But because he failed to draw up a clear image of any one of them from the past, lately Scratch had become certain he would never be worthy of having just one for the rest of his days. He had no right to want just one woman to last him all the seasons yet to come in his life. If he could not pay homage to all that the many had given him from the past, then Titus figured he was certain he had no right to hope for finding that one woman who would stand at his side through those seasons yet unborn.
Perhaps, he decided, he had been blessed enough … so maybe it was enough to accept what he did of each new day, thanking that which was larger than all of them, there at the end of each day granted him. With all that he had been given already, to want a full-time night-woman for the last of his years was simply more than he had the right to ask.
And so Titus consoled himself that dark morning as he had been consoling himself for many nights this winter now grown old. Doing his best to push the loneliness back, to push away the emptiness that cried out within him, its voice become louder and louder while spring loomed on the far horizon.
Oh, how he hungered for white faces as he floated adrift in this sea of copperskins. Like a dry man not knowing when he would next have a drink of water—Scratch thirsted for white voices and white laughter and the soul-healing potion of strong, saddle-varnish liquor.
If he did not have a woman come to fill those empty places in his soul, at least he knew there would always be friends and voices, laughter and whiskey, to soothe those raw and oozing places in his life.
Perhaps he would have enough of all the rest … so that one day he would eventually forget this deepest, most secret need of all.
*Near present-day Cove, Utah. Although one of the contemporary sources intimates that Jim Bridger, Milt Sublette, and Henry Fraeb met with their combined brigades in what is today called Cache Valley, what the mountain men of the era called Willow Valley, the majority of fur-trade historians appear to agree that the preponderance of the remaining contemporary sources show conclusively that the Rocky Mountain Fur Company outfits actually united on the Green River that July of 1831.
26
More and more with every turn of the seasons, Titus Bass came to know that no matter how long or hard the winters of his life, spring was always sure to come.
Sure enough, a little earlier than normal last autumn, Hannah and his horses had furred up just like the creatures of the wild. And they kept their heavy coats longer into the spring too. Although the skies domed a brilliant blue overhead as the air began to warm, large fields of snow lasted long on the north-facing slopes. The thaw came late to the Yellowstone country that eighth spring of his come out of St. Louis.
By the time he made ready to leave Arapooesh’s band, Titus Bass was packing two more large bundles of beaver hung from the elk-horn packsaddle on Hannah’s back. He had kept himself busy through the long months of short days.
When she brayed at him in protest at the load, he said, “Don’t know if that means you’re ready for the trail, or you’re squawking at me for packing you after you ain’t had much of nothing on your back all winter.”
He stepped up to her muzzle and grasped it between both hands and cocked her head so she could gaze at him with one eye. “Now, you know I ain’t no damned Ned. Ain’t never been one what plants his nose under a robe all winter—no matter how warm the womens might be. Never has Titus Bass been a child to lay around camp all through a robe season.”
She rolled that near eye and brayed at him again. “I s’pose that means you and me both ’bout ready for the trail, ol’ girl. But first we best pay our respects.”
As Scratch slowly approached Rotten Belly leading his three animals, the chief emerged from his door, stretched lazily, then stepped around to the side of the lodge where the morning sun would warm him with its full glory. He sat, leaned back in his warmest buffalo robe, and closed his eyes. And didn’t even open them as the trapper came to a stop at his elbow.
“I hear the sound of heavy horses,” the chief said without looking up.
“We are ready to go, my friend.”
“You were happy this winter?”
Scratch thought a moment, glancing over at the lodge where he had spent many a night with the widow. “I had all I needed—yes, Arapooesh.”
“So you’ll come back our way soon?”
“I want to hunt the waters north of the Yellowstone next fall,” Bass replied. “Yes, I think it will be a good thing to come find your camp when the winter winds begin to blow.”
With a long sigh the chief finally looked up into the bright morning light and shaded his eyes with a flat hand. “You will stay safe, won’t you, Pote Ani?”
“I will.”
“Because I cannot talk you out of riding west from Absaroka, you must promise me that you will stay safe so that my eyes can look upon my old friend again come next winter.”
Kneeling beside the chief, Bass pulled off his mitten and laid the hand on Rotten Belly’s arm under that buffalo robe. The chief looked up at him, and Titus said, “I’ll be back soon. You know how short the seasons are up this far north, when winter lasts so long.”
Arapooesh knifed his hand through the flap in his robe and laid it on Bass’s arm, saying, “My prayers go west with you. When you leave Absaroka in that direction, there is so much danger that can find a man alone.”
Standing, Scratch said with a smile, “I’m not looking to die just yet. I’ll watch behind me.”
Closing his eyes again, Rotten Belly said, “See you in the winter.”
“See you then, my friend.”
It took better than four days to ride down the Yellowstone to his cache, what with all the drifted snow and the boggy bottom ground, having to double back here and there. But eventually he dug at the icy, frozen snow that lay crusted over the earthen circle that plugged the neck of his small underground vault. For the next two days he busied himself with pulling out each bundle of beaver in turn, dusting every individual plew with Hannah’s currycomb, then closely inspecting each hide for sign of vermin that might burrow into the beaver felt and destroy the value of a hide. Once the plews were ready for their long spring journey toward rendezvous, Bass tied them back into bundles, then pushed the buffalo-hide shelter down into the cache. Positioning it high upon some freshly cut willow saplings, Bass left it at the center of the floor and backed out of the hole. Reweaving a network of narrow limbs, he finished his labors by muscling the round earthen lid back over the hole.
That night he built a fire atop his cache and the next morning scattered the ashes before he took up Hannah’s lead rope and rose into the saddle. Turning toward the Yellowstone, Bass headed west until he reached the crossing used for years without count by the massive herds blanketing these northern plains.
“Man knows what to look for, he can always find a buffalo crossing,” he said to Hannah, having taken to talking to her more and more with every day of his enforced separation from other humankind. “Don’t you know a man can’t hardly go wrong if he lays his nose along a buffalo trail.”
On the opposite bank of the river he pointed their noses west. Creek by creek, beaver stream by beaver stream, he trapped as he went those days of early spring, shivering through the wintry cold of each night, savoring the brief hours of sunny warmth as the earth’s rising heat formed puffy clouds across the deep spring blue like the snowflash feathers of ducks upended and fishing in a spring pond.
At times he came across sign of hunters out from one band or another of the River or Mountain Crow, but Scratch never saw another person in those first few weeks as he took his time marching for that cleft through the mountains west of the big bend of the Yellowstone, a crossing he had made years before with Silas Cooper. Bass turned in the saddle and gazed back at the large packs of beaver both Hannah and the packhorse carried. Hard to believe what he had done in the past year: he hadn’t trapped this many pelts since the seasons he had traveled with those three who had taken him under their wings his first seasons in the mountains. But that learning had cost him—first in what share Silas split off for himself, and then to lose all the rest of his plews when the trio floated off downriver with his fur.