Unlike their grandfathers had ever done back east, men of this new breed would live their simple existence permanently in the mountains—but without a permanent base. Such rootlessness, such unending wandering, suited this new breed just fine.
This was the dawn of a glorious era.
The mountain man had been born.
Two days after the last brigade pulled out, the morning breeze brought Titus the noise of snorting ponies being rounded up from the far meadows, driven in by pony-boys … the squawking orders of the women tearing buffalo-hide covers from lodgepoles, lashing travois together, and bundling every possession for the coming journey. In what seemed like a matter of minutes, the village was no more and the cavalcade was on its way north.
“Shoulda tasted y’ one, Scratch.”
Titus, watching the Shoshone depart, turned as Cooper and Hooks came up to stand by him. Billy had that indolent, contented look Scratch had come to recognize their winter with the Ute—the look he got when his belly was full, there was no work to be done, and his pecker was well satisfied.
Titus looked at Silas. “Tasted what?”
Cooper licked his lips. “Them Snake gals. Prime poontang—ain’t they, Billy?”
As soon as Silas jabbed him in the ribs, Hooks giggled. His bloodshot-red eyes widened momentarily in remembrance. “Prime. Yessirreebob! Prime poon!”
“Hell, even Bud went off to the Snake camp and dipped his quill in some gal’s inkpot. Didn’t y’, Tut?”
“Ever’ man’s got him a right, Silas,” Tuttle replied smugly. “Ain’t none of us had no women since winterin’ with them Utes.”
“’Cept Titus Bass here his own self.” Silas slung an arm around Bass’s shoulders. “How come you didn’t drop y’ one of them bang-tail Snakes, Scratch? Still fancy that Ute widder?”
For a moment he studied the marble-eyed Cooper. Then Bass slowly unleashed himself from the long, muscular arm. “When you fixing on us to pull up pins and set off?”
A brief look of consternation crossed the tall man’s face. “Say, boys—sounds to me like Scratch here got him a hard-on for one special gal.”
“Yup, it do,” Hooks agreed. “Yessirreebob—a hard-on for one special Ute gal, Silas. Must be real sweet on her.”
Titus glared up at Cooper. “We going today?”
“Why so all-fired ready to trot, pilgrim?”
“There’s miles to put behind us and beaver to trap when we get there.”
It took a moment, but Silas finally grinned a rotten-toothed smile. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “Maybeso that’s why this here greenhorn nigger gonna make a better trapper’n either of you boys.”
“I ain’t no greenhorn no more, Silas.”
Cooper looked him down, then up again. Then the man’s dark eyes slowly went to the horizon where the Shoshone were disappearing beneath a distant cloud of dust. “No—I s’pose y’ ain’t no more at that, Titus Bass.” When his red-rimmed eyes came back to Scratch, they were filled with a begrudging admiration. “Y’ve made a right respectable trapper outta yourself.”
It was closer to praise than anything he’d ever gotten from his pap. Titus swallowed hard, wanting his words to come out even. “Good as you, Silas?”
“Almost,” Cooper conceded. “But y’ ain’t good as me yet. Till that day y’ are, best y’ hang in with us.”
He finally let himself breathe as Silas stepped away, back toward the shade of the tall cottonwoods where the leaves rattled and the flies buzzed. The way it felt, that was about as good a fragment of praise as he was ever going to get, Bass figured.
“You figger we can pull out come morning, Silas?”
Cooper did not speak again until he settled on his blankets and robes, cocking an elbow beneath his head as he sank back onto his saddle. “I s’pose since there ain’t no more of that goddamned Ashley’s likker … and them Snakes has took off with all the spread-leg wenches in this here country … we might just as well see how the country looks up to the Bighorn.”
Scratch’s heart skipped a beat. “Maybeso we go all the way to … the Yallerstone?”
Silas grinned. “Why—don’t tell me y’ heard about the Yallerstone all the way back to St. Lou?”
“I did. Word was it was good beaver country!”
For the moment Cooper appeared interested. “A place where a man might winter up?”
Bass hurried into the patch of shade, kneeling near the other three. “If a man’s to winter up, Silas—might’s well be in country where the spring trapping is its best.”
“Awright, Scratch,” the strap-jawed Cooper eventually replied. “Let’s us just go see for our own selves that there Bighorn country y’ heard so much spoke of.”
Hannah snorted downstream.
High and wheezing.
A sound he’d never before heard come from the mule.
In his chest his breath froze like a chunk of January river ice. Scratch nearly choked trying to swallow down the thumping of his heart.
Then the mule bawled.
Like he was shot out of a cheap Indian-trade fusil, Bass flung the trap onto the bank and lunged out of the stream … but slipped back into the icy water. Angrily flinging himself against the bank again, he dragged his weight onto the frost-slickened grass by jabbing the sharpened float-pole into the ground, then throwing a leg up and onto the slippery ground, and finally seizing hold of the branches of fiery-red willow recently kissed by autumn’s cold breath.
Grunting and grumbling in his exertions, Bass made enough noise to scare half the beaver for miles around right on out of the country.
Filling one hand with the fullstock Derringer rifle leaning against that red-leafed willow, Titus bent low without missing a step, his left hand sweeping up the camp ax from the ground where it rested among the heap of long float-sticks and the rest of his square-jawed traps.
Now he heard a grunting roar. Weren’t the mule. But: Hannah answered in kind—braying for all she was worth.
Shards of pinkish light exploded before him as he slashed his way through the tall brush that climbed more than two feet over his head—his frantic race causing hoarfrost and icy particles to cascade into the new day’s rosy light.
Another grunt, followed by a throaty and repeated snort as that new sound faded. Then Hannah kee-rawed with as close to a plaintive call for help as he’d ever heard a mule make. Not in all those years wrestling mules into harness, those hours spent behind both a plow and some mighty powerful rear haunches, his youth wasted struggling against stubborn, pigheaded animals … could he remember hearing a mule make a desperate plea quite like that.
His moccasins slipped and slid as he dived this way and that. Spilling in his haste, Bass crashed to the hard, frozen ground on one knee and that hand clutching the rifle. Swearing under his breath, only a puff of frost broke his lips as he sprang up and lunged forward again—with his heart high in his throat as he cleared the last of the thick willow … and onto the strip of open ground at the border of the shadowy timber not yet touched by that single finger of sunlight creeping down the side of the frosty bowl.
Sliding to a stop, he brought the rifle down across the left wrist that held the ax. Quickly dragging his thumb back across the frizzen and hammer to assure that it was at full-cock, Bass jerked to the left.
Hannah stood upstream, pulling hard against the long lead rope he had tied around her ears and muzzle like a halter. Yanking with all she had in her, Hannah’s eyes were about as wide as his mam’s fancy-dinner saucers, her powerful rear haunches bent and that rump of hers nearly swaying on the ground as her hooves dug up deep furrows in a frantic bid to free herself from danger. Again and again she flailed her head side to side, lashing herself to escape the hold of the rope, where he had left her knotted to a tree with enough line that she could leisurely crop the dead, frozen grasses there at the border of the timber.