a lower lip for a moment more, then apologized. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, mister.”
“I figger you didn’t know no better, son,” Bass said. “One thing a pup learns as he grows is when to bark, and when to shut his jaws. There’s a time for barking, and by damn, there’s a time for keeping his yap closed and his ears open.”
An older man dressed in greasy wool britches and a tobacco-stained calico shirt had been watching it all. He now stepped up from the far window to the youngster’s shoulder. “Those are good words anyone can live by, Joseph.”
Joseph nodded once at him and said, “I didn’t want you thinking I’m backing down a’fore this feller, Pa. Don’t go—”
“I ain’t thinking that at all, son.”
Bass cleared his throat. “Your boy?”
“Yep,” the older man said as he clapped a hand on Joseph’s back. “His first trip to the mountains this summer. Likely filled his head with wild ideas.”
With a smile Scratch agreed. “Gonna be hard taking your boy back there to them settlements and St. Louie where a young man can’t stretch his arms when he wants.”
“Still, the trip done him good,” the man replied, gently starting Joseph away toward the blockhouse door. “He’s found out there’s a big world out here where I been coming last few years. Trouble, though, Joseph still gotta learn his place in that world.”
“Don’t ride him ’cause of the way he riled me,” Bass pleaded, feeling a bit guilty now as Joseph shambled out the door and clattered down the noisy wooden steps. “Ever’ man’s gotta find his own way, make his own mistakes in the world.”
“If he don’t make the sort of mistake that takes his life.”
For a moment Bass glanced at Magpie, then thought of Josiah. “It’s allays good when a man takes a step back ’cause he figgered out he’s tempted Lady Fate long enough on his own.”
“My name’s Clement,” the pecan-skinned man introduced himself as he approached.
A low, menacing growl rumbled at the back of Zeke’s throat, stopping the stranger in his tracks.
“Hush, boy!” Scratch snapped, motioning the stranger on.
“Antoine Clement,” the man said, pronouncing it with that richly expressive roll the tongue gave to
“French name,” Bass declared as he stood beside the fire he and Waits-by-the-Water were starting. “Titus Bass be mine.”
“My father was a Frenchman,” the half-breed explained. “I’m chief scout taking a Europe nobleman across the west. We are camped nearby, so he sent me to ask you for supper with him tonight.”
“Supper, you say?” Bass replied, glancing at his wife. In Crow he explained, “We’ve been invited to eat with another camp.”
She nodded enthusiastically.
“Seems my wife thinks it’s a right fine idee, Mr. Clement. When you want us to show up?”
“Soon as you’re able,” and the scout turned to point to the nearby bend in the river where the grassy meadow was rimmed with wild currant bushes laden with thick clusters of resplendent red fruit. “Can’t miss us. My boss has a few unusual tents pitched in a half circle around our fire.”
Bass rose, dusting his palms on the front of his greasy leggings. “We’ll be along shortly.”
In no more than a matter of minutes did Waits-by-the-Water have herself and Magpie ready to go visiting. After looping a short length of hemp rope around Zeke’s neck, the four of them set off into the last of the day’s heat as the sun sank upon those dark timbered heights resting along the western horizon, known to the mountain men as the Black Hills.*
“Stewart is my name, Mr. Bass,” said a slight and shorter man as he stepped away from the big fire to greet them. “William Drummond Stewart.”
“Call me Titus, baptized Christian back in Caintuck,” he explained. “Or call me Scratch—you might say I was baptized that name when I first come to these here mountains.”
“Scratch, is it?” Stewart repeated with a wry smile. “I believe I’ve heard your name come up among some of your American compatriots. Perhaps Bridger himself mentioned you.”
“Me and Gabe go back some,” Titus declared. “Run onto him clear back to twenty-six.”
With a look of warm approval filling his kind eyes, Stewart cast his gaze upon the woman and that young child she clutched against her side. “And this is your wife? What tribe is she—wait. Let me see if I can guess by her clothing.” He considered a moment, studying Waits-by-the-Water up and down, then finally wagging his head. “I’m not sure, but suppose she might be Shoshone?”
“Naw, she’s Crow.”
“Crow!” Stewart clapped his hands together exuberantly. “I haven’t had much acquaintance with the Crow in my travels, even the journey I made through a corner of their country. But come, come! All of you.” He pointed to some ladder-back wooden chairs arranged around the fire. “Let’s sit and talk away the evening.”
Stepping behind one of the chairs, Stewart gripped its back and looked at Waits with a broad smile.
“He wants you to sit on it,” Bass explained in Crow, unable to come up with a word for chair.
“Sit?”
“Among the white men, this is how they sit. They have many chairs.”
She regarded the piece of furniture suspiciously, then glanced at Stewart, and down at the chair again. “Why sit on this—when they can sit on the ground, can sit on a blanket or robe?”
“Don’t make much sense, just like a lot the white man does. But”—and he shrugged—“white folks partial to this way of sitting. Go on, sit—and we’ll be good guests for this visitor from a land far, far away.”
After she had settled, Bass and Stewart took their seats as a half-breed servant stepped up with a silver tray on which rested four large pewter goblets.
The nobleman took his from the tray as the half-breed stepped between Bass and the Crow woman. “Try this, Scratch. It’s a very nice wine I brought with me. If you shouldn’t like it, we can find you something else to drink.”
As it turned out, Waits enjoyed the taste of her first glass so quickly that Bass had to warn her the white man’s powerful drink might either make her sick or cause her to act like the trappers she had seen become silly fools after guzzling at rendezvous.
“You’ve covered some ground, William,” Bass declared later as the half-breed attendant poured steaming coffee in china mugs after an elegant supper of elk tenderloin garnished with canned oysters and slabs of a tart cheese on the side. He had never seen Waits-by-the-Water eat near as much as she did once Magpie was nursed and laid to sleep on a blanket spread beside her chair.
“You said you’ve been out to Vancouver. So you must have met Doctor McLoughlin?”
“That ol’ white-headed eagle? Sure did. A good man—even for a Britisher.”
“Lord, he’s not a Britisher!” Stewart corrected. “He was born in Canada. Which might explain why he might well share no more love for the crown than do I.”
“You’re Scots, are you?”
“Not a drop of John Bull in me,” Stewart said proudly.
Scratch sipped at his coffee, then said, “My grandpap allays told us we was Scot too—leastways, back some in the family.”
At that Stewart hoisted his tin cup and merrily proposed, “Welcome to the tartan, my friend!”
“You said you been far yonder to the west, and clear up to Fort Union at the mouth of the Yallerstone,” Scratch declared. “How far south you been? See’d Bents’ Fort?”
“Indeed I did. Spring of thirty-four. We came north after a winter sojourn in Sante Fe—”
“Jehoshaphat! We was close by ourselves—down to Taos that winter!” Titus exclaimed. “That’s where our li’l Magpie was born. I first come through Bents’ Fort that spring of thirty-four too, on my way back from St. Lou.”
“We visited Taos a few days on our way north for rendezvous on Ham’s Fork,” Stewart declared. “Quite an undertaking the Bent brothers have assumed with their fortress, not unlike the construction of this post. Back in Scotland, I’ll have you know, my brother is building himself a new castle. Murthly he’s calling it.”
“What brung you all the way out here?” Scratch inquired after draining his mug. “All the yondering you’ve done, from the Missouri to the Columbia and on down to the greaser diggings—that’s a passel of tramping.”
