“That back there be Buffalo Pass,” Cooper announced near twilight of that ninth day as they reached a meadow where the snow had blown clear on the lee side.
“You been up there afore?” Titus asked.
“We have,” Tuttle answered, flicking a glance at Cooper. “But we ain’t ever come this way.”
Turning to Cooper, Titus inquired, “How’d you know what the pass is called?”
“Only know cause I just named it,” Silas admitted. “Look for yourself.”
The three others turned to look up behind them as the gray clouds were beginning to drop, hurrying in to obscure the high granite formations that marked the very trail they had made across the saddle. Stark against the darkening clouds lowering on the pass was one formation in particular that from this side appeared to closely resemble a buffalo bull’s head—horns, chin whiskers and all.
“Buffalo Pass, it be, Silas,” Tuttle agreed as he clambered to the ground, stood a moment rubbing life back into his cold knees and thighs, then started to trudge back to the pack animals. “Scratch, you and Billy get some rope strung out in them trees for a corral, an’ I’ll bring in the cavvyyard.”
“Cawy … cawyyard?” Bass repeated.
“The remuda,” Billy said with that impish grin of his. “The horses … our herd, you idjit!”
“Cawyyard,” Titus repeated again, liking the feel of it on his tongue. “I ain’t never heard it called such—and you called it something else?”
“A remuda.”
“Yeah,” he said. “A remuda.”
“Billy’s picked up all he could of that greaser talk,” Cooper explained.
Hooks defended himself. “Some of them greaser words I really took a shine to, Silas.”
Cooper sneered. “That’s all them greasers good for, Billy—an’ don’t y’ forget it.”
Billy leaned close to Titus, saying, “Silas don’t like him them greasers down south in the Mexican Territory. We run onto a few of ’em trapping with American boys outta the greaser settlements a time or two—so Silas come to hate them people more ever’ time we bump into ’em.”
As he walked past with a horse at the end of each arm trailing behind him, Tuttle said, “Maybeso that’s why this is about as far south as we ever go nowadays, don’t you figger, Billy?”
“Silas’s medicine tells him we best stay in the country somewheres atween the Blackfoots and the greasers,” Hooks continued as Titus tied off one end of a long rope to one of the trees, then began to play out the rope to another tree.
As he wrapped the weathered hemp rope around the tree once, then moved off for the next, Bass inquired, “What’s up there in that north country make a man wanna get troubled by them Blackfoots anyway, Billy?”
“Beaver,” Hooks replied.
“For balls’ sake—big beaver!” Tuttle added as he finished tying off the second horse to the first section of their rope corral.
Cooper moved past with two horses and said, “The biggest beaver a man ever lay his eyes on.”
“That’s it?” Titus asked.
Stopping, Silas regarded Bass a moment, then added, “Beaver big enough—ever’ last one of ’em seal fat an’ sleek, so fine that a man might damn well risk his own hair just to lay down his traps in that country.”
“Three Forks: my, my,” Hooks commented with a cluck of his tongue.
“Fine country,” Tuttle agreed.
“Country just crawling with Blackfoot niggers—yessirreebob,” Hooks replied.
On his way past Titus to fetch another pair of the animals, Cooper slapped Bass on the back of the shoulders. “Maybeso that’s where we’ll take Scratch here come next winter.”
“Blackfoot country?” Titus repeated. How the name of that land ignited images of a forbidden land.
“Beaver pelts nigh big as blankets,” Tuttle said. “Just big enough to bury a man in when those red niggers lift his hair!”
“Bud’s a might squampshus, you understand,” Cooper declared. “He h’ain’t much a trapper, so it don’t seem worthwhile to go up to that country and stick his neck out for the prime beaver.”
“Prime beaver,” Billy repeated in a shrill voice. “Beaver just calling out, ‘Yoohoo! Come an’ get me Bud Tuttle!’ Then ’nother beaver cross the stream hollers out, ‘No, Bud Tuttle—come an’ get me!’ Pretty soon all them beavers is scrapping and fighting so hard to be the one what gets catched in Bud’s trap that the poor nigger never does catch him very many!”
“Sometimes, Billy Hooks,” Tuttle growled, his face flushing with anger, “you’re nothing more’n lucky. A lucky son of a bitch for what little brains you got left, what little ain’t already poured out your bunghole.”
“I may not be smart as you, Bud—but I’m sure as hell a better trapper’n you’re ever gonna be!”
“Right now all I want out o’ the two of you is for all you boys go drag in some timber—since you finished stringing up our corral, Billy.” Silas jumped into the argument as he brought up the last two horses. “Hush up your yammerin’ and get us plenty of wood. It’s fixin’ to get dark on us real quick.”
Tuttle strode up with the last of the mules in tow, asking, “How long you figger afore we’ll make it down to Park Kyack, Silas?”
“The north park? Why, lookee down there, Bud—an’ the rest of you. There it lay. Park Kyack.”
Hook wheeled about on his heel, his smile broadening. “Kyack? Down yonder’s where we’ll winter up with the Yutas?”
Cooper nodded. “That’s right, Billy. Y’ know what that means, don’cha?”
Leaping into the air with a wild, whirling, primal dance, Hooks shook and trembled like an old dog whose master had just returned home from a long, long journey. “Means womens! Womens! And more womens!”
That night Titus tossed in his blankets, unable to warm himself enough to escape the deliciously tempting dreams that flitted about the broken pieces of what shattered sleep he could capture.
Everywhere he looked, it was black. Up, down, and in all directions—then he realized he was floating in the water as black as the sky, stretching far, far to the horizon, where it touched the black sky and they became one. Only when Titus moved his arms to keep himself afloat did the starshine ripple across the surface of the water … then she was there.
Amy slowly pushed her way toward him across the black starlit water rippling in front of her as she slowly flung her arms out to stroke. As she drew ever closer, he could even see her bare feet break the surface now and again as her long legs kicked and paddled. Her shoulders bare and glistening with the water. Her white neck so long, and her dark hair strung out behind her. Then he saw a hint of the flesh at the tops of her breasts as they broke the surface, side to side with each stroke as she came closer, closer.
Waiting for her, Titus could feel his flesh harden, stiffen, lengthen—knowing that she was coming to him here in their secret pond. Here where they met to satisfy their great hunger.
Anxious, he reached out his arms to Amy—ready to draw her to him, to lift her up, then urge her down on the throbbing flesh between his legs … but as he strained to reach for her, she took a breath and disappeared beneath the surface.
“Titus,” a gentle voice called out to him over his shoulder, so close he could almost feel the woman’s breath on his skin. “Titus Bass.”
He turned from the ripples where Amy had disappeared to watch Marissa Guthrie drawing close, stopping there on the edge of the bank, stalks and flecks of hay cluttering her hair the way it always had when they had savagely coupled in the loft of her father’s barn there south of St. Louis.
“Oh, Marissa—it is you!” he heard himself exclaim, heart hammering, beginning to paddle for her.