the one who's paying me,' said January. 'I'm just here to follow orders. Madame -' he turned toward Morning Star - 'you wouldn't happen to know which side of the river the Blackfeet are on, would you?'
'I've not seen their tracks on this side today.' In addition to what she'd taken from Manitou's camp, she'd brought her own rawhide satchel of that mix of dried, shredded meat and rendered fat that seemed to be the standard trail rations of every hunter in the mountains. 'There are forty lodges of Blackfeet, my brothers tell me, led by Silent Wolf, a man of caution and good counsel who has little interest in this secret beaver valley ... I think this man you saw behind us on the butte must be one of the trappers, who held to the Beauty's trail through the night.'
'Makin' it either Boaz Frye or Manitou hisself.' Shaw licked pemmican grease from his fingers, then wiped his hands down the front of his shirt. 'They both bein' unaccounted for as of last night. Or one of the Dutchman's men. Or someone that's followed us from the camp—'
'Who might be working for Edwin Titus,' finished January. 'Or John McLeod. Or whoever it was who tried to lift our hair the other evening. I agree. We need to see who it is.'
Accordingly, after an hour's rest, the three hunters crossed the ford, January uneasily conscious that this course of action would put their return to the first of the rendezvous camps far after sunset. If there were something like three hundred Blackfeet on this side of the Green, it wasn't anywhere he wanted to be come nightfall.
The moment they were in the trees on the eastern bank, January dropped off his horse and shed his corduroy jacket and wide-brimmed slouch hat. With equal speed, Shaw cut saplings with his knife and made a sort of legless scarecrow, which he then lashed upright to the saddle of January's sturdy liver-bay gelding. It wouldn't have fooled a blind grandmother at a hundred paces . . . but the Green was considerably wider than a hundred paces broad at this point, and the man or men behind them would be either among the cottonwoods on the west bank - in which case all they'd be able to see was that there were riders on all three horses - or further back in the hills, in which case ditto. January stretched out under a clump of the huckleberry bushes, rifle at his side, as his companions - and his makeshift double - rode on.
And waited.
Sunlight flashed on the water like flakes of fire. Four deer emerged from the trees upstream, trotted hesitantly to the bank to drink. January wondered what he'd do if the tracker turned out to be Manitou. He guessed the big mountaineer had little concern about anybody's secret beaver valley, but if Manitou had indeed killed the old man in the woods, he'd be well aware that trackers had come investigating the clearing and his camp.
But if Wildman had killed the stranger - and taken a pistol ball in the process - why bother to hide? These mountains belonged jointly to the United States and Britain, and neither nation had anything resembling a lawman on-site (and in fact wouldn't have been permitted by the other to do so). Had Abishag Shaw walked up to Edwin Titus and shot him in the open, the only repercussion he would have had to face would have been from Titus's friends (if he had any), the Company (a serious consideration), or such champions of civilization as Sir William Stewart, who would probably have been distressed, but couldn't have legally done anything except shoot Shaw in return.
Wind brought the smell of dust and drying grass down the draw and across the water; the leaves of the cottonwood flickered and sighed. He'd described them for Rose in his notebook, examined the papery bark with the English magnifying lens she'd sent with him (accompanied by threats of murder in the night if anything happened to it).
Shadows lengthened, the stillness a balm on the heart. At this hour the streets of New Orleans would be clattering with carts, the air jagged with the voices of jostling drunks. Here, the silence was almost magical.
Then a man emerged from the cottonwoods on the far side of the water, leading a mule and a horse. Not Manitou. One less thing to worry about. A mountaineer - even at the distance, across the flashing