Ride the Moon Down

10

“Where is that black-hearted sonuvabitch!” Carson roared.

Bass jerked around there in the shade of that awning strung over the trading blankets where he was consumed that morning with selecting between bolts of the fine woolen tradecloth or some of the coarser ginghams and calicos. Red-faced and slit-eyed, the diminutive Carson suddenly appeared, on the verge of exploding, as Meek, Newell, and others leaped to their feet, surrounding Kit.

“Who you looking for?” Tom Fitzpatrick demanded as he stepped around a plank counter toward Carson.

Shaking with anger, Kit growled, “The Frenchman! Shunar!”

“We got rid of him yestiddy, Kit,” Meek declared soothingly.

“Run him off,” Carson concurred. “But—he went and made trouble for hisself in the ’Rapaho camp.”

“’Rapahos?” Newell repeated. “Where you been sparking that purty squaw?”

A dark cloud immediately shadowed the short man’s countenance. “When Shunar left here, the bastard went down by the crik, close by the ’Rapaho camp. He laid a’wait there for dark to come, watching for Grass Singing.”

“She the squaw you had your eye on?” Meek asked.

“He figgered to catch her in the brush,” Carson declared, then went on to explain the rest of the story.

After breakfast that morning he had decided it was about time for him to take himself a wife, just like booshway Bridger had done the day before. After all, Kit reasoned, he had been in the mountains four years already, and a man could do with a good helpmate. So he had taken account of all that he possessed and what credit he could wrangle out of the company clerks, then packed it all aboard two ponies he led over to the Arapaho village.

“She had to know I’d be coming,” Carson told them. “I could see it in her eyes ever since them ’Raps come into ronnyvoo. The gal knowed I had my eye on her too. Already I been over to smoke twice’t with her pa.”

“But you don’t speak no ’Rapaho!” Meek hollered.

“Don’t have to,” Carson shut him off. “Plain as sign to the ol’ man I was there for his daughter. After coming two times, he sure as hell figgered I’d be back with my presents, be back to buy her for my wife.”

But when Kit had shown up at the lodge with his gifts earlier that morning, the girl’s father spurned Carson’s offering, angrily signing enough of the story to explain why he and his daughter wanted nothing more to do with white men. The old warrior made it plain enough as he held two fingers projecting from his lips to signify the forked tongue of the pale-skinned trappers, then ordered Carson to leave just before he began to sing a war song to his bow and quiver of arrows.

Fitzpatrick asked, “What got the two of ’em so damned fractious over white men?”

“Shunar.” Carson spat it as if he had just spoken the most vile word in his vocabulary.

Meek asked, “What’s that horse’s ass got to do—”

“I tol’t you!” Carson barked. “We run him off from here, so that snake-bellied coward went right down to the crik and waited for Grass Singing to show up for water.”

For a breathless minute, more than a hundred men stood there in absolute silence beneath the morning sun, watching Kit quake in anger—knowing all too well the outcome of that story.

“So the Frenchie …” Fitzpatrick began. “He—”

“He tried,” Carson interrupted. “Her pa signed that Shunar tore her skirt off, scratched her all over when he throwed her down in the bushes and got hisself ready to poke her. That li’l gal ain’t never had a man afore!”

“How you know for sure?” Meek inquired.

Suddenly glaring at his tall friend, Kit snapped, “Grass Singing wears a virgin’s horsehair knot,” gesturing around his waist then between his legs to symbolize the knotting of an Arapaho chastity belt. “She showed me herself, Joe. When the big bastard went to grab for his knife so’s he could cut her belt off—”

“She made her play,” Bass finished Carson’s sentence.

Kit looked over at Titus. “That’s right, Scratch. Her pa signed that she somehow wriggled away from him like a tadpole, what with Shunar just having him one hand to hold her down.”

“So for sure he didn’t …” Fitzpatrick began.

“No,” Carson answered, staring at the ground in the midst of that swelling crowd. “But my gut tells me he’ll try again till one of ’em is dead.”

“One of ’em?” Bridger asked. “Who you mean?”

“Either she’s gonna kill him,” Kit replied, “or Shunar’s gonna kill her.”

From the catch in the young trapper’s voice, Titus thought he understood how Carson must feel: terribly wronged by someone so easy to loathe, so easy to hate.

Looking then into the distance over Carson’s shoulder, he saw the figures coming. Sure that it had to be—that tall one in the middle, a dozen or more clustered around on either side of him like saplings around the tall oak.

Scratch gazed directly at Carson. “So you figger to make sure Shunar don’t get that chance to kill the gal?”

“She and her pa,” Kit explained, “they don’t want nothing to do with me, not with no white man now—so this ain’t about getting myself a squaw no more.” His eyes went cold. “Now it’s about putting a bad animal out of its misery, fellas. It’s ’bout killing someone needs killing in a bad way.”

Pointing with one arm, Scratch pulled a long-barreled smoothbore pistol from his belt with the other hand and announced, “There comes your chance, Kit.”

Carson jerked around with the rest of the crowd to see Shunar striding up with his hangers-on.

Bridger said, “That’un’s bad as Blackfoot. Big mouth, but he shoots center too. Best watch ’im like a snake.”

Kit whirled back to look at Bass, gazing down at the big pistol. He took it in both hands, snapped back the hammer to half cock, flipped the frizzen forward, and peered down at the priming powder in the pan. “Thankee, Scratch,” he whispered with deep appreciation as he stuffed the loaded weapon into his belt.

As Carson turned to watch the giant’s approach, Bass was struck with how big that huge pistol looked hanging from the belt of the five-foot-four-inch trapper. The young American stood some eight inches shorter than Scratch, and Chouinard easily towered a foot or more over Titus. Suddenly Titus was reminded of an ancient, dramatic image from his long-ago childhood, a visage come as clear as rinsed crystal from those days he’d sat with his brothers and sister at their mother’s knee while she read by the fireplace from that huge family Bible draped over her legs like the curved wings of a great bird come to rest in her lap.

How vivid that image had been to him as a child: visualizing those colorful hills and armies of thousands blackening the valley, tents arrayed for as far as the eye could see as the enemies of Israel sent forth their hero—a giant called Goliath. To meet him there between the lines went a young shepherd boy, the smallest among that army of Israel. Instead of arming himself for battle with a shield, and bow or lance … David carried only three smooth stones and his leather sling—

“Amereecans!”

The crowd turned as the distant figure hurled the word like a profane slur. Slowly the Americans stepped to each side like the parting of a flock of wrens when a hawk descends through them. Carson, Meek, and Bass stood at their apex watching the monster lumber across those last fifty yards.

If this duel started close-up, Scratch knew Kit didn’t stand a snowflake’s chance in a boiling spring. He turned to the short man. “You don’t have to do this—”

“Yes, I do, Scratch,” Carson cut him off, not taking his eyes from the giant. “I ain’t running.”

From afar Chouinard pounded his chest twice and bellowed, “I want Amereecans to beat! Crunch my teeth on Amereecan bones, speet them out!”

Around the giant that motley array of cowered voyageurs and pork-eating Americans laughed as they came on in their hero’s gigantic shadow. From the glistening of the brown molasses pasting the Frenchman’s black beard, it was plain to see he’d been punishing the whiskey that morning. But as liquored up as he might be, the brazen Chouinard carried no rifle, had no pistol in sight.

“He ain’t armed,” Carson said.

Meek shook his head. “You can’t count on that.”

Ripping the big smoothbore from his belt so suddenly, it caused Chouinard to freeze nervously, Kit returned the weapon to Bass before he took a single step forward, empty-handed. “Here’s one American what’s ready to have you try chewing on me, Shunar! Look around you: Bridger’s brigade is full of men what’d thrash you good, but you’ve got ’em buffaloed. Ain’t got me fooled! By God, I may be the smallest one in this camp, but I’m gonna make you choke!”

Throwing his head back so far his tonsils showed, the St. Louis Frenchman howled with an evil laughter lusty enough that it had to make his throat raw. With a few more long strides he stopped again less than ten feet from Carson.

“You make me to laugh good, leetle Amereecan bird,” Chouinard growled. “Thees is good to laugh with your leetle bird chirping.”

“Don’t figger I said nothing wuth you laughin’ for,” Carson snapped.

The giant lost his sickly grin. “These Frenchmen here, no fun to flog no more. Now I come to crunch me Amereecans.”

Carson demanded, “What you want with an American?”

Inside his black beard Chouinard wore that same mad grin he had on his face yesterday afternoon as he mauled the four voyageurs. Pointing at the nearby brush, he snarled, “I go to trees, there. I get switch. I bring it back and switch all you Amereecans!”

“I’m standing right here. You don’t see me running, you yellow-backed bastard,” Carson rasped, his voice growing quieter each time he spoke. “Go fetch your switch and try to switch me.”

“Y-you?” Chouinard sputtered, turning left and right as his followers started to laugh with him. “B-but you are so small! Make me laugh to switch Amereecan so small!”

“I ain’t gonna take that talk from no goddamned Frenchman!” Carson bellowed, his voice grown loud once more. “There’s more’n two hunnert Americans in this camp, and any man of ’em can take your switch from you and shove it right down your goddamned throat.”

“Ho, ho!” Chouinard roared, covering his mouth as he laughed.

“Take your words back or I’ll shove ’em down your throat too!”

That only made the Frenchman laugh all the louder. “Sounds like leetle fly buzzing ’round Chouinard! Leetle fly says he stick my switch down my throat!”

“That’s right, I’m the smallest there is,” Carson declared, “but even I can brass-tack a coward like you.”

Glaring steely-eyed again, the Frenchman snorted his curse, “Enfant d’garce! I grind your bones first—let all these other peegs watch—then I see if more Amereecan peegs fight Chouinard! Moi! I beeg bull of thees lick.”

“When you gonna stop talking and go fetch your gun, Shunar?” Carson demanded.

“Gun?” the giant echoed, slowly pulling his big butcher knife from its scabbard at his side. “Sacre bleu! I like to cut when I keel.”

“You say ’nother goddamned word about crunching bones or stomping an American,” Kit warned, “I’ll blow a hole in your head, then take that goddamned knife of yours and rip your guts out with it right here and now! Leave them guts for the birds to peck over while you’re sucking your last breath!”

“I step on you like leetle bug,” the Frenchman boasted, stomping one moccasin into the trampled grass, grinding his heel into the dirt.

Carson rocked forward on the balls of his feet and hunched his shoulders menacingly. “All you can do is talk? Draw your goddamned knife, pork eater! For days now you been getting likkered up and bullying this hull camp—but now you’ve rubbed up again’ a real fighting rooster ’stead of some corn cracker’s barnyard pullet!”

For a moment Chouinard’s hand flexed and relaxed, flexed and relaxed around his knife handle.

Bass roared, “Gut ’im, Kit. Cut his heart out.”

His nostrils flaring, Carson growled at the towering Frenchman, “You’re big bull of this wallow?”

“I beeg bull of—”

“Shit!” Carson cut him off. “You ain’t much of a man, Shunar. Cain’t even take no horsehair belt off no li’l gal! You ain’t no bull no more! G’won and pull your knife so I can leave your guts out to dry for the jays!”

Chouinard drew his shoulders back, taking in a long breath as his chertlike eyes slowly ran across the crowd behind Carson. Only when he had done that did he peer down the short American’s frame before crawling back up to glare at Carson’s face. That look of undisguised contempt was suddenly replaced by a grin.

“No fight now, Keet,” he said almost apologetically. “I like your sponk. Maybe we be friends, ami? Friends, n’c’est pa?”

To Bass’s surprise the Frenchman turned on his heel without uttering another word and brutally shoved some of his followers aside as he stomped away.

Struck dumb at the suddenness of the giant’s retreat, Scratch listened as a smattering of laughter began among the Americans. In a heartbeat more than a hundred men were guffawing as loudly as they could, hooting and catcalling after the Frenchman and his embarrassed followers who scrambled to catch up to Chouinard in his retreat.

“Why, if that hoss don’t take the circle, Kit!” Scratch marveled as they watched the giant’s back grow smaller. “The bastard was just about to wade into you till you spoke your piece ’bout that ’Rapaho gal.”

Meek asked, “Figger that’s what made him run off with his tail ’twixt his legs?”

“No matter—he’s gone now,” Bridger announced. “Let’s have us a drink for that bastard showing us the white feather!”

“Dunno, but something tells me this ain’t over, Gabe,” Bass warned, sensing that gnawing in his belly about the suddenness of the giant’s backstepping once the squaw was mentioned. He turned to Kit, saying, “Best you watch your back.”

But Bridger and Meek jointly yoked their arms over the shorter man’s shoulders and cheerily dragged Carson off toward the whiskey canopy.

“There’s other gals you can poke,” Joe declared.

Newell caught up with them. “Allays other squars, Kit!”

Wagging his head, a bewildered Titus Bass sauntered back to the awnings where the trade goods lay, sensing that nothing had been settled between the two. Chouinard’s attack on Grass Singing had served to irritate a wound that had been opened and kept oozing for some five long weeks while the Bridger and Drips brigades sat on their thumbs, impatiently waiting for the long-overdue supply caravan to reach the mouth of New Fork.

The camps already sat atop a powder keg of emotion.

During those long days of waiting, rumors had begun to circulate that Sublette and Campbell had indeed given up the mountain trade in an agreement with Astor’s successors in St. Louis. Another story confirmed that the partners were even selling the fort they had built on the North Platte last summer to the new firm of Fitzpatrick and Fontenelle—quitting the fur trade completely to become landed gentry and mercantilists back in St. Louis.

First it was General William H. Ashley who had pulled out after he made his fortune, and now Sublette and Campbell appeared poised to do the same. Could it be, rumor had it, that the two of them were following Astor’s lead: getting out while the getting was good because there was no more money to be made in the mountain beaver trade?

A man had only to look around that sprawling rendezvous camp as they waited through those last days of June, on through the entire month of July and the first week of August, to see that the bales of beaver were small, and few. More and more of the grumblers in the company camps announced their plans to cash in their chips once the caravan arrived. And once Fitzpatrick showed up more than a month late on August 12 with those pack animals swaybacked beneath trade goods, one of Fontenelle’s St. Louis clerks busied himself telling all who would listen a depressing tale that served to thicken the aura of gloom already hanging over that rendezvous of 1835.

“Back home it’s all the talk—a story come upriver from N’orleans ’bout a French duke what was over visiting the Chinee last year,” the wag related to his rapt audiences. “Seems that Frenchie lost his beaver-plug hat over there, and them Chinee didn’t have nary a beaver-plug hat to sell him.”

The clerk went on to describe how the French diplomat had a tall hat specially made for him from the silk of those productive worms, a hat he proudly wore upon his return to Paris where it became all the envy, and the fashion conscious clamored to have one just like it. In droves the best dressed of Europe had begun to abandon their beaver felts and were ordering hats of Chinese silk.

By now, the clerk explained to slack-jawed trappers, this frightening trend was gripping the States. Silk was all the rage.

Any half drunk who cared to give it a thought couldn’t help but reckon what was at that moment being scrawled on the wall: if beaver was no longer in demand, then it stood to reason that beaver men were soon to become an endangered species.

In light of all that disgruntling talk of silk, the groaning about the poor price for plews, and the moaning about the high cost of possibles, it didn’t take all that much mulling over before Scratch decided he wasn’t about to trade off all his pelts to the company then and there. What with the low dollar beaver was bringing, coupled with the exorbitant prices demanded for what trade goods were being offered, he figured instead to hang on to half of his plews he might well end up trading off at that new Fort William raised down on La Ramee’s Fork. By any reckoning that post lay closer than Tullock’s new fort going up at the mouth of the Tongue, and much closer than either Taos to the south or Fort Union in the north.

There sure as hell had to be somewhere a man could squeeze a better dollar out of his pelts.

What with having a family now, why, a man needed to give due consideration to such matters—not as he had done in past summers when he would take what value was given, trade for his possibles and some whiskey at the prices demanded, then disappear for another year.

But the more he cogitated on it now in the shade of those awnings, the angrier it made him, realizing that the fur company, the traders, all of those who acted as middlemen to supply this to, or do that service for, the trappers were lining their palms and stuffing their pockets with fruits harvested through the risks taken by others. Those with the oiliest tongues turned out to be the richest at others’ expense.

And while he had galloped west many years ago hoping to leave that obscene inequity behind, with every summer Bass was coming to realize that the monied minority and their lackeys would always find some way to reach out from the settlements and exploit those who called this wilderness home.

Beaver had to come back, he told himself as he made his final decisions with more hope than horse sense. Beaver just had to come back.

“Run this up and tell me what I owe you,” he instructed the clerk after turning back what he hoped would be more than half of the necessaries and shiny presents he had picked out for his women.

“With all this fur of yours, you’ve got much more credit than these few purchases.”

“I ain’t trading all my furs,” he interrupted the man. “Gonna keep some for—”

“The Frenchman’s coming!”

Bass turned at that warning cry stabbing the hot summer air from beyond the tree line.

“Shunar’s coming!”

More of them took up the call as Titus swung around, his eyes digging, scratching, searching for Carson as he lamented, “Goddamn—there’s gonna be a fight now!”

Once more Bass scanned the trees, finding the giant just emerging a few hundred yards off on horseback. Even at this distance he could make out the shape of the firearm Chouinard had braced atop his right thigh as his horse loped toward the trading canopies.

At the sound of footsteps and loud voices Scratch turned, finding Carson hurrying past, out of the shade and shadow, to stop in the intense light as clouds continued to scud toward the sun. Behind the Frenchman came a growing crowd of the curious. The shelters poked back in the brush and trees now began to spew many more white men as well as Indians who had been visiting the trapper camps.

“Leetle Amereecan!”

Even at this distance they could all hear the bite of Chouinard’s voice in the dry, hot air.

A wisp of graying cloud brushed the face of the sun, sucking some of the intensity out of the afternoon light.

“Get my horse, Doc,” Carson ordered without turning.

While Newell hurried away, Bass stopped behind the short man, offering his weapon once more. “You want my pistol?”

Carson turned slightly, patted the butt of the big pistol he had stuffed into his belt this day. “Got mine, Scratch.”

Fifty yards away now, Chouinard shook the rifle overhead. “I keel you Amereecan! The squaw—she is mine!”

Turning suddenly, Carson snagged a handful of Bridger’s shirt. “Gabe, if’n this don’t turn out … promise me you’ll take my ponies, my plunder, over to that ’Rapaho camp.”

“What the hell for—”

“Promise me,” Kit begged. “Give it all to the ol’ man and try to tell him I done what I could to kill this bastard.”

“He ain’t gonna kill you.”

“Gimme your word, Jim,” Carson pleaded. “Tell him all white men ain’t lyin’, thievin’, snake-tongued bastards.”

“Awright,” Bridger agreed reluctantly.

“Keep what you want from my possibles,” Kit instructed. “It’s your’n, friend.”

With a snort from its nostrils, the horse was led up, and Newell quickly passed the reins over its ears as Carson leaped to the saddle. He yanked on the reins, and the animal lunged back against some of the growing crowd.

“Watch his eyes!” Bass shouted above the tumult.

“Scratch is right!” Bridger echoed. “The bastard’s tricky, so watch his eyes.”

Thin-lipped with determination, Carson nodded. “Them eyes 11 tell me when he’s gonna shoot.”

“Send ’im to hell, Kit!” Meek bellowed as Carson spun the nervous horse around and shot through the crowd.

Bass growled, “Make meat out of the nigger!”

The gathering throng had grown noisy as their numbers swelled. But the moment Carson burst into the meadow atop his horse, an even louder call burst from more than half-a-thousand throats.

“He got a chance, Scratch?” Bridger asked in a whisper.

“If’n he gets in there close, I’ll lay he’s got a chance.”

Kit began circling off to the right slowly, raising himself in the stirrups so he could instantly spring that way or this.

“Shunar! Am I the American you’re looking for?”

Wagging his big shaggy head of black hair, the Frenchman, for some reason, recanted. “No.”

“You’re a goddamned liar!” Carson snorted with some mean laughter. “And a yellow-livered coward!”

Chouinard hurled his curse as his horse pranced closer, lowering his rifle to make certain of his shot. “Peeg! I will crunch your bones in my teeth!”

“Ain’t much of a man, are you, Shunar?” Carson taunted as he bobbed back and forth in the stirrups, intently watching where the giant swung the muzzle of his smoothbore fusil. “Cain’t even untie the knot on a young gal’s chastity rope!”

“Beeg lie!” the giant spat, flecks of spittle collecting at the corners of his thick lips.

Kit sang out, “So you’re the big bull of this wallow, eh?”

“I chew your bones—”

“Not when a li’l Injun gal get herself away from you!”

Jerking back on his horse’s reins, Chouinard stopped only a few yards from Carson. With steely conviction he said, “I gonna like to keel you, leetle bird.”

Kit inched his frightened horse to the left, transfixed on the muzzle of the rifle that followed his every move. He held the pistol close, ready.

Already the crowd was shouting, calling out to one antagonist or the other, hooting and whistling and goading until Bass could barely hear what Chouinard and Carson were shouting at one another while they worked themselves up to that deadly moment.

“You’re nothing more’n a puffed-up bag of wind, Shunar! Some young gal can spook you!”

“I keel you, Keet! Cut your heart out—”

“Gonna stuff that rifle up your ass, Shunar!”

“—cut your heart out and show it to the squaw!”

Bringing his horse up beside the American’s with a leap, Shunar rested the rifle’s barrel across his left elbow, propping it there for his shot.

“I crunch your bones today!”

Now both animals were touching, their riders making the horses shove against one another, snorting and pawing up clods of dirt and prairie grass as the two men spun them in a tightening circle, slowly wheeling round and round.

“Gonna put you in hell today, Shunar!”

Turning constantly, this way and that, each dueler twisted in his saddle to keep an eye on his enemy.

“Leetle Amereecan bird chirping till I keel him!”

Suddenly Chouinard jerked his rifle back from his left arm, inverting it to slam the butt of his fusil against the neck of Carson’s horse.

Yanking a foot free of a stirrup, Carson lashed out with a moccasin at the Frenchman’s buttstock, failing to connect. “Buzzards gonna pick your bones clean a’fore sunset!” When Kit kicked a second time, the blow landed solidly against the flank of Chouinard’s horse.

The giant’s animal sidestepped in a leap as the Frenchman struggled to regain control of the frightened horse. He twisted in the saddle to face Carson, dropping the fusil’s barrel back into the crook of his left arm again as it spat a tongue of yellow fire.

But the American had fired an instant before as that fusil was descending. Carson was already swinging to the side as his pistol erupted.

With the fusil tumbling from his hand, Chouinard shrieked in pain, clutching his bloody right arm. For a moment he gazed down at the path the bullet had taken: entering the wrist, traveling through the forearm, then exiting the elbow as it smashed bone. As his eyes glazed in agony, the Frenchman turned round to find Carson now some twenty yards away, stuffing his empty pistol into his belt.

“It’s over, Shunar!” Andrew Drips shouted, loping toward them on foot.

“No! I keel him!” the Frenchman cried like a wounded, terrified animal.

“Leave it be!” Drips commanded as he came to a halt beside the giant’s horse.

Instead of turning away, Chouinard cocked his leg back and kicked out at the company commander, sending Drips sprawling across the grass. Then the giant slowly sawed on the reins with his left hand before reaching for the scabbard at his back with that one good hand left him. The other arm hung useless, dripping gouts of blood onto the trampled, dusty grass.

“Reload, Kit!” someone hollered from the crowd.

But Carson hadn’t carried his pouch or powder horn into the fight.

“Shunar gets Kit close enough to use that knife,” Bridger grumbled, “he’ll make meat of Carson.”

Slashing his big heels into his horse’s ribs, Chouinard leaped toward the small American until his animal collided with Carson’s, wildly slashing the huge knife through the air. Kit was just regaining his balance from that blow when the Frenchman lunged out with that left arm, swinging low enough with the big butcher knife that Carson had to lean backward in the saddle.

Back and forth Chouinard slashed at the American, forcing Kit to dodge side to side so fast he could not regain his balance—eventually spilling from the saddle. Pitching headlong into the grass, Carson struggled to yank his foot from the stirrup as Chouinard savagely kicked at the American’s prancing horse, hurrying to get around to the other side where Carson hung from the saddle.

Terrified, Kit’s horse sidestepped again and again, for some miraculous reason keeping itself between Carson and the Frenchman’s horse in those frightening seconds as Kit battled to free his foot twisted in the stirrup.

He pulled his moccasin free just as the Frenchman sawed his reins in the opposite direction, deciding to spin around the rear of Carson’s horse. Kit stood, his right hand scraping at the back of his belt, fingers finding his scabbard empty. Somewhere on the ground nearby lay his knife.

But as clouds loomed across the sun, so too the Frenchman loomed over Kit. With a powerful grunt Chouinard brought his left arm down at the American who dived between the horse’s legs, rolled on a shoulder, then sprang up in a sprint.

Bass was already on his way, tearing away from the crowd the moment he realized Carson didn’t have a weapon left. “Kit!”

Right behind Carson the giant was goading his horse into a gallop, its hooves thundering like hailstones the size of cotton bolls on a hide tepee. Scratch could see Kit wouldn’t have time to reach him before Chouinard would ride Carson down from behind with that knife.

Meek yelled, “Behind you!”

The moment Kit turned his head to find Chouinard all but on him, Carson stumbled, sprawling in the grass as the Frenchman shot past. The giant reined up, his horse gone stiff-legged as the Frenchman yanked back on the reins. Kit grasshoppered out of the dirt, sprinting toward Bass once more.

When Kit was no more than ten yards away, Scratch hollered, “Now!” in warning, and heaved the heavy smoothbore pistol into an arc.

Both of Carson’s arms came up as he plucked the weapon from the sky, drew the hammer on back from half cock, and wheeled about in a crouch at the very moment Chouinard raced up, leaning off the side of his horse, attempting to impale the short American on that long knife.

But Kit dropped to one knee, gripping the huge pistol with both hands at the end of his outstretched arms, pulling the trigger point-blank in the Frenchman’s face—the force of that blow driving the giant off the far side of his horse as the huge lead ball entered just below the left eye socket before it flattened to splatter out the back of his immense head an instant later.

Kneeling there with the smoking pistol still in his hands, Carson remained motionless as the big man drooped farther and farther in the saddle, then suddenly collapsed into the grass.

From one side rushed Bridger and from another came Drips, both of the company booshways reaching the Frenchman as some in the hushed, murmuring crowd pressed forward, step by curious step.

Drips wagged his head as Bridger stood and announced, “Bastard was dead a’fore he hit the ground.”

The crowd erupted.

Meek was at Carson’s side, pulling Kit onto his feet. “Shot him in the saddle, Kit! By jump—you been shot too!”

Staggering a moment, Carson regained his balance and touched the side of his neck. “Just a graze, Joe.”

Newell, Bass, and a gaggle of others were crowding in on Carson now as Drips was ordering some company men to drag the body away. In a moment Bridger shouldered his way through the clamoring crowd, each one of them loudly reliving the frightening seconds of that duel, all at the same time.

“Damn—if this don’t call for a drink!” Bridger hollered above the noise.

“Maybeso later tonight, Gabe,” Carson announced as he turned to Bass, his hands shaking. Passing the pistol back to its owner, he said, “Thanks, Scratch. I’m beholden to you. Saved my life.”

“Maybeso, Kit—you’ll have yourself a chance to save my ha’r one day.”

Joe Meek draped a mighty arm over Carson’s small shoulder. “C’mon with Gabe—we ought’n have us some whiskey wet our gullets now that bastard’s dead, Kit!”

Carson finished shaking hands with Scratch, then turned to Meek. “We’ll all have us that drink together after supper, Joe. Right now I got something I better tend to.”

“Tend to?” Newell echoed, scratching the side of his head. “What you gonna do that’s better’n wetting down our dry with Bridger’s whiskey?”

Carson winked at them, saying, “Right now, boys—I’m on my way to buy me a wife!”