Wind Walker

cowards somewhere out there, waiting in the dark to back-shoot us—an’ there’s the rest of you parley-voo pigs in here.”

“How we gonna get the young’uns out of the fort an’ back to the women?” Shad inquired in a harsh whisper.

“Oui?” Bordeau asked with a sneer as he knelt beside the wounded Frenchman again. “You kill two of my men, them both American Fur employees. Maybeso this third one too, eh?”

“I not die yet,” grumbled the wounded man who sat in a splatter of black that stained the clay floor. “I live,” and he coughed. “I live to keel this Americain!”

“Another day, mon-sur. Not this’un, you won’t.”

“We still gotta get outta here, Scratch,” Sweete reminded.

His eye fell on Bordeau. “C’mere, you parley-voo cock-bag.”

The trader stood slowly, but did not move.

“You c’mere now,” he growled as he slowly aimed a pistol at the wounded man on the floor, “or I’ll blow what li’l brains that weasel got in his head.”

“Non,” Bordeau protested.

He moved the muzzle of the pistol so that it pointed at the assistant factor. “Then I’ll blow a ball right through—”

“You kill me, monsieur,” Bordeau interrupted as he stood his ground, “Papin will not rest until you are dead.”

Titus grinned, his brain grinding on his extrication from the fort, making their escape from this North Platte country. “You’re important to Mon-sur Papin and the company?”

Bordeau jutted his chin with too much self-confidence, “Oui, very important.”

“Papin an’ all Chouteau’s money don’t mean a goddamned thing to me,” he declared as he stepped toward Bordeau and suddenly shoved the muzzle of his left-handed pistol under the trader’s chin. “But if you don’t come with me, I will splatter your brains all over the rest of your dog-sucking friends here.”

His eyes grew huge. “C-come with you?”

“You’re gonna get us outta the fort.”

“How I do that?” Bordeau asked as he shuffled away from the others, almost on his toes, that muzzle still shoved up under his chin as Bass slowly backed them toward the door.

Titus did not answer until they stepped into the light spilling out from the doorway. “Tell them, those four cowards of yours out there—tell ’em I’ll blow your shit-brains out the top of your head if they make any trouble for us getting outta the fort.”

“You cannot get away—”

With a sharp upward jerk of the pistol, Bass forced Bordeau’s chin toward the roof. “It’s up to you, parley- voo. If’n I kill you, I can grab another an’ another till I get my young’uns outta this mud hole. So you can come with me, or you can leave what you got left for brains in the mud at my feet. What’s it gonna be?”

“He’s cut up your li’l booshway,” Shad explained, sarcasm dripping from his words. “An’ there’s two more dead out there in the dirt right now. You better listen to this’un. I ain’t got no control over him when he gets like this. The man’s lived through twenty year o’ Blackfoot, Comanche raiders, and Mex soldiers too. Killing another fat, pissant Frenchman like you won’t make no nevermind to my friend—”

“Oui! Oui!” Bordeau stammered.

“Now,” Bass ordered and started them out the door, but suddenly stopped and wheeled about on his heel. “Flea, grab that sack with them geegaws and shawls in it. Bring Magpie two of them new blankets for her to carry too.”

Sweete helped the youngsters quickly gather up the trade goods, then Titus said, “Awright—let’s get outta this pigs’ hole. You bring up the rear, Shadrach. Put them young’uns atween us. Stay close, stay real close to me.”

His chin raised to the sky, Bordeau whimpered, “Wh-where you going with me?”

“To that gate. Shad, keep your eyes moving. You too, Flea. Watch the shadows—sing out if somethin’ moves. Watch those shadows behind us.”

Inside the tippling house arose a sudden clamor of voices, the scraping and clatter of wooden furniture. He glanced back over his shoulder, saw shadows flit the window, figures moving inside.

“Flea, wan’cha keep an eye on that door back there, son.”

When they finally reached the interior gate Titus ordered, “Open it.”

Bordeau slid back the iron bolt through its hasp with a grating rasp, dragged back one side of the gate, then took a step to the side. All through it Scratch never removed the pistol from under his chin.

His eyes grown hard once more, Bordeau hissed, “Now go.”

“Oh, no. We ain’t saying adieu, mon-sur. You’re gonna get us back to our camp.”

“You keeping him?” Shad said. “He’s a li’l booshway—worth something to the company. We can’t take him outta here, Scratch.”

“Reason I’ll take ’im is for what he is worth to ’em,” Titus replied, shoving Bordeau through the open gate.

“Non, non! Please, monsieur—”

“Stay close to me, Magpie. Don’t you see, Shad—we leave this bastard here, we couldn’t make a run for it fast enough afore the rest’d be down at our camp, shooting up the women and young’ uns.”

Breathlessly frightened, Bordeau asked, “You let me go at your camp, oui?”

“Likely I ain’t gonna let you go till I know they ain’t follering us, mon-sur.”

As they stopped for a moment just inside the outer set of gates and peered into the darkness, Bordeau pleaded, “Your friend said it true—you can’t take me out of here! I am important to my employers—”

“You don’t shut up, I’ll shoot you in the foot and make it hard for you to hobble back to your goddamned fort when I’m done with you miles from here.”

“W-walk? Miles?”

“I sure as hell ain’t gonna let you ride back here on one of my horses!”

He started to struggle against the old trapper. “You can’t!”

But Bass shoved the muzzle of the second pistol into the small of Bordeau’s back.

“Maybe you’re right, mon-sur,” he growled as he shoved the trader toward the gentle slope that would take them down into the cottonwood bottoms. “Maybe I just ought’n gut you right here an’ now, then go back in there an’ finish off that mouthy one I started cuttin’ on. No matter what happens to me—we just finish off all you sonsabitches right now for what you was gonna let them others do with my daughter.”

“Les filles … the girls,” and he paused a moment, “Injeean girls, they come with the tribes and maybe one of my mens, he takes a shine to one. He can buy her from her father—”

“No good, lazy bastards, sellin’ off their own blood kin,” he snarled. Jabbing the second pistol into Bordeau’s kidney, Titus said, “I ain’t the sort of nigger to trade my daughter to no stiff-necked parley-voo what ruin’t the hull goddamned beaver trade, Bordeau.”

“This night,” the Frenchman whispered, “the men think maybe to have some fun with you, is all.”

“Naw, this ain’t no fun. Dead serious to me: takin’ a man’s family—you an’ your weasel friends thinkin’ they was gonna use up my daughter, tradin’ her off from man to man like you fort loafers do down here.”

“Please, we make a big mistake!” Bordeau pleaded as they reached the cottonwood and he spotted the beckoning glow of the firelight inside the small lodge. “Cannot we be friends and you go your way?”

“More I think about it, the more this whole shebang sours my milk, Shad.”

“What’s that, Scratch?”

“You heard it: these bastards figgerin’ I’d sell off my own kin to ’em.”

Thirty yards ahead, a figure emerged from the lodge, a shadow taking shape as the sky began to mist.

“Ain’t that what the Injuns do?” Sweete suggested. “I s’pose I bought Shell Woman from her family—”

“She weren’t no li’l girl!” he snapped.

Shad swallowed, suddenly contrite. “Awright. Ain’t the same thing, not the same at all.”

“No it ain’t,” he growled. “Flea—g’won ahead. Tell your mother start packin’ in a hurry.”

“We go from here?” Magpie asked.

“Far away from here as we can,” Titus said. “Seems what trouble run us out of Taos been doggin’ us north.