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?”
For an instant Bass let his eyes flick to Tuttle, then to Hooks, and finally back to Cooper with the full realization. “That’s r-right, Silas. A’tween only you an’ me.”
Cooper grinned, that crooked, one-sided smile, big and broad. He looked down at the rifle in his hand, then slowly squeezed on the trigger, lowering the hammer. “Billy.”
Hooks came up as Cooper held the rifle back at the end of his arm. Billy took it from him.
“Bud.”
“Yeah, Silas.” Tuttle stepped forward obediently too, receiving the shooting pouch Cooper pulled over his head without taking his eyes off Titus.
“Now, Scratch,” Silas began, his voice gotten strangely quiet, his eyes narrowing as his iron-strap jaw set firmly in that black beard that reached the middle of his chest. “What y’ gotta say to me, face-to-face? Man to man?”
“Found some of m-my furs in your packs,” Titus repeated, watching Cooper take a step closer.
God, how the man seemed to tower over him. Cooper possessed shoulders wide enough to carry the span of a hickory-ax handle with room to spare.
“Them’s my furs, Titus,” he said, all but in a harsh whisper, taking another yard-long step closer to Bass.
Scratch wanted to back up that same distance. Maintain that much room between him and the big, chisel-faced man. “Had my mark on alla them.”
“Un-uh. All of ’em got my letters on ’em, Titus. Or ain’t y’ ever l’arn’t to read, son?”
“I can read good as most any man,” he said, his throat gone parched as Cooper came another long step closer. Easing in like a cat ready to pounce on a mouse. Toying. Playing.
This time Cooper’s voice had less of a mocking tone, more of an edge. “So what’d y’ read, greenhorn?”
“Saw wh-where you scratched over my letters … put your own letters on my hides.”
Suddenly Silas snapped his shoulders back, enjoying how that made Bass flinch. He grinned again. “But them ain’t your hides, nigger.”
“I catched ’em, Silas.” Titus wanted one of the others to say something, sure they knew, certain they realized the theft.
“They’re mine, Scratch.”
Bass shook his head slowly, daring that brave gesture as he watched the black cloud cross the big man’s face. His stomach growled with dread as he coughed loose the words, “Them’s my plews, Cooper.”