Ride the Moon Down (47 page)

What kept Scratch from throwing up his hands at those mountain-high prices and refusing to trade for anything at all was the fact that the company offered five dollars a pound for prime pelts, four dollars for poorer plews. That meant his Musselshell beaver brought him top dollar at the trading tent that afternoon when he brought his family along to look over the beads and rings, ribbon and hawksbells.

While Waits-by-the-Water picked through the merchandise to find herself a new brass kettle, Scratch stood at the other end of the long counter with Magpie as the girl chose several hanks of new ribbon to wrap up her brown braids, along with a new handkerchief of black silk to tie around her head the way her father tied a faded blue bandanna around his.

Then she spotted the tray of shiny, multicolored beads.

“Popo! Look!”

With the way she gushed and stuck out her hands to touch the beads in each compartment, Bass knew he was already in trouble.

“Purty, ain’t they?” he asked.

She gazed up at him a moment, imitating the word, “Pur-r-r-ty.”

“That’s right. I s’pose you want some too.”

“Yes,” and she nodded emphatically. But when she dug her fingers in and pulled out a handful of the deep cobalt-blue beads, along with some of the oxblood variety with their narrow white centers, Magpie surprised him by saying in Crow, “For you, popo—these so pretty on your ears.”

“On my ears?” he repeated, confused a moment.

Reaching up to tug on the tail of his shirt, Magpie pulled him down far enough that she tapped the small hoops of brass wire he wore through both earlobes. “Beads hang there.”

He straightened, smiling. “Damn fine idee, little’un. Put some purties on my hangy-downs.”

Turning back to the tray, Scratch scooped up a big handful of the Russian blues and the white-hearts, laying them atop several yards of calico he was buying for Waits-by-the-Water. Next he picked out several dozen brass tacks for decoration and some tiny brass nails to make repairs to saddles, packs, and other equipment. Then he took Magpie over to stand before the tray containing the tiny hawksbells and large coils of brass wire.

Picking up one of the bells, he shook it in front of her. “Want some?”

Grinning hugely, Magpie snatched the bell from him, holding it forth to shake it herself. “Two?”

“I said you could have some. How many?”

For a long moment she stared down at her tiny hands, then handed him the bell and held both hands before her, all the chubby fingers extended.

“Ten?”

“Ten,” she repeated that English word with certainty. “If that don’t beat all,” Shad Sweete chirped as he
came up and stopped at Bass’s elbow. “This li’l gal is already learning what a woman does best.”

“And what’s that, Shadrach?”

The tall man spit a stream of brown juice into the dirt behind them and dragged a dirty sleeve across the dribble on his lower lip. “Them womens learn early to hold a man right in their hands, don’t they, Scratch?”

“Ain’t no better reason for me to spend my money,” he replied with a wink. “Don’t matter if it be a little woman like Magpie here, or her mama.”

Rubbing his hand across the top of Magpie’s head as she grinned up at him, Sweete said, “Maybe one day I’ll take me a squaw, have me young’uns too.”

“Man like you don’t deserve to be alone, Shad.”

With a shrug the big trapper explained, “I run off to the brush with a few gals ever’ ronnyvoo. Sometimes I take a shine to a squaw when we hunker down for winter camp too. But I ain’t ever found one I wanna pack along with me.”

“One of these days,” Bass declared, “you’ll be ready to pack a squaw with you, raise some pups too.”

“Maybe so.” Sweete brushed his hand down Magpie’s cheek, then looked into Scratch’s eyes. “Where you figger to mosey come time to light out for the fall hunt?”

“Been thinking I’d wander on down to the South Platte again.”

“Gonna see if you can run onto more trouble with them ’Rapaho, eh?”

“That weren’t no big ruckus, Shad,” he protested. “’Sides, I always do my best to stay outta their way.”

For a moment Sweete’s eyes flicked to the back of Bass’s head. “I s’pose any man what’s lost his hair to them red niggers is gonna be extra careful he don’t lose the rest of his hair to ’em.”

“Come on over to our camp for supper?” Scratch offered. “That is, less’n you got plans to drag some gal back into the bushes with you this evening.”

“No plans particular’ now,” he answered. “Was gonna be a trial on one of the fellas.”

“Trial?”

“Yep—one of Drips’s men got hisself drunk last night and kill’t a Frenchman. But there ain’t gonna be no trial now.”

“Drips figgered to let the nigger go free?”

Wagging his head, Sweete explained, “The murderer run off. I s’pose he figgered he stood a better chance out there on his lonesome than he did standing for a murder charge with the rest of us as his jury.”

“Some men might figger him for a coward,” Bass reflected. “But I figger he’s run off to find his own way to die.”

“Maybeso that’s what he’s done. Sure saved us the trouble of stretching some rope off a tall tree.”

“Whyn’t you come look up our camp later,” Bass suggested. “We’ll have some meat on the spit ’long about sundown.”

“I’ll bring a little whiskey along,” Sweete offered with a grin.

“Ain’t no better way for friends to wash down some fat cow.”

Sweete scooped Magpie off the ground, hugged her, then whirled once around with the child before he set her back on her feet. He winked at Bass. “This here’s the purtiest gal I got my eye on, Scratch.”

“Hell with you, Shadrach,” he growled. “Ain’t no way I’m gonna marry off my daughter to someone the likes of you.”

“Here I thought you liked me,” he whined with mock wounding. “Thought I was your friend!”

“You are, you mangy, flea-bit, wuthless bag of polecat droppings,” Bass roared with a grin. “But that don’t mean I’d ever want you for a son-in-law!”

“So you’re gonna raise up your daughter to have a proper husband, are you?”

Bass pulled Magpie against his leg as she jingled a pair of tiny bells, oblivious to the English conversation above her. “Only thing I’m sure of is I want her to grow up safe and happy, just as happy as her mama’s made me.”

Shad knelt before the girl and gently pinched her cheek. “Your camp up Horse Crik a ways?”

“No more’n a mile from here.”

Standing, Sweete brushed off the knee of his legging and said, “See you come sundown.”

“You’re not one of Monsieur Fontenelle’s company men, are you?” asked the young man as he stood, shoving the long pad of paper beneath his arm. He poked a narrow wand of artist’s charcoal behind his ear and held out his hand.

“Name’s Bass,” Scratch announced, craning his neck around and bending to take a closer look at the pad where the man had been sketching when he finally realized Titus had crept up behind him, mesmerized at how that hand clutching a simple stick of charcoal was creating such magic. “And no, I ain’t one of Fontenelle’s outfit.”

“I’m Alfred Miller.”

He gestured to the sketchpad. “Lemme take a close look there, Alfred.”

“This?” and Miller took the pad from beneath his arm and held it before him.

It was nothing short of purely amazing. For a moment Titus stared at the thousands of tiny charcoal scratches on that long sheet of paper, at how they all came together in patterns that gave such reality to the sketch. Then his eyes lifted from the page to that scene occurring right over Miller’s shoulder. Back to the paper once more, then again to the scene out on the prairie where Indian and white riders were conducting horse races.

“I ain’t never seen anything like this,” Scratch whispered with abject admiration. “That there … with only your hand and that piece of charcoal … it’s just like what I’m seeing right out there.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bass,” Miller replied as he turned back to gaze at the scene he had been sketching. “I’ll take that as a real compliment.”

Scratch inched up to the young man’s elbow again. He tapped the paper lightly with a lone finger, saying, “Them lodges there, you drawed ’em just like they are over there. And those fellas down there running footraces too. All
them Injuns over there—all of it damn near like it is right here a’fore my own eyes.”

“So you’ve never seen a painting before?”

“Not that I can rightly say,” he admitted as Miller resumed his scratching at the paper with his charcoal. “And what I have seen, it only be sticks and such to stand for folks.”

His head still bent in concentration at his work, Miller asked, “If you don’t work for the fur company, then you must be what they call a free man?”

“That’s right,” he answered. “How you come to be out here to the Rocky Mountains, making your pictures on paper? You come out with the trader’s caravan to see ronnyvoo, then gonna turn around for the settlements?”

Miller shook his head. “I’ve been engaged by a Scottish nobleman who wants me to—”

“Stewart?”

The artist looked up at Bass in amazement. “You know of Sir William Drummond Stewart?”

“He knows me too,” he boasted. “We et together a time or two.”

With a smile Miller nodded, then went back to his sketch. “Perhaps I should draw you sometime.”

“Me? Naw. Naw—what you do is far too fancy for you to go and draw me,” he replied, then touched the edges of some sketchpad pages that had been stuffed in behind the one Miller was drawing on at that moment. “What’s these? Other’ns you already done?”

“Yes,” the artist replied, dragging out some of the crude sketches.

The first showed a mounted trapper, behind him a squaw on her pony.

“Who’s that?” Bass asked. “Looks like someone I know.”

“I think his name’s Walker. I sketched him yesterday.”

“Joe Walker, good man,” he commented.

As the next sheet came up, Titus stared at a drawing of two young Indian women playing in the shade of a tree, neither wearing anything more than a skirt, both bare-breasted
as one of the two swung from a tree limb by her arms, carefree as could be.

“This the first you ever see’d any Injun gals?” Bass inquired.

Miller smiled, his cheeks flushing with embarrassment a little as he answered, “First time ever beyond the Mississippi. Come up from New Orleans with Sir William.”

Miller shuffled another sketch to the top, this one a scene where a seated trapper held out his hand to a young Indian woman who appeared shy, even coy, as she peered back at him from behind her eyelashes.

“What’s this’un about?”

Clearing his throat, the artist explained, “This trapper’s taking a bride. Buying her from her father. That’s the father standing beside his daughter as the white man offers presents for her hand in marriage.”

“You seen this happen too?”

With a nod of his head Miller said, “I’ve seen all of these.” He shuffled through the stack of thick paper and brought out another page. “In fact, Mr. Bass—I’ve seen all manner of things out here in the West I never saw anywhere back east.”

“You must’ve see’d lots of griz,” Titus commented, looking at the scene of trappers flushing a huge silver-tip from some brush. “I lost some of my own hide to a griz, fingers too.”

“Miller!”

Together they turned at the call, finding the half-breed Antoine Clement jogging up on horseback.

“Miller! Sir William sent me to find you.”

“Something wrong?” the artist asked, his face grave.

“Nothing wrong,” Clement said. “But he wants you to come back to camp so you can draw something for him.”

Turning to stuff the large pad of paper into a narrow leather valise, Miller asked, “What is it this time?”

“He’s getting ready to make a present to Bridger.”

“Stewart’s gonna give Gabe a present?” Titus asked.

The handsome half-breed nodded, leaning on the flat
pommel of his Santa Fe saddle. “Sir William had something shipped all the way from Scotland just for Bridger.”

Swinging into the saddle, Miller gazed down at Bass. “You feel like coming to see for yourself what this gift is?”

“Go most anywhere, long as I can watch you draw some more,” Bass pleaded.

With a broad smile young Miller said, “Grab your horse, Mr. Bass. Let’s go see what Stewart had shipped all the way from his native land to present to Jim Bridger.”

In a matter of minutes they had reached the company camp where a crowd was gathering.

“Let Miller through!” Stewart yelled as soon as he spotted his artist returning. “Let the man through, dammit!”

The young artist dismounted and handed his reins up to Clement. Stepping aside, the trappers allowed Miller to pass through the ring they had formed around an open patch of ground where company operators Fontenelle and Drips stood, joined by partisans Fitzpatrick and Bridger. The Scottish nobleman called forth two of his servants, bearing a large round-topped leather trunk.

“Jim—Jim Bridger!” Stewart called, waving the trapper to his side. “Join me here, would you?”

From his perch atop his horse at the outskirts of the crowd jostling and shouldering to get themselves the best view, Scratch watched an embarrassed, self-conscious Bridger step up to Stewart’s elbow.

“Jim, the first time I returned to your eastern cities after meeting you, I posted a message to my home in Scotland,” the nobleman explained. “I dispatched my request that they send me what I’m now going to present to you.”

“This come all … all the way from Scotland?”

“Aye,” Stewart replied, his burr crisp above the murmuring throng. He turned, stepped to the trunk, and threw back the domed lid.

More than a hundred heads craned forward as the nobleman drew forth the odd-looking apparel. Stewart turned to hold the metal plate to Bridger’s shoulders.

“Wh-what’s this?”

“Cuirass,” he answered.

“Kwee-rass,” Bridger repeated, his face flushing with embarrassment again. “What’s it for?”

“It’s part of an ancient suit of armor, Jim. Here, help me. I’ll show you how to put it on.”

Red-faced, Bridger began to mutter as Stewart removed the trapper’s broad-brimmed hat and handed it to one of the servants. Instructing Jim to raise his arms in the air, the nobleman lowered the armored breastplate and back protector over Bridger’s head and down his arms until it settled on Jim’s shoulders.