Ride the Moon Down (22 page)

In light of all that disgruntling talk of silk, the groaning about the poor price for plews, and the moaning about the high cost of possibles, it didn’t take all that much mulling over before Scratch decided he wasn’t about to trade off all his pelts to the company then and there. What with the low dollar beaver was bringing, coupled with the exorbitant prices demanded for what trade goods were being offered, he figured instead to hang on to half of his plews he might well end up trading off at that new Fort William raised down on La Ramee’s Fork. By any reckoning that post lay closer than Tullock’s new fort going up at the mouth of the Tongue, and much closer than either Taos to the south or Fort Union in the north.

There sure as hell had to be somewhere a man could squeeze a better dollar out of his pelts.

What with having a family now, why, a man needed to give due consideration to such matters—not as he had done in past summers when he would take what value was given, trade for his possibles and some whiskey at the prices demanded, then disappear for another year.

But the more he cogitated on it now in the shade of those awnings, the angrier it made him, realizing that the fur company, the traders, all of those who acted as middlemen to supply this to, or do that service for, the trappers were lining their palms and stuffing their pockets with fruits harvested through the risks taken by others. Those with the oiliest tongues turned out to be the richest at others’ expense.

And while he had galloped west many years ago hoping to leave that obscene inequity behind, with every summer Bass was coming to realize that the monied minority and their lackeys would always find some way to reach out from the settlements and exploit those who called this wilderness home.

Beaver had to come back, he told himself as he made his final decisions with more hope than horse sense. Beaver just had to come back.

“Run this up and tell me what I owe you,” he instructed the clerk after turning back what he hoped would
be more than half of the necessaries and shiny presents he had picked out for his women.

“With all this fur of yours, you’ve got much more credit than these few purchases.”

“I ain’t trading all my furs,” he interrupted the man. “Gonna keep some for—”

“The Frenchman’s coming!”

Bass turned at that warning cry stabbing the hot summer air from beyond the tree line.

“Shunar’s coming!”

More of them took up the call as Titus swung around, his eyes digging, scratching, searching for Carson as he lamented, “Goddamn—there’s gonna be a fight now!”

Once more Bass scanned the trees, finding the giant just emerging a few hundred yards off on horseback. Even at this distance he could make out the shape of the firearm Chouinard had braced atop his right thigh as his horse loped toward the trading canopies.

At the sound of footsteps and loud voices Scratch turned, finding Carson hurrying past, out of the shade and shadow, to stop in the intense light as clouds continued to scud toward the sun. Behind the Frenchman came a growing crowd of the curious. The shelters poked back in the brush and trees now began to spew many more white men as well as Indians who had been visiting the trapper camps.

“Leetle Amereecan!”

Even at this distance they could all hear the bite of Chouinard’s voice in the dry, hot air.

A wisp of graying cloud brushed the face of the sun, sucking some of the intensity out of the afternoon light.

“Get my horse, Doc,” Carson ordered without turning.

While Newell hurried away, Bass stopped behind the short man, offering his weapon once more. “You want my pistol?”

Carson turned slightly, patted the butt of the big pistol he had stuffed into his belt this day. “Got mine, Scratch.”

Fifty yards away now, Chouinard shook the rifle overhead. “I keel you Amereecan! The squaw—she is mine!”

Turning suddenly, Carson snagged a handful of Bridger’s shirt. “Gabe, if’n this don’t turn out … promise me you’ll take my ponies, my plunder, over to that ’Rapaho camp.”

“What the hell for—”

“Promise me,” Kit begged. “Give it all to the ol’ man and try to tell him I done what I could to kill this bastard.”

“He ain’t gonna kill you.”

“Gimme your word, Jim,” Carson pleaded. “Tell him all white men ain’t lyin’, thievin’, snake-tongued bastards.”

“Awright,” Bridger agreed reluctantly.

“Keep what you want from my possibles,” Kit instructed. “It’s your’n, friend.”

With a snort from its nostrils, the horse was led up, and Newell quickly passed the reins over its ears as Carson leaped to the saddle. He yanked on the reins, and the animal lunged back against some of the growing crowd.

“Watch his eyes!” Bass shouted above the tumult.

“Scratch is right!” Bridger echoed. “The bastard’s tricky, so watch his eyes.”

Thin-lipped with determination, Carson nodded. “Them eyes 11 tell me when he’s gonna shoot.”

“Send ’im to hell, Kit!” Meek bellowed as Carson spun the nervous horse around and shot through the crowd.

Bass growled, “Make meat out of the nigger!”

The gathering throng had grown noisy as their numbers swelled. But the moment Carson burst into the meadow atop his horse, an even louder call burst from more than half-a-thousand throats.

“He got a chance, Scratch?” Bridger asked in a whisper.

“If’n he gets in there close, I’ll lay he’s got a chance.”

Kit began circling off to the right slowly, raising himself in the stirrups so he could instantly spring that way or this.

“Shunar! Am I the American you’re looking for?”

Wagging his big shaggy head of black hair, the Frenchman, for some reason, recanted. “No.”

“You’re a goddamned liar!” Carson snorted with some mean laughter. “And a yellow-livered coward!”

Chouinard hurled his curse as his horse pranced closer, lowering his rifle to make certain of his shot. “Peeg! I will crunch your bones in my teeth!”

“Ain’t much of a man, are you, Shunar?” Carson taunted as he bobbed back and forth in the stirrups, intently watching where the giant swung the muzzle of his smoothbore fusil. “Cain’t even untie the knot on a young gal’s chastity rope!”

“Beeg lie!” the giant spat, flecks of spittle collecting at the corners of his thick lips.

Kit sang out, “So you’re the big bull of this wallow, eh?”

“I chew your bones—”

“Not when a li’l Injun gal get herself away from you!”

Jerking back on his horse’s reins, Chouinard stopped only a few yards from Carson. With steely conviction he said, “I gonna like to keel you, leetle bird.”

Kit inched his frightened horse to the left, transfixed on the muzzle of the rifle that followed his every move. He held the pistol close, ready.

Already the crowd was shouting, calling out to one antagonist or the other, hooting and whistling and goading until Bass could barely hear what Chouinard and Carson were shouting at one another while they worked themselves up to that deadly moment.

“You’re nothing more’n a puffed-up bag of wind, Shunar! Some young gal can spook you!”

“I keel you, Keet! Cut your heart out—”

“Gonna stuff that rifle up your ass, Shunar!”

“—cut your heart out and show it to the squaw!”

Bringing his horse up beside the American’s with a leap, Shunar rested the rifle’s barrel across his left elbow, propping it there for his shot.

“I crunch your bones today!”

Now both animals were touching, their riders making the horses shove against one another, snorting and pawing up clods of dirt and prairie grass as the two men spun
them in a tightening circle, slowly wheeling round and round.

“Gonna put you in hell today, Shunar!”

Turning constantly, this way and that, each dueler twisted in his saddle to keep an eye on his enemy.

“Leetle Amereecan bird chirping till I keel him!”

Suddenly Chouinard jerked his rifle back from his left arm, inverting it to slam the butt of his fusil against the neck of Carson’s horse.

Yanking a foot free of a stirrup, Carson lashed out with a moccasin at the Frenchman’s buttstock, failing to connect. “Buzzards gonna pick your bones clean a’fore sunset!” When Kit kicked a second time, the blow landed solidly against the flank of Chouinard’s horse.

The giant’s animal sidestepped in a leap as the Frenchman struggled to regain control of the frightened horse. He twisted in the saddle to face Carson, dropping the fusil’s barrel back into the crook of his left arm again as it spat a tongue of yellow fire.

But the American had fired an instant before as that fusil was descending. Carson was already swinging to the side as his pistol erupted.

With the fusil tumbling from his hand, Chouinard shrieked in pain, clutching his bloody right arm. For a moment he gazed down at the path the bullet had taken: entering the wrist, traveling through the forearm, then exiting the elbow as it smashed bone. As his eyes glazed in agony, the Frenchman turned round to find Carson now some twenty yards away, stuffing his empty pistol into his belt.

“It’s over, Shunar!” Andrew Drips shouted, loping toward them on foot.

“No! I keel him!” the Frenchman cried like a wounded, terrified animal.

“Leave it be!” Drips commanded as he came to a halt beside the giant’s horse.

Instead of turning away, Chouinard cocked his leg back and kicked out at the company commander, sending Drips sprawling across the grass. Then the giant slowly sawed on the reins with his left hand before reaching for
the scabbard at his back with that one good hand left him. The other arm hung useless, dripping gouts of blood onto the trampled, dusty grass.

“Reload, Kit!” someone hollered from the crowd.

But Carson hadn’t carried his pouch or powder horn into the fight.

“Shunar gets Kit close enough to use that knife,” Bridger grumbled, “he’ll make meat of Carson.”

Slashing his big heels into his horse’s ribs, Chouinard leaped toward the small American until his animal collided with Carson’s, wildly slashing the huge knife through the air. Kit was just regaining his balance from that blow when the Frenchman lunged out with that left arm, swinging low enough with the big butcher knife that Carson had to lean backward in the saddle.

Back and forth Chouinard slashed at the American, forcing Kit to dodge side to side so fast he could not regain his balance—eventually spilling from the saddle. Pitching headlong into the grass, Carson struggled to yank his foot from the stirrup as Chouinard savagely kicked at the American’s prancing horse, hurrying to get around to the other side where Carson hung from the saddle.

Terrified, Kit’s horse sidestepped again and again, for some miraculous reason keeping itself between Carson and the Frenchman’s horse in those frightening seconds as Kit battled to free his foot twisted in the stirrup.

He pulled his moccasin free just as the Frenchman sawed his reins in the opposite direction, deciding to spin around the rear of Carson’s horse. Kit stood, his right hand scraping at the back of his belt, fingers finding his scabbard empty. Somewhere on the ground nearby lay his knife.

But as clouds loomed across the sun, so too the Frenchman loomed over Kit. With a powerful grunt Chouinard brought his left arm down at the American who dived between the horse’s legs, rolled on a shoulder, then sprang up in a sprint.

Bass was already on his way, tearing away from the crowd the moment he realized Carson didn’t have a weapon left. “Kit!”

Right behind Carson the giant was goading his horse into a gallop, its hooves thundering like hailstones the size of cotton bolls on a hide tepee. Scratch could see Kit wouldn’t have time to reach him before Chouinard would ride Carson down from behind with that knife.

Meek yelled, “Behind you!”

The moment Kit turned his head to find Chouinard all but on him, Carson stumbled, sprawling in the grass as the Frenchman shot past. The giant reined up, his horse gone stiff-legged as the Frenchman yanked back on the reins. Kit grasshoppered out of the dirt, sprinting toward Bass once more.

When Kit was no more than ten yards away, Scratch hollered, “Now!” in warning, and heaved the heavy smoothbore pistol into an arc.

Both of Carson’s arms came up as he plucked the weapon from the sky, drew the hammer on back from half cock, and wheeled about in a crouch at the very moment Chouinard raced up, leaning off the side of his horse, attempting to impale the short American on that long knife.

But Kit dropped to one knee, gripping the huge pistol with both hands at the end of his outstretched arms, pulling the trigger point-blank in the Frenchman’s face—the force of that blow driving the giant off the far side of his horse as the huge lead ball entered just below the left eye socket before it flattened to splatter out the back of his immense head an instant later.

Kneeling there with the smoking pistol still in his hands, Carson remained motionless as the big man drooped farther and farther in the saddle, then suddenly collapsed into the grass.

From one side rushed Bridger and from another came Drips, both of the company booshways reaching the Frenchman as some in the hushed, murmuring crowd pressed forward, step by curious step.

Drips wagged his head as Bridger stood and announced, “Bastard was dead a’fore he hit the ground.”

The crowd erupted.

Meek was at Carson’s side, pulling Kit onto his feet.
“Shot him in the saddle, Kit! By jump—you been shot too!”

Staggering a moment, Carson regained his balance and touched the side of his neck. “Just a graze, Joe.”

Newell, Bass, and a gaggle of others were crowding in on Carson now as Drips was ordering some company men to drag the body away. In a moment Bridger shouldered his way through the clamoring crowd, each one of them loudly reliving the frightening seconds of that duel, all at the same time.

“Damn—if this don’t call for a drink!” Bridger hollered above the noise.

“Maybeso later tonight, Gabe,” Carson announced as he turned to Bass, his hands shaking. Passing the pistol back to its owner, he said, “Thanks, Scratch. I’m beholden to you. Saved my life.”

“Maybeso, Kit—you’ll have yourself a chance to save my ha’r one day.”