“Them greasers cause us trouble?”
“Not the plain folks,” Isaac said. “Just the greasers what run everything. The soldiers and the tax fellers what don’t want Americans to trap no Mexican waters.”
“How the hell they gonna know if we pulled our beaver outta Mexican streams?”
“They don’t,” Jack said with a shrug. “So they tax all the beaver we got—no matter where it come from.”
This was startling news. Titus continued, “How’s a man s’posed to pay a tax when he ain’t got no money to begin with?”
“Them tax collectors and the soldiers what ride around with ’em take the government’s cut from yer beaver.”
“My beaver!” Bass shrieked. “They ain’t gonna take any of my beaver—not after I lost those last packs when Bud, Silas, and Billy went under!”
“That’s just what we’re trying to explain to ye, Scratch,” Hatcher said. “Them greasers working for the governor ain’t gonna have a chance to take none of our beaver.”
“Not a plew,” Caleb echoed.
“H-how we keep ’em from it?”
“By taking our asses on over yonder there to the west now that it’s dark,” Jack explained.
“What’s over there?”
“Workman’s caves,” Caleb answered. “That child makes good corn whiskey.”
“W-whiskey?” Bass stammered.
“Taos lightning,” Hatcher said. “Take the top of yer head off cleaner’n a Blackfoot tomahawk!”
“Lemme at it!” Bass croaked, his dry throat constricting in excitement.
“Ooo-hoo! Looks like Titus here got him a thirst, fellas!” Elbridge barked.
“Time we got down off this hill anyway,” Jack advised. “A cold night like this, best thing a man can do is to find him a warm place where the wind won’t blow—”
“Like Workman’s caves!” Caleb interrupted.
“Damn right,” Hatcher continued. “A warm place where he and his companyeros can pour some whiskey down their gullets!”
The loud voice came booming out of the night, echoing and reechoing off the narrow canyon walls. It was enough to cause Scratch’s skin to prickle with cold despite his layers of clothing.
“Workman?” Hatcher called out after he had thrown his hand up and stopped them all as they were slowly picking their way along the dry creekbed in the inky darkness. “That you, Workman?”
“Who the hell’s asking?”
“Jack Hatcher.”
They heard sounds from the night—above and to their left: stones clunking together, pebbles ground underfoot.
“Mad Jack Hatcher, is it?”
Suddenly a figure emerged out of the gloom here at the bottom of the deep, dry creekbed.
Jack sang, “So there ye are, Willy!”
“You don’t smell like no ghosts,” the stranger said as he stepped to within a rifle’s length of the muzzles of their horses. “And for sartin you don’t look to be Mexican soldiers neither.”
With a shrug Hatcher explained, “Just a bunch of fellers need a place to spread out our robes and hide away our packs for the season, Willy.”
“Done for the winter, are you, Jack?” the man asked. “If’n that be so, kick off there and give me a proper greetin’.”
Quickly dismounting, Hatcher stomped up and the two of them embraced, pounding shoulders and backs as Bass strained to get himself a better look at this William Workman. With nothing better than dim starshine it was hard to tell more than the fact that the man kept his face shaved and his hair cropped short, looking no different from a settlement storekeeper back in the States. Across his arm lay a rifle; in the wide belt that encircled his blanket coat were stuffed a pair of pistols. He wore no hat despite the cold, his pale face smiling as he turned from Hatcher to look up at the others.
“Who all’s with you, Jack?”
“Ye know ’em, Willy,” Hatcher explained. “All here with me ’cept Kinkead and Rowland.”
Workman moved up another two steps, peering over the group. “Where’s Joe?”
“Little’s gone,” Caleb replied.
“That you, Wood?” Workman asked. “You still throwin’ in with this bastard Hatcher?” He turned to Jack. “How’d Little go under? You run onto some Blackfoot way up there where you was going?”
“He went sick, Willy. Got him the ticks last spring.”
Then Isaac added, “Just afore the Blackfoot jumped us.”
With a raw snort of humorless laughter, Workman said, “I warned you sonsabitches not to go up there to Blackfoot country when you lit out of here more’n a year ago. But would Mad Jack Hatcher listen to any sane man?”
“Hell, no!” Hatcher answered, slapping Workman on the shoulders. “What good would it do me ever to listen to a sane man?”
Workman brought up the muzzle of his rifle, pointing it in Bass’s direction. “So who’s the new man?”
“C’mon down here, Scratch.”
“Scratch, is it?” Workman echoed as Bass kicked out of the saddle. “This new hand got him a real name?”
“Titus Bass,” Scratch said, pulling off a mitten to hold out his hand.
“Good to make your ’quaintance, Titus. Whoa—your grip feels cold. Mayhaps we ought’n get you boys on inside to warm up.”
“Ye got lightning? That’ll warm me quick!” Hatcher declared as he and Workman turned and started off into the dark.
“You’ll dang well play that fiddle o’ your’n for every drop, Jack,” the whiskey maker warned. “There ain’t no free drink at Workman’s still.”
“Ye gone and wounded me, Willy! No man can’t never say Jack Hatcher don’t pay his own way.”
“What’s to eat, Willy?” Elbridge asked, trotting up right behind the two.
“Got me most of a small cinnamon I shot up in the foothills two day back,” Workman answered. “That sow was young enough to still be tender.”
Isaac asked, “Bet you’ve got some corn too.”
“We can rustle you up some corn cakes to go ’long with that bear meat.” Workman stopped and turned as the others came to a halt in a broad semicircle around him. “You boys go on with Jack here and get your packs off them horses afore we draw too much attention standing round here in the dark o’ night. You know where you can corral your animals after you’ve got your beaver underground in the cave. Then you come on over to the mill house where I got the fire going, and we’ll catch up on what all you fellers see’d since last you was in Taos.”
That bear meat was superb, kept cool hanging back in the cavern across the dry creekbed from the hut and mill house William Workman had built himself out of all the loose stone found underfoot in this broken countryside west of Taos. Some two years previous he and John Rowland had discovered the narrow entrance to the cave just big enough for a dismounted rider to bring his horse through if the need arose. Once through the portal, however, the cavern opened up. Several smaller rooms jutted off that large main room.
After dropping their packs and possibles just outside the cave entrance, Scratch helped Isaac and Elbridge wrangle the horses and mules up the creekbottom another sixty yards to a bend in the canyon where Workman had constructed a post corral big enough to contain the animals a large trapping party would bring in. Against one side of the fence they found a pair of hayricks filled with cut grass, which the three trappers pitched into the corral for their trail-weary stock after removing all the bits and rope halters, draping them over the top fence rail.
By the time they stepped through the rough-hewn door into the low-roofed mill house, the fragrance of boiling corn and frying hoecakes instantly set Bass’s mouth to watering.
“I ain’t had no corn since … since I put the Missouri River at my back in twenty-five,” he stated as Caleb
