Bass nodded. “Mine’s the first.”
“New Year’s, eh? Two of us start the year off right, don’t we?” He held out his cup as Caleb Wood started around the fire with a blackened coffee kettle.
“Scratch says ye travel alone,” Hatcher declared.
“Last time I rode with others, I come north out of Taos with Pratte and Savary.” He sipped at the steaming coffee a moment, then continued. “Pratte died that trip out and Savary took over. We went on trapping and wintered up in Park Kyack afore we come back to Taos the spring of twenty-eight. After that I swored I’d never ride with a outfit again.”
“Ain’t so bad,” Scratch explained. “When you ride with the right outfit.”
“Said you come west in twenty-four?” Gray repeated.
“Up to Blackfoot country, where the Englishers play,” Williams snorted.
“God-blamed Blackfoot!” grumbled Rufus Graham. “Too many good men gone under at their hands!”
“I quit that country come spring—damn them Blackfoot,” Williams growled. “Got my carcass back to live with the Osages, where I run onto the surveyors gonna mark the road from the Missouri clear down to Santy Fee. They needed ’em a feller what knew how to talk sign—so I was took along.”
“When you get back to trapping?” Solomon asked.
“That fall—pulled out’n Taos and headed down the Rio del Norte, then moseyed on over to the Heely. Plew down in that country weren’t near prime as they was up where them Blackfoot roam.”
“Plew is prime in Blackfoot country,” Caleb agreed.
“I fi’t me more’n my share of Blackfoot,” Williams said with clear disgust. “They deviled me for a time the next year—when I set off on my lonesome. Niggered me clear down to the Wind River Mountains. Didn’t did get shet of Bug’s Boys till I made it far up the Bighorn.”
Hatcher asked, “So ye stay in these parts now?”
With a wag of his head Williams replied, “H’ain’t been healthy for this coon up north there in Blackfoot country. And the ’Paches caught me flat-footed of a time down on the Heely.”
“Apache?” asked Rowland.
“That’s right. When I tried the Heely a second go-round. Bastards stripped me, stole my guns, my horse and mule, ever’thing. Then they pointed me out to the desert and laughed as I took off barefoot.”
“How’d you pull yourself out of that fix?” Bass inquired.
“Pointed my nose torst the Spanish country. Only place I could reckon on. Way I lays the set—it were just shy of two hunnert miles afore I run onto some Zunis. They took me in like I was some special kin. I spent some time with them folks, healing up. Then went on over an’ stayed with some Navajos.”
Elbridge said, “Eventual’ you come back Santy Fee?”
“Taos—that’s when I hooked up with Pratte and Savary,” Williams said dolefully. “This nigger’s had him good fortune to pull out’n the thick of it a time or two. So I figger my luck runs high ’nough I don’t dare travel with no brigade no more.”
“You fixin’ on trapping the Bayou now?” Scratch asked.
He stared at the fire a moment, then answered, “Nawww, I’ll mosey on. You fellers busy here this side of the Park. If’n I take a shine to it, I’ll lay some traps on the far side. It don’t pay to crowd ’Nother man.”
“Enough beaver in the mountains for us all!” Isaac cheered.
“Damn right there is,” Williams said. “If’n we don’t trap ’em out, the Englishers do.”
“Trap ’em out?” Bass echoed. “How we ever trap out all the beaver?”
Of a sudden Williams grew animated, his eyes alive with the loathing and hatred he felt for the huge Hudson’s Bay Company. “Them Frenchie brigades the Englishers put out up north go right on into a stretch of country and trap ever’ living flat-tail there is. Strip that country clean: ever’ stream, ever’ beaver too—not matter that they catch some kits while they’re at it.”
“Sons of bitches,” Rowland grumbled.
“They h’ain’t got no business in our country,” Williams declared. “I plan to stay north of the greasers and south of the Englishers and all their Frenchie parley-voos. ’Sides, I’ve come to be partial to the Utes. But watch yer ha’r when there’s ’Rapahoes about.”
“The hell you say?” Bass growled. “Last time I run onto Arapaho my own self, I damn near went under.”
Williams grinned in the fire’s light. “Ye’re a lucky man. Them ’Rapahoes can be bad as Bug’s Boys when it comes to a white man. They’ll kill ye flat out and run off with all ye had. They leave ye ’thout an outfit?”
“They took that—’cept for the rifle they didn’t find, run off with all my animals but for my dear mule,” Scratch explained.
“Leastways ye come out of it with yer ha’r,” Williams observed, his leathery brow wrinkling in remembrance. “Live to fight ’Nother day. Jest like I done a time or two—did ye lay up in some rocks a’hiding till the red niggers quit the country?”
“Weren’t so lucky as you, Bill,” Scratch replied, reaching for the knot at the back of the bandanna he tied over the top of his head. “One of the black-hearts took part of me with him.”
Slowly nudging the large knot upward, Bass removed the bandanna and a circular scrap of beaver fur in one smooth motion, turning his head. As he did so, Williams could see the results of the scalping that had removed a crude circle some six inches in diameter from the crown of his head late in the summer of twenty-seven.
Setting his coffee tin down and wiping a forearm across his lips, Williams scrambled to his feet and stepped right up to loom over Bass. He took Scratch’s head in both hands and turned it gently toward the firelight, peering at the skull plate from all angles, then inspected the wound so closely, he was almost rubbing the end of his nose against the yellowed bone.
“It pain ye any?”
“Not after I learn’t to keep it covered.”
“With that patch o’ beaver plew?”
“Found this here fur is the trick,” Bass replied. “Sun does a powerful evil to my skull if I don’t keep it covered.”
“’Magine it would, Scratch.” He continued to study the bone closely. “Back east where I was raised up from a kit, I heard me a time or two of fellers getting scalped and living to tell the tale of it.”
“They done their best to kill this nigger off,” Hatcher said. “But I figger Scratch here just born under a good star.”
Williams gently patted the bare bone, then shambled back to his place at the fire and settled down with his cup. “Way I figger it, Bass—ye been told plain as sun that there be a heap more living in store for any man what lost his ha’r but wasn’t put under by the niggers what took that skelp from him.”
“Maybeso,” Gray replied with a cynical wag of his head as he quickly tallied the befuddled reactions of the others around the fire and began to grin widely. “But only if you’re a coon what believes there’s hoo-doos hiding behin’t every tree!”
“Hoo-doos, is it?” Hatcher asked with a snort, animated once again.
Elbridge gushed, “Don’t that beat all, Jack? Williams here says after he’s dead, he’s coming back as a bull elk what got it one bad antler.” And he showed them, mimicking what the old trapper had told the two of them near sundown. “If that ain’t the kicker—he says the Injuns are the ones show us how to talk to ghosts.”
But instead of laughing right off, Jack appeared to study Williams, then finally brought his gaze back to Gray and said, “Sounds to me like Bill Williams here savvies things same way as Asa McAfferty.”
“O-o-oo! That name just give me the trembling willies!” Isaac shrieked.
“Me too,” Rufus agreed with a shudder. “That crazy coon gone and rubbed out a ’Rikara medicine man —”
“Damn!” Williams exclaimed, leaping to his feet so suddenly, he startled all of them into stunned silence. “Ye really know a nigger what kill’t a medeecin man?”
In amazement they all watched the skinny man shuffle-footing it there by the fire, restless as a bull in spring, very much like a man walking over a bed of coals, trembling uncontrollably every few moments as if he had come down with the ague.
“Like Jack said,” Caleb was the first to dare speak, “feller’s name is Asa McAfferty.”
“He really kill a medeecin man?”
Hatcher nodded. “His hair turned white after rubbing out that Ree.”
