“Go with you?” Flea’s English caught his father as he and Shadrach ducked from the lodge right after a supper of some boiled venison.
“He asked that real good, didn’t he?” Sweete remarked.
Bass nodded proudly, then told the boy, “Go tie up the dogs to a tree, close by, like we allays do, son.”
Magpie’s head poked from the lodge door as she asked, “Me too, Popo? Go with you to fort?”
“What’s your mother say?”
The young girl stood just outside the doorway, speaking to her mother, then turned back to Titus and said, “We go, yes. Stay with Popo all the time.”
“You both unnerstand what stay with me all the time means?”
Magpie moved up two steps and took Flea’s hand in hers. They nodded their heads in unison as she said, “Where you go, we go.”
“If’n your manners stay as good as your American talk, then there won’t be no reason for me to scold you two,” Titus replied. “Your mother’s been here afore, you too, Magpie.”
“Me?” she asked. “I don’t remember.”
With a grin he explained, “You was little. No more’n a year an’ a half old back then.”
She stepped over and squeezed his hand lovingly. “That was so long ago, this will be a brand-new visit for me.”
“Like our visit to Bents’ lodge on the Arkansas,” Titus said, hugging her quickly, “this might just be your last an’ only chance to see this here Fort William on the Platte.”
“Platte?” Flea repeated.
“The river,” Shad explained. “That’s parley-voo for flat.”
This time Magpie echoed, “Parley-voo?”
“Frenchie talk,” Scratch said. “Lots of Frenchies out here. Not so many up to Crow country, but they’re all over the Arkansas country.”
“Frenchies—is this a tribe?” she inquired in her native tongue as the four of them climbed onto the flat and started crossing the soggy pasture toward the fort itself.
Both of the men laughed and Bass explained, “They’re part of the white tribe. Like there are River Crow, and there are Mountain Crow. The Frenchies are part of the white tribe, but they come from a land far, far from here—and they talk with a whole different tongue of their own.”
“But, the two bands of Crow speak the same tongue,” Flea protested. “Why do these Frenchies talk a different tongue than the rest of the white tribe?”
Baffled, Titus shrugged as he came to a halt near the gates, the light growing dim.
Shadrach chuckled as he held up two fingertips barely spaced apart and exclaimed, “Because them Frenchies got a wee small brain—so they don’t know no better than to squawk an’ whine in that idjit talk of theirs!”
“They got the inner gate closed, Shad,” Titus announced with a little worry. “C’mon.”
Passing under the arch over the double gates, the four entered a passageway at the end of which stood the set of closed gates. Midway down the adobe wall to their left was a narrow window covered by wooden shutters that had been bolted shut on the inside of the wall.
Scratch pushed on them gently. “Throwed an’ locked.” Then he pounded on them with his fist. “Ho! The fort! Open up! Open up out here!”
Muted voices and the scrambling of feet on soggy ground drifted to them from inside the gates; then the scrape of iron was heard, and one side of the shutters was pulled back a few inches. A nose poked itself out. After the nose’s owner made a cursory inspection of the newcomers, the shutter opened all the way and there stood a round-faced white man, his chin and cheeks clothed in a neatly trimmed beard, his upper lip naked of a mustache.
“What’s your business?”
“We’re thirsty,” Bass declared.
“Them too?” the man asked, his eyes flicking to the children with their heads poked between the two trappers.
“Jehoshaphat!” Titus roared. “These here my young’uns! They ain’t near old enough to drink.”
“They’re Indian?”
Scratch looked down at their faces as they peered up at him. “Yes, sir. These here pups o’ mine be ’bout as Injun as you is white.” He looked at the fort employee. “Now, let us in for to trade on some whiskey.”
“Almost time for the store to close,” he said, his eyes shifty. “Sunset, you see—”
Scratch wagged his head and clucked, “Never thought a trader would turn away a buy in’ customer.”
The man exhaled with that sort of sigh one used when they have been interrupted at what they regard as a most important task. “L-let me inquire of the factor.”
His face was gone and the shutter closed and locked before either Scratch or Shad could ask just who currently ruled Fort William on the Platte.
“You bring something to trade, Shadrach?”
“I ain’t wagering nothing Shell Woman made for me, if that’s what you’re asking,” he grumbled. “You’ll have to get your own self drunk tonight.”
That prompted Flea to look up at his father and ask, “You drink the spirit water tonight?”
“I pray I can afford a little of the spirit water tonight, you damn bet, son.”
“So what you bring to trade?” Sweete asked, looking Bass up and down.
He patted the front of his coat just above the spot where he had buckled the old belt decorated with what was left of its tarnished brass tacks. “Got me a little sack of some Mexican coins.”
“You been holding on to that money since you was down to Taos a while back?”
“Got me some coins in Taos,” he replied, “but most of ’em I got out to Californy.”
“When you rode off with some Mex horses?”
“Some of them greasers come after us had a few coins in their pockets,” Bass stated as the sound of iron sliding against iron echoed on the other side of the interior gate. “We took ever’thing we figgered we’d ever use off them dead bodies afore we kept on running for the desert.”
“There’s just the two of you?” asked a stout, broad-shouldered man in a thick French accent that reminded Titus of the back alleys and tippling houses of old St. Louis.
“An’ my two young’uns here,” Titus declared, then smiled as he said, “but, they don’t drink much whiskey no more.”
The Frenchman’s eyes wrinkled and his lips curled up in a smile. At least this one, Scratch thought, he appeared to have some remnants of a sense of humor.
“So, tell me—if the four of you have come to drink my whiskey, just where are your furs?”
Scratch immediately wheeled on Sweete. “Furs? Didn’t you remember to bring the damn furs?”
“Me?” Shad bellowed as if he had been insulted. “You was the one s’posed to remember to bring in them buffler robes with you to trade.”
“Damn your hide anyway!” Bass said, then turned back to the Frenchman. “Looks like we didn’t bring along any of our furs to trade tonight … so if you wouldn’t mind figgering out how much some gold coin is worth, we’ll know how much we can drink up afore moonset.”
“G-gold?” The Frenchman’s voice rose in pitch as he pushed the gate open a bit farther and stepped through the portal.
Titus nodded. “Mexican.”
“Real gold?”
“Californy gold,” Scratch replied. “I s’pose their gold is real out there. I only been to Californy once, but I don’t care to go back to them parts for to fetch me any more of it.”
The Frenchman started to hold out his hand, palm up as he asked, “You’ve got it with you?”
“I got enough for a li’l drinking, maybeso some geegaws and earbobs for our wives what stayed back to camp.”
“My name’s Bordeau,” he announced with transparent eagerness. “And yours?”