Somewhere on that far bank a bird chattered.
![ready to crack open a cold one ready to crack open a cold one](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/263/532/b80.jpg)
Like a gauzy tangle of lace laid against a bride’s dark hair, the mist clung in tatters against the dark, leafy brush. Staring at the far bank, Scratch watched the shudder and dance of the fog as it thinned, just then beginning to burn off. How good a fire would feel against his skin, how good some hot coffee would feel in his empty belly when he made it back to camp. With the sun’s impending arrival, the air had begun to warm slightly. That done to severely shorten the strap, Bass could count on keeping his pouch and horn tucked high above the surface of the creek, pulled right under his armpit now as he waded into the freezing water.īy the time he had seven traps set at the foot of slides and other likely spots where the lush new grass had been trampled by tiny paws, or saplings had been felled by the toothy rodents, Scratch was finding he wasn’t near so cold.
READY TO CRACK OPEN A COLD ONE SERIES
Overlapping the wide strap, Titus poked a long leather whang through a series of holes so that he could fasten it with a knot. Throwing his mittens down beside the traps, he pulled off his capote and yanked up his shooting pouch. Throwing the heavy buffalo-hide sack bearing a dozen American and Mexican traps over his shoulder and clutching his long bait-sticks under his arm, Bass lunged forward through the frosty grass as the dark canopy limned a thin line of sunny blue behind the jagged eastern skyline above his valley camp.Īt the water’s edge he dropped the sticks and sack, then leaned the rifle against a clump of willow. Looking again to the priming in both pistol and rifle, he stuffed the camp ax and a tomahawk into the back of his belt, where his skinning knife hung in its rawhide scabbard. He planned to wear them to and from every trap site, taking them off before he entered the water to make his sets, then pulling them on once he was ready to turn back for camp.
![ready to crack open a cold one ready to crack open a cold one](https://i.redd.it/4j8rl68qna621.jpg)
![ready to crack open a cold one ready to crack open a cold one](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/6nYAAOSwfeZcYwy2/s-l400.jpg)
Stirring out of the robes and blankets, Bass stomped feeling back into his feet, then crabbed over to his packs to dig out the buffalo-hide moccasins. Overhead no more than a matter of feet hung a foreboding layer of low clouds threatening to drizzle at any moment-it and the fog were both as cold and gray as ash flake in a long-dead fire. That next morning he awoke in the dark to find a cold early-spring fog cloaking the river bottom. Someone had built themselves a fire big enough to warm a passel of men. Except for that single fire, that lone point of light he had spotted down in the bottom of this valley years before, when he and the trio had come here to trap.