that he was getting so old he had forgotten where he had made the second set. Turning on his heel, he peered across the ground, discovering the stake he had driven into the bank to mark the location of his trap sites. Now he whirled, angry and confused, staring at that point where the frozen ground met the surface of the water, gazing into the stream with a squint to search for the tall pole that always marked the extent of the trap chain that prevented the beaver from reaching the safety of his winter lodge. Out there in the deep water, the creatures would drown—
But at this second set there was no pole, no trap. And no beaver.
Angrier still at his growing frustration, Titus flung himself out of the brush and sprinted upstream for the third set. He stood at the stake in the bank and peered at the widening pond pocked with the prickly domes of mud-and- branch beaver lodges. No trap pole there either.
Furious, he shoved his right arm into the water where he found only the narrow shelf he had carved for the trap. Empty.
Flinging water from the sleeve, he stood and whirled around, his breath coming hard. Heart pounding faster.
And in the light of day-coming Scratch spotted the tracks.
Hurtling forward, he pitched to his knees among them, studying the hoofprints, the moccasin tracks, blowing a little crusty, ice-laden snow out of the prints. Yesterday.
He had come across some tracks two days back, a heavy man riding a pony with a cracked hoof. Altogether there were more than ten horses and riders making that trail he had discovered a good distance north of the Crow village. Hunters were all over that part of the country. Likely the Crow were keeping an eye on him too.
But now he found evidence that same pony, if not the same rider, had visited his traps just yesterday, even though Bass’s camp and this stream were both east of the Crow village.
Balling a fistful of snow in his mitten, Titus stood and flung the snowball angrily at the ground. The bastards for sure spied on him. Circling his camp. And now they’d even gone to honey-fuggling with his trap sites, taken to stealing his traps. Three of them would take some plews for a man to replace, especially when that man was already down three traps.
Feeling his anger rising to fever pitch, Scratch feared the Crow had taken them all. Every last one of his traps, from every one of his sets, along with the beaver snared in them.
Pretty damned plain. No longer were they merely content to hold him at arm’s length. Not satisfied to keep an eye on him and prevent him from infecting them. Now the warriors were beginning their campaign to drive him off, muscle him as far away as they could, right on out of Absaroka. Away from her people.
Standing there over those tracks around the fourth set, his blanket mittens gripping the stock of the big flintlock, Bass sensed he held his deepest fury for Strikes-in-Camp. This was no way for the son of a bitch to treat his sister.
The first rays of the sun suddenly pierced the timber, sending shafts of saffron light across the snow, illuminating every hoofprint, every moccasin track. Eight, ten, maybe as many as a dozen—horses and riders. Goddamned bastards. They’d skulked around behind his back, waited for him to put in all the time to prepare and make his set, watched him turn his back and leave for camp, then swooped on down and robbed him.
Cowards! Traveling in packs like predators, sneaking up behind him—afraid to take him on even though they would have him on the downside of some bad odds. That was all part of their plan, he figured. They didn’t want to confront him in the open, so they committed their foul deeds in secret. Probably even Yellow Belly or the warrior- society chiefs left orders that the white man was not to be hurt, even killed, because he had once been a friend of the Crow. And, after all, he did have a Crow wife. Better to steal what they could from him, make it so tough to work his traplines that he’d pack up and ride off for other country.
Would he surprise them!
Just as soon as he rode back to camp to tell Waits-by-the-Water he wouldn’t be returning that night—not until late the following day because he had a long way to ride—he planned to tear right into that village and demand his property.
And if they didn’t allow him into the camp, if they didn’t return what was his … why, goddamn them niggers —there’d be some dead Crow!
How many thieving red niggers was an iron trap worth?
One for one? Or maybe as high as two of them smart-assed, cocky bucks for every trap they stole from him?
Angry as he was getting with every mile, Bass figured any of them got in his way, they’d find out this was one white man more dangerous than any of the white man’s smallpox.
“Keep the guns near you,” he reminded his wife as he tied the last knot on Samantha’s packsaddle.
She gazed up at his face. “Where are you going?”
“Til be back before the sun sets tomorrow.”
“Why is your face like a stone, husband?”
He tried to smile, but it didn’t work, so he turned away so she would not see his eyes.
“Is your heart an angry stone too?” she asked. “Are you riding somewhere because of your anger?”
“Yes,” he said, knowing he could not tell her a lie. The best he could do was to keep from telling her all of the truth. “I’ll be back by sundown tomorrow.”
She had pressed herself against him, clutching desperately. He sensed her fear, and in that moment Bass felt deeply guilty for the leaving. Since her own people had shunned her, Waits-by-the-Water had no one else but him. Now he was riding off without explaining, leaving her feeling as alone and lonely as she had ever felt.
He whispered, his lips against the top of her head, “Have Magpie help you with the boy.”
But the little girl at his side heard and wrapped herself around his leg. “Come soon to us?”
“Yes,” he said, bending to kiss her forehead.
Then he pressed his mouth against Waits-by-the-Water’s, turned, and vaulted into the saddle. Kicking his pony out of camp, Bass knew he could not turn and look back.
He wanted this to be over. Not just to have his traps returned, but to have his wife and children back with Waits-by-the-Water’s family and people. Disillusioned that everything could not be as it was before, Scratch started cross-country for the Crow village, knowing that he could be there before sundown if he stopped to rest the animals no more than twice on this journey through the snow.
Shame of it was, he didn’t know who he should be angry at, who he could get his hands on, to bloody them with his bony knuckles, to wrap his fingers around their necks and squeeze the breath right out of them. Who to blame? The sick man who had boarded the St. Peter’s down in the settlements when the company’s summer boat carried the dreaded scourge upriver? Or the booshways at the posts along the high Missouri who ended up putting their future trading dollars ahead of the lives of those tribes they traded with?
Could he blame white men like Gamble and Tullock for being a part of a giant sprawl of cogs, men who were essentially as powerless as he once the prairie fire was ignited? Could he blame the Blackfoot for their suspiciousness, their anger that they were being lied to by the white man when they were ordered to stay away from Fort McKenzie?
But shouldn’t he hold his deepest bitterness for the Crow who turned against their own because she had married a white man?
The Blackfoot and the booshways were already his enemies, already the target of much of his wrath. But what of Tullock and Gamble? If the Crow didn’t return to Fort Van Buren, then the trader was ruined, the company would close the post down, and Samuel was out of a job.
And hadn’t Levi lost enough already? Bass didn’t figure he could hold any bitterness for the old friend who had already paid the highest price a man must pay for another’s mistake.
But the Crow had no goddamned reason to steal his traps, to make it tough on him to provide for his family. Despite their fear of the pox, they had no call to keep the woman and their children from the village. Never could there be any justification strong enough that would allow the Crow to—
He yanked back on the pony’s reins, his breath caught in his chest, ears straining. Samantha blew, wisps of frosty steam jetting from her muzzle. As the sound disappeared, he heard more gunfire. Shouts. Screams and cries.
Scratch turned left, listening. Then right and listened some more.
Muffled by the distance, shielded by the slopes before him—those noises originated from the far side of the
