When the pup he held suddenly became animated in his arms, all legs and eager yelps, Bass leaned over the firewood fence and returned the pup to his mother and siblings. Some of the other pups hopped right up to give him a good going-over with their noses, sniffing all that was new on his fur.
“I want two,” he confessed.
“Two?” And then Charlotte Green chuckled, her fleshy face becoming even rounder in mirth, her big bosom and shoulders quivering with laughter. “That be a double handful of trouble, that’s what!”
“So you lemme have two?”
“You can have ’em all if’n you want ’em.”
He considered that a moment, then thought of that long ride north. One pup, maybe two at the most—he could handle them. But not a half dozen wild, animated creatures as he marched his laden pack string north to Absaroka.
“Nawww, just two.”
“Which’uns you want, mister?”
Pausing a moment more to study them all as they boiled back and forth across their small enclosure—some scratching an ear, others tugging a sibling’s long tail as they wrestled, and the rest plopping down in the dirt near the security of their mother’s shadow—he quickly decided.
Bending over the fence, he scooped one into his hands, hoisting it aloft to glance between its hind legs. Then he gazed into the little male’s face. He approved of the look in the pup’s eyes as the dog’s tiny pink tongue repeatedly lapped in its attempt to lick Scratch’s face.
“This’un likes ye, mister,” Charlotte observed.
“Hold ’im for me, would ye?”
Titus moved past her to step round to another side of the enclosure where he held his hand down close to the ground. Three of the remaining five pups immediately came over to sniff his callused, rough hand. But one of the three immediately nuzzled its tiny, cold nose into his palm, rubbing his fingers.
“You too,” he said as he scooped up the second pup and inspected its genitals.
“What you got there?” the cook asked. “A li’l girl? You wanna a li’l girl too?”
“Nope. Better for me to take two males, Charlotte.”
Again she chuckled with that merry laughter. “I knows! This way, the li’l boy won’t be crawlin’ on his li’l sister to make more pups, eh?”
“How much I owe you?”
“Nothin’,” she answered with a grin.
“I owe you somethin’ for these two pups,” he pleaded. Then Titus was hit with an inspiration as she shook her head emphatically. “Surely now, you’ve had your eye on something over to the trade room, woman! Some new beads, or a Mexican scarf. Maybe a bolt of cloth for a new dress—”
“I did see something!” Charlotte exclaimed as her eyes widened like white orbs swelling in a dark firmament.
He gulped, suspicious he might have offered too much. “What can I get for you?”
“I seen some …” And she squeezed an earlobe between her finger and thumb as she squinted, leaning close to peer at one of his wire hoops and those tiny small brass beads suspended from it. “Some real purty earbobs.”
Relieved, he shifted the dog into one arm and pulled her toward the door. “C’mon with me, Miss Charlotte! We’re gonna make us a trade!”
With the two pups in their arms, Titus and Charlotte threaded their way past hunters, trappers, and fort employees lounging in the last of the autumn sun cast against the east side of the inner courtyard, scurrying hip to hip into the trade room where they shuffled around a cluster of Mexicans and half-breeds arguing with one of the traders.
Charlotte began waving her free arm in the air to the clerks at the far end of the counter. “Mr. Goddamn! Ovah heah, Mr. Goddamn!”
Busy over a ledger at the far end of the long counter, Lucas Murray turned to peer over his shoulder as they approached. His face lit up when he realized who had called him out. “Charlotte!”
“You he’p me please, Mr. Goddamn?”
“Help you do what?”
“This here nice man gonna get me some earbobs I took a shine to.”
The fort’s head trader’s eyes trained on the old trapper. “You’re Bass—the one took all those blankets off our hands.”
He nodded, scratching the pup’s neck. “Like she said: I wanna trade for some purty earrings Charlotte’s put her eyes on.”
Murray leaned across the counter so he could put his lips near Scratch’s ear, whispering in delicious confidentiality, “You ain’t getting her something in trade for her bedding you. She gonna throttle your wiping stick, that the way of it?”
Titus roared as the trader straightened, stiffening in surprise. “Great Jehoshaphat! She’s got that husband of hers—the blacksmith! By the stars, I’m getting her them earrings she took a shine to in trade for these here two puppies!”
Nervously licking his lips in embarrassment, Murray sidestepped over to stand directly in front of the cook, only the narrow counter separating them now. “S’pose you tell me which ones you got in mind, Charlotte.”
Bass had to admit they did look good hanging from her ears, what with the way she wore her hair all pulled back and covered with that bright red, blue, and yellow Mexican scarf. As Charlotte was inserting the second earring through the hole in a lobe, Bass turned slightly, noticing the stack of pack baskets woven from oaken slats.
“How much you want for them baskets, Mr. Murray?”
The trader stepped down to the corner and picked one of them up by its single handle. “What you need one’a these for?”
“Two of ’em,” he declared. “One for each pup. Here, pass it over and lemme try it.”
He handed one of the dogs back to Charlotte, then clutched the remaining pup under one arm before he took the basket and set it on the floor. Then lowered the dog into the basket’s wide, oval mouth. Immediately the pup stood up inside, barely able to get its little nose over the top.
“These’ll work just fine,” Titus commented, taking his hand off the basket where he had been steadying it and the pup both. “How much you trade for two of ’em—and them earrings too?”
Charlotte’s infectious, uninhibited laughter split the trading room. Bass turned, watching the pack basket topple over and the puppy come tumbling out. It scrambled onto all fours and was just starting for the door when Titus leaped to grab it. He stood, scratching the pup’s ears as it went to licking his neck beneath the graying whiskers.
“ ’Bout got away from you, Mr. Titus!” she giggled as the dog in her arms squirmed.
Murray cleared his throat, “You got another two horses, I let you have both of these here baskets and Charlotte’s earbobs too.”
“Sounds steep to me,” Scratch reflected, allowing the pup to gently gnaw on his thumb with its tiny, sharp teeth.
“It ain’t steep,” Murray replied. “Could cost you more—but the Frenchmen was what used these baskets. So we don’t get much call for ’em anymore.”
“Two horses?”
The head trader nodded. “Two horses.”
“I’ll have your horses back here afore you bolt the gate at sundown tonight.”
Murray grinned as he turned to step back down the counter to his ledger. “You’re one I trust, Bass. Just put them two horses with the others you already brung up to the fort.”
“Well, now,” Charlotte sighed as she turned toward Bass, lowering the framed looking glass she had been regarding herself in. “How I look?”
“Handsome as could be,” Titus said with a grin. “I declare, if you ain’t the most handsome woman this side of the Wind River Mountains!”
