Buffalo Palace

17

No one was waiting for him there at the mouth of the Bighorn.

For the better part of two weeks Scratch struggled to keep that cavvyyard together as he marched east to meet up with Silas Cooper and the other two. A lot of work for one man.

There was watering the critters two at a time every morning before he fried himself his own breakfast. And there was keeping them strung out enough on the trail that they didn’t jam up so close they would bite on one another or tear at one another’s tails—but not so far apart that they took on unruly notions. Good thing, he thought, these animals were used to being around one another by and large and had made of themselves a good herd. That helped each night when it came time for him to find a place to camp.

Bass stopped early enough at the end of every one of those lengthening days to water them again two by two by two while the others grazed and rolled, dusting themselves as the mosquitoes and flies came out in springtime clouds to torture man and beast alike. And when the watering was done, Titus would build himself a fire down beneath the branches of the biggest cottonwood he could find along the banks of the river. The leaves and that incessant breeze in the valley of the Yellowstone helped to disperse the smoke rising from his cookfire, as well as hold down the number of tormentors wanting a taste of his flesh, to draw some of his blood.

After broiling his antelope or venison shot along the trail, Bass would drink his coffee, light up his pipe, and enjoy the temporary warmth of the fire as the night came down and the temperature dropped. Then when the cooking gear had cooled off enough to stuff it away in one of the panniers he could sling back atop Hannah’s back—closing on the time all light was just about gone from the sky, he poured out the dregs of his coffee and kicked dirt into the tiny fire.

That done, Bass mounted the saddle horse, took up Hannah’s lead rope, and rode over to where the other animals grazed on the tall grass. There he clucked, whistled, and called as he pulled Hannah through their midst. And most times, without much trouble at all, the rest of the horses and mules followed. Two miles, perhaps, sometimes more, on downriver—and when he had found a likely spot for more grazing beneath the stars, a likely spot where a man could roll up in his blankets for a cold, fire-less camp, then he would circle back around the small herd to let them know that here they could stop following and start eating again.

In country where the Apsaalooke themselves had so many enemies, it would never pay for a man to become too careless. Especially a man with so many horses.

Not that he feared the Crow. Not Big Hair’s people—now that they knew him. Now that he had spent a winter among them.

Yet repeatedly Bird in Ground had warned Scratch: the Blackfoot came raiding as the spring winds grew warm. Just as the River Crow would go riding off to raid Blackfoot country. Ponies and scalps … and if the opportunity presented itself—the Crow would always bring back an infant or a young child. Such stolen treasures would one day grow up to be Apsaalooke, no longer the enemy. After all, Bird in Ground had explained, there were never enough Apsaalooke, would never be enough when it came to defending their homeland against the powerful enemies who had Absaraka surrounded.

Perhaps it was true that Akbaatatdia did watch over his people, the Crow, protecting them from all those who outnumbered them.

Perhaps that powerful spirit that Bird in Ground called Grandfather Above had watched over Titus Bass, as well, while he was in Absaraka. Not that Scratch had ever been one to particularly believe in the naming of spiritual forces, as others, both white and red, were wont to do. Those who believed in such things had always seemed to be the sort to turn their lives over to such spirits rather than trusting in themselves, he figured. Whether it was the white man’s God, his Lord of Hosts, even the Archangel Michael and ol’ Lucifer himself—or the simple, unadorned beliefs of an honest man like Bird in Ground, who explained that the Grandfather Above was present in all things, and the closest spirit the Crow had to the white man’s devil could only be the playful practical joker called Old Man Coyote.

So perhaps it was that trickster who was toying with Titus Bass right now as he forded the Bighorn near its mouth, swatting his arms at clouds of mosquitoes and big green deerflies that hovered above the sweating backs of every one of the horses and mules as they splashed up through the brush on the east bank.

There simply was no fort on either side of the Bighorn River.

In angry frustration he lashed Hannah’s lead rope to some willow, knowing the other animals would not wander far, then remounted and pushed the saddle horse down the bank, fording the swollen Yellowstone. Riding an arc of more than two miles from east to west along that north bank, Scratch found no fur-company buildings nor pole corrals, no sign of any white men. Only some two dozen old lodge rings and fading black fire pits on this side of the river. Sign that was likely more than a year old. That, and a lot of buffalo chips scattered among the hoof-pocked ground.

In utter, all-consuming disappointment he swam the horse back over late that afternoon, redressed into his dry clothing, then got the animals moving east once more, growing more confused and concerned for his partners.

Perhaps they hadn’t made it, he began to fear. Maybe some accident had befallen them back yonder between here and the great bend of the Yellowstone. Worse still—attacked. But, no—he tried to shake off that nagging uncertainty as he pushed on east away from the Bighorn itself, resolutely.

After all, he’d come down the Yellowstone behind them. Wouldn’t he have seen some sign of a fight if the other three had been jumped by a Blackfoot raiding party that chanced onto the trappers? Wouldn’t he have seen one of the rafts pulled up to the bank, or if it had been set adrift, wouldn’t he have seen it snagged in some of the driftwood piles the Yellowstone itself gathered every few hundred yards when running full and frothy the way it did in spring?

Wouldn’t there be a chance he’d seen a body trapped in the same downriver driftwood piles?

Unless the Blackfoot dragged ’em off, he convinced himself. Half-alive. Tall and gory were the tales of how the Blackfoot loved to torture a man….

And then Bass told himself that he could have missed all sign of the trio’s destruction, because he had only come down the north bank of the Yellowstone until reaching the mouth of the Bighorn—and he hadn’t hugged right up to the bank, at that. What with picking the easiest country to cross with all these animals, Titus hadn’t always stayed in constant sight of the riverbank. Could be he’d missed something. Could be there’d been some sign on the south side of the river, and he’d passed it right on by.

But he hadn’t come far from the east bank of the Bighorn—the certainty of what had befallen the others looming all the larger with every step—when he spotted the ruins squatting on a small thumb of high ground not far ahead.

After dismounting nearby and leaving the saddle horse to graze with the rest, Scratch hurried to the burned and overgrown ruins of the small log post—hopeful that he would find where the trio were to leave him their notice. At least now he knew for certain there was no Missouri Fur Company post here where the trio could trade their plews for goods and liquor. And that meant that now he knew the three would have to push on down the Yellowstone, on down the Upper Missouri until they got close to the Knife River … but where was the word from them they had promised to leave him?

Perhaps an angry band of Indians had burned down the fort’s cabins and stockade in some long-ago season past … or maybe the white traders had done it themselves when they’d abandoned the post. Maybe the Crow trade wasn’t all that profitable for the company, he mulled. Not any longer, since men like Ashley had come to the mountains with skin trappers of their own to strip a piece of country bare. Maybeso the fur companies that had of a time ruled on the northern rivers no longer could survive the competition.

Stepping over the burned hulk of a cottonwood wall now collapsed into the soil where the stockade and cabin ruins were being overgrown year after year by grass and weed and the blooming purple crowns of wavyleaf thistle, Titus remembered how Cooper said the traders were operating their post not all that long ago.

“Twenty-one,” Bass said to himself, scratching at his bearded cheek. “Maybe twenty-two it was.”

But Silas and the rest said they had been here not long after the fort had been constructed and manned … just like the Spaniard Manuel Lisa had raised his own fort somewhere nearby more than ten years before that.

Back of the ruins rose a soft-sloped knoll he hurried to on foot, climbed, then carefully appraised the surrounding country. How he wished now that there was some high point of rimrock the likes he had discovered back upriver a ways, some great flat-topped promontory where a man could see for himself a good stretch of country.*

But from up here on this low knoll, and from his explorations back by the mouth of the Bighorn itself, Scratch could see no indication of another stockade. Too much time had passed since Lisa and Henry had abandoned the northern country.

“Mayhaps a dozen years or more,” he reminded himself quietly, despair sinking in atop that hill.

After all those winters and summers, there simply wouldn’t be much left of an abandoned stockade and some dirt-roofed cabins, a post burned down by those who sought to leave nothing behind for the brownskins. Too many seasons for the ground itself to reclaim any ruins, grass too tall for him to spot anything, anyway.

He sighed, sure there was no chance that Silas and the rest had left him some notice, some sign, some indication they had been there and were heading on downriver. For a moment there his hope had soared: if not at the Missouri Fur Company post, then likely the trio had left all important word at the earlier Bighorn post Isaac Washburn had spoken of during Lisa’s day on the upper rivers.

Damn.

But in gazing west at the path of the falling sun, he realized he didn’t have time to mourn and brood about it now. Time he should be working on filling his belly with what was left of that antelope he’d shot two days back. And some coffee to keep him warm until he rode off to find himself a likely place for a cold camp farther downriver.

But as he descended the knoll and walked past the ruins, his belly didn’t feel all that hungry. Just empty and cold—a feeling he thought for a moment was something he could remedy with a juicy steak and some strong coffee. Yet no matter how much he tried to feed his belly, what bothered him would not be satisfied until he knew what had become of the three.

Call it fear. Call it doubt. Call it what he would—Scratch figured he was smart enough to realize that until he knew for sure, then there would be plenty of room in his imagination for all sorts of possibilities.

And that scared him down to his roots.

Rising from the bank of the river with his coffee kettle among the broad-leafed cattails and slogging out of the water lapping against the shore, he told himself he did not want to believe anything but the best in people. Despite what others older and perhaps much wiser than he might believe—Titus simply wanted to give every man the sake of the doubt. Far better was it for him to fear the worst that could befall the trio than to think the worst of them. Far, far better to believe that some terrible fate had rubbed them out than to allow himself to believe that he had been taken advantage of.

Alone again … but Scratch would simply not allow himself to even begin to consider anything but that Lady Fate’s terrible and capricious ways had robbed him of the notice they were going to leave at this post if they found it abandoned. If it had been something scrawled on a scrap of canvas with a bit of fire-pit charcoal and then hung loosely at the corner of the ruins … perhaps the wind might be the playful culprit. Or Old Man Coyote.

That evening as he waited for his coffee to come to a boil and he hung the thick antelope steak from a sharpened stick over the flames to drip huge drops of fragrant grease into his cookfire, Bass grappled with it until he decided there was no other way but to backtrack along the south bank of the Yellowstone. He could remember the last of the trio’s campsites he had run across as he’d marched downriver. Back there on the north bank—and a hell of a distance back up the Yellowstone.

So somewhere between here and there he would likely have his answer. To find where they had pulled over to the bank, tied up their rafts, and built their night fire. If not a campsite, then he would likely find evidence of their ruin. His worst fears conjured up images of discovering one of the rafts crushed and broken against some boulders, perhaps one of their scalped and mutilated bodies tangled in the driftwood. And all those plews—a rich man’s ransom in beaver—gone to the bottom of the swollen river.

That evening as the light began to fade slowly from the summer sky, Scratch ate slowly, chewing each bite deliberately but without any real enjoyment, sipping at his coffee without relish. There wasn’t enough antelope or thick coffee to fill the yawning hole of his doubt, the chasm that was his fear.

After cooling the small coffee kettle so he could repack it among his camp plunder, Bass walked over to the grazing animals. Thinking he ought to try cheering himself as he threw the blanket onto the back of the saddle horse, Titus began to whistle notes of some tune that he quickly recalled as a song the boatmen sang. It helped to think back on how Ebenezer Zane’s and Hames Kingsbury’s crew had held together—one for all—men he could put his faith, trust, and loyalty in. Scratch’s whistle became a bit merrier at the remembrance.

Then, as he bent over to retrieve the saddle and rose with it suspended across both arms, he was shoved from behind.

Dropping the saddle as if it were a hot coal, Scratch wheeled, yanking at the big pistol stuffed into the wide sash at his waist—his heart in his throat as he yanked back the hammer with the heel of his left hand.

Surprised now more than scared—he wagged his head and stuffed the pistol away, swallowing down the hard lump of instant fear that had choked him.

“D-damn, girl,” he said with relief as the mule moved closer, her head bobbing up and down as if she acknowledged that term of address he often used around her. “Don’t you go scaring me like that.”

Quickly rubbing her muzzle, Titus turned away and went back to whistling the riverboatman’s song as he bent to pick up the saddle. Again she jabbed her nose right between his shoulder blades, shoving him forward clumsily. He stumbled a couple of steps, lunging against the saddle horse that sidestepped out of his way.

“Damn you!” he growled this time. “You need to stop that, Hannah. I got work to do here.”

Again he turned his back on the young mule and stepped toward the horse. Not realizing, he went back to whistling the merry tune and had just managed to throw the saddle up onto the animal’s back and was bending over to reach under the horse’s belly for the far half of the cinch when out of the corner of his eye he saw Hannah coming for him.

“You stay right there,” he warned with a wag of his finger. “I ain’t in no mood to be putting up with no pranks you done learned on your own.”

Yanking up on the cinch, he twisted to keep an eye on her as his hands completed the task, and went back to whistling … watching her bob her head up and down as she came for him again.

“Why … I’ll be go to hell right here,” he said quietly as she moved up close enough. He scratched that forelock between her ears. “And be et for the devil’s tater.”

Maybe she wasn’t being a devilish, cantankerous, playful sort when she came up and tried to get his attention in her own way. Perhaps he was just too dumb to notice at first. Scratch decided he’d just have to prove it to himself, here and now before they went off to find a cold camp where they would bed down.

Stepping over to the far side of the horse, he waited the few minutes until Hannah went back to her grazing. As soon as her head lowered and she began to tear off the tops of the tall stems of porcupine and bluegrass, Titus quietly moved away, taking a roundabout route as he made for the walls of the abandoned post.

Reaching the ruins, he sat down on the collapsed corner of the burned logs where the grass and weeds and the wavyleaf thistle had knotted themselves over the charred stumps, then waited a few minutes more to be sure she wasn’t paying him any attention.

Then he wet his lips with the tip of his tongue and whistled. The same sort of whistle he had used to call their old hound, Tink, in from the timber at the family’s farm, or back to his side when they’d been out hunting together. Not the boatman’s song he had been whistling slightly out of tune—but the sort of notes a man would string together to bring an animal …

By gloree! She raised her big jug-head, perked up her ears, and promptly headed his way without the least hesitation.

What with the way she was coming right over, Scratch felt he should give her a reward … but as he stood, Bass realized he had nothing to give the mule. When she stopped before him there by the ruins, he swiftly bent and tore up a handful of the long porcupine grass and held it out in an open palm.

Hannah sniffed it, nuzzled it a moment with the end of her nose, then snorted—blowing the grass stems off his palm so she could rub her nose on his hand. As he stood there in surprise, the mule craned her neck so she could work her head back and forth beneath his hand the way she might scratch herself on a branch of convenient height. Yet … he saw this as something different.

She was wanting something more than just a soothing scratch. She was wanting his touch.

As Bass cooed to her, he rubbed her ears and forelocks and muzzle the way he knew she enjoyed it. At times she would rock her head over against his shoulder, lay it momentarily against his chest, then cock one of her dark, round eyes up at him—as if studying the man very, very closely. This man she was coming to know, this man she was learning to give her affection to.

“We best get moving off for the night,” he finally said some time later when he again became aware of just how little light was left in that late-spring sky.

As long as the days were lasting at this time of the year, he wasn’t all that sure if it might not be the first part of summer already. And now he had the prospect of losing another week or more in backtracking on his trail here to assure himself he hadn’t missed any evidence that disaster or ambush had befallen the trio on their trip downriver.

After climbing atop the saddle mount, he led Hannah around and through the rest of the stock as they grazed contentedly in the bluestem, pushing aside the thistles’ purple globes. It took a third trip through, with his growing a bit frustrated and slapping a rawhide braided lariat against his leg, grumbling at them all to get the herd moving. Reluctant were they to leave when it seemed they had just begun to settle in for the night.

He did not end up taking them far at all—less than a couple of miles on east of the post ruins, he noticed a spot along the bank where the bulrushes and spear-leafed cattails naturally parted wide enough to allow a man to water his stock come morning. Twisting in the saddle, Scratch looked back toward the ruins in the distance, calculating just how far he had come, then glanced at the sky, still a much paler hue in the west.

Settling himself back around, he figured that he hadn’t come far enough to elude any horsemen who might be watching, needed to push on a little farther—when he spotted the large circle of trampled grass there among the overhanging branches of the tall and stately cottonwoods. Near the center of the trampled grass sat a blackened circle. Several charred limbs lay within the pile of ash. No ring of rocks had they used to circle their fire, nor had they dug a pit for it. Nothing more elaborate than gathering up their kindling and starting their fire then and there with flint and steel.

Quickly yanking both feet out of the broad stirrups and kicking his right leg over the saddle horn, Scratch dropped to the grass and hurried alone to the site. He skidded to a halt at the edge of the large circle some forty feet across, studied it for a moment more—then lunged ahead to the circle of ash. Squatting there, he held a hand no more than a breath over the charred limbs. No heat.

Now he stuffed his fingertips into the ash. Still no heat. Swirling his fingers around m the fire heap, he could find no telltale warmth of a single coal still glowing deep among the ash.

His nose helped him locate the bone heap nearby where they had butchered the doe—cutting out the steaks and hams and other juicy morsels without dismembering the carcass. They would have eaten their fill for supper, breakfasted on what had been cooked and left over the night before, then taken the rest with them when they’d pushed off.

Standing abruptly, he scooted over to that wide parting in the bulrushes and cattails. There at the bank where the foxsedge grew he saw their moccasin prints. Saw where they had scraped the ends of the crude rafts, carving scars into the muddy bank. Found the rope burns where they had lashed the two craft on up the bank, tying them off around a pair of cottonwood. Through their single night at this spot, the long ropes had brushed back and forth across the bank’s vegetation as the rafts had bobbed here in the quiet eddy of the Yellowstone’s current.

Back near the fire he could see where they had bedded down, those grassy places near the fire more flattened than the rest of the bluestem and porcupine grass that was barely beginning to recover. Where the trio had laid out their bedding and blankets for the night—the grass was broken, discolored, and entirely crushed.

From all the sign he could make out in the failing light as summer night surrounded him, Scratch reassured himself they had been there. At least they had come this far—and, like him, had discovered the post to be abandoned, burned, and fallen to ruins. If there had been at least the shell of a cabin left standing, then they likely would have pulled over then and there, spending the night within the shelter of the log stockade, he decided. But instead the three of them had seen no walls rising on that narrow thumb of high ground, and therefore had no reason to stop where they said they would leave him word of their passing.

He stood, anxious, looking this way and that.

So why wouldn’t they leave him some sign—a scrap of old canvas with their marks on it—hanging here? If not at the post site, then why not here? Had they forgotten? he wondered. Or, as he slid closer to fearing, was it just a case of not giving a damn about what they had promised him?

And if they cared so little about the promise of leaving him a message at the mouth of the Bighorn River … then … then could the three have come to care nothing about the other promises made him?

Finally he wagged his head, steadfastly refusing again to take this as evidence of the worst. Better to keep on believing the best. Billy was a simpleminded man, but good enough at heart. And Tuttle was smarter than Hooks, so he’d remember what they’d promised Titus Bass. So it really didn’t matter what he might fear at the core of him about Silas Cooper … because Scratch believed that come hell or high water, in the end Cooper would do exactly as he had promised: trade their furs and return for another winter season in the mountains, and another after that, and another after …

Scratch believed in that strongly because of what he knew he meant to Silas Cooper. There was no two ways of Sunday about it: Titus Bass was the best trapper of the four of them. And as long as Silas was getting his healthy cut of Scratch’s catch, then Cooper would do everything to protect his best trapper.

Wasn’t no way in hell Silas would break his bond with Bass, not by a long chalk!

Sighing, Scratch looked about again as the light faded. He decided he would sleep here and turned back to the saddle horse and Hannah. After securing them for the night near his bed, Titus stretched out and gazed up at the black dome flecked with a wide trail of dusty stars. Wondering if the three of them were looking up at much the same sky right then too.

At least they’d come this far. So chances were good they’d make it from here on down to that Mandan post just above the mouth of the Knife River. Silas, Bud, and Billy had come this far, he reminded himself … and that was good enough to convince Scratch that they would likely make it the rest of the way. Without accident, without attack.

Far, far better was it for him to believe in that—than to go on nursing doubt any longer. Better to hang his hope on the fact they’d been right here, ate and camped and slept right here on this ground … better to hope than allow any misgivings to creep in and ambush him. Always better to trust in someone than to let doubt and uncertainty nibble away at the faith he wanted to have in the three.

Best that he protect what kernel of loyalty remained than to allow something to fester inside him … no matter what.

No matter how long it took.

High summer was daily baking the central Rockies the way his mother had baked her double-sweetened corn bread in the Dutch oven in their river-rock fireplace, scooping hot coals onto the top of the cast-iron kettle.

In the heat he tried now to remember the fragrance of that rising bread, the surface of the cornmeal turning golden. But Titus could not remember.

Instead he rubbed his nose, finding it caked and crusted again with the dry dust of this open, unforgiving country far to the southwest of the low saddle* that took a man to the Pacific side of the great continental spine. The dust stived up with every hoof the horse set down. Dust from all those horses and mules behind him, all those hooves—and when the breeze stirred to temporarily cool the sweat glistening his skin, the breeze might just as soon blow that cloud of alkali dust in his direction.

A far, far different country, this, far different from that up on the Yellowstone in the land of the Apsaalooke. More weeks than he cared to think about since he’d left the mouth of the Yellowstone behind and moved south up the Bighorn. Since there was no longer a Missouri Fur Company post, all this time he had been counting on the three joining up with him far to the south.

That day after finding sign of their riverside camp, he had begun this journey south. Eager most of all to complete his side of the compact made with Silas Cooper and the others. Only way Titus knew for sure that their reunion would ever come to be was that he himself had to be there to meet up with the three when they rode in from Fort Vanderburgh on the Missouri. From there Cooper said he would bring them a little south of west. Unencumbered by all the weight of traps, baggage, camp gear, and what other truck four men required to survive one winter after another out here in the mountains, surely the three could make far better time hurrying toward their rendezvous south of Henry’s Fork and the Green River country east of the Uintah.

Was no doubt in Scratch’s mind that the trio could travel far faster than he had been able to since he had last seen them floating off down the Yellowstone. Considering the number of horses and mules he had to ride herd on … well, while he might not have as far to ride, Bass grew more certain with every day that Silas Cooper’s bunch could likely cover twice the distance he could in every sunup-to-sundown ride. And that’s what kept him pushing on as fast as the animals, and the rugged, broken terrain, and all the terrible storms of early summer allowed him.

The days drifted by as he scooted south along the winding path of the Bighorn, south farther still into the Wind River country and then the high breaks of the Popo Agie, where he crossed that high saddle as a hellish hailstorm battered him and the animals early one afternoon. The icy shards hurt so much, he was driven out of the saddle, dropping to the ground and dragging a thick wool blanket with him as he huddled beneath the belly of the tail-tucked saddle mount to sit out heaven’s attack on this treeless expanse of parched, high sagebrush desert. How all the horses whimpered and the mules snorted in their discomfort and pain until the bombardment moved on east and a cold rain fell. Eventually a band of blue and purple and dusty rose sky emerged along the western horizon, and the last of the storm was finally on its way over him.

Like him, the horses and mules had shuddered and shivered, and reluctantly they moved out with him once more as he urged them in motion. The wind had come up soon after and made for a damp, cold camp that night until he got his fire started. Chilled to the marrow, Scratch clutched his coffee tin close beneath his hairy chin and consoled himself with the fact that he was getting all the nearer to the country where he would await the arrival of his partners.

Partners.

It had been the first time in more than two winters with the trio that he had ever thought of them as partners. At first they had been saviors—arriving as they did just when his last horse had died of black water. Then he had come to think of them as his mentors, teaching him not only trapping but the ways of the mountains and of the brown-skinned natives who likewise called this high country home. And finally he was forced to consider Silas Cooper as his master when Cooper first exacted his tribute for saving Bass’s life, for keeping him alive.

What else would he call it when he had thrown in near everything he owned, certainly everything he had worked the better part of a year to acquire, handed over that fortune of his to join with theirs in that exciting, challenging endeavor of floating their furs downriver? What else would the four of them call themselves … but partners?

As anxious as he was to rendezvous with them, Bass had figured he would reach the reunion site far ahead of schedule, so he had turned back a bit on the compass and headed south by east toward Park Kyack—fondly remembering that high mountain valley and the Ute band. Recalling the widow and the warmth of her blankets.

But as much as he searched the familiar ground, there was no sign of the tribe, nor much evidence of what direction they had taken. On occasions as he worked his way through the valley, Bass crossed the trail of a hunting party, perhaps a raiding party—unshod horses of one and or another haunting this high country. The one old camp he came across showed him where the Ute had likely moved out of the valley, heading north by west to hunt both the buffalo and antelope they would not find here in Park Kyack.

Staring down at the cold, blackened rings of those lodge fires, the remains of drying racks, the litter of camp life, he had grown lonely, so lonely again. It hurt every bit as much as when he watched the three float off down the river and around the far bend in the Yellowstone. The Ute had been here. But after hoping to find them … to find her … the loneliness inside made him want to disbelieve the Ute had been here at all, had crossed this ground—so close, yet no more.

Then he realized he was sore in need of seeing another human face, hearing another human voice, watching a smile emerge and eyes twinkle when they looked back at him. As much as he cherished the solitude, loved the aloneness, and savored being beholden to no one but himself … Titus yearned terribly. Yearned for faces and voices and laughing eyes. Hungered for the mere touch of a hand in his, perhaps the arms of a friend around his shoulders, even the mouth of a woman pressed against his as he tasted her breath and felt himself stir to readiness.

From time to time after reaching the beautiful valley, he stopped a day or so to lay his traps. But as well as he did, the pelts were poor compared to what a man could catch in-winter or early spring.

“Beaver always come to bait in this here country,” he spoke out loud one night at his fire, surprised to hear the sound of his own voice. “Come to bait they do: just as sure as a man’d lay down his money on a St. Louie whore’s feather bed so’s to get hisself a proper forking.”

It was pretty country, to be sure. No wonder the Ute felt so strong about it—were prepared to defend it the way the Crow defended their Absaraka.

That was just the way he got to thinking a few weeks later after pushing up and out of Park Kyack, wondering if it weren’t the same with those tribes along the Upper Missouri. Would they defend their land and the river that ran through it from a trio of white men floating down to a distant trading post? If those lone men were heading on out of that tribe’s precious country, why wouldn’t the warriors just let the trio pass on by? Or would they realize that the mere sight of white men meant the possibility of plunder, not to mention the presence of guns and powder to be stolen? And Bass knew, in the marrow of him, that might well prove to be enough of a temptation to spell the trio’s doom.

Dropping down out of the high country again, driving that herd of horses and mules north by west, constantly keeping his eyes moving along the far skyline, watching the distant ridges, staying to the long stretches of timber that bordered every stream and creek and riverbed so that he wouldn’t stand out with that cavvyyard he had stirring up a cloud of dust behind him. Then, at long last, he reached the banks of the Green as summer was growing all the hotter and the days had become their longest. For weeks upon weeks now he had counted upon laying his eyes on this river. For here was the place, and now was the time, the four would rejoin.

He waited.

The mosquitoes grew thick there in the valley of the Green as summer aged and the big bottle-green horseflies tormented the animals he was forced to move to new grass from time to time.

And he waited some more.

Scratch hunted, and watched the skyline for warriors. He rode out to the high ground northeast of where he maintained his lonely vigil and watched the skyline for Silas, Billy, and Bud.

Still he waited.

And each day he added a notch to a peeled wand of willow. So many days and notches now since he had watched the three of them float away—there were many such wands of willow stuffed down in his saddle pouch. More than he cared to count anymore. More than he cared to remind himself. Each time he did, the doubt crept back in.

He had waited long past the time Silas had calculated they would reunite.

Then he added notches he knew would put him past the time the traders’ rendezvous had come and gone at the south end of the Sweet Lake. With regret, and a growing anger, Titus tried to remember the faces of the merry Daniel Potts, mulatto dandy Jim Beckwith, young and randy Jim Bridger, and even crusty old Henry Fraeb. Faces he hadn’t seen in a year now, not since Willow Valley. Hard, tanned, wind-seamed faces and rough-edged voices brought easily to laughter with the tall tales he wouldn’t share now for at least another year.

Unless he went, and now. Yes, perhaps some of the brigades might still be in that country close by the Sweet Lake. Wouldn’t be no trick at all to find where the hundred or more had camped and traded, drank and reveled together. Wouldn’t be no hard task to seeing how they had split up and moved out, what direction the brigades were headed. He might catch up, spend a few days among the company of one brigade or another. Just to have the sound of voices and laughter in his ears.

After all … it was plain to see that Silas and Billy and Bud had been rubbed out. Somehow he had to accept that he was on his own hook once more.

Perhaps they hadn’t made it all the way down the Yellowstone and then the Missouri to that trader’s post called Vanderburgh’s. Then again—they might well have made it there and traded all the furs, only to be rubbed out coming across all that country where the Arikara and Pawnee and Arapaho could jump a few white men hurrying back to the mountains. Leastways, that’s something Isaac Washburn had known of firsthand. The country where Scratch’s three friends were to cross was the same stretch of high plains where Ol’ Gut and Hugh Glass had barely escaped with their hide and their hair.

As much as he stared into the small fire he built himself for company every night, as much as he watched the water flow by in the Green every day—the feeling inside him had grown no more comfortable, no more easy to accept until he was ready to let it go. To hell with the furs. There’d always be beaver in the mountains and high valleys. Besides, he still had his traps and other truck. By God, Titus thought, he was still in the business of trapping.

So to hell with all that prime beaver he had dragged out of countless frozen streams, beaver stretched and scraped, beaver packed in hundredweight bales and finally lashed down on that crude raft that disappeared down the Yellowstone with Silas Cooper.

Only thing that mattered was that he’d lost three friends. Lost the three men who had damn well saved his life.

Down in his belly that eventual acceptance of it brought up the gorge that nearly choked him after all these years: remembering how he had lost Ebenezer Zane. A trusted friend, a mentor Titus had looked up to, a man who had taught Bass not just about the great rivers, but about life on the river—women and rum, song and friends.

Then he remembered Isaac himself. How the graying trapper had done all that he could to keep Bass from liking him there at first, but come to love him Titus had. To trust Washburn enough to plan on following him west into the unknown. Then Gut was taken from him too. Gone as suddenly.

After all these winters and summers healing over those two painful scars of loss, now he had to face the loss of three more. Silas, Billy, and Bud ripped from him.

“The Big Muddy’s fair boiling with red niggers,” he told himself out loud more than once as he wrestled with his inner agony. “Likely it be that the three of ’em just bought into more’n they could barter for on that river’s track. Injuns got ’em up there—or Injuns got ’em coming back.”

As much as a man might refuse to grapple with it, he had to accept that the three of them were gone. Dead. Rubbed out.

And the only way there was to get on with life was to get on … with people. Bass had to find one of those brigades. He had to be among others until this pain eased. It might take a few days. More likely it would take weeks, and Bass might just decide to throw in with Fitzpatrick’s bunch for the fall hunt, joining up for as long as the winter. He could trade off what he didn’t need in the way of all these horses to the company men for some coffee and sugar, anything he didn’t already have enough of back there among the packs. The brigade’s booshway might even have some liquor left. And rum or whiskey might just go a long way to helping numb a bit more of the pain.

Titus was sure the only way that hurting would stop and he could venture back out on his own was to do one thing. If he was to survive inside, he knew he had to scare up some faces and voices and eyes crinkling in laughter.

Knowing that the best chances for finding any of that healing lay over in that Sweet Lake country, Scratch eagerly set off before sunrise the next morning, unable to sleep after coming to his decision. All night he had brooded on it, concluding that his best chances of running onto a brigade moving out with the breakup of rendezvous lay in his striking out to the north. At least he knew there would always be one brigade moving northeast into the high mountain country to trap through the autumn. There might even be two brigades he could run across—since another was likely to march east a ways from the Sweet Lake country before pointing their noses directly north.

Chances were better than good that he would run onto one such brigade somewhere to the north—or at least come across sign of their passing, and he could hurry along their backtrail until he caught up with them. That morning he put the Green at his back and struck out east, following the meandering path of a narrow river* that he knew would eventually lead him back toward the mountains and Park Kyack. Scratch felt a new chapter opening on the book of his life. Instead of plunging back into that high country to search for the Ute, this time he would strike out to the north upon reaching the foothills.

All the better to avoid the Arapaho who came to raid the Ute for ponies and plunder. Titus knew firsthand just how that warrior tribe craved ambushing their ancient enemies.

It simply made a lot more horse sense to stay as far out of the way of those thieving Arapaho as he could.

*Pompey’s Pillar, east of present-day Billings, Montana

*South Pass in present-day Wyoming

*Present-day Yampa River, known among the Rocky Mountain fur trappers as the Little Bear River