“Close that son of a bitch,” Culpepper ordered. “Damn, but you let in all that cold so to make my bones ache.”
Slowly shoving the iron-hinged door back into its jamb, Bass returned to the half-log benches, where he rejoined the others.
After a long period of silence as the sergeant continued to stare at the flames, Clayton finally asked, “What you figure to see out yonder to the west what’s so all-fired important?”
“First off—I want to see me some buffalo.”
“Buffalo?” Culpepper exclaimed.
“That’s right. I been hankering on seeing them big beasts for about as long as I can remember.”
The sergeant prodded for more. “’Sides the buffalo, what else?”
“Them mountains,” Bass added. “I’ve heard me stories—”
“Me too,” Culpepper interrupted enthusiastically. “The way some fellas talk about them mountains being so this and so that, why—I figure what with all that unlordly talk, them fellers is full of shit right up to the bung!”
“I knowed me one what ought to know,” Titus explained. “He was a fur trapper in that upcountry—on the likes of the Bighorn and the Yallerstone.”
“Bighorn,” Clayton repeated wistfully. “Yallerstone too?”
“So what’d he have to say for hisself?” Culpepper demanded.
“Yeah,” Lancaster joined in, “what’d he tell you ’bout that country?”
“I figure them mountains gonna be something for a man to see.”
Lancaster leaned forward now, elbows on his knees. “Ain’t you seen mountains before, Bass?”
“If what Washburn tol’t me was the true: then all the mountains I’ve seen till now back east be nothing but foothills to them what lay out yonder.”
“Where you’re dead set on going,” Clayton observed solemnly.
Titus finally owned up, “I don’t figure I can rest till I do.”
A doubtful Lancaster prodded, “Once you do, what then?”
“If’n I like ’em—I plan to stay on.”
“Doin’ what?” Culpepper asked.
“Trapping beaver.”
“So you’re for sure a fur man, are you?” Clayton inquired. “We hear most of them fur men what go upriver don’t ever come back down, leastwise with their hair still on. Them I hear what does come back got ’em lots of ghosty stories to tell of that country and the Injuns running things out there.”
Rising to his feet again, Titus bristled at the challenge. He boasted, “I ain’t scared of them mountains, not the Injuns neither. And I damn well don’t believe in no man’s ghosty stories. I’ve heard my share of windbags and Sunday-blowers to know what to lay stock in and what not. Can’t think of a damned thing gonna turn me aside from what I’ve been fixing on doing for a long time now.”
“Where you headed?” Clayton inquired as the civilian turned away from the trio.
Grumpily he said, “Off to my blankets.”
“But the night’s still early, Bass!” Culpepper cheered.
Titus stopped and turned to explain, “Not when I’ve got more miles to put under me tomorrow. If it’s all the same to you fellas, I’ll make me my bed right over here where I dropped my truck.”
“Anywhere you lay your head be fine by me,” Clayton declared. “Just as long as you don’t settle down on the spot there in the corner where you see I laid me my tick and blankets.”
No matter that there were only four of them in that whole fort—Titus Bass still felt cramped.
By the time the sky grayed, he was already wide-eyed and awake, anxious to be gone from this place. To go at last where he would be troubled by no man, rubbed against, and questioned. Maybeso to leave white folks behind wouldn’t be all that bad for a while.
Then Bass worked hard to think back on the last time he had been truly on his own. More than a decade it had been since the Mississippi flatboat crew had set him afoot on the west bank of the river, where he had taken off north to St. Louis—alone until he came across Able Guthrie’s barn and that warm, inviting hay where he lay his weary self down. Even longer still since he had run off from home and spent those first nights in the woods on his own. Alone and growing all the hungrier until he presented himself at Ebenezer Zane’s night fire, joining the pilot’s Kentucky boatmen.
Two of the soldiers snored close by in the thinning darkness. Each of them grumbling, gurgling, snorting at times. This fort room smelled damp with the seepage from last night’s rain. The timbers grown sodden and dank. How well he knew places like this took on a rank smell after man had been there too long.
Titus sat up quietly and pulled aside his blankets. After dragging on his old boots he slipped from the door, leaving it partially open rather than make more noise in closing it. From side to side he dodged the patchwork of puddles in the open compound left by last night’s rain, then passed by the tall, forlorn fur-press when he saw the Indian pony turn at the sound of his approach. The mare raised her head and stomped a hoof expectantly as well.
Aswirl with moisture, the air felt heavy to breathe here in the moments just before dawn. Light drops fell to prick the surface of each puddle and rut as he untied both orses from their hitching rings and moved off toward the gate. There he dragged aside the heavy wooden hasp and heaved back on one side of the gate until it swung open wide enough to let him slip out with the animals.
The goatsuckers were still out in the graying light, winging this way and that over the tall grass that stretched endlessly toward the timber on three sides of the stockade: several different species of birds that fed on moths and gnats—whippoorwills and nighthawks mostly, all swooping, diving, and feeding here in the cold, damp dawn.
Following a well-worn footpath, Titus led the two horses away from the walls toward the timber south of the fort. After two hundred yards he found the spring Lancaster had described. He released the animals and went to his knees, rocking forward over the surface of the water, where he could lap its cold with his tongue. Renewed, and anxious to be done with his leaving, Titus stood and waited for the horses to finish.
Sergeant Clayton had Lancaster working corn mush into cakes by the time Bass returned. Culpepper sat by the fireplace, feeding the flames and heating a skillet in which he was melting bear lard to fry their breakfast.
“You wasn’t about to run off without something in your belly, was you?” Lancaster asked, dragging his fingers down into a wooden bowl and emerging with more of the soggy cornmeal he began to pat between his palms.
“What’s for breakfast?”
The sergeant looked at Bass with astonishment, saying, “Here I thought you told us you wasn’t a breakfast man.”
Drinking in the fragrances with a deep breath for a moment, he found the three of them looking expectantly at him. “S’pose I’ll take time this morning,” Titus replied. “Seeing how this be the last morning I figger to be eating with white folks for some time to come.”
“A apple tart with hot buttered rum sauce,” Culpepper spoke right out of the blue.
“What the hell you talking about?” Lancaster grumbled at the rounder man.
With a shrug, the big-bellied soldier said, “Just sitting here thinking of what I’d like to have me a taste of.”
Clayton set the piggin of water on the plank table with a clatter. The small pail was made with stave wood: that hardwood used to make thin-shaped strips set edge to edge to form a small bucket or barrel. He asked, “A apple tart, is it?”