The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,117

jackrabbits, foxes, prairie dogs, kangaroo rats - he realized he would miss this open silence, this thin, free air. Far off he could still see the white peaks of the Wind River Mountains, glittering in the starlight: the Green River in which he'd almost drowned, the dry coulees where he'd almost starved, where he'd fought for his life against the Omaha and the Crow . . .

He'd miss those, too. No wonder the mountain trappers stayed in the mountains.

It wasn't only beaver that they sought in those valleys that whispered with the voices of the pines.

Beside the fire, Manitou slept - and dreamed of what? The medieval streets of a German University town? Or the empty world where he was safe from the danger that the thunder spirit in him would awake?

By daylight the big trapper kept close to the train, as if to reassure - or remind - Bodenschatz that he, too, was going back to the United States to face justice for what he had done. But as they moved east and the endless pale-yellow miles stretched on, he became more and more uneasy. 'We should be seein' Indians by this time,' he said one evening, as the engages were setting camp. 'This's the time of their Fall hunt. Plain should be crawlin' with 'em. I ain't even seen sign, have you?'

Both Shaw and Goodpastor shook their heads.

Shaw was quieter also as they put the miles behind them. He took his turn at scouting, but January could tell it bothered him to let Bodenschatz out of his sight, and most nights he would stay awake, watching him. Having risked his brother's anger for the sake of doing justice, January guessed, he lived with the dread that something would go wrong and leave him bereft of both justice and revenge. And if that happened - as he had once said to Manitou - he stood to lose not one brother, but two: all the family that remained to him in the world.

For his part, the prisoner had little to say for himself, and what little he did was mostly sarcasm: 'If to destroy me, I have made that beast take himself back to justice,' he remarked on one occasion, 'then I have accomplished my aim.' When he wasn't reading - and he scorned Hannibal's small volume of Shakespeare's comedies - he watched Manitou with glittering eyes. 'I will confess whatever you ask me to,' he said on another evening to Goodpastor. 'Just so that you bring him also to the scaffold and let me tell in open court the things that man has done.'

But January thought that as they went east, Shaw was bracing himself.

Tom Shaw met them at the gate of Fort Ivy, his narrow face dark with shock, anger and disbelief as he saw who rode in their train. 'What the hell you think you're doin', bringin' that piece of pig snot back with you?' he demanded, when Shaw dismounted and helped Bodenschatz from the saddle. He turned and struck Shaw open-handed across the face. 'Where the hell you think you are, brother? New Orleans? Goddam Philadelphia? You think any jury back in the States is gonna convict a man for shootin' another way the hell and gone out past the frontier?'

'I do, yes,' replied Shaw in his mild voice. 'I said I'd bring him to justice—'

'There ain't gonna be no justice for what he done to Johnny!' retorted Tom. 'You think twelve "good citizens" is gonna care about somethin' that happened out here? Like God Himself could even find twelve good men in Independence—'

'Been awhile since you been to Independence, sir,' Goodpastor broke in. 'It's settled some, and there's enough men there who'll convict a man, if not of killin' your brother, then of killin' his own father - which is what we got plenty of evidence for, an' affidavits, too. Not to speak of plottin' with the savages to murder every man in the rendezvous. Believe me, he'll hang.'

'You stay outta this.' Tom Shaw barely glanced at the older man. 'I don't give spit in a whirlwind about what-all else he done. This's blood. An' we was brought up - / was brought up - that blood wins out, over what twelve "good citizens" or the whole damn Constitution of the United States might say ... or might not. I was brought up not to take chances with your blood.'

He took the pistol from his belt, and Shaw stepped between its barrel and Bodenschatz. Tom