Death Rattle (47 page)

“Already got your breakfast, do you?”

After sprinkling the nearby snow himself, Titus warmed what was left of his coffee from the night before and chewed on some slices of meat he had roasted for supper. It didn’t take long before the pups moseyed over, lured by the smell of that flame-kissed meat.

“So now you don’t want them bones, eh?”

One at a time, he fed himself and the dogs small bites he trimmed from the slabs of roasted venison until there was no more. Then downed the last of his coffee before pulling on his coat in the gray light, stomping out to take the horses to water.

By the time the pack animals were loaded, Scratch pulled the blanket halves from the two baskets and whistled for the pups. First one, then the other, he set inside their basket and arranged the blanket under and around them both for padding and for warmth.

They marched until midmorning when he stopped briefly to let them pee in the snow and he himself sprayed the bushes. By the middle of the day when they stopped again to rest the horses for the better part of an hour, Scratch unfurled two buffalo robes, one atop the other, and called the pups inside the cocoon with him for a short nap. They pushed on again until midafternoon when he gave the dogs another chance to stretch their legs before enduring a last long stretch that took them right into twilight.

So it went, day after day, as Titus hurried to strike the South Platte. Then late one afternoon, they reached the abandoned adobe walls of Fort Vasquez.

“This here’s where I brung my wife and li’l Magpie too—we spent the winter of thirty-five-thirty-six right over yonder in them trees.”

Abandoned, and forlorn—how lonely the place seemed now. Then he remembered the Arapaho who caught him trapping in the foothills that early spring of ’36. Squeezing the dread from his mind, Scratch decided to stay the night within those quiet, ghostly adobe walls once a witness to far better times. As darkness came down and the wind moaned outside the half-hung gate, he thought of Shad Sweete, how the big man’s moccasins had once crossed and recrossed this ground … until the fur business went to hell and the traders abandoned their fort. The Bents and American Fur up at Laramie were both able to offer more to the wandering bands for their tanned buffalo robes than any small-time operation ever could hope to offer in trade.

Now Shad had gone off to the blanket with the Cheyenne. Maybe even took him a shine to a squaw, some gal he couldn’t get off his mind or out of his heart. Titus knew how a man could get himself so lonely for the touch of a woman, the smell of her too—himself feeling pretty damn miserable right then and there for missing his own woman. Month after month of nothing but the growl of deep voices falling upon his ears—it made him hunger for to hear her soft, trilling voice at long, long last. He went to brooding on just how her arms could feel around him, the fragrance of her hair when she nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder. A hollow pit yawned in the middle of him as he remembered the way her warm mouth crushed his lips so eagerly when she hungered for him.

And he discovered that he ached to see the little ones too. Oh, their bright eyes—how Magpie would curl up in his arms, and the way Flea would tug at his father’s one lone braid. So the old trapper called the pups close, scratching their ears and rubbing their bellies, thinking how wonderful a surprise these two dogs would be for his two children when he returned to Absaroka, long overdue.

The wind blustered outside those old mud walls, groaning past the dilapidated gate swinging on the last of its hinges, a cold wind sighing as it hurtled snow clouds past the silver face of a quarter-moon overhead. He had been alone, so very alone before. But never quite this lonely.

That next morning he left the South Platte to angle itself off to the northeast as he struck out for the northwest and the base of the foothills that would guide him in his quest. The sky was lowering, and another storm would be bearing down on them by nightfall. Better to be in the lee of the mountains come late afternoon, find a sheltered draw or ravine where he could protect the horses and build a fire the wind could not torment.

After dark it began to snow again. He sensed the inward pressure of time. Never having owned a pocket watch, not a man who was mindful of a calendar either,
Titus nonetheless felt a compression of his soul as the cold knifed its way into the marrow of him. He should have been home by now. Not having the slightest idea where that realization sprang from … Scratch nonetheless knew he should have been back to Absaroka by now.

He passed a fitful night, tossing in the robes and blankets with those two leggy pups. The storm moderated by first light as it rolled on east. The exertion made Bass warm as he loaded up the horses, one by one with their Indian pack saddles, then strapped on their bundles and made ready the saddle horse and the pups’ baskets. They set off across a new snow that had rubbed the little dogs’ furry bellies earlier that morning before he ensconced them in their blankets and baskets for the journey.

His decision was made before the sun appeared behind the thick storm clouds. There would be no trip that would take him to Fort William at the mouth of the Laramie on the North Platte, no trip east from the direct route he had charted in his mind. He didn’t have the time for such a luxury. Winter was on its way to the northern plains, and he needed to strike for home as fast as he could push the animals.

In a matter of days he had them skirting around the far end of the Black Hills,
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gradually stretching out the daily march even though the number of hours between dawn and dusk was perceptibly shrinking. They could move faster now, cover more ground, the Cheyenne horses hardened to the trail, accustomed to their loads. After all, he knew these hills and bluffs, knew every creek and rivulet as he hurried cross-country, guided by the map long ago burned in his mind.

At last he struck the upper North Platte, and in two more days he put that river at his back—scurrying, scurrying west for Turtle Rock and Devil’s Gate, following the Sweetwater in its icy climb into the naked,
scrub-covered expanse that would transport a man to the Southern Pass.

But Titus would not be near so patient as to wait for the Sweetwater to make it to the top of the pass before he would turn north. Instead, he struck out across country, praying his memory of the land would not fail him. North by northwest through each shortening day. That first night after abandoning the Sweetwater, he bedded down the weary horses at dark without water. They were too weary to care. The dogs whimpered some, however, tongues lolling—but quieted as soon as he tossed them the raw gut of a skinny antelope buck he had chanced across just before sundown.

Near midmorning the following day, he spotted the telltale brushy border of a creek, that dull gray of leafless branches huddling close to the snowy ground as the watercourse meandered its way across the unbroken white expanse that stretched ever onward toward the harsh blue of the prairie sky. A bone-dry westerly wind prevented the horses from smelling the moisture until they were almost on top of the little creek.

In a matter of moments every one of the animals was lined up, licking at the icy crust, hammering at the discolored slake with their hooves to get down to water … what little water still flowed over the pebbled creekbed. The dogs were yowling piteously, clawing at the tops of their baskets by the time he got to the pups and dropped them onto the icy crust of snow. The old, gentle horses were careful for the impetuous puppies as the pair darted between legs and hooves to drink first at one place, then scampered to another, lapping at the skimpy flow.

On his knees after cracking the ice with his tomahawk, Scratch leaned out and lowered his face into the ragged hole. Water so cold it made his back teeth ache clear down to the jawbone. He came up gasping, raking his blanket mitten down his mustache and into his beard, both instantly caked with ice in that freezing wind blustering off the hillsides—

There in the mid-distance, he saw them gathered beneath the hulking, bruised, blue-black clouds. The mountain
slopes. They had to be the Wind Rivers. Two days, three at the most, and he would be at the cache. The cache. It was one more milestone to put at his back, each landmark announcing he was drawing closer and closer to home.

The cache. Here he had buried his traps and all the other weighty truck he had not wanted to pack across the desert to California. With Bill Williams’s help, he had taken a day to dig that shallow hole before they pushed on south to the appointed rendezvous with the other raiders at both Davy Crockett and Robidoux … suddenly it all seemed so long ago. The desert crossing early in the summer, the raids and fighting, then recrossing the desert with all their horses. Striking for the mountains and home. He’d made it east of the Rockies, but he was still far from home.

He let the animals drink and drink. He owed them that much, he decided. Then Bass called the pups to his feet and picked them up, one by one, settling them inside their baskets. For some reason, it struck him just how much they had grown: if they stood on their rear legs, each of the pups could easily leap out of the baskets that weren’t holding them much longer. Perhaps by the time they reached the cache and he had his plunder resurrected from that hole in the ground, he could give the pups a try on their own—following the horses north.

Bass mounted, led the pack animals across the narrow creek, and struck for the foot of the mountains.

Late morning of the third day, he recognized the distant landmarks here several leagues south of where the fur companies had held two of their rendezvous. Summer of ’30 had been a good one, times were clearly getting better—the mountain men were basking in their glory days. But by July of ’38, when the traders and trappers once more gathered in these nearby meadows, dark and ominous shadows had appeared over the mountains. Most of the free men realized the writing was already carved in the wall. The beaver trade was dying. Over the last few years there had gradually been less and less to hurraw about, less to celebrate and revel in, with far less
whiskey to kill the pain that came of such a slow, agonizing death.

By sundown a day later, Bass had everything dragged out of the small cache, dividing the square-jawed iron traps and all that extra powder and lead among the baggage he would strap on the packhorses come morning. At twilight Titus celebrated inching that much closer to her and the children.

Here in the lee of the mountains his horses had plenty of grass blown clear by the winds groaning off the eastern slopes of the Wind River Range. Nearby they had a narrow creek, fed by a spring that would keep the creek open most of the winter. Now they were ready to point their noses directly north—following the Wind River into Absaroka itself. He could have done with a little whiskey to toast his efforts this night beside that empty hole in the ground, but Bents Fort coffee would have to do.

That night as he lay in the robes and blankets, scratching the furry ears of those two weary dogs, Bass stared up at the patches of starry sky that appeared through wide gaps in the drifting clouds. For the first night in a long, long time he felt assured that this truly was the same sky she would be looking up at this moment too. No more did months separate them. Now it was only a matter of weeks—days really, or so he wanted to convince himself.

Hopeful the miles would pass beneath him all the quicker for it.

Bad as his joints pained him—especially the stiffness in those hard, raw-knuckled hands, not to mention the afflictions suffered a’times in both his knees and the aggravation that came and went in that left hip—Scratch nonetheless did not tarry at the medicinal oil springs lying north of that old rendezvous site.

Memories were wrenched up just in passing on by the smelly, sulphurous tar pits. In much the same way Titus sensed the ghosts of the past as he stood beneath the low-slung, midday sun resplendent on the bright snow in that meadow where the Popo Agie joined the Wind River.
How many hooves and horses, lodges and lean-tos, trappers and traders had trampled this grassy lowland … but those were matters of a bygone time. He whistled the dogs close as he slowly rose to the saddle, grown melancholy with remembrance as he set off again.

Way it seemed, most of his life was already at his back, day by day steadily moving beyond all that he had left behind—friends and fights and freezing streams—realities and recollections that only made the possibilities of what lay ahead that much sweeter.

Titus knew how the pups must feel: for the first time they were allowed their own legs on this northbound journey. He’d realized he would have to check their paws and pads at each stop throughout the days ahead, looking for telltale signs of frostbite from tromping across the patches of ice, stretches of bare, frozen ground, and crusty snowdrifts everywhere they’d turn. Their skinny, wolfish legs would have to grow all the stronger too, what with the endurance that would be required of them if they were to travel with Titus Bass. To have them strike out across the ground on their own seemed the only way to toughen up their pads for this last part of the trail taking them north into the heart of winter. At first they might have only enough bottom to last until the mid-morning halt—but he knew that day by day the pups would harden for both the trail and what new life awaited them in Absaroka.

The dogs were eager to begin their march each morning, but by midday they were tongue-lolling and near done in as they collapsed near his feet the moment he dropped from the saddle. Titus packed them in their baskets most of the afternoon. As one day tumbled onto the next, he found them able to last a little longer. A good thing too, he reflected. Those half-big dogs would soon outgrow the pack baskets he had traded off of Goddamn Murray. They weren’t roly-poly puppies anymore. He had burned off their store of baby fat. Mile by mile, they had become lean and hard.

By the time he led them through the Pryor Gap, Titus knew the dogs could survive without him if they had to.
Should something happen to him, they would make it on their own. That gave him peace of mind: knowing that if he were no longer around, the animals wouldn’t fall prey their first few days in the wilderness. The pups just might end up having some hair of the bear too, might possess what it took to survive in this raw, wild land.