rest they took from us.”
“Or?” Cooper prodded, looking all the more smug.
“Or the Crow say we can pay ’em for their beaver—which means we can keep ever’thing what’s ours, and …”
Exasperated, Tuttle whined, “And?”
“And,” Bass paused, winking at Cooper, “we been invited to stay on till spring.”
The River Crow moved four times that winter, migrating each time to another traditional camping spot in another sheltered valley where wood and water were available, where the wind by and large kept large patches of the autumn-dried meadow grasses blown clear of snow. Every few weeks when the firewood became scarce and the last of the grass was cropped down, when the game grew harder to scare up and the campsites began to reek with human offal and that stench of an abundance of gut-piles, Big Hair’s River Crow set off behind one warrior band or another chosen by the elders to have the honor of selecting the valley where their brown and blackened lodges would next be raised.
Not only were they a handsome people, but the Crow turned out to be less haughty and arrogant than Titus had taken them to be at first. Whereas the Ute had welcomed the white men immediately, Big Hair’s band were a little slower to accept their winter visitors. But once they had warmed up to the trappers, the Crow turned out to be warm and generous hosts. As time went on, in fact, Titus discovered them not only to have a keen sense of humor—but they enjoyed playing practical jokes on one another … and on their guests.
“Silas!” Billy Hooks was bellowing as he came tearing out of the lodge where he had been taken by a clan elder, near naked.
To the four white men, it seemed like nothing new—just what had been the Crow’s practice all winter long: one man or another would present a wife or daughter to one of the trappers for a few nights, usually no longer than a phase or the moon. This day the trappers had been seated in the afternoon sun around a fire with more than a dozen warriors, smoking, talking in sign, practicing either their pidgin English or their stunted knowledge of Crow, when a clan elder came up to lead Billy off to a nearby lodge. While Billy frequently turned and winked, rubbing his crotch a time or two in lewd anticipation, the others watched.
And when the lodge door went down and all grew quiet, the men at the fire went back to their easy chatter and midwinter socializing. Suddenly Hooks burst from the lodge completely naked but for the buckskin shirt he desperately fought to clutch around his midsection as he stumbled and fell on the slick ground, clawed his way to his feet again, and raced for the fire, screeching.
As Cooper and Tuttle shot to their feet, Bass instead glanced at some of the brown faces gathered at that fire ring. Strange, he thought, that the dark eyes showed no surprise at this turn of events, no alarm.
“Don’t y’ want that squaw they give y’?” Silas demanded as the sputtering Billy approached, shuddering like an aspen leaf in autumn. Gazing over Hooks’s shoulder, Cooper and the others watched the woman emerge from the lodge, a blanket wrapped around what was clearly an otherwise naked body.
“H-her?” Billy squeaked, sliding to a stop on the slushy snow right in front of the giant trapper.
“For balls’ sake, Billy! She’s a looker,” Tuttle agreed, nodding.
“Damn now, Billy,” Cooper said, grasping Hooks’s shoulder with one big hand, “if’n y’ don’t want the slut—I’ll rut with her for a few days my own self.”
As the others appraised the squaw, Bass was again glancing in turn at the faces of the Crow men. By now the eyes were crinkling, and sly grins were beginning to crack the masks of indifference. A few even held hands over their mouths to stifle laughter, and for the first time Titus noticed the women gathering here and there in knots between the lodges, having halted their work at hides or child care to whisper and watch.
Hooks shook his head, eyes as big around as conchos, as he sputtered, “B-but … she ain’t a—”
Silas whirled Billy around and pushed him back toward the blanket-wrapped squaw. “G’won now and climb on that slut’s hump, Billy boy!” he roared. “Or I’ll do it for y’!”
“Silas?” Hooks pleaded, his feet locked in place, skidding across the snow as the insistent Cooper pushed him along.
“Listen—y’ bonehead idjit. Y’ don’t poke your stinger in ’er—I sure as hell gonna do it my own self!”
“B-but, Silas … she don’t—”
“Come to think of it,” Cooper suddenly interrupted, shoving his way past Hooks as he took off in that long- legged, lumbering gait of his, headed for the woman. “She’s a good-lookin’ wench, ain’t she? Y’ done wasted your bet, Billy. Think I’ll dip some honey out o’ her pot first off afore y’ get her all bumfoozled.”
Scratch had to agree—the woman was real pleasant looking: nice featured with a gentle nose and almond- shaped eyes, her glossy hair braided, one long twist spilling over a smooth-skinned bare shoulder. But the way these Crow fellers were acting …
From a standing start Hooks burst into a blur, shooting past Cooper to reach the woman just a heartbeat before Silas came to an abrupt stop before them both.
“Told y’, Billy: had y’ your chance’t. Now step ’side and let the booshway wet his whang in this’un first.”
“Ain’t … she ain’t what you think, Silas!”
When Cooper gave Hooks a playful shove aside and took him another step toward the woman, Billy leaped right back, saying frantically, “Silas—you cain’t … you ain’t gonna—”
It was then Cooper took the woman by the one bare arm she had exposed, clamping the blanket to her body, and turned the squaw back toward the lodge—his eyes clearly feasting on that bare shoulder.
“Tried to tell you, Silas!”
And that’s when Billy did the unthinkable. He grabbed hold of the woman’s blanket and began tugging. Immediately she wheeled away from Cooper and began pulling back on the blanket. Silas lunged for them both— seizing hold of Billy’s wrist.
“Leave her the hell be!” Cooper roared, shoving Hooks backward with a mighty heave. “Slut’s mine now!”
But as Hooks fell, the woman’s blanket came loose—and all hell came loose with it.
Billy sprawled in a heap on the snow. Cooper whirled, visibly shuddered—then stood frozen, staring openmouthed at the naked squaw. Tuttle was already on his feet, but now he too stood rooted to the spot, unable to comprehend what had just occurred.
Slowly, at first, the Crow men began to laugh—almost as one, as if on cue. Behind and all around their men, the women giggled too. Then every Crow in that camp seemed to be laughing, so hard that a mighty din it made that winter afternoon beneath the bare branches of the cottonwood.
For a moment all Cooper could do was point down at the figure naked before him, his arm trembling. Then he hobbled a halting step back, and a second, his mouth moving up and down. Lunging for Hooks, he pulled his naked friend off the ground as Billy fought to keep himself covered from all the Crow eyes.
Seething, Silas roared, “Why—y’ think this is some good laugh on me, don’t y’, Billy?”
As Cooper shook him slowly back and forth, they both stumbled back another step. Hooks tried to explain, “I-I didn’t know when she took me in!”
As Cooper and Hooks stumbled out of the way, Bass clearly saw what the Crow had been smiling about. The moment Silas moved back, Billy in tow, Titus saw it wasn’t a beautiful young woman at all. Instead, it was a very pretty, thin-boned young man, vainly trying to wrench his blanket back from Billy … and as he did, his very apparent male appendage wagged in the cold winter air.
“She’s a … a man!” Tuttle gushed.
“I’ll kill y’, Billy Hooks!” Silas vowed, nearly heaving Hooks off the ground.
“I didn’t do nothing!” he shrieked.
“Cooper!” Bass hollered, starting to rise. “Cain’t you see it’s their joke on Billy?”
At Scratch’s words Silas jerked around, still clutching Hooks in both paws. “Their … joke?”
“Yeah—I figure they knowed just how much Billy likes him his ruttin’,” Titus said with a shrug. “I’ll wager they thought they’d pull on his leg a bit.”
Cooper shook Billy once. “Y’ didn’t know nothing ’bout this?”
“How c-could I, Silas?”
By then Bass was making sign, asking his questions of the Crow men, getting his answers amid the laughter the warriors were sharing. One hand on the scruff of Billy’s neck, Cooper watched too. After a few minutes Silas
