With a sigh the warrior with the knife leaned back, taking his weapon from the trapper’s neck. After stuffing his tomahawk back into his belt and rising, the warrior suddenly held out the knife, handle first, to Spivey, who continued to rub his throat, then check his fingers for sign of blood.
“What the hell’s this for?” the trapper asked, his eyes going to Bridger’s face.
“Says he’s giving you his knife,” Jim replied. “He riggers at least you won that fair and square.”
Spivey wrenched it from the warrior before the two Shoshone gathered up their clothing from the buffalo robe and looked longingly at the small kettle of amber liquor—then turned away into the crowd of their own people.
“Maybe next time you fellas won’t be so all-fired ready to get no Injuns drunk,” Bridger snorted as he stood, then with Fitzpatrick started away from the crowd.
“C’mon,” Potts said to Bass.
“Where’d you come from?” Titus asked of the man coming up to his elbow out of the milling group.
“Been looking high and low for you,” Daniel explained. “Wan’cha have dinner over at our fire since’t we’ll be pulling away day after tomorrow.”
“Ronnyvoo over?” They started away through the grove of cottonwood.
“Ashley’s got him all the fur from his brigades, ’long with what he traded from Provost’s bunch.”
“He’s got near all ours too,” Titus replied.
“Best you get your outfit to be trading off any furs what you got left by tomorry morning, or the general likely won’t have no more goods for you. Then what will them plews be wuth?”
Bass nodded. “Not much—when there ain’t no one else out here what wants beaver fur in trade.”
“Ever you et painter, Scratch?”
“P-painter?” Titus asked as they neared the fire where Fitzpatrick and Bridger’s brigade had been bedding down.
“Sure.
“And you eat that lion?”
Potts smacked his lips. “Some fine eatin’. C’mon—we’ll get some on the fire. One of the boys shot a pair this morning up torst the hills yonder.”
That mountain lion was a treat to the pallet and a tongue grown used to elk and venison. Bass eagerly went back for more, eventually slicing himself a third helping of the roast and loin steaks. Later on Bud Tuttle showed up in time to squeeze himself down by Bass and Potts as one of Fitzpatrick’s men brought out his small concertina to the cheers and claps of all those Ashley men gathered at the fire.
Pulling two short leather latches from the tiny pegs that held the instrument closed, the player was then able to slip his hands into leather straps on either side and began to wheeze some air in and out of the squeezebox until he suddenly began to stomp one leg lustily, his foot pounding the ground as he whirled round and round, wailing out the words to the rollicking song accompanied by his concertina’s wild strains.
Many of the others noisily clapped in rhythm as a few leaped to their feet, bowed low to one another, then began to circle round this way and round that, arms locked and head thrown back, wailing and caterwauling worse than any wharfside alley filled with tomcats.
“Man could grow used to this ever’ night, couldn’t he, Scratch?” Tuttle asked, jabbing an elbow into Bass’s ribs. “Music, likker, and the womens!”
Scratch had almost forgotten about such seductive lures, doing his best to stay as far away as he could from the temptations of those young women and their flint-eyed menfolk downstream in the Shoshone village.
Titus looked off in the direction of the quartet’s camp. “Cooper and Hooks didn’t come with you?”
Tuttle grinned as he clapped along with the wheezing squeezebox. “They daubin’ their stingers again.”
“Hell, I should’a knowed,” Titus replied. “Likely them two’ll be daubin’ their stingers when Gabriel blows his goddamned horn!”
“Maybe that, or Gabriel can find ’em laid out under a trader’s likker kegs!”
A cloud quickly passed over Scratch’s face as the firelight flickered on the dancers all. “Silas didn’t go and drink up all our earnin’s, did he?”
Tuttle bravely tried to maintain the smile, then admitted, “Ah, shit—Scratch. Him and Hooks been having themselves such a spree, they ain’t give a damn thought one to seeing that we’re outfitted for the coming winter.”
“Where’s the plews?”
Tuttle hemmed and hawed a moment, then answered.
Bass demanded, “How many packs you figger we got left?”
“Not near enough—”
“All gone in likker?” he squeaked in disbelief.
Dropping his head to look at his hands suddenly stilled even though the music, laughter, and merriment continued around them, Tuttle replied, “An’ foofaraw for the squaws.”
“Damn him,” Bass muttered between clenched teeth. “Sort of a bitch beat me near to death an’ said I owed him my hides … so now he don’t even use them hides he stole from me to trade for what it is we really need!”
“Trouble?” Jim Beckwith asked, curious when Bass’s voice grew louder in the midst of the revelry.
Finally shaking his head, Titus answered, “No. No trouble, Jim.”
As Beckwith turned back to clapping and stomping with the music, Titus grabbed Tuttle by his shirt. “Listen, Bud—we gotta be sure no more of them hides go to pay for geegaws and girlews so them two sonsabitches can stick some Injun gals with their peckers.”
Turtle’s head bobbed, almost in time with his Adam’s apple.
“You figger we can hide them plews somewhere’s till morning?” Titus inquired. “When we can get ’em traded off to Ashley?”
“I s’pose—”
“Ain’t no s’posin’ about it, Bud,” Titus interrupted. “We gotta do it first thing come morning—or Ashley ain’t gonna have him no more powder and lead, no coffee and blankets left to trade.”
“And we need flints bad.”
“See? Just like I told you. Now, I want you get back to camp while them two is off knocking the dew off their lilies and drag the last of them packs off into the bushes somewhere outta camp where they can’t find ’em—drunk or sober.”
“M-me? Ain’t you—”
“Awright, I’ll damn well come and help you.”
Turtle seemed much relieved to have an accomplice in their crime.
“Hell, don’t worry none, Bud,” Titus explained. “If them two ever come back to camp tonight, I don’t figger they’ll be thinking none about plews till long after sunup anyways.”
Bud chuckled. “I do believe you’re likely right, Scratch. They’ll have daubin’ on their minds.”
“C’mon.”
By the time they had dragged what they had left in the way of those heavy packs out of their camp, away from their blanket and canvas bowers and into the nearby bushes, the half-moon was on its rise. It, along with the glittery stars overhead, was enough to cast some faint shadows as Bass and Tuttle made their way back through the raucous camp toward Fitzpatrick’s fire, where the concertina player was taking himself a rest and many of the others were settling back, their cups filled with Ashley’s liquor, jawing and swapping exaggerated tales of their experiences and exploits.
“How ’bout them two, Bridger?” someone called out as Tuttle and Bass came into the fire’s light. “They hear your tale of the Salt Sea?”
As some of the bunch chuckled and jabbed elbows into one another’s ribs, the young Bridger turned to gaze over his shoulder at the two free trappers. “Don’t believe they have.”
“Then tell ’em!”
Nonplussed, Jim turned around on his stump and asked the returning pair, “Since we run onto your outfit north of here, I ever tell you fellas about the time I floated down to the Great Salt Sea?”
“Y-you been all the way out there to the west?” Tuttle asked, turning slowly in disbelief to look at Bass.
Bud’s question brought howls of laughter from a few of that bunch gathered round the fire.
“Don’t pay these dunderheads no mind,” Bridger confided.
