Buffalo Palace

6

Dry and wispy as old ash, the snowflakes struck his cheeks as he stepped out from the copse of aspen trees and stared up at the graying sky. Just a few flakes for now. But with that look of the horizon, this appeared to have the making of the first hard snow of the winter.

Hard to tell just what month of the year it was anymore up this high. Titus had been up here, wandering through these southern foothills and into the lower reaches of the mountains, since late summer and early autumn. Some time back he’d given up trying to sort things out like keeping track of months, deciding that none of it really mattered out here no more anyway. Long ago—back to late spring as he’d pushed west along the Platte River—he had decided that keeping track of days at this or days at that was a fool’s errand, and though he might well be accused of being a fool on other counts, he vowed not to be a counting fool. All that folderol about numbers and ciphering their meaning was merely one thing more to be shet of and left behind back there where he had lived another life.

With that sort of thing at his back, Titus had moved through the summer not in the least worrying what month it must surely be. June wasn’t all that hard to sort out—it had already been June before he’d first spotted his Rocky Mountains off in the distance. And July brought true warmth to the days he’d spent climbing with the mare into those first pine-shaded places south by west of the Platte River, where a narrowing stream led him into the high country. From there he could look all the farther to the west and the northwest, seeing for the first time how the snow lingered on those distant peaks. From his high vantage point it was plain to see that even at this late season the white still mantled some of those mountains nearly halfway down their dark sides.

“That’s where I’m wagering we’ll find the best beaver hides,” he had confided to the mare, the only creature thereabouts to listen to him.

More and more of late he had taken to talking out loud to her, if for no other reason than to hear the sound of his own voice. Likely, it was the only human voice for hundreds of miles around, he told himself.

Bass had tried setting Washburn’s traps in that cold stream leading him up through that first high ground,* at times in those feeder creeks that spilled into it, too. Each time he did just as Isaac had instructed him back in St. Louis: with the bait-stick and the trap-shelf and the float-stick too. But for all his effort, only a half-dozen scrawny muskrats had been curious enough to get themselves caught. Titus hadn’t even thought enough of them to skin them. Why, compared to the beaver hides he had seen congregate in huge packs on the wharfs at St. Louis from the upriver country, those half-dozen puny skins weren’t worth the trouble it would take to bloody his skinning knife.

“Weather’s bound to be lot more the sort that makes a flat-tail critter put on a heavy hide up there,” he commented to the mare as they moseyed on west toward the distant white-capped peaks. “Snow means cold, and cold means thick fur, seems to me, girl.”

That sort of reasoning made sense to him, it did. Especially after he had managed to trap four unwary beaver in that small range of high mountains off to the southwest—just four, after all those days he went out to his labors among the streams and those aspen that quaked with the slightest breeze on the hillsides above him. And now that he had wandered down from those unproductive mountains in bitter resignation, striking out for the northwest—yearning to reach that range where the snow looked to lay all the heavier at those upper elevations, even as summer was lost to the first signs of autumn.

Into those foothills he had led the mare as the seasons began to turn and the days grew imperceptibly shorter—climbing ever higher, trying this stream, then that. A bit more luck had he, but not near as much as Bass had hoped when he’d moved into the southern reaches of this extensive mountain range. For some days now the quakies had begun to turn gold.

There had been two quick dustings of snow already, weeks ago. Both had melted by the following day, the air steaming in the shafts of golden light piercing the leafy branches of the trees. Then of late the weather turned downright warm again as Indian summer set in. But up here among the high foothills, where it seemed he spent one fruitless day after another, the cycle of life was soon to change. After less than two weeks of sunny days and cool nights, it had smelled of snow this morning when he’d kicked his way out of his blankets.

After watering the bushes Titus took the mare out a distance from camp where she could graze on some good grass; then he returned to kindle his fire and set the remains of last night’s coffee on to reboil. With a breakfast of venison steak washed down, it was time to bring the old mare in and pack her up for their daily routine: a trip out to set more traps. This morning, like so many that had gone before, he promised himself it would be different. His luck was bound to change today.

It had begun to snow those dry, ashen white flakes by the time he got himself moving out to fetch up the mare. Through the trees he saw her, some distance off, kicking a hind leg, then whipping her head around to nuzzle at her belly. At the edge of the clearing he stopped, watching, frightened at what he saw. When she began to stretch her neck out before bringing her head around again to nuzzle at her stomach, he was finally convinced.

“Damn, if you don’t likely have the colic,” he grumbled as he approached and untied the long lead rope from a tree. She was hard to lead at first, bobbing her head, pulling back from him, near yanking him off his feet when she did, then stopping suddenly to blindly kick one hind leg or the other.

“That’s it, girl,” He tried to soothe best he could, knowing how a horse with the colic sensed the growing pain in its belly, suffered the bloating swell and the unre-ieved pressure, kicking their legs, stretching out their necks, nosing their own bellies in some frantic, dull-witted desire to release that pent-up pressure.

“Troost always walked the colic off,” he told her as he tried to draw close to her head.

But she stretched out her neck again, then nearly knocked him to the ground as she suddenly whipped around to try nuzzling her belly once more.

“C’mon—we’re gonna walk it off,” he told her with a tug on the rope that got her moving slowly. “Always worked before.”

And he hoped it would work again.

Hysham Troost had called it the sand colic: what a horse got when it ate a bunch of sand mixed in with its feed, so much sand that it collected in every one of those low bends and twists of the horse’s gut until it was nearly impossible for any of the animal’s feed to make it on through their system. That’s when the real trouble with sand colic started—when the mare got bloated up with all that unrelieved pressure that would have to be eased or else.

Or else.

For more than an hour he led the mare around and around that small clearing, with the horse meandering more and more slowly each time they made the circle. Finally he admitted that with the way she was acting so poorly, they would not be venturing out that morning to set more traps. If nothing else, it was a relief just to get the mare back to camp, where he could water her and keep her close at hand while the colic worked itself out of her system.

Tossing some more limbs onto his fire, Bass slid the coffeepot over to the edge of the flames to rewarm what was left from two heatings. Then he turned to grab up one of the big, heavy woolen blankets he intended to wrap around himself as he sat by the fire … when he heard her go down.

As Titus wheeled around, a big part of him was already praying that he hadn’t heard the animal collapse. Any horseman knew the chances were somewhere between slim and damn poor for a horse that went down. If you could keep them on their feet, you had yourself a chance. But once an animal went down …

He felt like swearing as he flung the blanket off his shoulders among the rest and lunged toward her as, the big neck and head were the last to hit the forest floor covered with a thick carpet of pine needles. But swearing wouldn’t help—as much as he wanted to curse someone, some thing … to keep from cursing his own self.

Down on his knees Titus slid the last few feet to slowly reach under her head, bringing it gently into his lap. Her eyes were wild, glazed with pain, her sides heaving as she thrashed that upper hind leg. Something noxious and foul gushed from her hind end … then she seemed to lie still, nostrils flaring, eyes still rolling. From time to time they even seemed to come to a rest looking at him—pleading, perhaps—then moved on.

“Maybe that means you got it on outta your system,” he pleaded with the mare quietly, figuring the gush had been just that, the way a man might get himself the green-apple quickstep and with all that pressure built up inside him from the unripe fruit might well make himself feel right pert once he had himself a decent shit.

“Let’s hope that’ll fix you—”

Then she thrashed her head a little as he held her, vainly trying to raise it enough to reach back to nuzzle her belly, at the same time that top rear leg began to fling about again. And he knew she hadn’t found any relief by ridding herself of whatever foul substance had gushed from her hind end.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there cradling the mare’s head that morning but realized the coffeepot boiled again—smelling it, downwind of the fire as he was. Over time his fire burned down to nothing but thin wisps of smoke, then slowly went out as he watched. And waited. And tried to think of what more Hysham Troost would be doing for a horse suffering the sand colic.

He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep right there with the mare’s head in his lap the way it was until he came awake with something tapping on the sole of his boot and a voice booming in his ears.

“I’ll be go to hell!” the deep voice cried. “It be a white nigger for sure!”

Bass jerked up, his eyes squinting, blinking, straining to see through the veil of trees and gently falling snow as the dark form moved back from him and brought up a rifle to point at his belly.

Bass sat frozen, his bowels run cold—come awake suddenly to stare up, then down the immense figure before him. The man was dressed in a blanket coat, hood pulled over his head, with a black beard that reached to midchest and a belt around his waist where several long black scalps hung near his knife scabbard. From the greasy, muddy bottom of his coat extended his legs, stuffed within two faded, red-wool blanket tubes, fringe gently swaying at their outer seam above thick winter moccasins.

How Titus wished now that he’d brought the rifle close. “What … just who the hell are you—”

“Injuns! By damn, we’re Injuns!” a new voice shrieked from the timber, drawing Bass’s attention as another figure leaped into the camp clearing—dressed completely as an Indian like the first, the fringe on his leather war shirt whirling round and round as he danced toward Titus: whooping and hollering, rhythmically clapping his hand over his mouth, woo-wooing and stomping round and round in some ungainly imitation of a scalp dance.

Suddenly that figure whirled up beside the first man and stopped, asking, “What you figger him to be doin’ just a’squatting there by that horse, Silas?”

Titus set fus eyes again on the tall, dimly lit figure in the hooded coat standing over him in that gentle fall of early snow, his face hidden in shadow.

The tall figure said, “Shit—stupid son of a bitch appears to be rockin’ that god-danged horse to sleep, don’t he, Billy?”

Then a third voice laughed along with the two standing there in front of Bass. From the shadows that new voice shouted.

“Injuns!”

And a third long-haired Indian-look-alike came stomping and whirling and woo-woo-woo-wooing into the clearing, shrill and sounding every bit like a savage warrior bent on taking a scalp.

Damn! Titus swallowed hard, watching the third hairy, bearded man dance up, watched how the second joined in the dance and chanting, watched with growing uneasiness the way the first figure continued to stare right down at him—his face hidden within the hood of his blanket coat.

No, Bass told himself—I don’t wanna fear no man, red nor white.

“You’re wolf bait now for sure, pilgrim!” cried the second man; then he let out a bloodcurdling scream, dragging his knife from its scabbard and shaking it in Bass’s face.

Titus’s eyes quickly shot to where his rifle stood against a tree, and where the pistol lay beyond it. These had to be white men, he told himself as he ran his tongue around the inside of his dry mouth, suddenly surprised that it had the texture of sand. After all, they spoke his tongue, didn’t they?

Then it struck him: Why, he hadn’t heard the sound of a human voice other than his in … in a damned long time. Damn, but why was these white fellas in Injun clothes?

“How—howdy, fellas … whyn’t all of you g’won over there by my fire and have yourselves a sit,” he called out in a croak, the words emerging squeaky from that dry throat.

The tall hooded one stretched out his arms, a gesture that immediately slowed the two wild dancers. With a booming voice he said, “By damn, boys—’pears we got us an invite to help that son of a bitch rock his horse to sleep!”

“You sure he ain’t no dangerous Injun killer, Silas?” the third voice finally asked.

The second man’s face lit up with mirth as he asked, “How the bejesus can this pilgrim be a Injun killer when he ain’t got him no gun?”

Again Bass glanced at his weapons across the small clearing, there among his bedding. All he had here at hand was the belt knife.

“He won’t do us no harm,” the nearest one said inside the shadow of his hood.

Suddenly there was the face of the man who had spoken. Bass jerked his head up, watching the figure step closer, yanking back on the hood to his blanket coat then and there in the murky shadows as snow fell into the camp clearing. Damn near as tall as any man he’d ever seen, damn near as big as Hezekiah Christmas. And Hezekiah was the biggest man he’d ever laid his mortal eyes on.

“Don’t figger we need to cover him no more, eh?” the second man said as he stepped out of the shadows no more than twenty feet away.

Then some needles snapped behind Titus. He twisted his head around to watch the third man advance into the camp clearing.

“He ain’t got a gun on him,” this third one said. “Don’t figger he’s about to kill none of us by axe-see-dent.”

The big man in the center came a step closer. Titus studied the way he carried his rifle captured in the crook of his left arm and a pistol ready, there in his right hand. Now the tall one began to wave that pistol at the second man.

“Billy—punch that fire so I can warm my ass.”

“Helluva way to go and wake a man up,” Bass grumbled, angry at himself for feeling embarrassed at being caught flat-footed and unarmed.

The tall man watched his eyes flick over to the rifle again. “One thing y’ll learn, son—y’ best keep your guns at your side. No matter you’re taking a shit”—and that made the second man guffaw with a great gust of laughter—“or y’ be rolled up with nothing more’n your own dreams to keep y’ warm at night.”

“Just who … who the blue blazes are you?” Bass inquired.

Pounding the pistol barrel against his chest, the big man replied, “Me? Why, hell—my name’s Silas Cooper.”

“He’s the big bull in this lick, he is—that Silas. Yessirreebob!” the second man said, his head nodding in emphasis.

Cooper came a bit closer, his eyes narrowing. “So who might be you?”

Bass’s eyes went back to Cooper’s. “Titus … Titus Bass.”

“Where you come from?” the third man demanded as he came around to a spot where Bass could see him without turning his head. He looked a tarnal mess with his long, unkempt beard.

“St. L-louis,” he answered with that croaky voice.

“This here’s Bud Tuttle,” Cooper introduced the third man, pointing at him with his pistol.

“Ain’t my first name, but everyone calls me Bud.”

“’Cause he don’t like Hyrum none!” the second man gushed with a wild giggle.

“That’s right,” Tuttle replied. “My name’s Bud.”

Just as Titus began to nod his head to the third man, ready to ask the last man his name, Cooper began to move off to the right, stuffing his pistol into the wide, colorful sash he had tied about his waist. The tall man asked, “How long y’ been up here in these parts, Titus Bass?”

“Since end of summer.”

“That long, eh?” Cooper asked as he neared the mare’s rear flanks, sniffing, wrinkling his nose up at the strong stench.

“Ain’t had you much luck trapping, have you?” the second man asked.

“Was going out this morning—when the horse here was took with sand colic,” Bass explained.

“Damnation,” Cooper said with a sigh as he settled some distance back from the horse’s tail and studied the ground around the mare’s hind end.

“What is it, Silas?” Tuttle asked.

“G’won now, Billy,” and he looked up at the second man. “Y’ get yourself introduced proper, then get that fire punched.”

With an open-faced grin that second man snagged the fur cap off his head and bowed slightly from the waist, showing that he kept his long hair tied back in a long queue. He flashed a handsome, gap-toothed smile, announcing, “Name’s Hooks, mister. Billy Hooks.”

“So now y’ know us all. Silas be my name,” Cooper repeated as he looked up from the moist ground he had been inspecting near the horse’s flank, “that’s Billy y’ just met, and him over there is Bud.”

“Pleased,” Bass replied, reaching up to scratch at the incessant itch there at his collar, “pleased to meet you all.”

“Bet y’ are,” Cooper growled. “Better us’n some half-starved red niggers out for hair or coup.”

“K-koo?”

The tall man slipped his wide-brimmed felt hat off the back of his head, grabbed a gob of his own long black hair in one hand, and pulled it straight up while his other hand whipped out his belt knife and dragged the back of the blade showily across his throat—while he made a scratchy, wheezing sound.

“Meaning the red bellies gonna slit your goddamned pilgrim, idjit, pork-eater throat, the sonsabitches would,” Silas grumbled, stuffing the knife away and pulling the hat back over his head.

“I … I don’t eat no pork,” Titus explained sheep-faced. “Don’t eat no more Ned.”

“Then y’ have the makings of a good man, Titus Bass,” Cooper declared with a sudden smile. “There be enough god-blamed Frenchie pork-eaters in these here mountains awready!”

Billy gushed with that easy laughter of his as he came over from the fire to squat near Titus, grinning as if he’d just made himself a new friend for life.

“What you think, Silas?” Turtle asked as he came up to stand behind Cooper, peering down at the horse’s hind end.

“Black water—ain’t no two ways about it,” Silas clucked, then shook his head one time for emphasis.

“B-black water?” Titus repeated. “Nawww. She’s just got her a li’l case of colic. Likely it be the sand colic—”

“I said it was black water, Titus Bass,” Cooper snapped, rising to point down at the remains of the dark, murky liquid the mare had spewed on the ground behind her. “Come see here for your own self.”

“Ah right. Black … black water,” Titus repeated, not daring to move, not daring to show Cooper he doubted him. He felt cold in his belly of a sudden. Looking down into the mare’s one eye staring wildly up at him. If it was black water, then there wasn’t much a man could do. Not much time neither. “I was … hoping it was the colic.”

“Bet y’ walked her, didn’t you?” Cooper asked.

How helpless he felt, maybe having a hand in killing his only horse. “Yes … well—I thought it was the colic!”

“It’s awright, son,” Silas said, suddenly sounding almost fatherly so soon after he had been downright snarly. “Most folks don’t know how to tell the black water until it’s too late.”

“Too late?”

“Listen, Titus Bass,” Cooper said as he came over to kneel beside Titus, “this critter’s in some terrible pain. And when a body’s in pain—it’s allays best to put it right outta its misery, ain’t it?”

Lord, he fought not to sob, especially when Cooper leaned over to put an arm around his shoulder, just the way his grandpap used to do. Bass could feel the tears sting as they started to well in his eyes.

“Y’ll get along just fine—won’t he, Bud?” Silas offered.

“That’s right, Titus,” Tuttle replied, pushing some of his long sandy-blond hair back out of his eyes. “Where’s your other horses?”

“Other … other horses?” Bass asked dumbly.

Cooper asked, “Y’ got mules?”

“I ain’t got no other’ns.”

Billy shrieked with sudden unrestrained belly laughter, clamping a hand over his mouth when Cooper shot him a stern, disapproving look.

Then Silas was tugging Titus up. “Bud, gimme a hand getting Titus up on his feet. Here, son—that’s it, Titus … y’ don’t wanna go down like your only horse there, now—do you?”

As much as Titus tried to think of speaking, of what to say, of what the hell to do, his mouth just wagged wordlessly.

“Y’ mean to bald-face tell me you come out here to the mountains with one horse only?” Cooper inquired.

“Started off with two from St. Louie,”

Tuttle asked, “So what happed to the other’n?”

“Lost it—crossing the Platte.”

“Spring flood?” Billy asked, that big grin brightening his face.

With a shake of his head Titus shrugged and replied, “Don’t know—bottom just gone out from under us and we … this mare and me, we barely swum ourselves out.”

“Y’ ever find the other horse?”

He looked at Cooper and nodded. “Dragged the saddle off’n it. Was a Injun pony.”

“Injun pony?” Tuttle asked, concern on his face. “What sort of Injun pony?”

“Don’t rightly know. Just that it come down from Fort Kiowa with a friend of mine.”

“Friend?” Billy asked.

“Isaac Washburn. The Injun pony was his.”

“And this here mare’s yours?” Silas said.

Bass looked down at the horse. She flailed that rear leg about again, only this time with a much more feeble movement. “She was give me by a man in St. Louis.”

Cooper flung his long arm around Titus’s shoulder, saying, “A good horse this was, Titus Bass, weren’t it?”

“She got me here—all the way here.”

Then he felt what Cooper suddenly pressed into his belly. Slowly he looked down and saw the pistol pushed against his blanket coat. Fear knotted cold in his gut.

“Take it, Titus Bass,” Cooper demanded. “Finish off the god-blamed animal, y’ idjit. Cain’t y’ see she’s in some awful pain?”

“F-finish?”

“Shoot her!” Billy cried. “She’s dying anyways—so, shoot her now!”

“I … ain’t there nothing can be done?” he begged of Cooper, turning toward the tall man, trying to push away the pistol the tall man shoved into his belly.

“Not when a critter’s gone and got black water,” Cooper said quietly, his big, beautiful eyes gone sad and limpid. “Once a horse goes down with black water—that critter ain’t never getting up on his legs again. Y’ cain’t be squampshus about it. Time for y’ to do the decent thing, Titus Bass.”

“I can’t shoot her,” he pleaded. “Don’t have me no other horse. This here’s the only one—”

“Gimme the goddamned pistol, y’ weasel-stoned pup!” Cooper growled angrily as he yanked the weapon from Bass’s hand and dragged back the hammer.

“No!” Titus bellowed, hurling himself at the man’s long, powerful arm. “No—don’t you see if it’s to be done, I’m the one gotta do it?”

Cooper looked down at him with those long-lashed, limpid eyes of his that Bass was sure could hypnotize lesser men. “That’s right, Titus Bass. Now you’re showing a lick of good sense: see that you’re the one what’s gotta do it—if’n you’re man enough.”

“The nigger ain’t man enough!” Billy cried, sidestepping a little jig in eager anticipation. “Ain’t man enough!”

“Shuddup, Billy!” Tuttle ordered. “Leave ’im be.”

With gratitude Bass glanced at Bud Tuttle and found there in the man’s homely face something that said he understood Bass’s reluctance—something that said he just plain understood.

“I’ll do it … if’n there’s no other way,” Bass reluctantly said.

Cooper and the others backed away a few steps. Then Silas said, “She’s been good to y’. Now’s time for y’ to return that good, Titus Bass. Take her outta her misery.”

With two trembling hands he pulled the hammer back to full-cock, brought the muzzle down to aim at a spot behind her ear.

“Y’ might miss there,” Cooper advised. “Go up on her head,” and he jabbed with one long finger at a spot midway between the eyes—up between the eyes and the ears. “Horse got it a little brain … y’ don’t put that ball into it just right, y’ gonna cause the mare all the more pain, Titus Bass.”

Still trembling, he moved the muzzle to that new target, trying to hold it on the spot Cooper described.

“Nawww—hold it again’ her head,” Silas instructed. “Now, y’ want one of us to go and do—”

“No! I’ll … I’ll do it,” he interrupted, forcing down the stinging bile that gathered at the back of his throat as he brought the muzzle squarely against the mare’s forehead. Titus glanced one more time into that one wild, bloodshot, pain-crazed eye, then closed both of his and pulled back on the trigger.

The pistol leaped in his hand, and he sensed the immediate splatter of warm blood across his bare flesh as he keeled backward with instant regret—not wanting to look, not daring to open his eyes until he had turned away. Bass held the pistol out at the end of his arm, loosely in his grip—hoping one of them would take it.

Cooper swept the weapon out of the hand before it dropped, looping his other arm over Bass’s shoulder. He almost cooed, saying, “Y’ done good by her, Titus Bass. I allays said a man’s only as good as he is to his animals. And y’ done right by your mare.”

“Tough thing you did—but the right thing,” Tuttle added.

“Weren’t nothing to laugh at, Titus,” Billy said. “Sorry I am I laughed at you.”

“The world’s a merry place to Billy Hooks,” Silas replied. “Y’ just gotta understand him is all, Titus Bass.”

He peeled himself from under Cooper’s arm and trudged over to his rekindled fire. There he squatted on his hands and knees, feeding the coals until he had more warmth from the flames.

“Whyn’t you two go fetch up the animals?” Cooper instructed somewhere behind him.

“Sure, Silas,” Tuttle replied. “C’mon, Billy. Let’s go fetch up the horses.”

Hooks came bounding up on foot to stop near Bass’s shoulder as he asked, “Silas—ain’cha gonna give one of our Injun ponies to this here Titus Bass feller?”

“I s’pose it’s the thing to do, don’t y’ figger?”

“Yessirreebob!” Billy replied. “I do figger so. He needs him a horse, and we got alla them what we took off them red niggers few days back.”

“R-red niggers?” Titus repeated, looking up to the faces of the three standing over him.

“Injuns, Titus Bass,” Tuttle replied. “C’mon, Billy.”

“Dirty, thieving red sonsabitches what tried to steal our ponies, our plews, and our scalps too!” Cooper growled as the other two started off into the shadows. The snow gathered on the shoulders of his blanket coat, lying there so stark against the gleaming black of his long hair that spilled over his shoulders, tangled in with his long, dark beard.

“Where?” Titus asked, feeling his palms sweat.

“North o’ here,” Cooper replied, then squatted to help break off some more branches for the fire. “Likely they was Blackfeet, though they call themselves Blood Injuns. Part of the same sonsabitches anyways. Don’t make me no never mind to kill any of ’em.”

“F-far from here?”

“We been riding six days since,” Silas answered. “Why, now—do I see me that y’ got yourself skairt of Injuns?”

“Nawww,” Bass said with feigned bravado. “Fought me Injuns afore.”

“Where?”

“Mississippi,” Bass replied. “Chickasaw, they was.”

“Chickasaw.”

“Yep.”

Silas shook his head. “Them ain’t real Injuns no more.”

“They was real Injuns when I fought ’em,” Titus explained. “My first Injun scrap. Fifteen winters ago. Took my flatboat pilot. A friend of mine.”

“So y’ was a riverman afore y’ come to the mountains?”

“For a short time,” he admitted, then knew he ought to admit it. “One trip, then I come up the Natchez Trace for that one and only walk back to the Ohio River country.”

“That make y’ a Kentucky man?”

Bass nodded. “Boone County.”

“I hail out of what they’re calling the Illinois now,” Cooper explained. “Them other two: Billy’s from down around the Cape on the Missouri—”

“Cape Girardeau?”

“Y’ know of it?” Silas asked.

“Sure as hell do,” Bass said with some of the cold departing his stomach as he rubbed his cold hands over the flames. “Spent me many years in St. Louis.”

Cooper continued. “And, Bud there—he’s a Pennsylvania man. Don’t rightly know if he’ll ever make a trapper howsomever. Them Pennsylvania folk are slow on the take-up—leastways every one of ’em I’ve run onto. Trapping don’t seem to be Turtle’s calling.”

“Why’s he stay out here?”

“Hell,” Cooper snorted, “he’s like the rest of us what stayed on out here after those early days with Lisa—ain’t got much left for us back—”

“Lisa?” Titus interrupted, his voice rising, turning suddenly to look at Cooper beside the fire. “Manuel Lisa?”

“Y’ heard of that thieving Spanee-yard, have y’?”

“You mean you fellas worked for him?”

“Damn if he didn’t make all of us bust our humps for him—and some of us died for it too!”

“Then you’ll know … maybe you’ll know a man—fella by the name of Eli, Eli Gamble?”

For a moment there was nothing more than a blank look on Cooper’s face; then the eyes started to crinkle. “Ol’ Eli. Yes, I remember Gamble, I do. A good man—”

“What become of him?”

“Y’ be a friend of his?”

Titus shrugged, gazing back down at the fire again, rubbing his hands that refused to get warm as the snowflakes spat into the fire with a hiss. “Knowed him once. Of a time I shot against him in a rifle match. Just ’bout beat him too.”

Squinting one eye in appraisal of Bass, Cooper commented, “Always heard Eli was some with a rifle. A man what could shoot straight and hit center, Gamble was. Y’ say you just ’bout beat him?”

“I’d a’beat him,” Titus grumped. “But I was young back then.”

Silas looked Titus up and down with a widening grin. “I should say you was young then! That had to be many a summer ago!”

“I was sixteen,” he said proudly. “And I beat every other man ’cept Eli Gamble.” Then Titus had to snort with a grin, “Sly son of a bitch wasn’t even from Boone County neither—not like the rest of us shooting that day!”

“Pushing west, weren’t he?”

“Tol’t me he was fixing to join up with Lisa’s brigade,” Titus explained. “Lisa been crossing all that country north of the Ohio for to get fellas to sign on—”

Nodding, Cooper interrupted, “We all of us signed on in just such a way.”

“Then all of you know Gamble?”

“Might say we knowed of him, Titus,” he answered, his eyes narrowing. “He was in that bunch went over to the Three Forks with Major Henry. We was sent off to work other country.”

Bass itched for an answer. “W-what become of Gamble?”

Cooper shrugged a shoulder, then turned at the sound of the others’ approach. “Don’t rightly claim to know, Titus Bass.” He stood slowly, turning his rump to the fire and rubbing warmth back into it. “There was too many a good man we never knowed what become of up there in that Blackfoot country.”

“Blackfoot? Like that bunch you say you run onto a few days back?”

Billy Hooks burst into the camp clearing on horseback, Tuttle right behind, both of them leading a small herd of horses and mules.

As he dismounted, Hooks cried out, “Blackfoot be the baddest red niggers you’d ever wanna doe-see-doe with, Titus Bass!”

There were more than a dozen of the animals altogether. Some immediately winded the dead horse sprawled on the ground and shied away, others just got wide-eyed, snorting, and pawing.

“Best y’ get them tied off down in that meadow yonder,” Cooper ordered the other two.

“So is this here Titus Bass gonna pick him out a new horse and pack animal this morning, Silas?” Hooks asked as he started to step away, pulling on the lead ropes to a half dozen of the horses.

Cooper turned to look steadily at Bass, the black eyes again reflecting nothing more than good human charity. “S’pose he will for sure, Billy. But first he’s gotta decide if’n he’s gonna throw in with us.”

Over the next few weeks the frequent snows succeeded in pushing the four of them down the mountainsides a little more with each camp as they trapped their way around the southern reaches of the Wind River range.

At their first camp after leaving the carcass of Bass’s mare behind, the three experienced trappers had awakened Titus in the cold, frosty darkness the next morning.

“Rise and shine!” Billy exclaimed, then laughed merrily, his eyes dancing as he tapped at Bass’s toes again.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus grumbled, rubbing some fingers in a gritty eye as he sat upright in his blankets. “What the devil are you three doing? It’s still dark!”

“Damn right it is, Titus Bass,” Silas Cooper replied solemnly. “Time we kick off your l’arning.”

“Learning?”

Billy snorted. “How to be a trapper, Titus.”

“I’m already a trapper,” he groused, more than a little nettled that some man might say he had a lot to learn about trapping—then hawked up some night gather in the back of his throat as he dug at the bothersome itch on the back of his neck.

Cooper said, “Only thing it ’pears y’ catched was a few dumb beaver stupid enough to mosey on by your traps. Lucky is all y’ are.”

“Truth be: lucky we run onto you, yessirreebob,” Hooks added.

“Damn good thing we found you afore any red niggers lifted your hair,” Tuttle chimed in. “C’mon now, Silas gonna l’arn you how it’s done.”

Beneath one irritating armpit Bass dug with his fingernails as he kicked his blankets off his legs; then he dug at the other.

“Varmints,” Billy declared to the others. “Son of a bitch is rotted with ’em, I’ll wager.”

“C’mon, Titus,” Cooper said, starting to turn away into the darkness. “Man what wants to catch hisself some beaver better be up afore the beaver.”

Bass wanted badly to say something about the fact that he had always risen early, as far back as he could remember on his father’s farm, on through his days of work on the wharf at Owensboro and even in Troost’s Livery … but as he started to open his mouth, the three of them turned their backs on him and started trudging out of the timber toward the nearby stream.

“Up before the beaver, my ass,” Titus hissed under his breath as he stood and knew he had to pee in the worst way.

Quickly he unbuttoned the front of his worn and patched wool britches as he stumbled over to a far tree and drained himself with a sigh. The three had disappeared in the dark by the time Bass had on his coat, moccasins, and the wool cap he had fashioned from some blanketing cut from the bottom of his capote. Titus slung the leather trap sack over his shoulder and set off at a trot through the grass and elk cabbage that crackled with frost underfoot with every step. Eventually he caught up with them, following their muted whispers as the three of them stopped, turned about, and waited for the newcomer to join them.

“Thar’s the stream, Titus Bass,” Cooper declared. “What’s to do?”

“Set my traps, natural as you please,” he said, believing he gave the right answer.

“Just like that?” Billy asked.

Bass replied-with a nod, “Just like that.”

“Nigger—are you ever wrong!” Hooks guffawed.

“Hold your goddamned noise down!” Silas snapped. “I declare, Billy—y’ go and run off the beaver with your mouth one more time, I’ll cut out your goddamned tongue my own self!”

Hooks dropped his eyes, contrite and chastened as he pursed his lips into a narrow line of silence.

Bass felt sorry for him as he turned back to look at Cooper. “All right—s’pose you tell me what I do first.”

“Now you’re l’arning, Titus Bass,” Silas said with a faint smile. “Y’ do everything I tell you, the way I tell you, and when I tell you to do it—y’ll be a master trapper in no time … and we’ll get along fine.”

At first he glanced to the quiet Tuttle, then back to Cooper. “Awright, so tell me.”

The tall leader began to discourse on how a man first inspected a section of stream, looking for beaver slides, dams, or lodges built out in the middle of those ponds the efficient rodents had created in engineering their environment to suit themselves—mostly to protect their kind from four-legged, nonswimming predators. As Cooper had done yesterday afternoon before twilight while the others had established camp, he showed them how a man was to determine where best to set his traps. Silas led the other three into the leafless willow right to the streambank.

“There, Titus Bass,” and he pointed. “Show me what to do now.”

Bass yanked upon the sack’s drawstring and pulled one of the square-jawed iron traps from the leather bag. Setting it upright on the ground, he squatted over it as Washburn had taught him, pushing down on the two jaws with his heels, allowing them to flap down so he could set the pan trigger within the notch filed in the pan arm.

“Whatcha gonna do with it now, Titus Bass?” Hooks asked in a harsh whisper.

“Set it in the water,” Bass replied, hopeful he would get some of this right.

Billy wagged his head. “Not till you got your set made.”

“Set?”

Tuttle explained, “Where you gonna lay it, Titus.”

“How?”

Cooper nudged Hooks forward. “Billy, y’ show him.”

“C’mere, Titus Bass,” Hooks instructed, tugging Bass’s sleeve. “I be the one to show you first whack.”

“First … first whack?” Titus asked.

“Right off. Means I show you right off.” Hooks held out his hand. “Gimme one of your float-sticks. You got float-sticks, don’cha?”

“Here,” and he slapped one down in Billy’s open palm as Hooks pulled the second mitten from his hand by placing it beneath his armpit.

That reminded Bass how much he itched, so he dug fingernails again, not only at his neck and armpits, but also stuffing a hand in there between the folds of his blanket coat where he could get at his groin.

“You do got the varmits, don’t you?” Tuttle replied.

Bass shrugged and said, “They ain’t been troubling me long.”

He didn’t take his eyes off Hooks as Billy knelt on the bank, leaned over, whacked the stick against the thick rime of ice crusted at the surface of the water near the bank, and began digging and scraping beneath the surface with the end of the long float-stick. After a short time he shoved his coat sleeve up his arm, then stuck nearly the whole length of it under the surface.

When he brought the arm out and shook it, Billy stood, saying, “Put your damned hand down there, Titus Bass—and see what I made for your trap to sit itself on.”

Kneeling right where Hooks had, Titus stuffed his arm into the shockingly cold water, a chill that felt all the worse because of the dark at this predawn hour. His fingertips walked down the side of the bank until he felt the underwater shelf Billy had crudely dug out of the bank.

“I feel it. So you gone and made a flat place for the trap under the water.”

Cooper said, “Tell him what it’s for, Tuttle.”

“Put your trap down there, under the water, so the goddamned beaver don’t see it, you idjit.”

As he pulled his hand out of the freezing water, Bass turned to ask of Cooper, “What good does it do to hide your trap?”

“Beaver ain’t too stupid a animal, Titus,” Silas explained. “They smell your scent—where y’ve walked, where y’ go and spit—they won’t come anywhere near. Y’ been a stupid pilgrim to leave your traps on top of the bank afore now?”

“Yeah, I done that.”

Silas wagged his head. “Don’t y’ see that trap got your scent, maybeso that dead horse’s smell on it from packing it out here from St. Louis,” Cooper declared. “But under water—the beaver can’t pick up no man-scent.”

“And ’sides—you gotta have bait!” Billy added.

Tuttle asked, “Maybeso you didn’t have no bait to set out, did you?”

“B-bait? Hell—I ain’t fishin’ … I’m trapping beaver!”

Hooks and the other two snorted laughter behind their hands to muffle as much of the shrill sound of it as they could—a sound that grated Titus like a coarse file drawn across rusted iron.

“You was a lucky nigger,” Tuttle reminded him. “To catch a few old beaver ’thout no bait, and your traps sitting right on the bare ground, bold as can be.”

“I found me a place where there was tracks,” Titus protested. “And I caught me some beaver.”

Billy cheered, “You gotta l’arn to be sneaky!”

“How’d y’ like to learn yourself how to catch least two beaver to every three traps y’ set out?” Cooper said.

“That’s how good Silas here does—yessirreebob,” Billy declared.

“T-two beaver for every three sets?”

“And sometimes Silas fills ’em all,” Tuttle added. “Damn but he’s so good, it puts me to shame.”

“Maybe you an’ me just ain’t got the knack of it the way Silas do,” Hooks cautioned.

Standing, Titus measured the tall, black-haired man before him. “You really mean sometimes you fill all your god-blamed traps?”

“These here partners of mine speak the truth. I tried to teach ’em the best I could,” Cooper said. Then he leaned forward and said in a whisper, “Y’ wanna learn how to be as good as me—y’ll have to learn from me, Titus.”

And learn he did.

From that morning on Bass hung on every one of Silas Cooper’s words, soaking in all he could, asking questions of all three, and being sure he was the first to rise in the morning, the last to return to camp in the evenings after checking his sets. And right from that very first morning Titus got better and better at selecting where he should set the traps, deciding which side of the stream he would use for his set, and figuring how to leave his bait behind on the long willow limbs he jabbed into the frozen ground, the other end daubed in the “beaver milk” given him by the other three until he had caught enough animals to acquire some of the smelly bait for himself.

It did not take him long before he was able to surpass Bud Turtle’s catch at each camping site. Then for weeks he worked hard to equal the tally of Billy Hooks’s beaver. And in the end, as winter set in hard and drove the group down out of the Wind River Mountains, south for the southern Rockies, Titus Bass knew he would never be content until he beat Silas Cooper.

Just the way he had come, oh, so close to beating Eli Gamble in that shooting match back to Boone County fifteen summers before.

“So how old a man are y’ now, Titus Bass?” Cooper asked one blustery evening as the clouds parted enough to let the moon and some stars shine through not long after twilight.

He shivered, knowing it would be a cold one this night. “I turn thirty-two this coming Janee-ary.”

“Won’t none of us rightly know when that is!” Tuttle advised.

“Maybe we go and have us a li’l celebration anyways,” Cooper said, shivering himself. “Time we get down to Park Kyack, we’ll likely have to fort up for the winter—as far out of the wind as a man can get hisself.”

Titus dug up behind an ear, his fingertip feeling for the tiny hard vermin about the size of a small grain of rice. “Park Kyack?”

“Where we plan on winterin’,” Bud Tuttle said.

Hooks pointed at Bass, squealing, “Just throw that grayback in the damn fire!”

“Your goddamned nits better not come jumpin’ over here on me,” Tuttle grumbled.

“Titus Bass,” Silas started, “’bout time y’ owned up that you’re fixed with the nits.”

“Rode on him alla way from the settlements, I’d imagine,” Tuttle said.

“Whores got ’em. Ever’ last whore I knowed,” Billy said. “That and the pox too. Man takes his poison from a whore in small doses, but, damn, I hate the Irish itch the way you got it!”

Bass’s scalp crawled all the more just for the speaking of it. Sheepishly he dug his fingers along the top of his scalp, searching, feeling more and more of the tiny varmints infesting him.

Cooper asked, “Whores, was it?”

Wagging his head, Bass replied, “Ain’t been with a whore since early last spring.”

“You itch right after?” Tuttle inquired.

“Not till I was out long the Platte.”

Silas roared, “Say, boys—any Pawnee what had raised that varmit’s skelp—they’d get the grayback nits for all their trouble!”

The three of them laughed heartily, generously, at Bass’s incessant torment. It had gotten worse since meeting up with the trio—if only because one or the other would always comment about his all-but-nonstop itching. When Titus was alone, at least there hadn’t been anyone around to remind him he played host to a troublesome infestation. But looking back at this moment, he decided it had to be that he took on those vermin from the damned soldiers at Fort Osage … that, or from the widow woman up north of Franklin.

“Chances were good it were soldiers,” he declared, not wanting to mention Edna Grigsby as he dug at the back of his neck, pulling a louse free and pitching it into the coals, where it popped and hissed as it was quickly consumed.

“Soldiers?” Cooper demanded.

“Where abouts you run onto ’em out on the Platte?” Hooks asked.

“Wasn’t there,” Titus replied. “Back to Fort Osage.”

“Oh,” Tuttle said with relief crossing his face. “Good thing they didn’t just make you a soldier with ’em. They do that, you know? They can press you into service if’n they take a mind to.”

Bass defended, “These were good fellas—”

“Damn ’em all!” Hooks interrupted. “Soldiers is just like them graybacks. Serve for no good.”

Cooper leaned over and slapped a big hand on Bass’s knee to ask, “Y’ been anywhere else’t but that soldier post where you’d take on a herd of nits?”

A bit embarrassed at telling of his encounter with the widow, Bass looked down, away from the prying eyes, to stare at the fire. It was as good as admitting to it.

“Where, Titus?” Tuttle demanded.

“A woman.”

“Tell us! Tell us now!” Billy roared, clapping his hands twice.

“Billy loves him stories of the womens, he surely does,” Cooper declared. “So tell us your woman story, Bass. And make it a good’un. We all been without for too long, and likely be some weeks afore we winter up with some friendly Injun gals.”

“Injun gals!” Hooks repeated with enthusiasm, rubbing his crotch and humping his hand. “Good poontang, them Injun gals for Billy Hooks.”

“Best part of living in the mountains for the man,” Silas said. “So, y’ gonna tell us ’bout your woman?”

“A widow woman,” Bass finally admitted. “Just a lonely … widow woman. Been ’thout a man for a long time.”

“Them’s the best kind!” Cooper exclaimed with a smile. “They know just how a man gets—going too long ’thout a wet woman wrapped around his stinger. Damned thankful too—no matter how a fella treats ’em.”

“Yeah—them widder-women kind get the hunger bad as us,” Tuttle added.

“So,” Cooper announced in a loud voice suddenly, “before Titus Bass here spins his tale of the widder woman and how she give him the grayback nits … I believe it be time we give our new partner here a new name.”

“N-new name?” Bass stammered.

Billy chimed right in, “Yes, yes! A new name!”

“You got something in mind?” Tuttle asked of Cooper.

Silas shrugged. “S’pose I do, Bud. Just look for yourself. Lookee what he’s got hisself doing for days on end now.”

“Itching,” Tuttle replied as he stared at Bass. “He’s scratching all over hisself. Damn but he’s got him a passel of them nits, and bad!”

“Scratchin’ is what he’s doing,” Silas said. “So—I say let’s give him a new name what’s fittin’ for all them nits he’s been digging at.”

“We gonna call him nit?” Hooks asked with a silly grin.

“Nawww,” Cooper growled as he stood and stepped over behind Bass with his warm tin cup of coffee in hand—which he slowly began to pour on Titus’s head.

When Bass started to jerk aside to get away, Cooper’s empty hand came down to clamp on one of his shoulders as he continued to pour the warm coffee on the newcomer’s long brown hair. His head and shoulders steamed in the cold, frosty air, just like their coffee tins.

Then Cooper flung his cup aside and spread a hand over the crown of Bass’s head, raising his eyes to the black of that winter night, his voice booming in declaration.

“Henceforth and for yonder time—let all men know this here pilgrim nigger no longer be called Titus Bass, greenhorn … but from now on he be the free trapper we gonna know as—Scratch!”

*The LaRamee, or Laramic, River