Wind Walker

FIVE

A cold, steady rain sluiced off the soggy, shapeless brims of their low-crowned hats as they came to a halt at the crest of the low hill and gazed down at the tall, weathered adobe stockade erected around the American Fur Company’s Fort Laramie.

“Thar’s Fort William, Shadrach,” Titus said, flicking a droplet of moisture from the end of his cold, red nose.

“When they put up them mud walls?” Sweete asked as Bass’s eldest son came to a stop on the hill with the packhorses.

“I dunno,” Titus replied, failing to remember. “Last time I was here, I reckon on how there was timbered walls.”

“How long’s it been, you been here?”

“Years. Can’t recollect how many gone by now. You?”

Sweete wagged his head. “Had to be afore beaver went to hell.”

“Back near the end—when Bridger was a brigade cap’n for American Fur?”

“Naw,” Sweete replied. “Bridger always stayed ’bout as far away from here an’ them booshways as a man could keep himself.”

Bass sniffled, “Likely was some time afore that last ronnyvoo we had us over on the Seedskeedee near Horse Crik.”

“American Fur squeezed ever’thing outta the mountains,” Shad grumped.

“Then they kept on squeezin’ so hard they damn near choked ever’thing north from here, clear up to the Englishers’ country.”

“Only reason they ain’t got a finger in the business south of the Platte is the Bent brothers—” but Sweete caught himself. “I mean, what them brothers did afore Charles was murdered down to Taos.”

Titus smiled, flashing those crooked teeth the color of pin acorns. “You reckon they got some whiskey to trade, Shadrach?”

“What the blazes you got to trade for whiskey?”

“I figger it’s you got some trade goods.”

A quizzical look crossed Sweete’s face. “I ain’t got no foofaraw to trade. Ain’t worked for Vaskiss or the Bents in many a season … an’ I ain’t laid bait or set a trap in longer’n that—”

“Can you still arm-wrestle like you done back in them ronnyvoo days?”

For a moment Sweete gazed down at his right arm, then patted it with his left hand. No longer did he wear the left one in that black bandanna of a sling. “Long as it’s the right arm.”

“Your other’n, it’ll come, Shad,” Bass reassured. “Don’t you worry—I’ll lay how you’re getting stronger ever’ day. You can still fotch ary a man with that right arm of your’n.”

“That how you figger we’re gonna get us some whiskey to drink?”

Titus shrugged. “Don’t pay a man to trap beaver no more. Onliest thing the traders want nowadays is buffler robes. But neither of us got a camp o’ squaws to dress out buffler robes. What’s a ol’ man like me s’posed to do but find a likely young’un with big arms like you to wager whiskey on?”

“What you got to wager against a cup of hooch?” Shad inquired.

He thoughtfully scratched at his chin whiskers. “That Cheyenne skinner hangin’ off your belt sure to grab someone’s attention at the trade counter.”

“My skinner and this sheath Shell Woman worked for me?” he whined in disbelief. “An’ my right arm to boot? You’re just ’bout as slick as year-old snake oil, Titus Bass.”

“Smooth talker, ain’t I?” And he grinned as the rain splattered his face.

“Shit. You can’t get away with nothin’, ol’ friend—you’re so bad at lyin’.”

“Then you’ll buy me a cup of whiskey?” Scratch begged. “Ain’t had none since Dick Green topped off my gourd back down to Bents’ big lodge on the Arkansas.”

“If’n you’ll put up something of your own against two cups of whiskey, then I reckon I can throw in my arm for a match.”

“Shell Woman don’t mind you drinking?”

Turning to peer over at his wife, Sweete ruminated a moment, then said, “I can’t callate as I’ve ever had a drop o’ whiskey since I’ve knowed her.”

“Nary a cup down to that mud fort on the Arkansas?”

He wagged his head. “Nope. Not a drop since I been around Shell Woman an’ her people.”

Titus chuckled softly and said, “Then she ain’t see’d you drunk the way I see’d Shadrach Sweete get in the cups!”

“Nope. Them days belong to another man now, Scratch.”

“You was a wild critter, Shadrach,” Bass commented with fond remembrance. “Good damn thing you never got so drunk we’d had to rope you to a tree till your head dried out. Would’ve took a bunch of us to get you wrassled down and tied up.”

“Can’t say as I’ve ever see’d you get bad in the cups neither,” Sweete admitted. “So you figger to tear off the top of your head and howl at the moon tonight?”

“Nope.” And he shook his head dolefully. “Them times is over for me too, lad. I hurt too damn much for days after. Can’t swaller likker like I used to and stay on my feet.”

“We’re just getting old.”

“The hell you say! Speak for your own self!” And he shuddered with a chill that was penetrating him to the bone. “I’m getting damned cold sitting out in this rain, water dripping down my ass what’s gone sore on this here soggy saddle—listening to you spoutin’ off ’bout whiskey,” Titus grumbled. “A few swallers’d sure ’nough warm my belly right about now.”

The fifteen-foot-tall double gate was still much the same as it had been on his last visit to Fort William, but now the arch that extended overhead bore the figure of a horse galloping at full speed, painted red in a primitive design that reminded Scratch of how a horse might be rendered on the side of a Crow or Shoshone lodge. A little distance out, he whistled the dogs close and they all angled away from the mud walls, aiming instead for that flat just below the fort, where the La Ramee Fork dumped itself into the North Platte. Here they would camp close enough to the post to conduct some business, but far enough away that there was little chance of their families being disturbed. After Titus sent Magpie and Flea off through the brush to scratch up what they could of kindling dry enough to hold a flame, he turned to help Shell Woman and Waits-by-the-Water with that small Cheyenne lodge the two women erected only when the weather turned as inhospitable as it had this day.

“Here, I’ll lend a hand,” Shadrach offered as he grabbed an edge of the buffalo-hide lodge cover.

“Not with that arm of yours still mending,” Bass scolded.

“A’most good as new awready.”

Titus shook his head. “G’won and tend to the stock. Three of us raise the lodge while you get our goods off them horses.”

The early spring rain finally let up late in the afternoon, not long after the women and Magpie got Shell Woman’s lodge staked down and the smoke flaps directed against the breezy drizzle. Inside the women unfurled buffalo robes and blankets around the small fire pit, then got the little ones out of their wet clothing. To the left of the door Flea piled the driest wood he could find down in the brushy creek bottom, while the women stacked bundles of their belongings dragged inside, out of the weather. Again tonight the two families would gather beneath one roof, crowded hip to elbow, sharing their warmth and their laughter rather than erecting Waits-by-the-Water’s lodge nearby.

“Go with you?” Flea’s English caught his father as he and Shadrach ducked from the lodge right after a supper of some boiled venison.

“He asked that real good, didn’t he?” Sweete remarked.

Bass nodded proudly, then told the boy, “Go tie up the dogs to a tree, close by, like we allays do, son.”

Magpie’s head poked from the lodge door as she asked, “Me too, Popo? Go with you to fort?”

“What’s your mother say?”

The young girl stood just outside the doorway, speaking to her mother, then turned back to Titus and said, “We go, yes. Stay with Popo all the time.”

“You both unnerstand what stay with me all the time means?”

Magpie moved up two steps and took Flea’s hand in hers. They nodded their heads in unison as she said, “Where you go, we go.”

“If’n your manners stay as good as your American talk, then there won’t be no reason for me to scold you two,” Titus replied. “Your mother’s been here afore, you too, Magpie.”

“Me?” she asked. “I don’t remember.”

With a grin he explained, “You was little. No more’n a year an’ a half old back then.”

She stepped over and squeezed his hand lovingly. “That was so long ago, this will be a brand-new visit for me.”

“Like our visit to Bents’ lodge on the Arkansas,” Titus said, hugging her quickly, “this might just be your last an’ only chance to see this here Fort William on the Platte.”

“Platte?” Flea repeated.

“The river,” Shad explained. “That’s parley-voo for flat.”

This time Magpie echoed, “Parley-voo?”

“Frenchie talk,” Scratch said. “Lots of Frenchies out here. Not so many up to Crow country, but they’re all over the Arkansas country.”

“Frenchies—is this a tribe?” she inquired in her native tongue as the four of them climbed onto the flat and started crossing the soggy pasture toward the fort itself.

Both of the men laughed and Bass explained, “They’re part of the white tribe. Like there are River Crow, and there are Mountain Crow. The Frenchies are part of the white tribe, but they come from a land far, far from here—and they talk with a whole different tongue of their own.”

“But, the two bands of Crow speak the same tongue,” Flea protested. “Why do these Frenchies talk a different tongue than the rest of the white tribe?”

Baffled, Titus shrugged as he came to a halt near the gates, the light growing dim.

Shadrach chuckled as he held up two fingertips barely spaced apart and exclaimed, “Because them Frenchies got a wee small brain—so they don’t know no better than to squawk an’ whine in that idjit talk of theirs!”

“They got the inner gate closed, Shad,” Titus announced with a little worry. “C’mon.”

Passing under the arch over the double gates, the four entered a passageway at the end of which stood the set of closed gates. Midway down the adobe wall to their left was a narrow window covered by wooden shutters that had been bolted shut on the inside of the wall.

Scratch pushed on them gently. “Throwed an’ locked.” Then he pounded on them with his fist. “Ho! The fort! Open up! Open up out here!”

Muted voices and the scrambling of feet on soggy ground drifted to them from inside the gates; then the scrape of iron was heard, and one side of the shutters was pulled back a few inches. A nose poked itself out. After the nose’s owner made a cursory inspection of the newcomers, the shutter opened all the way and there stood a round-faced white man, his chin and cheeks clothed in a neatly trimmed beard, his upper lip naked of a mustache.

“What’s your business?”

“We’re thirsty,” Bass declared.

“Them too?” the man asked, his eyes flicking to the children with their heads poked between the two trappers.

“Jehoshaphat!” Titus roared. “These here my young’uns! They ain’t near old enough to drink.”

“They’re Indian?”

Scratch looked down at their faces as they peered up at him. “Yes, sir. These here pups o’ mine be ’bout as Injun as you is white.” He looked at the fort employee. “Now, let us in for to trade on some whiskey.”

“Almost time for the store to close,” he said, his eyes shifty. “Sunset, you see—”

Scratch wagged his head and clucked, “Never thought a trader would turn away a buy in’ customer.”

The man exhaled with that sort of sigh one used when they have been interrupted at what they regard as a most important task. “L-let me inquire of the factor.”

His face was gone and the shutter closed and locked before either Scratch or Shad could ask just who currently ruled Fort William on the Platte.

“You bring something to trade, Shadrach?”

“I ain’t wagering nothing Shell Woman made for me, if that’s what you’re asking,” he grumbled. “You’ll have to get your own self drunk tonight.”

That prompted Flea to look up at his father and ask, “You drink the spirit water tonight?”

“I pray I can afford a little of the spirit water tonight, you damn bet, son.”

“So what you bring to trade?” Sweete asked, looking Bass up and down.

He patted the front of his coat just above the spot where he had buckled the old belt decorated with what was left of its tarnished brass tacks. “Got me a little sack of some Mexican coins.”

“You been holding on to that money since you was down to Taos a while back?”

“Got me some coins in Taos,” he replied, “but most of ’em I got out to Californy.”

“When you rode off with some Mex horses?”

“Some of them greasers come after us had a few coins in their pockets,” Bass stated as the sound of iron sliding against iron echoed on the other side of the interior gate. “We took ever’thing we figgered we’d ever use off them dead bodies afore we kept on running for the desert.”

“There’s just the two of you?” asked a stout, broad-shouldered man in a thick French accent that reminded Titus of the back alleys and tippling houses of old St. Louis.

“An’ my two young’uns here,” Titus declared, then smiled as he said, “but, they don’t drink much whiskey no more.”

The Frenchman’s eyes wrinkled and his lips curled up in a smile. At least this one, Scratch thought, he appeared to have some remnants of a sense of humor.

“So, tell me—if the four of you have come to drink my whiskey, just where are your furs?”

Scratch immediately wheeled on Sweete. “Furs? Didn’t you remember to bring the damn furs?”

“Me?” Shad bellowed as if he had been insulted. “You was the one s’posed to remember to bring in them buffler robes with you to trade.”

“Damn your hide anyway!” Bass said, then turned back to the Frenchman. “Looks like we didn’t bring along any of our furs to trade tonight … so if you wouldn’t mind figgering out how much some gold coin is worth, we’ll know how much we can drink up afore moonset.”

“G-gold?” The Frenchman’s voice rose in pitch as he pushed the gate open a bit farther and stepped through the portal.

Titus nodded. “Mexican.”

“Real gold?”

“Californy gold,” Scratch replied. “I s’pose their gold is real out there. I only been to Californy once, but I don’t care to go back to them parts for to fetch me any more of it.”

The Frenchman started to hold out his hand, palm up as he asked, “You’ve got it with you?”

“I got enough for a li’l drinking, maybeso some geegaws and earbobs for our wives what stayed back to camp.”

“My name’s Bordeau,” he announced with transparent eagerness. “And yours?”

“Sweete,” the tall one answered. “An’ my ugly friend here is named Bass.”

Bordeau turned and started toward the tall, heavy gate being held open by another man. “Come in—and bring your children.”

“You’re booshway here?” Titus asked as they followed.

“No,” Bordeau answered as the group stepped inside the inner courtyard. “Monsieur Papin is chief factor, but he is gone east. Gone downriver with a load of furs for St. Louis.”

“Papin,” Titus repeated the name. “That’s a French name, just like yours.”

“Oui.” He turned them slightly on the path for the trading room.

Scratch looked at Shad. “American Fur ain’t very American no more, Shadrach. All these Frenchies leavin’ St. Louie behind an’ makin’ for the High Stonies. From the sounds o’ things, there likely ain’t a Frenchie left on the Mississippi River by now.”

Bordeau stopped at the wooden door and, with his hand on the iron latch, quickly appraised the two Americans again, then asked, “Did you, or you, trap the beaver for our company before the beaver was good no more?”

“I worked for Jim Bridger,” Sweete explained. “When he hired on to run a brigade for American Fur.”

“And you, monsieur?” Bordeau asked, his eyes falling on Bass.

“Never,” he snorted. “It stuck in my craw when I was made to trade my plews^* over to American Fur at ronnyvoo after Billy Sublette was bought out of the mountains. I dunno who done the worst to kill off my way of life—you niggers with American Fur or them John Bull niggers with Hudson’s Bay.”

Bordeau unlocked the bolt and shoved open the door, promptly stepping behind a nearby counter where he turned up the wick on a lamp. “But American Fur is the American company holding the English out.”

“From the looks of you and that parley-voo booshway Papin, and all them other Frenchies working down at Bents’ mud lodge down on the Arkansas—I don’t know if there’s much of what you’d call American in the fur trade no more. Them fat, rich Frenchmen back to St. Louie, they near bought up ever’thing. Their kind’s been doin’ business outta these posts where they don’t need no American trappers like me an’ him.”

“This is my business, the furs that come to this place,” Bordeau said as he stepped behind the counter and turned the wicks up on two more lamps that slowly pushed back the twilight’s growing darkness. “The furs, are they your business still, monsieur?”

Sweete shook his head. “No, can’t say as they are.”

The trader asked Titus, “You do the fur business still, like me?”

“Not since fellas like you squeezed beaver to death and killed the way I made a life for myself and my own,” Scratch replied sourly.

Bordeau grinned. “So you see? I am the American in American Fur now. You two and all the rest of your kind—you are no longer around. But I am still here. I work hard, work my way up. Learn the business. You two, like the rest, you nevair want to learn to work for the company—so the company does not need men like you no more.”

“A damn shame,” Bass grumbled. “Badger-eyed li’l weasels like you come in and took over this business from men who stood tall and bold of a time not so long ago. None of you Frenchies ever gonna be half o’ the men I knowed back in the glory days!”

Shad latched his hand around Scratch’s arm and held him tight at the very instant Titus leaned toward the counter where Bordeau’s face was darkening with crimson.

Bass glanced down at Sweete’s hand, then at his friend’s face. “Don’t you worry, Shadrach. I ain’t about to pop this parley-voo in the jaw.”

Shad slowly released his grip. “It’d be hard as hell to trade with this booshway after you busted his nose an’ made him bleed all over his purty shirt.”

With a snort, Titus said, “Mon-sur Bordeau ain’t gonna throw me out, Shadrach. No matter how low he thinks of me.”

“Because I am a gentleman … and you are not.”

Shaking his head, Scratch said, “Wrong, mon-sur.”

Bordeau said, “Because you do not fight with blood in front of your half-breed children?”

“That’s wrong too, pork-eater.” Titus stuffed his hand inside the flaps of his coat. “No matter how bad you wanna throw me outta your fort, you won’t do it because I got some Mexican gold you want pretty bad.”

Between Bordeau’s lips appeared the pink tip of his tongue. He licked the lips, then rolled them inward over his teeth with anticipation. Glee twinkled in his eyes as Titus brought out the small skin satchel and clanked it on the counter.

“Let me see these coins of yours.” Bordeau rubbed his hands together.

“I’ll show you one,” he advised as he unknotted the leather string wrapped around the top of the pouch. From it he pulled a coin, which he loudly thumbed onto the counter and pushed toward the trader.

As Bordeau raised it into the light for an inspection, the gold shimmered.

“You held on to that Mex money a long time,” Sweete commented.

“Most times, I got some furs, something to trade off. Not no more. So it seems like this is as good a place as any to dicker on some goods for these here coins,” Titus said as he watched the factor slip the coin between his teeth and clamp down with zeal. “Appears to me Mon-sur Bordeau here knows good gold when he sees it.”

“Is real,” the trader attested.

“’Course it is,” Scratch replied.

He watched Bordeau turn away, still clutching the coin, moving aside some objects on a shelf behind him before he pulled out a small set of scales and weights. Placing the coin on one side of the scale, Bordeau selected one of the smallest weights. After he had it balanced, Bordeau looked up at the American again.

“How many of these you have, Monsieur American?”

“What’s that’un worth to you?”

“How many you want to spend?”

“Only one,” he said stiffly. “I figger it’s more’n enough to buy some earbobs and hangy-downs for our womenfolk. A play-pretty or two for each o’ the young’uns.”

Removing the coin from the scale, Bordeau leaned back against the shelves and held the gold piece before his eyes, turning it this way and that in the lamplight. “Pick out what you want for your women and the children too.”

How excited the youngsters became as Bordeau pulled wooden trays from the shelves behind him and laid them side by side on the counter, each one filled with hanks of sewing beads, or large multicolored glass beads from faraway Venice and the continent of Africa too, along with many styles of finger rings, an assortment of tin bracelets, and small rolls of brass wire. Magpie went right to work touching every single item to her satisfaction. Next, Bordeau set a small wooden pail on the counter; inside were nestled a bevy of tin whistles and string toys that snared the eyes of young Flea and Shadrach.

Scratch was bending over the trays with his daughter when the trader spoke.

“What do you think of this?”

Magpie and her father both looked up together, finding Bordeau holding a colorful shawl, delicately sewn with a tassel fringe at the hem around the bottom V of the broad triangle. Scratch noticed how his daughter clamped her hand over her mouth, eyes going wide as muleprints.

“She likes, eh?”

“Let ’er try it on, trader,” he demanded.

Bordeau passed the shawl to her. With her father’s help, Magpie laid it over her shoulders while Bass lifted her long black hair. She clutched the shawl closed at her breast and spun this way and that. As he watched her twirl to make the tassels flutter, Titus suddenly spotted six faces pressed against the thick window glass, six pairs of eyes watching Magpie preen, the young girl lost in her own little world.

Looping his arm over her shoulder, Bass quickly turned his daughter away from the prying eyes and faced her toward Bordeau. “You got ’nother of these here shawls?”

“Same as the one she’s got on?”

“Lemme see all of ’em so we can pick out three of ’em.”

“Three?”

“The other two for our wives.”

“That’s awful good of you, Scratch,” Sweete said.

“You damn well can’t go back to that lodge without presents for her, Shadrach.”

“But I ain’t got nothing to repay you for ’em—”

He whirled on Sweete. “Don’t ever say that to me again. I do this ’cause I wanna. Don’t take away the joy from me doing this for you.”

“Aw … awright.”

“Shell Woman don’t ever need to know it weren’t your money,” he explained. “Ever’ woman needs some geegaws an’ girlews to make their eyes shine and their hearts go warm.”

“Popo!”

He turned at Magpie’s exclamation, finding her running her fingers over eight different patterns of shawls. Bass told her, “Pick out one for yourself, and Shell Woman, and a real pretty one for your mother too. Shad an’ me gonna scratch through these here earbobs an’ foofaraw for some pretty hangy-downs to go with them shawls.”

In the end, after they had argued over the worth of Mexican gold this far north of the old Spanish possessions, Bass finally relented and let go of two of his coins for a treasure trove of trinkets and jewelry, along with the three shawls, four more blankets, and a burlap sack filled with at least three of every sort of toy Fort Laramie had on its shelves.

“An’ you said I had some left over for a little whiskey,” Bass reminded.

“Yes, yes,” Bordeau answered in a gush as he scooped the two coins into a pocket of his drop-front britches.

Shadrach asked, “Where’s your likker?”

“Bring it out, trader!” Scratch demanded.

“No drinking here in trade room,” Bordeau stated. “Other room for whiskey.”

“Awright, show us,” Sweete said.

They stepped from the trading room just ahead of Bordeau as the trader snuffed the lamps, then pulled and locked the door behind him. As the group followed the Frenchman down the side of the square, Bass turned to study that group of six curious employees stepping away from the shadows near the trade-room window, slowly following the Americans.

“I dunno if there’s trouble brewin’, Shadrach,” he said in a low voice. “Maybeso there’s some nosy parley-voo niggers spotted my gold through the window.”

Sweete glanced over his shoulder at the half dozen following them. “They’re small, Scratch. Frenchies too. They can’t cause us too much trouble. ’Sides, you allays had your back to that window. They couldn’t see your pouch or your gold.”

“Then why you reckon they follerin’ us?”

With a shrug, Shad said, “Bet they know we’re headed for the whiskey room. Pork-eaters like them figger to drink a horn or two on your money.”

“Ain’t enough Mexican gold in my pouch to make me pay for a round of whiskey for one of their kind,” he growled as Bordeau stepped through a smudge of yellow light spilling upon the damp ground from a smoke-stained, dirty window and immediately flung open the cottonwood door beside it.

“Alors!” the trader called out to the fat man behind the counter as they came in. “Four whiskeys for my friends here!”

“For the petite fille?” the barman asked, his face drawn up in question.

“Non!” Bordeau exclaimed with a snort. “These mixed-blood children do not drink the whiskey. Two whiskeys for the one-eyed one, and two for his tall friend.”

“This Injun gal looks old enough for a cup of whiskey.”

Bass froze at the counter and slowly turned at the sound of the voice. On instinct, he quickly glanced around the room, counting enemy, hopeful of finding another female. But as he had feared most, he found but one woman in this smoky room, dank with the mingled odors of sweaty bodies, spilled whiskey and brandy, as well as the stench of clothing and anuses gone too long unwashed.

“Fill the cups, like the trader told you to,” Titus ordered the barman, then cleared his throat as he turned back to the stocky man who had called out with the loud voice.

“I buy the woman a drink of my own, yes?” the badger-eyed one asked.

Shaking his head as he felt his breath come hard, Bass growled, “This here ain’t no woman. My daughter she be, you gut-sucker of a parley-voo.”

“What is this you say of me … gut-sucker?”

Sweete immediately replied. “It ain’t good, what my friend called you.”

Slowly the Frenchman’s eyes tore from Shad’s to look again at Bass. “So, she is your daughter. Still I think she looks old enough to drink the whiskey.”

Bordeau slipped away from the counter, stepping behind the Americans and inching along the wall until he stood just behind the right elbow of his stocky employee.

“She’s maybe a moon away from her thirteenth summer, you no-count dog.” Titus reached out and gently snugged Magpie against his hip. With his other hand he dragged a cup of whiskey his way and brought it under his nose for a sniff.

“Me? A dog? That makes me laugh! You are the dog who sleeps with the Injeeans. Look at this half-blood girl. Now she is the best for a man like me, no? Half-blood women want a real man in the robes.”

After smelling the strength of Bordeau’s whiskey, Bass took a long drink, enough to make his throat burn and his eyes water. If it was going to be the only drink he’d have this night, then he wanted it to be a deep one. He set the cup back on the counter. So far, the Frenchman hadn’t moved any closer. Made no threatening moves. Although the stocky man still leaned against the wall, Titus nonetheless knew it was but a matter of moments. Scratch turned, wiping his mustache with the back of his hand, and glared over at the antagonist. The man wore a pistol stuffed in his belt and one knife Bass could see over the right hip. Appeared to be a lefthander.

“We come to drink our whiskey, part of a trade,” Shad began to explain as he set his first cup down on the counter behind Bass and tugged Magpie a step back from her father.

“Trade? You want to trade, n’est-ce pas?”

Bordeau leaned over to his employee, whispering something in the stocky man’s ear. The Frenchman listened, nodded once, but never took his eyes off either the American or the half-blood girl.

“Awready done our trading for the night,” Bass said as he squared himself and laid a hand on Flea’s shoulder. “Son, move yonder toward the door now.”

“Popo, I don’t want to go,” the boy said in Crow.

“We aren’t going, not just yet,” he answered his son in the same language.

Bordeau asked, “Does your daughter know the words that will drive a man wild in this same tongue you speak to the boy?”

“Let’s not fight over her,” the muscular employee said with a mocking kindness. “I will bring some goodness to your poor family, old man.”

“How could a gut-eater like you do that?”

Sneering, he said, “Don’t marry your girl off to no Injeean warrior who picks the lice off his head. Non, marry your girl off to a real man like me who can get her out of those dirty Injeean clothes and put her in a fancy dress and hair combs.”

The thought of such a life for his daughter turned his stomach. “I’d sooner see her married to a half-starved Digger than to have a scum-lickin’ parley-voo in my family!”

“Let her make her choice, old man,” the Frenchman demanded. “A Injeean life with lice, the life you choose … or a life as my woman—”

“She’s just a girl, you French pig.”

“Old enough to me,” the muscular man provoked. “Look at her ass. Is that not how you Americains say it—ass? And she has those little teats so small and hard now too.”

“You’re a coward,” Titus growled, both hands flexing, wondering how much older he was than this bad-tongued bully, trying to calculate how many pounds of muscle the Frenchman had on him. “You stand here in front of a little girl and her father, talking bad with your pig tongue, only because you got all these other stupid gut-eaters around you. You’re no man, mon-sur. You’re just a soft-brained, scum-lickin’ parley-voo what works for Chouteau’s American Fur because you can’t do a real man’s job … an’ the most you can ever hope for is to die in your sleep somewhere out of the rain.”

“Me? The coward, Americain?”

“All you parley-voo bastards ain’t got the spine of a yap-pin’ prerra dog,” Titus declared. “You ever hear what happened to one of your kind when he bumped up against a fighting cock named Carson? Kit Carson?”

The dark eyes narrowed. “Who is this?”

“Carson’s the one killed the parley-voo called Shunar.”

“Chouinard?”

Bordeau leaned over and whispered something more into the man’s ear.

“Thees Shunar, he was not as good as me, eh?”

“You ain’t half the man Shunar tried to be,” Scratch said. “But … I figger you’re gonna be just as dead as him afore I leave this room.”

“You talk so beeg for such old man.”

“I can pin your ears back, slice ’em off, an’ feed ’em to you.”

“No pistols!” Bordeau suddenly hollered as the employee reached for his belt weapon.

“Fine by me,” Scratch replied, his heart thundering in his ears. He dragged the .54-caliber flintlock from his belt and clunked it on the counter.

His antagonist asked, “When I kill you, I have to kill the other one too?”

Before Bass could answer, Sweete announced, “I ain’t leaving here with you on your feet, pork-eater.”

“Ah! You sweet on the girl yourself, eh?”

“No,” Shad said as he nudged Magpie behind him at the bar. “I got me my own baby daughter too.”

“She half-blood, like his girl?”

“Yes,” Sweete answered.

“Too bad now. She grow up with no papa.”

Scratch slowly pulled his knife from its sheath, saying, “Is all you do is talk, mon-sur?”

The Frenchman laughed mirthlessly. “Infant d’garce! You hurt me with your leetle knife?”

“Big enough to open your gut.”

“Non, thees is a real knife,” and the employee pulled the large butcher knife from its crude rawhide scabbard.

“It’s big, s’all,” Titus said. “Big and stupid, like you, dung-head.”

For a moment the Frenchman smiled, then said, “Thees will be fun. First I kill you. Then I kill your friend. And after some more whiskey … tonight I make a real woman of your leetle daughter. Tonight she will bleed from the hard rut I will give her—”

All words and other sounds were suddenly muffled by the roar of blood rushing to his ears as he raced for the Frenchman, whose eyes snapped as big as the trader’s teacups. The man started to crouch as the American shot across the short distance that divided them. Without time to work his big knife into position, the Frenchman did his best to jab in toward his attacker, but Bass already had that figured out too.

As the stocky man’s left arm stabbed forward with the wide blade, Scratch raked under the arm with his own thin-bladed skinner. At that same instant he felt the Frenchman’s calf crashing against his ankles. The room turned around as Titus spun into some crude stools and an empty wooden crate where playing cards and bone dominoes went flying.

“Arrgggh!” the Frenchman cried in pain as he gripped his sundered left forearm in his right hand and slung about bright streamers of blood in anguish until he gritted his teeth and took the bloody knife into that empty right hand.

“Bordeau!” Sweete cried in warning. “I’ll shoot any of your pork-eaters makes a move to help the bleeder! You understand I’ll kill ’em if they make one move toward my friend!”

With a nod, Bordeau growled at the rest of the men in the room while Bass scrambled to his feet, his shins and right shoulder crying out in pain.

“Lookee there, pork-eater,” he rasped. “You do bleed just like a fat pig.”

With an ear-splitting cry, the enraged Frenchman lunged toward Titus, slinging blood and flashing the butcher knife in his weaving right hand. In a blur, Scratch sank to a crouch, leaning forward, then retreated in a half circle from beneath the attacker’s arm, all in the space of a heartbeat. Bass inched backward until he was stopped by the counter, then stood motionless as the Frenchman slowly gazed down at his lower chest. His shirt hung open the entire width of his body, blood oozing from the long, gaping wound. Small, dark pools began to collect on the clay floor around the toes of his moccasins.

Shadrach stepped up right behind Bass’s left elbow. “You say the word, we’ll gut ’em all.”

“You want me to finish you, pork-eater?” Titus asked his enemy. “Want me to kill you off so you won’t have to live with the memory of this night your tongue ran away on the wrong man’s daughter?”

His mouth curled up, “I keel you now—”

“Non!” bellowed Bordeau as he leaped in front of his bleeding employee. “You are losing too much blood already! You cannot win, and I do not want to lose you.” The trader turned and took a step toward the Americans. “No more fighting. You go. Take your goods and go from this fort—nevair to return—”

“Popo!”

Scratch whirled on his heel at Flea’s shrill call of distress. He found the boy sprawled on the floor right beside the door, holding a hand to his head. Then something suddenly awakened in him as the silence closed around the old trapper.

Magpie was gone.

^* The mountain trapper’s term for a beaver pelt, borrowed from the French word plus, for a prime beaver skin.