as he implored the Americans.
“You’ll get this pistol, some ball and powder,” Titus said, remaining untouched by the Frenchman’s plight. He tossed Bordeau a small horn of powder, then scraped out a dozen or so lead balls from his spare pouch. “Just don’t waste ’em all afore you get back to your friends.”
As Shad helped Shell Woman load up the children, Titus turned back to the trader. “You know where you are?”
His face was a gray mask of fear. “You can’t do this—w-we did no harm to your daughter!”
“That’s the only reason I left any of you alive, only reason I’m givin’ you this chance to warn them others,” he said flat and hard. “Now, do you want to know where you are?”
“
He bent before the Frenchman’s boot toes and pulled his skinning knife from its scabbard, using it to scratch out a crude map on the damp, flaky ground. “You foller our tracks back, you should make it fine in a week or so.”
“A w-week? Seven days?”
“’Pends how fast you walk in them boots o’ your’n. But you best watch your step when you get to them foothills off yonder where we was hit by the storm. Likely to be a mite confusing for you—all them tracks goin’ round and round the way we did till we finally found a place to make camp out of the storm. That’s when you best use your savvy and figger out the right direction.”
Bordeau was near to crying. “I can’t do this! I never was for the wilderness.”
Bass stood and stared a moment at the man. “The company brung you out to this country and they didn’t teach you nothin’ of how to last out here?”
Wagging his head, Bordeau started to reach out to touch Bass, imploring—but Titus took a step back and wiggled the skinning knife between them. “See this knife? It’s the one I used to cut your friend.”
“Gaston?”
“That’s his name? Gaston. I’ll remember it,” Scratch vowed. “I figger he’ll remember me too.” Wiping the dirt and mud from the tip of the blade across his greasy legging, Titus said, “Should’ve cut his throat an’ scalped him. Them other two grabbed my Magpie, just the same. But I wanted to get my girl and boy away from the sight of your kind quick as I could, Bordeau. ’Sides, what’s Gaston’s scalp to me anyways? I’d only spit on it afore I throwed it down at your feet.”
“Don’t leave me out here without a horse! I beg of you,
“Just stay on the high ground and you’ll keep your boots purty dry.” Scratch passed off the man’s plea and took a step backward. He glanced up at the sky quickly. “Got a half dozen hours of daylight, so you can cover ground if you get after it.”
Bordeau’s face slowly changed from a look of fear to one of undisguised contempt. “From this day—your life is not worth the poor beaver pelt now,
“Only way you do that is keep yourself alive, Bordeau.” He turned away to take up the reins of his horse. “None of your kind ever belonged out here … but I’ll bet one day your kind will run all over this country, stinkin’ it up—”
“The company will not forget this murder!”
“Your company be damned!” Titus snapped as he stuffed his muddy moccasin in the cottonwood stirrup and raised himself into the saddle.
Shaking his muddy fist at the old trapper, Bordeau shrieked, “You do not do this to the American Fur Company!”
Pulling his horse around, Titus took a moment to watch Shad start away with the others as Flea herded their pack animals at the rear of the march.
“Your company put its murderin’ hands around the beaver trade—choking the breath an’ blood out of my way of life, makes me wanna put my hands around your throat an’ choke it outta you.”
Bordeau laid a hand at his throat. “You nevair get away with what you do to me!”
Suddenly Bass kicked his horse in its ribs, galloping back across those few yards toward the trader. Bordeau shrank backward, putting both arms up and crossing them over his face protectively. Wrenching back on the reins, Scratch stopped just a yard short of the Frenchman. He leaned over in the saddle, looming over Bordeau.
“Maybe your kind has gone and kill’t most ever’thing I hold dear, you parley-voo windbag,” he growled as he straightened in the saddle once more and nudged his horse around in a half circle. “But I’ll be damned if I let your kind kill me!”
Scratch didn’t rein up and look back at Bordeau until he had reached the top of a low rise. The trader was still standing there, unmoved, as if he intended to watch the old mountain man ride away until he finally disappeared from sight. But the moment Bordeau saw the horseman stop and turn around, he scooted into the sage and crouched as if he could actually hide himself among that skimpy brush.
“I hope that scared fool won’t come follering us,” Titus sighed. “Maybeso he does, he’ll find out soon enough there’s no way he’s gonna keep up on foot—not him wearin’ them fancy St. Louie boots of his.”
The sun was out for three more days before the next soaking storm forced them to huddle out of the wind in the lee of a ridge for a night and all of the following day. When it was plain that the sun would be rising into a cloudless sky the next morning, Bass and Shadrach got everyone up early and had Magpie cook them all a big breakfast while Waits and Shell Woman tore down the lodge and packed the travois. When he was given the word, Flea tugged on the lead rope tied around the neck of the friendly lead mare and started their extra horses toward the next wide gap, plodding ever westward.
“That the Winds?” Sweete asked late that afternoon, pointing at the jagged line of white-capped purple lying low along the horizon far to the north-northwest of them.
“Southern Pass be a long, long ride from here, that’s for sure,” Scratch said. Then he asked, “How long it been since you was up there in that country?”
“Back when ronnyvooz died,” Shad admitted. “How many winters is that?”
“I cipher it’s goin’ on seven, Shadrach.”
Sweete chuckled, “So I can figger you know the way you’re leadin’ us west?”
“I only tromped over parts of this,” he confessed. “See’d other parts of it from on high.”
It was long before Sweete asked, “Maybe we should’ve took the old trail by the Platte to the Sweetwater, across the pass and down to the Sandy.”
“Helluva long ways to get to Black’s Fork. I’ll lay we’ll be at Bridger’s back door afore Bordeau ever walks back into Fort William.”
The grin disappeared from the tall man’s face. “You know you cain’t ever show your face on that side of the mountains again, Scratch.”
Bass pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “I can’t think of anything ever gonna pull me back to that side of the mountains anyway, Shadrach.”
“I’ll go back, eventual’,” Sweete admitted.
“You will?”
“The woman—she’s got family,” Shad explained. “That means them young’uns got family down on the plains.”
“But that’s south of Fort William,” Titus assured him. “You won’t have to go nowhere near that post when you take Shell Woman back to see her kin down toward Bents’ big lodge on the Arkansas.”
Wagging his head slightly, Sweete said, “There I was—happy as a sow bug under a buffler chip, living the life of a Cheyenne warrior … and you have to come along an’ pull me away for a long ride right into a mess o’ trouble.”
With a snort, Bass said, “Man like you only gonna waste away in the life of a Cheyenne warrior, Shadrach! Slowly go crazy bein’ a layabout with nothin’ to do an’ nowhere to go.”
“I go huntin’,” Shad argued, bristling. “And I been on a few raids for Ute horses.”
“You got lazy an’ soft, way you been livin’ the last few years, child.”
They burst out laughing together, loud enough it made both women turn and gaze back at them a moment before the wives looked at one another in that way women do when men act in some new and bewildering way.
