Buffalo Palace

14

“Mountaineers and friends!” William H. Ashley began, several days after that skirmish with the Blackfoot. “Most of you who know me must know by now that I’m not much good at this speech making.”

Never a man who felt at ease speaking on his feet, even among friends, the sturdy forty-six-year-old businessman and trader had nonetheless been prompted by the emotion of this moment to gather all those who had until recently owed him their allegiance. From this day these hundred-plus men would give their fealty to the new company in the mountains: Smith, Jackson, and Sublette. So this morning before he set off for St. Louis with his 125 packs of furry treasure—a fourth more than he had reaped last season—the visionary Ashley felt compelled to call these crude, unlettered, fire-hardened men together for his final farewell not only to them, but to these Rocky Mountains.

“When I first came to the mountains, I came a poor man,” he explained as the crowd slowly fell all the more quiet, respectful. “You, by your hard work, undying toils, and with your sacrifices, have made for me an independent fortune. For this, my friends, I feel myself under great obligation to you.”

Across the better part of three weeks these Ashley men had camped together, sang and danced with one another, told stories of their spring hunts, and swapped outrageous lies. They had tried to outshoot, outwrestle, and outrun every other man jack among them. And they had joined in nothing short of wonderment that the general had even rolled a cannon across the plains, over South Pass, and on to rendezvous: a six-pounder! On wheels, no less!

Damn—some would say—don’t you see? If wheels could rumble along the Platte River and rattle over South Pass, then the cursed wagons of settlers could not be far off! Perhaps this land was not as remote, nowhere near as forbidding as they had hoped it would be … not if General Ashley had dragged his cannon on its wheeled carriage all the way from St. Louis!

Yet, they figured, this institution of the rendezvous just might last long enough—if the trade goods they depended upon would continue to make it out here every summer. But as every summer must come to an end, the time had come to bid one another farewell: time for the Smith, Jackson, and Sublette men to split apart into smaller trapping brigades, while the few free trappers in attendance drifted off to the four winds—going in secret to those places where their own most private medicine told them they would find a rich bounty of beaver.

This had been only the second rendezvous in the far west, yet it was to be Ashley’s last.

“Many of you have served with me personally,” the general continued, “and I shall always be proud to testify to your loyalty … how you men have stood by me through all danger. Let no man ever question the friendly and brotherly feelings which you have ever, one and all, shown for me.”

Titus Bass stood on the fringes of that group gathered in a crude crescent, the horns of which nearly touched Ashley’s shoulders. Scratch was not one of them, but nonetheless he was. Somewhere a quarter of a mile off lay Bud, Billy, and Silas—those three sleeping off one last hard night of swilling down the general’s liquor. Despite his own pounding hangover, for some reason Scratch realized that this morning he was likely to witness with his own eyes a man-sized chunk of history.

Out of their own heartfelt respect, many of the men had removed their hats—wide-brimmed beaver felt, or those of badger, skunk, wolf, or bear. A few men hung their heads, the better to shield their damp eyes from the appraisal of others. And a handful openly snorted back tears and dribbling noses.

“For these faithful and devoted services I wish you to accept my thanks; the gratitude that I express to you springs from my heart and will ever retain a lively hold on my feelings.”

With a loud sniffle the man beside Titus whispered, “I fought the Rees on the upper Missouri for the general.” He dragged the back of his sleeve under his nose. “And I’d still ride into hell and back again for the man.”

Such was a commonly held sentiment among that group simply because Ashley had all but single-handedly brought them here to the Rockies himself. And it was here in these mountains that most of these double-riveted but sentimental men had discovered, for the first time in their lives, just what it truly meant to live.

“My friends! I am now about to leave you, to take up my life in St. Louis. Whenever any of you return there, your first duty must be to call at my house, to talk over the scenes of peril we have encountered, and partake of the best cheer my table can afford you.”

“An’ you’ll always be welcome at my fire, General!” cried one of the throng.

“Hear! Hear!”

Ashley held up both hands to the noisy crowd, and when they had quieted, he concluded, “I now wash my hands of the toils of the Rocky Mountains. Farewell, mountaineers and friends! May God bless you all!”

Undoubtedly he must have felt the tide of good fortune was about to carry him home after four arduous western journeys. Twice he had fought his way up the Missouri, battling the Arikara and losing more than his share of good men. And twice now he had crossed the continental divide at South Pass—the very heart of the Rockies. No more would he face the scorching summer heat of the plains, nor the terrible, bone-numbing cold of the mountain winters … yet no more would he ever enjoy the company of such men as these.

Slapping a hand against one cheek, there beneath an eye about ready to tear as if he were swatting at a fly, Ashley turned on his heel and took up the reins handed him by one of the thirty-man escort who would accompany him back to St. Louis with his fortune in furs loaded on more than a hundred horses and mules. Tugging his hat down on his head while the rest of the escort rose to their saddles, the general led the cavalcade away without looking back.

“Farewell, General!”

The crowd surged forward, almost as one, as if those in the lead might just drag him from his horse—yet something restrained them as more of these hard men not easily given to sentiment sang out with voices hoarse and croaking.

“God’s speed, General! God’s speed!”

So it was that they parted, one from another … again.

That quixotic booshway Davy Jackson marched his band away from rendezvous with Ashley’s pack train. Somewhere west of South Pass he would bid his farewell to the general, then after trapping the country around Ham’s Fork and the Green, would point his own nose north toward the rich beaver country that lay at the foot of those pilot knobs the French voyageurs called Les Trois Tetons, or the Three Breasts.

Jedediah Smith took his small band of fifteen and moved west of south toward the great and salty inland sea, obsessed with what lay across that great expanse of desert even if it took him into Mexico: even if it meant he marched all the way to the land of the Spanish Californios.

Working their Way north to the Snake River, Billy Sublette would lead his brigade over to the Blackfoot River, turning east through Jackson’s Hole and marching north to eventually reach the land that would soon be known as Colter’s Hell. Two full decades before them, the wily trader Manuel Lisa dispatched Lewis-and-Clark veteran John Colter off from the mouth of the Bighorn to tell the Crow bands they were invited to Lisa’s post to trade. Traveling on foot and alone into the teeth of a Rocky Mountain winter, Colter was the first white man to visit this strange land of sulfurous smokes, boiling cauldrons of mud, and spewing geysers that would one day bear his name.

This trip out Jim Bridger would serve as one of Sublette’s lieutenants. And the stories the young trapper would soon tell of that mystical land of spewing waters and many smokes would for a generation be considered some of the biggest whoppers ever concocted by a frontiersman.

Meanwhile, the streams of the northern Rockies beckoned to Fitzpatrick once more. Despite the chances being good that he and his men might just rub up against more Blackfoot, north they headed nonetheless—hoping to trade with the Flathead for horses and skins until the beaver began to put on more fur come late autumn.

At the same time, Etienne Provost led his loose band of trappers west of north into the beaver-rich interior basin of the Snake River, where the odds were they would run across the Hudson’s Bay men under Peter Skene Ogden.

“Good huntin’!” came the cry from those off in one direction.

“Yup!” called those bound away in another. “Y’ best watch your topknot!”

And soon only the Shoshone village and a scattering of free trappers had Willow Valley to themselves. No more than a half-dozen small knots of hardy men tarried behind the company brigades—those of an independent streak who stubbornly refused the offers of one outfit or another to join up and ride along for the season.

“Maybeso it’s better to travel in small strings,” Scratch explained the common wisdom expressed by those of such persuasion. “A big outfit just hap to attract too much attention.”

“Possibly so,” Daniel Potts protested that last morning before Sublette’s brigade pulled out, “but if’n I’m to face them gut-eating Blackfoots again, I’d ruther have me a hull passel of fellers along for the fight.”

“But we don’t aim to stick our noses in Blackfoot country,” Bass replied.

Potts had pursed his lips as if he could see his words were winning no convert. “So be it, Titus Bass. Stay warm this winter … till next we ronnyvoo at the south end of Sweet Lake.”

“Till ronnyvoo,” Scratch repeated the word as if it had already become some spiritual incantation, shaking Daniel’s hand as they pounded one another on the shoulder.

The mulatto had offered his hand next, “Could well be we could winter here again. So remember our offer stands—you come join us if you grow tired of the company you’re keeping.”

Bass watched Beckwith glance over to the trees where Cooper and the other two reclined against their saddles, watching the great departure of the brigades hour by hour, without much excitement of their own or interest at all.

“I got me a place I belong,” Titus repeated.

His eyes filling with concern, Daniel said, “They ain’t your only friends, Scratch. Anytime, you just come looking to find us—”

“It’s a wonderful thing for a man to have him such good friends as you,” Bass interrupted, his eyes smiling.

Understanding at last that there no longer was any sense in trying to talk Bass into joining them, Potts pursed his lips and went to the saddle in a hurry, galloping off with Beckwith to catch up with the last brigade on its way out of the valley. In less than an hour the midsummer air grew quiet but for the occasional call of birds and the incessant drone of flies or the whine of bees. No longer could Titus see the telltale smudge of dust there along the horizon. The company men were gone for another year.

All sights ana sounds of that merry gathering were nothing but memories now.

What grass the stock hadn’t eaten had been trampled into pathways by hooves and moccasins. Dry and flaky piles of horse droppings dotted the close-cropped pasturage of the valley floor for as far as the eye could see. The rib-bare skeletons of willow wickiups and leafy bowers built streamside now stood naked in the strong sunlight of high summer. No more were blankets and buffalo robes unfurled in the shady places where men once lounged to swap stories or merely sleep off the terrible effects of Ashley’s potent liquor throughout those long, hot days of summer. Refuse and litter from repairs made to saddles, bridles, and pack harness lay discarded and scattered among what kegs and empty burlap sacking had been carried here from faraway St. Louis.

Clouds of bottle-green deerflies and black-winged horseflies buzzed in annoying clouds over every latrine hole, flitted over every campsite, and blackened every stinking gut-pile. Ants and hard-shelled beetles crawled and scritched through the trampled grass to lay claim to what refuse the robber jays weren’t already picking over—wings flapping and beaks squawking when another bird landed to threaten their bloody morsel. Rings of darkened stones surrounded the countless black circles once fire pits. Butchered, bone-bare carcasses of elk and deer hung numberless like gory sacrifices from the branches of trees where the many had feasted upon the few: men cutting away a ham, or loin, or a fat steak to sizzle over the flames—each fire a gathering place where all came in turn to eat, to drink, or merely to commune with one’s own kind.

In the span of less than two momentous years, a breed was born out here among these rich valleys sheltered and shadowed by the high and snowy places. A novice who was at first content to follow others up the Missouri River to the beaver country, William H. Ashley had ended up fathering a whole new strain of frontiersmen. Unlike their predecessors, those “longhunters” who had roamed the hardwoods forests back east of the Mississippi, these fledgling grandsons were only beginning to tramp across an unfathomable territory much more hostile in both geography and native inhabitants than anything ever before encountered by their eastern forebears.

Unlike their grandfathers had ever done back east, men of this new breed would live their simple existence permanently in the mountains—but without a permanent base. Such rootlessness, such unending wandering, suited this new breed just fine.

This was the dawn of a glorious era.

The mountain man had been born.

Two days after the last brigade pulled out, the morning breeze brought Titus the noise of snorting ponies being rounded up from the far meadows, driven in by pony-boys … the squawking orders of the women tearing buffalo-hide covers from lodgepoles, lashing travois together, and bundling every possession for the coming journey. In what seemed like a matter of minutes, the village was no more and the cavalcade was on its way north.

“Shoulda tasted y’ one, Scratch.”

Titus, watching the Shoshone depart, turned as Cooper and Hooks came up to stand by him. Billy had that indolent, contented look Scratch had come to recognize their winter with the Ute—the look he got when his belly was full, there was no work to be done, and his pecker was well satisfied.

Titus looked at Silas. “Tasted what?”

Cooper licked his lips. “Them Snake gals. Prime poontang—ain’t they, Billy?”

As soon as Silas jabbed him in the ribs, Hooks giggled. His bloodshot-red eyes widened momentarily in remembrance. “Prime. Yessirreebob! Prime poon!”

“Hell, even Bud went off to the Snake camp and dipped his quill in some gal’s inkpot. Didn’t y’, Tut?”

“Ever’ man’s got him a right, Silas,” Tuttle replied smugly. “Ain’t none of us had no women since winterin’ with them Utes.”

“’Cept Titus Bass here his own self.” Silas slung an arm around Bass’s shoulders. “How come you didn’t drop y’ one of them bang-tail Snakes, Scratch? Still fancy that Ute widder?”

For a moment he studied the marble-eyed Cooper. Then Bass slowly unleashed himself from the long, muscular arm. “When you fixing on us to pull up pins and set off?”

A brief look of consternation crossed the tall man’s face. “Say, boys—sounds to me like Scratch here got him a hard-on for one special gal.”

“Yup, it do,” Hooks agreed. “Yessirreebob—a hard-on for one special Ute gal, Silas. Must be real sweet on her.”

Titus glared up at Cooper. “We going today?”

“Why so all-fired ready to trot, pilgrim?”

“There’s miles to put behind us and beaver to trap when we get there.”

It took a moment, but Silas finally grinned a rotten-toothed smile. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “Maybeso that’s why this here greenhorn nigger gonna make a better trapper’n either of you boys.”

“I ain’t no greenhorn no more, Silas.”

Cooper looked him down, then up again. Then the man’s dark eyes slowly went to the horizon where the Shoshone were disappearing beneath a distant cloud of dust. “No—I s’pose y’ ain’t no more at that, Titus Bass.” When his red-rimmed eyes came back to Scratch, they were filled with a begrudging admiration. “Y’ve made a right respectable trapper outta yourself.”

It was closer to praise than anything he’d ever gotten from his pap. Titus swallowed hard, wanting his words to come out even. “Good as you, Silas?”

“Almost,” Cooper conceded. “But y’ ain’t good as me yet. Till that day y’ are, best y’ hang in with us.”

He finally let himself breathe as Silas stepped away, back toward the shade of the tall cottonwoods where the leaves rattled and the flies buzzed. The way it felt, that was about as good a fragment of praise as he was ever going to get, Bass figured.

“You figger we can pull out come morning, Silas?”

Cooper did not speak again until he settled on his blankets and robes, cocking an elbow beneath his head as he sank back onto his saddle. “I s’pose since there ain’t no more of that goddamned Ashley’s likker … and them Snakes has took off with all the spread-leg wenches in this here country … we might just as well see how the country looks up to the Bighorn.”

Scratch’s heart skipped a beat. “Maybeso we go all the way to … the Yallerstone?”

Silas grinned. “Why—don’t tell me y’ heard about the Yallerstone all the way back to St. Lou?”

“I did. Word was it was good beaver country!”

For the moment Cooper appeared interested. “A place where a man might winter up?”

Bass hurried into the patch of shade, kneeling near the other three. “If a man’s to winter up, Silas—might’s well be in country where the spring trapping is its best.”

“Awright, Scratch,” the strap-jawed Cooper eventually replied. “Let’s us just go see for our own selves that there Bighorn country y’ heard so much spoke of.”

Hannah snorted downstream.

High and wheezing.

A sound he’d never before heard come from the mule.

In his chest his breath froze like a chunk of January river ice. Scratch nearly choked trying to swallow down the thumping of his heart.

Then the mule bawled.

Like he was shot out of a cheap Indian-trade fusil, Bass flung the trap onto the bank and lunged out of the stream … but slipped back into the icy water. Angrily flinging himself against the bank again, he dragged his weight onto the frost-slickened grass by jabbing the sharpened float-pole into the ground, then throwing a leg up and onto the slippery ground, and finally seizing hold of the branches of fiery-red willow recently kissed by autumn’s cold breath.

Grunting and grumbling in his exertions, Bass made enough noise to scare half the beaver for miles around right on out of the country.

Filling one hand with the fullstock Derringer rifle leaning against that red-leafed willow, Titus bent low without missing a step, his left hand sweeping up the camp ax from the ground where it rested among the heap of long float-sticks and the rest of his square-jawed traps.

Now he heard a grunting roar. Weren’t the mule. But: Hannah answered in kind—braying for all she was worth.

Shards of pinkish light exploded before him as he slashed his way through the tall brush that climbed more than two feet over his head—his frantic race causing hoarfrost and icy particles to cascade into the new day’s rosy light.

Another grunt, followed by a throaty and repeated snort as that new sound faded. Then Hannah kee-rawed with as close to a plaintive call for help as he’d ever heard a mule make. Not in all those years wrestling mules into harness, those hours spent behind both a plow and some mighty powerful rear haunches, his youth wasted struggling against stubborn, pigheaded animals … could he remember hearing a mule make a desperate plea quite like that.

His moccasins slipped and slid as he dived this way and that. Spilling in his haste, Bass crashed to the hard, frozen ground on one knee and that hand clutching the rifle. Swearing under his breath, only a puff of frost broke his lips as he sprang up and lunged forward again—with his heart high in his throat as he cleared the last of the thick willow … and onto the strip of open ground at the border of the shadowy timber not yet touched by that single finger of sunlight creeping down the side of the frosty bowl.

Sliding to a stop, he brought the rifle down across the left wrist that held the ax. Quickly dragging his thumb back across the frizzen and hammer to assure that it was at full-cock, Bass jerked to the left.

Hannah stood upstream, pulling hard against the long lead rope he had tied around her ears and muzzle like a halter. Yanking with all she had in her, Hannah’s eyes were about as wide as his mam’s fancy-dinner saucers, her powerful rear haunches bent and that rump of hers nearly swaying on the ground as her hooves dug up deep furrows in a frantic bid to free herself from danger. Again and again she flailed her head side to side, lashing herself to escape the hold of the rope, where he had left her knotted to a tree with enough line that she could leisurely crop the dead, frozen grasses there at the border of the timber.

But in the next instant he wheeled right at the sound. He saw nothing from that direction, where he was positive he’d heard the rasp of a foreign noise. The hair prickling at the back of his neck, he suddenly picked up the scent of something on the wind. Like an animal, like old Tink herself—that family dog back in Kentucky—he measured the caliber of the upwind, attempting to sort out what that musky, heavy odor was that now prickled the hair on his arms beneath the buckskin war shirt and the heavy blanket capote.

He discovered he was sweating, even as cold as it was. While he stood there in the chill half light of early morn, sniffing into the wind, Scratch sensed a huge drop of sweat gather at the nape of his neck where his long hair clung, a pendulous drop that slowly sank down the course of his backbone to land against the dark-blue wool of his breechclout, pooling there at the base of his spine. Where it froze him like January ice water.

The wind shifted. And the stench of it came to Bass, smacking him in the face. He’d never smelled anything like this before. Danger—pure and simple. Something feral, wild, beastly.

Hannah cried out, head twisting, her eyes rolling to find him. She shifted her stance, plowing up more of the loose turf made fragrant and heady by the bed of decomposing pine needles under her hooves. The instant he started her way, Bass saw a flicker of some movement in the trees beyond her. There just beyond the edge of the timber … it moved again. Like a chunk of black light torn off the corduroy of shadow that was the forest itself at this early hour as day splintered night into giving way to a reluctant dawn.

With his next step, and the shadow’s answering grunt—he knew.

Not that Bass had ever seen one himself since coming to the mountains. Lucky, he’d always figured. But he knew nonetheless. Something instinctive, perhaps. After all, he’d seen enough black and brown bears back east in those Kentucky woods.

“D-damn,” he muttered under his breath as the beast rose from its exertions.

How Bass had ever missed the elk carcass when he’d led Hannah there earlier in the dim light of false dawn, he had no idea.

But there stood that huge, hunch-backed behemoth, busy uncovering its carrion. Tearing away at the dirt, rotting pine needles, branches, and saplings it had scraped over the huge partially eaten carcass the day before. Likely an elk, Titus figured—for the size of what was left of it.

Standing rooted to the spot, Titus found himself marveling at the sheer size of that animal intent over its next meal.

Hell, out here he was no longer surprised to find everything bigger than he had ever let his imagination run. Even though Isaac Washburn had told him over and over again the tale of how the sow grizzly cuffed and mauled and chewed on old Hugh Glass up by the Grand River— never had Scratch expected the animal to turn out to be so huge, come this close, near face-to-face.

With its returning to its recent kill just moments ago—was the beast’s own feral stench carried on the wind to Hannah’s sensitive nose? Had she winded the deadly silver-haired creature, attempted to flee, and cried out in terror when she found herself prisoner? Is that why the monster had grunted? Was it threatened by the mule?

Up the slope far to the right came a new snort. Followed by a series of grunts slowly fading in volume.

Hannah bawled anew, high and plaintive.

Dropping to one knee, Bass reluctantly took his eye off the shadow-ribboned silvertip just long enough to squint into the patchwork of light and dark farther up the nearby hillside.

This close to it, he felt the ground tremble. Bass jerked back to the left, finding the grizzly jumping up and down-on all fours beside its carrion, massive muzzle pulled back to expose the rows of huge teeth, giant fore-paws tearing at the ground, wagging its massive head from side to side. It too sniffed the air, then roared again with that sound completely new and foreign to Bass. A challenge. A lure. A call to battle.

Wau-au-au-au-gh-gh-gh!

From the hillside came its answer.

Wau-au-au-au … gh-gh-gh!

To Bass’s left the grizzly stood on its hind legs.

As it rose to full height, Scratch felt himself shrink inside. Although it was giving its full attention to the nearby hillside, nonetheless Titus felt dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the beast as it balanced on its two hindquarters, clawing at the air as if shadowboxing. Long, curved claws tore shreds of reflected sunlight: glistening, honed razors slashing at the end of each heaving swipe, rending what wisps of cold mist remained among the black timber.

They were snorting at one another nonstop now. One roar answered almost immediately by the other, and both drowning out the feeble bray of the frightened mule. The grizzly he could see whirled about on its haunches and dropped to all fours, quickly circling the elk carcass, savagely flinging dirt and pine needles back onto its kill in some feeble attempt to hide it from the approaching challenger.

Considering what to do in that instant as the forest’s terror was now suddenly doubled, Bass wondered if he should dash over and release Hannah. What with the way she rolled her eyes at the grizzly, then danced back in that confining arc to roll her eyes at him—bawling with that high-pitched squeal of hers. But if he did, his instincts told him … he’d be left on foot.

Hannah would wheel and run, yanking the rope from his cold, bare hands, likely bowling him over in her eagerness to flee as far away from there as she could. Maybe not stopping until she made it back to camp upstream, perhaps even into the next valley, where they had trapped out just about everything with a flat-tail on it before moving here yesterday.

How he’d come to rely on her, trust her, cantankerous and contrary as a mule could be, yet coming to respect her as he never had respected such a stubborn animal while a youngster made to work with mules, together tearing long furrows in the dark, loamy soil of Boone County. But there was something entirely different about this animal.

Through the past winter and into his productive spring hunt, then as the seasons turned to summer’s rendezvous and finally their moseying into the Wind River range, trapping and tramping, easing north all the more … Bass had come to care for the young mule, more than he had ever cared for an animal. A time or two he had even allowed himself to believe the mule cared for him too.

So it had surprised him—as suspicious as he was about mules from those long-ago days on his pap’s land in Rabbit Hash—when Hannah would slip up behind him without a sound, with no warning, as he was going about some camp chore, suddenly swinging her thick muzzle into that hollow between his bony shoulder blades. Knocking him down, sprawling into the dirt that first time. Heels over head a second time. Sent skidding on his rump a third time—just starting to twist about with the faintest sound of her approach.

Always careful to pick her time and place, Hannah grew more crafty as the months rolled by. It became her own private way to play him the fool—this stunt she loved to pull on him. The mule never seemed to tire of it. Nor did she seem to take much heed of the way he scolded her, shook his finger at her as he clambered off the ground and brushed himself off, his cheeks crimson with embarrassment at the way the other three trappers gushed with laughter, snorting at how boneheaded he was to allow the mule her folly with him when he should either whack her upside of the head, or shoot her.

Each time she succeeded in sneaking up on him—he figured it was nothing more than a knot not being tight enough … but this time she was held fast. In that instant he decided he wouldn’t free her.

Not just yet, he wouldn’t—not when she’d likely bolt off and leave him stranded. Scratch wasn’t about to try outrunning a grizzly. Not from all that he’d heard tell of the beast. Not from what common sense told him was purely a fool’s errand. No mere, mortal man could dare outrace a behemoth like that on all fours. It made no matter that it would be an obstacle course, darting in and out among the trees, lunging over deadfall, ducking branches, and avoiding those slick, icy patches of winter’s first snow still tucked way back in among the dark, sunless places. No matter that he would be on two feet and this monster on four.

Something feral, wild, and untamed within him told Titus that the surest way for a man in his predicament to throw his life away was to try fleeing. From where that spark of wildness came, he knew not. Only that it rested at the deepest marrow of him—and enough had transpired in his nearly thirty-three years that proved to him he should listen to the flicker of its voice.

Was it something in his lineage, in the breeding, in that Scottish ancestry that harkened back to all those generations among the lowlands, clan ancestors stealing down from the misty hills and out across the foggy moors to relieve the arrogant lords and the British army of so many of their horses? Was it all those centuries of Basses pilloried and tortured by fire, all those Basses hung at the end of short ropes, Basses torn apart by four stout draft horses each whipped in four different directions, all at the hands of the king’s servants … or was it something given birth on this continent in recent generations? Some feral otherworldly sense born in the blood of his grandpap, who as a young man had fought in the wilderness against the French and their Indians, then so soon thereafter chose to make his family’s stand on the Ohio River frontier against the English and their Indians, as the colonials tore themselves apart from the Tories and Loyalists and George III himself?

If that wildness was truly something passed down in the blood—then how did one explain Thaddeus? If this uncanny savvy was sunk so to the core of Titus, then why was his own pap content to carve settlement out of wilderness, to domesticate and till and build where only the untamed beasts and half-naked savages had roamed?

Was that why he was here among these great mountains and high valleys, after all? Titus had asked himself many a time.

Had he ventured far, far past the last outpost of settlement, leaping past the final vestiges of civilization, just so he could find himself as far from everything that was his father … if only to prove that the blood that had driven his grandpap to hack out a path through the wilderness to seek out a new home was still the blood that ran hot and thick in Titus’s own veins? Was he more the grandson? Or had he come here to these far places to prove to himself, if to no one else, that he was not Thaddeus Bass’s eldest son?

Wau-au-au-ghghghgh!

With the soul-shattering roar from the nearby grizzly, Bass jerked about. The stench from both creatures was unbelievably raw, primal, deadly.

Waugh-ngg-ngg-ngg-ngg!

In that moment the second grizzly burst into view on the slope above him. Every bit as big as the first, it might well weigh even more.

Now it bounced up and down on its four paws, then lumbered clumsily onto its hindquarters. With its fore-claws slashing at the air, it reared its head back, the slobbery muzzle pulled away to bare its yellowed teeth, shaking the massive skull that seemed to rest momentarily on the huge hump between its shoulders.

Crashing back onto alt four legs, the second monster continued its march out of the shadows toward the first grizzly, who was pacing about his carrion territorially, putting himself between the carcass and the intruder. He clawed the ground savagely, tearing up huge clumps of the moist, partially frozen forest floor with his six-inch claws, black clods of earth spraying here, sailing there. Now and again for but a moment he would stop to growl at the interloper before returning to his bristling, defensive behavior.

At the same time the newcomer would halt after every few steps, roaring his challenge, bouncing a bit on all fours and wagging his head as he exposed his rows of teeth, jaws slobbering in anticipation of his meal. Then he continued down the gentle slope through the timber toward his opponent.

And that carcass that had lured him here from miles away.

More closely related to the hog family than anything else, the bear used its keenest sense to locate food and avoid danger. From far downstream, miles away at the mouth of another valley, the interloper had whiffed his first, faint hint of that rotting meat. And as he had turned into the wind to investigate that telltale dawn breeze, the seductive stench grew stronger and stronger. On and on he had come—until he also began to pick up the smell of one of his own kind.

Yet what truly confused him for a moment was the odor of two other creatures he could not identify … not with his dim eyesight as he studied the two-legged and then the frightened four-legged only briefly from this distance. But that smell of blood and sundered flesh quickly recaptured his attention each time his thoughts wandered to the other creatures. That, and the challenge raised by one of his own kind standing guard over the feast that had brought him from so, so far.

Already with the first snowfall come to these high slopes and deep valleys, the ancient clocks were ticking within these creatures as autumn aged, as winter crept farther down from the high places, a great cold racing all the faster out of the north. Something ageless and without rationale had instructed both of these boars to spend the long days of their short summer months feasting on the rich, nutritious plants of this high country. But as the temperatures began to drop, especially after that first heavy snowfall that had taken days to melt off from the exposed slopes, some new biological imperative had taken over within the beasts. As the grizzly neared its time for hibernation, it no longer was satisfied with leaves and stems and roots. Now as the weather turned cold—the grizzly needed meat.

A terrible season for these boars as they hunted the meat they craved, while at the same time the calendar within them also aroused the ancient itch to mate, to rut, to satisfy that which can be quenched only by coupling with a sow. So it was that in these last days before the deep sleep of winter, the boars roamed their valleys in search of meat and females, their temperament constantly on edge, easily irritable—more than ready for battle or the long sleep that would relieve them of their hungers and their itches.

So first the interloper had to find out if the protector was a sow.

When he reached a spot some twenty-five feet from the carcass, he raised his nose into the air again, sniffing everything he could while the protector rumbled his defiance.

No—the interloper decided: there wasn’t a hint of a female here. No rich, heady aroma that heretofore told him a sow was indeed in heat and ready to accept what he needed to scratch. With a disgusted snort of disappointment he lowered his head, chin almost to the ground as he lumbered side to side, wagging that head he had drawn defensively back into the huge hump to make himself appear all the bigger.

There would be no rutting this day. But there just might be a free meal … if he could drive off this other boar with a few measured cuffs of his massive paws, given deadly execution by his powerful shoulders.

As soon as the interloper turned its full attention back to the protector, Scratch began his sidelong creep, slowly inching his way toward Hannah. She continued her keer-rawwing without stop, even though she kept flicking her eyes from those silver-tipped monsters to her owner, back and forth, over and over. Little chance she was relieved to see her master coming her way. He was all too slow.

While the protector backed up a few feet, he was in reality rocking back on all fours, as if cocking himself, preparing to launch his bulk right into his enemy. He crouched there, snarling, huge jaws frothing in anticipation, his body shuddering with uncontrollable passions. The same juices that prepared him to fight also readied him for coupling with a sow. And for now—the hot fire of those juices shooting through his veins and heaving muscles brought nothing but frightening confusion.

A few yards off the interloper lunged back, rising onto its hind legs, a forepaw ripping bark from a nearby pine tree. Shards of blackened bark exploded off the trunk in all directions, exposing the deep yellow wounds that would soon ooze with pitch.

Shuddering at the vicious explosion, Bass sank back on his haunches near the line of willows. Glanced at Hannah. Then swallowed hard as he turned his attention back to the two monsters. By damn, if a griz could do that sort of damage to the tough, hardened bark of an old pine tree, just think of what the beast could do against mere flesh and sinew.

Then the protector rose on his hind legs, head brought forward as far as he could out of the hump, jaws open wide, but only momentarily, until he began snapping them, clawing at the air, growling loud enough that the sound of both boars rocked back from the valley walls in a never-ending cascade of reverberation.

With a blur of silver-tipped shadow, the two bears lunged, closed, arms swinging, clawing, clutching their enemy at last. Snapping their muzzles ferociously, both tried repeatedly to sink fangs into the other—groping for an ear, biting the muzzle, sinking teeth into the tip of the nose or that thick slab of protective ridge of brow bone over an eye socket.

Then down they tumbled in a heap. Something akin to a frightened yelp burst from one of them as they flew apart, shaking their tough, thick hides … then wheeled quickly to relocate the adversary—charging on all fours.

When they collided again, the ground beneath Bass shook even more than it had before. As the grizzlies locked themselves together, their bodies rippled and shook with the strain of muscles tested to the maximum. Over and over one another they tumbled, smashing against the trunks of great trees and careening over saplings that snapped like kindling wood, four hind legs flailing, akimbo as each fought for balance, to seize the upper hand.

Then the protector found a soft, vulnerable target in the other boar’s snout—and clamped down with his mighty jaws.

Squealing just like a scalded hog, the interloper struggled this way, then that, to free himself. But in the end he flung the protector off only by pitching his opponent over his shoulder against an old pine that shuddered with the tremendous force of the blow as the protector spilled to the ground, having released his grip on the enemy. Shaking his head in a daze, the protector sat there a moment.

Sat there too long.

The bloodied interloper was upon him that quickly, sinking his teeth into the back of the protector’s neck, one front paw yanking the opponent’s jaws back as he raked and raked with the long claws, biting again and again, filling his huge mouth with the neck tissue there at the rise of the great hump.

Twisting to his left, then twisting to his right, the protector tried vainly to snap at the enemy who had its teeth sunk into his neck, long claws slashing at his vulnerable throat, hindquarters raking along his back. Blood glistened the protector’s coat from muzzle to rump as the boar rolled over, slamming its enemy against the tree. Still the interloper would not release his grip.

Groaning, growling, whining in pain and dismay, the huge protector nailed away at nothing more than thin air, unable to land a paw on his adversary stuck like a spring tick on his back. Meanwhile the interloper snorted each time he sank a more secure hold on the tough, thick hair and hide of the protector’s neck—a grunt of impending victory. He drew his head back slightly, eyes wild, taking measure of where next to plant his powerful jaws.

Suddenly the roar of the protector became a high-pitched squeal the instant he burst free of the enemy’s grasp. Free at last, he tumbled rump over head before he came up, dazed, surprised to find he had escaped. Now some ten yards or more away, he shook his whole body, licked quickly at one of the glistening wounds, then set himself for the interloper’s attack.

But instead of pursuing his adversary, the interloper settled to his rear haunches, his big tongue lolling out of those slabbering jaws to slap across the bloody slashes on his own muzzle, trying to ease the torment in that most sensitive part of his anatomy. He snorted and swiped at his muzzle with a paw slicked with drying blood and his enemy’s hair. Then he noticed the new scent. Turned to look. And finally discovered what it was that had lured him there from so far away.

Lumbering up the slope to the ruins of the elk carcass, the interloper sniffed it over from broken neck to the rear quarters, where the hide had been torn back and huge gashes made in the thick muscle. Then his nose nuzzled down toward the belly. With a ravenous roar he brought his muzzle out bright with gore and blood dripping, having discovered the soft innards.

At that provocation the protector leaped forward a few yards menacingly, snarling. But he was stopped in his tracks just as quickly as he had started for the interloper, which immediately raised himself halfway and growled that frightening roar of battle. It was enough to give the protector pause.

He settled back on his haunches as the interloper went back to his feast … then, while his adversary ate on the food just taken from him, the protector suddenly poked his nose into the air—as if catching the hint of something on the wind. A moment more and that battered snout sank slowly, his huge blood-flecked eyes narrowing as would any predator who has caught scent of his prey.

Titus watched the nostrils flare as more slobber drooled from the lower lips.

The bear raised itself to all fours and took a step from the trees when it was immediately stopped by a warning snarl from the interloper busy at its bloody feast. Instead of protesting, the defeated boar turned slightly and lumbered off at an angle away from the victor so that he would clearly present no threat to the carcass.

He had something else in mind altogether.

As the badly wounded grizzly cleared the shadows into the first spray of sunlight crowning the forest that dawn, Titus shuddered again. To watch the muscles ripple as it advanced, the way the long hairs of its coat alternately caught and hid the light with each stretch and contraction of its hide, and how the blood glistened at its torn neck, back in the dark furrows on the haunches, or gathered in frozen coagulate across the hump … his fingers tightened on the wrist of the rifle.

No. Bass refused to believe it.

But there was the monster, plotting a due course for Hannah.

Then the grizzly stopped, sniffed—and rose to its hind legs, measuring the breeze again. Slowly turning aside from the mule and its loud braying, as if it suddenly couldn’t hear the pack animal, or at least did not care. Eventually the snout came round to point in Scratch’s direction.

Titus froze where he was, squatting in the brush at the edge of the tall red-leafed willow. He was sure the beast could clearly hear his heart hammering in his chest.

After two lumbering steps forward the ungainly grizzly dropped to all fours, snorted, and turned back to its original course—the mule. For a moment he was relieved and let the air rush out of his chest in a great gust … until he realized the creature still wanted Hannah.

“No!”

Bass hollered before he thought, before he could catch himself. And found he was on his feet, standing, bringing the rifle to his hip, laid over that left forearm still clutching the camp ax.

As if the beast ignored him entirely, the grizzly picked up its pace. Its huge frame rocked from side to side as it rolled on down the gentle slope toward the mule. Hannah thrashed and kicked—at times she turned her rump in its direction, preparing to deliver a sharp hoof against her attacker, then other times she tried to pull away at the end of the long rope, bawling, tail whipping in the breeze.

Before he realized what he was doing, Bass found himself sprinting on a collision course for the two of them, wondering if he was going to make it in time before the angry, bloodied grizzly lunged for the helpless mule.

“You son of a bitch!” he screamed.

For some strange reason the bear skidded to a halt at that, quartered to its left as it stretched up to its hind legs, there to stand and stare at him. Then, as quickly, it lunged forward onto its front paws again … as if suddenly discovering Bass. Wiggling its head around—the better to see with its poor vision and to smell with that powerful nose—the grizzly no longer peered at him with eyes filled by wild aggression. Instead they appeared confused, as the massive creature poked its long snout in the air and attempted to take its own measure of this strange, noisy, two-legged creature.

But at that moment Hannah chose to let out another frightened, braying yelp.

The monster turned back to her as suddenly—drawn by the plaintive bawl of the four-legged animal. Perhaps that cry was more of something the boar understood far better than the spoken language of the two-legged mystery.

As if dismissing the man, the grizzly lumbered to its four paws and continued toward Hannah, its jaws snapping greedily as the mule’s bray was choked off in a frightened peal.

Skidding to a stop less than twenty-some yards from the bear, Scratch slammed the rifle into his shoulder, peered down the barrel, and slipped the narrow front-blade sight over the slowly moving animal until he had the grizzly’s chest at the center of his sight-picture and set the trigger. As the bear rocked back on its haunches, throwing one paw into the air to take a warning swipe at the mule frantically kicking at its attacker, Scratch eased back on the front trigger.

With a roar the rifle shoved itself back into his shoulder. Through the cold smudge of gun smoke he watched the boar swat at his chest with the same paw he had used to claw the air, then sniffed at his wound beginning to ooze a little blood. The grizzly licked it, snorted, then turned back to Hannah, now angrier than before.

How he wished he had time to reload the more powerful rifle as he yanked the pistol from the sash tied around his capote. His hands were shaking as he checked the powder in the pan, dragged the frizzen back down, and cocked the hammer. He knew he would have to get all the closer now to his target. Even though the pistol threw the same-size ball as his rifle, there wasn’t nearly the punch, nor the powder charge.

He closed to within ten yards before the bear had reached the sidestepping mule.

“You touch her—you’re goin’ to hell right here!”

With a loud roar the boar stood again, swiping at the air, presenting Scratch the best shot of all. Holding right on the center of the beast’s chest, Bass pulled the trigger. He felt the weapon jerk in his hand. But through the haze of smoke saw the grizzly merely settle to its rump as it rubbed its paw on its chest. Another flesh wound.

Making it even angrier than before.

Flinging the pistol aside, Bass swung the ax from left hand to right as the bear shot to its hind legs, then slowly settled a second time. It snorted at the noisy mule, then slowly began to close the distance between it and the annoying two-legged.

Clutching the ax in both hands, Scratch brought it over his head, preparing for the attack.

Run, his instincts told him.

Again, everything he had ever heard tell about the grizzly reminded him he wouldn’t have a chance running. Not in an out-and-out footrace. The only prayer he had would be to leap to the side at the last instant, jump behind and to the side, and then maybe—just maybe—he could drive the ax down into the creature’s skull, splitting it open like an overripe fruit.

Unconscious of anything but the beast, Scratch barely heard the snort of a horse and the warning whinny of another above Hannah’s frightened bawl as the boar drew nigh—close enough for him to smell the dank, musky stench of the animal, to sense the fetid breath stinking of the rotted carrion it had been feasting upon. Hot and repulsive: every bit as much so as was the stench of death.

Lifting the ax higher in both hands, Scratch watched the bear rise slightly as it closed to within five feet … four feet … then its mighty arms came out like the jaws of a huge steel trap as the beast roared, loud enough to block out all sound—breath filled with such a stink, Bass wanted to close his eyes …

But he kept them open, trained on his enemy—and just as the grizzly lunged with those swinging arms and slashing razors, Scratch pitched to the left, diving right under the beast’s huge front leg. Before he consciously thought what to do, before the monster even began to turn, Titus savagely hurled the ax down on the back of the bear’s head, sinking it deep into the thick, tough neck muscle, feeling the bone crack and splinter at the base of the creature’s skull all the way into his forearms.

As he yanked back on the ax handle, he was sure he would never budge it. Though he tried again—the ax head did not move, buried in splintered bone and sinew and muscle. Slick as the handle was with hot, sticky blood, Bass could hold on no longer as the beast shuddered, flinging the man aside.

With a cry of great pain the grizzly whirled on its two-legged tormentor just as Scratch pulled his last weapon from its scabbard on his belt. The skinning knife wasn’t much—but it was all he was left with … and there and then he vowed he wasn’t about to go down without using it all on the monster.

With a vicious swipe the grizzly split the air an inch from Titus’s face. Bass jerked backward so quickly, he nearly lost his balance. Lunging, the boar was on him, arms locked around Scratch’s shoulders, the first paw drawn up and back, preparing to rake as the huge jaws opened and sought to close down on the coyote-skin cap the man wore.

Then, as quickly as he thought death had him in its clutches … the monster freed him, flinging the two-legged tormentor away like so much river flotsam.

Bass landed on his back, stunned a moment, the breath knocked out of him—then watched in astonishment as the grizzly slowly turned its butchered head this way, then that, as the two men came up on either side of it.

From that deadly close range they both fired their pistols now, taking steely, deliberate aim. And as the muzzle smoke billowed up, he watched Tuttle and Hooks dance side to side out of the way of the bear’s weakening attempts to lunge out with its immense arms … when an immense shadow suddenly crossed behind Bass, all but stepping over him—coming between the fallen man and the wounded grizzly.

Stopping no more than arm’s length from the beast, Cooper brazenly stuffed the muzzle of his rifle right into the bear’s wide, snarling mouth … shoved it right on to the back of the creature’s throat and pulled the trigger with a jerk.

The back of the bear’s head exploded, thrust backward as Cooper leaped out of the way. Both Tuttle and Hooks stepped aside as the immense beast stumbled on backward a few lumbering steps, then came crashing down on its back.

For several long moments—none of them moved. No one made a sound. Then …

Still holding the empty rifle pointed at the grizzly, Silas asked quietly, “It dead, Billy?”

Hooks moved cautiously forward. “T’ain’t breathin’, Silas.”

“For balls’ sake,” Tuttle whispered, “he’s a big’un!”

“Y’ two stay back,” Cooper warned. He pulled his own belt pistol, a huge smoothbore with an immense flintlock on it, and swapped his rifle to his left hand.

Only when he stood over the bear, straddling one of the beast’s forelegs, did he Anally look at Titus. “Y’ ain’t never run onto griz afore, have y’, pilgrim?”

Scratch dragged a hand across his lips. “N-n-no, I ain’t.”

“That ax in the back of the head’s a bright idee, it is,” Cooper explained. “But shootin’ for the heart like y’ done be just a waste of time. Ol’ Ephraim here can eat you and ever’ last one of us in the time it takes for two dozen balls to get through his tough ol’ hide, Scratch.”

Gulping, Bass could only nod.

Cooper rose to full height, placed one moccasin on the bear’s chest, there on the blood-slickened hide. “I s’pose I’m cursed with havin’ to teach y’ ever’ lesson, ain’t I, Titus Bass?”

“Leastways,” Bass replied in a harsh whisper, “you l’arn’t me ’bout bears.”

“Why—lookee here,” Cooper said, smiling as he swept a hand the length of the grizzly carcass, “I’ve done gone an’ saved your worthless life again.”