“Things for sure gonna be a mite safer for you in this’r country.”
Splitting his shaggy beard with a grin, Titus said, “Won’t no Injuns be troubling me anywhere I go, Shad—not as far back in them hills as I plan to hide.”
“To get that high, and go back so far, that be a load of work and time on a man.”
“Hardscrabble for sure,” he admitted. Then, shrugging, Titus pointed at the woman. “But we don’t got nothing else to do, nowhere else to be now, but up there where the Injuns ain’t likely to roam … so it don’t matter a lick if I gotta work hard and high to find them flat-tails.”
“Bridger told me him and Frapp gonna hook up again, fixing to work the rivers hereabouts. He asked me to join in, but I told him I’d give the traps a rest. Maybeso you’d wanna ride with them?”
Wagging his head slowly, Titus confessed, “I spent me some seasons throwed in with Jack Hatcher’s outfit. Since then I got old and set in my ways. Better off on my lonesome.”
Slowly Shad Sweete grinned, then flung his long arms around the thin man and squeezed him fiercely. His voice so quiet that it was barely heard over the rustle of the breeze, he whispered into his friend’s ear, “Likely you always will be better off, going where it feels right, and being on your own, Titus Bass.”
His flesh a war map etched with every wound of arrow, knife, and ball, his sagging face lined and pocked by the deep cold and the high sun, the very marrow of his soul cut, healed, and now scarred … Titus Bass clung on. He always would, alone if need be.
Though the seasons he had weathered in this life had mellowed, aged, then died, each one gone the way of the quakies’ golden leaves—still his love for this land and this life endured.
Though those summers of rendezvous were now gone forever, though no more than a few beaver had survived the deadly onslaught, though most of the hardy hunters were already scattering east or west … still a few would linger, a few would prevail as their world changed around them.
For those few, this then had truly been a love story if ever there was one. Across winters harsh and unforgiving, throughout brief seasons of fading glory, the few had come to love a land, come to love a way of life with such fierce and steadfast devotion that they could not begin to consider ever abandoning their mountain domain.
No more could these few forsake this wild land and this raw life they had come to love with such unspoken fidelity than they could abandon a woman they loved with that same undying passion.
No more could Titus Bass leave these uncharted western rivers than he could leave little Flea. No more could he abandon the valleys teaming with elk and buffalo than he could abandon his sweet Magpie.
And no more could this man forsake the high mountain passes and the hoary peaks than he would ever think of parting from the woman who held his heart in her hands.
There were sunrises and seasons yet unborn.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TERRY C. JOHNSTON was born the first day of 1947 on the plains of Kansas, and has lived all his life in the American West. His first novel, Carry the Wind, won the Medicine Pipe Bearer’s Award from the Western Writers of America, and his subsequent books, among them Dance on the Wind, Cry of the Hawk, and Long Winter Gone, have appeared on bestseller lists throughout the country. He lives and writes in Big Sky country near Billings, Montana.
Each year Terry and his wife, Vanette, publish their annual “WinterSong” newsletter. Twice every summer they take readers on one-week tours of the rendezvous sites of the early Rocky Mountain Fur Trade, and to the battle sites of the Indian Wars.
Those wanting to write to the author, those requesting the annual “WinterSong” newsletter, or those desiring information on taking part in the author’s summer historical tours can write to him at:
Terry C. Johnston
P. O. Box 50594
Billings, MT 59105
Or, you can find his website at:
http://www.imt.net/~tjohnston/
and can e-mail him at:
tjohnston@imt.net
Copyright © 1998 by Terry C. Johnston
Map by Jeffrey L. Ward