The man nodded, then motioned off to the north. “The general sent out riders to pass the word that he was getting close.”
“Close?” Hooks repeated, his voice rising a full octave in excitement.
That first rider nodded. “We figure him to be no more’n a few days out of Willow Valley.” Then he held out his hand to the tall, slab-shouldered Cooper. “I’m the general’s leader for this band. Name’s Fitzpatrick. Tom Fitzpatrick.”
That’s when the second rider stepped up to Tuttle, holding out his hand. “An’ my name be Jim Bridger. Outta Missouri.”
Now, that youngster couldn’t be a day over twenty, Titus thought as Bridger and Tuttle shook.
At that the last four riders sank to the ground, and the rest of the ten strode up among the rest, shaking hands all round with Cooper’s bunch.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus exclaimed, bent slightly at the waist to peer closely at the other man, his chin cocked in wonder, his hand suddenly frozen, stopped in midair between them. “You’re … you ain’t a negra, are you?”
“My pa was a Virginia landowner,” the man said without a hint of shame, glancing at his empty hand before dropping it to his side. “Fortune had it that my mother happed to be one of his slaves. I was borned out to the slave quarters … but my pa brung us both into the house after his first wife died.”
“Didn’t mean you no offense by nothing I said,” Scratch apologized, shamefaced and offering his hand out firmly before him. “Here. My name’s Titus Bass.”
The tall mulatto with Caucasian features and coffee-colored skin grinned warmly. “No offense taken. Name’s Beckwith. After my pa. You can call me Jim … Jim Beckwith, of Richmond County, Virginia. But I was brung up in the woods near St. Charles. You know where that is on the Missouri River?”
“St. Charles? Same village lays north of St. Louie?”
The tall mulatto nodded, sweeping both his hands down his dust-coated but colorful buckskins in that manner of a genteel horseman settling his clothing upon dismounting. Bass had him figured for a man who liked to cut a dashing figure here among the greasy, rough-shorn, ramshackle hellions he rode in with.
“My pa figgered to move west, so he brung Ma an’ me there back to O-nine.”
“Hell, I was still a Kentucky boy back then my own self.”
Beckwith stood at least six feet tall, perhaps a little more. He grinned, his kind eyes smiling. “Out there in that Lou’siana wilderness, I soon had me twelve brothers an’ sisters.”
Scratching at his beard, Bass replied, “Don’t sound like you’re no freedman neither.”
“No, I ain’t. Never needed freeing from my pa.”
“Knowed me a Negra once’t,” Titus said, remembering. “He was a freedman. But I never knowed what become of him.”
Beckwith explained, “No need bein’ a freedman: my pa and ma was rightfully married. Means I ain’t never been a slave.”
“Your pap was well-off, I take it.”
Shaking his head, Beckwith replied, “Nawww—we wasn’t wealthy, by no means … but my pa had him a good heart, an’ he made sure there was no question that his children was no slaves. Went himself off to a judge at court to declare my emancipation.”
Confused, Titus tried to repeat the word, “E- … e-man-see—”
“Means his pa told the world Jim here was a free man,” explained the thickset third rider as he came up and handed Beckwith the reins to a horse. “C’mon, Beckwith. We got us these critters to keer for—then we kin palaver all we want with these boys.”
The two weren’t a matching pair, by any means, it was plain to see. Whereas the one named Daniel Potts was short and beefy, trail dirty, besides being mud-homely to boot, the mulatto cut quite a figure compared to the rest, what with his colorful buckskins. He was tall too—the tallest there with the exception of Cooper himself—standing an inch or two over Bass and most of the others there on the prairie floor among Fitzpatrick’s brigade. And Beckwith affected a bit of the dandy: wearing his long black hair in a profusion of tight, well-kept braids that hung past his shoulders. As the mulatto started to turn aside with Potts, Titus decided he might just try one of those braids in his own long hair—as handsome as they were on Beckwith.
With a booming voice Fitzpatrick offered, “Say, Cooper—we have us two elk quarters along we’d offer to lay up by the fire for us all if’n that makes you fellas no mind.”
“Never make it a habit to turn down good meat,” Silas said. “Bring it on—we’ll likely chaw everything down to the bone this night!”
Most of the riders dropped their saddles, blankets, and packs onto the prairie near the quartet’s fire, then turned back to see to their horses. After rubbing down their saddle mounts with thick tufts of prairie grass, Potts strode up with his arm around Beckwith’s shoulder. Together they peered at Bass.
The stubby Potts asked, “Tell me something, mister—we look anywhar’ as dirty an’ bad off as the four of you scurvy niggers?”
Titus grinned, glancing down at his dusty, greasy, sweat-stained clothing. “I s’pose we do at that, Potts. Mayhaps even worse off.”
“Call me by my Christian name, will you? It be Daniel.”
“Sure—an’ my given name’s Titus.”
Tuttle broke in, slapping Bass on the back and saying, “But he’d sooner answer to his real handle.”
“What’s that?” Beckwith asked.
“Scratch,” Titus answered as Bud was getting his mouth open. “They give me the name Scratch some time back.”
The mulatto asked, “Was it skeeters?”
Titus shook his head. “Fleas.”
“Big’un’s too,” Tuttle said before he turned back to the fire, chuckling.
“Well, now—Scratch,” Potts said, looking wistfully over at the translucent blue of the Bear River nearby, its border of tall emerald willow in full-leafed glory. He slapped Beckwith on the back and declared, “Me an’ Jim here was cogitating that we’uns go find us a pool in that river yonder. Have us two a sit and a soak afore supper.”
The idea struck Scratch like a fine one indeed. Impulsively he asked, “You mind company?”
Potts grinned readily. “Why—no. Allays good for a man to have a new face and new ears once’t while. We both got stories Fitz, Frapp, and the other’n’s is tired of hearin’ … an’ I’ll wager you got a few tales to tell your own self.”
“Yeah!” Beckwith agreed. “Damn right we’ll all go have our own selves a sit in that cold river—either till we cain’t stand the cold no more, or we turn the water to mud!”
“Likely that Negra boy gonna turn the water to mud, Scratch!” Billy Hooks was suddenly nearby, laughing and wagging his head with cruel sarcasm. “But that brown-assed Negra still gonna be a Negra when he comes out’n that river—no matter how hard the black son of a bitch scrubs hisself!”
Beckwith was turning on his heel to start for Hooks when the strong and stocky Potts locked his friend’s arm and held the mulatto in place—at just the moment Bass stepped between the mulatto and Billy, staring Hooks in the eye.
“This man ain’t done nothing to deserve the talk you’re throwing at ’im, Billy.”
Hysterically laughing, Hooks said, “Just look at him, Scratch! Why, I cain’t hardly believe my own eyes. It’s a Negra—out in these here mountains!”
Potts growled, struggling to hold Beckwith, “He’s as good a man as any.”
“If Beckwith here ain’t the kind to walk away from the fight we had us with Blackfoot not long back,” Bridger interrupted them all as he hurried up purposefully, Cooper and Fitzpatrick both scrambling to stay with him, “then he sure as hell ain’t the kind to back off from no fight with you.”
“Fight?” Cooper repeated as he stepped between the two, grinning from ear to ear, raking his long beard with his fingers, and taking a measure of those standing with the mulatto. “There ain’t gonna be no fight here … will there, now, Billy?”