“Decided I’d give a offhand shot at turning trader, Scratch. Brought my plews in last month. Traded ’em to a Kentucky feller here what come in with a train from St. Lou. He give me good dollar for my beaver, so I’m pounding my bait-stick in right here in Taos.”
“Ain’t you gonna trap no more?”
“Not if I can make a living right here, sitting in the sun ’stead of wading in icy streams up to my
They both chortled; then Williams retrieved his own china cup of coffee from the rocks surrounding a nearby fire where the two of them stood warming themselves as Taosenos crisscrossed the plaza in their daily shopping excursions.
“Bill Williams—trader,” Bass announced, testing the feel of it.
“Don’t sound too bad, do it?”
“You’re happy with staying put to one place, Bill?”
“Wouldn’t
Scratch raised his coffee mug in salute. “Then I’m glad for you, Bill Williams. Here’s to your success this winter.”
“How’s trading sound for you?”
“For me?”
“You, become a trader like me,” he answered. “Like the rest of these here damned
“Titus Bass—trader,” he rolled the words off his tongue. “Naw. Don’t taste right.”
“Ye don’t mind living yer life on yer fingernails, eh?”
“Don’t get me wrong, Bill,” Bass explained. “There’s been many a piece of ground where I wondered then and there if I was about to leave my bones bleaching in the sun. But I figger a man takes him a little bad with all the good of living free like I do.”
“I’m a free man! I can pack up my truck and ride off any time I want,” Williams bristled in protest. “I just don’t have to worry ’bout no red varmit putting a early end to my days, afore my time.”
“Damned Apache almost put me under this fall,” Bass admitted.
“West of here? Or was they roaming north?”
“Over on the Heely. Bastards follered me and my partner for days,” and Bass went on to relate the tale as Williams poured more coffee for them both.
When Titus finished the story with their arrival at Workman’s place a few days back, Williams said, “This McAfferty—he’s the one I heerd tell of got his hair turned white.”
“One and the same.”
“And folks call me a strange one!” Williams chortled. “From what I hear, that McAfferty takes the circle.”
“He may talk strange and have him his spells a’times—but he’s never let me down.”
“That’s all a man needs in a partner,” Williams agreed. “Find a partner what don’t ask for no more than he’s ready to give his own self. So”—and he turned, ready to change the subject as he gestured toward his stall—“ye had yer wiping stick polished yet since ye come in to Taos?”
“Naw: this here’s my first trip in from Workman’s.”
Williams draped a long, bony arm over Bass’s shoulders and urged him toward the stall as he confided, “Hmmm—let’s us see what a man like you could need, what with him figgering to get his wiping stick polished!”
Despite the coffee, Scratch’s mouth was going dry. “You hap to know where a feller might go to … to find him a likely gal—”
“A bang-tail whore?”
Embarrassed at Williams’s loud response, Bass flicked his eyes this way, then that.
“Hell!” Williams roared loudly. “These here greasers don’t know much American talk! And they sure as hell don’t know sheep shit from bang-tail whores!”
Several of the Mexicans nearby turned at Bill’s loud voice, but they as quickly returned to their own affairs.
“See, Titus Bass?” he asked. “Ain’t a one of these here
Speaking in a hush, Scratch asked, “You know where I can find me a gal might be happy to let me crawl her hump?”
“There’s two places in the village,” Williams explained. “But, for my money, the gals over to the Barcelos house are the finest American money can buy!” And he smacked his lips in delight.
“Barcelos, you say?”
“Senora Gertrudis Barcelos,” Williams repeated. “She ain’t here herself no more, but she’s got her sister running the Taos house since she went down to Santy Fee. Older gal—’bout as tough talking as a Yankee sailor, she is … but she runs the best knocking shops and saloons here ’bouts in north Mexico.”
Grabbing hold of Bass’s shoulder, Williams turned Scratch and pointed off to the east side of the square. “Off yonder, that way takes ye to a street where ye’ll come to a fork at the corner of a low building—been whitewashed just this fall. Go on down past it to the left, and ye’ll come to a place allays got horses tied up out front, morning and night. Allays busy with soldiers, them gals is.”
Bass marked it in his memory the way he would a piece of ground he figured to remember. “Barcelos.”
“Barcelos,” Williams echoed.
“And it might be worth yer while to ask for Conchita,” Williams advised. “If she ain’t busy with no soldier.”
“She a looker?”
Williams expressively held his cupped hands out in front of his chest as his eyes got big as saucers. “A likely gal with lots for a man to enjoy kissing on, if’n ye catch the way my stick floats. But this here Conchita ain’t young as most of them others at the Barcelos house. Still, she knows her business, and her business is pleasuring a man like he ain’t been pleasured in a long time.”
“Good, eh?”
“For my money Conchita is the gal to ride yer wiping stick till ye’re panting like a played-out mule and yer eyes roll back in yer head!”
20
Conchita was everything Bill Williams said she would be.
Of course, it wouldn’t have taken much to satisfy a man with as wild a woman-hunger as he was nursing about the time he and McAfferty banged the huge iron knocker against the cottonwood plank door that very next evening.
Stripping his wide-brimmed hat from his hair he had tied in braids for this special occasion, bowing low in his freshly brushed and dusted buckskins, Bass used a few of the sparse words Williams had taught him to greet the fat, moon-faced woman who answered the door—light and warmth, music and laughter, pouring out around her ample form.
Her red, liquor-puffy eyes shifted to McAfferty and took their measure of them both. “Gringos, eh?”
She poked a grimy finger at the corner of her bloodshot eye and rubbed as she stepped back out of the way,
