Then she stretched up over him like a big cat, pushing him back upon their bed, finally arching herself out to full length atop him, her mouth finding his. The taste of her, wild with red meat simmered until tender with those dried leaves she harvested last summer—again his heart sang with happiness that he had taught her to kiss him back. Their mouths sucking, drawing, savoring one another’s as his hands stroked down that concave valley at the small of her back, then rising onto the rounded knoll of her bottom. Fingertips played over the fleshy fullness of her hips only briefly before his hunger drove him to push her off to the side where he could lick and suck on her breasts, running a hand down to that warm delta where she already grew moist.
Ready for him on this, their one last night.
Titus rose above her slowly, then suddenly descended as an animal would pounce while Fawn, the woman, pulled him into her feverishly, fingernails digging like puma’s claws, laying claim to the muscles of his back.
There in the red glow of the fire’s dying, he wordlessly spoke his good-bye in the one language he was sure she understood—for it was, after all, the same language they had spoken all winter long and into the coming of spring to these high places.
That language of need. Unspoken words that acknowledged you were taking what you needed from another and in return giving back what you thought the other needed most from you. A ferocious hunger there in the dark as the fire slowly went out.
Having dozed fitfully beside her that last night, morning came slowly—in some ways not soon enough; in others too long in the coming. When he turned to lift the buffalo robe gently, he found her already awake. She pulled at his wrist, turning Bass toward her so one hand could reach up to touch his face, the other slipping down to encircle the flesh that hardened with the barest of her touch.
She deserves this, he told himself as he mounted her. She deserves so much, much more than I can give her. So it was that he took his pleasure as she took hers from him, one last time.
And even before his heartbeat had slowed, he rolled from her and slipped from beneath the buffalo robes. Reaching first for his tradewool breechclout, Titus next pulled on the leggings, then yanked the shirt down over his head. He was aware of how she watched his every move as he bent to tie on his moccasins.
“I will miss your shadow in my lodge, Me-Ti-tuzz.”
“Come outside to say good-bye to me,” he said, his back to her still, not brave enough to look at her yet, afraid he would too easily respond to the plaintive sound in her voice.
“I will dress and bring the boy.”
After buckling the wide belt around his coat, Titus pushed back the antelope hide Fawn used for a door cover and blinked with the first light of the coming sunrise. From their rope corral he retrieved Hannah, along with his saddle horse and one more pack animal, taking them all to the lodge, where he tied the three to a nearby aspen beginning to show the first signs of budding. Back and forth between the lodge and the mule Bass hefted what he had left in the way of pack goods, then finally his season’s catch: those stiffened round beaver hides lashed together in hundredweight bales.
It was plain as sun that his animals were anxious, restive, eager to go at last. Somehow they knew this was not to be just another hunting trip—no, not with all three of them going. No, the loads Bass secured to their backs, were too heavy to these trail-wise animals. This departure would mean they would not be returning to this place.
“Howdy, Titus!”
Bass turned to find Tuttle walking up in his well-greased dark-brown buckskins.
Bud pointed behind him at his animals picketed at a nearby lodge. “All loaded, I am.” Some of his sandy-brown hair hung down over his eyes, poking from beneath the wolverine-hide cap he had fashioned for himself. “You ready to pull out?”
“Just ’bout,” he replied. “Where the others?”
“They’s loading up,” Tuttle answered. “Light enough to ride, so Silas sent me to fetch you up.”
Just then Bass heard the movement of the lodge door against the taut, frozen lodge skins and turned. Fawn emerged into the cold morning, holding the young boy on her hip. She set him down on the cold ground, where he stood unmoving, clutching her leg and watching the two white men, little puffs of frost at his lips.
“I’ll catch up with you in just a bit,” he said, his eyes coming back to look at Tuttle. “Gonna say my farewells.”
Bud nodded. “Don’t be long, Scratch. Less’n you’re fixin’ to pack that squaw along for your wife—best you just kiss her, pat her on her sweet ass, and tell her thankee for warming your robes last winter … then turn around, never look back, an’ be done with it.”
Bass grimaced with the sudden, cold feel those words gave his belly. Not that he hadn’t been the sort to just run off and leave the first gal he’d ever poked. Not that he wouldn’t have run away from the Ohio River whore neither—but Abigail had beat him to the door. And then there’d been Marissa … the hardest one to leave, because he had come to realize that if he didn’t run when he did, he’d be there still.
No, by Jehoshaphat—Titus Bass was no innocent, white-winged angel when it came to running off and hurting folks’ feelings bad. But—just to hear Tuttle put it all to words the way he had, why … it gave a man pause to look back at the thoughtless things he’d done in the past, the sort of things a real man wouldn’t have done.
Bristling at Tuttle, angry with himself for more than he cared to admit right about then, Titus snapped, “Said I’d be along, Bud. I won’t be no time a’tall.”
“S’awright by me,” Bud replied with a slight shrug. “Just bear it to mind Silas ain’t one to be waiting on no man.”
“If’n he’s set on leaving ’thout me, he can go right ahead,” Bass said. “I’ll be on your backtrail shortly.”
Bass watched Tuttle turn away without another word, heading back to midcamp, where more and more people gathered in a growing congregation around Cooper and Hooks as the sun’s light continued to creep on down the side of the mountain toward the shadowy valley where the village sat.
Bass sighed, as if steeling himself before he turned round to look at her for the last time. When he did, Bass found Fawn staring at the ground. Only the boy gazed up at him. So much like Amy’s younger brothers and sisters—they reminded him—the wee ones who watched older folk with wide, questioning eyes that bored right through to the core of a person.
As he came to her, Fawn raised her face to him, cheeks wet. For a moment he started to stammer; then, in frustration, Bass quickly looped his arms about her shoulders and clutched her tight. The feel of her tremble within his grasp was almost more than he could bear.
Why the hell hadn’t he just saddled up and gone before she ever awoke? he asked himself. Like he’d done before? Damned sight easier that way.
She quivered against him as she said, “My husband rode away one morning. He never came back.”
That made him angry—then immediately sorry that his back hairs had bristled. She had every right to speak her heart.
“Fawn, I am not your husband.”
Finally she admitted, “You are right. You come here for the winter. Now spring winds blow you on down the trail.”
“You knew when I came—”
“Yes, I knew,” she interrupted, squeezing her arms about his waist. “I … I did not count on letting my heart grow so fond of you.”
“It is because you are so lonely,” Bass explained, gazing down at the child. White Horse looked up at the two of them in wonder.