As the weeks tumbled behind them, their animals labored under the growing weight of heavier and heavier packs of beaver. And though they occasionally came across sign of war parties moving this way and that up the Mussellshell or down through the Judith Basin, neither Bass nor McAfferty saw a single warrior. By late spring it was almost enough to make a man grow complacent, if not downright lazy.
With as warm and sunny as it had become that afternoon, Titus determined to move out of their new camp before slap-dark had descended upon the valley. At sunset he took up the big Mexican butcher knife they used in camp and stuffed it into the back of his belt. His rifle in one hand, his trap sack in the other, he nudged Asa with a toe.
“Goin’ out—set me some traps.”
McAfferty squinted into the afternoon light, then rubbed both eyes with his knuckles. “Ain’cha waiting till dark?”
He snorted. “We ain’t see’d a feather.”
“But we seen lots of sign up here this close’t the Missouri.”
“You’re like a mother hen,” Titus replied as he turned away. “It’s only bait sticks I’m cutting. Ain’t no Bug’s Boys gonna catch me out.”
Still wet from that afternoon’s thundershower, the tall grass and leafy brush soon soaked through his leggings and moccasins, beading on the long flaps of his thick wool capote. Constantly moving his eyes across the surrounding hills, looking for anything that shouldn’t be there, Scratch searched for a likely spot to cut his bait-and float-sticks. Plenty of green willow up and down the Judith—but where would he find a place concealed enough to work?
At the edge of the river he spotted the narrow sandbar that ran in a jagged strip from the bank toward the edge of the water, a damp piece of ground some thirty yards long. Up to his left the sandbar jutted against a sharp cutbank better than eight, maybe ten, feet high. And off to his right the cutbank fell away to nothing but a gentle slope as the grassy bank descended to the river’s edge.
Damn good place to cut his willow, peel it, and prepare his traps—all of it out of sight from the surrounding hills and meadows. A pretty spot, too, here as the light was beginning to fade and turn the rustling leaves to a deeper hue.
After clambering through the thick copse of willow and buckbrush, Titus dropped his heavy trap sack onto the edge of the sandbar and propped his rifle against it. Directly behind him hung a wide canopy of willow suspended over the edge of the cutbank. It was there he pulled the tomahawk from his belt and began to hack at the base of some of the thicker branches, tossing them into a pile near the trap sack. After he had nearly two dozen cut, Scratch turned back and squatted on the sandbar to begin peeling the first limb, slowly fashioning it into a bait-stick, sharpening its thicker end so that he could drive it into the bank just above a set he would make come morning. At the other end of the stick he used his knife and fingers to peel back layers until he had the limb fanned out for some three or four inches down the wand. The better to hold more of the “beaver milk” that would lure a curious flat-tail to drop one of its feet within the jaws of his trap.
Downstream … there among the willow along that gently sloping, grassy bank … maybe it was only the wind sighing.
But he waited. Glanced over at his rifle, and waited a moment more. Yeah, probably only the breeze rustling those branches up there.
He tossed the finished stick aside and picked up another, starting to hack off the small limbs and nubs with that big butcher knife. Peeling, stripping, peeling some more.
Of a sudden the hair stood on the back of his neck as the breeze shifted into his face and he frantically sorted out the meaning of that rank smell. Whatever it was, he scratched up a memory strong enough to trigger revulsion, then some growing fear. He kept clawing for the answer as he turned slightly, his right hand beginning to tremble—and that scared the hell out of him. Just to look down at the butcher knife and see it quaking.
Perhaps it was an Indian pony—this rank odor of dampness. Maybeso it might even be a damned Blackfoot he smelled on that hint of wind coming into his face, bristling the guard hairs on the back of his neck, stirring him to remember. Something like the fetid, putrid stench of bear oil smeared on a warrior’s skin, or the bear grease rubbed into his braids … a smell so suddenly recognizable as the red nigger rushed close enough to grapple with you—
With their snorts of surprise and curiosity, he watched them both lumber his way out of the willow. But the moment he fell back to his haunches and struggled to drag his legs back under him, the two grizzly cubs skidded to a halt, whirled ungainly, and bumped into one another, their eyes frightened of this big creature they had just discovered. And then they began to whimper.
A sure call for their mother.
So fast did the next few heartbeats thump within his chest—enough time for the sow to burst through the thick willow brush behind her cubs. Time enough for her to stick her nose into the breeze and size up the threat posed to her offspring. Time only for him to start scooting backward.
She shakily rose on her back legs, opening her massive jaws and rolling back her muzzle to expose those yellowed fangs dripping with foamy slobber.
Glancing at the rifle that lay between them, Bass got only to his knees in that instant the sow dropped to all four and heaved his way with a lurch. Shoving the butcher knife into his left hand with that half-peeled willow branch he was already holding, he yanked out his pistol and raked back the goosenecked hammer, getting it up in front of him just in time to blot out her snout as she opened that gaping maw and began to roar.
Wau-augh!
He felt the pistol buck in his hand as she was yanked up short—immediately swiping the arm and that tiny weapon aside as smartly as she would swat a troublesome mosquito, the pistol’s smoky bark buried beneath the terrible battle cry of a mother wronged and duty bound to protect her young. She brought that paw up to rub at the side of her jaw where the ball smashed through her face. Then gazed down at her enemy and grumbled something great and fearful at the back of her throat the moment she rocked back down onto all four and lumbered into motion.
In that final moment before she swatted him, and the pistol went wheeling into the willow, he remembered how the thick tufts of green grass exploded into the air as she sank each paw into the ground, how the glittering sand spurted from each foot in a golden cascading spray as she exploded toward him.
One powerful paw crashed over the rifle and the heavy trap sack as she scrambled past the cubs and closed on her prey—the open sack clattering across the wet earth, the rifle cartwheeling end over end toward the water lapping against the rain-dampened sandbar.
Wau-au-au-au-gh-gh-gh!
With her huge maw open and dripping with that terrifying roar, the sow bellowed the grizzly’s battle cry as she pounced upon Bass with such a powerful rage that she bowled both of them over, spilling them across the wet sand and into the tall grass like the large rawhide balls small Indian boys batted back and forth across the ground in their exuberant, youthful games.
He felt the sudden, hot tenderness at his back, rolling groggily onto an elbow, knowing she had caught him with a paw, raking him with one or more of her four-inch claws as she burst past him—