In a moment the man had weighed out several hanks of the various colors. “That’s five pounds. So it’ll be twenty-five dollars.”
“All right,” Titus said with a smile. “I’ll take them five pounds, but put back them white and black’uns—gimme only them real purty colors: like that green and blue, the yellow and that blood color too. See that brown, gimme that too.”
“You need nails?” the clerk asked after he had laid out the long hanks of beads atop the white blanket.
“Lemme see what you have.”
After inspecting the various sizes of short brass nails a man used for both repair and decoration, he asked, “How much?”
“Fifty cents a dozen.”
“Let’s see—five dozen of ’em oughtta do.”
“You want any ribbons?”
“Show me what you got to trade.”
The clerk brought out a box containing a rainbow of cotton ribbon. “It’s six bits the yard.”
“Better let me have my pick of ten yards.”
“I figure you’ll want some bolt cloth too, won’t you, mister?” and he patted a stack of different patterns and colors.
“Tell me how much that’ll cost me.”
As he started down the stack of bolts, the clerk called out the prices, “This here scarlet is the best grade. Mr. Sublette likes it best too. It’s a wool. Goes for ten dollars.”
“Ten dollars a yard?”
“A yard. The coarse blue is eight dollars. But the calico here is only two-fifty.”
“What’s that on the bottom?” he asked, pointing.
“Striped cotton. It’s a soft material like the calico.”
“Sounds like I can get me a lot more of that ’stead of the coarse cloth,” Bass declared. “Let’s say … ten yards of each of them two. Show me how much cloth that’ll be.”
After Scratch had seen just how much twenty yards of material would be, he felt himself growing more excited about the possibilities—staring again at the various colors of the beads, figuring gifts like these would be able to communicate where his rudimentary talents with the Shoshone tongue left off.
“You got some vermilion, don’t you?”
“Chinee, I do,” the clerk replied. Returning to the rough-hewn plank, he held up a wooden tray that contained a profusion of small waxed packets the size of a man’s fist, one of which he opened to show the deep-purple pigment. “It ain’t cheap.”
“How much?” Hatcher asked.
“Six dollars a pound.”
Bass scratched the end of his nose, sensing the eyes of the others riveted on him. “Better make it five pounds.”
“All that red paint for you, Scratch?” Rufus asked.
“Shit!” Caleb snorted. “It ain’t all for him, you idjit! Scratch’s gonna get his stinger wet with that Chinee vermilion!”
Graham wagged his head in doleful confusion. “How’s Scratch gonna get his stinger wet with …” Then it struck him like a bolt of summer thunder. “Say! You’re gonna get yourself one of them Sho’nie gals, ain’cha?”
Bass winked and turned back to the clerk. “Show me what you got in wiping sticks and flints.”
“Good hickory, these be,” the clerk replied, turning back to his crates. “And for flints: we got English and French.”
“Get them French ambers,” Hatcher suggested. “Likely we’ll pay more for ’em, but they’ll last longer’n the English.”
By the time he had picked out a bundle of two dozen straight-grained hickory wiping sticks, as well as three pounds of the pale amber flints imported from France, along with several handfuls of assorted screws and worms for gun repair and cleaning, he finally asked the clerk to total it all up. He looked again over at his stack of pelts beneath that first awning, remembering just how many plews he had sent downriver with Silas Cooper. Then he suddenly squeezed his eyes closed in that way he hoped would shut off the terrible memory.
Letting out a long sigh, the trader’s employee came back to the free men and announced, “That all comes to four hundred seventy-three.”
Several of the others whistled low, but Bass remained undismayed. “What’s that leave me?”
“Eighty-six.”
Scratch licked his lips and asked, “So how much is your whiskey?”
“He don’t just wanna get his stinger wet!” Caleb hooted behind him. “Bass wants to get his gullet scrubbed too!”
“Damn right I do!”
The clerk cleared his throat. “Whiskey sells two dollar the pint.”
He squinted again, trying to imagine how much a pint was. “How much is that a gallon?”
“Eight dollars.”
For a moment more Scratch looked around at the other six trappers. “I got enough for three gallons start off with?”
“That’s twenty-four dollars. And you’ll have a little money left over for some more.”
“That’s the way I want it,” Bass said with satisfaction. “Go get a kettle, one of you.”
“I ain’t gotta go anywhere to get a goddanged kettle,” Caleb yelled with glee, leaning over to retrieve the kettle he had purchased from the ground. “Here, mister—put a gallon of that likker right in here.”
The clerk looked at Bass.
At which Scratch roared, “You heard the man. This here’s a free man, master trapper in the Rocky—by God —Mountains. So you better pour us some whiskey in that kettle and give me my trade goods … then step back outta our way, ’cause these here cocks o’ the walk are struttin’ bold and brassy tonight!”
16
He had forgotten just how good an Injun gal could smell, all earthy and fragrant with her own body heat, skin smeared with some bear oil, maybe some crushed sage or flower petals rubbed in her hair.
Quite different from them Mexican gals, who stank of cheap
Still, he was glad to be back in the mountains, back to Injun gals what didn’t chatter that much at all like them Mexican whores while they serviced their customers. These Injun women knew what they were about when it came to earning that handful of beads, that cup of Mexican sugar, or that yard of calico he held out to finally entice one of them to follow him back toward a spot he had prepared in the middle of a patch of willow.
She grasped his rigid flesh in the moonlight as he centered himself over her and began to lunge forward hungrily as she half closed her eyes.
Starved as he was, Scratch did his best to go at it slow. Knowing that after having gone so long without, this was bound to be over with all too soon anyway. Best savor it while he could.
Squirming, the woman adjusted herself on the buffalo robe he had spread beneath the wide strip of oiled sheeting Titus had tied up in the event the sky decided to cloud up and rain on them that night. Right at dusk a few clouds had begun to clot at the western rim of the valley, there against the mountains, ominously backlit by the falling sun.
Titus thought he could smell her excitement. Its strong pungency rose to his nostrils on the warm night air. And that stirred him to jab himself into her with all the more urgency.
How long had it been … too damned long to calculate, to wonder about, now. The drought was over. He had bought himself a woman for the night. At least he hoped it was for the night, praying suddenly that she would not
