for the high country once more. By the reckoning of most, he hadn’t taken much. A few beaver plews to trade with Sublette at the coming rendezvous on Ham’s Fork where he would buy a few girlews and geegaws to pack off to Rotten Belly up in Absaroka, Crow country—when Bass returned Waits-by-the-Water to the land of her people for the coming winter.
Josiah. Each time he thought on the one who had been his young partner, thought too on that ex-slave, Esau, they had stumbled across out in Pawnee country,* on the others he had left behind in the Mexican settlements … it brought a hard lump to Scratch’s throat.
For those first few days after bidding them that difficult farewell, Titus would look down their backtrail, fully expecting to find one or more of them hurrying to catch up, to again try convincing him to remain where it was safe, maybe even to announce that they were throwing in with him once more. After some two weeks he had eventually put aside such notions, realizing he and Josiah had truly had their time together as the best of friends, realizing too that their time lay in the past.
Time now for a man to ride into the rest of his tomorrows with his family.
One of the ponies snorted in that language he recognized as nervousness edging into fear. Whoever it was no longer was staying downwind of the critters.
Kneeling, Bass swept up one of the pistols from where he’d laid them when he’d settled down to sleep. After stuffing it into the belt that held up his leggings and breechclout, Scratch scooped up a second pistol and poked it beneath the belt with the first.
Gazing down at the look of apprehension on the woman’s face, he whispered in Crow, “Our daughter needs a name.”
He stood before Waits could utter a reply and pushed into the dark.
The babe needed a name. For weeks now his wife said it was for the girl’s father to decide. Never before could he remember being given so grave a task—this naming of another. A responsibility so important not only to the Crow people, but to him as well. The proper name would set a tone for her life, put the child’s feet on a certain path as no other name could. Now that his daughter was almost a month old, he suddenly realized he could no longer put this matter aside, dealing each day with other affairs, his mind grown all the more wary and watchful now that there were these two women to think of, to care for, to protect.
More than his own hide to look after, there were others counting on him.
No one was going to slink on in and drive off their horses—
Suddenly Zeke emitted more than a low rumble. Now it became an ominous growl.
One of the ponies began to snort, another whinnying of a sudden. And he could hear their hooves slam the earth.
Where was that goddamned dog? Zeke was bound to get himself hurt or killed mixing with them what had come to steal their horses. In his gut it felt good, real good, to know that he wasn’t going into this alone. The dog was there with him. Bass quickened his pace.
As that strong, feral odor struck him full in the face, Scratch stepped close enough to the far side of the meadow to see their shadows rearing. The struggling ponies were frightened, crying out, straining at the end of their picket pins right where he had tied them to graze their fill until morning.
He stopped, half crouching, searching the dark for the intruders, those horse thieves come to run off with his stock—
A dim yellow-gray blur burst from the tree line. His teeth bared, Zeke pounced, colliding noisily with one of the thieves just beyond the ponies.
There had to be more, Scratch knew—his finger itchy along the trigger. With Zeke’s roar the thieves had to expect the owner of the horses to be coming.
But as Bass looked left and right, he couldn’t spot any others. Perhaps only one had stolen in alone.
Then in the midst of that growling and snapping Scratch suddenly realized the dog hadn’t pounced on a horse thief at all. It was another four-legged. A predator. A goddamned
“Zeke!” he roared as he bolted forward toward the contest. Remembering that dog fight Zeke was slowly losing in front of the waterfront tippling house back in St. Louis when Scratch stepped in and saved the animal’s life.
The damned boneheaded dog didn’t know when he was getting the worst of a whipping.
Three of the ponies whipped this way and that, kicking and snorting at the ends of their picket ropes where he had secured them. Dodging side to side, Bass rushed into their midst, ready to club the wolf off Zeke when the battle-scarred dog tumbled toward him under the legs of a packhorse, fighting off two of them.
Two goddamned wolves!
At that moment Samantha set up a plaintive bawl, jerking him around as if he were tied to her by a strip of latigo.
Again and again she thrashed her hind legs, flailing at a third wolf that slinked this way and that, attempting to get in close enough to hamstring her.
He’d fought these damned critters before, big ones too, high in the mountains and on the prairies.
Taking a step back as Samantha connected against her attacker with a small hoof, Scratch jammed the rifle against his shoulder, staring down the long, octagonal barrel to find the target. Then set the back trigger.
As the predator clambered back to all fours and began to slink toward the mule once more, Scratch shut both eyes and pulled the front trigger. With a roar the powder in the pan ignited and a blinding muzzle flash jetted into the black of night.
On opening his eyes, Titus heard the .54-caliber lead ball strike the wolf, saw it bowl the creature over.
Whipping to his left, the trapper upended the rifle, gripping the muzzle in both hands as he started for the mass of jaws and legs and yelps where Zeke was embroiled with two lanky-limbed wolves, getting the worst of it. Slinging the rifle over his shoulder and preparing to swing the buttstock at one of the dog’s attackers, a fragment of the starlit night tore itself loose and flickered into the side of his vision.
Landing against Scratch with the force of its leap, a fourth wolf sank its teeth deep into the muscle at the top of his bare left arm. Struggling on the ground beneath the animal as it attempted to whip its head back and forth to tear meat from its prey, Bass yanked a pistol from his belt as the pain became more than he could bear—fearing he was about to lose consciousness at any moment.
He fought for breath as he rammed the pistol’s muzzle against the attacker’s body and pulled the hammer back with his thumb, dragging back the trigger an instant later. The roar was muffled beneath the furry attacker’s body, nonetheless searing the man’s bare flesh with powder burns as the big round ball slammed through the wolf and blew a huge, fist-sized hole out the attacker’s back in a spray of blood.
Pitching the empty pistol aside, Scratch pried at the jaws death-locked on his torn shoulder, savagely tearing the wolf’s teeth from his flesh. He rolled onto his knees shakily, blood streaming down the left arm, finding Zeke struggling valiantly beneath his two attackers, clearly growing weary. Bass pulled the second pistol from his belt and clambered to his feet. Lunging closer, praying he would not miss, he aimed at the two darker forms as they swarmed over their prey.
The moment the bullet struck, the wolf yelped and rolled off the dog, all four of its legs galloping sidelong for a moment before they stilled in death. The last wolf remained resolutely twisted atop Zeke. The dog had one of the attacker’s legs imprisoned in his jaws, but the wolf clamped down on Zeke’s throat, thrashing its head side to side in its brutal attempt to tear open its prey, assuring the kill.
Rocking down onto his hands, Bass frantically searched the grass for the rifle knocked from his grip, tears of frustration stinging his eyes. By Jehoshaphat! That dog was a fighter to the end. He had known it from the start back there in St. Louis when Zeke hadn’t run out of fight, even when he was getting whipped—
Scratch’s fingers found the rifle, dragged it into both hands as he leaped to his feet, swinging his arms overhead as he rushed forward, yelling a guttural, unintelligible sound that welled up from the pit of him as he lunged toward the wolf and dog.
The cool air of that summer night fairly hissed as it was sliced with such force—driving the butt of his long full-stock Derringer flintlock rifle against the wolf’s backbone. The creature grunted and yelped but did not relinquish its hold on Zeke. Yellow eyes glared primally at the man.
“You goddamned sonuvabitch!” he roared as he flung the rifle overhead again.
Driving it down into the attacker a second time, Bass forced the wolf to release its hold on Zeke. Now it staggered around to face the man on three legs, that fourth still imprisoned in the dog’s jaws. Then with a powerful
