Each man to fear a stranger;
Whate’er the game, we join the chase,
Despising toil and danger.
And if a hearty foe annoys,
No matter what his force is,
We’ll show him that Kentucky hoys
Are alligator horses!
Him, a Kentucky boy. Just like Ebenezer Zane and Hames Kingsbury. Such as them was alligator horses. No, not Titus Bass—for he hurt too damn much.
His thoughts pulled his eyes to the rifle standing against a nearby tree. Within easy enough reach. And yonder lay the pistol with his shooting bag and possibles pouch. Then he looked at the sleeping forms. There in the middle lay the biggest, clearly the one who had pummeled and kicked him like no better than a bad dog. And then he looked back at the rifle, studied the pistol again. Two bullets. If he did it then and there, which one of those three should get the second lead ball?
When he pulled the trigger on Cooper, the rifle’s blast would bring the other two out of their blankets like the rising of the dead come Judgment Day. So which would it be? One would live—to be freed along with Bass from Cooper’s grip. And then the choice became clear.
His mouth went dry just thinking about it. Murder is what they called it back there, down out of these here mountains and back east. Murder was to take another man’s life while that man lay sleeping in his blankets.
Licking his cracked lips, Titus began to drag himself over toward the tree, wincing with the sharp pain in his ribs. It was good, he thought, biting his bottom lip to keep from groaning as he inched toward his weapons. Such pain reminded him why he would take the life of a sleeping man.
His fingers locked around the rifle at its wrist, there behind the hammer, then climbed to that part of the forestock repaired with rawhide after the battle with the Arapaho raiding party. Bringing it down to his lap, Titus thumbed back the hammer—finding the pan filled. No man would want to chance a misfire when he set out to murder someone the likes of Silas Cooper.
Snagging hold of the pistol, Scratch moved his other hand as far up the rifle barrel as he could. Arm outstretched, he planted the rifle at his side, then slowly began to rise on shaky legs, pulling himself up an inch at a time on the makeshift crutch that in moments would take another man’s life. A wave of nausea swept over him as he stood, rocking against the long barrel—he was so light-headed that his temples throbbed. Yet Scratch swallowed down that faint misgiving and stuffed the pistol in his belt.
The second would be Billy Hooks.
Of the two, only Tuttle might have enough misgivings about shooting Bass. Hooks would have to die.
He pursed his lips together forcefully, hoping to muffle his grunts of pain as he began to hobble toward the fire pit. Scattered on the far side lay the three of them. In a few moments there would be only one left … and he prayed Tuttle would realize that now he was free—
“Don’t do it, Scratch.”
That sharp whisper made him freeze, rocking there atop his rifle like a peg-legged crutch. Titus wasn’t sure in those seconds when he didn’t breathe, his eyes peering over the three forms, just which one had called out to him.
Then Tuttle slowly sat up. “I figger I know what you’re about to do, Scratch. But—killin’ him ain’t right.”
“You saw. He … he almost kill’t me.”
For a long time Tuttle just stared at Bass in that crimson-tinged darkness, his face grave in the low flames and shimmering coals of their fire, his eyes deadly serious. Then he finally spoke. “Them was his furs—his fair share, Scratch. The man could’ve kill’t you long time back. ’Stead, he took you on. You learned to trap, to live up here, and you kept your hair. You owe him.”
“The way you see it: I owe him.”
“That’s right,” Tuttle emphasized.
“Bet you owe him too.”
“I do—an’ that’s the devil’s gospel. For balls’ sake, Cooper’s saved my hash more’n I care to count. You owe him, same as me.”
“You got a gun on me, eh?”
After a long silence Tuttle quietly said, “I have.”
“I could kill him afore you took me, Bud.”
“But you won’t, Titus. I know you can’t. I know you see what he’s saying. You owe him your goddamned life. You won’t kill him ’cause you can’t take the life what give you back your own.”
Titus sighed long and deep, and, oh, how it hurt to fill his lungs like that. He tore his eyes off Tuttle and stared at the other sleeping form beneath its blankets.
“He right ’bout me goin’ under, Tuttle?”
“He saw to it you made yourself a trapper, Titus. Don’t figger you was a nigger what was gonna keep hisself alive out here when we found you.”
It was like lancing a festering, fevered boil … sensing that poison ooze out of him. Suddenly he felt as weak as a wobbly-legged, newborn calf.
Starting to turn away, pivoting on his rifle, Bass stopped and whispered, “You can put your gun down, Tuttle. The killin’ fever’s gone.”
“I’ll be here to mornin’ for you, Titus,” Bud replied. “Goin’ with you out to your sets like Cooper told me.”
He choked hard on the pain. “Don’ know if I can.”
“I’ll be with you ever’ step of the way.”
Titus sighed wearily, completing his turn, and began to hobble off to his blankets, sleepier than he could remember being in a long, long time.
“Get your rest, Titus Bass.”
That voice froze Scratch where he stood.
“Y’ll need your strength come sunup,” it said.
Slowly he turned his head, peering over his shoulder—finding Silas Cooper pulling the sawed-off, shortened smoothbore trade gun from beneath his blankets now, laying it in plain view atop his belly. It was one of the trophies he had claimed off the dead Arapaho warriors.
“You just learn’t me something more, didn’t you, Silas?”
“Mayhaps I did, Scratch. G’won now—get in your blankets.”
He did just that, painfully settling back atop that single buffalo robe Fawn had given him, a robe he had laid over some pine boughs in making his bed at this campsite. After pulling the blankets up to his chin, he stared across the fire at the chertlike eyes gleaming back at him in the glow of the red coals. Then Cooper closed them.
And all that glimmered was the dull-brown sheen of the barrel on that stubby trade gun filled with lead shot that likely would have cut him in half had things come down to it.
That’s twice now he could’ve damn well killed me, Titus thought as he rolled painfully to attempt finding a position comfortable enough to sleep.
He seen me coming for him, thinking him asleep—could’ve had me dead to rights.
… Mayhaps I do owe him.
Yet that hurt most of all. Owing your life not once, but twice … twice to the bastard you’ve wanted to kill more than any other man alive.
* * *
From the Sierra Madre range rising west of the Medicine Bows, they continued north over the western rim of the Great Divide Basin, north still until they dropped into the southern tableland of the Red Desert Basin, where they struck out due west with the setting sun as their guiding lodestone.
Picking their way day by day between the jutting escarpments and low, solitary peaks of that parched, striated desert, the four always kept in view those mountains far to the north where the Wind River was given its birth. After striking the Verde River,* Cooper led them angling northwest along its meandering course until they reached the mouth of the Sandy: It was there they crossed to the west bank and finally left the Verde behind, making for the low range of mountains that lay almost due west.