once again abandon the notion of growing rich and living out his days in comfort.
Beyond what he could give his family and friends in the way of material goods, this temporal matter of
Scratch breathed deep of the air still chilly here at sunrise … and realized again that he already was one of the richest men in the whole of all this country west of the wide Missouri.
It wasn’t long before he was thinking back to their last big hurraw last night—when Williams staggered over, his stooped shoulders wagging side to side as he lurched to a drunken halt by Titus there beside their roaring fire.
“I should’a let ’em kill you, Titus Bass,” he grumbled, his face set hard as mountain talus.
“Who?”
“Thompson. Them yellow-livered sonsabitches with ’im. They wanted to gut you so bad … I should’a let ’em, goddamn ye!”
Surprised, and made wary with all the alcohol washing around in his belly, Titus backed a step away from the man and did his best to set himself for what might come: a fist, or even the flash of a knife in the fire’s light.
His curiosity pricked, Scratch asked, “Why you figger them low-down bastards should’a kill’t me, Bill?”
The old trapper was a while in answering, taking his stern, half-lidded eyes off Bass to drain his pint cup before glaring again into Scratch’s face as he licked at the droplets suspended like glittering diamonds from the ends of his shaggy mustache.
“If’n I’d let Thompson an’ his bunch do with you how they wanted … then you’d ain’t been around a few nights back when I was fixin’ to guttin’ that goddamned Beckwith.”
Bass shook his head a minute, his mind confused, dulled somewhat by the potent liquor. “You want me dead ’cause I stopped you from getting yourself hurt, even kill’t by Beckwith?”
“That be the sartin truth of it,” he slurred. “Damn your eyes! I’d a-took him for sure, Scratch.”
“You was drunk then as you’re drunk now,” Titus argued. “Jim’d a hurt you bad, if’n he didn’t kill you outright. I damn sure didn’t want that to happen, Bill … for then I’d had to cut Beckwith up my own self.”
Williams attempted to straighten himself and keep from weaving unevenly, blinking his eyes at Bass. Finally he said, “Y-you’d done that for me?”
“Hell, I stood at your back all the way into California, and all the way back out again,” Scratch reminded. “And when they was fixing to slit my throat, you didn’t look away. Been easy ’nough to do it. But you stood up to ’em, an’ Peg-Leg later on too.”
“I ’member Peg-Leg.” Williams shook his head dolefully. “Dunno where he went bad.”
“I figger a man goes bad, like him and Thompson—they’re the sort allays was bad. Bad just waiting for a place to happen.”
“Damn your soul, Titus Bass.” And Williams licked his lips again. “You gone an’ ’minded me of why I favor taking to the high lonesome on my lonesome. Being with other coons just too hard sometimes. Finding them what you can count on, that’s too damn much work. Better off not havin’ to count on no one else but my own self.”
“Buy you ’nother drink, Bill?”
Williams gazed down into his cup a long moment, then his watery eyes climbed up to stare into Bass’s. “Drinking myself silly—that there’s one thing Ol’ Solitaire don’t cotton to doin’ alone.”
Other raiders were thumping on brass kettles, clanging iron skillets, or pounding on an old hollowed stump as the rest wheeled and cavorted round the fire. The noise and blur and numbness just like the old times, just like rendezvous. Gone forever now. Like cold mountain water run through a man’s fingers …
As the night aged, Williams had grown misty-eyed and asked, “We had us our hurraw, Scratch, didn’t we?”
“This here?”
“Nawww!” Bill shook his head emphatically. “Riding bold as brass into California and sneering at all them goose-necked greasers. We had us our hurraw showin’ them bean-bellies what for and slipping away with all them horse right under their idjit noses. Making it all the way back here ’cross that desert and them Rocky Mountings with what horses could still run with us. That’s the hurraw, Titus Bass. By damn … if that wasn’t a real man’s hurraw!”
Scratch’s eyes grew misty again too. Suddenly, he was struck with the reality that he would likely never see any of these men again in his life. No telling if Elias and the others would ever come back to the mountains once they reached the settlements with those horses. They’d likely sell every one for a ransom and become rich men overnight. If not rich, at least wealthy enough to damn well do anything rather than come west again in an attempt to scratch out a meager living trapping flat-tails in half-frozen streams, looking over their shoulders for grizzly or Blackfoot either one.
And men like Bill. Likely Williams would be good at his word about running alone and not poke his head in most places where Titus Bass might chance onto him again. So Scratch looked around the fire, at those dancing shadows whirling and spinning and stomping with gusto as they kicked up dust and watered down a long-grown thirst. He was not likely to lay eyes on these fellas ever again.
If for no better reason than Titus Bass couldn’t conceive of much that would lure him out of the north country. No matter what an uncertain future might bring his way.
So he had turned to look at old Bill, reading the war map that was Williams’s face, knowing his own face read like a war map of scrapes and scraps and battles too—all those times he had managed to slip right through death’s fingers … not to mention all the suns and the winds, and every last one of the winters that had carved their way onto his face and right on into his soul.
Damn, if the two of them didn’t have their epic California adventure to tell their grandchildren! If, that is, any of them lived long enough to bounce grandpups on their knees. They’d always have what they’d shared together.
“Ain’t no one gonna ever take our hurraw from us, Bill,” he had said to the man seated at his elbow. “No matter neither one of us become the rich men we figgered we was gonna be once we started out for California. No matter we had to fight off Mex soldiers and greasers too, slash our way through them goddamned Diggers and Yutas both just to jab most of these here horses all the way over every one of them mountain passes and down the canyons and valleys so we could reach that Picketwire Creek sitting right over yonder. No matter we hung our asses over the fire an’ roasted ’em good, Bill Williams. It still don’t make me no never mind we ain’t the rich men we thought we was gonna be.”
Bill had snorted some mirthless laughter. “Neither one of us ever likely to make ourselves rich by wading up to our balls in icy water to catch them goddamned big flattailed rats, Titus Bass.”
“Your words are true,” he ruminated. “I s’pose after enough seasons out here, them what learns they’re allays gonna be poor are the first to skeedaddle back east to what they was … while the rest just give up an’ head west for Oregon country to try farming.”
“What’s to become of the rest of us, Scratch?”
“The rest of us?” And Titus paused for some thought before continuing. “Why—niggers like you an’ me damn well made peace with being poor a long, long time ago, Bill!”
“What you figger to do with all them horses of your’n so you can stay on bein’ a poor nigger like you allays was?” Williams asked.
“Traded most of ’em off—give a few away. Keeping only what I need to get some plunder back to my family,” he admitted. “A passel of horses like them’d only slow me down getting north, going back where I belong. An’ … I don’t wanna linger too long striking out for the country I never should’ve left in the first place.”
*
21
Those rangy, strong-backed horses he traded off a few of Gray Thunder’s Cheyenne were a steady lot. Mile
