weary horses at dark without water. They were too weary to care. The dogs whimpered some, however, tongues lolling—but quieted as soon as he tossed them the raw gut of a skinny antelope buck he had chanced across just before sundown.
Near midmorning the following day, he spotted the telltale brushy border of a creek, that dull gray of leafless branches huddling close to the snowy ground as the watercourse meandered its way across the unbroken white expanse that stretched ever onward toward the harsh blue of the prairie sky. A bone-dry westerly wind prevented the horses from smelling the moisture until they were almost on top of the little creek.
In a matter of moments every one of the animals was lined up, licking at the icy crust, hammering at the discolored slake with their hooves to get down to water … what little water still flowed over the pebbled creekbed. The dogs were yowling piteously, clawing at the tops of their baskets by the time he got to the pups and dropped them onto the icy crust of snow. The old, gentle horses were careful for the impetuous puppies as the pair darted between legs and hooves to drink first at one place, then scampered to another, lapping at the skimpy flow.
On his knees after cracking the ice with his tomahawk, Scratch leaned out and lowered his face into the ragged hole. Water so cold it made his back teeth ache clear down to the jawbone. He came up gasping, raking his blanket mitten down his mustache and into his beard, both instantly caked with ice in that freezing wind blustering off the hillsides—
There in the mid-distance, he saw them gathered beneath the hulking, bruised, blue-black clouds. The mountain slopes. They had to be the Wind Rivers. Two days, three at the most, and he would be at the cache. The cache. It was one more milestone to put at his back, each landmark announcing he was drawing closer and closer to home.
The cache. Here he had buried his traps and all the other weighty truck he had not wanted to pack across the desert to California. With Bill Williams’s help, he had taken a day to dig that shallow hole before they pushed on south to the appointed rendezvous with the other raiders at both Davy Crockett and Robidoux … suddenly it all seemed so long ago. The desert crossing early in the summer, the raids and fighting, then recrossing the desert with all their horses. Striking for the mountains and home. He’d made it east of the Rockies, but he was still far from home.
He let the animals drink and drink. He owed them that much, he decided. Then Bass called the pups to his feet and picked them up, one by one, settling them inside their baskets. For some reason, it struck him just how much they had grown: if they stood on their rear legs, each of the pups could easily leap out of the baskets that weren’t holding them much longer. Perhaps by the time they reached the cache and he had his plunder resurrected from that hole in the ground, he could give the pups a try on their own—following the horses north.
Bass mounted, led the pack animals across the narrow creek, and struck for the foot of the mountains.
Late morning of the third day, he recognized the distant landmarks here several leagues south of where the fur companies had held two of their rendezvous. Summer of ’30 had been a good one, times were clearly getting better—the mountain men were basking in their glory days. But by July of ’38, when the traders and trappers once more gathered in these nearby meadows, dark and ominous shadows had appeared over the mountains. Most of the free men realized the writing was already carved in the wall. The beaver trade was dying. Over the last few years there had gradually been less and less to hurraw about, less to celebrate and revel in, with far less whiskey to kill the pain that came of such a slow, agonizing death.
By sundown a day later, Bass had everything dragged out of the small cache, dividing the square-jawed iron traps and all that extra powder and lead among the baggage he would strap on the packhorses come morning. At twilight Titus celebrated inching that much closer to her and the children.
Here in the lee of the mountains his horses had plenty of grass blown clear by the winds groaning off the eastern slopes of the Wind River Range. Nearby they had a narrow creek, fed by a spring that would keep the creek open most of the winter. Now they were ready to point their noses directly north—following the Wind River into Absaroka itself. He could have done with a little whiskey to toast his efforts this night beside that empty hole in the ground, but Bents Fort coffee would have to do.
That night as he lay in the robes and blankets, scratching the furry ears of those two weary dogs, Bass stared up at the patches of starry sky that appeared through wide gaps in the drifting clouds. For the first night in a long, long time he felt assured that this truly was the same sky she would be looking up at this moment too. No more did months separate them. Now it was only a matter of weeks—days really, or so he wanted to convince himself.
Hopeful the miles would pass beneath him all the quicker for it.
Bad as his joints pained him—especially the stiffness in those hard, raw-knuckled hands, not to mention the afflictions suffered a’times in both his knees and the aggravation that came and went in that left hip—Scratch nonetheless did not tarry at the medicinal oil springs lying north of that old rendezvous site.
Memories were wrenched up just in passing on by the smelly, sulphurous tar pits. In much the same way Titus sensed the ghosts of the past as he stood beneath the low-slung, midday sun resplendent on the bright snow in that meadow where the Popo Agie joined the Wind River. How many hooves and horses, lodges and lean-tos, trappers and traders had trampled this grassy lowland … but those were matters of a bygone time. He whistled the dogs close as he slowly rose to the saddle, grown melancholy with remembrance as he set off again.
Way it seemed, most of his life was already at his back, day by day steadily moving beyond all that he had left behind—friends and fights and freezing streams—realities and recollections that only made the possibilities of what lay ahead that much sweeter.
Titus knew how the pups must feel: for the first time they were allowed their own legs on this northbound journey. He’d realized he would have to check their paws and pads at each stop throughout the days ahead, looking for telltale signs of frostbite from tromping across the patches of ice, stretches of bare, frozen ground, and crusty snowdrifts everywhere they’d turn. Their skinny, wolfish legs would have to grow all the stronger too, what with the endurance that would be required of them if they were to travel with Titus Bass. To have them strike out across the ground on their own seemed the only way to toughen up their pads for this last part of the trail taking them north into the heart of winter. At first they might have only enough bottom to last until the mid-morning halt—but he knew that day by day the pups would harden for both the trail and what new life awaited them in Absaroka.
The dogs were eager to begin their march each morning, but by midday they were tongue-lolling and near done in as they collapsed near his feet the moment he dropped from the saddle. Titus packed them in their baskets most of the afternoon. As one day tumbled onto the next, he found them able to last a little longer. A good thing too, he reflected. Those half-big dogs would soon outgrow the pack baskets he had traded off of Goddamn Murray. They weren’t roly-poly puppies anymore. He had burned off their store of baby fat. Mile by mile, they had become lean and hard.
By the time he led them through the Pryor Gap, Titus knew the dogs could survive without him if they had to. Should something happen to him, they would make it on their own. That gave him peace of mind: knowing that if he were no longer around, the animals wouldn’t fall prey their first few days in the wilderness. The pups just might end up having some hair of the bear too, might possess what it took to survive in this raw, wild land.
Once he had started into the Gap, Bass began to train an ever-more-alert eye on the blue horizon, searching for any sign of smoke or dust, something that might foretell of a village in camp or some Crow on the move. Yellow Belly’s people could be anywhere in this stretch of country now, he reminded himself. Deep in winter the band might push far south of the Gap, seeking out those protected valleys as the weather intensified its icy fury. But for now, he figured that the village would still be migrating across more open country. Anywhere west from the Bighorn. Pushing on, Titus continued down that river to its junction with the mighty Yellowstone.
From those high southern bluffs he halted to let the horses blow and water while he had himself a look with his brass spyglass. Dragging it from his possibles bag, Scratch snapped open the three long, leather-wrapped sections and began to search the north bank of the Yellowstone, slowly scanning to his right as the Bighorn flowed off to the northeast. Then he inched it around to the south, searching the lower Bighorn valley. Still nothing.
They had to be west of there, he decided. Turning to the left, Titus began to scan the north bank of the Yellowstone for any sign of movement, human or otherwise.
How desperately he wanted to find them, spot some wispy tower of smoke perhaps, that his eyes strained and grew tired. So tired for the strain in the winter light, from his willing it to be so, that his eyes began to water in
