Scratch felt the hair prickle at his neck. It sounded to him as if Asa were saying he wanted to die in a bad way. “So you ain’t afraid, are you?”
“No, 7 go the way of all the earth,’” McAfferty answered.
“I’m gonna miss the good times we had, Asa,” he admitted quietly. “And I’ll likely think back on all them scrapes we had us too. I thank you for saving my hide, more’n once you saved me.”
“There comes a time for all of us to go our own way,” the white-head said. “There comes a time when we see our end and no longer are afraid, Mr. Bass.”
“You’re not afraid of dying neither?”
“‘And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.’ I’m not afraid of the Blackfoot. They become my people, here in my latter days,” McAfferty replied. “’And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army.’”
Wagging his head in exasperation, Bass stammered, “I’m t-trying to understand what it is pulling you up there, Asa. Up north to Blackfoot country. All this talk about your final days, and not being afraid to dSie—”
“The ways of the Lord are mysterious ways. We are not meant to question, or understand. A man is only meant to follow the hand of the Lord.”
“Will I see you come ronnyvoo in Willow Valley?” Scratch asked as Hatcher and his men came up to stand near McAfferty’s horses.
“If it’s God’s will and I got my hair—I’ll be in Willow Valley next summer,” Asa said, taking up the long rawhide rein to his horse. “If it’s God’s will, Mr. Bass.”
The white-head swung up into the saddle, then held down his hand to each of those who stepped up in turn to shake with him. In the end he put his hand out to Scratch.
Bass shook, saying, “I truly hope you find what you’re looking for up there in Blackfoot country, Asa.”
With a smile he replied, “I don’t think there’s a way I could fail to find what I’m going up there for. If God allows, I’ll see you next summer so I trust you’ll fare well till then.”
Letting go his grip on Scratch’s hand, McAfferty took up the long lead to the first packhorse, clucked his tongue, and gave heels to his saddle mount, reining away from the cottonwood grove, the other animals clattering behind him. Stepping out into dawn’s dim light themselves, they watched the white-head lope away for a few minutes until he slowly faded out of sight, gone downriver, riding for the far hills.
“Man’s in a hurry to be gone from here, ’pears to me,” Rufus exclaimed.
As they all turned back to their campsite, Hatcher said, “He’s damn well got him somewhere to be, fellas. That’s for certain.”
“Wish I was the sort what could figger folks out,” Bass admitted, still staring after McAfferty even though he could no longer see the distant figures. “Sometimes what I know a man is keeping from me gets in my craw and eats at me for not knowing.”
Later that morning Jack came to a halt where Bass was finishing his work lashing the last bundle atop his pack animals. “Ye’re still bound for the Judith?” he asked.
“Good trapping, that country,” Scratch had answered as he tied off the last knot, knowing the saddest of moments had arrived. “If I keep my head and don’t let no roaming Blackfoots know I’m about—I’ll hang on to my hair.”
Hatcher had stepped up, opening his arms wide, seizing Titus within his bony embrace. “You’ll damn well watch over what ye got left for hair, won’cha?”
He heard a sob thicken the sound of Jack’s words. It made his own heart rise in his throat as he squeezed Hatcher fiercely, fiercely. “I’m prideful of my purty hair, Mad Jack. It’s gonna be long and gray afore you’ll ever think of seeing it hanging from any warrior’s lodgepole.”
One by one he had hugged the others, slapped them each on the back and promised to buy them a drink come whiskey time in Willow Valley, come the summer of thirty-one. But for now the rest were headed west, and he felt the Judith pulling him north once more. As if that country might become as much his as he had come to love the Bayou Salade.
Jack stepped close and held up his hand after Bass was in the saddle. For a long moment Hatcher was silent before he finally spoke. “Yers is a damned ugly scalp anyway, Titus Bass. Not a warrior wuth anything a’tall gonna wanna take yer poor scalp.”
“You flea-bit, broke-down, crow-bait of a buzzard.” Bass shook heartily one last time, then flung Hatcher’s hand down with a wide smile and waved to them all. “You ain’t got no room to talk about just who’s got the worst case of the uglies! You boys watch your backtrail now! I’ll see you come summer!”
A painful memory, recalling how he rode off for the north, how he had turned in the saddle that one last time to look behind him, finding the six of them still standing. How they had all raised their arms and some had waved hats … it again brought that dry clutch high in his chest here beside the Yellowstone, two moons later.
But he had a cache to finish before he could push on for the Judith. To find a certain sandbar. And there to make medicine.
The sort of medicine a man could make only when he was truly alone. Truly on his own at long, long last.
23
How good were those last hot days of summer to think back upon now that winter had clamped its jaws tight upon this land. Those days that he rode out the long hours from well before sunrise until twilight squeezed down until nothing but starshine fell from the sky. Even the cool rainy days of autumn when he had turned back from the Mussellshell to dig his cache near the Yellowstone would have felt far better than this marrow-numbing cold.
Up ahead beneath the aching winter blue of the clear sky, he recognized that bulk of those hills as they tumbled down toward the valley of the Judith.
“Looks like we found it, girl!” he flung his voice back to Hannah, eager to share his mounting anxiousness with another. “Maybeso we’ll make camp up yonder for the night.”
For days now it had felt as if it were the thing to do: locate the place where he and Asa had camped late last spring as they’d worked their way north to the Missouri River—the site where for days McAfferty had ministered to his wounds, sewn up the worst of them on his hip and back with those short strips of buffalo sinew and downy tufts of beaver felt, then through day and night nursed Scratch back to health with bone broth and broiled bits of meat.
It hurt to think about his old friend, pained him to wonder just what it was that lured a man into Blackfoot country all on his own—to go where certain death waited, go where few other white men would ever tread. A tangible ache throbbed in his chest each time he tried to figure out what made McAfferty ride off into a sure and certain death carrying nothing more than his Bible and his rock-hard faith that all his steps were guided by his God.
Most times Scratch could put his mind on other things, the way a man would pick up a checker piece and move it to another square. But there were times in the black of night, or the coming gray of morning, or in the day-long swaying rock of the saddle, that he found it wasn’t so damned easy to shift his thoughts away from a mortal fear for McAfferty’s life, if not his very soul.
Not so much afraid that the Blackfoot would butcher Asa as he was afraid of something he could not describe, could not put his hand out and touch. To fear a man of flesh and blood who came at you with his gun or club or knife was one thing. But Bass was coming to fear this journey of McAfferty’s had everything to do with what Scratch himself could not understand.