The warrior smiled, then replied in kind, his hands fluttering before him as he nodded in the closest thing to friendliness Bass had seen since the hospitable Shoshone at last summer’s rendezvous.
“’Pears to be an agreeable sort,” Bud commented.
“Don’t seem so bad a bunch, after all, do they?” Hooks added.
Cocking his head around to tell them over his shoulder, Cooper said, “This here’s a bunch of Crow.”
“By damn, we run onto the Crow ’stead of Blackfoot!” Tuttle cheered with genuine relief.
Hooks slapped Titus on the back. “Crow got ’em some purty squaws, so the downriver talk says. Mighty purty squaws.” Then he bent his head close, his lips almost touching Bass’s ear. “Maybeso we can talk Cooper into winterin’ up with these here Crow and their womens. Word on river says these bang-tails make the best robe- warmers!”
Bass grumbled, “Maybeso you’d better wait to see what these here bucks have in mind for us afore you up and decide you’re gonna spread some Crow squaw’s legs for the winter here.”
With a snort Billy rocked back on his heels and said, “You grown particular of a sudden, Scratch? Gone and got picky about where you poke your wiping stick?”
“Hush, Billy!” Tuttle warned while Cooper went on talking in sign.
With some word from their leader, half of the warriors slowly turned their ponies and formed up loosely to move off down the slope toward the valley and that village nestled among the cottonwoods along the river.
“All I know is that running onto Injuns means we found us some brownskin sluts,” Billy hissed with a grin on his thick lips. “An’ I ain’t never met me a brownskin slut what didn’t kick her legs wide for Billy-boy here when I showed her a handful of my purty red beads or a little strip of ribbon!”
“Maybeso ol’ Silas got lucky for y’ boys again!” Cooper crowed as he turned and joyously slapped Hooks on the shoulder. “Leave it to me to find a warm lodge, and a warm honey-pot for our stingers, ever’ time!”
As the remainder of the horsemen urged their ponies closer to the white men, Tuttle whispered, “What they figger to do with us, Silas?”
Cooper smiled in that long black beard of his that tossed in the rising wind, slapping both hands down on the tops of Bud’s shoulders. “Ease your hammer down, son. These here Crow bucks just gave us the invite to come on down for dinner with their big chiefs.”
Billy echoed, “Big chiefs?”
Taking his rifle back from Tuttle, Cooper said, “From the sign talk I just got, looks like they knowed we was coming after our horses for the last two days.”
Bud asked, “An’ if we didn’t come after the damned horses?”
Grabbing Turtle’s elbow to urge them all down the snowy slope, Silas said, “Then they’d knowed we had us yaller stripes painted down our backs an’ was no better’n women.”
As the afternoon light deepened the hues of everything from clouds, to cedar, to the surface of the creek itself in that hour before the sunset, the Crow warriors escorted the white men into their noisy village. Not all that different from making their ride into the Ute village last winter, to Scratch’s way of thinking. Except one thing— these Crow sure were a tall people. Men and women both seemed taller than the Shoshone, and the Ute he had come to know in Park Kyack. Too, the more he looked at not just the menfolk, but the children and the Crows’ slant-eyed womankind, the more Titus felt these were as fair-skinned and handsome a people as rumors and campfire palaver had boasted they were.
Cooper turned over the two animals to a pair of young, smiling boys who appeared to take their grown-up responsibilities most seriously as they barked at the children to stay back from a wary Hannah and the restless saddle horse. And with that the trappers were shown into a warm lodge where waited at least ten men as old as Cooper himself.
That first evening of ceremonial smoking and eating boiled meat dragged on and on as speeches were made and exploits recounted by every warrior in attendance before he began his turn at haranguing the rest. And sometime after the first winter moon had fallen in the west, the white men were told that they would have to wait until morning for an answer to what would be done about their stolen horses.
When the next morning finally became afternoon, the trappers were told they would have an answer the following day. But it wasn’t until four days later that Cooper and the others were called before the Crow council, after impatiently cooling their heels where they were allowed to camp in a grove of cottonwood at the edge of the village circle.
“Seems they figger they got the right to ask us to pay for the beaver we’re taking from their criks,” Cooper explained what he had been told in the stillness of that council lodge. “They took our stock to pay for that beaver they say we’re stealing.”
“I don’t figger they’re asking for all that much,” Bass said.
For a moment Silas glowered at Titus, then finally asked, “What y’ think, Billy?”
“You tell me, Silas. Think we ought’n give ’em any of our beaver?”
Cooper looked at Tuttle. “If’n we don’t—these thievin’ bastards said they’d stretch us out over a fire an’ let their womens do their worst to us.”
“That … that ain’t ’sactly what they said, Silas,” Bass corrected.
“Oh?” Cooper demanded, smiling the best he could for the sake of the Crow men, his marblelike eyes nonetheless glaring holes in Bass.
“From what I saw ’em sign to you,” Titus explained, “they give us a choice.”
Pursing his lips in seething anger, Silas crossed his arms and said, “So now y’ figger y’ read sign language good enough to know what the hell these ol’ bucks said to me? S’pose y’ tell us all ’bout it, y’ boneheaded nigger.”
Not only were the eyes of the trappers on him now, but the black-cherry eyes of every one of the Crow elders and counselors were as well, clearly sensing the tension among the white men.
“From what I make of it,” Scratch started tentatively, then swallowed hard, “looks to be we got us one of two ways to go at this. We can give ’em something in trade for the beaver we been taking out’n the streams in their country, or …”
“Or?” Tuttle squeaked.
“Or they throw us right on out the way they found us—maybe lucky to get our mule and horse back.”
Hooks twisted to look at Cooper. “That true what Scratch said? We give ’em something to trade or they turn us out?”
Cooper nodded, his brow furrowed, anger smoldering at Bass, every bit as plain as sun on his face.
“But they’ll let us go?” Tuttle said. “Just let us ride on out—if’n we give ’em some plunder?”
“That’s the way I read the sign, boys,” Silas replied.
Then Bass declared, “Looks to me like we gotta figger out just how good it might turn out to be—us trapping here in Crow country.”
“What you think of us hanging back in this country, Silas?” Billy asked.
For a moment Cooper was silent; then with a smile he turned to Bass. “Let’s ask Scratch what he thinks we ought’n do.”
“I say we give ’em presents,” Titus was quick to answer. “Never know when it might turn out good to have us friends like these up here close to Blackfoot country, don’t you think?”
“Never thought of that,” Tuttle mused.
“What it cost us?” Hooks asked.
“Hardly nothing. A couple of horses and a blanket here, maybe a few beads or tin cup there,” Titus responded.
“That all they asking, Silas?” Hooks inquired, long ago conditioned to believe in Cooper, still doubtful of what Bass was telling them.
“By damn, Billy—if Scratch ain’t picked up enough sign to know fat cow from poor bull!” Cooper exclaimed with grudging admiration. “S’pose y’ go ahead on and tell us what else these ol’ bucks said ’bout keeping all our plunder for theyselves.”
With a jerk Tuttle twisted near fully around at that. “They gonna rob us of ever’thing?”
Cooper winked faintly, saying, “Y’ wanna tell ’em, Scratch? Or y’ want me to?”
“I s’pose if you’re asking me to tell Billy and Bud the bad news,” Bass began, then sighed. “These here Crow say we can walk on outta here just the way we walked in … ’cept we have to leave Hannah and the horse with the
