back to the stocky man who had called out with the loud voice.
“I buy the woman a drink of my own, yes?” the badger-eyed one asked.
Shaking his head as he felt his breath come hard, Bass growled, “This here ain’t no woman. My daughter she be, you gut-sucker of a parley-voo.”
“What is this you say of me … gut-sucker?”
Sweete immediately replied. “It ain’t good, what my friend called you.”
Slowly the Frenchman’s eyes tore from Shad’s to look again at Bass. “So, she is your daughter. Still I think she looks old enough to drink the whiskey.”
Bordeau slipped away from the counter, stepping behind the Americans and inching along the wall until he stood just behind the right elbow of his stocky employee.
“She’s maybe a moon away from her thirteenth summer, you no-count dog.” Titus reached out and gently snugged Magpie against his hip. With his other hand he dragged a cup of whiskey his way and brought it under his nose for a sniff.
“Me? A dog? That makes me laugh! You are the dog who sleeps with the Injeeans. Look at this half-blood girl. Now she is the best for a man like me, no? Half-blood women want a real man in the robes.”
After smelling the strength of Bordeau’s whiskey, Bass took a long drink, enough to make his throat burn and his eyes water. If it was going to be the only drink he’d have this night, then he wanted it to be a deep one. He set the cup back on the counter. So far, the Frenchman hadn’t moved any closer. Made no threatening moves. Although the stocky man still leaned against the wall, Titus nonetheless knew it was but a matter of moments. Scratch turned, wiping his mustache with the back of his hand, and glared over at the antagonist. The man wore a pistol stuffed in his belt and one knife Bass could see over the right hip. Appeared to be a lefthander.
“We come to drink our whiskey, part of a trade,” Shad began to explain as he set his first cup down on the counter behind Bass and tugged Magpie a step back from her father.
“Trade? You want to trade,
Bordeau leaned over to his employee, whispering something in the stocky man’s ear. The Frenchman listened, nodded once, but never took his eyes off either the American or the half-blood girl.
“Awready done our trading for the night,” Bass said as he squared himself and laid a hand on Flea’s shoulder. “Son, move yonder toward the door now.”
“Popo, I don’t want to go,” the boy said in Crow.
“We aren’t going, not just yet,” he answered his son in the same language.
Bordeau asked, “Does your daughter know the words that will drive a man wild in this same tongue you speak to the boy?”
“Let’s not fight over her,” the muscular employee said with a mocking kindness. “I will bring some goodness to your poor family, old man.”
“How could a gut-eater like you do that?”
Sneering, he said, “Don’t marry your girl off to no Injeean warrior who picks the lice off his head.
The thought of such a life for his daughter turned his stomach. “I’d sooner see her married to a half-starved Digger than to have a scum-lickin’ parley-voo in my family!”
“Let her make her choice, old man,” the Frenchman demanded. “A Injeean life with lice, the life you choose … or a life as my woman—”
“She’s just a girl, you French pig.”
“Old enough to me,” the muscular man provoked. “Look at her ass. Is that not how you Americains say it— ass? And she has those little teats so small and hard now too.”
“You’re a coward,” Titus growled, both hands flexing, wondering how much older he was than this bad- tongued bully, trying to calculate how many pounds of muscle the Frenchman had on him. “You stand here in front of a little girl and her father, talking bad with your pig tongue, only because you got all these other stupid gut-eaters around you. You’re no man, mon-sur. You’re just a soft-brained, scum-lickin’ parley-voo what works for Chouteau’s American Fur because you can’t do a real man’s job … an’ the most you can ever hope for is to die in your sleep somewhere out of the rain.”
“Me? The coward, Americain?”
“All you parley-voo bastards ain’t got the spine of a yap-pin’ prerra dog,” Titus declared. “You ever hear what happened to one of your kind when he bumped up against a fighting cock named Carson? Kit Carson?”
The dark eyes narrowed. “Who is this?”
“Carson’s the one killed the parley-voo called Shunar.”
“Chouinard?”
Bordeau leaned over and whispered something more into the man’s ear.
“Thees Shunar, he was not as good as me, eh?”
“You ain’t half the man Shunar tried to be,” Scratch said. “But … I figger you’re gonna be just as dead as him afore I leave this room.”
“You talk so beeg for such old man.”
“I can pin your ears back, slice ’em off, an’ feed ’em to you.”
“No pistols!” Bordeau suddenly hollered as the employee reached for his belt weapon.
“Fine by me,” Scratch replied, his heart thundering in his ears. He dragged the .54-caliber flintlock from his belt and clunked it on the counter.
His antagonist asked, “When I kill you, I have to kill the other one too?”
Before Bass could answer, Sweete announced, “I ain’t leaving here with you on your feet, pork-eater.”
“Ah! You sweet on the girl yourself, eh?”
“No,” Shad said as he nudged Magpie behind him at the bar. “I got me my own baby daughter too.”
“She half-blood, like his girl?”
“Yes,” Sweete answered.
“Too bad now. She grow up with no papa.”
Scratch slowly pulled his knife from its sheath, saying, “Is all you do is talk, mon-sur?”
The Frenchman laughed mirthlessly.
“Big enough to open your gut.”
“It’s big, s’all,” Titus said. “Big and stupid, like you, dung-head.”
For a moment the Frenchman smiled, then said, “Thees will be fun. First I kill you. Then I kill your friend. And after some more whiskey … tonight I make a real woman of your leetle daughter. Tonight she will bleed from the hard rut I will give her—”
All words and other sounds were suddenly muffled by the roar of blood rushing to his ears as he raced for the Frenchman, whose eyes snapped as big as the trader’s teacups. The man started to crouch as the American shot across the short distance that divided them. Without time to work his big knife into position, the Frenchman did his best to jab in toward his attacker, but Bass already had that figured out too.
As the stocky man’s left arm stabbed forward with the wide blade, Scratch raked under the arm with his own thin-bladed skinner. At that same instant he felt the Frenchman’s calf crashing against his ankles. The room turned around as Titus spun into some crude stools and an empty wooden crate where playing cards and bone dominoes went flying.
“Arrgggh!” the Frenchman cried in pain as he gripped his sundered left forearm in his right hand and slung about bright streamers of blood in anguish until he gritted his teeth and took the bloody knife into that empty right hand.
“Bordeau!” Sweete cried in warning. “I’ll shoot any of your pork-eaters makes a move to help the bleeder! You understand I’ll kill ’em if they make one move toward my friend!”
With a nod, Bordeau growled at the rest of the men in the room while Bass scrambled to his feet, his shins and right shoulder crying out in pain.
“Lookee there, pork-eater,” he rasped. “You do bleed just like a fat pig.”
