the Platte in a wagon-train. No, I set out from Fort Laramie like a respectable representative of the United States Congress, with ten engages, a secretary and a half-breed guide who couldn't find his way back from the outhouse. When we got to the Popo Agie we heard from a couple of Shoshone hunters that there was a band of Crow - eighty lodges - skulking around the mountains near the rendezvous without comin' into it, which sounded downright fishy to me. I had the boys make camp, took those two scoundrels with me, did some scouting on my own and here I am.'
'Here you are,' agreed January. 'But could you leave if you wanted to?'
'I could, yes. Or at least I think I'll be able to, once Walks Before has figured out what he wants to do with you and with Iron Heart. I'm on his territory. I'm no more than an envoy from the Congress to the Crow. And I wouldn't care to bet on it that he'd let me leave the camp tonight - or that Iron Heart's boys wouldn't find a way of making sure I didn't get to the rendezvous if I did leave, sort of quiet like in the woods. We're a long ways from anywhere, here, and if they plan on killin' any white men they're not going to leave an Indian Agent to go tellin' the tale.'
'Ah,' said January. 'Then all we've done is make your position here worse.'
'Hell, I been in worse places. Though things could get damn sticky if that woman tries to make a break when she gets near the rendezvous, and there's an attack made on this camp. I ain't sayin' Titus wouldn't keep a lid on it if he could—'
'Titus?'
'That sourpuss Controller the AFC's got with their factory there this year. He's the one paid Walks Before thirty rifles and three barrels of gunpowder to come down here and not let a soul see 'em. There's talk all over this camp of them attackin' the smaller trains as they leave the rendezvous - an' of stagin' an attack on the AFC train, for show, so word can be took back to Congress that it was the Hudson's Bay Flatheads, an' that the military's needed to keep them pesky British an' their Indian allies in line, just like back in 1812. I been workin' on convincin' Walks Before that it ain't such a good plan.'
He pitched a clean-picked sheep-rib into the fire, wiped his fingers on his bandanna. 'Another reason I'm not tryin' to leave this camp just yet. So I would appreciate it,' he went on, 'if you boys would give me some idea of what's been happenin' at the rendezvous.'
The white-haired Indian Agent listened with interest to January's account of the trade in liquor with the Indians ('Lord, Bill Grey made it sound like Sodom and Gomorrah,') and the attempted scalping on the way back from the banquet ('That sounds like Titus, all right . . .'). He grinned at the effort to convince Congress that the dead man was himself, but his eyes narrowed sharply when January spoke of Bodenschatz's plan to give away poisoned liquor.
'That's no Indian plan,' he rumbled, and he stroked the milk- white stubble of his trail beard. 'Mission Indians, maybe - that have learned how civilized folks go about their business.'
'My brother stumbled on a half-wrote letter from Bodenschatz to Iron Heart.' Shaw spoke up from his side of the fire. 'I thought, myself, it mighta had somethin' to do with the AFC tryin' to push Congress into sendin' troops to take Oregon ... an' like the young fool he was, I think Johnny just up an' asked Bodenschatz about it, an' he was found dead not long later. Only when the Beauty up an' died, after drinkin' the last of the liquor they'd found in the old man's coat, did we start to put together that there was different game afoot. Worse game.'
'You still have those letters from Boden to his father?'
'They were in my hand when the Omahas attacked us on the quarantine island,' said Hannibal. 'Even had I had the chance to get my hand to my coat before running for our lives, they wouldn't have survived the river. And if they had survived, I'd have eaten them the following day.'
'An' you had no idea Frank Boden - or Franz Bodenschatz - would be posin' as a Mexican trader here?'
'We knew he'd be here,' said January. 'The