“That’s wrong too, pork-eater.” Titus stuffed his hand inside the flaps of his coat. “No matter how bad you wanna throw me outta your fort, you won’t do it because I got some Mexican gold you want pretty bad.”
Between Bordeau’s lips appeared the pink tip of his tongue. He licked the lips, then rolled them inward over his teeth with anticipation. Glee twinkled in his eyes as Titus brought out the small skin satchel and clanked it on the counter.
“Let me see these coins of yours.” Bordeau rubbed his hands together.
“I’ll show you one,” he advised as he unknotted the leather string wrapped around the top of the pouch. From it he pulled a coin, which he loudly thumbed onto the counter and pushed toward the trader.
As Bordeau raised it into the light for an inspection, the gold shimmered.
“You held on to that Mex money a long time,” Sweete commented.
“Most times, I got some furs, something to trade off. Not no more. So it seems like this is as good a place as any to dicker on some goods for these here coins,” Titus said as he watched the factor slip the coin between his teeth and clamp down with zeal. “Appears to me Mon-sur Bordeau here knows good gold when he sees it.”
“Is real,” the trader attested.
“’Course it is,” Scratch replied.
He watched Bordeau turn away, still clutching the coin, moving aside some objects on a shelf behind him before he pulled out a small set of scales and weights. Placing the coin on one side of the scale, Bordeau selected one of the smallest weights. After he had it balanced, Bordeau looked up at the American again.
“How many of these you have,
“What’s that’un worth to you?”
“How many you want to spend?”
“Only one,” he said stiffly. “I figger it’s more’n enough to buy some earbobs and hangy-downs for our womenfolk. A play-pretty or two for each o’ the young’uns.”
Removing the coin from the scale, Bordeau leaned back against the shelves and held the gold piece before his eyes, turning it this way and that in the lamplight. “Pick out what you want for your women and the children too.”
How excited the youngsters became as Bordeau pulled wooden trays from the shelves behind him and laid them side by side on the counter, each one filled with hanks of sewing beads, or large multicolored glass beads from faraway Venice and the continent of Africa too, along with many styles of finger rings, an assortment of tin bracelets, and small rolls of brass wire. Magpie went right to work touching every single item to her satisfaction. Next, Bordeau set a small wooden pail on the counter; inside were nestled a bevy of tin whistles and string toys that snared the eyes of young Flea and Shadrach.
Scratch was bending over the trays with his daughter when the trader spoke.
“What do you think of this?”
Magpie and her father both looked up together, finding Bordeau holding a colorful shawl, delicately sewn with a tassel fringe at the hem around the bottom V of the broad triangle. Scratch noticed how his daughter clamped her hand over her mouth, eyes going wide as muleprints.
“She likes, eh?”
“Let ’er try it on, trader,” he demanded.
Bordeau passed the shawl to her. With her father’s help, Magpie laid it over her shoulders while Bass lifted her long black hair. She clutched the shawl closed at her breast and spun this way and that. As he watched her twirl to make the tassels flutter, Titus suddenly spotted six faces pressed against the thick window glass, six pairs of eyes watching Magpie preen, the young girl lost in her own little world.
Looping his arm over her shoulder, Bass quickly turned his daughter away from the prying eyes and faced her toward Bordeau. “You got ’nother of these here shawls?”
“Same as the one she’s got on?”
“Lemme see all of ’em so we can pick out three of ’em.”
“Three?”
“The other two for our wives.”
“That’s awful good of you, Scratch,” Sweete said.
“You damn well can’t go back to that lodge without presents for her, Shadrach.”
“But I ain’t got nothing to repay you for ’em—”
He whirled on Sweete. “Don’t ever say that to me again. I do this ’cause I wanna. Don’t take away the joy from me doing this for you.”
“Aw … awright.”
“Shell Woman don’t ever need to know it weren’t your money,” he explained. “Ever’ woman needs some geegaws an’ girlews to make their eyes shine and their hearts go warm.”
“Popo!”
He turned at Magpie’s exclamation, finding her running her fingers over eight different patterns of shawls. Bass told her, “Pick out one for yourself, and Shell Woman, and a real pretty one for your mother too. Shad an’ me gonna scratch through these here earbobs an’ foofaraw for some pretty hangy-downs to go with them shawls.”
In the end, after they had argued over the worth of Mexican gold this far north of the old Spanish possessions, Bass finally relented and let go of two of his coins for a treasure trove of trinkets and jewelry, along with the three shawls, four more blankets, and a burlap sack filled with at least three of every sort of toy Fort Laramie had on its shelves.
“An’ you said I had some left over for a little whiskey,” Bass reminded.
“Yes, yes,” Bordeau answered in a gush as he scooped the two coins into a pocket of his drop-front britches.
Shadrach asked, “Where’s your likker?”
“Bring it out, trader!” Scratch demanded.
“No drinking here in trade room,” Bordeau stated. “Other room for whiskey.”
“Awright, show us,” Sweete said.
They stepped from the trading room just ahead of Bordeau as the trader snuffed the lamps, then pulled and locked the door behind him. As the group followed the Frenchman down the side of the square, Bass turned to study that group of six curious employees stepping away from the shadows near the trade-room window, slowly following the Americans.
“I dunno if there’s trouble brewin’, Shadrach,” he said in a low voice. “Maybeso there’s some nosy parley-voo niggers spotted my gold through the window.”
Sweete glanced over his shoulder at the half dozen following them. “They’re small, Scratch. Frenchies too. They can’t cause us too much trouble. ’Sides, you allays had your back to that window. They couldn’t see your pouch or your gold.”
“Then why you reckon they follerin’ us?”
With a shrug, Shad said, “Bet they know we’re headed for the whiskey room. Pork-eaters like them figger to drink a horn or two on your money.”
“Ain’t enough Mexican gold in my pouch to make me pay for a round of whiskey for one of their kind,” he growled as Bordeau stepped through a smudge of yellow light spilling upon the damp ground from a smoke-stained, dirty window and immediately flung open the cottonwood door beside it.
“For the
“This Injun gal looks old enough for a cup of whiskey.”
Bass froze at the counter and slowly turned at the sound of the voice. On instinct, he quickly glanced around the room, counting enemy, hopeful of finding another female. But as he had feared most, he found but one woman in this smoky room, dank with the mingled odors of sweaty bodies, spilled whiskey and brandy, as well as the stench of clothing and anuses gone too long unwashed.
“Fill the cups, like the trader told you to,” Titus ordered the barman, then cleared his throat as he turned
