formation of the spear-headed migrations paraded across the crystal-clear autumnal blue. Each formation transformed itself from black specks spotted far off in the sky to become a low-swooping V of geese and ducks, angling in to settle across the ponds and still water of the valley with a thunderous concert of honking and splashes. First the longnecks circled, their heads craning, searching for a landing spot before making their long, graceful figure-eight loop across an open spot of marsh water. Then the huge geese slanted down in formation, banking sharply before they hit the skylit water, kicking up rooster tails of spray, squawking to one another, to the ones they were joining, or to those still descending from the sky above.
On those mornings that Bass found himself out in the autumn chill to set his traps, he would stand and stare for long periods of time at the pageant of sky and water and wing—there were so many of the ducks and geese that there could not possibly be room for any more out on the huge marshes and icy bogs. Yet still they came as if spewed out of the sky.
From this direction and that, the smoothbores echoed from the far hills, his fellow trappers out hunting, their guns loaded with shot instead of a huge round ball. And every night the men roasted the rich, fat meat over their fires, this a welcome change from a diet of elk and venison and buffalo.
Other, smaller songbirds feasted before the coming onslaught of winter on those insects, locusts, and beetles clinging cooled and torpid on those grasses dried by the slash of autumn winds. Time hung in the balance here, and fall was clearly a time when it was decided just what creatures survived, what creatures would not. Each species was making ready for the coming change in its own ages-old dance of the seasons, each life-form readying itself for the time of cold and death that was winter in this high country.
True, the coming winter would decide just what would live, and what would not. This intricate rhythm that hummed around him each new and glorious day was a rhythm begun so long ago that aeons had still rested in the womb of time.
The first storm came and went, not yet cold enough for the snow to stay longer than a couple of days. Then the second and third storms rolled through the valley, each snowfall lasting a little longer before it finally melted, soaking into the soggy ground, dripping off the thick spruce boughs, feeding every creek, stream, and freshet a sudden, final burst of life before winter would squeeze down hard.
“When you figger for us to pull out?” Elbridge Gray asked one evening around their fire as the wind came up, beginning to blow off the high slopes with a wolfish howl.
Standing to stretch, Hatcher said, “Trapping’s been so damned good—I’d like to stay right to the last day afore the passes close up.”
Caleb Wood declared, “Trouble is, a man can’t never tell when he’s gonna stay a day too long … till he tries and finds the passes are all snowed in.”
“Ye saying it’s time to go south?” Jack asked.
With a shrug Caleb replied, “I dunno. Last week or so I been thinking real hard on Taos—”
“Ain’t a one of us ain’t been thinking real hard on Taos,” Matthew Kinkead interrupted.
Hatcher stepped over and laid a hand on Kinkead’s shoulder. “Ye’ll be there afore the hard cold sets in.”
Matthew’s eyes softened, and with a hound-dog expression crossing his jowly face, he sobbed, “Wanna see my Rosa.”
John Rowland looked up and asked, “You ever get the feeling she might one day figger you for dead, Matthew? That you been gone so long from her … she goes out and gets herself ’Nother husband?”
Slowly wagging his big shaggy-bear head, Kinkead gave that considerable thought, then answered, “I don’t figger her the kind to do anything of the sort … not till one of you boys rode into Taos and tol’t her your own self I gone under.”
“And even then Rosa’s the sort of woman what just might expect one of us to bring her something special of yer’n, Matthew,” Hatcher explained as he knelt by the coffeepot. “Something what would show her ye was really gone.”
Isaac Simms asked, “What would that be, Kinkead?”
“Yeah,” echoed Solomon Fish, “what would be the one thing we’d have to show your Rosa to prove to her you been rubbed out?”
He scratched his big onion bulb of a nose with a dirty, charcoal-crusted finger, deep in thought. Then he said, “I s’pose it’d be this here kerchief I wear round my neck.” Using a couple of fingers, Kinkead lifted the soiled black cloth, emblazoned with a multitude of painted red roses in full bloom.
“Rosa give you that, didn’t she?” Titus asked.
He nodded, looking down at it a moment. “Winter afore last, when this bunch was all in Taos—afore we come north last two year. She and me, we bought this here kerchief down to a poor woman’s blanket she had spread out in a warm spot there in the sun, over to the Taos square.”
“I remember that ol’ brown Injun gal!” Rowland crowed with excitement. “I see’d that same kerchief my own self that morning and was coming back to buy it.”
Kinkead nodded, grinning. “Yep: that were the first time I met this here skinny son of a bitch.” And he pointed at the rail-thin Rowland.
“We got to talking,” John began.
Then Kinkead continued, “And you said you was done with that bunch you’d been trapping with for more’n a year.”
“Some folks just ain’t meant to run together,” Rowland agreed.
Matthew said, “You told me your outfit was breaking up that winter, picking sides then and there in Taos.”
“Yep, some fellers following Ewing Young, and some others saying they was gonna tag along behind Antoine Robidoux. Only me and McAfferty didn’t take no side when the outfit tore apart.”
“McAfferty?” Hatcher inquired. “That when you two come and hooked up with us?”
With a nod Rowland looked up at their brigade leader and answered, “Damn—but that nigger never was the same since’t he killed that Ree medicine man. He started to get … strange after that. Strange and … downright spooky.”
“Damn if he didn’t after he killed that medicine man,” Fish replied.
“Just the fall afore we run all the way south to Taos—two year ago now.”
“All the way from Ree country. That was a far piece to travel just to winter up,” Graham observed.
“McAfferty, he was a nigger what wasn’t gonna stay in that country where he’d just killed the ol’ rattle shaker,” Rowland recalled. “Hell, he told us it wasn’t healthy for a man’s hide to be caught in country anywhere close to where the Ree stomped around.”
Scratch found that long trek hard to believe. “Just for him killing a Ree medicine man you tramped all the way down to Taos?”
“Don’t you see?” Rowland tried to explain in a quiet voice that hushed the others. “This here McAfferty had him dark hair—shiny like a new-oiled trap and near black as the gut of hell itself—afore the night he had to kill that Ree medicine man.”
Bass asked, “What you mean,
For a moment Rowland pursed his lips as if he were trying to pull out the particulars of that memory. “Something to do with what feller had the strongest medicine … to do with that medicine man fixing to steal McAfferty’s Bible.”
“He carry a Bible hisself?” Scratch inquired.
“Yup,” John answered. “The man left us with hair black as charred hickory. An’ he come back with it turned.”
“No shit?” Titus asked. “So that’s when his hair become white?”
Turning to Bass, Rowland explained, “McAfferty’s hair is as white as new snow.”
“What turned his hair?” Titus inquired.
John stared into the fire for long moments before answering. “Maybeso the hoo-doos.”
“Hoo-doos!” shrieked Rufus Graham with a gust of sudden laughter.
“That’s right,” John said, nonplussed. “Like I said, McAfferty left our bunch with black hair … and come back with it and his beard turned white.”
Rufus declared, “Like the man see’d a ghost!”
With a shrug Rowland continued, “The man never told any of the rest of us what scared him so. Said he
