Crack in the Sky (50 page)

Titus thought he could smell her excitement. Its strong pungency rose to his nostrils on the warm night air. And that stirred him to jab himself into her with all the more urgency.

How long had it been … too damned long to calculate, to wonder about, now. The drought was over. He had bought himself a woman for the night. At least he hoped it was for the night, praying suddenly that she would not get up and leave once he was done in her. Because he realized he would be done all too soon.

It was always that way when he went so long without—

Then he was exploding inside her in great rushing waves of relief, flinging himself against her, almost whimpering that it hadn’t lasted longer.

Slowly, slowly he sank atop her, filled both with regret and immense satisfaction, savoring these few minutes while his breathing slowed and his heart quieted itself, listening to her breathing and the night sounds so close around their crude shelter. When he grew soft, the woman slid out from under him, then scooted back against his body, nestling her head on his shoulder as she reached out for her dress and that blanket she had wrapped around her shoulders when she’d followed him there.

He unfurled her blanket over them both and closed his eyes.

How warm was the night air, despite that hint of a chilling cloudburst carried in from the horizon on an occasional breeze.

After completing his purchases and carrying his supplies back to camp, Scratch and the others had carved up
the remains of an elk cow shot two days before and put the steaks over the fire. As the meat sizzled at the end of sharpened
appolaz
, they eagerly dipped their tin cups into the three kettles, sipping at the amber-colored grain alcohol that burned a man’s goozle raw.

Scratch near choked with that first great gulp.

Sputtering, he found the others guffawed and knee-slapped at his fit of coughing.

“Ain’t smooth as lightning, is it?” Hatcher asked, grinning so widely one could see all of that rotted tooth.

No, it sure wasn’t smooth. Nor had Bass chosen to sweeten the liquor’s raw bite with Mexican brown sugar as he had learned to do with the Taos
aguardiente
. But soon enough his tongue and gullet grew accustomed to this particular recipe. So with supper out of the way and his head feeling light and easy, Bass cut free enough beads to fill a pint tin cup half the way to the top, sliced himself off an arm’s length of striped cotton cloth with his belt knife, then bid the others farewell for what he hoped would be the rest of the evening.

“Ye be back afore morning?” Hatcher cried.

But before Bass himself could answer, Elbridge yelled, “Shit, Jack! His blankets and robes is gone!”

“Eegod! Ye got yerself a little hidey place picked out, don’t ye?” Jack asked before Scratch could utter a word.

He was really beginning to feel the numbing tingle radiating across his forehead now that he was standing, doing all he could to remain standing. “My night to let the wolf loose, boys!”

“See you tomorry,” Caleb replied with a slur and a wave.

He weaved past their merry fire as some of the rest grabbed their crotches and hooted profanely. An exuberant Hatcher blew him a kiss before Bass turned toward the banks of the Popo Agie.

That’s when he heard the loud voices of men mixing with the lighter giggles from women. Instead of wading on into the creek, Scratch decided to stay with the east bank. After crossing less than fifty yards he came upon an open piece of ground within the willow and cottonwood, where
more than two dozen people milled about in the light of the rising half-moon. Trappers sauntered among the warriors and squaws who had come across the Popo Agie with one thought in mind: no two ways about it, there were treasures to be bartered from those white men hungry to lay with their dark-skinned women. Cloth and coffee, beads and bells, knives and awls, vermilion and ribbons.

And all these beaver men wanted was a few minutes’ time to rut with a woman!

Were there no females back in the land of these white men?

For a few minutes Scratch stood shuffle-footed on the fringe of that merry gathering, watching the company men and a handful of free trappers mosey in and out through the group. They circled, appraising, then circled again, stopping now and then to have themselves a close inspection of this or that woman beneath the moonlight. He ought to have himself a look, Titus decided, just so the others wouldn’t pick over all the best there was before he got around to choosing.

The warrior warily watched the white man approach, saying something quietly to his woman from the corner of his mouth. She nodded as she looked Bass up and down. Then smiled faintly. He set down the cup of brown Mexican sugar at his feet and asked How much? in sign, ending with that simple gesture of male readiness: a stiffened index finger on one hand sliding back and forth between the wide-spread Y of the first two fingers on the other hand.

“A knife and some powder too?” he asked when the warrior gave his answer.

He showed the man the calico, but it was the woman who fingered it with approval.

“Listen—you go and offer ’em too much,” one of the company men growled as he lunged up to Bass’s elbow, “gonna make it miserable on the rest of us here on out!”

“This free man giving these red whores too much?” grumbled another who lumbered up to stand at the other elbow.

In the meantime the squaw knelt and retrieved the cup
from the ground. Sniffing it first, she plunged a finger into the sugar.

“Lookee thar’. He offers her a bunch of that smooth cloth, and see? She’s took her a shine to that cup of his,” the first man snorted. “What’s in that damn cup?”

“Sugar.”

“Shit—you’re giving ’em sugar!” the second trapper shrieked, and turned away, throwing his hands up in disgust. “Better get your whore quick now, boys. That free man’s riding up the price of a man’s poke but good!”

The first warrior had snatched the cup from his wife and stiffly handed it back to Bass, wagging his head and pulling the woman away toward the other side of the clearing. Pursing his lips in frustration, Scratch began to circle again, feeling the glares of the company men hot between his shoulder blades. A second time around the glen he stopped before another warrior who had a woman stationed at either arm.

“You have two wives?” he asked as he watched the plain-faced woman bend to retrieve the cup.

But the warrior signed that he had one wife. The other—and he gestured to the woman who licked the brown sugar from the finger she had plunged into the tin cup—was the sister of his wife.

“How much you want for her?” Scratch asked aloud as he signed, then indicated the warrior’s wife. She was clearly the better-looking of the two.

The Shoshone put his arm on his wife’s shoulder and shook his head. Next he laid his arm on his sister-in-law’s shoulder and pointed to the cloth on Bass’s shoulder. And the tin cup. And then he used a finger to tap against the butt of the new pistol Titus had stuffed in his sash.

“No,” Scratch said emphatically.

The warrior glowered, turning both the women away so quickly, Titus had to lunge to snatch his tin cup back. But he promptly stepped in front of the warrior and stood his ground, forcing the trio to stop.

“Here.”

He handed the cup to the sister-in-law and freed the antelope-skin bag stuffed beneath his belt. From it he
pulled a handful of the big pony beads. First he pointed to the beads, then to the cup the squaw held, and finally to the calico.

“That’s too goddamned much to pay for a quick hump in the brush!” a voice snarled somewhere close behind him.

Ignoring the grumblings of those around him, Bass inched his hand closer to the wife, holding the beads right under her chin, then slowly moved the hand so he could hold them right under the nose of her sister.

“It ain’t too much for a goddamned woman,” Titus said, flinging his words over his shoulder at those behind him, the men he knew were watching his negotiations.

The Indian shook his head again, tightening his arms around the shoulders of the two women and saying something to his wife’s sister. She handed the cup of sugar back to Titus.

“You ain’t getting my pistol,” Bass snapped at the warrior. “Now, here’s a fair trade.”

But the Indian pulled the women away again. This time he let them go, standing right there watching their backs, his hands filled with beads and sugar, his heart despairing.

“Serves you right, nigger!”

He turned on a group of them sniggering at him.

“That’s right,” another bawled. “Serves you right for stacking up the price of a hump that’a way.”

From the corner of his eye Bass saw them moving his way: an older warrior, leading four women. Halting in front of the white trapper, the wrinkled Shoshone with an expressive face stepped aside and gestured in turn to each of the four. Scratch quickly appraised them in the silver light.

“No men,” the man signed.

Maybeso he means they ain’t got no husbands.

Setting down the cup and dumping the colorful beads back into the small skin pouch, he asked, “No men?”

“Killed,” the warrior replied with his hands. “Rubbed out by Blackfeet.”

“Your daughters?”

He nodded, then spoke in Shoshone. “Show me your beads.”

Handing the old man the pouch, Bass watched the Shoshone pour out some of the beads and inspect them in his palm. Then he held them out so his four daughters could appraise them.

His deep, dark eyes gazed into the white man’s. “The cup?”

Bass picked up the tin and waited while the man licked the tip of his finger, dipped it in the Mexican sugar, then licked the fingertip once more.

“I got the cloth too,” Scratch said in English, taking the strip of calico from his shoulder as the grumbling from the white men around him grew louder.

One of the women stepped forward, and immediately a second, both of them fingering the cloth. But the old man motioned them back suddenly, then nodded. Moving aside, he gestured again to his four daughters in turn, moving his arm from the trapper to each woman as if asking that a decision be made before a price was negotiated.

The oldest looked a lot like Fawn, and the youngest, a mere slip of a girl, looked very similar to Slays in the Night’s daughter. That one couldn’t be any older than fourteen, maybe fifteen, summers. But the warrior had said they all had been married. An immediate tug at his heart made him feel sorry for the girl, for the old man too. He hoped she would not be chosen this night … but realized that was muddle-headed thinking. She’d likely be the first to go to one of the others, a man who might not treat her near as kindly as he would.

Then he wondered if he was feeling sorry for her, or if he was trying to talk himself into picking her instead of the others.

“How many summers?” he asked.

“Seventeen.”

Titus peered closer at the girl. She had to be younger than that. Why, Amy Whistler was that same age when she and he …

So Bass repeated the number. “Seventeen.”

With a nod the old man reached over and inched the
young woman forward as if about to consummate the deal.

Jehoshaphat! That’s half my age!

Still clutching the skin pouch, the old man upended the bag and poured out all the beads into the hands of another woman standing behind the youngest, who kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Then the warrior gave the pouch back to the trapper at the same time he took the tin cup from Bass’s hand. His final gesture was to take the folded strip of cloth from where it hung over the white man’s arm—leaving Scratch with nothing more to hold.

In a whisper the young woman turned slightly and said something to the man. Instead, it was the oldest of her sisters who answered curtly. Chastised, the young woman turned back, glanced up at Bass for a brief moment, nodding her head at him before her eyes returned to the ground at her feet.

Shooing the trapper away, the old warrior turned on his heel, pulling a soft pouch from his belt. Spreading its top and holding it out as he shuffled away, he had the oldest of the sisters pour the beads into it while the other two women took turns licking sugar from the fingers they repeatedly plunged into the cup. With his bag poked back under his belt, the old Shoshone unfurled the long strip of cloth and draped it around his own shoulders, swirling this way, then that, admiring it on himself in the moonlight.

“Gonna make himself a shirt, I’d reckon,” Scratch said to no one at all.

“Damn you, free trapper!”

Turning slightly, he found that group of company men glaring at him anew.

“That’s right—we oughtta cut your goddamned oysters off right here and now!” a second one bellowed menacingly. “Then you’d never go daubing no Injun gals again!”

For a moment he measured them in the moonlight limned through puffy clouds embroidered with silvery borders. If they meant him real harm, they wouldn’t be blustering—he figured as his heart began to beat faster with
this challenge, uncertain if it did so out of anticipation for the woman, or from the danger the four company men presented with their swagger.

That’s likely what it was, he decided. Nothing more than strut and swagger. Nonetheless, he laid his left hand on the handle of his knife for a moment while he wrapped his right hand around the curved butt of the new pistol. Squaring his shoulders as the four continued their hooting and catcalls, Bass turned and grabbed the woman by an elbow. She let him guide her through the rest of the Indians and trappers crowding the glen.

And she did not protest as he led her back along that east bank of the Popo Agie until they reached the bower he had constructed over his sleeping robes. He prayed she understood what was expected of her when he came to a halt and let go of her arm. For a moment she watched him as he freed the knot in the wide, colorful sash, then laid the pistol on it near his blankets, just within reach.

The minute he sank to the ground and began to untie his moccasins, she flung her own blanket aside, then seized hold of the fringed bottom of her hide dress with both hands—pulling it up over her thighs, her bare hips, the flat of her belly as he stared transfixed at that dark wedge of hair there at the crown of her legs … on up she dragged the dress, pulling it inside out over her shoulders as her small breasts bounced free and he swallowed hard, suddenly so dry-mouthed he could barely swallow—watching every shimmy of her flesh as the woman slipped the dress down one arm, then another, and finally tugged it off over her head.