after mile, from murky first light until it grew too dark to see much of anything past the saddle horse’s muzzle, Titus Bass goaded every one of the creatures north.
The pups seemed to swell and grow each day, steadily filling out, their lanky legs stretching even longer—no great surprise, for they were eating a diet of the fresh game Scratch killed along the way, gnawing at the meaty bones at night while all three of them lay by the fire in those camps he selected so they would be sheltered from the harsh, howling autumn winds and any roving eyes, giving them a few hours respite from the trail.
That first night out from Bents Fort, it suddenly struck him that he was alone again in Arapaho country. Titus had banked the fire and dragged the wood close to his robes so he wouldn’t have to slip out into the cold to periodically feed the flames. As he lay there, listening to the dark womb of night surrounding them, Scratch watched first one, then the second pup, tire of chewing slivers of meat from their bones. It wasn’t long before their eyes were closed and their tails were curled over their noses.
When he awoke later on, the wind had died some, but it had begun to softly snow, just enough to already collect a scum of flakes on the dogs’ fur. After quickly banking more wood on their fire, Bass whistled softly.
Both heads popped up. “C’mere.”
He held up the edge of the buffalo robe and patted the blanket beside him. “C’mon, you rascals—get in here.”
The black-eyed one was the first to scramble to his feet and prance around the small fire. He settled right against Bass’s hip. Then the ghost-eyed pup complied too, settling in against the man’s knees. Gently laying the robe back over all three of them, Titus fell asleep quickly—sensing the warmth of those pups seeping into his own old bones.
“I got the feeling we’re gonna be the best of friends, you boys an’ me,” he whispered just before sleep overtook him again.
That next morning, the temperature hovered well below freezing as the pups stirred and poked their noses from under the edge of the snow-crusted buffalo robe.
“G’won, now—go pee.”
They stretched and yawned as they emerged into the cold, then stepped away to water the bushes beyond the far side of the fire ring, while Titus shuddered with the stiffening breeze as he laid the last of his wood on the coals. Laying his cheek right above the icy crust of snow, he began blowing to excite the few, fading embers. Finished with his morning business, the dark-eyed one shoved his pointed snout through the two or more inches of snow, searching a moment before scooping up last night’s bone. The second pup excavated for his too.
“Already got your breakfast, do you?”
After sprinkling the nearby snow himself, Titus warmed what was left of his coffee from the night before and chewed on some slices of meat he had roasted for supper. It didn’t take long before the pups moseyed over, lured by the smell of that flame-kissed meat.
“So now you don’t want them bones, eh?”
One at a time, he fed himself and the dogs small bites he trimmed from the slabs of roasted venison until there was no more. Then downed the last of his coffee before pulling on his coat in the gray light, stomping out to take the horses to water.
By the time the pack animals were loaded, Scratch pulled the blanket halves from the two baskets and whistled for the pups. First one, then the other, he set inside their basket and arranged the blanket under and around them both for padding and for warmth.
They marched until midmorning when he stopped briefly to let them pee in the snow and he himself sprayed the bushes. By the middle of the day when they stopped again to rest the horses for the better part of an hour, Scratch unfurled two buffalo robes, one atop the other, and called the pups inside the cocoon with him for a short nap. They pushed on again until midafternoon when he gave the dogs another chance to stretch their legs before enduring a last long stretch that took them right into twilight.
So it went, day after day, as Titus hurried to strike the South Platte. Then late one afternoon, they reached the abandoned adobe walls of Fort Vasquez.
“This here’s where I brung my wife and li’l Magpie too—we spent the winter of thirty-five-thirty-six right over yonder in them trees.”
Abandoned, and forlorn—how lonely the place seemed now. Then he remembered the Arapaho who caught him trapping in the foothills that early spring of ’36. Squeezing the dread from his mind, Scratch decided to stay the night within those quiet, ghostly adobe walls once a witness to far better times. As darkness came down and the wind moaned outside the half-hung gate, he thought of Shad Sweete, how the big man’s moccasins had once crossed and recrossed this ground … until the fur business went to hell and the traders abandoned their fort. The Bents and American Fur up at Laramie were both able to offer more to the wandering bands for their tanned buffalo robes than any small-time operation ever could hope to offer in trade.
Now Shad had gone off to the blanket with the Cheyenne. Maybe even took him a shine to a squaw, some gal he couldn’t get off his mind or out of his heart. Titus knew how a man could get himself so lonely for the touch of a woman, the smell of her too—himself feeling pretty damn miserable right then and there for missing his own woman. Month after month of nothing but the growl of deep voices falling upon his ears—it made him hunger for to hear her soft, trilling voice at long, long last. He went to brooding on just how her arms could feel around him, the fragrance of her hair when she nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder. A hollow pit yawned in the middle of him as he remembered the way her warm mouth crushed his lips so eagerly when she hungered for him.
And he discovered that he ached to see the little ones too. Oh, their bright eyes—how Magpie would curl up in his arms, and the way Flea would tug at his father’s one lone braid. So the old trapper called the pups close, scratching their ears and rubbing their bellies, thinking how wonderful a surprise these two dogs would be for his two children when he returned to Absaroka, long overdue.
The wind blustered outside those old mud walls, groaning past the dilapidated gate swinging on the last of its hinges, a cold wind sighing as it hurtled snow clouds past the silver face of a quarter-moon overhead. He had been alone, so very alone before. But never quite this lonely.
That next morning he left the South Platte to angle itself off to the northeast as he struck out for the northwest and the base of the foothills that would guide him in his quest. The sky was lowering, and another storm would be bearing down on them by nightfall. Better to be in the lee of the mountains come late afternoon, find a sheltered draw or ravine where he could protect the horses and build a fire the wind could not torment.
After dark it began to snow again. He sensed the inward pressure of time. Never having owned a pocket watch, not a man who was mindful of a calendar either, Titus nonetheless felt a compression of his soul as the cold knifed its way into the marrow of him. He should have been home by now. Not having the slightest idea where that realization sprang from … Scratch nonetheless knew he should have been back to Absaroka by now.
He passed a fitful night, tossing in the robes and blankets with those two leggy pups. The storm moderated by first light as it rolled on east. The exertion made Bass warm as he loaded up the horses, one by one with their Indian pack saddles, then strapped on their bundles and made ready the saddle horse and the pups’ baskets. They set off across a new snow that had rubbed the little dogs’ furry bellies earlier that morning before he ensconced them in their blankets and baskets for the journey.
His decision was made before the sun appeared behind the thick storm clouds. There would be no trip that would take him to Fort William at the mouth of the Laramie on the North Platte, no trip east from the direct route he had charted in his mind. He didn’t have the time for such a luxury. Winter was on its way to the northern plains, and he needed to strike for home as fast as he could push the animals.
In a matter of days he had them skirting around the far end of the Black Hills,* gradually stretching out the daily march even though the number of hours between dawn and dusk was perceptibly shrinking. They could move faster now, cover more ground, the Cheyenne horses hardened to the trail, accustomed to their loads. After all, he knew these hills and bluffs, knew every creek and rivulet as he hurried cross-country, guided by the map long ago burned in his mind.
At last he struck the upper North Platte, and in two more days he put that river at his back—scurrying, scurrying west for Turtle Rock and Devil’s Gate, following the Sweetwater in its icy climb into the naked, scrub- covered expanse that would transport a man to the Southern Pass.
But Titus would not be near so patient as to wait for the Sweetwater to make it to the top of the pass before he would turn north. Instead, he struck out across country, praying his memory of the land would not fail him. North by northwest through each shortening day. That first night after abandoning the Sweetwater, he bedded down the
