“That’s right,” Jack replied, kneeling at Bass’s knee, using one finger to describe a circle around the Arapaho’s scalp. “Ye won’t need that plew no more because ye got ’sactly what ye need to make a new skelp lock for yerself.”
Scratch gazed down at the glossy hair and the drying flesh he held in his lap. “For myself?”
Hatcher reached out and seized the trophy. “Take off that goddamned bandanny for me.”
“Why you want me to—”
“Take it off so I can have me a good look at that head bone of yer’n. G’won, do it.”
Quickly glancing at a few of the others, Bass’s eyes eventually landed on John Rowland, who sat alone at the side of the fire, staring morosely into the flames—totally without interest in what the others were doing. John looked up at Scratch for a long moment, then went back to gazing at the fire.
“Awright,” Titus agreed quietly, standing as he started to drag off the dirty bandanna.
“Sit back down right where ye are,” Hatcher commanded, stepping right to Bass’s side, where he could peer down at the bare bone. With one hand he gently turned the back of Scratch’s head toward the fire’s light.
Bass started to look up a moment. But Jack locked Scratch’s head in his hands and turned it back to the side so he could examine the patch of bone while holding the Arapaho’s scalp beside it.
“Eegod! There it is, boys,” Hatcher declared eventually. “Bass can wear this nigger’s hair for his own!”
“How he gonna do that when we know the bastard’s skelp gonna dry up?” Rufus asked.
“This here scalp ain’t gonna dry up,” Hatcher said. “Not if Bass takes care of it.”
“Just how’m I gonna take care of it?” Bass inquired.
“First whack, ye’re gonna salt it,” Jack explained.
Titus wagged his head. “Awright, then what?”
“Ye’re gonna tan it just like the squaws do all their hides.”
Scratch had to grin, what with the way the others were beginning to smile as if Jack had lost a few of his pebbles. “I … I’m gonna tan this nigger’s scalp.”
“Injuns do it alla time,” Hatcher declared. “Take ye some brains and water … get that worked down into the skelp. In no time at all it’s gonna be ever’ bit as soft as them skins a squaw used for yer leggings last winter.”
He stared at his leggings for a long moment, rubbing the brain-tanned, fire-smoked hide between a thumb and forefinger. “You really s’pose it’d work?”
“Mad Jack Hatcher says it’ll work?” Caleb Wood cheered, “It’s gonna work!”
Jack himself boasted, “Less’n a week from now, ye’ll be wearing this nigger’s hair for yer’n.”
“The hull thing?” Solomon asked.
“Hell, no,” Hatcher growled. “We gonna cut that skelp down so after it’s cured, it’ll be just a li’l bigger’n that bone on the back of Bass’s head.”
“Fit right over it?” Scratch inquired.
“Like it was made to be there,” Jack said enthusiastically.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Bass roared, slapping his knee as he stood. “I’ll wear the nigger’s hair what got mine, boys!”
“Gonna look a li’l strange to me,” Isaac said.
Bass whirled on him. “What the hell’s gonna look so strange ’bout it?”
“Ain’t same color as your’n.”
He peered down at the scalp, a disappointment sucking the wind right out of him. “Damn, if you ain’t right. It don’t look like—”
“It don’t have to,” Jack interrupted, shouldering Simms aside. “The nigger’s hair is yer’n, no matter that it don’t look like yers. It’s the medicine what counts!”
With Hatcher’s contagious enthusiasm, he felt cheered anew. “Damn right, Jack! It’s the medicine what counts.”
“But Scratch’s hair is brown,” Solomon grumped, “and that there’s black as night.”
“Scratch’s ain’t gonna be brown much longer anyways,” Caleb declared.
Bass cocked his head, asking, “What you mean by that?”
“You ever look at your hair since we moseyed down to Taos last winter?” Wood tried to explain. “Ever give that beard of your’n a good look too?”
“This child sure is getting gray awready, ain’t he?” Rufus said.
Grabbing a hank of hair at the side of his head, Titus held it out before his eyes in the firelight. “This here ain’t gray!”
“That ain’t where ye’re going gray right now, Scratch!” Hatcher bellowed. “Up there on top of yer head. Down there on yer beard. Here,” and he grabbed some of the silver-flecked hair hanging right there at the temple. “Lookee there.”
Sure enough, if those strands didn’t radiate some gray in the firelight.
“Get me a mirror, you sonsabitches,” he grumbled at them. “I wanna see this for my own self.”
Hatcher turned to the rest. “Get the man a mirror, boys. He deserves to see just how he’s getting on in years.”
“But I ain’t a ol’ man,” Bass whimpered as he sank down upon the log with the scalp in hand.
Hatcher took the scalp from him and handed it back to Caleb. “Here, get that salted down real good for me. Roll it up like ye’d do a skin, and tie a whang around it till we can start on it in a couple of days.”
Caleb turned away as Isaac returned with a small mirror the size of a large man’s palms put side by side. Bass shifted on the log so he could look into the mirror with enough light to inspect his graying hair. Still, his eyes always came back to his mustache and beard. In a stripe of gray that ran down the middle of the brown mustache, on below his lower lip and down the extent of his brown beard, the hair stood out like that white band running down a skunk’s back.
“Damn, if I didn’t notice,” he confessed as he studied the gray hairs spreading back from his temples, the graying of that hair hanging from his brow.
“Ain’t getting old,” Hatcher declared. “Just getting gray earlier’n most, Titus.”
“Sometimes … it feels like old,” Bass explained as he peered at himself in the mirror, examining his first wrinkles, the spread of those deeply furrowed crow’s-feet.
“Chirk up, friend!” Jack cheered. “Why, ye got plenty to bark about this night!”
Isaac leaped in front of Bass, there between Scratch and Hatcher, grinning wildly. “Don’t you figger it’s ’bout time to punch some holes in Titus’s ears?”
“A damned fine idee!” Hatcher roared.
“P-punch some holes in my ears?”
“Hang some purties from ’em,” Rufus said, leaning in to tap his earrings with a fingertip.
“Y-you said … a hole?”
“Get me my awl!” Hatcher bellowed, ignoring Titus completely.
Scratch nearly came off the log as Rufus whirled away. “Your awl?”
“I could do it with a needle, Scratch,” Hatcher said, stepping right up beside Bass to grab hold of Bass’s earlobes, tugging on them to turn Titus toward the light. “But a needle makes it a round hole, ye see?”
“Which means it takes longer to heal,” Caleb explained.
Hatcher nodded. “We’ll get some glover’s needles from the trader this summer: they got three sides filed on ’em like a awl.”
“Awright,” Titus replied with no small measure of relief. “L-let’s just wait till we got the proper needle—”
“But don’cha wanna have it done on the night ye killed that red nigger what took yer hair two years back?” Jack asked.
Everyone came to an immediate stop around him, turning to look his way, expectantly awaiting his answer.
Clearing his throat nervously, Scratch explained, “It’s a mighty fine thing you wanting to celebrate with me—”
Solomon hollered, “Birthdays too!”
“But I ain’t so sure ’bout putting holes in my ears—”
“Nothing to it,” Jack assured. “Why, ye had bigger holes shot in you with G’lena lead, bigger holes poked in yer hide by Injuns. Hell—don’cha ’member?”