, shot over the rise, then were gone from sight. Only their exultant voices reverberated off the hills.
Then Isaac Simms shot by. And Rufus Graham careened past Hatcher and Bass, until Jack had time only to remind Solomon and Gray that some of them needed to stay back momentarily and see to the cavvyyard of horses and mules. At that reminder Scratch tightened his grip on Hannah’s lead rope, pulling the mare closer to his saddle mount. They were about to enter a special place by all accounts. Such magic was to be shared with all of a man’s friends.
“That it?” he asked Hatcher almost breathlessly as they crowned the saddle, pulling Hannah’s rope so the mule came up right alongside him.
Below the crest, down the smooth, treeless hillside, he watched the others race, zigging and zagging, waving hats and standing tall in the stirrups, passing one another in curving swoops, signaling back at those yet to come down the slope. Beyond them on the valley floor lay the slowly undulating clots of buffalo milling, grazing, lowing among the belly-high, mineral-rich grasses.
“This is it,” Jack said quietly, his eyes twinkling with a peaceful contentment.
“The Bayou Salade.” Spoken almost like a prayer of thanksgiving.
Hatcher reached over and touched Scratch’s arm. “Way ye said it, I can tell ye feel the place awready.”
Tugging at the back of the blue silk bandanna he had knotted over his skull, Titus replied, “I can’t remember seeing a valley near so purty, Jack. Not in all my days out here. Strange as it may sound to folks what ain’t never come to this here place, looking up to see such sculpturin’s as these all around ’em—I doubt their kind would ever understand if I tried to explain just how I feel right here an’ now.”
“How’s that, Scratch?” Hatcher asked with a smile as wide as South Park itself.
“You told me yourself the other night, Jack.”
“Told ye what?”
He rubbed the back of the bandanna over his missing scalp and hair, saying with a quiet, but keen, anticipation, “You told me I’d feel like this here’s one of them few places where a man can know just why it was he ever come out here to the Rocky Mountains.”
It was the marrow of the world.
Scratch realized at last that this was the bone and sinew to which everything else in his known universe had always been attached.
From these tall peaks where the snow never fully melted flowed the lifeblood of a whole continent. This truly was a place where a man found confirmation in the reason he ever dared to venture on past those folks back east not willing to risk all they ever had, continuing on by those not willing to dare enough in placing their very lives on the line … here suddenly to sense the close kinship a man could feel with a patch of ground, with a stretch of open country, with an entire virgin land that had embraced him.
Welcoming him home.
Into a small protected bowl the rest had taken their pack animals, stopping only when they had reached a secluded meadow ringed by thick timber and outcroppings of granite dotting the hillsides. A place big enough to afford enough pasturage for their remuda over the next two months or more, yet a place small enough to afford them ample security from chance discovery of their fires and shelters by roaming bands of raiders. More than enough wood—a litter of deadfall back in the thick groves … and water too: a narrow stream gurgling along its mossy bed right through the middle of the bowl. The stock would want for nothing as the last days of summer waned and the seasons turned.
Here they would be sheltered by the timber on the surrounding hills and the rock outcroppings. The stone faces of the granite would reflect the heat of their small fires on the nippy mornings to come, again each cold evening that autumn was bound to bring anyone venturing this high. As well, these rocky faces would serve to better hide the entrance to their small bowl from any who might pass through the valley itself.
“We used this here same place a couple seasons back,” Isaac Simms explained. “Oughtta be real safe here.”
