was about to stab her arms into the sleeves of the dress, he seized her, twisting her down onto the blankets.
In her first words to him, these spoken in a low, husky voice, she began to give him hell, shaking her head emphatically as he flung the blanket off himself and rolled over to position himself between her legs. With one arm shoving upward against his chest, the woman clamped her other hand over herself so he could not enter.
“Now what you doing that for?” he groaned, rocking back on his knees in distress, his hardened flesh wagging forlornly.
Pushing herself backward, the woman slid far enough away from him that she could sit up and reach for the blanket, which she yanked into her lap.
“You was all for me crawling on you afore,” he groaned, dejection thick in his voice. “Why not now when I can make it last a little longer for us both?”
After a pause she shook her head, then motioned that she intended to head over to her village across the creek.
He tried to inch forward, eager to grab one or the other of those small breasts. “Lemme crawl on you one more time … then you get on back to your camp.”
Curling her legs up defensively, she put out an arm to hold him at bay. Then she made the sign for no trade.
“No … no trade?”
For a moment he was confused; then it struck him. “What I give your father was for just the first time, that it?”
She continued to stare at him. At least she wasn’t moving to get away.
Good enough for the first time—all right, he thought. If he was going to convince her to spread her legs for him a second time, Bass figured he was going to have to come up with something to give her that she would not have to share with her older sisters. Something for her and her alone.
Turning to stare at the free trappers’ camp some sixty yards away in an attempt to divine what he could offer her, Bass heard her moving of a sudden. When he whirled back, he found her dragging her dress over her head and arms.
“No, stay,” he begged in desperation, his hardened flesh still insistent, his heart in despair of finding something to offer her.
But then he lunged to the side, flinging back the flap on his shooting pouch to dig around inside until his fingers found one of the awls he had traded for that afternoon. Scratch scooted back on his knees to present it to her in his flat palm.
After a moment of consideration she took it from his hand, tapped a finger pad against its sharp tip, and considered his offer a moment longer … before she laid it back in his hand and went back to pulling the dress down over her breasts.
Jehoshaphat! What did he have that would make her eyes shine enough to lay back down for him!
Glory!
He dived back at his shooting pouch, stuffed a hand into the pocket at the back, and swept out a long length of the wool ribbon generally used to bind an edge on blankets. This he held out in his hand for her to inspect.
By that time she wasn’t watching him—rising to her knees so she could tug the dress down over her hips when she suddenly spotted the selvage ribbon and froze. Despairing that it was not enough, he moved that open hand closer to her, bringing it up beneath her chin so she could see just what it was that he offered her. The woman lifted the narrow strip of wool from his palm, inspecting it in the moonlight. Then shook her head and dropped it back across his hand.
“Please, don’t … don’t go,” he implored with that urgency of the flesh.
Then, with her two hands, she pantomimed poking the index finger of one hand into an invisible something she held in the other. For a moment he imagined she was making the sign for copulation…. Then he understood.
“The awl!” he whispered. “You want the awl too!”
He retrieved it from his pouch and laid it in one hand, grabbing the ribbon in the other, and presented them both to her.
For a painful moment the woman stared down at the awl and ribbon. Just stared.
And finally she removed the two objects from his palms, placing them to the side atop her blanket, then rose on her knees to grasp the bottom of her dress once more, shimmying out beneath it as he suddenly went desert- tongued at the sight of her quivering breasts freed again for his touch … sensing his own renewed hardness, his own feral heat about to overwhelm him.
As savage as he attacked her that first time, now he discovered he was able to savor this delicious anticipation of delay rather than feeling himself hopelessly swept up and helplessly hurtled forth by a mysterious force he could in no way control.
Again she reached out to wrap her fingers around his swollen readiness, easing him forward to rub against that moistening cleft in her flesh for a time while she gently gyrated her hips, gradually driving him mad with desire. With one volcanic lunge he was finally inside her, feeling his groin locked against hers as the woman clamped both of her hands on his buttocks, arching her back as she began to gyrate more violently beneath him. He was certain he would explode if she continued flinging herself up at him—
Instead, Bass locked his hands on her hips and rocked back, lifting her completely off the blanket as he sank backward until the woman straddled him. For a sudden, frightening moment she did not move, gazing down at him in shock. But when he ground his hips up against her, raising her off the blankets, he got the notion across to her. The Shoshone woman apparently liked the sensation of their position so much that she herself began to buck and dance there atop his upright flesh, clamped tightly about him as she moved forward and back, side to side, and even tried slowly to grind herself round and round in small, and very insistent, circles.
Of a sudden she was recklessly bouncing on top of his hardness, rocking up so far on her knees that she stroked the entire length of him, so far, in fact, that he feared she would pull him out … yet each time she slammed herself back down onto his hips. Up and down she pumped him, her eyes compressing into half slits, her breathing become ragged as he felt himself rising toward a furied crescendo.
Then she was whimpering, and for a moment he became afraid he had hurt the young woman with the vigor of their coupling. He stopped and seized hold of her shoulders, worried—when she opened her eyes and stared down at him. Shaking her head, she smiled as she hadn’t ever smiled at him before … and immediately went right back to bouncing atop his rigid manhood.
This time they rose together, climbing toward a fiery release. The initial whimper that had begun low in her throat was now a keening, breathless, raspy cry. And that grunt of his beast on the verge of achieving its primal satisfaction became like shrill hammer strikes on an anvil.
Slamming herself down onto his penis, the woman instantly began to shudder and quake, little high-pitched wails squeaking past her lips…. Then he was thrusting himself against her every bit as forcefully, clawing at her breasts, seizing her upper arms and pulling her close as he roared into her like a ferocious torrent dammed for far too long.
She collapsed against him, sinking weak and drained, at just the instant he felt that last explosion rocking him to his core.
Bass cradled the woman atop him until their flesh cooled and the air chilled with the coming of morning there beside the Popo Agie. He pulled her blanket over them both and let her sleep atop him. Surrendering to complete and utter exhaustion, Scratch sighed and closed his eyes, feeling the weariness washing over him, sensing sleep flooding every part of his body.
A woman like this was clearly a poison for a man: exactly the sort of creature who confounded, confused, and ailed a simple man with simple needs, just those very needs that made him crave a woman like her in the worst way … yet at the very same time, she was just the sort of cure for that very poison she inflicted—a soothing balm for all that ailed him. A poultice drawing out all the months of pent-up hunger and despair with such satisfaction that Scratch knew he would never again find such complete and utter relief.
Bass went to sleep as the sky far to the east began to gray, realizing that if he ever again found a woman who could bring him the sort of satisfaction he had just experienced, he wouldn’t hesitate a moment to trade his pistol for her.
Almost two weeks later, William Sublette and Robert Campbell parted company on the Popo Agie. The
