Buffalo Palace

11

Spring was done for by the time they had trapped themselves out of the last of the high country and slowly worked their way down through the foothills. From time to time they set traps along any promising stretch of creek or stream cutting its course through the high benchland that stretched north away to the far mountains where the three first ran across Titus last autumn. This broken, rugged, parched, and high benchland appeared to extend all the way west to the distant, hazy horizon where the roll of the earth still hid the lure of Willow Valley.

There, in the yonder land of Sweet Lake, lay rendezvous.

It was the hive that, in these lengthening days of slow warming of the land, would draw the drones from all points on the compass—just as surely as the queen bee compelled her loyal subjects back with the fruits of their own far-flung labors.

West of north they moved now, beneath the sun sliding off midsky, following the yellowed orb in its western march these days until they reached the branches of a river Cooper said a few others called the Verde. Said it was greaser talk for “green.” Word was that there they might just find more lowland beaver to catch. But no matter if they didn’t end up seeing a single flat-tail … once in that country on the west side of the great continental spine, rendezvous wasn’t but a few more days’ ride on to the west.

This high-prairie country proved to be so different from the foothills, more different still than the mountains the four of them had just abandoned. Every day now they trampled unshod hooves through a warming land where lay carpets of the blue dicks in small flowering trumpets, or past the six open-faced purple blooms of the grass widow.

For the longest time Titus Bass cared little for, nor did he notice anything of, the beauty in that high, rolling wilderness. He was a long time healing. Scratch had hurt for days after that beating. Yet it was a hurt he swallowed down and let no man know.

If there was one small piece of Thaddeus Bass his son had carried away with him from Boone County, it was that a man did not complain of what ills he had brought on himself. No matter that a man might bemoan the unfathomable fates of weather, crop disease, or even the fickle nature of his breeding stock—what suffering a man brought to his own door must always be endured in silence.

For the rest of that horrible morning Titus lay where he had fallen, finding it hard to breathe deep for the sharp pain it caused him in his side and back. Most any change of position brought its instant reminder of the beating Cooper had just given him. It was not until late afternoon when Bass finally decided he was parched enough that he could no longer put off finding himself a drink of water.

Slowly and shakily rising onto his knees and one hand, Titus held the other arm splinted tight against the ribs that made it so hard to breathe, then crabbed inches at a time toward his side of camp, where water beckoned in a kettle—where his blankets lay.

From the corner of his eye he watched the three study him as he dragged himself along less than a foot at a time.

“Lemme help him, Silas,” Hook begged.

“You stay put, Billy,” Cooper warned. “Cain’t y’ see he’s doin’ fine on his own. Both y’ g’won back ’bout your business an’ don’t worry ’bout that’un. He’ll make it where he’s headed.”

No matter how badly his head hurt, the crushing pain in his face and jaw, too—Bass remembered those exact words for days to come. Yes, he thought to give himself the strength needed first to sit, later to stand and then walk, and finally what steel he needed in his backbone to stuff a foot in a stirrup and ride the morning Cooper’s bunch was moving camp. He kept those words in his heart and on his lips in those first days.

He’ll make it where he’s headed.

By damn, I will, Scratch vowed.

There in his blankets, having lapped some water from the kettle into his cupped palm and brushed the sweet wetness against his swollen, bloodied lips, Titus collapsed for the rest of the afternoon. He awoke just after sundown, rubbing a crusty eye where blood had dried it shut, then peered across camp at the other three. While Silas cleaned and oiled weapons there by the fire, Hooks and Tuttle finished the last of their day’s catch—stretching and graining the big blanket beaver.

His eyes found the sun’s last light, his groggy mind determining that evening was now at hand. If he was going to have enough strength to make it to his sets come morning, he needed two things most of all: sleep and a little food in his belly.

The first was not a concern; he knew he would easily fall into a cozy stupor once more. But the food—why, just the thought of it twisted his empty belly, caused it to rumble in protest. He had no appetite and doubted he ever would again, but realized that if he was to demand something of his body, then it would soon demand something of him.

When next he awoke, the night was dark and silent—all but for the snores of the others curled up in their blankets upon pine-bough beds and buffalo robes. Stirring painfully, Scratch pushed himself up on an elbow, clutching that set of busted ribs with the other arm, then inched himself over to the water in the kettle once more. He repeatedly dunked his hand into the kettle, licking all he could from his palm and fingers until thirst was no longer his greatest need. Then he thought of Hames Kingsbury’s broken ribs—remembering how Beulah had wrapped them securely and seen the flatboat pilot through his healing.

There beside the kettle lay the fixings left over from his supper more than a day before. Bass pulled a chunk of meat from the pot, blew the dust off it, and brought it to his mouth. Slowly parting his swollen, crusted lips, opening his jaw to slivers of icy pain below each ear, he tore at small threads of the cooked meat, swallowing a little at a time, not sure just how his stomach would accept it.

Shred by shred of that old, crusted meat he forced down, licking water from the palm he dipped into the kettle, sitting there in the midst of those mountains, listening to the nightsounds of men sleeping, the rustle of the breeze whispering through the quakies and the soughing of the pine. When the wind died, he could hear the faint murmur of the nearby creek trickling along its bed.

Above him stood the dark, jagged outline of the high peaks thrust up against the paler, starlit sky—huge, ragged hunks of that sky obliterated by the mountaintops punching holes in the nighttime canopy.

Nowhere else you gonna see anything like that, Titus Bass, he told himself as he chewed slowly against the pain in his jaw and neck. Then remembered a song long ago sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” not come to his recollection in many, many a year:

We are a hardy, freeborn race,

Each man to fear a stranger;

Whate’er the game, we join the chase,

Despising toil and danger.

And if a hearty foe annoys,

No matter what his force is,

We’ll show him that Kentucky hoys

Are alligator horses!

Him, a Kentucky boy. Just like Ebenezer Zane and Hames Kingsbury. Such as them was alligator horses. No, not Titus Bass—for he hurt too damn much.

His thoughts pulled his eyes to the rifle standing against a nearby tree. Within easy enough reach. And yonder lay the pistol with his shooting bag and possibles pouch. Then he looked at the sleeping forms. There in the middle lay the biggest, clearly the one who had pummeled and kicked him like no better than a bad dog. And then he looked back at the rifle, studied the pistol again. Two bullets. If he did it then and there, which one of those three should get the second lead ball?

When he pulled the trigger on Cooper, the rifle’s blast would bring the other two out of their blankets like the rising of the dead come Judgment Day. So which would it be? One would live—to be freed along with Bass from Cooper’s grip. And then the choice became clear.

His mouth went dry just thinking about it. Murder is what they called it back there, down out of these here mountains and back east. Murder was to take another man’s life while that man lay sleeping in his blankets.

Licking his cracked lips, Titus began to drag himself over toward the tree, wincing with the sharp pain in his ribs. It was good, he thought, biting his bottom lip to keep from groaning as he inched toward his weapons. Such pain reminded him why he would take the life of a sleeping man.

His fingers locked around the rifle at its wrist, there behind the hammer, then climbed to that part of the forestock repaired with rawhide after the battle with the Arapaho raiding party. Bringing it down to his lap, Titus thumbed back the hammer—finding the pan filled. No man would want to chance a misfire when he set out to murder someone the likes of Silas Cooper.

Snagging hold of the pistol, Scratch moved his other hand as far up the rifle barrel as he could. Arm outstretched, he planted the rifle at his side, then slowly began to rise on shaky legs, pulling himself up an inch at a time on the makeshift crutch that in moments would take another man’s life. A wave of nausea swept over him as he stood, rocking against the long barrel—he was so light-headed that his temples throbbed. Yet Scratch swallowed down that faint misgiving and stuffed the pistol in his belt.

The second would be Billy Hooks.

Of the two, only Tuttle might have enough misgivings about shooting Bass. Hooks would have to die.

He pursed his lips together forcefully, hoping to muffle his grunts of pain as he began to hobble toward the fire pit. Scattered on the far side lay the three of them. In a few moments there would be only one left … and he prayed Tuttle would realize that now he was free—

“Don’t do it, Scratch.”

That sharp whisper made him freeze, rocking there atop his rifle like a peg-legged crutch. Titus wasn’t sure in those seconds when he didn’t breathe, his eyes peering over the three forms, just which one had called out to him.

Then Tuttle slowly sat up. “I figger I know what you’re about to do, Scratch. But—killin’ him ain’t right.”

“You saw. He … he almost kill’t me.”

For a long time Tuttle just stared at Bass in that crimson-tinged darkness, his face grave in the low flames and shimmering coals of their fire, his eyes deadly serious. Then he finally spoke. “Them was his furs—his fair share, Scratch. The man could’ve kill’t you long time back. ’Stead, he took you on. You learned to trap, to live up here, and you kept your hair. You owe him.”

“The way you see it: I owe him.”

“That’s right,” Tuttle emphasized.

“Bet you owe him too.”

“I do—an’ that’s the devil’s gospel. For balls’ sake, Cooper’s saved my hash more’n I care to count. You owe him, same as me.”

“You got a gun on me, eh?”

After a long silence Tuttle quietly said, “I have.”

“I could kill him afore you took me, Bud.”

“But you won’t, Titus. I know you can’t. I know you see what he’s saying. You owe him your goddamned life. You won’t kill him ’cause you can’t take the life what give you back your own.”

Titus sighed long and deep, and, oh, how it hurt to fill his lungs like that. He tore his eyes off Tuttle and stared at the other sleeping form beneath its blankets.

“He right ’bout me goin’ under, Tuttle?”

“He saw to it you made yourself a trapper, Titus. Don’t figger you was a nigger what was gonna keep hisself alive out here when we found you.”

It was like lancing a festering, fevered boil … sensing that poison ooze out of him. Suddenly he felt as weak as a wobbly-legged, newborn calf.

Starting to turn away, pivoting on his rifle, Bass stopped and whispered, “You can put your gun down, Tuttle. The killin’ fever’s gone.”

“I’ll be here to mornin’ for you, Titus,” Bud replied. “Goin’ with you out to your sets like Cooper told me.”

He choked hard on the pain. “Don’ know if I can.”

“I’ll be with you ever’ step of the way.”

Titus sighed wearily, completing his turn, and began to hobble off to his blankets, sleepier than he could remember being in a long, long time.

“Get your rest, Titus Bass.”

That voice froze Scratch where he stood.

“Y’ll need your strength come sunup,” it said.

Slowly he turned his head, peering over his shoulder—finding Silas Cooper pulling the sawed-off, shortened smoothbore trade gun from beneath his blankets now, laying it in plain view atop his belly. It was one of the trophies he had claimed off the dead Arapaho warriors.

“You just learn’t me something more, didn’t you, Silas?”

“Mayhaps I did, Scratch. G’won now—get in your blankets.”

He did just that, painfully settling back atop that single buffalo robe Fawn had given him, a robe he had laid over some pine boughs in making his bed at this campsite. After pulling the blankets up to his chin, he stared across the fire at the chertlike eyes gleaming back at him in the glow of the red coals. Then Cooper closed them.

And all that glimmered was the dull-brown sheen of the barrel on that stubby trade gun filled with lead shot that likely would have cut him in half had things come down to it.

That’s twice now he could’ve damn well killed me, Titus thought as he rolled painfully to attempt finding a position comfortable enough to sleep.

He seen me coming for him, thinking him asleep—could’ve had me dead to rights.

… Mayhaps I do owe him.

Yet that hurt most of all. Owing your life not once, but twice … twice to the bastard you’ve wanted to kill more than any other man alive.

* * *

From the Sierra Madre range rising west of the Medicine Bows, they continued north over the western rim of the Great Divide Basin, north still until they dropped into the southern tableland of the Red Desert Basin, where they struck out due west with the setting sun as their guiding lodestone.

Picking their way day by day between the jutting escarpments and low, solitary peaks of that parched, striated desert, the four always kept in view those mountains far to the north where the Wind River was given its birth. After striking the Verde River,* Cooper led them angling northwest along its meandering course until they reached the mouth of the Sandy: It was there they crossed to the west bank and finally left the Verde behind, making for the low range of mountains that lay almost due west.

“We get beyond them hills,” Silas explained one evening in camp, “I was told we’d likely see Sweet Lake from a ways off.”

“Yup—that’s what we was told,” Hooks agreed, dragging the back of his dust-crusted hand across his parched mouth.

Titus figured Billy had him the whiskey hunger bad. That, or he needed a woman soon in the worst way. Then Bass looked over at Tuttle, and Cooper too. Ana finally peered down at himself. If they all didn’t look the sight!

Hats, faces, hands, and damned near every exposed inch of clothing, even their horses and pack animals, from nostrils to tail root—all of it layered with a thin coating of superfine dust. Beneath the high summer sun the pale talc seemed to cling tenaciously to the horses and the men because of the sweat that poured out of them from sunup to well past sundown every one of those lengthening days.

At what those early trappers called Sweet Lake,** to distinguish it from the bitter-tasting and immense inland lake they called the Salt Sea, lying not all that far to the southwest, Silas Cooper had been told by Ashley’s trappers that a man would have to decide upon one or the other of two courses from there on in to the rendezvous site. The southern route would lead them around the lakeshore until they were able to strike out. due west toward the last range of mountains they would have to cross before dropping into the Willow Valley.

Cooper chose to take them on the longer route, but one that was bound to be much easier on man and horse alike. At the north end of Sweet Lake they picked up the Bear River, named years before by a brigade of British Hudson’s Bay men, which they followed even farther north before it angled west, then quickly swept back again to the south, looping itself through some austere country dominated by lava beds, eventually flowing on around the far end of that tall range of mountains they might otherwise have had to cross.

“Damn easier going on these here animals,” Titus declared as they made camp that first evening after they had pointed their noses south along the course of the Bear River. Nearby was a soda spring from which bubbled bitter water.

“Don’t mind taking our time at it my own self,” Tuttle said as they unloaded the weighty packs, dropped them to the ground.

Next came the task of picketing the animals out to graze in the tall blue grama, where most of the horses chose to plop down and give themselves a good roll and dusting before beginning to fill their bellies on the plentiful salt-rich grasses. From night to night Tuttle and Bass rotated these tasks with Cooper and Hooks, who this evening were gathering wood, starting the cookfire, and bringing in water for their coffee.

“Lookee there, Bud,” Titus said, the hair standing on his arms as he slapped Tuttle on the back to get his attention. He pointed, his alarm growing. “You s’pose them to be Injuns?”

Tuttle squinted into the distance stretching far away to the north of them. “Don’t figger so. Lookee there—you can see them niggers is riding with saddles. Legs bent up the way they is. Only red-bellies I ever knowed of rode barebacked: legs and feet hanging low on their ponies.”

“Yeah, maybeso you’re right,” Titus agreed, peering into the shimmering distance as the sun secreted itself beyond the western hills. “Looks to be they got pack animals with ’em.”

Tuttle asked, “How many you make it?”

Bass counted them off silently, his lips moving as he did. “Least ten. Ten of ’em for sure.”

“We best us go tell Cooper and Billy we got folks coming in.”

Silas was a cautious one on occasions such as this, Scratch thought. But, then—it made sense that Cooper would be. After all, why shouldn’t a man who, without guilt or remorse, would take from another white man be suspicious that other white men might just ride on in and steal from him?

“Get your guns out and ready,” Cooper ordered the other three. “Leave ’em handy. Leave ’em for them niggers to see in plain sight if’n there’s to be trouble.”

Tuttle tried to tell him, “I’d care to set they only some of Ashley’s men goin’ to ronnyvoo—same as us, Silas.”

“Don’t matter none to their kind to leave the bones of us’ns to be picked clean by the buzzards right here … an’ take all our plews on in to ronnyvoo for themselves. Y’ think about that, Bud Tuttle—and then y’ tell me y’ don’t figger we ought’n be ready to keep what’s ours.”

So they stood spread out, the four did, as the ten approached at a walk. Then suddenly Cooper tore the wolf-hide cap off his head and waved it, whooping at the top of his lungs. It surprised Bass so much, he was scared for a moment—especially the next instant when Billy and Bud joined in, wheeling about to seize up their weapons as they cheered and hurrawed to the skies.

With the first whoop Titus lunged for his rifle, diving to crouch behind a pack of pelts where he would have some protection and a good rest for the weapon when the shooting started. He had no sooner taken cover than the ten riders began to screech and holler, pounding flat hands against their open mouths with a “woo-woo-woo,” and raised their rifles in the air.

The first of those long weapons boomed with a great puff of gray smoke. Cooper squawked like a raven in reply, pointing his own rifle into the sky, firing it just before a second rider shot his off.

“What the blue hell?” Bass hollered into the noisy tumult.

Billy turned slightly, raising his rifle over his head, aiming for the puffy clouds. “It’s a good sign, Scratch! Good medicine! They’s emptying their guns!”

“That there be a likely bunch of good coons, boys!” Silas hollered. “I see me a couple faces I could lay to being at last summer’s doin’s.”

In the end all but Bass had fired their rifles by the time the ten came close enough to plainly see the dust caked into the creases on the men’s faces. A double handful of bearded, dirty, sweat-soaked, hard-bitten men who brought their animals to a halt there among the four and peered down from the saddle with widening grins.

“Been follerin’ your sign for last three days, we have,” the first man spoke.

He had twinkling eyes and a good smile, Bass decided. Then Titus looked over to fix his study on the second rider: not all that old, really—but it seemed that he, like the first rider, also spoke for the others. Still, he had given the older man at his side the first say.

“Welcome, boys! Get down an’ camp if you’re of a mind to,” Cooper offered them all with a grand, sweeping gesture.

“Be much obliged,” that young second rider replied.

Immediately a third said, “Figger you fellas be hur-ryin’ on to ronnyvoos like us.” He had a round face, that sort of easygoing countenance that naturally put most men at ease. “Bound for the Willow Valley?”

“Ain’t no two ways of it!” Hooks cheered just before he turned back toward the fire and pushed the coffeepot closer to the flames. “Likker an’ women it’s gonna be for this here child!”

The second rider slowly eased out of the saddle, his damp flesh squeaking across the wet leather as he slid free. “We hear the general’s bringing him likker out this year.”

“Bound to be some shinin’ times,” the first rider agreed as he dropped to the ground.

Bass watched the older one take off his hat and slap it against his legs, stirring up a cloud of fine dust. He can’t be much older’n me, Titus thought. His hair hung long and brown, some of it fair, well-bleached by the sun. For sure the wrinkles were worn there around the eyes, and his skin had long ago turned a shade of oak-tanned saddle leather like all the rest. But there were no creases at the sides of his mouth—he couldn’t be a day over thirty, Titus figured.

Silas stepped up to the man, asking, “So your bunch making tracks to ronnyvoo now?”

The man nodded, then motioned off to the north. “The general sent out riders to pass the word that he was getting close.”

“Close?” Hooks repeated, his voice rising a full octave in excitement.

That first rider nodded. “We figure him to be no more’n a few days out of Willow Valley.” Then he held out his hand to the tall, slab-shouldered Cooper. “I’m the general’s leader for this band. Name’s Fitzpatrick. Tom Fitzpatrick.”

That’s when the second rider stepped up to Tuttle, holding out his hand. “An’ my name be Jim Bridger. Outta Missouri.”

Now, that youngster couldn’t be a day over twenty, Titus thought as Bridger and Tuttle shook.

At that the last four riders sank to the ground, and the rest of the ten strode up among the rest, shaking hands all round with Cooper’s bunch.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus exclaimed, bent slightly at the waist to peer closely at the other man, his chin cocked in wonder, his hand suddenly frozen, stopped in midair between them. “You’re … you ain’t a negra, are you?”

“My pa was a Virginia landowner,” the man said without a hint of shame, glancing at his empty hand before dropping it to his side. “Fortune had it that my mother happed to be one of his slaves. I was borned out to the slave quarters … but my pa brung us both into the house after his first wife died.”

“Didn’t mean you no offense by nothing I said,” Scratch apologized, shamefaced and offering his hand out firmly before him. “Here. My name’s Titus Bass.”

The tall mulatto with Caucasian features and coffee-colored skin grinned warmly. “No offense taken. Name’s Beckwith. After my pa. You can call me Jim … Jim Beckwith, of Richmond County, Virginia. But I was brung up in the woods near St. Charles. You know where that is on the Missouri River?”

“St. Charles? Same village lays north of St. Louie?”

The tall mulatto nodded, sweeping both his hands down his dust-coated but colorful buckskins in that manner of a genteel horseman settling his clothing upon dismounting. Bass had him figured for a man who liked to cut a dashing figure here among the greasy, rough-shorn, ramshackle hellions he rode in with.

“My pa figgered to move west, so he brung Ma an’ me there back to O-nine.”

“Hell, I was still a Kentucky boy back then my own self.”

Beckwith stood at least six feet tall, perhaps a little more. He grinned, his kind eyes smiling. “Out there in that Lou’siana wilderness, I soon had me twelve brothers an’ sisters.”

Scratching at his beard, Bass replied, “Don’t sound like you’re no freedman neither.”

“No, I ain’t. Never needed freeing from my pa.”

“Knowed me a Negra once’t,” Titus said, remembering. “He was a freedman. But I never knowed what become of him.”

Beckwith explained, “No need bein’ a freedman: my pa and ma was rightfully married. Means I ain’t never been a slave.”

“Your pap was well-off, I take it.”

Shaking his head, Beckwith replied, “Nawww—we wasn’t wealthy, by no means … but my pa had him a good heart, an’ he made sure there was no question that his children was no slaves. Went himself off to a judge at court to declare my emancipation.”

Confused, Titus tried to repeat the word, “E- … e-man-see—”

“Means his pa told the world Jim here was a free man,” explained the thickset third rider as he came up and handed Beckwith the reins to a horse. “C’mon, Beckwith. We got us these critters to keer for—then we kin palaver all we want with these boys.”

The two weren’t a matching pair, by any means, it was plain to see. Whereas the one named Daniel Potts was short and beefy, trail dirty, besides being mud-homely to boot, the mulatto cut quite a figure compared to the rest, what with his colorful buckskins. He was tall too—the tallest there with the exception of Cooper himself—standing an inch or two over Bass and most of the others there on the prairie floor among Fitzpatrick’s brigade. And Beckwith affected a bit of the dandy: wearing his long black hair in a profusion of tight, well-kept braids that hung past his shoulders. As the mulatto started to turn aside with Potts, Titus decided he might just try one of those braids in his own long hair—as handsome as they were on Beckwith.

With a booming voice Fitzpatrick offered, “Say, Cooper—we have us two elk quarters along we’d offer to lay up by the fire for us all if’n that makes you fellas no mind.”

“Never make it a habit to turn down good meat,” Silas said. “Bring it on—we’ll likely chaw everything down to the bone this night!”

Most of the riders dropped their saddles, blankets, and packs onto the prairie near the quartet’s fire, then turned back to see to their horses. After rubbing down their saddle mounts with thick tufts of prairie grass, Potts strode up with his arm around Beckwith’s shoulder. Together they peered at Bass.

The stubby Potts asked, “Tell me something, mister—we look anywhar’ as dirty an’ bad off as the four of you scurvy niggers?”

Titus grinned, glancing down at his dusty, greasy, sweat-stained clothing. “I s’pose we do at that, Potts. Mayhaps even worse off.”

“Call me by my Christian name, will you? It be Daniel.”

“Sure—an’ my given name’s Titus.”

Tuttle broke in, slapping Bass on the back and saying, “But he’d sooner answer to his real handle.”

“What’s that?” Beckwith asked.

“Scratch,” Titus answered as Bud was getting his mouth open. “They give me the name Scratch some time back.”

The mulatto asked, “Was it skeeters?”

Titus shook his head. “Fleas.”

“Big’un’s too,” Tuttle said before he turned back to the fire, chuckling.

“Well, now—Scratch,” Potts said, looking wistfully over at the translucent blue of the Bear River nearby, its border of tall emerald willow in full-leafed glory. He slapped Beckwith on the back and declared, “Me an’ Jim here was cogitating that we’uns go find us a pool in that river yonder. Have us two a sit and a soak afore supper.”

The idea struck Scratch like a fine one indeed. Impulsively he asked, “You mind company?”

Potts grinned readily. “Why—no. Allays good for a man to have a new face and new ears once’t while. We both got stories Fitz, Frapp, and the other’n’s is tired of hearin’ … an’ I’ll wager you got a few tales to tell your own self.”

“Yeah!” Beckwith agreed. “Damn right we’ll all go have our own selves a sit in that cold river—either till we cain’t stand the cold no more, or we turn the water to mud!”

“Likely that Negra boy gonna turn the water to mud, Scratch!” Billy Hooks was suddenly nearby, laughing and wagging his head with cruel sarcasm. “But that brown-assed Negra still gonna be a Negra when he comes out’n that river—no matter how hard the black son of a bitch scrubs hisself!”

Beckwith was turning on his heel to start for Hooks when the strong and stocky Potts locked his friend’s arm and held the mulatto in place—at just the moment Bass stepped between the mulatto and Billy, staring Hooks in the eye.

“This man ain’t done nothing to deserve the talk you’re throwing at ’im, Billy.”

Hysterically laughing, Hooks said, “Just look at him, Scratch! Why, I cain’t hardly believe my own eyes. It’s a Negra—out in these here mountains!”

Potts growled, struggling to hold Beckwith, “He’s as good a man as any.”

“If Beckwith here ain’t the kind to walk away from the fight we had us with Blackfoot not long back,” Bridger interrupted them all as he hurried up purposefully, Cooper and Fitzpatrick both scrambling to stay with him, “then he sure as hell ain’t the kind to back off from no fight with you.”

“Fight?” Cooper repeated as he stepped between the two, grinning from ear to ear, raking his long beard with his fingers, and taking a measure of those standing with the mulatto. “There ain’t gonna be no fight here … will there, now, Billy?”

“No fight, Silas,” Hooks agreed quickly, then giggled some more like a man willing to rub salt into another’s wounds.

“Damn ride der’ h’ain’t be no fide here,” declared a swarthy, dark-eyed, much older man as he eased up on the far side of Fitzpatrick, his fists clenched and ready.

It was plain the trapper had something on the order of twenty years on Bass, maybe as much as a decade older than Cooper. More than a life outdoors had aged his face: many a year on the frontier had clearly left their mark on the man. His accent was thick, throaty, yet something that sang of its own rhythm, an accent Titus could not remember hearing since those youthful days along the Lower Mississippi: maybe Natchez, more likely all the way down to New Orleans, where the Spanish, French, and Creole tongues mingled freely with the upriver frontier dialects.

“Easy there, Henry,” Fitzpatrick coaxed the German-born Henry Fraeb. “Frapp here gets his blood up pretty quick, but there ain’t no need for cross words, is there, fellas?”

“We’re all friends here,” Cooper readily agreed. “Right, Billy?”

Hooks giggled behind his hand, his eyes gleaming with childlike innocence again. “I ain’t never see’d no Negra out here—”

“Beckwith is the name, not Negra,” the mulatto repeated firmly. It was plain his pride had been wounded. He looked at Hooks steadily and said, “Beckwith. Maybeso you’ll remember it one day.”

“Why, you gonna be something big up on a stick?” Billy mocked, then suffered himself another fit of laughter.

“G’won and help them others with their plunder,” Silas ordered sternly, slapping Hooks across the upper arm, plainly made uneasy by the readiness of the others to back the mulatto.

Cooper waited while Hooks moved off wagging his head, still giggling to himself. “Pay him no mind fellas,” he advised good-naturedly. He tapped a finger to the side of his head, explaining, “Billy’s just … just a bit slow a’times. Why, he finds him some simple joy in most ever’thin’.”

His eyes angry, Bridger argued, “Being soft-brained don’t give a man no right—”

“You’re right,” Silas interrupted, nodding at the much younger man. “C’mon now, fellas. What say we forget this trouble … let’s camp!”

“Man’s right,” Fitzpatrick said grudgingly, eyeing Bridger, Fraeb, and Beckwith with a look that told them all that he expected them to smooth their ruffled feathers and put the matter to rest. “Sun’s down and this bunch ain’t et since morning. ’Sides—we move on to shining times tomorrow.”

Cooper shouldered in between Fitzpatrick and Bridger as the group moved toward the fire, asking, “You boys figger the general spoke the truth when he tolt us he’d pack likker this summer?”

Fitzpatrick said, “Ashley’s a man allays done what he said he’d do. If he says there’ll be likker to ronnyvoo—there’ll be likker there, by God.”

Bass watched the rest gradually settle near the fire with Cooper. But instead of joining them, Potts and Beckwith hung back with Titus.

“So, fellas,” Scratch finally asked in that uneasy silence, “we still going to have us our soak?”

The mulatto shrugged dolefully. “S’pose I could use some water.”

“Damn right you could use some water!” Potts exclaimed suddenly, joyfully, flailing an arm exuberantly at Beckwith. “You’re coming to the river, or you’re dang well stayin’ downwind o’ me from here on out!”

As cold as the water was, nonetheless Scratch plopped himself down in a little pool of it near the sandy bank, just as Potts and Beckwith readily did as twilight put a twinkle to the summer sky. They sat up to their armpits in a little backwater the Bear had long ago cut out of the side of the bank.

In the last of the real light Titus noticed the dull glimmer of something hung round the mulatto’s neck on a narrow thong. “What’s that you got yourself?”

Beckwith held it up, gazed down at it again a moment. “A guinea. First pay I ever got. Stamped with the year I was born.” He held it up for Bass to see.

Leaning over, Titus stared in the fading light at the large round coin, a tiny hole drilled near its top right through the king’s head. There below the nobleman’s neck was emblazoned the date 1800. “You was born six years after me.”

Potts suggested, “Tell him where you got your coin, Jim.”

“We never was the best-off folks in Portage des Sioux outside of St. Charles,” he explained. “So my pa set me to work with a blacksmith, learn me a trade.”

“You don’t say,” Titus replied with happy recognition. “I worked for many a year in Hysham Troost’s place.”

“There in St. Lou? I heard of it, often,” the mulatto replied. “Casner’s was the blacksmith shop where I apprenticed for some five years.”

“Then you come out here to the mountains?” Bass inquired.

“Nawww. Not when I left Casner’s,” Beckwith said. “First I fought Injuns with Colonel Johnson’s expedition up to Fever River when I was released from Casner’s indenture … only nineteen, I was by then. Short time later I figured to take me a ride on down to N’Awlins … where I got yellow fever for my trouble. Barely made it back home alive to my folks at Portage des Sioux, and there I stayed put, healing up, till I learned General Ashley was outfitting him a new brigade for the mountains.”

“I first knowed of Ashley some time back—had him outfits going upriver for the last few years,” Bass observed. “When was it you first come out with him?”

“Back to twenty-four,” Jim answered, his eyes growing wide with excitement, “and that was the first year the general wasn’t headed upriver with them keelboats to get on by the Ree villages. This time he was bound to ride overland for the mountains.”

“Say, boys—my belly’s beginning to holler for fodder,” Potts declared, leaning over to scoop up a handful of sand from the bottom of the pool. “Telling me it’s time to eat my fill of that elk we shot this morning.”

For a few moments Titus watched with interest as Potts, then Beckwith, scooped up one handful after another and used it to scrub their skin.

“What’re you two doing?”

Potts replied, “Givin’ ourselves a good washing.”

“Just sittin’ there in the river isn’t going to help a man much,” the mulatto advised.

“When was the last time you sat your ass down in some water?” Potts asked.

With a shrug Titus said, “Been a long time. ’Cept for times I swum rivers with my critters and stood freezing in mountain streams—I ain’t been near no washing water for more’n a year.”

“Once a year,” Potts instructed, “a man ought’n wash up proper … as good a cleaning as he can.”

Bass said, “I never figgered I’d be one to carry me lye soap.”

“We ain’t the sort to carry no soap neither,” Beckwith explained. “But a good hard scrubbin’ with sand does a toler’ble job, Scratch.”

“Awright,” Titus answered them, scooping up a double handful of sand, which he smeared over his chest.

“Rub it hard, now,” Potts said. “Gotta get shet of all that stink afore ronnyvoos.”

“If you watch, you’ll see your horses and mules does about the same thing when they have themselves a roll in the dirt,” Beckwith said as he pulled one leg out of the water and began sanding it.

Next to his, Bass’s leg was starkly white. In fact, Scratch was so pale, his legs reminded him of the skinny white legs on the pullets the family raised back on the place in Boone County. Only his hands from wrist down were deeply tanned, along with that wide vee extending from his neck onto his chest, as well as his darkened face. Except for those river crossings when he briefly stripped off his clothing, every other part of his pale hide had been protected from much exposure to the sun’s light as far back as he could remember.

At first it was an odd sensation, rubbing the river bottom grit from chin to toe, but soon enough it became a right pleasant feeling. In fact, his skin began to tingle and glow the more he scrubbed.

“That ’bout does it for me,” Beckwith announced as he rose out of the water, turned, and long-legged it onto the riverbank to stand dripping among the foxsedge.

“I’m done too,” Potts agreed as he stood with a splash.

Bass watched in amusement as the two trembled and quaked, shaking what they could of the water from their flesh just like a hound. Then, as the evening breezes cooled, they quickly stepped into their clothing, despite still being a little damp. Potts pulled on leather britches and a ragged, dirty calico shirt. Beneath his linen shirt Beckwith wore a pair of leggings and a breechclout, same as Bass.

As Titus emerged from the water, shivering in the gentle movement of a cool wind, the other two plopped to the ground and began pulling on their moccasins.

“Dang if it ain’t time to fill up my meatbag,” Potts declared. “Been a long stretch since breakfast.”

“C’mon, now—don’t dally,” Beckwith urged Bass. “Unless you hurry, there won’t be a thing left for us to eat.”

“He’s right.” Potts smacked with relish. “Them others can eat a horse by themselves—and all we got us is half a elk!”

Titus leaped into his clothes, suddenly discovering he was himself immensely hungry after the long day’s ride, followed by that invigorating bath. As the trio neared the fire lighting the ring of deeply tanned faces, Fitzpatrick stood, wiping his greasy fingers in his hair as he called out.

“That you, Potts?”

They strode into the corona of firelight as Daniel announced, “It’s me.”

“You got Beckwith?”

“I’m here,” the mulatto replied, coming into the light.

All three stopped near the fire ring. Potts was the first to yank his knife from his belt and bend down over one of the two roasting elk quarters. He sliced himself a long, narrow slab of the pink meat still dripping juice and blood into the flames below—each drop landing with a merry hiss.

“Just wanted to tell you what I reminded the rest here,” Fitzpatrick declared. “When you roll out in the morning, see to it you trim off that beard of your’n.”

Potts eyed the brigade leader. “All of it?”

Fitzpatrick nodded. “You too, Beckwith.”

Scratching at the side of his face, the mulatto said, “A shame, Fitz. I been growing real particular to it since winter.”

Sporting his own brown beard, Fitzpatrick replied, “If you don’t wanna stay working for Ashley long, then a man can keep his beard, boys. Otherwise—you know the general’s rule. He don’t ’llow no beards on his men.”

Titus asked, “Why’s Ashley so all-fired against beards?”

“He’s a trader, mind you,” Fitzpatrick explained, stepping close. “And traders allays deal with them Injuns, don’t they?”

“Yep,” Billy Hooks answered, leaping into the conversation.

With a cursory glance at the mat of facial hair on Hooks, Fitzpatrick went on. “General’s come to know Injuns don’t like beards. They don’t much favor any kind of hair on a man’s face.”

“That’s why they pluck ever’ damn hair out,” Bridger added with a mock shudder. “Even the eyebrows too.”

Fitzpatrick continued. “Few years back Ashley learned him that some Injun bands won’t have nothing to do with a man wearing a beard. They say it hides a feller’s face. And the Injuns is big on reading a man’s face to see that he’s talking straight.”

“Man kin grow him a beard,” Potts declared, “but he dare’st not let the general ever see it.”

“All that fuss over a man’s beard?” Tuttle inquired.

“You free trappers don’t have to worry none over that,” Fitzpatrick explained.

Potts stepped back with a second slice of elk hanging from his knife. “But you free trappers best ’member the general takes care of his own fellas first.”

“An’ if Ashley’s got anythin’ left after he outfits his own for the next year,” a new man spoke up with an accent that reminded Bass of the Spanish and French tongues heard at the mouth of the Mississippi, “then you free trappers might get to pick over the leavin’s.”

Bass studied that speaker for a moment as the older man bit down on one end of a long strip of meat, pulled the strip out from his lips with one hand, then used the knife he clutched in his other hand to slice off a good mouthful. He had long black hair prematurely sprinkled with gray where it hung loosely on either side of his well-wrinkled face, and his beard was starting to show a dusting of iron too, although the man was clearly younger than Titus.

Potts explained, “Louis here don’t cotton much to you free trappers joining in on our ronnyvoos.”

Around a mouthful of the meat, Louis Vasquez spoke up for himself, his dark Spanish eyes glaring at Daniel Potts. “This here’s the general’s doin’s—ronnyvoo is. Them don’t work for the general has no business barterin’ plews for Ashley’s trade goods.”

“’Sides powder and lead, coffee and sugar,” Fitzpatrick said, “the rest of it’s all foofaraw anyway, Vaskiss.”

“Their kind wanna work for Ashley, eh?” Vasquez growled. “Let ’em sign on wit’ Ashley.”

Silas snorted. “An’ fight Blackfeet up there in the devil’s own country like you boys done? No thankee. Pll trap where I wanna trap an’ stay aways from making trouble for myself.”

Then Hooks chimed in, “That means us keeping our noses far from Blackfoot country!”

“Weren’t all that far north of here,” Bridger declared. “Was a good li’l scrap of it. Show ’em what I mean, fellas.”

Five of the others brandished scalps they had hanging from their belts.

“That’s five Blackfoot what ain’t ever gonna raise my hair!” Bridger exclaimed.

“’Nother’n was shot up bad—but the rest rode off with his carcass,” Fitzpatrick said. “Couldn’t raise his scalp.”

“Makes six Blackfeet what won’t devil none of us no more,” Fraeb emphasized.

“Much trouble as them niggers are, the trapping’s some up in them parts,” Fitzpatrick said.

Titus asked, “Some?”

Potts turned to look at Bass. “Means it’s just ’bout the best there is, child.”

“Blanket beaver,” Bridger added with an approving cluck. “And the rivers is so thick with ’em, all a man has to do is walk down to the water and club ’em over the head.”

“Sounds like some crock of bald-faced to me!” Cooper spouted, a disbelieving grin creasing his dark beard.

The dour Fraeb scratched at his nose with the black crescent of a dirty fingernail. “Haps you free trappers ought just go on up there to that Blackfoot country and see for yourselves.”

“No thankee,” Cooper replied, eyes dancing with mirth as he winked at Hooks. “I favor my skelp to stay locked right where it is!”

Billy tore the fur cap from his head and grabbed a handful of his own long, greasy hair. “Ain’t the red nigger born what can take this from me, Silas!”

Then Tuttle observed, “For balls’ sake—only way you Ashley boys can poke your noses up there in that Blackfoot country at all is to travel in a hull bunch like you done.”

“Yessirreebob!” Hooks added, spreading his arms wide. “And there ain’t but four of us!”

Potts leaned close to Bass and asked under his breath, “You still so sartin sure you don’t wanna throw in with us come ronnyvoos?”

For a few moments Titus looked over Fitzpatrick’s bunch, then eyed what the ten had themselves in the way of fur. As much as there was, man for man, the Ashley trappers didn’t have a thing on Cooper’s bunch—despite having trapped that spring in the beaver-rich country haunted by the bloodthirsty Blackfoot.

Then Bass glanced at Tuttle, Hooks, and even the bruising hulk of Silas Cooper himself before he turned aside to Potts and said, “Thankee anyway, Daniel. You offer a handsome prospect, mind you. But the way I see it—I’d rather work for my friends than be working for some trader what brings his goods out to the mountains come once a year.”

“Fitzpatrick’s a good man to foller,” Potts explained, “an’ Bridger’s gonna make him a fine booshway one day his own self.”

“Booshway?”

“Man what leads a brigade hisself.”

“Yeah,” Scratch replied. “Plain as sun to see Bridger’s older’n his years.”

The jovial Potts tugged on Bass’s elbow, whispering low. “Come join us, Scratch. You’re a good man to have around for a smile or two.”

As much as he might take pleasure in the honor of those words, Titus weighed matters a mite different from most, perhaps. Here he was offered the chance to cut the losses in beaver he’d already suffered and get out from under the ominous shadow of Silas Cooper … or he could stay on with the men who had come along to give him the companionship of an open hand—no matter that the same hand had closed itself into a brutal fist of a time. No, Titus saw himself as a loyal, steadfast man, the sort of man another could easily put his faith and trust in without question.

He wasn’t the sort to let down those who had very likely saved his hide.

Bass slapped a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, saying, “Thanks anyway, Potts—you’re a good man, and this appears to be a likely bunch but … I got my own place where I already been took in.”

* Present-day Green River

** Present-day Bear Lake