“Them too?” the man asked, his eyes flicking to the children with their heads poked between the two trappers.
“Jehoshaphat!” Titus roared. “These here my young’uns! They ain’t near old enough to drink.”
“They’re Indian?”
Scratch looked down at their faces as they peered up at him. “Yes, sir. These here pups o’ mine be ’bout as Injun as you is white.” He looked at the fort employee. “Now, let us in for to trade on some whiskey.”
“Almost time for the store to close,” he said, his eyes shifty. “Sunset, you see—”
Scratch wagged his head and clucked, “Never thought a trader would turn away a buy in’ customer.”
The man exhaled with that sort of sigh one used when they have been interrupted at what they regard as a most important task. “L-let me inquire of the factor.”
His face was gone and the shutter closed and locked before either Scratch or Shad could ask just who currently ruled Fort William on the Platte.
“You bring something to trade, Shadrach?”
“I ain’t wagering nothing Shell Woman made for me, if that’s what you’re asking,” he grumbled. “You’ll have to get your own self drunk tonight.”
That prompted Flea to look up at his father and ask, “You drink the spirit water tonight?”
“I pray I can afford a little of the spirit water tonight, you damn bet, son.”
“So what you bring to trade?” Sweete asked, looking Bass up and down.
He patted the front of his coat just above the spot where he had buckled the old belt decorated with what was left of its tarnished brass tacks. “Got me a little sack of some Mexican coins.”
“You been holding on to that money since you was down to Taos a while back?”
“Got me some coins in Taos,” he replied, “but most of ’em I got out to Californy.”
“When you rode off with some Mex horses?”
“Some of them greasers come after us had a few coins in their pockets,” Bass stated as the sound of iron sliding against iron echoed on the other side of the interior gate. “We took ever’thing we figgered we’d ever use off them dead bodies afore we kept on running for the desert.”
“There’s just the two of you?” asked a stout, broad-shouldered man in a thick French accent that reminded Titus of the back alleys and tippling houses of old St. Louis.
“An’ my two young’uns here,” Titus declared, then smiled as he said, “but, they don’t drink much whiskey no more.”
The Frenchman’s eyes wrinkled and his lips curled up in a smile. At least this one, Scratch thought, he appeared to have some remnants of a sense of humor.
“So, tell me—if the four of you have come to drink my whiskey, just where are your furs?”
Scratch immediately wheeled on Sweete. “Furs? Didn’t you remember to bring the damn furs?”
“Me?” Shad bellowed as if he had been insulted. “You was the one s’posed to remember to bring in them buffler robes with you to trade.”
“Damn your hide anyway!” Bass said, then turned back to the Frenchman. “Looks like we didn’t bring along any of our furs to trade tonight … so if you wouldn’t mind figgering out how much some gold coin is worth, we’ll know how much we can drink up afore moonset.”
“G-gold?” The Frenchman’s voice rose in pitch as he pushed the gate open a bit farther and stepped through the portal.
Titus nodded. “Mexican.”
“Real gold?”
“Californy gold,” Scratch replied. “I s’pose their gold is real out there. I only been to Californy once, but I don’t care to go back to them parts for to fetch me any more of it.”
The Frenchman started to hold out his hand, palm up as he asked, “You’ve got it with you?”
“I got enough for a li’l drinking, maybeso some geegaws and earbobs for our wives what stayed back to camp.”
“My name’s Bordeau,” he announced with transparent eagerness. “And yours?”
“Sweete,” the tall one answered. “An’ my ugly friend here is named Bass.”
Bordeau turned and started toward the tall, heavy gate being held open by another man. “Come in—and bring your children.”
“You’re booshway here?” Titus asked as they followed.
“No,” Bordeau answered as the group stepped inside the inner courtyard. “Monsieur Papin is chief factor, but he is gone east. Gone downriver with a load of furs for St. Louis.”
“Papin,” Titus repeated the name. “That’s a French name, just like yours.”
Scratch looked at Shad. “American Fur ain’t very American no more, Shadrach. All these Frenchies leavin’ St. Louie behind an’ makin’ for the High Stonies. From the sounds o’ things, there likely ain’t a Frenchie left on the Mississippi River by now.”
Bordeau stopped at the wooden door and, with his hand on the iron latch, quickly appraised the two Americans again, then asked, “Did you, or you, trap the beaver for our company before the beaver was good no more?”
“I worked for Jim Bridger,” Sweete explained. “When he hired on to run a brigade for American Fur.”
“And you,
“Never,” he snorted. “It stuck in my craw when I was made to trade my plews* over to American Fur at ronnyvoo after Billy Sublette was bought out of the mountains. I dunno who done the worst to kill off my way of life—you niggers with American Fur or them John Bull niggers with Hudson’s Bay.”
Bordeau unlocked the bolt and shoved open the door, promptly stepping behind a nearby counter where he turned up the wick on a lamp. “But American Fur is the American company holding the English out.”
“From the looks of you and that parley-voo booshway Papin, and all them other Frenchies working down at Bents’ mud lodge down on the Arkansas—I don’t know if there’s much of what you’d call American in the fur trade no more. Them fat, rich Frenchmen back to St. Louie, they near bought up ever’thing. Their kind’s been doin’ business outta these posts where they don’t need no American trappers like me an’ him.”
“This is my business, the furs that come to this place,” Bordeau said as he stepped behind the counter and turned the wicks up on two more lamps that slowly pushed back the twilight’s growing darkness. “The furs, are they your business still,
Sweete shook his head. “No, can’t say as they are.”
The trader asked Titus, “You do the fur business still, like me?”
“Not since fellas like you squeezed beaver to death and killed the way I made a life for myself and my own,” Scratch replied sourly.
Bordeau grinned. “So you see? I am the American in American Fur now. You two and all the rest of your kind—you are no longer around. But I am still here. I work hard, work my way up. Learn the business. You two, like the rest, you nevair want to learn to work for the company—so the company does not need men like you no more.”
“A damn shame,” Bass grumbled. “Badger-eyed li’l weasels like you come in and took over this business from men who stood tall and bold of a time not so long ago. None of you Frenchies ever gonna be half o’ the men I knowed back in the glory days!”
Shad latched his hand around Scratch’s arm and held him tight at the very instant Titus leaned toward the counter where Bordeau’s face was darkening with crimson.
Bass glanced down at Sweete’s hand, then at his friend’s face. “Don’t you worry, Shadrach. I ain’t about to pop this parley-voo in the jaw.”
Shad slowly released his grip. “It’d be hard as hell to trade with this booshway after you busted his nose an’ made him bleed all over his purty shirt.”
With a snort, Titus said, “Mon-sur Bordeau ain’t gonna throw me out, Shadrach. No matter how low he thinks of me.”
“Because I am a gentleman … and you are not.”
Shaking his head, Scratch said, “Wrong, mon-sur.”
Bordeau said, “Because you do not fight with blood in front of your half-breed children?”
