giggles from the little one as she peered over her shoulder at the terrible man-beast pursuing her.
At the edge of the meadow stood Waits-by-the-Water, always watching, smiling, laughing with them each time either father or daughter spilled, rolling in the cool, wet grass. Day by day Magpie got better at smacking the ball away from him, better at staying on her feet, better able to dodge and sidestep her father until he would collapse on the ground, huffing from exhaustion while she leaped upon his chest to pull at his long hair or his beard.
“Popo play! Popo play!” she would cry in English, unable yet to call him
“Popo tired, Magpie,” he would mimic her pet name for him. “Popo sleep now.”
Then Titus would shut his eyes to feign sleep until she bent over his face, gently nudging back an eyelid to inspect his condition. Each time she did, Scratch would immediately roar and leap up, snatching her into his arms, hoisting her overhead, spinning, spinning until he made himself so dizzy he had to collapse again, both of them laughing as Waits-by-the-Water leaped on them both.
These warming days of early spring were good. Though their times together were brief because the beaver were sleek with winter coats, he did his best to make the most of every visit before he rode off again. One day soon, he promised, they would start north for rendezvous in the valley of the Green, not so much to trade furs off for their necessaries as much as he hankered to see familiar faces again—to learn what old friends had gone under, who had abandoned the mountains, and who remained steadfast as this way of life slowly burned itself out like the final ember in a fire that had flared far too hot.
Far back in the hills again, he had encountered sure sign of Indians for something on the order of a week, moving his camp a little each day. At first he saw the smoke of distant fires. Then spotted some far-off riders. And even crossed a fresh trail that came down from the saddle above him two days back. Four of them, perhaps five. At least there were five horses. No telling how many riders. Might only be hunters, their packhorses laden with elk as the game grazed farther and farther up the slopes with each week’s warming.
But for the past two days of making cold camps—chewing on dried meat, going without coffee, and sleeping without a fire—Bass hadn’t run across any new sign of the horsemen.
“Likely ’Rapaho,” he grumbled to himself now as he pulled the trap sack loose from Samantha’s packsaddle, the way he had grumbled countless times in the last week. “Taking furs in to trade with Sublette and Vaskiss. Get ’em more powder and shot.”
More than once Bass had returned from his trapping forays to find Arapaho lodges pitched outside the walls of Fort Vasquez, come there to trade for what they needed, perhaps wheedling for what they coveted, willing to steal what wasn’t nailed down when the white men turned their backs.
Losing some of his hair made his gut burn with an unquenchable hatred for the tribe. Finally Scratch had taken his revenge upon the very man who had scalped him nine years ago.
How cleansing it had been to exact that brutal retribution.*
And even though the red bastards had put an arrow in his shoulder more than two winters back, somehow Titus always managed to hurt the Arapaho more than they had hurt him.
Over the years he had come to learn there were tribes and bands he could deal with, and tribes who meant trouble straight up. Even among the Crow, he had discovered there were good and there were those whose hearts lay in a dark and shadowy place. He figured it had to be just that way with the Arapaho. A man had to be on the watch for Bannock too, a bunch who always did their damndest to run off with what they could. Then there were the Ute, a peaceable enough people. And those Shoshone who had healed him, perhaps saved his life, though Slays in the Night had inexplicably turned on him later: stolen Bass’s horses, tried to kill his old white friend.
Maybeso there really was good and bad in each bunch, he had begun to believe this long, wet winter. Just as there were good men who were his friends among the company brigades, there would always be men like Silas Cooper or that parley-voo Chouinard. Skin color didn’t make no difference, he allowed.
Except when it came to the Blackfoot.
They were the foulest creatures God ever put on the earth. Why, those red sons of bitches had butchered more good men Scratch knew of. If ever there was a tribe that deserved the iron fist of God’s own wrath rubbing them out in one fell swoop, he believed it was the Blackfoot. Evil incarnate.
Late in the day after lying back in the shadows wrapped in a robe, Titus led Samantha out of hiding, heading downhill for the swampy bottom ground where he set more than a dozen traps that morning. The beaver had been busy there in the shade of the leafless quaky, stirring from their winter lodges to fell the saplings they fed their young. That half of the meadow the sun could not yet reach this time of the year was still slicked with inch-thick ice. The rest of the clearing warmed enough to become a bog by day, but refroze each night.
Now he needed to gather all his traps before returning to camp; tomorrow he’d be on his way even higher. What with the way the tiny freshets were feeding every little stream, how so many of them wove together to form gushing creeks that spilled on down the slopes, Titus figured the high country had to be melting. And if the snow was softening, then there surely had to be a way of punching his way back into that country where the beaver slumbered, yet undisturbed.
When he pulled up that first trap, Bass found it empty. Into one of the two trap sacks it went, clattering softly as the iron jaws and chain settled against Samantha’s side where the deer-hide sack hung suspended from the elk-horn pack-saddle. The second clutched a fat, sleek beaver captured in its jaws. Glancing at the sun, he figured he had enough time to skin the animal out there and then. That done, the trap went into the other sack with the green hide he had rolled tightly. On and on he went, collecting at least two beaver for every three traps he pulled from the water—
Samantha’s ears came up as she froze.
Bass held his breath. Stilled his hands over the carcass he was skinning in the cold, damp grass beginning to slick with ice here as the sun’s light continued to fade from the sky. For the longest time he listened, his eyes searching the brush, the trees, always coming back to look at the mule—watching her eyes, her nostrils, until she finally snorted and dipped her head to tear contentedly at the grass.
He breathed again, relieved, and went back to trimming the hide from the two back legs, then sawed off the huge tail. But instead of pitching this tail out with the gut-pile, Titus decided to save it, perhaps cook it tomorrow after they had climbed high enough, far enough that no skulking redbelly would follow.
Gathering tail, hide, and trap, he stood and heard his knees crackle in protest. The years of cold, wading and working in frozen streams, were exacting their toll on his joints. Tortured more every season with aching, icy stabs of pain, he worried how long his body would be able to endure, how long before he could no longer provide for those who counted upon him.
He glanced over at the big Derringer rifle leaning against the brush, then decided against gathering it up, pushing instead for the pack mule, his arms already burdened. At Samantha’s side he dropped the trap with a clatter, then spread the green, sticky hide across her wide rump, hair side down. On the gummy flesh he laid the beaver tail and quickly rolled it within the hide.
Pulling back the top of the trap sack, Titus dropped the green plew inside—crying out with pain as the iron tip of an arrow slashed a furrow along his right shoulder, pinning his right hand against the wide wooden packsaddle support.
Gritting his teeth with that exquisite trail of fire scorching its way up his arm, Scratch jerked around, hearing the war cry burst from the brush at the edge of the clearing. Just one voice. A lone figure among those leafless trees, nocking a second arrow against the bowstring.
Twisting back to look at his right hand, bloodied and impaled on the arrow shaft that quivered with every pulse of his bright red blood, quivered with every shudder of uncontrollable pain that sent its tremor through the arm. Gently he flexed the fingers a little, finding that every one of them still moved. Just a little, what with the pain it caused—but they moved.
He seized the shaft with his left hand, slid the fist down until it smeared the blood oozing from the wound, and pulled. The arrow did not budge.
When the second arrow struck the mule’s flank, they yelped in pain together as Samantha jerked, kicking a hind leg, slashing his shin with her hoof as she tried to escape the cause of her torment. With each buck she made and tremor that shot through her muscles, he grunted anew with his own pain.
Behind him the warrior suddenly screamed again, shouting this time a rhythmic, off-key war song as he jabbed another arrow against the bowstring and brought the weapon up.
