Perhaps the warrior had it right, after all, Scratch brooded as he headed downstream toward the Flathead camp.
Indian males celebrated their togetherness in many ways: in the buffalo hunt, at pipe ceremonies, making war, and with those informal talks on all manner of things as they sat in the warm sun while their women went about the camp chores. But, too, many were the warriors he had known who would set off on their own for the hunt, or eager to earn themselves a battle honor, perhaps to steal horses, or only to find an answer to their seeking somewhere on high.
Suddenly stopping dead in his tracks, Scratch nodded emphatically. Although he was alone, he spoke out loud.
“Yes.”
Having decided answers came only to those who took their own path.
All a man found among others was the noisy answers that fit only those other men: a garbled babble of talk that was hard to divine.
To find his way back to that serenity he had first discovered in this huge land, Bass realized he had to make his way back toward solitude.
Barefoot and dressed in nothing more than tiny strips of cloth that served as breechclouts held around their waists by narrow rawhide strings, a half-dozen little boys came chasing after another handful as he neared the outer lodges of the village. Yelling taunts and shouting encouragement to one another, flinging their sapling lances or shooting their boyhood bows, they played at these deadly lessons of warfare, this study of dying and death learned so young.
At the edge of a morning fire sat a young woman who glanced up at the white man walking past. In her lap she cradled the head of her free-trapper husband, his eyes closed in exquisite relaxation. Carefully the Flathead squaw parted her husband’s coal-black hair, inspecting the scalp painstakingly—until she found another louse, which she seized and cracked between her teeth before tossing it into the fire, then continued her search for the next.
Men and women came and went on foot, or on horseback. Warriors rode past bareback, the expressive eyes in their impassive faces locked on some nether point and never touching his. Girls of marrying age watched him pass as they whispered to one another, their sparkling eyes gleeful above the hands they held over their mouths as they shared secrets about him, giggling coyly, playful at the arts of catching themselves a mate.
“Mr. Bass!”
He stopped, turning toward the sound of the voice, searching for the caller. Ahead in the shadows stood a small group of Flathead warriors, busy with some concern near a lodge door. One of the men waved, called out.
“Ho, Mr. Bass!”
Only then did he see how that warrior differed from the others. While the rest wore their hair plaited, braided, adorned, and unmistakably black, the one who called wore white.
“McAfferty? That you?”
Asa stepped away from the Flathead men. “You was up early—gone afore I rolled out this morning.”
“Didn’t sleep in.”
“I see’d such is the way about you,” McAfferty said as he came to a halt before Bass. “That what makes you so damned good a trapper?”
He grinned. “Maybeso, Asa. Get them flat-tails afore the day gets old.” Then, with a gesture, he asked, “What brings you to the Flatheads so early of the day?”
Shrugging, McAfferty replied, “I happed to spend me some of last winter with this very bunch. Stayed on in their country for spring trapping.”
“Spring gotta come late that far north.”
Shuddering slightly, Asa declared, “No truer words was ever spoke. I was hunting on my own hook and about to mosey south for ronnyvoo when I run onto some of Davy Jackson’s boys. Said they was soon to start back to join up with their booshway so to make their way to ronnyvoo their own selves. Sounded like a fine notion to me.”
Bass felt the sensation grow strong deep within him: something snagging his curiosity, pulling at it like the hooked claw of a golden eagle tearing at the body of its prey, peeling it back and making him suddenly aware of what lay beneath.
“You said you was … was on your own hook?”
McAfferty looked at him strangely a moment before answering, “Didn’t none of Jack’s boys tell you how I come to part company with ’em?”
“S’pose they did, yes.”
Asa stared off toward that far border of trees where the white men had their camp. “I ain’t one to stay with a gaggle of fellers, not for long I ain’t.”
“They said you up and had to take your own way.”
“Now, don’t go getting me wrong, Mr. Bass. Ain’t but a few men near as good as Jack Hatcher to lead a bunch of niggers what want to go their own road and do things their own way. And the rest … why, I likes some better’n others, but that’s a bunch what’ll be there when it comes time for the nut-cuttin’.”
Scratch nodded. “They’ve been at my back ever’ time I’ve needed some backing up. Never let me down, not once.”
“And they won’t. That just ain’t their way,” Asa argued. Then he seemed to regard the man before him carefully until he said, “You ain’t really the sort what cottons to a lot of folks around either, are you, Mr. Bass?”
“S’pose I’m not,” he admitted.
“How long you say you been with Jack’s outfit?”
“Almost two years now since I got my hair stole and Jack’s bunch run onto me up by the Wind River hills.”
With a cluck McAfferty replied, “That’s a long time for a man such as yourself to stay hooked up with others.”
“Maybeso. Then again, maybe not.”
“For some men, like the rest of them what been together for years and years now, it ain’t nothing to run in a pack with others winter after winter.”
Scratch looked deep into McAfferty’s icy blue eyes. “But for you?”
“For me?” he asked, then sighed. “I ain’t like most. Had my fill of faithless folks long time back. East it was. For winters now I ain’t been the sort to stay on with this bunch or that very long at all. Sets better by me to have my friends, spend time, trap, and winter up with ’em … then move on afore we find we ain’t friends no more. Maybeso that makes me a hard one to live with, eh, Mr. Bass?”
“None of ’em claimed you was a hard keeper, McAfferty.”
“I ’spect they wouldn’t—that’s why I moved on after a couple seasons with them boys. Took off afore we wasn’t friends no more. Do you figger it’s wrong to ride off before being round others starts to stick in my craw? Is it wrong that I pack up plunder and plews and get high behind down my own trail?”
“Don’t sound unreasonable to me, if’n a man’s made of such,” Bass declared.
“You the sort what likes to mosey on his own, Mr. Bass?”
“I …” And Scratch paused a moment, reflecting, “I s’pose I am. Truly.”
“Never was much a joiner, was you?”
“Can’t say I was.”
Then McAfferty’s eyes narrowed as he gazed at Titus. “The trapping’s better when there ain’t so many to split the take.”
With a shrug Bass said, “We allays worked our own places on the stream. Never was a problem for me.”
“Just give yourself a shake or two and think on it. How good you’d do ’thout all them others working that same stream.”
“It ain’t all about the beaver—”
But McAfferty grabbed hold of Bass’s elbow and turned him so they directly faced the west slope of the Tetons. With an arm, he waved slowly across their granite ruggedness, saying, “Now, look up there and tell me how good you’d do in beaver country, if you was the only one working a stream. Maybeso it’s only you and ’Nother trapper.”
He turned to appraise Asa. “I had me a good spring what got me a fine hurraw on the Popo Agie. Had me ’nough plews last fall to get me a fine winter down to Taos too.”