snap the wolf seized Zeke’s nose in his teeth, clamping down for that moment it took to compel the dog to release the bloody leg.
Whimpering, Zeke pulled free of this last attacker, freeing the wolf to whirl back around. It crouched, its head slung between its front shoulders, snarling at the man.
Once more Scratch brought his rifle back behind his head, stretching that torn flesh in the left shoulder.
He was already swinging the moment the wolf left the ground. The rifle collided with the predator less than an arm’s span away. With a high-pitched yelp the wolf tumbled to the ground. Scratch was on him, slamming the rifle’s iron butt-plate down into the predator’s head again, then again.
Remembering other thieves of the forest, he flushed with his hatred of their kind.
Over and over he brought the rifle up and hurtled it down savagely, finally stopping as he realized he had no idea how long he had been beating the beast’s head to pulp.
“Zeke,” he whispered even before he turned.
Staggering toward the dog, Bass knelt beside the big gray animal. Weakly the dog raised its head, whimpered a bit, then laid its bloody muzzle in Scratch’s hand. He quickly ran a hand over the animal’s throat, fingers finding warm, sticky blood clotting in the thick hair. Then he dragged his hand over much of the rib cage, the soft underbelly, finding no other wounds to speak of.
“Can you get up, boy?” he asked in a hopeful whisper. “Can you?”
Patting the dog on the head, Titus stood shakily himself. “C’mon now, you can get up, cain’t you?”
God, how his heart ached—not wanting to lose this dog the way he had lost Hannah, the way he lost so many other good friends—the way he almost lost Josiah.
“C’mon, boy,” he urged as if it were a desperate prayer.
With a struggle Zeke dragged his legs under him, thrashed a bit, then lurched upward onto all four. The dog staggered forward a few steps as Bass crouched, welcoming the animal into his arms. Zeke collapsed again, panting, his breath shallow and ragged.
“Good ol’ boy!” he cried louder now, his face wet with tears. “We got ’em, didn’t we? Got ’em all!”
He needed light to look over the dog’s wounds.
Gazing east, he figured it was nowhere near getting time for dawn. They could light a fire and he could see to Zeke before packing up and setting out early. Be gone by the time anyone who had spotted their fire could get close.
For several minutes he knelt there stroking the animal as it laid against him, its breath growing more regular. Then he remembered Waits. She would have heard the shots and could well be near out of her mind with fright by now.
“We ought’n go back,” he whispered as he bent over, stabbing his arms under the big animal, pulling the dog against him as he staggered to his feet.
Its fur was warm and damp against the one arm as he started back toward their shelter in the dark, his bare feet feeling their way through the grass.
She was standing there against the trees in front of their blankets, holding a rifle ready as he emerged from the gloom. With a tiny shriek she dropped the heavy weapon and dashed toward him, throwing her arms around his neck, clinging against Bass and the dog.
“He is wounded?” she asked in Crow as she drew back, swiping tears away with both hands.
“Yes, but I won’t know how bad until I get a fire going.”
“Your daughter is sleeping,” she said as she began to turn. “I will start the fire. You stay with the dog.”
“That sure as hell is one ugly critter of a dog!”
From the way the speaker was smiling, Bass could easily see the man meant no harm by his critical judgment.
“I take it you’re a man what knows his dogs?” Titus asked as he neared the bare-chested white trapper who had stepped out from the trees and willows that lined the south side of Ham’s Fork of the Green River where every shady, cloistered spot was littered with canvas tents, lean-tos, and bowers made of blankets and oiled sheeting.
Awful quiet here for a rendezvous, Titus had been thinking ever since their tiny procession marched off the bluff and made their way into the gently meandering valley. But, after all, it was the middle of a summer afternoon and a smart man laid out that hottest time of the day.
The stranger whistled to the dog and knelt. “He your’n?”
Bass reined to a halt as Waits came up beside him. “Zeke’s his name.”
Patting and scratching the big dog’s head, the man observed, “He been in a scrap of recent, ain’t he?”
“Pertecting our camp from a pack of wolves.”
The man cupped Zeke’s jaw in a hand and peered into the dog’s eyes. “Had me a dog not too different’n this’un back in the States when I was a growing lad.” Then he sighed. “Likely he’s gone under by now. Be real old if he ain’t.”
“My name’s Bass. Titus Bass,” and Scratch held down his hand to the stranger.
“You’re a free man, I take it?” the stranger asked as they shook.
“Trap on my own hook,” he replied.
“Then you’re likely the Bass a feller was lookin’ for, asking if you’d come in when they arrived a week or so back.”
His eyes warily squinted as he searched the nearby groves of trees and canvas. “Someone asking after me?”
“Big feller, English-tongued he was—”
“By damn, them Britishers here again this summer?”
“They are for sure.”
“Where’s their camp?”
“Off yonder,” and he pointed. “My name’s Neis Dixon. Ride with Drips.”
“He that booshway with American Fur?”
Dixon threw a thumb, gesturing over his shoulder. “Him and Font’nelle. That’s us over there.”
“Good to know you,” Bass replied. “Where the free men camped?”
“Some here and some there. Rocky Mountain Fur settled in on upstream ’bout eight miles or so. Sublette come in with his goods to trade, with ’nother feller too.” Then, after he glanced quickly at the woman and the child she had lashed inside that Flathead cradleboard swinging from the tall pommel at the front of her saddle, Dixon asked, “How long you been out here to the mountains?”
Scratch smiled. “Come out spring of twenty-five.”
“Damn—you mean to tell me you was a Ashley man for that first ronnyvoo?”
Wagging his head, Bass replied, “Didn’t see my first ronnyvoo till twenty-six. But I made ever’ one since.”
“That makes nine of ’em, Bass.”
Drawing himself up, Scratch sighed. “Time was, I didn’t figure I’d ever see near this many ronnyvooz, Dixon. S’pose it’s nigh onto time for us to make camp.”
“That sure is a handsome woman,” the man declared, backing one step to grab himself a last admiring look at Waits-by-the-Water. “I take it she yours.”
“My wife. Crow. They are a handsome people. We been together for more’n a year now,” then he nudged his heels into the buffalo runner’s ribs.
“Handsome woman, Titus Bass,” Dixon repeated. “But, like I said, that sure is one ugly dog!”
“Thankee kindly,” Scratch replied with a wide, brown-toothed grin. “Thankee on both counts!”
As the infant suckled at her breast, Waits-by-the-Water watched her husband call the dog over to have it lay beside him as he squatted at their small fire. She studied how the man scratched its torn ears, the scarred snout, that thick neck the wolf tried vainly to crush—seeing how gently her husband’s hands treated the big dog, recalling how his hands ignited a fire in her.
Her husband loved his animals, the buffalo pony and mule, and now this dog too. Almost as much as she knew he loved her and their daughter.
“Have you decided upon a name?” she asked.
He stared at the flames awhile. The only sound besides the crackling of their fire were the shouts and
