Buffalo Palace (46 page)

“Yup, it do,” Hooks agreed. “Yessirreebob—a hard-on for one special
Ute
gal, Silas. Must be real sweet on her.”

Titus glared up at Cooper. “We going today?”

“Why so all-fired ready to trot, pilgrim?”

“There’s miles to put behind us and beaver to trap when we get there.”

It took a moment, but Silas finally grinned a rotten-toothed smile. “I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “Maybeso that’s why this here greenhorn nigger gonna make a better trapper’n either of you boys.”

“I ain’t no greenhorn no more, Silas.”

Cooper looked him down, then up again. Then the man’s dark eyes slowly went to the horizon where the Shoshone were disappearing beneath a distant cloud of dust. “No—I s’pose y’ ain’t no more at that, Titus Bass.” When his red-rimmed eyes came back to Scratch, they were filled with a begrudging admiration. “Y’ve made a right respectable trapper outta yourself.”

It was closer to praise than anything he’d ever gotten from his pap. Titus swallowed hard, wanting his words to come out even. “Good as you, Silas?”

“Almost,” Cooper conceded. “But y’ ain’t good as me yet. Till that day y’ are, best y’ hang in with us.”

He finally let himself breathe as Silas stepped away, back toward the shade of the tall cottonwoods where the leaves rattled and the flies buzzed. The way it felt, that was about as good a fragment of praise as he was ever going to get, Bass figured.

“You figger we can pull out come morning, Silas?”

Cooper did not speak again until he settled on his blankets and robes, cocking an elbow beneath his head as he sank back onto his saddle. “I s’pose since there ain’t no more of that goddamned Ashley’s likker … and them Snakes has took off with all the spread-leg wenches in this here country … we might just as well see how the country looks up to the Bighorn.”

Scratch’s heart skipped a beat. “Maybeso we go all the way to … the Yallerstone?”

Silas grinned. “Why—don’t tell me y’ heard about the Yallerstone all the way back to St. Lou?”

“I did. Word was it was good beaver country!”

For the moment Cooper appeared interested. “A place where a man might winter up?”

Bass hurried into the patch of shade, kneeling near the other three. “If a man’s to winter up, Silas—might’s well be in country where the spring trapping is its best.”

“Awright, Scratch,” the strap-jawed Cooper eventually
replied. “Let’s us just go see for our own selves that there Bighorn country y’ heard so much spoke of.”

Hannah snorted downstream.

High and wheezing.

A sound he’d never before heard come from the mule.

In his chest his breath froze like a chunk of January river ice. Scratch nearly choked trying to swallow down the thumping of his heart.

Then the mule bawled.

Like he was shot out of a cheap Indian-trade fusil, Bass flung the trap onto the bank and lunged out of the stream … but slipped back into the icy water. Angrily flinging himself against the bank again, he dragged his weight onto the frost-slickened grass by jabbing the sharpened float-pole into the ground, then throwing a leg up and onto the slippery ground, and finally seizing hold of the branches of fiery-red willow recently kissed by autumn’s cold breath.

Grunting and grumbling in his exertions, Bass made enough noise to scare half the beaver for miles around right on out of the country.

Filling one hand with the fullstock Derringer rifle leaning against that red-leafed willow, Titus bent low without missing a step, his left hand sweeping up the camp ax from the ground where it rested among the heap of long float-sticks and the rest of his square-jawed traps.

Now he heard a grunting roar. Weren’t the mule. But: Hannah answered in kind—braying for all she was worth.

Shards of pinkish light exploded before him as he slashed his way through the tall brush that climbed more than two feet over his head—his frantic race causing hoarfrost and icy particles to cascade into the new day’s rosy light.

Another grunt, followed by a throaty and repeated snort as that new sound faded. Then Hannah
kee-rawed
with as close to a plaintive call for help as he’d ever heard a mule make. Not in all those years wrestling mules into harness, those hours spent behind both a plow and some mighty powerful rear haunches, his youth wasted struggling against stubborn, pigheaded animals … could he
remember hearing a mule make a desperate plea quite like that.

His moccasins slipped and slid as he dived this way and that. Spilling in his haste, Bass crashed to the hard, frozen ground on one knee and that hand clutching the rifle. Swearing under his breath, only a puff of frost broke his lips as he sprang up and lunged forward again—with his heart high in his throat as he cleared the last of the thick willow … and onto the strip of open ground at the border of the shadowy timber not yet touched by that single finger of sunlight creeping down the side of the frosty bowl.

Sliding to a stop, he brought the rifle down across the left wrist that held the ax. Quickly dragging his thumb back across the frizzen and hammer to assure that it was at full-cock, Bass jerked to the left.

Hannah stood upstream, pulling hard against the long lead rope he had tied around her ears and muzzle like a halter. Yanking with all she had in her, Hannah’s eyes were about as wide as his mam’s fancy-dinner saucers, her powerful rear haunches bent and that rump of hers nearly swaying on the ground as her hooves dug up deep furrows in a frantic bid to free herself from danger. Again and again she flailed her head side to side, lashing herself to escape the hold of the rope, where he had left her knotted to a tree with enough line that she could leisurely crop the dead, frozen grasses there at the border of the timber.

But in the next instant he wheeled right at the sound. He saw nothing from that direction, where he was positive he’d heard the rasp of a foreign noise. The hair prickling at the back of his neck, he suddenly picked up the scent of something on the wind. Like an animal, like old Tink herself—that family dog back in Kentucky—he measured the caliber of the upwind, attempting to sort out what that musky, heavy odor was that now prickled the hair on his arms beneath the buckskin war shirt and the heavy blanket capote.

He discovered he was sweating, even as cold as it was. While he stood there in the chill half light of early morn, sniffing into the wind, Scratch sensed a huge drop of sweat gather at the nape of his neck where his long hair clung, a pendulous drop that slowly sank down the course of his
backbone to land against the dark-blue wool of his breechclout, pooling there at the base of his spine. Where it froze him like January ice water.

The wind shifted. And the stench of it came to Bass, smacking him in the face. He’d never smelled anything like this before. Danger—pure and simple. Something feral, wild, beastly.

Hannah cried out, head twisting, her eyes rolling to find him. She shifted her stance, plowing up more of the loose turf made fragrant and heady by the bed of decomposing pine needles under her hooves. The instant he started her way, Bass saw a flicker of some movement in the trees beyond her. There just beyond the edge of the timber … it moved again. Like a chunk of black light torn off the corduroy of shadow that was the forest itself at this early hour as day splintered night into giving way to a reluctant dawn.

With his next step, and the shadow’s answering grunt—he knew.

Not that Bass had ever seen one himself since coming to the mountains. Lucky, he’d always figured. But he knew nonetheless. Something instinctive, perhaps. After all, he’d seen enough black and brown bears back east in those Kentucky woods.

“D-damn,” he muttered under his breath as the beast rose from its exertions.

How Bass had ever missed the elk carcass when he’d led Hannah there earlier in the dim light of false dawn, he had no idea.

But there stood that huge, hunch-backed behemoth, busy uncovering its carrion. Tearing away at the dirt, rotting pine needles, branches, and saplings it had scraped over the huge partially eaten carcass the day before. Likely an elk, Titus figured—for the size of what was left of it.

Standing rooted to the spot, Titus found himself marveling at the sheer size of that animal intent over its next meal.

Hell, out here he was no longer surprised to find everything bigger than he had ever let his imagination run. Even though Isaac Washburn had told him over and over again the tale of how the sow grizzly cuffed and mauled and chewed on old Hugh Glass up by the Grand River—
never had Scratch expected the animal to turn out to be so huge, come this close, near face-to-face.

With its returning to its recent kill just moments ago—was the beast’s own feral stench carried on the wind to Hannah’s sensitive nose? Had she winded the deadly silver-haired creature, attempted to flee, and cried out in terror when she found herself prisoner? Is that why the monster had grunted? Was it threatened by the mule?

Up the slope far to the right came a new snort. Followed by a series of grunts slowly fading in volume.

Hannah bawled anew, high and plaintive.

Dropping to one knee, Bass reluctantly took his eye off the shadow-ribboned silvertip just long enough to squint into the patchwork of light and dark farther up the nearby hillside.

This close to it, he felt the ground tremble. Bass jerked back to the left, finding the grizzly jumping up and down-on all fours beside its carrion, massive muzzle pulled back to expose the rows of huge teeth, giant fore-paws tearing at the ground, wagging its massive head from side to side. It too sniffed the air, then roared again with that sound completely new and foreign to Bass. A challenge. A lure. A call to battle.

Wau-au-au-au-gh-gh-gh!

From the hillside came its answer.

Wau-au-au-au … gh-gh-gh!

To Bass’s left the grizzly stood on its hind legs.

As it rose to full height, Scratch felt himself shrink inside. Although it was giving its full attention to the nearby hillside, nonetheless Titus felt dwarfed by the sheer immensity of the beast as it balanced on its two hindquarters, clawing at the air as if shadowboxing. Long, curved claws tore shreds of reflected sunlight: glistening, honed razors slashing at the end of each heaving swipe, rending what wisps of cold mist remained among the black timber.

They were snorting at one another nonstop now. One roar answered almost immediately by the other, and both drowning out the feeble bray of the frightened mule. The grizzly he could see whirled about on its haunches and dropped to all fours, quickly circling the elk carcass, savagely flinging dirt and pine needles back onto its kill in
some feeble attempt to hide it from the approaching challenger.

Considering what to do in that instant as the forest’s terror was now suddenly doubled, Bass wondered if he should dash over and release Hannah. What with the way she rolled her eyes at the grizzly, then danced back in that confining arc to roll her eyes at him—bawling with that high-pitched squeal of hers. But if he did, his instincts told him … he’d be left on foot.

Hannah would wheel and run, yanking the rope from his cold, bare hands, likely bowling him over in her eagerness to flee as far away from there as she could. Maybe not stopping until she made it back to camp upstream, perhaps even into the next valley, where they had trapped out just about everything with a flat-tail on it before moving here yesterday.

How he’d come to rely on her, trust her, cantankerous and contrary as a mule could be, yet coming to respect her as he never had respected such a stubborn animal while a youngster made to work with mules, together tearing long furrows in the dark, loamy soil of Boone County. But there was something entirely different about this animal.

Through the past winter and into his productive spring hunt, then as the seasons turned to summer’s rendezvous and finally their moseying into the Wind River range, trapping and tramping, easing north all the more … Bass had come to care for the young mule, more than he had ever cared for an animal. A time or two he had even allowed himself to believe the mule cared for him too.

So it had surprised him—as suspicious as he was about mules from those long-ago days on his pap’s land in Rabbit Hash—when Hannah would slip up behind him without a sound, with no warning, as he was going about some camp chore, suddenly swinging her thick muzzle into that hollow between his bony shoulder blades. Knocking him down, sprawling into the dirt that first time. Heels over head a second time. Sent skidding on his rump a third time—just starting to twist about with the faintest sound of her approach.

Always careful to pick her time and place, Hannah
grew more crafty as the months rolled by. It became her own private way to play him the fool—this stunt she loved to pull on him. The mule never seemed to tire of it. Nor did she seem to take much heed of the way he scolded her, shook his finger at her as he clambered off the ground and brushed himself off, his cheeks crimson with embarrassment at the way the other three trappers gushed with laughter, snorting at how boneheaded he was to allow the mule her folly with him when he should either whack her upside of the head, or shoot her.

Each time she succeeded in sneaking up on him—he figured it was nothing more than a knot not being tight enough … but this time she was held fast. In that instant he decided he wouldn’t free her.

Not just yet, he wouldn’t—not when she’d likely bolt off and leave him stranded. Scratch wasn’t about to try outrunning a grizzly. Not from all that he’d heard tell of the beast. Not from what common sense told him was purely a fool’s errand. No mere, mortal man could dare outrace a behemoth like that on all fours. It made no matter that it would be an obstacle course, darting in and out among the trees, lunging over deadfall, ducking branches, and avoiding those slick, icy patches of winter’s first snow still tucked way back in among the dark, sunless places. No matter that he would be on two feet and this monster on four.

Something feral, wild, and untamed within him told Titus that the surest way for a man in his predicament to throw his life away was to try fleeing. From where that spark of wildness came, he knew not. Only that it rested at the deepest marrow of him—and enough had transpired in his nearly thirty-three years that proved to him he should listen to the flicker of its voice.