He turned on a group of them sniggering at him.
“That’s right,” another bawled. “Serves you right for stacking up the price of a hump that’a way.”
From the corner of his eye Bass saw them moving his way: an older warrior, leading four women. Halting in front of the white trapper, the wrinkled Shoshone with an expressive face stepped aside and gestured in turn to each of the four. Scratch quickly appraised them in the silver light.
“No men,” the man signed.
Maybeso he means they ain’t got no husbands.
Setting down the cup and dumping the colorful beads back into the small skin pouch, he asked, “No men?”
“Killed,” the warrior replied with his hands. “Rubbed out by Blackfeet.”
“Your daughters?”
He nodded, then spoke in Shoshone. “Show me your beads.”
Handing the old man the pouch, Bass watched the Shoshone pour out some of the beads and inspect them in his palm. Then he held them out so his four daughters could appraise them.
His deep, dark eyes gazed into the white man’s. “The cup?”
Bass picked up the tin and waited while the man licked the tip of his finger, dipped it in the Mexican sugar, then licked the fingertip once more.
“I got the cloth too,” Scratch said in English, taking the strip of calico from his shoulder as the grumbling from the white men around him grew louder.
One of the women stepped forward, and immediately a second, both of them fingering the cloth. But the old man motioned them back suddenly, then nodded. Moving aside, he gestured again to his four daughters in turn, moving his arm from the trapper to each woman as if asking that a decision be made before a price was negotiated.
The oldest looked a lot like Fawn, and the youngest, a mere slip of a girl, looked very similar to Slays in the Night’s daughter. That one couldn’t be any older than fourteen, maybe fifteen, summers. But the warrior had said they all had been married. An immediate tug at his heart made him feel sorry for the girl, for the old man too. He hoped she would not be chosen this night … but realized that was muddle-headed thinking. She’d likely be the first to go to one of the others, a man who might not treat her near as kindly as he would.
Then he wondered if he was feeling sorry for her, or if he was trying to talk himself into picking her instead of the others.
“How many summers?” he asked.
“Seventeen.”
Titus peered closer at the girl. She had to be younger than that. Why, Amy Whistler was that same age when she and he …
So Bass repeated the number. “Seventeen.”
With a nod the old man reached over and inched the young woman forward as if about to consummate the deal.
Jehoshaphat! That’s half my age!
Still clutching the skin pouch, the old man upended the bag and poured out all the beads into the hands of another woman standing behind the youngest, who kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Then the warrior gave the pouch back to the trapper at the same time he took the tin cup from Bass’s hand. His final gesture was to take the folded strip of cloth from where it hung over the white man’s arm—leaving Scratch with nothing more to hold.
In a whisper the young woman turned slightly and said something to the man. Instead, it was the oldest of her sisters who answered curtly. Chastised, the young woman turned back, glanced up at Bass for a brief moment, nodding her head at him before her eyes returned to the ground at her feet.
Shooing the trapper away, the old warrior turned on his heel, pulling a soft pouch from his belt. Spreading its top and holding it out as he shuffled away, he had the oldest of the sisters pour the beads into it while the other two women took turns licking sugar from the fingers they repeatedly plunged into the cup. With his bag poked back under his belt, the old Shoshone unfurled the long strip of cloth and draped it around his own shoulders, swirling this way, then that, admiring it on himself in the moonlight.
“Gonna make himself a shirt, I’d reckon,” Scratch said to no one at all.
“Damn you, free trapper!”
Turning slightly, he found that group of company men glaring at him anew.
“That’s right—we oughtta cut your goddamned oysters off right here and now!” a second one bellowed menacingly. “Then you’d never go daubing no Injun gals again!”
For a moment he measured them in the moonlight limned through puffy clouds embroidered with silvery borders. If they meant him real harm, they wouldn’t be blustering—he figured as his heart began to beat faster with this challenge, uncertain if it did so out of anticipation for the woman, or from the danger the four company men presented with their swagger.
That’s likely what it was, he decided. Nothing more than strut and swagger. Nonetheless, he laid his left hand on the handle of his knife for a moment while he wrapped his right hand around the curved butt of the new pistol. Squaring his shoulders as the four continued their hooting and catcalls, Bass turned and grabbed the woman by an elbow. She let him guide her through the rest of the Indians and trappers crowding the glen.
And she did not protest as he led her back along that east bank of the Popo Agie until they reached the bower he had constructed over his sleeping robes. He prayed she understood what was expected of her when he came to a halt and let go of her arm. For a moment she watched him as he freed the knot in the wide, colorful sash, then laid the pistol on it near his blankets, just within reach.
The minute he sank to the ground and began to untie his moccasins, she flung her own blanket aside, then seized hold of the fringed bottom of her hide dress with both hands—pulling it up over her thighs, her bare hips, the flat of her belly as he stared transfixed at that dark wedge of hair there at the crown of her legs … on up she dragged the dress, pulling it inside out over her shoulders as her small breasts bounced free and he swallowed hard, suddenly so dry-mouthed he could barely swallow—watching every shimmy of her flesh as the woman slipped the dress down one arm, then another, and finally tugged it off over her head.
Sweeping both hands down the length of her long, loose black hair before she tossed it over her shoulder, the woman knelt onto the rumple of blankets he had prepared, folding her own neatly at the side of the bed, then laid her skin dress upon it. At last she sank onto her back, and gazed over at the white man staring mule-eyed and slack-jawed at her provocative, bare-skinned beauty.
Scratch sensed the urgency suddenly seize hold of him, realizing any self-control was no longer possible. More quickly than she had, he wrenched up the bottom of his leather shirt and ripped it from his arms, yanking it over his head, flinging it into the brush. Where the shirt landed, it mattered not.
Reaching beneath the front flap of his breechclout, Titus’s fingers flew at the knot tied in the wide rawhide whang that secured the wide strip of wool around his waist. That whang came whipping off in one hand at the same time the other hand ripped the breechclout from between his legs. He heaved both of them into the surrounding brush.
Still wearing his leggings, Scratch knelt at her knees. She spread her legs and held her arms up to him, grasping one of his wrists and pulling him toward her gently as she reached out with a hand, fingers searching for his manhood.
He nearly choked on readiness when she wrapped her hand around him, guiding him down, down, then forward, ever so gently as the woman sought to place him against her just so.
Lying here now with the woman as his heart continued to slow, Titus remembered how she had half closed her eyes while he had driven himself into her. Not sure if that had been pleasure for her, or merely pain with his fury to plant himself fully, completely within her moist warmth.
Barely opening his eyes from time to time as they lay together, Scratch became aware that time was passing only because of the journey taken by that half-moon limned behind the silver-framed cotton puffs in its climb from there to there across the cloudy sky. He wasn’t really aware he had been sleeping until he felt her rustle beside him, bringing him fully awake.
For a moment she peered over a shoulder at him, her narrow, naked back only inches from his face; then she reached out to drag her dress into her lap. As she began to pull the hide garment right side out, Bass propped himself up on an elbow and studied what he could see of her, finding himself stirred once more. Just as the woman
