“We get beyond them hills,” Silas explained one evening in camp, “I was told we’d likely see Sweet Lake from a ways off.”
“Yup—that’s what we was told,” Hooks agreed, dragging the back of his dust-crusted hand across his parched mouth.
Titus figured Billy had him the whiskey hunger bad. That, or he needed a woman soon in the worst way. Then Bass looked over at Tuttle, and Cooper too. Ana finally peered down at himself. If they all didn’t look the sight!
Hats, faces, hands, and damned near every exposed inch of clothing, even their horses and pack animals, from nostrils to tail root—all of it layered with a thin coating of superfine dust. Beneath the high summer sun the pale talc seemed to cling tenaciously to the horses and the men because of the sweat that poured out of them from sunup to well past sundown every one of those lengthening days.
At what those early trappers called Sweet Lake,** to distinguish it from the bitter-tasting and immense inland lake they called the Salt Sea, lying not all that far to the southwest, Silas Cooper had been told by Ashley’s trappers that a man would have to decide upon one or the other of two courses from there on in to the rendezvous site. The southern route would lead them around the lakeshore until they were able to strike out. due west toward the last range of mountains they would have to cross before dropping into the Willow Valley.
Cooper chose to take them on the longer route, but one that was bound to be much easier on man and horse alike. At the north end of Sweet Lake they picked up the Bear River, named years before by a brigade of British Hudson’s Bay men, which they followed even farther north before it angled west, then quickly swept back again to the south, looping itself through some austere country dominated by lava beds, eventually flowing on around the far end of that tall range of mountains they might otherwise have had to cross.
“Damn easier going on these here animals,” Titus declared as they made camp that first evening after they had pointed their noses south along the course of the Bear River. Nearby was a soda spring from which bubbled bitter water.
“Don’t mind taking our time at it my own self,” Tuttle said as they unloaded the weighty packs, dropped them to the ground.
Next came the task of picketing the animals out to graze in the tall blue grama, where most of the horses chose to plop down and give themselves a good roll and dusting before beginning to fill their bellies on the plentiful salt-rich grasses. From night to night Tuttle and Bass rotated these tasks with Cooper and Hooks, who this evening were gathering wood, starting the cookfire, and bringing in water for their coffee.
“Lookee there, Bud,” Titus said, the hair standing on his arms as he slapped Tuttle on the back to get his attention. He pointed, his alarm growing. “You s’pose them to be Injuns?”
Tuttle squinted into the distance stretching far away to the north of them. “Don’t figger so. Lookee there—you can see them niggers is riding with saddles. Legs bent up the way they is. Only red-bellies I ever knowed of rode barebacked: legs and feet hanging low on their ponies.”
“Yeah, maybeso you’re right,” Titus agreed, peering into the shimmering distance as the sun secreted itself beyond the western hills. “Looks to be they got pack animals with ’em.”
Tuttle asked, “How many you make it?”
Bass counted them off silently, his lips moving as he did. “Least ten. Ten of ’em for sure.”
“We best us go tell Cooper and Billy we got folks coming in.”
Silas was a cautious one on occasions such as this, Scratch thought. But, then—it made sense that Cooper would be. After all, why shouldn’t a man who, without guilt or remorse, would take from another white man be suspicious that other white men might just ride on in and steal from him?
“Get your guns out and ready,” Cooper ordered the other three. “Leave ’em handy. Leave ’em for them niggers to see in plain sight if’n there’s to be trouble.”
Tuttle tried to tell him, “I’d care to set they only some of Ashley’s men goin’ to ronnyvoo—same as us, Silas.”
“Don’t matter none to their kind to leave the bones of us’ns to be picked clean by the buzzards right here … an’ take all our plews on in to ronnyvoo for themselves. Y’ think about that, Bud Tuttle—and then y’ tell me y’ don’t figger we ought’n be ready to keep what’s ours.”
So they stood spread out, the four did, as the ten approached at a walk. Then suddenly Cooper tore the wolf-hide cap off his head and waved it, whooping at the top of his lungs. It surprised Bass so much, he was scared for a moment—especially the next instant when Billy and Bud joined in, wheeling about to seize up their weapons as they cheered and hurrawed to the skies.
With the first whoop Titus lunged for his rifle, diving to crouch behind a pack of pelts where he would have some protection and a good rest for the weapon when the shooting started. He had no sooner taken cover than the ten riders began to screech and holler, pounding flat hands against their open mouths with a “woo-woo-woo,” and raised their rifles in the air.
The first of those long weapons boomed with a great puff of gray smoke. Cooper squawked like a raven in reply, pointing his own rifle into the sky, firing it just before a second rider shot his off.
“What the blue hell?” Bass hollered into the noisy tumult.
Billy turned slightly, raising his rifle over his head, aiming for the puffy clouds. “It’s a good sign, Scratch! Good medicine! They’s emptying their guns!”
“That there be a likely bunch of good coons, boys!” Silas hollered. “I see me a couple faces I could lay to being at last summer’s doin’s.”
In the end all but Bass had fired their rifles by the time the ten came close enough to plainly see the dust caked into the creases on the men’s faces. A double handful of bearded, dirty, sweat-soaked, hard-bitten men who brought their animals to a halt there among the four and peered down from the saddle with widening grins.
“Been follerin’ your sign for last three days, we have,” the first man spoke.
He had twinkling eyes and a good smile, Bass decided. Then Titus looked over to fix his study on the second rider: not all that old, really—but it seemed that he, like the first rider, also spoke for the others. Still, he had given the older man at his side the first say.
“Welcome, boys! Get down an’ camp if you’re of a mind to,” Cooper offered them all with a grand, sweeping gesture.
“Be much obliged,” that young second rider replied.
Immediately a third said, “Figger you fellas be hur-ryin’ on to ronnyvoos like us.” He had a round face, that sort of easygoing countenance that naturally put most men at ease. “Bound for the Willow Valley?”
“Ain’t no two ways of it!” Hooks cheered just before he turned back toward the fire and pushed the coffeepot closer to the flames. “Likker an’ women it’s gonna be for this here child!”
The second rider slowly eased out of the saddle, his damp flesh squeaking across the wet leather as he slid free. “We hear the general’s bringing him likker out this year.”
“Bound to be some shinin’ times,” the first rider agreed as he dropped to the ground.
Bass watched the older one take off his hat and slap it against his legs, stirring up a cloud of fine dust. He can’t be much older’n me, Titus thought. His hair hung long and brown, some of it fair, well-bleached by the sun. For sure the wrinkles were worn there around the eyes, and his skin had long ago turned a shade of oak-tanned saddle leather like all the rest. But there were no creases at the sides of his mouth—he couldn’t be a day over thirty, Titus figured.
Silas stepped up to the man, asking, “So your bunch making tracks to ronnyvoo now?”