“Even if you don’t understand me at times?”
The woman nodded, dragging the cradleboard into her lap and stroking the infant’s cheek with a fingertip. “I may not always understand the way things rumble around inside your head, husband. But I always know just how your heart works.”
“Is that the back of Jarrell Thornbrugh’s head I’ve got my pistol pointed at?”
At first the tall Englishman froze, daring not to turn his head, his eyes instead glancing at the other company employees nearby, hoping to find them ready to defend him.
“And you’re the booshway of this here bloody Hudson’s Bay bunch, ain’cha?”
With his pounding heart rising to his throat and his hands held out from his body, Thornbrugh turned just enough to level his eyes at his antagonizer.
Plain to see that the man had no pistol trained on the back of his head.
Jarrell’s eyes climbed to the stranger’s face.
“By the stars! It can’t be!” Thornbrugh roared as he whirled around, his booming voice like the clangor on a huge cast-iron bell.
Bass slapped both his open hands on his chest, then spread his arms wide. “In the flesh, you god-blame-ed Englishman!”
They crashed together, hugging fiercely, slapping backs and shoulders, dancing side to side and around and around.
“I’ve asked after you,” Thornbrugh admitted breathlessly as they ground to a halt, their forearms locked fraternally. “No one heard evidence of you since last summer on the Green. No one’s come across you in their travels.”
“I stayed south ever since ronnyvoo,” Bass explained. “And I went east for a time too.”
“The States?” and Jarrell rocked back a bit, closely studying his friend’s face. “You didn’t think of giving up the mountains?”
“Hell, I couldn’t give up the mountains,” he declared with a reassuring smile. “Wouldn’t be happy anyplace else.”
Then he spotted the left eye and leaned close to have himself a look at it. “So tell me about this eye of yours.”
“Don’t rightly know what to think of it, Jarrell. Just come on me few months back. Been seeing stars shootin’ out of it for some time, howsoever. But this last spring it got so ever’thing’s real fuzzy.”
He peered closely at the milky film over the iris and pupil. “Looks cloudy. You see anything with it?”
“A little,” Bass answered. “I can tell light from dark. Not much else. For most part, I ain’t in a bad way, what with this other eye doing more’n its share.”
“Tie your horse off and come on in here, you old one-eyed reprobate,” he said with relief, gesturing for Titus to follow him beneath the canvas sheeting Thornbrugh’s men had strung up for shade in the middle of their encampment.
He watched the American ground-hobble his animal where it could graze nearby, then patted the blanket beside him. “Sit.”
“You John Bulls got any tobaccy wuth smoking?” Bass inquired.
“Get me some tobacco for this guest with such terrible manners,” Thornbrugh roared, laughing.
As the American filled his pipe, Jarrell said, “As soon as I arrived here, I asked after you. But as the days slipped past, I feared more and more you’d lost your hair.”
“Wagh! If’n that half-breed giant named Sharpe couldn’t raise this nigger’s hair last summer, ain’t a Injun gonna take what’s left of this poor scalp!”
He slapped Bass on the leg, sensing such an exquisite joy in seeing this friend after a long, long year of separation. “You’ve brought many pelts to trade?”
“Nope, I ain’t got but a few left to barter off.”
“Not a good year for you and young Paddock?”
The American smiled. “It was a damn fine year for the two of us, Jarrell. But I left most all of them plews behind in Taos with Josiah.”
“Taos,” he repeated, confused. “Josiah’s not here with you?”
Having puffed on his pipe to get it started with a twig from the nearby fire, Titus Bass began to tell the story of all that had taken place since last summer’s raucous trading fair. From that chase after an old Shoshone friend turned horse thief, through their deadly hunt for an Arapaho war party in the Bayou Salade, on to those Christmas and New Year’s celebrations in the little village of San Fernando de Taos, where Scratch had run onto an old friend believed dead. A chance meeting that spurred Scratch all the way back to St. Louis through the maw of winter, then off to the west again for the massive mud fort the Bent brothers had erected beside the Arkansas River—completing that deadly journey in hopes of putting some old ghosts to rest.
“This Silas Cooper shot you?”
The American tugged up the hem of his cloth shirt to show the vividly pink bullet wounds.
A dark-skinned stranger stepped beneath the shady bower, leaning in to inspect one of the puckers as he commented, “You got nothing better to do, Jarrell—but go and look at this man’s bullet holes?”
Thornbrugh snorted, “By the stars, the bullet made that wound came a hairsbreadth from killing my friend here. Introduce yourself proper, Thomas.”
“Thomas McKay,” the man declared, holding his hand out as he backed a step.
Watching the American grab McKay’s hand, Jarrell explained, “This be Titus Bass—”
“Yes, I’ve heard of you,” McKay replied, his dark Indian eyes narrowing. “You come to Vancouver to visit the Doctor.”
“Two winters back it was,” Bass stated. “A good man, the Doctor. He is what you see of him.”
“Thomas here is leading the Doctor’s brigade this year,” Thornbrugh explained.
“We ain’t been doing much in the way of trading,” McKay confessed as he took a dipper of water from one of the company’s laborers and drank. Wiping the dribble from his chin, he said, “But we didn’t figure to scare up much trading from you Americans anyway.”
Bass looked at Thornbrugh. “Company men bound to deal with their own traders. Them what trap for American Fur gonna trade for company supplies. And Rocky Mountain Fur gotta trade with Sublette.”
“Last year them Rocky Mountain Fur partners had contracted with that Yank named Wyeth to buy supplies off him this summer,” McKay said. “But Sublette come in a couple days ahead of Wyeth, so Fitzpatrick started trading off pelts even before Wyeth got to the valley.”
Thornbrugh wagged his head. “So now Wyeth has all those goods Rocky Mountain Fur said they’d take off his hands, with no one to trade with.”
“How ’bout the free men?” Bass inquired. “Where they been trading their furs?”
Jarrell could tell by the set of Scratch’s jaw that the unfairness of Sublette’s actions didn’t sit well with his American friend. “Sadly, from what I have been witness to myself, it appears most of your American free men are conducting their business with Sublette.”
“Damn ’em,” Bass growled, his brow furrowing. “But it don’t s’prise me none. Most of ’em knowed Sublette for years now. Some trapped with him back when, or they been trading with him for the last few ronnyvooz. Natural, I s’pose, for ’em to stick with what they know. But it damn well sours my milk to see a man break his vow with another, like Fitz and the rest done to Wyeth.”
“Is there no honor among you Americans?” McKay inquired with a wry grin.
“Not when you’re speaking of prime pelts and beaver country,” Bass confessed. “For years now there’s been a war on between Rocky Mountain Fur and Astor’s company.”
“From what I’ve learned over the past few days,” Thornbrugh injected, “no longer is there any war between them. Instead, they’ve divided up the fur country on the east side of the mountains.”
Bass bellowed, “Divided it between ’em!”
Finally settling on the ground beside Thornbrugh, McKay declared, “Astor’s retired and turned his business on the upper Missouri over to Pierre Chouteau in St. Louis—so that Upper Missouri Outfit’s gonna run things up there from here on out.”