Death Rattle

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 least two anyway.

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.

Unless they were so cocky that they figured they had jumped a lone white man and he was as good as dead.

The wind suddenly gusted through the nearby brush. With its groaning rise of sound, Scratch whispered sharply to the two bandanna-bound pups, “Shush!”

Bass stood, slowly inching onto his feet, knowing the crackling of his knees and left hip had to be loud enough for the bastards to hear. No longer content to sit, both dogs were on their feet. Titus could tell their neck fur had ruffed.

He waited breathlessly, watching the man to his left start quietly around the fire pit, his smoothbore held low, its muzzle almost on the ground. When he stopped, Scratch froze too. He was just out of the fire’s light. Any closer would expose him to the warriors and he would have to wheel to the right to fire at that second intruder. But from where he stood just inside the thick veil of darkness, he could get off both pistols at them without being forced to move for the second shot.

The muzzle of that fusil climbed a little, and the Indian held. It seemed almost as if the son of a bitch hankered to savor this moment when he had the drop on the enemy.

That’s when he realized they couldn’t be Crow. Once before—not knowing who he was or that he was married into the tribe—Crow warriors had stripped him of horses and left him afoot. If these raiders only wanted his horses, they could have taken them and been gone in the dark.

Chances were damned certain these weren’t Crow horse thieves. These were killers. Scalp hunters.

The hair rose at the back of his neck. Blackfoot.

Bug’s Boys had killed more good men than he dared to count. Blackfoot took Jack Hatcher. Arapooesh. Whistler. And they killed Strikes In Camp with their pox. Blackfoot kidnapped his woman and daughter—nearly killed Waits-by-the-Water with their slow-dying sickness. No doubt about it: These red bastards had slashed and hacked their way through Titus Bass’s life from every which way. And here they were again. Not content to lift his horses, or ride off with all that trading-post plunder … the sons of bitches had a hankering to kill him.

Their kind had tried it many times before and failed—

The warrior slowly raised the muzzle until it was less than four feet from the buffalo robe tucked over the clumps of sage and brush he had tied and formed to look like a man—then fired.

Standing near his knees, both dogs jerked, shuddering with the sudden explosion. They pressed themselves against his legs. Titus lowered his arms to momentarily reassure them both by scratching them with the pistols he gripped in both bare hands.

Wincing from the bright muzzle flash, both Indians twisted to the side, covering their eyes with mittens. It was several moments before their eyes adjusted to the dark, when both warriors stepped closer, grumbling at one another. The second warrior brought up his weapon and warily held it on the straw man as the shooter poked the muzzle of his empty smoothbore under the edge of the buffalo robe and flung it back.

The two of them had a moment to stare at the brush tied in several places with leather whangs to form the crude shape of a body, then gaze into one another’s faces—before Scratch took those two steps that brought him right to the edge of the firelight.

“Lookin’ for me?”

They immediately wheeled on him, utter shock clouding their copper-red faces. The second warrior’s long rifle came up as if strapped on a pulley.

“You’re dead, you sonsabitches!”

With that first pistol shot, Bass hit the rifleman high in the chest, hurtling the warrior backward a step where he spilled over some of the baggage circling the fire.

Wheeling to his left, Titus found the first shooter lunging to the side. He had flung his smoothbore aside and was scratching at his belt to pull out the tomahawk with its dull, tarnished brass head.

English. French, maybe.

Such a weapon was Blackfoot for sure.

A voice shouted from the dark. Then another from the far right. Shit—there were four of them after all.

Bass ducked backward, retreating out of the light. Kneeling beside one of the old cottonwoods, he laid the empty pistol down on the snow and swapped the other to his right hand. Far, far better with it. He never had been a good two-handed shooter.

There! He spotted that shooter with his ’hawk crouched at the edge of some of the trade goods, what there was of his form illuminated by the fire’s light.

Off to his left some of the horses whinnied. Whoever was there, one or more of them, was no longer worried about the white man’s horses making any noise. The tomahawk man was hollering. His voice, high and strident. Bass could tell he was afraid, caught by surprise, seeing his friend killed, and now he had to fathom he was pinned down by the white man who was just waiting for him to break into the open.

In the next moment, Scratch realized he needed more than that one pistol in hand. There were at least three of them still out there—each one capable of cutting him down. He whirled about on the balls of his feet, jamming the pistol into his belt and pulling out the larger of the two knives at his back.

Back at his hidden bed, Titus grabbed Ghost’s rope in his left hand, sawing the blade against the woven hemp. As the rope came apart in his hand, he reached up and yanked the bandanna off the dog’s snout. Close at hand, Digger was lunging at the end of his rope, the length of it snapping taut with so much force it made a dull pung-pung-pung sound. He reached the second dog, tearing the bandanna off its muzzle, then made a grab for its restraining rope.

Behind him at the fire, the killers were shouting now. One of them even screaming. Another voice broke into a discordant wail. A death song. The son of a bitch knows he’s gonna die.

By the time Titus got turned back around and stuffed the knife in its scabbard, he wasn’t sure if he was hearing the dogs padding on the snow in the dark or if it was the enemy. He dropped to his knees there at the buffalo robes, flinging back the hides and feeling for the rifles he had exposed. He supposed at least two of them were coming. He could see no movement in the firelight. As many as three. Those two out there in the dark, and now the tomahawk carrier had dived into the shadows, that inky black beyond the reach of the fire’s feeble glow.

Weighing what he should do—go in search of them, or wait for them to stumble across him in the dark—Bass listened for the dogs. They would either make a nuisance of themselves in the dark, or they would get themselves killed. Suddenly he felt guilty for releasing them to attack the attackers. They were a threat to the thieves and would likely get—

Then he made himself a promise on their behalf. If he heard a sound from one of the pups or a warrior, Titus vowed he would dash to the sound. He convinced himself that if he reacted quickly enough, the enemy wouldn’t have time to kill either of the dogs because they posed a threat.

That was the pale-eyed Ghost’s growl. A man suddenly yelped in pain. A dull thud—an instant before Bass started forward in the dark. Then he heard Ghost whimpering in his own pain.

Just as Titus shuffled through the trees at his left, he caught sight of a jumble of shadows at the far edge of the firelight. Ghost had one of them by the calf, his jaws locked tight as the warrior clumsily swung his fusil down on the dog’s back again and again, sometimes swinging wild, sometimes connecting. With each noisy thud, Ghost released a groan—but never did release the Indian. It must be excruciating to have those half-grown fangs buried deep into that calf muscle.

From the veil of darkness Digger flew like a blur, striking that same warrior with such force that the Indian spilled over some baggage. As the scalp hunter tried holding off the second dog, Titus kept moving. Before he got to the edge of the light, the tomahawk holder appeared between the trees, his weapon held high as he lunged forward, making for Digger because the big pup had his warrior flattened on the ground, protecting his throat.

At his right hip Titus brought up the rifle on instinct, instantly setting the back trigger before yanking on the front trigger without thinking, much less aiming as he clenched his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he found the tomahawk holder spinning, the upper part of his left arm bleeding. The warrior grumbled as he settled onto the balls of both feet wobbly, then brought the tomahawk back once more as he stumbled to a stop right over Digger.

Scratch dropped the .54 and passed the .50-caliber flinter over to his right side. There was no set trigger on it, Titus reminded himself as his cold, stiffened fingers wrapped themselves around the wrist and trigger guard. He was already close enough to his target that he didn’t have to bring the weapon up to his shoulder. Instead, he shot it from his side, bracing the cheekpiece against the bottom of his rib cage.

The ball caught the tomahawk holder low in the face, shattering his lower jaw and driving on out the back of the warrior’s head as he cartwheeled backward a step, propelled off his feet to land flat on his back where he slid across the icy, trammeled snow.

Two more of them remained. At least one more out in the darkness, somewhere. He wasn’t sure of the voices he heard—not certain of just what he had heard or the tally now as he pitched aside the empty .50 and started for the dogs on those creaky knees of his.

Back and forth the warrior on his back swung his weapon, growling at the dogs that had sunk their teeth into his leg and his forearm.

Dragging the second pistol from his belt, Titus swept in past Ghost, kneeling at the Blackfoot’s shoulder to press the pistol’s muzzle against the warrior’s forehead. That brought an immediate reaction: the Indian ceased his struggles, going cross-eyed as he stared at the muzzle for a moment, his face contorted in pain, before the eyes shifted again, glaring up at Bass’s face.

“Git, boys!” he ordered. The dogs did not instantly obey. He could tell they loosened their grips, yet did not fully release the warrior. “I said git! Back off! Back, goddammit!”

His eyes flicked up quickly, peered around, looking for one or both of the other thieves. Then the warrior moved beneath him—prompting Bass to press so hard with that muzzle he was certain he’d either cave in the bastard’s head or shove that head right on into the snow beneath the warrior.

Seizing the man’s trade gun in his left hand, Bass grumbled, “Gimme that, you red son of a black-hearted whore.”

He heard its twung and whisper, pitching himself to the side without thinking. More a feral reaction than anything approaching a thought process. Damn, if the arrow still didn’t rake along the side of his neck as he dove out of the shaft’s trajectory. It had been aimed at his chest. The explosion of the bowstring had warned him.

But he had reacted in the wrong direction, diving low as the iron arrowpoint opened up a raw, oozy, throbbing wound along the great muscles where his neck met the shoulder.

Landing on the snow, Titus twisted to look for the arrow, surprised it wasn’t embedded in him. A few feet away the warrior on the ground was fighting anew with the dogs. Scratch felt his trade gun pinned beneath his hip as the bowman stepped into the light, holding his weapon at the ready in his left hand, a half dozen arrows clutched in that same hand, arrayed around the center of the bow where they were ready for instant use.

With a twung he watched a second iron-tipped shaft hurtle away from the bow. Scratch rolled off the rifle, rocking onto the hip—swinging the smoothbore up and dragging his palm back on the big hammer in a fluid motion. It was already at full cock. Praying there was powder in the pan, he squeezed back on the trigger. The huge frizzen spat a shower of sparks, and the pan spewed a flare of both fire and smoke an instant before the old fusil belched loudly.

As that second arrow flitted past Scratch’s shoulder, the bowman was already stumbling backward, his weapon slowly tumbling from his grasp as he stared down at the red blossom in his belly with a blank look crossing his fire-lit copper face—

A fourth warrior shrieked out of the darkness, a club held high overhead, a knife in his left hand. Rushing in under that head of steam, the Blackfoot didn’t have time to leap aside when Titus pitched onto his shoulder and held out the empty fusil, tripping the Indian as he stumbled past.

Old as he was, the fear of death nonetheless gave the trapper a little prod at that flickering edge of winter’s darkness.

Landing atop that stunned fourth warrior he had just tripped, Titus jammed one knee down on the forearm that held the club while he seized the left wrist and wrenched the Indian’s knife from his fingers.

Rocking back on his knees, Scratch brought the long beaver-tail dagger into the air overhead, preparing to hurtle it downward into the man’s throat—when he stopped, staring dumbfounded at the Blackfoot’s face. And jerked in surprise.

This wasn’t a man at all. He was a boy. No more than a youth. A goddamned pony holder! Come to fight like a man with all the life-and-death consequences of manhood. When he was no more than a goddamned pony holder of a boy!

The eyes below him held a fire of such unmitigated hatred, for an instant Bass wondered why he didn’t plunge the knife right down into the youth’s sneering face itself. Instead Titus brought his right knee up to pin down the boy’s left arm as he shifted the knife in his hand so he could grip its blade.

“Digger! Ghost!” he. cried sharply. “Off! Off now! Back, goddammit!”

The pups eventually complied, releasing the badly mauled Blackfoot from their jowls.

“Back, I said! Back!”

Both of the dogs began to slink away, their teeth still bared, a low warning that rumbled in their throats as the wounded warrior began to shove himself backward, sliding away from the snarling animals. With one hand the Blackfoot reached out to claw himself along, while his wounded left arm snagged hold of that tomahawk stuffed in the sash wrapped around his blanket capote.

Wrenching his right arm to the left as if cocking it, Scratch flung the arm sideways. The pony holder’s dagger caught the warrior in the side of his chest. Instantly dropping the tomahawk, he brought both hands up to grip the dagger’s handle, struggling to pull it from his body as he collapsed backward into the snow. His thrashing legs slowly came to a stop and he lay still.

Beneath Titus, the youngster’s eyes slowly rolled from the warrior just killed to glare with hatred at the white man no more than a heartbeat before he struggled anew.

With his free right hand, Scratch reached down and tore the stone club from the Blackfoot’s grip. He swung it to the side and smacked it along the side of the youngster’s head.

All the fight sank out of the Blackfoot.

Waiting a moment to be certain, Scratch finally got to his feet and stared down at the youngster while the two dogs loped up to stand at his side.

“Good, fellas—that’s right,” he whispered harshly, his eyes scanning the treed circle around them. Listening.

With his own heart pounding loudly in his ears, Scratch finally figured out that if there had been any more of the enemy, the dogs likely wouldn’t have been hanging back. They would have been charging into the dark for the enemy. That must have meant he had brought them all down. Including this boy.

“Stay here with this’un,” he told the pups as if they would know what he was saying. “Stay.”

Both of the pups surprised him when they did stay as he moved off. The dogs stood guard over the unconscious youth as Scratch hurried into the dark, finding the tree where he had tied Ghost, and cut the entire length of rope free. With it, Bass quickly knotted the Blackfoot’s hands together, then brought a loop down to wrap more rope around the ankles.

Finally he stood and gazed down at the youngster. The boy would awaken to find himself all trussed up, with a good-sized goose egg on the side of his skull.

“Well, boys,” Titus whispered to the pups. “You both was li’l hellions in that scrap—”

The youngster’s eyes fluttered, opening half-lidded as the groggy Blackfoot attempted to gaze up at the white man.

Bass dropped to one knee and stared into the youth’s face. He began to lower a hand, but the boy jerked his head aside. With his left hand pressed down on the youngster’s forehead to hold it in place, Titus brushed snow and ice from the side of the Blackfoot’s face.

Then Scratch rocked back on his haunches and dusted off his hand. Staring at the youth, he sighed, “So what in the billy blue hell am I gonna do with you?”

It began snowing just before first light.

There was something significant to this particular quiet that awoke Scratch where he sat propped with his back against a cottonwood. The last thing he could remember was he had been looking at that youngster’s face. And now that was the first sight he had when his eyes snapped open with alarm.

Of a sudden every muscle was keenly aware of the overwhelming silence as the snow soughed through the bare branches of the trees. Maybe there were more of them. Titus listened for a long time, weighing what he didn’t hear—but when one of the Cheyenne horses nickered in that gentle, contented way of their species, Bass finally let the air out of his chest again.

“You been watching me, ain’t you?” Titus asked, more to let the Blackfoot understand he was awake than any attempt at language or hope for an answer.

“This here snow means we ain’t goin’ nowhere, not till it’s passed.”

So you just as well settle in till the weather breaks, he thought as he scratched Ghost behind an ear. The dog had its muzzle laid on his thigh.

Easing onto his knees, he crabbed closer to the fire and laid on some more wood. Glancing at what wood he had dragged into camp the night before, Scratch prayed he had enough to last them that day and even into the coming night. With the big, fat flakes coming down the way they were, all too soon it would be next to impossible to find a lot of the small, loose squaw wood. So if he carefully marshaled what he already had, they might just stay warm enough, might not freeze before they could ride out of there and look for the Crow—

“What the hell are you thinking?” he scolded himself under his breath. “Your brains must’ve gone soft! What the blazes we gonna do ’bout that boy?”

Bass realized he couldn’t ride into the Crow camp with this enemy. Soon as his wife’s people recognized his dress, the quillwork pattern on his leggings, his hairstyle too, the Crow would drag him to the ground and begin to beat him. They’d inflict a thousand wounds on him, none alone enough to kill the youngster. But as they warmed to their fury, the men would turn the prisoner over to the Crow women. They would be the ones to carefully trim off the Blackfoot’s eyelids, ceremoniously castrate him, build a slow, smoky fire on his genitals, then … carve off an arm, quite possibly a leg—slowly, slowly, like butchering an antelope or mule deer. Until there was little left that would resemble a human being—nothing more than a scalped head with its eyes poked out positioned atop a slashed, bloody torso—its flailed skin blackened by countless hot embers.

An involuntary shudder washed over him as he brooded on the horror that might await this young enemy at the hands of those women he knew in Yellow Belly’s band. Women he knew as mothers and grandmothers, sisters and aunts. Women who were the soul of the Apsaluuke nation. If men were its heart and muscle and bone, then the women were its soul. But … times before he had watched those same women grow increasingly more cruel and vindictive as they wrung every drop of retribution and revenge out of a prisoner.

“If’n I let you go, I couldn’t give you no weapon,” Titus confessed as he settled the buffalo robe back around his shoulders and leaned against the tree again. The two dogs stretched out beside him and yawned.

He was surprised his thoughts had already reached that point: setting the youth free. The Blackfoot might use whatever weapon the white man provided to take his revenge on the white man who had killed three of his companions. Then it struck him: Maybe one of the dead men lying here, or there, was a father. An uncle. Or a brother. Chances were very good that this boy was related to one of those Scratch had killed last night—if for no other reason than, for most of the mountain tribes, this was the way a boy stepped into the world of manhood: invited to ride along as pony holder on a raid conducted by an older relative.

One of these dead men was shepherding this bad-eyed youngster into adulthood, Titus brooded as he watched the boy slowly work at the ropes strangling his wrists. After drifting off a little while, Scratch awoke, thinking he deserved to know if he was wrong about the boy. Or if he was right.

“I kill your father here?” he asked as he stood and started toward the first body.

Kneeling by the dead warrior, Scratch grabbed a handful of the man’s hair and yanked up the Blackfoot’s head, pressing the sharp edge of his skinning knife into the skin of the brow, right at the hairline. All while studying the youth’s reaction.

The boy’s eyes filled with even more hate as he redoubled his efforts to free his hands from the knotted rope.

“Naw. I don’t think this’un’s the one.” And Titus let go of the hair, dropping the head onto the crusty snow.

One at a time, he went and knelt at the next two bodies—threatening to scalp them too. While the youngster did growl in a feral way, Scratch nonetheless figured it had to be the last one. Especially when he watched how the youth’s eyes widened as he knelt next to that third corpse.

Rolling the body over so that the youngster could plainly see the dead man’s face, Titus filled his left hand with hair and pulled the head off the trampled snow. The instant his scalping knife flashed into view there beside the low flames, the boy started howling like a pup without its mother. He stopped his knife, then examined the dead man’s face.

“He ain’t old ’nough to be your papa. Maybeso your uncle?” After a long, quiet moment while the fat flakes fell upon the leafless branches of the cottonwood around them, Scratch sighed, “But I bet he was your older brother. He was gonna show you what it took to be a man.”

Slowly rising, Bass stuffed the skinning knife back into its scabbard as the look of loathing and fury disappeared from the youth’s face. Replacing it was sudden confusion, bewilderment, maybe even a little fear as the boy stared at the white man’s every move.

“They was all brave men, son. Just like you was gonna be too.”

He shook the coffeepot, heard some liquid sloshing inside it, so he sat the pot at the edge of the low flames.

“Like I said afore: can’t cut you loose with no weapon … an’ I damn well can’t let you go ’thout no weapon neither.”

That would be certain death. He might as well kill the boy here and now. Not that he hadn’t killed youngsters before—but none of that had been in cold blood. Shit, some Crow, Flathead, maybeso someone else, would run this youngster down inside of three days and butcher him.

What the hell was he gonna do with him?

As the dim light swelled into the pewter glow of a snowy dawn, Titus decided that he didn’t have to sort it out today. He could wait, thereby giving the right answer time to stew and cook, then bubble to the surface in its own good time. Sometimes weighty matters were best left to the closest deliberation he was known to ever give anything of concern.

He’d think on it now and again while the day passed. Which meant one more day he was forced to put off his search for the Crow of Yellow Belly.

At midmorning when the wind died a little, Titus awoke with a start and clambered to his feet. As soon as the white man made noise, the youngster snapped awake, awkwardly pushing himself back into a sitting position, glaring anew at his enemy.

And that was just how Scratch felt as he stepped around the opposite side of the fire pit, watching the boy’s eyes. These Blackfoot had long been his enemy. How many of them had he killed over the seasons? Maybeso he’d have to scratch at that knotty problem sometime tonight after dark. For now, he bent and grabbed one of the stiffening corpses by the back of the warrior’s collar. Raised him up and dragged the dead man out of the copse of trees through the snow that had fallen deep enough to fill most of the hoofprints and moccasin tracks around his camp.

He returned for the second attacker, dropping the contorted body next to the first, downwind and next to a three-foot-high snowdrift. As he stepped back into the trees he watched the youngster’s eyes and stopped in his tracks. Something different there now—no longer the unmitigated hatred. Titus wondered if he was a damn fool to think the boy’s eyes might be softening, almost pleading with him.

That third body was the boy’s blood. Family. Kinfolk. While Titus had given up on his own people, had abandoned his cold and distant parents, his sister and brothers back in Boone County, he had come to possess some strong notion of just what family could mean to a body. Over time, his woman and their young’uns—they had come to be the family he had long wanted to hold close, the family he felt he deserved.

The boy began growling again, a wild, raspy sound at the back of his throat when Bass stopped at the third corpse and bent over to grab hold of the half frozen carcass.

This time Scratch did not turn around in his tracks and trudge out of the trees. Instead, he took the dozen steps that brought him to the youngster’s shoulder, where he gently, slowly laid the cold body beside the boy’s hip. The youngster’s eyes followed the white man as he stepped away to some of his baggage, dusted off some snow with the side of his woolen mitten, then threw back the oiled sheeting and began to unknot a pile of red blankets. More than likely, red would be of special significance.

Dragging the Russian sheeting back over the blankets and trade goods to protect them from the unrelenting snowfall, Bass trudged over to the youngster whose eyes never once left the trapper as he went and came. The black orbs were growing with wonder at what the old man was up to—if not downright consternation—by the time Titus stopped by the corpse, grabbed an edge of the blanket, and unfurled it in the frosty air.

When he had it draped over the body, completely covering the warrior from his greased and feathered topknot to the soles of his buffalo-hide winter moccasins, Bass straightened once more and dusted snow from the knee of his legging.

“I know this’un means something to you,” he said as the youngster’s eyes eventually climbed to stare into his. “Far as I know, for most of your people—no matter what tribe you be—red’s the color for war. No better honor I can give this nigger what tried to kill me than to leave him on his back, facing the sky. And cover ’im with red—head to toe—the color of a warrior’s paint.”