“That’s where I’m wagering we’ll find the best beaver hides,” he had confided to the mare, the only creature thereabouts to listen to him.
More and more of late he had taken to talking out loud to her, if for no other reason than to hear the sound of his own voice. Likely, it was the only human voice for hundreds of miles around, he told himself.
Bass had tried setting Washburn’s traps in that cold stream leading him up through that first high ground,* at times in those feeder creeks that spilled into it, too. Each time he did just as Isaac had instructed him back in St. Louis: with the bait-stick and the trap-shelf and the float-stick too. But for all his effort, only a half-dozen scrawny muskrats had been curious enough to get themselves caught. Titus hadn’t even thought enough of them to skin them. Why, compared to the beaver hides he had seen congregate in huge packs on the wharfs at St. Louis from the upriver country, those half-dozen puny skins weren’t worth the trouble it would take to bloody his skinning knife.
“Weather’s bound to be lot more the sort that makes a flat-tail critter put on a heavy hide up there,” he commented to the mare as they moseyed on west toward the distant white-capped peaks. “Snow means cold, and cold means thick fur, seems to me, girl.”
That sort of reasoning made sense to him, it did. Especially after he had managed to trap four unwary beaver in that small range of high mountains off to the southwest—just four, after all those days he went out to his labors among the streams and those aspen that quaked with the slightest breeze on the hillsides above him. And now that he had wandered down from those unproductive mountains in bitter resignation, striking out for the northwest—yearning to reach that range where the snow looked to lay all the heavier at those upper elevations, even as summer was lost to the first signs of autumn.
Into those foothills he had led the mare as the seasons began to turn and the days grew imperceptibly shorter—climbing ever higher, trying this stream, then that. A bit more luck had he, but not near as much as Bass had hoped when he’d moved into the southern reaches of this extensive mountain range. For some days now the quakies had begun to turn gold.
There had been two quick dustings of snow already, weeks ago. Both had melted by the following day, the air steaming in the shafts of golden light piercing the leafy branches of the trees. Then of late the weather turned downright warm again as Indian summer set in. But up here among the high foothills, where it seemed he spent one fruitless day after another, the cycle of life was soon to change. After less than two weeks of sunny days and cool nights, it had smelled of snow this morning when he’d kicked his way out of his blankets.
After watering the bushes Titus took the mare out a distance from camp where she could graze on some good grass; then he returned to kindle his fire and set the remains of last night’s coffee on to reboil. With a breakfast of venison steak washed down, it was time to bring the old mare in and pack her up for their daily routine: a trip out to set more traps. This morning, like so many that had gone before, he promised himself it would be different. His luck was bound to change today.
It had begun to snow those dry, ashen white flakes by the time he got himself moving out to fetch up the mare. Through the trees he saw her, some distance off, kicking a hind leg, then whipping her head around to nuzzle at her belly. At the edge of the clearing he stopped, watching, frightened at what he saw. When she began to stretch her neck out before bringing her head around again to nuzzle at her stomach, he was finally convinced.
“Damn, if you don’t likely have the colic,” he grumbled as he approached and untied the long lead rope from a tree. She was hard to lead at first, bobbing her head, pulling back from him, near yanking him off his feet when she did, then stopping suddenly to blindly kick one hind leg or the other.
“That’s it, girl,” He tried to soothe best he could, knowing how a horse with the colic sensed the growing pain in its belly, suffered the bloating swell and the unre-ieved pressure, kicking their legs, stretching out their necks, nosing their own bellies in some frantic, dull-witted desire to release that pent-up pressure.
“Troost always walked the colic off,” he told her as he tried to draw close to her head.
But she stretched out her neck again, then nearly knocked him to the ground as she suddenly whipped around to try nuzzling her belly once more.
“C’mon—we’re gonna walk it off,” he told her with a tug on the rope that got her moving slowly. “Always worked before.”
And he hoped it would work again.
Hysham Troost had called it the sand colic: what a horse got when it ate a bunch of sand mixed in with its feed, so much sand that it collected in every one of those low bends and twists of the horse’s gut until it was nearly impossible for any of the animal’s feed to make it on through their system. That’s when the real trouble with sand colic started—when the mare got bloated up with all that unrelieved pressure that would have to be eased or else.
Or else.
For more than an hour he led the mare around and around that small clearing, with the horse meandering more and more slowly each time they made the circle. Finally he admitted that with the way she was acting so poorly, they would not be venturing out that morning to set more traps. If nothing else, it was a relief just to get the mare back to camp, where he could water her and keep her close at hand while the colic worked itself out of her system.
Tossing some more limbs onto his fire, Bass slid the coffeepot over to the edge of the flames to rewarm what was left from two heatings. Then he turned to grab up one of the big, heavy woolen blankets he intended to wrap around himself as he sat by the fire … when he heard her go down.
As Titus wheeled around, a big part of him was already praying that he hadn’t heard the animal collapse. Any horseman knew the chances were somewhere between slim and damn poor for a horse that went down. If you could keep them on their feet, you had yourself a chance. But once an animal went down …
He felt like swearing as he flung the blanket off his shoulders among the rest and lunged toward her as, the big neck and head were the last to hit the forest floor covered with a thick carpet of pine needles. But swearing wouldn’t help—as much as he wanted to curse someone, some thing … to keep from cursing his own self.
Down on his knees Titus slid the last few feet to slowly reach under her head, bringing it gently into his lap. Her eyes were wild, glazed with pain, her sides heaving as she thrashed that upper hind leg. Something noxious and foul gushed from her hind end … then she seemed to lie still, nostrils flaring, eyes still rolling. From time to time they even seemed to come to a rest looking at him—pleading, perhaps—then moved on.
“Maybe that means you got it on outta your system,” he pleaded with the mare quietly, figuring the gush had been just that, the way a man might get himself the green-apple quickstep and with all that pressure built up inside him from the unripe fruit might well make himself feel right pert once he had himself a decent shit.
“Let’s hope that’ll fix you—”
Then she thrashed her head a little as he held her, vainly trying to raise it enough to reach back to nuzzle her belly, at the same time that top rear leg began to fling about again. And he knew she hadn’t found any relief by ridding herself of whatever foul substance had gushed from her hind end.
He didn’t know how long he stayed there cradling the mare’s head that morning but realized the coffeepot boiled again—smelling it, downwind of the fire as he was. Over time his fire burned down to nothing but thin wisps of smoke, then slowly went out as he watched. And waited. And tried to think of what more Hysham Troost would be doing for a horse suffering the sand colic.
He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep right there with the mare’s head in his lap the way it was until he came awake with something tapping on the sole of his boot and a voice booming in his ears.
“I’ll be go to hell!” the deep voice cried. “It be a white nigger for sure!”
Bass jerked up, his eyes
squinting, blinking, straining to see through the veil of trees and gently falling snow as the dark form moved back from him and brought up a rifle to point at his belly.
Bass sat frozen, his bowels run cold—come awake suddenly to stare up, then down the immense figure before him. The man was dressed in a blanket coat, hood pulled over his head, with a black beard that reached to midchest and a belt around his waist where several long black scalps hung near his knife scabbard. From the greasy, muddy bottom of his coat extended his legs, stuffed within two faded, red-wool blanket tubes, fringe gently swaying at their outer seam above thick winter moccasins.
How Titus wished now that he’d brought the rifle close. “What … just who the hell are you—”
“Injuns! By damn, we’re Injuns!” a new voice shrieked from the timber, drawing Bass’s attention as another figure leaped into the camp clearing—dressed completely as an Indian like the first, the fringe on his leather war shirt whirling round and round as he danced toward Titus: whooping and hollering, rhythmically clapping his hand over his mouth, woo-wooing and stomping round and round in some ungainly imitation of a scalp dance.
Suddenly that figure whirled up beside the first man and stopped, asking, “What you figger him to be doin’ just a’squatting there by that horse, Silas?”
Titus set fus eyes again on the tall, dimly lit figure in the hooded coat standing over him in that gentle fall of early snow, his face hidden in shadow.
The tall figure said, “Shit—stupid son of a bitch appears to be rockin’ that god-danged horse to sleep, don’t he, Billy?”
Then a third voice laughed along with the two standing there in front of Bass. From the shadows that new voice shouted.
“Injuns!”
And a third long-haired Indian-look-alike came stomping and whirling and woo-woo-woo-wooing into the clearing, shrill and sounding every bit like a savage warrior bent on taking a scalp.
Damn! Titus swallowed hard, watching the third hairy, bearded man dance up, watched how the second joined in the dance and chanting, watched with growing uneasiness the way the first figure continued to stare right down at him—his face hidden within the hood of his blanket coat.
No, Bass told himself—I don’t wanna fear no man, red nor white.
“You’re wolf bait now for sure, pilgrim!” cried the second man; then he let out a bloodcurdling scream, dragging his knife from its scabbard and shaking it in Bass’s face.
Titus’s eyes quickly shot to where his rifle stood against a tree, and where the pistol lay beyond it. These had to be white men, he told himself as he ran his tongue around the inside of his dry mouth, suddenly surprised that it had the texture of sand. After all, they spoke his tongue, didn’t they?
Then it struck him: Why, he hadn’t heard the sound of a human voice other than his in … in a damned long time. Damn, but why was these white fellas in Injun clothes?
“How—howdy, fellas … whyn’t all of you g’won over there by my fire and have yourselves a sit,” he called out in a croak, the words emerging squeaky from that dry throat.
The tall hooded one stretched out his arms, a gesture that immediately slowed the two wild dancers. With a booming voice he said, “By damn, boys—’pears we got us an invite to help that son of a bitch rock his horse to sleep!”
“You sure he ain’t no dangerous Injun killer, Silas?” the third voice finally asked.
The second man’s face lit up with mirth as he asked, “How the bejesus can this pilgrim be a Injun killer when he ain’t got him no gun?”
Again Bass glanced at his weapons across the small clearing, there among his bedding. All he had here at hand was the belt knife.
“He won’t do us no harm,” the nearest one said inside the shadow of his hood.
Suddenly there was the face of the man who had spoken. Bass jerked his head up, watching the figure step closer, yanking back on the hood to his blanket coat then and there in the murky shadows as snow fell into the camp clearing. Damn near as tall as any man he’d ever seen, damn near as big as Hezekiah Christmas. And Hezekiah was the biggest man he’d ever laid his mortal eyes on.
“Don’t figger we need to cover him no more, eh?” the second man said as he stepped out of the shadows no more than twenty feet away.
Then some needles snapped behind Titus. He twisted his head around to watch the third man advance into the camp clearing.
“He ain’t got a gun on him,” this third one said. “Don’t figger he’s about to kill none of us by axe-see-dent.”
The big man in the center came a step closer. Titus studied the way he carried his rifle captured in the crook of his left arm and a pistol ready, there in his right hand. Now the tall one began to wave that pistol at the second man.
“Billy—punch that fire so I can warm my ass.”
“Helluva way to go and wake a man up,” Bass grumbled, angry at himself for feeling embarrassed at being caught flat-footed and unarmed.
The tall man watched his eyes flick over to the rifle again. “One thing y’ll learn, son—y’ best keep your guns at your side. No matter you’re taking a shit”—and that made the second man guffaw with a great gust of laughter—“or y’ be rolled up with nothing more’n your own dreams to keep y’ warm at night.”
“Just who … who the blue blazes are you?” Bass inquired.
Pounding the pistol barrel against his chest, the big man replied, “Me? Why, hell—my name’s Silas Cooper.”
“He’s the big bull in this lick, he is—that Silas. Yessirreebob!” the second man said, his head nodding in emphasis.
Cooper came a bit closer, his eyes narrowing. “So who might be you?”
Bass’s eyes went back to Cooper’s. “Titus … Titus Bass.”
“Where you come from?” the third man demanded as he came around to a spot where Bass could see him without turning his head. He looked a tarnal mess with his long, unkempt beard.
“St. L-louis,” he answered with that croaky voice.
“This here’s Bud Tuttle,” Cooper introduced the third man, pointing at him with his pistol.
“Ain’t my first name, but everyone calls me Bud.”
“’Cause he don’t like Hyrum none!” the second man gushed with a wild giggle.
“That’s right,” Tuttle replied. “My name’s Bud.”
Just as Titus began to nod his head to the third man, ready to ask the last man his name, Cooper began to move off to the right, stuffing his pistol into the wide, colorful sash he had tied about his waist. The tall man asked, “How long y’ been up here in these parts, Titus Bass?”
“Since end of summer.”
“That long, eh?” Cooper asked as he neared the mare’s rear flanks, sniffing, wrinkling his nose up at the strong stench.
“Ain’t had you much luck trapping, have you?” the second man asked.
“Was going out this morning—when the horse here was took with sand colic,” Bass explained.
“Damnation,” Cooper said with a sigh as he settled some distance back from the horse’s tail and studied the ground around the mare’s hind end.
“What is it, Silas?” Tuttle asked.
“G’won now, Billy,” and he looked up at the second man. “Y’ get yourself introduced proper, then get that fire punched.”
With an open-faced grin that second man snagged the fur cap off his head and bowed slightly from the waist, showing that he kept his long hair tied back in a long queue. He flashed a handsome, gap-toothed smile, announcing, “Name’s Hooks, mister. Billy Hooks.”
“So now y’ know us all. Silas be my name,” Cooper repeated as he looked up from the moist ground he had been inspecting near the horse’s flank, “that’s Billy y’ just met, and him over there is Bud.”
“Pleased,” Bass replied, reaching up to scratch at the incessant itch there at his collar, “pleased to meet you all.”
“Bet y’ are,” Cooper growled. “Better us’n some half-starved red niggers out for hair or coup.”
“K-koo?”
The tall man slipped his wide-brimmed felt hat off the back of his head, grabbed a gob of his own long black hair in one hand, and pulled it straight up while his other hand whipped out his belt knife and dragged the back of the blade showily across his throat—while he made a scratchy, wheezing sound.
“Meaning the red bellies gonna slit your goddamned pilgrim, idjit, pork-eater throat, the sonsabitches would,” Silas grumbled, stuffing the knife away and pulling the hat back over his head.
“I … I don’t eat no pork,” Titus explained sheep-faced. “Don’t eat no more Ned.”
“Then y’ have the makings of a good man, Titus Bass,” Cooper declared with a sudden smile. “There be enough god-blamed Frenchie pork-eaters in these here mountains awready!”
Billy gushed with that easy laughter of his as he came over from the fire to squat near Titus, grinning as if he’d just made himself a new friend for life.
“What you think, Silas?” Turtle asked as he came up to stand behind Cooper, peering down at the horse’s hind end.
“Black water—ain’t no two ways about it,” Silas clucked, then shook his head one time for emphasis.
“B-black water?” Titus repeated. “Nawww. She’s just got her a li’l case of colic. Likely it be the sand colic—”
“I said it was black water, Titus Bass,” Cooper snapped, rising to point down at the remains of the dark, murky liquid the mare had spewed on the ground behind her. “Come see here for your own self.”
“Ah right. Black … black water,” Titus repeated, not daring to move, not daring to show Cooper he doubted him. He felt cold in his belly of a sudden. Looking down into the mare’s one eye staring wildly up at him. If it was black water, then there wasn’t much a man could do. Not much time neither. “I was … hoping it was the colic.”
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