Hatcher explained, “Didn’t rightly lose it. Elbridge got it crushed a’neath a packhorse when the critter slipped off the trail and took it a slide down the mountainside.”
“Had to shoot my packhorse,” Gray added morosely. “And then I found that squeezebox smashed like fire kindling when I untied my packs to carry ’em back up the slope.”
Hatcher leaned forward and whispered, still loud enough that most men could hear. “The man sat right down, then and there, with what was left of his squeezebox broke all apart in his two hands … and took to bawling like he was a babe.”
“I loved that thing,” Gray defended himself in a squeaky voice, hands fluttering helplessly before him.
“Here!” Grimes shouted as he burst back onto the scene.
“Gimme that!” Gray screeched as he lunged to his feet, reaching for the concertina, ripping it from the other man’s hands. “Oh, J-jack—ain’t she ’bout the purtiest sight you’ve ever see’d?” he gushed, running his fingers over the oiled wood of both octagonal end pieces and the wrinkled leather bellows.
Hatcher turned and winked at Bass. “Damn sight purtier’n that’un ye got smashed under a dead horse what took a tumble long ago.”
“It is purtier, ain’t it? It is for the truth of God!” Gray shouted in glee as he hitched up his leather britches before stuffing both hands inside the wide leather straps tacked to the wooden ends of the concertina.
Scratch whispered into Hatcher’s ear, “He really can play?”
“This boy can play like the devil his own self,” Jack replied. “Eegod! He’s better’n me!”
Nodding in amazement, Bass turned to watch Elbridge Gray’s merry face as the trapper slid up and down some scales, listening intently to the instrument’s tuning. For the moment Scratch was amazed to find himself in the fastness of these mountains—where he had been put afoot, where he had lost three friends to the savages somewhere downriver, where he had been scalped and left for dead, then resurrected by Jack Hatcher and his buffalo-worshiping Shoshone—out here in the great beyond to find not only did Hatcher have along a fiddle he could play tolerable well … but now he discovered that Elbridge Gray could make all sorts of sweet sounds emerge from that hand-me-down concertina.
Here in this intractable wilderness, he had found music. Real music. Not just the dimming memories of tunes he carried inside his head, off-key and little used, whistled or hummed in tattered fragments as he went about his icy labors … but real, heart-stirring music.
“‘Hunters of Kentucky’!” Gray cried above the whooping and clapping of those crowding close.
“Get back, there—give us some room, dammit!” Hatcher demanded from the gathering as he dragged the bow long across the strings in prelude. Turning to Gray with as big a grin as Jack ever had on his face, he roared, “Do it, ’Bridge!”
Elbridge yanked the two ends of the concertina apart and began to stomp about in a tight circle, thumping the grassy ground with his floppy moccasins, his eyes squinted shut, fingers flying in a blur as he wheezed life into that instrument, squeezing sweet music from it, pumping the magic of song into the lonely lives of lonely men in a lonely wilderness.
With the second playing of the chorus, Caleb Wood started to sing at the exact moment Jack Hatcher raised his own croaking voice.
We are a hardy, free-born race,
Each man to fear a stranger;
Whate’er the game we join in chase,
Despoiling time and danger,
And if a daring foe annoys,
Whate’er his strength and forces,
We’ll show him that Kentucky boys
Are alligator horses!
Oh, Kentucky—the hunters of Kentucky!
Oh, Kentucky—the hunters of Kentucky!
By then two of the company trappers had joined in to sing along with Wood and Hatcher. A few of the words Titus could remember, having learned it during his years in St. Louis following the War of 1812—each time recalling that autumn journey down the Ohio and Mississippi with Ebenezer Zane’s riverboatmen. A stirring frontier ditty that recalled the courageous backwoodsmen who had stood with Andrew Jackson against the British at the mouth of the Mississippi.
I s’pose you’ve read it in the prints,
How Packenham attempted
To make old Hickory Jackson wince,
But soon his scheme repented;
For we, with rifles ready cock’d,
Thought such occasion lucky,
And soon around the gen’ral flock’d
The hunters of Kentucky!
Eventually a few more joined in, accompanied by the trapper beating his taut, willow-strung beaver hide.
You’ve heard, I s’pose, how New Orleans
Is fam’d for wealth and beauty,
There’s girls of ev’ry hue it seems,
From snowy white to sooty.
So Packenham he made his brags,
If he in fight was lucky,
He’d have their girls and cotton bags,
In spite of old Kentucky!
Then Hatcher began to prance and bob right around Gray in a quick, whirling jig of a dance, both of them kicking up dust and bits of flying grass as their feet flew.
But Jackson he was wide-awake,
And was not scar’d at trifles,
For well he knew what aim we take
With our Kentucky rifles.
So he led us down to Cypress swamp,
The ground was low and mucky,
There stood John Bull in martial pomp
And here was old Kentucky!
Back to back the two weaved and swayed, then began to do-si-do around and around one another.
They found, at last, ’twas vain to fight,
Where lead was all the booty,
And so they wisely took to flight,
And left us all our beauty.
And now, if danger e’er annoys,
Remember what our trade is,
Just send for us Kentucky boys,
And we’ll protect ye, ladies!
After two more songs one of the company men hollered, “Meat’s cut. Time for the fire!”
Night had deepened while a handful of trappers had butchered loose, bloody slabs of venison and elk. The trappers surged forward now that the supper call was raised, knives in hand, waiting for their portion. Jabbed on the end of long, sharpened sticks, the rich red meat sizzled over the flames, juices dripping into the crackling fire. Men grunted and groaned with immense, feral satisfaction until their bellies could hold no more; then once again their thoughts turned to liquor. With pepper-laced alcohol warming their gullets, many of the men brought out pipes of clay or cob or briar burl, filling them with fragrant Kentucky burley, lighting them with twigs at the fireside before settling back against saddles and packs and bedrolls.