“Don’t know,” Shad Sweete grumped.
“Damn right, you don’t. Wanna go riding off and tell ’em?” he asked, feeling his belly burn for want of food. “Go tell them chiefs how they got swindled for putting their marks on that piece of paper you asked ’em to come and sign?”
“Maybe we should. Somebody’s gotta tell ’em.”
“What then, old man? We gonna help ’em take on the whole army? Seems they been doing just that since before we come out here. And from the look of things—these Injuns’ll be fighting the white man long after our bones are buried and there’s grass growing over the spot they buried us.”
Sweete sighed, working the whiskey around in his mouth the way he worked the thoughts around in his numbed brain.
They had arrived back at Fort Larned and were four days all told getting mustered out. Shad Sweete released from duty with the army, and Jonah Hook bidding farewell to Major Frank North’s Pawnee Battalion. Come spring, they were told at the last, there would be work for a man who was willing to guide and track, interpret and fight. Come spring, that is, after a man made it on his own through the prairie winter.
So there was money in their pockets and a thirst in their throats. But first the old mountain man had his duties, learned years before in the fur trade at rendezvous. Company trapper like Jim Bridger, or free trapper the likes of Titus Bass—either one would tell you your money had to go down on the necessaries before the money went to liquor. No matter the color of the whiskey, no matter how strong the scent of the women once you started your drinking—a man had to assure himself of the necessaries before everything was drunk up and there was nothing left. Nothing to get him through the winter and over to shortgrass time when he would again find work.
So with their pokes bulging, Shad Sweete steered Jonah over to the local sutler at his canvas-topped mercantile squatting just beyond the fringe of the military reservation surrounding Fort Larned. There they perused what the squinty-eyed clerk had to sell.
“A nervous and shifty-eyed one, that he is,” Shad whispered.
“We go someplace else do our business?”
“No,” he replied, grabbing Jonah’s elbow. Shad looked up at the clerk. “The owner in, mister?”
“He’s off right now.”
“When he be back?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, most likely.”
“We’ll be back.”
And they were—not long after the sutler returned.
“Name’s Sweete. Yours?”
The man presented his hand. “Sidney Gould. What is it I can do for you?”
“Some outfitting,” Sweete had replied, and Jonah remembered now that look on the mountain man’s face as Shad had glanced at him, a look of warming to the haggling. “You see, we’re bound for the Territories for the winter and are in need of some provisioning.”
“You’ve got money? Gold, I take it?”
“Army scrip ought’n be as good as gold here, Mr. Gould.”
The dark-haired, full-bearded sutler smiled. “It is indeed, Mr. Sweete. Show me what it is you think you need for this trip of yours.”
“And we’ll talk.”
Gould showed more teeth, leaning across the plank counter. “Yes—we’ll talk.”
Shad had grunted his approval and walked over to the wood-and-glass case where the weapons were locked. “What’s them three guns? Never seen anything like ’em.”
“Winchesters,” Gould said. “Model 1866.”
“Let’s look.”
Gould unlocked the case and brought out one of the lever-action rifles with a full-length, twenty-four-inch barrel.
“What’s the caliber?”
“Forty-four rimfire, Mr. Sweete.”
“Paper, like army?”
The sutler shook his head. “Rimfire brass. Twenty-eight grains of powder behind a two-hundred-grain bullet.”
“Light charge,” the old mountain man grunted, used to bigger bore and bigger charges. “Must move that bullet at a good speed.”
“These give a man more than one shot. With one in the chamber and a full load—you have eighteen shots.”
“Eighteen, Jonah.”
“Spencer’s only got seven, Shad.”
“These the first I’ve seen of them,” Gould explained. “I’m told by the drummer who sold them to me he delivered the first pair to Major H. G. Litchfield, adjutant for the Department of the Platte, back in August.”
“How much you want for a pair?”
Gould studied it, scratching his chin. “Considering what I got in them—”
“How much?”
“A hundred-twenty dollars.”
He snorted, pulling at his gray beard. “You think a little gun like this gonna be a weapon a man can use out here on the plains, Jonah?”
Hook hefted it to his shoulder, down to look at the action, then back to his shoulder before answering. “That’s a lot of shooting, Shad.”
“Tell you what, Mr. Gould—I’ll give you what you want for two of these rifles. You throw in two hundred rounds each.”
Gould thought, then smiled. “I like a man who knows his own mind and can make a deal quickly. All right, Mr. Sweete. You and your partner have your Winchesters.”
Down the counter Sweete selected goods from the shelves: coffee, a little salt, and a lot of sugar. Toote sure enough loved her sugar, which reminded him to get both her and Pipe Woman the geegaws that would make her eyes shine when he came to fetch her up in the Laramie country. Bright finger rings and hawks-bells, some trade strouding and a bolt of fancy calico cloth. Along with a new brass kettle and some tin cups. Ribbons of many colors and a handful of shells brought all the way in from the far Pacific coast. Those pale, pink shells had been a pure wonder for Jonah Hook.
Then the old man had looked down at Jonah’s feet. “Them boots you’re wearing got deplorable on you.” Speaking to the sutler, “Show us your best boot. Hog-leg is preferred.”
“Your size, mister?”
Jonah shrugged, then brought one boot up to plop squarely down on the counter. “’Bout so big.”
Gould grinned. “I see.” He brought forth a tall pair of high-heeled boots. “In these parts, the teamsters and mule whackers call ’em Coffeyvilles. Other fellas prefer ’em because the heel is tall enough to hang in a stirrup the way they want.”
Jonah had tried them on and found them snug. “I can break ’em in all right, Shad. They’ll do.”
Sweete turned to Gould. “Get me a size bigger. Maybe two sizes.”
“What the hell for?” Jonah had protested. “Told you I could break these in.”
“I want you wearing more’n one pair of stockings from now on. Till I get you stomping around in buffler moccasins like me—least you can do is keep your feet warm this winter with a couple pairs of stockings.”
It was done. A new pair of boots he pulled on by yanking up the mule ears, with a snug, comfortable fit over two new pair of cotton stockings. Four new hickory shirts for each of them, and a new pair of canvas britches for Hook. With new suspenders and some deer-hide gloves to go along, they were ready to settle accounts with the sutler.
“By damn, I even think we got us a little left over to celebrate with,” Shad had declared. “We’ll be back in a couple days to pick up our truck and plunder from you, Mr. Gould.”
“It’ll be here, waiting.”
