From the rump end he worked forward, finally peeling the hide from the head itself, right down to the animal’s nose. Holding it up, Bass inspected it quickly, as he did with every one, looking first at the flesh side to see that he hadn’t been too quick and eager, and thereby sloppy, causing his knife to slip and cut through the plew. Then he could admire the thick, damp, oily fur on the opposite side.
After resetting the trap and smearing more of the sticky bait on the tip of the willow limb poised over that much-used slide the beaver had carved themselves down the slippery bank, Titus poked a long whang of stiffened rawhide through one of the empty eye sockets and slung the heavy green plew over his shoulder. Snagging the beaver’s scaly tail root, he flung the carcass as far as he could into the brush away from the pond. A few feet away he retrieved his rifle, threaded his way back through the willow, and slogged on to the second set.
One after another one he pulled up a beaver. It had been this way for days. Not a single empty trap. Fourteen more plews by midmorning when he finished resetting his traps and turned back for camp. Those fourteen would make for a full day of fleshing and stretching. As boring as the work was, it remained somewhat joyous work, nevertheless: knowing now just what each one of those hides should be worth come the middle of summer when they got on over to the Willow Valley by the Sweet Lake.
Through the thin vertical straps of lodgepole shadow and the patches of early sunlight, he saw the gray film of firesmoke and the slow, deliberate movements of the three as he drew close. Cooper was late turning them out this morning.
“Ho! The camp!” Bass called out.
Billy Hooks turned, his face quickly painted with that ready smile. “Ho! Scratch!” Then he peered more carefully at Bass as Titus lumbered up with half of his burden at the end of each arm. “Will you lookee at that, boys?”
Bass himself turned to find Cooper squatting over a pile of his own beaver hides. Silas rose and set his big ands down on his hips. “Pound some powder up my ass and strike fire to my pecker! Looks to me like this here green pilgrim got him a haul of prime plew awready today, boys!”
Titus was proud to boast, “Fourteen of ’em, Silas!”
“Fourteen?” Cooper repeated as he came around Scratch’s shoulder to have himself a look at the two heavy bundle of green hides. “All these since yestiddy?”
“Skinned ’em this mornin’.”
“An’ don’t they look like big’uns too,” Cooper went on, admiringly.
Bass glowed with the praise, fairly crowing. “Nearly every one—bigger’n any I ever catched.”
Slapping his hand down on Bass’s shoulder, Silas nodded once and said, “Fellas, this here greenhorn nigger gonna have him the finest pack of plew come time to talk to the trader, don’t y’ think?”
“For balls’ sake if he won’t!” Bud agreed, and Billy bobbed his head eagerly.
Then Tuttle stepped up to heft both rawhide straps from Titus, flinging the green hides toward the area of camp where they fleshed the skins and lashed them inside willow hoops—where more than two dozen of those willow hoops stood propped against trees this morning, their skins drying, hide side up.
“C’mon, y’ two. We got us a long way to go this morning,” Cooper ordered, the slash of a grin on his face. “We ought’n go see if we can catch ourselves some of them prime plew like Scratch here done.”
Joking good-naturedly among themselves as they always did, the three gathered up their trap sacks and float-sticks, bait and weapons, before easing off downstream where they had been trapping for the last six days with moderate success. But unlike Bass’s good fortune, the three had been forced to move farther and farther downstream with each succeeding day.
Once he had some more limbs steepled on the fire, and the coffeepot set on the flames to boil, Titus turned back to the fourteen green hides. One at a time he slid them off the thick rawhide whang, laid each down, and rolled it up tightly, flesh side in so they would not air-dry prematurely. All but the last one he tied up with thin cords of fringe to prevent them from unrolling. On that last one he began work there beside his morning fire as the coffeepot began to spew a thin trail of vapor from its spout.
From his leather possibles pouch, where he carried everything a man might require to survive in the wilderness, Scratch took one of those large iron awls he had fashioned for Isaac Washburn and himself back in Troost’s St. Louis livery. Stuffing one of its two sharpened ends into the hole drilled in a rounded knob of wood that fit his palm, Scratch began to carefully poke holes around the outer circumference of the first plew, grabbing an empty willow hoop from those stacked to lean against some deadfall. When he had selected a long loop of rawhide cord from among those hanging on knots and broken limbs around their campsite, Titus began the process of lashing the hide to the hoop.
Leaving himself better than a foot of the rawhide cord free, Scratch shoved the pointed end of the cord through the first hole he punched at the extreme edge of the soft green hide, then looped the cord over the thick willow limb and repeated the process of poking the cord through the next hole, round and round and round, over the willow hoop and through the succeeding holes until he had the beaver plew completely circumscribed.
Now began the most time-consuming part of the job at hand: ever so slowly stretching the hide into a large round shape to fit the round hoop. Tugging on loop by rawhide loop, Scratch painstakingly moved around the hoop again, stretching the hide out another fraction of an inch. A little more on the next trip around. Then stretched it more, and more. Finally, after uncounted trips around that willow hoop, the beaver plew had been worked as taut as the head of an Indian war drum, fashioned into that crude shape the mountain man called his “beaver dollar.”
The coffee had begun to hiss and spew, so he grabbed a short limb and used it to pull on the bail to ease the pot back off the flames. There on the bed of glowing coals it would remain warm for some time to come. Then …
Oh, how Titus hated what grueling work came next: fleshing.
Yet he figured he should make a start of it before Tuttle came back to finish up the hides—at least flesh this first one. So far this spring they had them an easy bargain worked out. Titus was far better at lashing the plews within their willow hoops, so he did that for Bud. And Tuttle didn’t much mind the fleshing, a chore most beaver men considered “squaw’s work.” Funny thing was that here, as in most camps of fur trappers, there simply weren’t any squaws to complete the back-bending, shoulder-sore labor of removing every last bit of flesh, fat, and connective tissue from the backside of the beaver plew once it had been stretched on its frame.
Near a stack of empty willow hoops, Scratch found one of the fleshing tools, its half-round wooden handle well darkened with oil from the hands of those who had labored with it. Screwed between the two long halves of the wooden handle was a rounded piece of thin iron, sharpened on its convex side, enough room left in the iron blade so that a man’s fingers could slip through the slot and firmly grip the flesher.
Flipping the hoop so it laid fur side down, Titus squatted, sighed, then knelt over the plew to begin dragging the sharp edge of the flesher against the grain of the beaver’s skin—gradually lifting that excess flesh, thick straps of fatty tissue, and thin strips of connective fascia. Time and again he peeled the sticky residue from his crude flesher and went back to work, until he eventually had the hide scraped to within a thumb’s width of the edge of the plew where the rawhide loops secured it to the willow hoop.
Slowly volving his shoulders as he rocked back on his haunches, Scratch felt the pull and tightness in his back with the hunched-up work he truly felt was fit only for a squaw. Weary as the work made him, the rest could wait until Tuttle returned, he figured. Then together they could begin to work on the other thirteen, plus what others Bud would manage to bring back from his own traps that morning.
Titus crabbed forward and poured himself half a tin cup of the steaming coffee as more of the sun shot down through the
trees in narrow shafts of misting light. He scooted his rump over to lean back against a large trunk of some deadfall, his feet to the fire, and sipped his coffee.
Here in the sun, its warm rays creeping up his legs, the heated coffee tin cradled between his hands, Scratch slowly closed his eyes. No doubt was there that the best beaver men moved out of camp before first light. But just as sure was it that a man might reward himself with the luxury of a little nap once he was back in camp with the prior day’s catch. Titus sat the coffee tin beside him on the trampled ground, folded his arms, and let his chin whiskers fall to his chest.
Startled by the chirk of a squirrel in the branches high overhead, he awoke sometime later, aware he had indeed been dozing with no recollection of just how much time had passed. But picking up the cup and taking a sip of the cold coffee gave him some idea of just how long. He flung out the dregs and poured himself another half cup. That was the way he had learned not to waste valuable coffee: drinking only a half cup at a time so that it wouldn’t cool prematurely.
After a few sips on the hot brew that invigorated him, Scratch got to his feet and moved off toward his side of the small camp to roll up his bedding he had abandoned before first light. There among his pack goods he stopped of a sudden—staring down at the four packs of beaver hides he had trapped in valley and high-country streams since first reaching the mountains last autumn. Three … damn if three of the packs didn’t look smaller than he remembered.
Bass rubbed his smoke-reddened eyes, thinking perhaps it was only because he was still groggy from napping that the packs somehow appeared smaller. Then he tilted his head to one side, appraising them. And tilted his head to the other. None of it made things appear any better.
Dropping quickly to his knees on the thick turf of fallen pine needles, Scratch worked to loosen the knots at the first of those three short packs. As his fingers clawed feverishly, he realized his heart was hammering a little faster with apprehension. Confusion. Pure bewilderment. And a sickening lump was starting to rise in the back of his throat, making it hard to swallow.
As he flung back the four long strands of thick rawhide, Titus became all the more despairing—thinking back to that very morning at the meadow pond where he had labored to skin those fourteen beaver: when he had realized those fourteen plews would be enough to finish out his fourth pack and provide a good start on a fifth. But now as his hands quickly parted the hides, counting them silently as his lips moved, trembling and fearful—Bass knew with growing certainty that he no longer had four full packs.
He quickly tore at the rawhide lashes on a second stack and began counting.
Suddenly Bass was confronting the fact that what he had now was far from enough to make even three full packs, much less the four. And as quickly he was afraid of just what that meant.
His hands froze at the knots securing the rawhide lash on the third short pack. Instead of releasing the knot, he turned slowly, staring across camp to where the others cached their plunder, possibles, and plews.
Titus was choking on the sour taste of it as he rose shakily, his knees wobbly as the realization sank in … slowly stumbling around the fire pit toward the far side where the trio’s packs sat beneath drapes of dirty canvas.
There he stopped and stared down, seeking to weigh things before committing the unpardonable transgression of prowling through another man’s belongings. From the way things appeared, Bud Tuttle didn’t have near enough packs among his things for Bass to be concerned.
Maybe Billy. By damn, maybeso it was him. That handy smile and happy-go-lucky naybobbin’ way of his might well be just the proper cover-up that would allow a jealous Hooks to get away with the theft of another man’s furs.
Thievery.
There it was. A word yet unspoken, but big and bold all the same.
Kneeling beside Billy’s possessions, Bass hurled back the end of the canvas, pulled the first stack toward him, and tore at the knots. But as he was beginning to count that first stack of furs, his eyes eventually, reluctantly, crawled to Cooper’s hides bundled nearby.
Lord, how he didn’t want it to be so.
Rising from Billy’s uncounted furs, Bass trudged over to Silas’s belongings with the air of a man forced to walk those last thirteen steps up to a hangman’s noose. Sinking to his knees, he drew back the canvas drape. There sat better than five whole packs.
Titus looked once more at Turtle’s piddling catch. At Billy’s best efforts. Then back again to regard how Silas’s catch outstripped the other two. It was plain to see that Cooper had a sizable lead on Titus.
His hands were shaking as he began to pull at the knots on that first pack, trembling so bad that Scratch finally pulled his knife and slashed at the rawhide ties. Setting the skinning knife aside, Titus pulled the first hide off the top. He swallowed hard as he turned it over, eyes skipping quickly over the flesh side.
It bore Cooper’s mark.
As did the second, and the third. And even the fourth.
He swept the knife up and cut free the rawhide bands on the second pack, beginning to inspect the hides in that pack. The first half dozen or so were clearly branded with Cooper’s mark. Likewise he slashed at the rawhide thongs on the third pack. Growing more desperate as he went along, Titus tore into the fourth stack of beaver pelts, wondering what was worse: thinking Cooper was the thief, or finding out that Cooper was not … which meant Titus still had a great, unsettling mystery to solve.
Then eight plews down in that fourth pack he saw it.
His mark on the backside of a large, shiny, glossy beaver pelt. His mark, sure enough—except that Cooper had attempted to scratch his own mark right over Bass’s.
Bass yanked it out of the stack, then pulled the seventh and studied it. Damn but the job was good, the way Cooper had carefully scratched a knife tip over the T B on the rough, stiffened, fleshy side of the pelt, turning the T into a careless S, and thickening out the B, adding a crude curve to the letter, which served to scrawl the C for Cooper.
Lunging for one of the stacks he had just inspected, Titus found the same to be true farther down in each pack. He hadn’t looked deep enough, nor well enough. The top six or eight hides were Cooper’s in each pack, to be sure. But they laid upon plew after plew that Scratch had trapped, skinned, and fleshed with Turtle’s help. Bass realized he hadn’t seen the crude forgery at first—how Cooper’s scrawl obscured all Titus’s hard work.
“What the hell are y’ doing in my packs, you weasel-stoned nigger?”
Bass wheeled at the growl, his hair rising on the back of his neck, skin prickling in fear as he stared at Cooper some two rods away. Just behind Silas stood Tuttle and Hooks, looking on—but not in disbelief or shock that Bass would be among Cooper’s belongings … instead, looking at the scene with masks of knowing horror. He realized they knew.
Suddenly the massive Cooper had crossed those last few ten yards, seizing Bass’s coat in one big paw, and hurled him to the ground. “Y’ fixing to steal from me, you tit-sucking son of a bitch?”
“S-steal from you?” Titus’s voice crackled as he rolled onto his knees, then arose slowly. He couldn’t believe he had been accused of theft by the thief himself.
“Looks to me what you’re fixin’ to do!” Cooper spat. His big jaw jutted there in the middle of his wide, sloping shoulders that gave him the look of a man without a neck. Silas flung out his arm, pointing across the fire to Bass’s packs torn apart and in disarray.
Titus wagged his head in disbelief and stammered, “Y-you … you’re the one what’s been—”
“Lookee there, boys!” Cooper interrupted, his long black beard waving on the breeze as he whirled on the other two. “I caught this greenhorn sumbitch fixing to line his packs with my furs!”
Beginning to shake in utter disbelief, Bass glanced quickly at Turtle. Bud dropped his eyes just as quickly. Then Titus took a deep breath and dared the words, “Silas—you’re the thievin’ son of a bitch!”
Cooper had
him again in an instant, flinging the smaller man backward before Bass even realized Silas had snagged the front of his coat again. This time Titus collided with a tree, knocking the wind out of him as he slid down its trunk, the shooting pain in his back so immense that he could taste it. The next time he inhaled it hurt so much he gasped—fighting to catch his breath. Scratch swallowed down his galloping heart and tried to speak as he struggled back to his feet.
Bass’s arm was shaking as he pointed. “F-found my furs in your goddamned packs, Cooper!”
Silas brought the rifle into his right hand, his monstrous thumb drawing back the hammer.
“Silas! No!” Tuttle screeched, lunging toward Cooper, then suddenly remembering that he must not interfere.
The other three watched the rifle shudder in Cooper’s grasp, as if he were tormented to keep from pulling the trigger.
Bass stared down at the muzzle. Never before had he looked at a weapon’s yawning black hole … so damned close.
There beneath the gray-black wolf hide he had sewn into a cap so the pelt spilled over his shoulders and the wolfs face was pulled down to his brow to shade his black eyes, suddenly came an ugly, taunting, vicious look to the giant’s face as he asked, “What … what’d you say ’bout me, Titus Bass?”
“You g-got my hides in your … your, p-packs.”
Hooks took a step closer saying, “Silas ain’t stealin’ your beaver, Titus. He only—”
“Shuddup, Billy!” Cooper snapped, hulking there in that lumbering side-to-side shuffle of his.
Bass watched how Hooks immediately clamped his mouth closed, eyes every bit as wide as Turtle’s, and both pairs of eyes filled with fear, the two men’s faces blanched as they studied Cooper, then Bass, then back to Cooper.
Quietly, Tuttle started, “Maybe Titus don’t under—”
“You shut your yap too, Bud!” Silas growled as he flung an arm menacingly in Turtle’s direction. “This here’s a’tween Scratch’n me. Ain’t it … Titus?”
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