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.
Sweeping both hands down the length of her long, loose black hair before she tossed it over her shoulder, the woman knelt onto the rumple of blankets he had prepared, folding her own neatly at the side of the bed, then laid her skin dress upon it. At last she sank onto her back, and gazed over at the white man staring mule-eyed and slack-jawed at her provocative, bare-skinned beauty.
Scratch sensed the urgency suddenly seize hold of him, realizing any self-control was no longer possible. More quickly than she had, he wrenched up the bottom of his leather shirt and ripped it from his arms, yanking it over his head, flinging it into the brush. Where the shirt landed, it mattered not.
Reaching beneath the front flap of his breechclout, Titus’s fingers flew at the knot tied in the wide rawhide whang that secured the wide strip of wool around his waist. That whang came whipping off in one hand at the same time the other hand ripped the breechclout from between his legs. He heaved both of them into the surrounding brush.
Still wearing his leggings, Scratch knelt at her knees. She spread her legs and held her arms up to him, grasping one of his wrists and pulling him toward her gently as she reached out with a hand, fingers searching for his manhood.
He nearly choked on readiness when she wrapped her hand around him, guiding him down, down, then forward, ever so gently as the woman sought to place him against her just so.
Lying here now with the woman as his heart continued to slow, Titus remembered how she had half closed her eyes while he had driven himself into her. Not sure if that had been pleasure for her, or merely pain with his fury to plant himself fully, completely within her moist warmth.
Barely opening his eyes from time to time as they lay together, Scratch became aware that time was passing only because of the journey taken by that half-moon limned behind the silver-framed cotton puffs in its climb from there to there across the cloudy sky. He wasn’t really aware he had been sleeping until he felt her rustle beside him, bringing him fully awake.
For a moment she peered over a shoulder at him, her narrow, naked back only inches from his face; then she reached out to drag her dress into her lap. As she began to pull the hide garment right side out, Bass propped himself up on an elbow and studied what he could see of her, finding himself stirred once more. Just as the woman was about to stab her arms into the sleeves of the dress, he seized her, twisting her down onto the blankets.
In her first words to him, these spoken in a low, husky voice, she began to give him hell, shaking her head emphatically as he flung the blanket off himself and rolled over to position himself between her legs. With one arm shoving upward against his chest, the woman clamped her other hand over herself so he could not enter.
“Now what you doing that for?” he groaned, rocking back on his knees in distress, his hardened flesh wagging forlornly.
Pushing herself backward, the woman slid far enough away from him that she could sit up and reach for the blanket, which she yanked into her lap.
“You was all for me crawling on you afore,” he groaned, dejection thick in his voice. “Why not now when I can make it last a little longer for us both?”
After a pause she shook her head, then motioned that she intended to head over to her village across the creek.
He tried to inch forward, eager to grab one or the other of those small breasts. “Lemme crawl on you one more time … then you get on back to your camp.”
Curling her legs up defensively, she put out an arm to hold him at bay. Then she made the sign for no trade.
“No … no trade?”
For a moment he was confused; then it struck him. “What I give your father was for just the first time, that it?”
She continued to stare at him. At least she wasn’t moving to get away.
Good enough for the first time—all right, he thought. If he was going to convince her to spread her legs for him a second time, Bass figured he was going to have to come up with something to give her that she would not have to share with her older sisters. Something for her and her alone.
Turning to stare at the free trappers’ camp some sixty yards away in an attempt to divine what he could offer her, Bass heard her moving of a sudden. When he whirled back, he found her dragging her dress over her head and arms.
“No, stay,” he begged in desperation, his hardened flesh still insistent, his heart in despair of finding something to offer her.
But then he lunged to the side, flinging back the flap on his shooting pouch to dig around inside until his fingers found one of the awls he had traded for that afternoon. Scratch scooted back on his knees to present it to her in his flat palm.
After a moment of consideration she took it from his hand, tapped a finger pad against its sharp tip, and considered his offer a moment longer … before she laid it back in his hand and went back to pulling the dress down over her breasts.
Jehoshaphat! What did he have that would make her eyes shine enough to lay back down for him!
Glory!
He dived back at his shooting pouch, stuffed a hand into the pocket at the back, and swept out a long length of the wool ribbon generally used to bind an edge on blankets. This he held out in his hand for her to inspect.
By that time she wasn’t watching him—rising to her knees so she could tug the dress down over her hips when she suddenly spotted the selvage ribbon and froze. Despairing that it was not enough, he moved that open hand closer to her, bringing it up beneath her chin so she could see just what it was that he offered her. The woman lifted the narrow strip of wool from his palm, inspecting it in the moonlight. Then shook her head and dropped it back across his hand.
“Please, don’t … don’t go,” he implored with that urgency of the flesh.
Then, with her two hands, she pantomimed poking the index finger of one hand into an invisible something she held in the other. For a moment he imagined she was making the sign for copulation…. Then he understood.