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!”