As the first clerk went back to grading and weighing pelts, the store clerk said, “Take your pick,” and began to write in his own ledger. “You got enough to near buy what all you want.”
“Damn,” Titus said as it began to hit him. “I ain’t really had no chance to buy nothing but what it took to live on for so long now—I … I don’t know how to act, boys.”
“What you need?” Solomon said as he came up and laid a hand on Bass’s shoulder.
Hatcher chuckled, bursting out with, “The nigger needs just ’bout ever’thing!”
“I got me a gun,” Bass said.
“You need a pistol?” asked the clerk.
“I got the one Hatcher loaned me,” he replied. “How much are those you’re selling?”
“They’re smoothbore, sixty caliber—sell for fifty dollars.”
“Oooo!” exclaimed Caleb. “That hurts.”
Hatcher came up to stand beside Titus, saying, “You go ahead on and keep that’n I loaned ye long as ye want.”
“If I can buy me my own, I’ll do that. Much ’bliged, Jack,” he said, then turned back to the clerk. “Gimme one of them pistols to look at.”
After he started inspecting the weapon, slowly dragging back the big hammer to check the crispness of the lock, holding it against his ear to listen to the action, Bass had the clerk hold up this or that, quoting one price after another.
Closing his eyes in sensual pleasure, Scratch sniffed at the bag of green coffee beans below his nose.
“Two dollar a pound.”
“Better weigh out twenty-five pounds. How’s your powder?”
“Best grade is two-fifty the pound.”
Titus turned to Hatcher and Gray. “You figger it’s better’n that Mex powder we got along?”
“Gotta be,” Jack replied.
“It’s American,” the clerk asserted. “Du Pont.”
“All right,” and Scratch nodded. “I’ll take fifty pounds. What’s Galena?”
“Lead’s only a dollar and a half.”
“We got us some of that Taos lead from down in the Mexican mines,” Rufus said.
Bass cogitated a few moments, staring up at the underside of the awning over his head as the sun baked down on them. “I’ll take me a guess and go with seventy-five pounds. And I need me some good awls.”
The clerk spun around and swept up a sample from the boxes behind him. “These are three for fifty cents.”
They appeared sturdy with their fire-hardened steel points and hardwood handle. “Gimme six.”
Solomon asked, “You want ’Nother blanket?”
So Bass looked at the clerk, “How much?”
“White blankets for twenty dollars.”
“That’s a lot just to keep a man warm,” Bass grumbled.
The easterner said, “You want it sewed into a capote, them are only twenty-five each.”
“How much your striped blankets?”
“They ain’t near as much,” Hatcher explained. “He’s charging just fifteen dollar for striped ones.”
“Because they ain’t as big as the white ones,” the clerk declared.
“Better gimme a white blanket.”
As the clerk returned with the neatly folded blanket, he asked, “Need any pepper or salt?”
Scratch shook his head. “Got plenty of that down to Taos last winter.”
“Beads-or ribbon?”
“What do them hanks of beads cost a man?”
Shoving forward that heavy tray containing thick hanks of the big colored variety commonly called pony beads, the clerk answered, “Five dollars a pound.”
“Show me how much a pound is,” Bass requested.
In a moment the man had weighed out several hanks of the various colors. “That’s five pounds. So it’ll be twenty-five dollars.”
“All right,” Titus said with a smile. “I’ll take them five pounds, but put back them white and black’uns—gimme only them real purty colors: like that green and blue, the yellow and that blood color too. See that brown, gimme that too.”
“You need nails?” the clerk asked after he had laid out the long hanks of beads atop the white blanket.
“Lemme see what you have.”
After inspecting the various sizes of short brass nails a man used for both repair and decoration, he asked, “How much?”
“Fifty cents a dozen.”
“Let’s see—five dozen of ’em oughtta do.”
“You want any ribbons?”
“Show me what you got to trade.”
The clerk brought out a box containing a rainbow of cotton ribbon. “It’s six bits the yard.”
“Better let me have my pick of ten yards.”
“I figure you’ll want some bolt cloth too, won’t you, mister?” and he patted a stack of different patterns and colors.
“Tell me how much that’ll cost me.”
As he started down the stack of bolts, the clerk called out the prices, “This here scarlet is the best grade. Mr. Sublette likes it best too. It’s a wool. Goes for ten dollars.”
“Ten dollars a yard?”
“A yard. The coarse blue is eight dollars. But the calico here is only two-fifty.”
“What’s that on the bottom?” he asked, pointing.
“Striped cotton. It’s a soft material like the calico.”
“Sounds like I can get me a lot more of that ’stead of the coarse cloth,” Bass declared. “Let’s say … ten yards of each of them two. Show me how much cloth that’ll be.”
After Scratch had seen just how much twenty yards of material would be, he felt himself growing more excited about the possibilities—staring again at the various colors of the beads, figuring gifts like these would be able to communicate where his rudimentary talents with the Shoshone tongue left off.
“You got some vermilion, don’t you?”
“Chinee, I do,” the clerk replied. Returning to the rough-hewn plank, he held up a wooden tray that contained a profusion of small waxed packets the size of a man’s fist, one of which he opened to show the deep-purple pigment. “It ain’t cheap.”
“How much?” Hatcher asked.
“Six dollars a pound.”
Bass scratched the end of his nose, sensing the eyes of the others riveted on him. “Better make it five pounds.”
“All that red paint for you, Scratch?” Rufus asked.
“Shit!” Caleb snorted. “It ain’t all for him, you idjit! Scratch’s gonna get his stinger wet with that Chinee vermilion!”
Graham wagged his head in doleful confusion. “How’s Scratch gonna get his stinger wet with …” Then it struck him like a bolt of summer thunder. “Say! You’re gonna get yourself one of them Sho’nie gals, ain’cha?”
Bass winked and turned back to the clerk. “Show me what you got in wiping sticks and flints.”
“Good hickory, these be,” the clerk replied, turning back to his crates. “And for flints: we got English and French.”
“Get them French ambers,” Hatcher suggested. “Likely we’ll pay more for ’em, but they’ll last longer’n the English.”
By the time he had picked out a bundle of two dozen straight-grained hickory wiping sticks, as well as three pounds of the pale amber flints imported from France, along with several handfuls of assorted screws and worms for gun repair and cleaning, he finally asked the clerk to total it all up. He looked again over at his stack of pelts beneath that first awning, remembering just how many plews he had sent downriver with Silas Cooper. Then he suddenly squeezed his eyes closed in that way he hoped would shut off the terrible memory.
Letting out a long sigh, the trader’s employee came back to the free men and announced, “That all comes to four hundred seventy-three.”
Several of the others whistled low, but Bass remained undismayed. “What’s that leave me?”
“Eighty-six.”
Scratch licked his lips and asked, “So how much is your whiskey?”
“He don’t just wanna get his stinger wet!” Caleb hooted behind him. “Bass wants to get his gullet scrubbed too!”