Like Jack Hatcher, Caleb Wood, and the others.
Men red and white, men for all the seasons of his life.
As the ice on the Yellowstone had begun to crack and shatter, opening the river early that spring, he had taken his leave as Rotten Belly’s band started upriver to the south, while he pointed his nose down the valley to the east. Just past the big rock, he had crossed to the north bank of the Yellowstone and located the patch of ground where he had dug his cache last autumn, the frozen earth lying beneath a snowdrift he had to shovel aside.
As he pried back the thick sod lid to the cache’s neck, Scratch had suddenly remembered what he hadn’t during that winter in Absaroka—he had turned thirty-seven!
Although there had been times during his winter with the Crow that he had wondered on Christmas and remembered Taos during the Nativity festival, thinking too how his own birthday came only a week after that celebration … Bass hadn’t given all that much thought to adding another ring to his years.
It had simply been too wonderful a winter in the land of the Crow: new friends, plenty of protection from the wind and the cold among a people who from time to time provided their guest with one woman or another to relieve the trapper’s pent-up hungers.
“Who’s been sending me these women who come to my lodge?” he had asked Bird in Ground one cold day as they were out gathering deadfall for their fires.
The strange man of the Apsaalooke stood and looked squarely at Bass. “Since you do not want me for your wife, I decided that you must satisfy your appetites with the women of our tribe.”
“Believe me when I say, if I ever wanted to settle down with a man-woman among your people for the rest of my winters, I would choose you, Bird in Ground.”
“I am afraid I will never have a husband,” the Crow sighed. “Look around. There aren’t any others now who are like me—touched by this same spirit medicine. Perhaps I can find some way to show the power of my medicine, to prove to other young men of our tribe that I would make them a good wife.”
“It is not hard for any man to see that you would make a good wife.”
The man-woman smiled in that gentle way of his. “I realize you will never be my husband. But you will always stay one of those strong in my heart.”
“And you will always stay one of those strong in my heart too.”
Had to be Bannock under that distant dust cloud. Damn. They sure weren’t good folks like the Crow.
Bannock.
Certain that’s what they were, Bass tarried a while longer after finishing his cold meat before retightening cinches and pushing on into the afternoon. He’d do all he could to give the Bannock war party a wide berth.
Not long after the saffron orb had slinked from the summer sky, Scratch noticed how that smudge of dust to the south had faded. The riders must have put in for camp up there a ways in the valley of Black’s Fork. And from there he calculated it wasn’t more than nine, ten days at the most before he’d finally reach the inner-mountain valley where Sublette promised to meet the company brigades for July.
Before long he grew wary, figuring he had dogged the war party’s backtrail close enough and found himself a place where he tied off the animals, letting them graze while he set off on foot along the east side of the valley. Watching to the southwest as the shadows lengthened, sticking his nose in the wind for firesmoke, keeping his eyes moving from horizon to horizon. That bunch might have hunters out, after all. Making meat for supper. It wouldn’t pay to have a run-in with one or two of the bastards, then find himself tracked by the rest as they tried to run him down.
Goddamned Bannocks. Who the hell did they think they was, anyway? He’d been run down by the best of ’em—riding day and night with the Apache breathing down on his ass. No way these here Bannocks ever come close to measuring up to Apache.
He stopped there in the shadows of the man-sized willow that bordered the coulee and sniffed again. Woodsmoke.
His mouth went dry.
That weren’t no summer thunderstorm grass fire. No, that was a smell altogether different. This was wood-smoke. Even had the smell of broiling meat braided around the edges of that stronger scent.
And that made his dry mouth water.
Then Bass remembered that he was slipping up on some thieving red bastards, scolding himself that he’d better forget his feed bag for now.
After checking the priming in both the rifle and pistol for the fifth or sixth time, Titus angled down the side of the coulee toward the river valley, hanging with the cover offered him by the thick, leafy brush.
Less than a half hour later, he stopped suddenly—his nose greeted by horse sweat wafted on that cooling breeze nuzzling its way down the riverbank. Another twenty yards and … he heard them.
Parting the willow with the rifle’s muzzle, Titus spotted the horses. Son of a bitch if that wasn’t a white man’s tack on that piebald! Not no braided buffalo-hair hackamore.
And that roan! Hell if he hadn’t seen it before!
One of the horses on the far side of the bunch whinnied low as a figure stepped out of the tree shadows and headed for the piebald. Scratch’s heart stopped then and there in his chest—
“Rufus Graham!”
The figure wheeled at the call of his name, yanking on the pistol he had stuffed into the wide, colorful sash at his waist.
“Don’t shoot me, Rufus!”
As Bass rose to his feet there in the thick willow, he watched the horses part, listened to the ground reverberate with running feet. At the far side of the clearing where a wary Rufus Graham stood frozen, there suddenly appeared the other five.
Titus didn’t know when their ugly, hairy faces had ever looked prettier!
“Eegod, boys!” Jack Hatcher yelped as he stepped closer, a wide slash of a grin splitting the lower half of his bearded face. “If it ain’t Titus Bass his own self … riz right up from the dead!”
25
The six of them had near pounded him to black-and-blue there in that little clearing as the horses snorted around them.
“Lookee here, boys!” Hatcher roared as he grabbed hold of the front of Bass’s shirt—cocking his head this way, then that, looking at Scratch from different angles. “If this nigger ain’t graying up like a ol’ barn owl!”
“Ain’t he now!” Solomon agreed, yanking the wide-brimmed hat off Scratch’s head. He held up that narrow braid of hair hanging there in front of Bass’s left ear.
Titus nabbed it away from Fish, his eyes crossing as he focused on it. “Gray?”
“See what I tol’t you!” Elbridge roared. “Hell, Jack-Titus Bass rode with Asa McAfferty too long awready!”
Caleb asked, “You mean he’s getting white-headed like that ol’ preacher?”
“My hair ain’t white!” he protested.
Jack rocked back on his heels, grinning like a house cat put out to the barn where all the mice are at play. “Sure are getting ol’t, Scratch. Maybeso ye ain’t had nothing scare yer hair to white … but this here’s certain sign ye’re getting ol’t!”
Bass lunged for him suddenly, sweeping low beneath Hatcher’s right arm to hoist the surprised man onto his shoulders as he straightened, raising Jack right off the ground and flipping him right on across his back so that Hatcher flopped into the waist-high grass. The other five roared, holding their bellies as they guffawed at the stunned Hatcher, some pounding their knees, bent over in a laughing fit.
“Tell me now just how ol’t I am, Jack Hatcher!” Scratch bellowed like a wounded bull, standing over the man sprawled on the ground, balling his fists on his hips, just daring Hatcher to get back to his feet again.