learned of mind—why was it that Titus Bass had outlasted all but the hardy few who remained, steadfast holdouts like him?
What had singled him out for this honor?
From the echo of their barking, he could tell the dogs were making their way back. He stood listening to the dying of the light as the last pair of horses drank their fill. As the last rays of sun slowly drained behind the nearby bluffs, his old wounds began to ache with the great and deep cold that settled in the river valley.
Had he survived merely because he was so vigilant and wary? Or, quite the contrary—had he survived because he had ignored the odds and refused to shrink from those dangers that caused lesser men to cower— taking risks that spared his life in the end, while other less daring souls fell to less ordinary circumstances?
The two dogs burst onto the scene, causing the horses to snort in surprise, perhaps in disgust, at the canines’ playfulness. Titus turned and led those last two horses back to join the others as the dogs came up, bounding around him.
“Here. Here, boys,” he said as he dropped the lead ropes and patted his knees, calling the dogs. Something on their muzzles, a difference to their noses.
He wrapped an arm around the black-eyed one and held him close for an inspection. “Well, now—lookit you, Digger. What’s this?”
Swiping his mitten across the black nose and into the pale fur behind it, Bass grew suspicious.
Biting off his mitten, Bass dropped it at his knee while he licked his first two fingers and used them to wipe at the dog’s nose. Then he held the fingertips beneath his nose and smelled. Immediately brought the fingers to his mouth, tasting them lightly with the tip of his tongue.
“Ashes, boys. You had your noses in a fire pit, ain’t you?”
He let the darker pup go, snagged his mitten and pulled it on as he stood. Staring off in the direction where the pups had gone to investigate.
Not that the ash could have been warm—sensitive as their noses were, these dogs wouldn’t have done that. Even so, had it been as recent as last night’s fire pit, still had been a whole day—hunters up and moving off at daylight, clearing out of this country …
But, if they had been Crow hunters—why hadn’t they just returned to their village after their hunt instead of spending the night out in the cold?
Maybeso it wasn’t a Crow fire. Damn, he hated feeling squampshus like this on what had become more and more like home ground after all these years.
Looking around at this place he had chosen, Scratch sighed. He’d build a fire, cook his supper, and heat some coffee. Then take the precaution of building a straw man he would stuff beneath some robes to give the appearance of a man sleeping.
That done and the fire banked, he’d slip off into the dark, back among the cottonwood shadows where he would dig a narrow trench after nightfall. Into that shallow hole he’d lay enough of the glowing coals he could scoop from the fire pit, then sprinkle a thin layer of dirt over them before spreading his sleeping robes atop the trench. That done, he’d sleep warm, hiding back in the dark, laying right where he could keep watch on the fire and campsite through the trees.
Something told him. Maybe it was the fact he hadn’t found the Crow village by now. Compounded by the dogs investigating that ash from an old fire.
Then again … maybe it was nothing more than that finely tuned edge of discomfort that had saved his life so many, many times before.
* What the mountain men called the Laramie Range in southeastern Wyoming; not the Black Hills of today, which rise in extreme northwestern South Dakota.
22
Damn! He’d dozed off into a sleep too content and restful.
Should have heard them coming.
Bass listened to the night, his eyes straining at the dim corona of firelight that remained through the trees. Nothing moving yet.
Only sounds. The nicker of a horse, soft as a sigh. Then from another direction—this time to his right—the groan of a misplaced moccasin on the icy snow. That meant there was two of ’em. At
Already the dogs were alert, trembling in keen anticipation, whimpering low and feral in their throats there at his side, where they lay upon the robes. Before bedding down, Titus had tied them with lengths of rope to a pair of nearby trees, then wrapped bandannas around their jaws to clamp them shut when he inched back into the darkness last night. Oh, he could have tied them up close to the fire and the straw man, but these thieves might well have killed the pups outright. Dogs were noisy in an Indian camp—warning those in the village of all intruders. This enemy would go right after the pups if Titus had left them tied by the fire.
Better that they were beside him where he could scratch their ears, reassuring them—even whisper to them to hush now that so much depended upon noise, or the absence of it.
While his ears continued to listen for the slightest whisper of telltale sound, he watched the shadows around that copse of trees, that circle of radiant light from the fire he had banked. The glow was fading. A good chunk of time had passed since he slipped back into the shadows to wait out the night. There for a while he had come wide awake with every new sound emanating from the darkness. A restless, wary discontent huddled in the robes laid atop that warm trench of dirt and live coals.
Must’ve made himself too comfortable, too warm, too secure and lazy. His two pistols jabbing him in the gut hadn’t been enough to keep him from sleeping. They were primed and ready for the close work—once the three long guns were emptied. How many would there be?
Then he tried to assure himself there couldn’t be that many. If there were—it’s for certain the red niggers would have stepped right on into his camp, bold as brass to take his hair. Or, leastwise, to lift that straw man’s topknot.
No more’n three of ’em. Maybe four at the most, he convinced himself. No more than four, or these niggers would have been sassier. As it was, the thieves were cautious. And he had long ago learned to be all the more scared of a cautious adversary than to be wary of a boldly overconfident enemy.
As he lay there, trying to work his mind around just how to make his play from the dark, the first of the intruders eased into the outer edge of firelight, just off to his left a little. The warrior moved cautiously, still back in too much of those shadows preventing Titus from determining what the man might be—Blackfoot, Assiniboine, maybe even Crow horse thieves.
At the back of Digger’s throat, a low rumble grew. Good thing the wind rustled the leaf-bare branches enough to overwhelm the dog’s warning in that moment before Scratch grabbed Digger’s muzzle and squeezed it shut. The pup swallowed down the last of its growl.
This Indian had much of his back to Bass as he stepped silently, studying that long form stretched upon the ground, at the far side of the fire from Titus. Then part of the tall shadow moved, and a long weapon appeared in the warrior’s hand. A rifle. Maybeso a smoothbore trade gun, short as the barrel was. Its muzzle was being leveled at the straw man wrapped up in those buffalo robes.
It surprised Scratch when the Indian took one of his mittens from that smoothbore and waved it in gesture to the dark. Bass’s eyes shifted to the right, watching a second figure emerge from the dark. Out in front of him was a long-barreled weapon—definitely not a fusil. That was a rifle. Likely taken off some white man. Not a weapon bartered in the Indian trade.
Only then did Titus realize his heart was loudly thumping in his chest. He was scared they could hear it too and realize he was behind them in the dark. As the second one took another step into the light, Scratch rocked up on his hip. With a step from the other, he brought out one of the pistols. Each time the Indians moved with a rustle or a shuffle of their own, the old trapper readied himself a little more—shifting the robe out of his way before dragging out that second pistol. If there were two in the light, likely there were others still back in the dark.
