Was there any sense in trying to talk to McAfferty about it come a month from now? Perhaps when he had more strength to argue with the white-head. Maybeso days and weeks from now, someplace on down the trail. Somewhere closer to rendezvous. Someplace away from this river valley where he had made the mistake of bumping into the sow grizzly and her cubs.
Somewhere much, much farther away from this low-hanging, evil patch of torn and sundered sky.
22
Spring was all but done anyway. And with it the good trapping too.
Time for a man to be making tracks for rendezvous.
Time for him to be sorting through just what he would do when company trappers and free men gathered in the valley of the Wind River. Soon he’d have to decide if he would throw in with Mad Jack Hatcher’s boys … or if he would set off on his own hook now. Alone against the mountains.
Maybeso this was the season to set his own direction. Just as he had six years before: leaving behind St. Louis and the east and all that he had been. Proving to himself that he could reach the high mountains on his own.
But even then Bass remembered—just as he was beginning to believe he had beaten the odds stacked against him, he was suddenly forced to stare failure in the eye … about the time the three of them had shown up. To his reckoning, events never had allowed him the chance to succeed, or let him fail all on his own. Back then Silas, Billy, and Bud had come along to save his hash.
And ever since then it seemed that every time he had chosen to steer his own course—why, his fat had tumbled right back into the fire. Damn the fates if it hadn’t.
Only God knew how Titus Bass had tried to make it alone after his first three partners had disappeared down the river, getting themselves rubbed out in the bargain.
For all his trouble trying to set his own course, he went and got himself scalped.
It took Jack Hatcher’s bunch to yank his fat from the fire that time.
Then shortly after deciding to pull off from those fellas, he and McAfferty had come a gnat’s hair from going under down in Apache country, close as he ever wanted to come again in his living life. Only bright spot in that whole dank memory had been the fact that he had saved McAfferty’s life along with his own in reaching that river in time to end their thirst, in time to prepare for the Apache.
But no sooner did they make it back to the Mexican villages than Asa had to rescue him in that knocking shop. Later to save his life a second time with that she-grizz.
Scratch wondered if his wanting to stay together with McAfferty might only come from his longing to right the scales. To square himself with the man who had not just evened things by rescuing him at the whorehouse … but had gone on to pull him back from death’s door on that sandbar beside the Mussellshell River. Maybe, just maybe, Scratch thought, he might be resisting McAfferty’s notion of splitting up only because that would make it near impossible for him ever to clear his accounts with the white-head.
If he was anything, Titus Bass realized he wasn’t the sort of man who could stand going through the rest of his days knowing that he owed someone for saving his life a second time.
It was something that nettled him as they began their journey south from the Judith, up near the Missouri itself, then continued to eat at him as they made their way on down the valley of the Mussellshell, picking their way between mountain ranges. After crossing the Yellowstone, Bass and McAfferty reined to the southeast, skirting the foot of some tall snow-covered peaks then steered a course that took them through a wide cleft in two lower ranges.
Near there they struck the Bighorn, following it south until the Bighorn became the Wind River.
At the hot springs they tarried for two nights among the remnants of countless Shoshone and Crow campsites. Here where warrior bands had visited far back into the time of any old man’s memory, the two had the chance to sit and soak in the scalding waters so comforting that they made Scratch limp as a newborn babe before he would crawl out, crabbing over to a cold trickle of glacial snow-melt that had tumbled all the way down to the valley from the Owl Creek Mountains. There he splashed cold handfuls of the frigid water against his superheated flesh, then scampered back, shivering every step, to settle once again into the steaming pools. Back and forth he dragged his slowly healing carcass, sensing the stinking, sulphur-laden water draw at those poisons that could near eat up a man’s soul. Like one of his mam’s drawing poultices she would plaster upon an ugly, gaping wound, Bass felt those hours he lay in the springs renew not only his flesh, but his spirit as well.
By late in the afternoon of that second day, Titus called for McAfferty to bring his knife along to the pools. Once more the heated water had softened the tough sinew Asa had used to sew up his ragged wounds—and now he was ready.
“Come cut your stitches out,” he asked of the white-head.
“Lemme have a good look at ’em first.” “They’re heal’t.”
McAfferty finally pulled his knife from its scabbard and plunged it beneath the scalding water after he had inspected the thick ropes of swollen welt. “You heal fast, Mr. Bass. ’This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.’”
Titus bent over and turned his bare back and hip toward his partner. “I’m ready. Cut ’em out of me.”
“My sewing wasn’t purty,” Asa muttered as he pricked the end of the first short length of animal tendon and began to tug it from the tight new skin become a rosy pink with the heat.
“But your sewing likely saved my life.”
Between the long edges of every jagged laceration, McAfferty had stitched tiny fluffs of downy-soft beaver felt as he’d crudely closed the wounds by the fire’s light. But now nothing was left of that beaver felt—all of it absorbed by Scratch’s body until all that remained were those thick purplish-red welts roping their way across his shoulder, down his back, over his hip.
Titus Bass would carry that mark of the bear for the rest of his natural life.
As tight as it was, in time that new skin would stretch and loosen, and he would move that shoulder, move that hip without so much as a protest from it. But Scratch knew he would never … could never … forget coming face-to-face with a force so powerful it could rip the sky asunder, reach through, and devour his very soul.
No more than two days later they reached the valley where the Popo Agie drained into the Wind River. Those wide and verdant meadows were dotted with several camps of Indian lodges, small herds of grazing horses, and a scattering of blanket-and-canvas shelters lying stark against the green banks of both rivers.
“Har, boys!” Scratch cried, feeling an immediate and very tangible joy rise in him like sap in autumn maples.
A handful of white men came out of the shady trees to squint up at the two newcomers. One of them asked, “Where you in from?”
Bass replied, “The Mussellshell and the Judith.”
Another stranger inquired, “You must be free men?”
“We are that,” McAfferty answered this time.
So Titus asked, “You know of Jack Hatcher?”
A third man nodded and moved forward a step as he pointed on up the valley. “Seen him and his outfit, come in already. Don’t know if they’re still here. But they was camped on past Bridger’s bunch.”
“D-don’t know if they’re still here?” Bass repeated, disappointment welling in him like a boil. “They pull out early?”
“Naw,” replied the first man. “Just that ronnyvoo’s ’bout done for this year. Ain’t no more beaver for Sublette to wrassle from us. You boys are the last to wander in from the hills.”
Bass gulped and straightened in the saddle, licking his lips. “Trader still got him any whiskey?”
“Might’n have him a little left,” the second trapper explained as two of his group turned away and headed back to the shade where swarms of flies droned. “He brought the hull durn shiterree out from St. Lou in wagons this year. Can you cotton to that?”
The first
man cackled. “Ain’t never been a wagon roll all the way out here! And if that don’t beat all—Sublette brung him two Dearborns along too!”
“Carriages?” Bass squeaked in a high voice, disbelieving. “Dearborns and wagons—here in this wilderness? Shit,” Scratch grumbled as he turned to flick a raised eyebrow at McAfferty. “What’s all this big open coming to? Next thing there’ll be white women and town halls out here!”
“So you say Sublette still got his tents open?” Asa inquired, clearly anxious. “Need me some trade goods.”
“Seemed he had some of near ever’thing left yestiddy,” the trapper answered. “You looking for supplies—lead, powder, coffee?”
With a shrug Asa explained, “Want me some goods for the Injun trade: Chinee vermilion, ribbon and calico, maybeso a passel of beads and tacks and hawk’s bells—the likes of that.”
Bass gazed at the white-head in consternation. “Now, where you figger to use all that?”
“Injun country, Mr. Bass,” he answered cryptically, then turned his head to look again at the stranger below them. “You said Sublette’s got his tents on up the valley?”
The man pointed. “Just other side of the bend in the river. That Hatcher feller’s camped not far past the trader hisself.”
“Much ’bliged,” Asa said, tapping heels against his horse.
They hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when Scratch caught up with McAfferty at a lope. “Damn if you don’t seem in the hurry. Who lit the fire under you?”
“I can’t go ’thout them trade goods, Mr. Bass,” Asa explained, anxiety already graying his face.
He could see how something was chewing away at McAfferty. “Why are them trade goods so all-fired important?”
“I know now the Lord’s given me a sign. Showed me the road to go. ’For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever. ’”
“What land?” he asked. “And what sign was give you?”
“Up north there, that’s the country give me by the hand of God,” McAfferty explained. “The sign come to me on the Judith—after you was near kill’t by the bear.”
“That can’t be the land been given you!” Bass replied in disbelief. “There’s Injuns there.”
Asa nodded. “’And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.’”
“I don’t understand,” Scratch admitted. “That surely can’t be where you been told to go, Asa.”
“North. I been told north.”
“B-but that’s Blackfoot country.”
McAfferty nodded solemnly, his eyes never touching Bass. “I will trust in the Lord that there will be many Blackfoot where I aim to go.”
Titus swallowed on that hard lump stuck in his throat, beginning to sense that this friend of his had found himself a sure and quick way to snuff out his own candle. “With your trade goods—you’re fixing to head north to trade with them Blackfoot?”
At last Asa turned to look at Scratch. “I’m no trader, Mr. Bass. But the geegaws and the foofaraw give me something to set before the heathen chiefs when I get there to talk.”
“You … you really figger you’re gonna ride right in to have yourself a palaver with them Blackfoot? Them red killers?”
“‘And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out
of the north, and a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it,’” McAfferty declared, his blue eyes relit with that ice-cold fire.
“What whirlwind gonna come out of the north?”
“The Blackfoot, Mr. Bass,” Asa said, then turned away to search the riverbank ahead. “The heathen Blackfoot.”
For a moment longer Scratch studied the man’s face, how it was illuminated by a most unholy light. Then he figured he was only spooking himself. Why, if he came to believe half of what Asa McAfferty spouted in his Bible talk, then he figured he was soft-brained his own self.
When he turned to look at the small herd immediately ahead of them, Titus suddenly squinted in the bright afternoon sun, not certain he could trust his eyes. “I ain’t believing what I’m seeing, Asa!”
“Believe it!” he whooped with laughter.
“Cows!”
“Five of ’em, Mr. Bass!” And McAfferty wagged his head. “One even looks to be a milker too!”
Sure enough, this summer William Sublette brought four head of beef cattle and a milch cow to accompany his ten big freight wagons each topped with huge canvas-covered bows and that pair of fancy Dearborn carriages.
“jumping Jehoshaphat,” Scratch mumbled sourly. “Man can’t hardly get away from settlement doings, can he?”
“It’s only ronnyvoo!” McAfferty cheered with a smile. “Them cows and wagons and such gonna be turning right back for St. Louie soon enough.”
“S’pose you’re right,” Bass replied eventually as they approached the grazing cows. “Ain’t none of them settlement doings gonna last out here longer’n ronnyvoo.”
The Sublette camp was mammoth this year, and bustling like a hive. There was no mistaking the many newcomers to the mountains from those hivernants who had endured at least one winter in the wilderness. Men moved about like ants on a prairie hill at midday. Trappers both free and company came and went on horseback and foot. Others clustered beneath the shade of the trade canopies or sprawled out near the last of the nearby whiskey kegs. Why, Bass had never seen so many humans gathered in one place since he’d put St. Louis behind.
Wagging his head, Scratch declared, “It purely bumfuggles my mind to try to figger how all these here fellers gonna find enough beaver in these mountains to make their trappin’ worth their while.”
“I don’t reckon all these niggers gonna make a living at all,” McAfferty replied as they reached the fringe of a small herd of horses and moved on past. “A goodly number of ’em likely to go under, that’s a fact. Other’ns gonna skedaddle back east with Sublette come next summer’s ronnyvoo.”
“After they see’d the elephant, eh?”
“Damn right,” Asa agreed. “Not every man gonna keep his hide or hair out in this country. ’For the Lord my God has set my foot down in the wilderness and abideth with me.’”
“Jack! Lookee here!”
Scratch jerked about to stare at the trees up ahead where the voice had called out. If that didn’t look like Elbridge Gray!
Hatcher peeled himself away from the base of a cottonwood tree where he had been leaning. Clambering to his feet, Jack roared, “Titus Bass? And Asa McAfferty too! Ye lily-livered polecats! We figgered ye both for wolf-bait by now!”
“Just ’cause we’re a li’l late for whiskey?” he bellowed, standing in the stirrups as he drew closer to Hatcher and those five men who gathered about him. “Jack Hatcher—don’t you dare take on airs now!”
“Take on airs?” Hatcher cried, thumping his chest. “Why, I ought’n kick yer bony arse—”
“Kick my arse, will you?” Scratch cried in glee. “Don’t you know I’m here to give you the thumping you been needing ever since’t last ronnyvoo!”
“Thump me now, Titus Bass? Why, I’ll have ye know I can outride, outshoot, and outthump ary a man in this hull valley! Mad Jack Hatcher be the nigger what can out-lie, outdrink, and outpuke all the rest of ye poor sons put together! We’ll wrassle if’n ye think ye’re man enough, Titus goddamned Bass!”
Reining up sharply, Scratch immediately flung his leg across the saddle and dropped to the ground, bursting into motion as his feet hit the grass—sprinting low and headlong for Hatcher. They collided with a mighty gust of air from them both as the two spilled onto the ground, a writhing, snaky mass of arms and legs, flying fists and buckskin fringe, spewing and grunting as they rolled over and over atop one another.
“Leave the poor man be, Scratch!” Caleb Wood lunged up to their side laughing as the pair tussled and romped in the grass, thumping one another with their fists and giggling like two schoolboys let out to recess.
“Proper greeting?” McAfferty called. “Why, you ain’t never made me wrassle with you, Jack.”
Hatcher brushed some of his long, dark hair back out of his eyes and swiped at a bead of sweat sliding down the bridge of his nose when he peered up at the white-head as if measuring his words before he set them free.
“Asa McAfferty,” Jack said evenly in that way a man might when he had derided it best to leave certain feelings unspoken. “Didn’t figger either of ye for coming in alive this summer.” Then he turned back to Bass, looping an arm over Scratch’s shoulder. “Damn, but it’s good to lay eyes on ye both again.”
“I’ll be et for the devil’s tater if it ain’t good to see you boys again too!” Titus cried, thumping a fist into Hatcher’s taut belly.
“You’ll camp with us?” Solomon Fish pleaded as the rest came up in turn to give Bass a hearty embrace.
“Ain’t no other place I’d rather spread my robes,” Scratch declared, basking in the glow of these friends.
Rufus Graham looked up at McAfferty. “You getting down off that horse, Asa? Or maybeso you don’t figger to camp with your partner here.”
For a fleeting moment Titus glanced at McAfferty. He explained, “Asa and me—well, we reckon to go our own ways for the fall hunt.”
“I’ll be go to hell!” Caleb exclaimed.
Hatcher himself said, “That news s’prises me.”
“Don’t s’prise me none,” Elbridge grumped. “Asa allays been one to go off on his own. Ain’cha, McAfferty?”
Instead of answering, Asa rocked out of the saddle and came to the ground, busying himself with throwing up a stirrup and loosening the cinch.
Hatcher studied Scratch’s face a moment, as if he might divine some clue thereupon. Eventually Jack said, “Asa ain’t never reckoned on pulling away on his own this quick, boys.” He grinned disarmingly as he turned to McAfferty. “Something really must trouble ye ’bout riding with Titus Bass.”
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