As he settled at the fire near the blankets where Little trembled, Bass felt those first stirrings of a sense of belonging to something bigger than himself. It had taken him three seasons, but now he felt as if he was a part of the lives these men shared one with another. Among them, out here in this wilderness, there existed few rules if any—and what rules there were existed for the sake of the living. Those rules were learned, and practiced, solely for saving a man’s hair and hide.
And there was a code of honor too—one that dictated that a man’s friends do what was decent when it came time to bury him, to speak their last farewell and leave ’hat old friend behind. As simple as that code was, Bass realized he had already sworn to it before taking his leave of St. Louis. He had done what was right by Isaac Wash-bum—then come west to live out the life the old trapper would never live again for himself.
How temporal and truly fragile life had turned out to be, Bass brooded. No matter that these were a hardy breed of men, the toughest he had ever known—tougher than any plowman, tougher still than any riverboatman—the men of this breed lived for what time was granted them, then accepted death as surely as they had come to accept life on its own terms. Each man in his own way wanting no more out of life than was due him.
They were quiet around their fire that night as the nine ate, for the most part deep in their own thoughts as they chewed on half-raw pieces of a cow elk shot that morning. While the coffee brewed, they filled themselves on lean red meat and gulped down the boiled onions Gray had scrounged from the creekbanks.
For eating, a man used his knife only, no matter how big the cut of meat. Holding one end of a reddish piece of steak between his teeth, Bass pulled the other end, then sawed his skinning knife neatly through the outstretched portion, feeding himself chunk after mouth-filling chunk. Before he poured himself some coffee, Titus chopped up a well-done piece of elk into small pieces that Little just might swallow without the trouble of chewing. These he dropped into a second tin cup set before the dying trapper, next to his cup of water.
When he had plunged his knife blade into the hot coals and left it there to set a moment, Scratch poured a cup of steaming coffee, its aroma wild and heady. Not wanting the knife to become too hot, he pulled it from the fire, wiping it quickly across the thigh of his leggings, back and forth over the buckskin until its sheen had returned, cleansed of blood and gristle so he could nest it back in its scabbard.
He was struck with a sudden thought. “Where’s ronnyvoo to be this year?”
“That’s right—you wasn’t one to make it last summer,” Caleb Wood replied.
“Got hisself jumped by the Araps,” Simms reminded them.
“Then ye’ll have yerself a second go-round for Sweet Lake,” Hatcher announced.
Titus inquired, “Where you met up with the traders last summer?”
“The same,” Fish replied.
“Ah—ronnyvoo,” Mad Jack sighed as he leaned back on his saddle and blankets, one hand laid lovingly on his battered fiddle case. “Damn near what a man works for all year long, don’cha figger, Titus Bass?”
“I callate ronnyvoo is the prize what any of us gambles his hide for.”
“Likker and lovin’,” Caleb added. “By damn, for every man what comes to ronnyvoo, give ’im the wust of the likker and the best of the lovin’!”
Near moonrise Little began muttering and mumbling. As he lay shivering in his blankets, sweating from his rising fever, Joe rapidly slipped into a delirium. No longer did he experience any lucid moments, nor did he respond to the men who went to his side with water.
It was hard for any of them to turn away and sleep that night.
Sometime in that last hour before sunrise, the noisy muttering and thrashing quieted and Little finally fell silent. Taking his rotation at guard, Solomon Fish was the man up to hear when everything went quiet with Joe.
“Hatcher,” Fish whispered loudly, and he clambered to his feet. “C’mere!”
As the others slowly sat up in their blankets, watching in silence, Jack joined Solomon at Little’s side. Hatcher first held his hand just above Joe’s face. Then laid his ear over the man’s mouth. And finally Jack touched Little’s cheek, his forehead, then the front of Joe’s throat as he pulled back the blankets.
“He … he dead?” Caleb asked.
Instead of answering immediately, Hatcher laid his ear against Little’s chest and listened for what seemed like a good piece of eternity to Bass.
When he raised his head, Jack pulled the top blanket over Joe Little’s face. “Rufus, want you and Scratch start digging a hole.”
“He dead awready?” Simms asked.
“Fever took him quick,” Hatcher replied.
“Merciful heavens,” Wood whispered, grabbing that beaver-skin cap off his head. “Damn good thing it was quick.”
“No man deserves to die slow,” Graham muttered as he kicked off his blankets and stretched as he got to his feet. “C’mon, Scratch. We got us a burying hole for to dig.”
The two of them found a patch of ground at the distant edge of the tree line where they didn’t figure they would run across too many rocks as they worked their way down into the soil with the crude, stubby-handled shovels. As they were approaching four feet, Jack showed up. The sun was just easing off the ridge to the east.
“Deep enough,” Hatcher declared as he bent quickly to glance into the hole. Turning, he waved an arm in the air and brought the others—four of them carrying the body on a shoulder.
When Graham and Bass scrambled out of the hole, Hatcher ordered, “Put ’im in.”
Titus could see that they had lashed Joe inside one of the huge blankets wrapped round and round with hemp rope for a secure funeral shroud.
“Any of you know some proper burying words?” Caleb asked as Hatcher stared down at the body.
These men, that blanket-wrapped body, the quiet stillness about them as the birds ceased their songs and calls—and especially the utter senselessness of Joe Little’s death … it all brought a flood of memories back for Titus. Remembering Ebenezer Zane. Recalling how he had lived, and how the man died. How the pilot’s loyal crew of boatmen buried him off the side of their Kentucky flatboat, the shroud slowly slipping beneath the muddy surface of the Mississippi River.
“Any of ye have something to say to Joe, now be the time to speak yer piece,” Hatcher said quietly.
“He was a good man and a fair ’nough trapper,” Caleb said after he took a step right up to the edge of the long hole.
Moving up beside Wood, Elbridge Gray added, “The sort you could allays trust to watch your backside.”
“He weren’t the best in the world at nothing,” Simms said, “but he knew just how to be a man’s friend.”
“Not a better man to count on when things got tough,” Fish said self-consciously. The rest nodded.
Jack said, “Won’t none of us soon forget ye, Joe Little.” Then he turned to the rest of them. “Any ye niggers know any proper church words?”
For a few moments all of them stood there embarrassed and shuffle-footed in their moccasins and greasy buckskins, hands clasped in front of them, their eyes darting this way and that, or staring at the dark hole near their feet … none of them knowing what to say.
“Stupid for this here nigger to ask that,” Hatcher admitted after a long moment. “Should’ve knowed better’n to ’spect any of us ever been inside a church to recollect any Sunday-meeting words to say over one of our own.”
Then Caleb blurted, “Weren’t no good reason for him to go the way he did.”
Kinkead nodded his big head, saying, “Man figgers to be took in a Injun fight, maybeso a grizz—but to go under this a’way …”
“Dead is dead,” Scratch muttered just as suddenly. The words surprised him as much as they surprised the others, who turned to look at him. “Don’t matter how a man dies—that ain’t what counts nohow. What matters most is how Joe Little lived.”
Hatcher and a cou
ple others grunted their approval. Jack studied Bass carefully there as he picked at an itchy scab on his cheek where a mosquito had landed at the edge of his beard. Then Jack said, “That’s the true of it, fellas. Joe ain’t here no more. He’s gone.”
“Ain’t here no more,” Wood repeated.
Jack continued. “Like Titus said, it don’t matter how he died. It were how Joe lived … how any of us lives what makes a good goddamn.”
“He were a free man,” Rowland said. “Lived free and didn’t cotton to working for no man.”
“I don’t know no better words’n that, Johnny,” Hatcher declared. “Joe Little was a free man. He gone where he wanted to go. He done what he wanted to do. And he damn well lived the way he wanted to live. That’s what matters most.” Jack looked at Bass.
With a nod Bass added, “A man don’t always get a chance to choose the way he dies, fellas … but a man sure as hell can choose the way he lives. I figger Joe had all he ever wanted to have, and lived the way he wanted to live.”
“Let’s us remember that,” Hatcher reminded them. “Not how the man died. Let’s remember the good days we had with our friend.”
Jack knelt quickly, scooping up a double handful of loose soil and shoving it into the hole, where it landed with a muffled splatter on the thick wool blanket. “S’long, Joe.”
Caleb knelt at the side of the grave and tossed in a single handful of dirt. “Keep your eye on the skyline.”
One by one they came to the edge of the hole and threw in some dirt to begin this burial of their friend, each man speaking his own farewell as if it might be no more than a parting among those at the end of rendezvous. Neither one knowing when next they would see one another.
Eventually all had spoken save for Bass.
“We vow to remember,” he said, repeating the grieving woman’s words more than seventeen winters old, words spoken while another canvas-wrapped shroud was slipped into the waters of the Mississippi. “Those of us left behind, we vow to remember the ones what been took from us.”
“Damn,” Jack muttered. He dragged his forearm beneath his nose and blinked rapidly. “Promised myself I wasn’t gonna do this.”
Titus began, “Ain’t no shame in having strong feelings for a friend—”
But he fell silent the instant Hatcher turned on his heel and stomped away.
“Goddamn—I knowed this was gonna happen,” Caleb explained, wagging his head.
The others didn’t even look up to watch Hatcher hurrying back to camp. Their eyes stole a glance at Titus, then went back to gazing down at the body in the hole.
“Wh-where’s he going?” Bass inquired.
“To get hisself away,” Simms said.
“Get away from what?”
“From you,” Wood answered.
“From me?”
Caleb explained, “From what you said.”
“I … I said something wrong?”
“No, not rightly wrong,” Wood confided. “I s’pose it was bound to happen. You see, Jack ain’t never took … he ain’t never got used to losing folks. We’uns—all of us—we know Jack ain’t never had him a friend what died that he wasn’t all broke up about it for a long time.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong with that,” Titus said, looking after the tall, thin man hurrying across the small meadow as the sun began to creep down the hillside toward them.
Simms declared, “Maybeso Titus here hadn’t oughtta gone and said nothing ’bout having feelings for a friend. Hatcher being so techy the way he is.”
“How ’bout me going to tell Jack I didn’t know,” Bass suggested, sensing remorse that he had offended a friend and hurt feelings. “Tell him I’m sorry for—”
They all heard the pony snort. And the forest around them go silent in the space of a heartbeat. Then came the snap of a branch somewhere behind them in the timber. Turning as one without a word, the trappers bolted off in the opposite direction as if a bolt of lightning had struck beneath their feet.
In that instant they were racing back for camp on instinct—not yet aware just what danger was riding down on them with the hammer of all those hooves.
A danger wearing death’s own hideous, earth-paint masks.
*Absaroka Range
23
With a wild, whooping screech, a single horseman burst out of the trees on the slope off to Hatcher’s left.
Bass watched the warrior kicking his heels into the pony’s ribs as he hunched forward, drawing back the raw-hide string on his short bow as he swung it in an arc over the pony’s bobbing head, the animal carrying him rapidly across the grassy flat that still remained between him and Hatcher.
With that war cry Jack exploded into a dead run—so tall and skinny, his movements were almost spiderlike. Grabbing free the pistol stuffed in his belt—still he kept sprinting for camp.
Voices cried out, screeching behind the rest of them. As Scratch’s blood went cold, it seemed the whole forest instantly came alive with more horsemen exploding from the trees. Perhaps two dozen or more. Maybe as many as half a hundred. No matter how many—the odds were clearly stacked against these men racing for their lives. They’d been caught flat-footed, away from camp without their rifles and pouches at a moment of grief … having nothing more than a single load in each of their belt pistols.
Blood-chilling yelps and high, tremulous trilling made the hair bristle on the back of Scratch’s neck. How he wanted to turn and look at the attackers—but dared not, knowing he had to run faster, despite the slippery grass beneath their moccasins. And in those first few seconds the eight got themselves strung out now, some on the left and some on his right.
That solitary horseman ahead of them released his arrow with a wild, demonic shriek. Jack grunted, stumbling the instant it struck him—the arrow slamming into the back of his bony hip. He was still tumbling over and over across the grass as the warrior shot past the trapper on his flying pony.
Watching that shaft sink itself deep, hearing his friend fall with no more than a grunt, seeing the long-legged Hatcher crumple to a stop—it made the gorge rise in Scratch’s throat. He didn’t care to run anymore. Better to turn and fight. But unlike the others, he realized he didn’t have a belt pistol. The damned Arapaho had taken it—that and a good piece of his scalp.
Reaching around to the back of his belt, Titus snagged the tomahawk in his right hand, yanking the handle from the small of his back. As soon as he felt the reassurance of the weapon in his palm, he planted his left foot and rolled off it, pivoting the moment he skidded to a stop. He had the space of three hammering heartbeats before the first horseman closed on him.
The top half of the warrior’s face was painted red from brow to upper cheeks, yellow hailstones splotching the lower half—in front the Blackfoot’s hair was pulled up in a provocative clump tied there above his brow and those dark, menacing eyes. Back from a muscular brown shoulder swung the arm that at this distance looked as thick as a tree trunk. At the end of the arm waved a long stone club coming for the white man on a whistling arc.
Titus ducked at the last moment, feeling the handle graze the top of his skull as it passed, tearing the blue bandanna off.
But it did not matter, because Scratch was already swinging—both arms driving the tomahawk into the front of the rider’s body. Belly, or chest, Titus did not know at that instant. Only that he felt the bladed weapon jar in his death-grip, sensed the hot spray of blood splattering over his hands and wrists, heard the surprised gush of air burst from the enemy as the tomahawk was yanked from Bass’s hands suddenly slick with blood and gore.
Spinning on around, he watched the rider topple from side to side, staring down at the tomahawk buried in his chest—then slowly cartwheel to the right, off his pony.
Scratch’s upper arm cried out for attention. An arrow whispered past, just cutting through the buckskin shirt enough to carry away a track of skin with its flight. Scooping the bandanna up from the ground and stuffing it into his belt, he yanked ou
t the knife with the other hand, watching the mass of horsemen break apart like oil dropped on water, a few moving off for each of the white men.
“Bass!”
Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the blond head, saw Solomon going to his knee beside Hatcher. Beyond them at the edge of the trees two forms flitted behind trees and turned. Fish was waving Titus on as soon as he had Jack rolled over. Scratch saw Hatcher move.
One of the pistols roared in that clearing. Whirling again in a crouch, Titus watched another horseman tumble backward off the rear flanks of his pony, heels over head into the grass.
“Scratch!”
For a moment he couldn’t see any of the rest and wondered where they were. Fish was struggling to hold Jack down as Hatcher thrashed on the ground, fighting Solomon to get his arm back to the arrow in his hip. Then another pistol barked from behind the tree just ahead. The horsemen were closing on them now as Bass reached Fish, throwing his weight against Hatcher as they rolled him onto his side.
“Get the—get the—”
With both hands clutching the arrow’s shaft. Fish brutally snapped it off—a loud and distinct crack in the midst of the war cries and the pony hooves and the shouts of the other white men somewhere in the trees beyond them. Hatcher’s back bowed up in sudden pain, and he thrashed his legs again wildly.
“You alive, Jack?”
In an instant Hatcher became still. His eyes were red, moist with pain as he stared up at Bass, grabbing for the front of Scratch’s shirt. “Eeegod! If this don’t hurt like hell!”
Fish turned from looking at the horsemen bearing down on them and bellowed, “Let’s get him outta here!”
Grabbing for Jack’s right arm, Scratch yanked the pistol from Hatcher’s grip. “Gimme this!”
“Don’t take it from—”
As his thumb raked back the large goosenecked hammer, finding it already at full-cock, Bass began his turn, there on his knees beside the other two. He found the closest, riding low alongside his pony’s neck, a long dark tube held out from his right hand.
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