Buffalo Palace (20 page)

“Sure, Silas,” Tuttle replied. “C’mon, Billy. Let’s go fetch up the horses.”

Hooks came bounding up on foot to stop near Bass’s shoulder as he asked, “Silas—ain’cha gonna give one of our Injun ponies to this here Titus Bass feller?”

“I s’pose it’s the thing to do, don’t y’ figger?”

“Yessirreebob!” Billy replied. “I do figger so. He needs him a horse, and we got alla them what we took off them red niggers few days back.”

“R-red niggers?” Titus repeated, looking up to the faces of the three standing over him.

“Injuns, Titus Bass,” Tuttle replied. “C’mon, Billy.”

“Dirty, thieving red sonsabitches what tried to steal our ponies, our plews, and our scalps too!” Cooper growled as the other two started off into the shadows. The snow gathered on the shoulders of his blanket coat, lying there so stark against the gleaming black of his long hair that spilled over his shoulders, tangled in with his long, dark beard.

“Where?” Titus asked, feeling his palms sweat.

“North o’ here,” Cooper replied, then squatted to help break off some more branches for the fire. “Likely they was Blackfeet, though they call themselves Blood Injuns. Part of the same sonsabitches anyways. Don’t make me no never mind to kill any of ’em.”

“F-far from here?”

“We been riding six days since,” Silas answered. “Why, now—do I see me that y’ got yourself skairt of Injuns?”

“Nawww,” Bass said with feigned bravado. “Fought me Injuns afore.”

“Where?”

“Mississippi,” Bass replied. “Chickasaw, they was.”

“Chickasaw.”

“Yep.”

Silas shook his head. “Them ain’t real Injuns no more.”

“They was real Injuns when I fought ’em,” Titus explained. “My first Injun scrap. Fifteen winters ago. Took my flatboat pilot. A friend of mine.”

“So y’ was a riverman afore y’ come to the mountains?”

“For a short time,” he admitted, then knew he ought to admit it. “One trip, then I come up the Natchez Trace for that one and only walk back to the Ohio River country.”

“That make y’ a Kentucky man?”

Bass nodded. “Boone County.”

“I hail out of what they’re calling the Illinois now,” Cooper explained. “Them other two: Billy’s from down around the Cape on the Missouri—”

“Cape Girardeau?”

“Y’ know of it?” Silas asked.

“Sure as hell do,” Bass said with some of the cold departing his stomach as he rubbed his cold hands over the flames. “Spent me many years in St. Louis.”

Cooper continued. “And, Bud there—he’s a Pennsylvania man. Don’t rightly know if he’ll ever make a trapper howsomever. Them Pennsylvania folk are slow on the take-up—leastways every one of ’em I’ve run onto. Trapping don’t seem to be Turtle’s calling.”

“Why’s he stay out here?”

“Hell,” Cooper snorted, “he’s like the rest of us what stayed on out here after those early days with Lisa—ain’t got much left for us back—”

“Lisa?” Titus interrupted, his voice rising, turning suddenly to look at Cooper beside the fire. “Manuel Lisa?”

“Y’ heard of that thieving Spanee-yard, have y’?”

“You mean you fellas worked for him?”

“Damn if he didn’t make all of us bust our humps for him—and some of us died for it too!”

“Then you’ll know … maybe you’ll know a man—fella by the name of Eli, Eli Gamble?”

For a moment there was nothing more than a blank look on Cooper’s face; then the eyes started to crinkle. “Ol’ Eli. Yes, I remember Gamble, I do. A good man—”

“What become of him?”

“Y’ be a friend of his?”

Titus shrugged, gazing back down at the fire again, rubbing his hands that refused to get warm as the snowflakes spat into the fire with a hiss. “Knowed him once. Of a time I shot against him in a rifle match. Just ’bout beat him too.”

Squinting one eye in appraisal of Bass, Cooper commented, “Always heard Eli was some with a rifle. A man what could shoot straight and hit center, Gamble was. Y’ say you just ’bout beat him?”

“I’d a’beat him,” Titus grumped. “But I was young back then.”

Silas looked Titus up and down with a widening grin. “I should say you was young then! That had to be many a summer ago!”

“I was sixteen,” he said proudly. “And I beat every other man ’cept Eli Gamble.” Then Titus had to snort
with a grin, “Sly son of a bitch wasn’t even from Boone County neither—not like the rest of us shooting that day!”

“Pushing west, weren’t he?”

“Tol’t me he was fixing to join up with Lisa’s brigade,” Titus explained. “Lisa been crossing all that country north of the Ohio for to get fellas to sign on—”

Nodding, Cooper interrupted, “We all of us signed on in just such a way.”

“Then all of you know Gamble?”

“Might say we knowed of him, Titus,” he answered, his eyes narrowing. “He was in that bunch went over to the Three Forks with Major Henry. We was sent off to work other country.”

Bass itched for an answer. “W-what become of Gamble?”

Cooper shrugged a shoulder, then turned at the sound of the others’ approach. “Don’t rightly claim to know, Titus Bass.” He stood slowly, turning his rump to the fire and rubbing warmth back into it. “There was too many a good man we never knowed what become of up there in that Blackfoot country.”

“Blackfoot? Like that bunch you say you run onto a few days back?”

Billy Hooks burst into the camp clearing on horseback, Tuttle right behind, both of them leading a small herd of horses and mules.

As he dismounted, Hooks cried out, “Blackfoot be the baddest red niggers you’d ever wanna doe-see-doe with, Titus Bass!”

There were more than a dozen of the animals altogether. Some immediately winded the dead horse sprawled on the ground and shied away, others just got wide-eyed, snorting, and pawing.

“Best y’ get them tied off down in that meadow yonder,” Cooper ordered the other two.

“So is this here Titus Bass gonna pick him out a new horse and pack animal this morning, Silas?” Hooks asked as he started to step away, pulling on the lead ropes to a half dozen of the horses.

Cooper turned to look steadily at Bass, the black eyes again reflecting nothing more than good human charity.
“S’pose he will for sure, Billy. But first he’s gotta decide if’n he’s gonna throw in with us.”

Over the next few weeks the frequent snows succeeded in pushing the four of them down the mountainsides a little more with each camp as they trapped their way around the southern reaches of the Wind River range.

At their first camp after leaving the carcass of Bass’s mare behind, the three experienced trappers had awakened Titus in the cold, frosty darkness the next morning.

“Rise and shine!” Billy exclaimed, then laughed merrily, his eyes dancing as he tapped at Bass’s toes again.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” Titus grumbled, rubbing some fingers in a gritty eye as he sat upright in his blankets. “What the devil are you three doing? It’s still dark!”

“Damn right it is, Titus Bass,” Silas Cooper replied solemnly. “Time we kick off your l’arning.”

“Learning?”

Billy snorted. “How to be a trapper, Titus.”

“I’m already a trapper,” he groused, more than a little nettled that some man might say he had a lot to learn about trapping—then hawked up some night gather in the back of his throat as he dug at the bothersome itch on the back of his neck.

Cooper said, “Only thing it ’pears y’ catched was a few dumb beaver stupid enough to mosey on by your traps. Lucky is all y’ are.”

“Truth be: lucky we run onto you, yessirreebob,” Hooks added.

“Damn good thing we found you afore any red niggers lifted your hair,” Tuttle chimed in. “C’mon now, Silas gonna l’arn you how it’s done.”

Beneath one irritating armpit Bass dug with his fingernails as he kicked his blankets off his legs; then he dug at the other.

“Varmints,” Billy declared to the others. “Son of a bitch is rotted with ’em, I’ll wager.”

“C’mon, Titus,” Cooper said, starting to turn away into the darkness. “Man what wants to catch hisself some beaver better be up afore the beaver.”

Bass wanted badly to say something about the fact that he had always risen early, as far back as he could
remember on his father’s farm, on through his days of work on the wharf at Owensboro and even in Troost’s Livery … but as he started to open his mouth, the three of them turned their backs on him and started trudging out of the timber toward the nearby stream.

“Up before the beaver, my ass,” Titus hissed under his breath as he stood and knew he had to pee in the worst way.

Quickly he unbuttoned the front of his worn and patched wool britches as he stumbled over to a far tree and drained himself with a sigh. The three had disappeared in the dark by the time Bass had on his coat, moccasins, and the wool cap he had fashioned from some blanketing cut from the bottom of his capote. Titus slung the leather trap sack over his shoulder and set off at a trot through the grass and elk cabbage that crackled with frost underfoot with every step. Eventually he caught up with them, following their muted whispers as the three of them stopped, turned about, and waited for the newcomer to join them.

“Thar’s the stream, Titus Bass,” Cooper declared. “What’s to do?”

“Set my traps, natural as you please,” he said, believing he gave the right answer.

“Just like that?” Billy asked.

Bass replied-with a nod, “Just like that.”

“Nigger—are you ever wrong!” Hooks guffawed.

“Hold your goddamned noise down!” Silas snapped. “I declare, Billy—y’ go and run off the beaver with your mouth one more time, I’ll cut out your goddamned tongue my own self!”

Hooks dropped his eyes, contrite and chastened as he pursed his lips into a narrow line of silence.

Bass felt sorry for him as he turned back to look at Cooper. “All right—s’pose you tell me what I do first.”

“Now you’re l’arning, Titus Bass,” Silas said with a faint smile. “Y’ do everything I tell you, the
way
I tell you, and
when
I tell you to do it—y’ll be a master trapper in no time … and we’ll get along fine.”

At first he glanced to the quiet Tuttle, then back to Cooper. “Awright, so tell me.”

The tall leader began to discourse on how a man first
inspected a section of stream, looking for beaver slides, dams, or lodges built out in the middle of those ponds the efficient rodents had created in engineering their environment to suit themselves—mostly to protect their kind from four-legged, nonswimming predators. As Cooper had done yesterday afternoon before twilight while the others had established camp, he showed them how a man was to determine where best to set his traps. Silas led the other three into the leafless willow right to the streambank.

“There, Titus Bass,” and he pointed. “Show me what to do now.”

Bass yanked upon the sack’s drawstring and pulled one of the square-jawed iron traps from the leather bag. Setting it upright on the ground, he squatted over it as Washburn had taught him, pushing down on the two jaws with his heels, allowing them to flap down so he could set the pan trigger within the notch filed in the pan arm.

“Whatcha gonna do with it now, Titus Bass?” Hooks asked in a harsh whisper.

“Set it in the water,” Bass replied, hopeful he would get some of this right.

Billy wagged his head. “Not till you got your set made.”

“Set?”

Tuttle explained, “Where you gonna lay it, Titus.”

“How?”

Cooper nudged Hooks forward. “Billy, y’ show him.”

“C’mere, Titus Bass,” Hooks instructed, tugging Bass’s sleeve. “I be the one to show you first whack.”

“First … first whack?” Titus asked.

“Right off. Means I show you right off.” Hooks held out his hand. “Gimme one of your float-sticks. You got float-sticks, don’cha?”

“Here,” and he slapped one down in Billy’s open palm as Hooks pulled the second mitten from his hand by placing it beneath his armpit.

That reminded Bass how much he itched, so he dug fingernails again, not only at his neck and armpits, but also stuffing a hand in there between the folds of his blanket coat where he could get at his groin.

“You do got the varmits, don’t you?” Tuttle replied.

Bass shrugged and said, “They ain’t been troubling me long.”

He didn’t take his eyes off Hooks as Billy knelt on the bank, leaned over, whacked the stick against the thick rime of ice crusted at the surface of the water near the bank, and began digging and scraping beneath the surface with the end of the long float-stick. After a short time he shoved his coat sleeve up his arm, then stuck nearly the whole length of it under the surface.

When he brought the arm out and shook it, Billy stood, saying, “Put your damned hand down there, Titus Bass—and see what I made for your trap to sit itself on.”

Kneeling right where Hooks had, Titus stuffed his arm into the shockingly cold water, a chill that felt all the worse because of the dark at this predawn hour. His fingertips walked down the side of the bank until he felt the underwater shelf Billy had crudely dug out of the bank.

“I feel it. So you gone and made a flat place for the trap under the water.”

Cooper said, “Tell him what it’s for, Tuttle.”

“Put your trap down there, under the water, so the goddamned beaver don’t see it, you idjit.”

As he pulled his hand out of the freezing water, Bass turned to ask of Cooper, “What good does it do to hide your trap?”

“Beaver ain’t too stupid a animal, Titus,” Silas explained. “They smell your scent—where y’ve walked, where y’ go and spit—they won’t come anywhere near. Y’ been a stupid pilgrim to leave your traps on top of the bank afore now?”

“Yeah, I done that.”

Silas wagged his head. “Don’t y’ see that trap got your scent, maybeso that dead horse’s smell on it from packing it out here from St. Louis,” Cooper declared. “But under water—the beaver can’t pick up no man-scent.”

“And ’sides—you gotta have bait!” Billy added.

Tuttle asked, “Maybeso you didn’t have no bait to set out, did you?”

“B-bait? Hell—I ain’t fishin’ … I’m trapping beaver!”

Hooks and the other two snorted laughter behind
their hands to muffle as much of the shrill sound of it as they could—a sound that grated Titus like a coarse file drawn across rusted iron.