They were Injun dogs. Plain and simple.
Their long, wolfish snouts and short, peaked ears marked these mongrels as belonging to a breed much, much closer to their wild cousins than any civilized house or hunting breed preferred by white folks back east.
He could easily believe there might well be some prairie wolf in the pups, what with him getting that brief look at their mother. She was nothing more than a Cheyenne cur … that tribe being an extremely nomadic people who had long ago grown attached to those wild canines roaming the fringes of their villages in the prehorse days. From her narrow head and shallow rib cage, the bitch was nothing more than a typical Cheyenne camp dog, homely mongrel that she was.
But the male that had mounted her at the fragrant peak of her last season damn well had some buffalo wolf in him—if not an outright wolf himself. That wild, feral cast to the pups’ eyes, the forehead and lean haunches of the two—characteristics that all bespoke an ancient ancestry dating long, long before man and dog ever crossed paths to advance their mutual fortunes.
That first morning marching north, Scratch had them ensconced in their baskets, slung on either side of a gentle, hard-boned mare he figured had to be some eight to ten years old from the condition of her teeth. With a short lead rope he had loosely looped around her neck, he kept the mare close by his knee. Only once did one of the black-eyed pups ever grow fractious enough to clamber his way out of his basket.
Titus watched it out of the corner of his eye: that offhand pup scratching and clawing desperately, pulling himself up with all fours until the dog purchased a hold on the top of the basket with his powerful jaws—pulling the rest of his roly-poly body behind him … then
Suspending his flintlock from the saddle horn using the braided loop he had knotted to the trigger guard, Titus dropped to the ground and stepped around the mare. Now the second pup, the one with those pale, ghost-colored eyes, was yelping—wanting out to play too.
Its darker-haired brother rocked onto its feet, shimmied to dust himself off, then immediately dove under the mare’s legs to flee the man just settling to his knees.
“C’mon, you li’l Digger,” he said as he stood, slowly moving to the other side of the mare.
Which caused the obstinate pup to scamper in the opposite direction.
Titus stopped, put his hands on his hips, and said in a quiet, clear voice, “So, you don’t wanna go north to Absaroka with me—that it?”
He watched how the pup settled to its rear haunches and cocked its head at him—as if trying to understand those sounds the man was making. Behind Titus the other pup kept up a pitiful yowl for its brother.
“It’s up to you. If’n you’re going, you get over here now so we can be on the tramp. I ain’t gonna take you up there to them two young’uns of mine less’n you wanna go with me on your own.”
He bent forward slowly, inching toward the pup—which suddenly darted to the other side of the mare again.
“Awright—there’ll only be one of you dogs get up there with us for the winter. Damn your li’l black eyes anyway. By mornin’ you’ll be breakfast for a b’ar!”
Scratch stood, dusting off the knees of his leggings and settling the elkhide coat around him once more as he strode around the mare’s head and took up the reins to his saddle horse. When he was settled, Bass loosed his rifle off the round saddle horn and clucked at the mare. “Giddap.”
It took no more than three of his heartbeats for the ghost-eyed pup to set up a mournful howl the moment it saw they were leaving its black-eyed brother behind. Scratch turned to gaze over his shoulder at the dog sitting on the prairie, dispassionately watching the string of packhorses pass him by, one by one by one. Eventually he was alone, and the big rumps of those cayuses were passing out of sight in the far trees lining a creekbank.
Yip-yipping, the black-eyed pup suddenly set up its own call—a plaintive cry far different than the mournful howl of its basket-bound brother.
“If’n he don’t come—we’ll both get over him,” Bass assured the grief-stricken, pale-eyed dog.
Then he glanced over his shoulder a third time, spotting the little pup scurrying along the line of packhorses, its short legs churning so furiously that it shot past the string of tall horses, making for the front of the line where the old trapper reined to a halt. After suspending the rifle from the horn again, Scratch eased himself slowly to the ground, turned, and descended to both knees, patting the tops of his thighs.
“C’mon, you li’l Digger! Get on up here!”
The puppy tumbled into his arms, every leg still wind-milling as Titus swept it off the ground—whimpering, burying its muzzle beneath Scratch’s elbow. He stood with the pup, scratching behind its ears. The way its brother was howling and leaping in its basket, Bass carried the black-eyed one over and let them both lick each other’s faces for a long moment before returning the darker one to his basket.
“You gonna stay there now,” he chided. “Leastways, till your legs are long enough for you to foller on your own.”
He scratched them both atop their bony skulls before remounting. “I sure hope you fellas gonna be as good a dog as ol’ Zeke was.”
Of a sudden it made his heart small and cold with mourning to remember that gray-haired hound. Loyal to its dying breath … killed by the goddamned Blackfoot it was following to protect its family—*
He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting of tears and clucked for the saddle horse, gave the mare’s lead rope a tug. Damn, if he wasn’t getting more and more human all the time, he reflected as the sun emerged at the far edge of the prairie behind his right shoulder. Older he got, the easier it was for him to hurt, easier for his eyes to seep a little too. Ol’ Zeke. Damnation, if he hadn’t been about the best dog a man could ever deserve to have as a friend. He blinked and looked up at the rosy-orange clouds strung out in strips across the autumn-blue sky with the sun’s rising.
If there was a heaven, and if there was a God … then Titus Bass knew the Lord had ol’ Zeke at his knee right about then. Up where Zeke was sure to spend all eternity, that faithful dog had to know how Titus Bass’s heart still pined for a scarred ol’ riverfront mongrel.
Maybeso, one of these two, even both, could one day make as good a dog as Zeke. Him and Zeke—they’d been a pair. Both of them weathered and scarred more than their share. But he’d never heard complaint one out of the dog over their few seasons together. Hell, Zeke had even come along to help him mourn when it came time to grieve alone for Rotten Belly.
He looked over at those two pups, rocking gently side to side as the mare carried them north into the unknown with their new master. Neither one of them made a peep, appearing content as could be in their baskets padded with parts of an old blanket Titus had cut up for them to share. Its thick wool had his smell buried deep within its fibers.
By the time he managed to track down Yellow Belly’s village, Scratch was certain the two of them would be imprinted with his smell, the various tones of his voice, the stern reproach when he corrected their behavior, or that gentle feel of his hands as he ruffled their soft fur. They would no longer be pups just weaned from their mamma. They’d be his dogs.
The day’s new sun felt warm on the side of his face. He and the fellas had themselves quite a hurroo last night—all of it wetted down with lots of Mexican whiskey. For some time now Elias Kersey, Jake Corn, and the others had determined they would push on for the Missouri settlements with their share of the horses, no more than another day or two—once they could cure their hangovers. But Scratch wasn’t about to wait another day. No matter that his head throbbed more than it had in years, he was starting north.
Like Bass and Williams, about half of the raiders had decided to turn their share of the California horses into mountain currency, getting from St. Vrain and Murray what they could per head, then taking out that credit in trade goods. Oh, there’d been a little good-natured grumbling to be sure, but Solitaire and the rest understood as well as any that the complaining wouldn’t do a lick of good.
Out here in this land, on the rolling flats or up into the broken and forbidding high country, freedom meant nothing less than horses to a man. No two ways about it.
But to Titus Bass, his share of those thousands of stolen horses he’d risked his neck to drive out of California were no better than a shackle and thousandweight iron chain hammer welded around his neck. All those animals could make him a veritable rich man for the first time in his life … but he wasn’t about to push on across the plains to reach the Missouri settlements where he could turn them into a small fortune. With no regret at all, he would
