The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,21

fair on the guitar.'

'Excellent! One of the Taos traders usually has one. Or perhaps that fellow Wynne from Philadelphia . . . Heaven knows he has every other sort of useless thing for sale. Could I induce you and Sefton to come down and play for us? Bring the lovely Mrs Sefton as well. I know the chief of her village has been asked, and - damn it!' he added and, turning, strode across the path to where Jed Blankenship, far from approaching La Princessa or Irish Mary (Veinte-y-Cinco having disappeared with another customer), had gone over to Pia, Veinte-y-Cinco's thirteen-year-old daughter, who ran errands for Seaholly's and worked behind the bar. The yellow-bearded trapper had the girl by the arm, and Pia was pulling back, not fear in her face but a child's disgust at adult stupidity.

'For God's sake, Blankenship—' Seaholly came around the bar as January, Stewart and several other men crossed the path. Blankenship - who'd had several drinks already - turned to Seaholly, thrust toward him a handful of credit-plews of various companies at the rendezvous and snarled, 'Waugh! You want a cut of every piece of commodity in this camp?'

The Reverend William Grey - at his usual stand next to the liquor tent - waved his Bible and thundered, 'Generation of serpents! You are as fed horses in the morning, neighing after whoredoms and strong drink! Woe unto you!'

More expeditiously, the trapper Kit Carson seized Blankenship by one shoulder, whirled him around and knocked him sprawling. As he lay on the ground, Moccasin Woman - the gentle, gray-haired woman of the small tribe of the Company's Delaware scouts - stepped out of the crowd and kicked him.

'As I said,' declared Stewart contentedly, 'the Laws of Nature will take their course. It's what I love about this land, January. The very lack of human law brings out what is essential in Man - what each man is in his heart. And it's comforting to find that so much of it is good.'

January opened his mouth to ask whether the Good lay in the fact that men would object to injury to a child - the girl Blankenship had tried to rape two days ago on the river bank had been barely two years older than Pia, and no one besides himself and Manitou had interfered - or injury to a girl who was more or less white. But his job, he reminded himself, was to befriend as many potential informants as possible - and to put himself in a position to receive whatever gossip was going - not to have any opinions of his own.

So he only shook his head, sighed and asked, 'Where's Blezy Picard when we need him?'

Chapter 5

The clouds gathering over the Gros Ventre mountains to the north swept down the valley that night, unleashing a torrent of wind and a succession of short-lived cloudbursts that rattled on the skins of Morning Star's lodge like the hoof-beats of a passing stampede. The bags of pemmican, the bullet pouches and powder horns that hung from the lodge poles swayed gently in the glow of the embers, and the poles themselves creaked as they rocked, as if the lodge itself were a living thing, dreaming of flight. January was twice wakened by lightning, huge blue-white explosions that shone through the semi-translucent skins: when he went outside, wind flowed down around him, and he could hear the river roaring in spate, all the cottonwoods stirred to a rushing tumult nearly as loud. Another bolt flashed almost overhead, and by it he had a startling vision of a river of cloud pouring past above him, close enough, it seemed, that he could reach up and put his hands in it, before purple-black darkness slammed down again.

Rose would love this, he thought as he groped his way back into the tent again, found his blankets by the tiny whisper of the fire. Rose reveled in lightning and storms. How can I note this in that little book? Why can't I fold up the night, the air, the lightning and the soft creak of the lodge poles into a little packet to store in my pocket, to unfold for her when I come home?

If I come home.

If she's alive when I get there . . .

From beneath the bundled jacket under his head he drew his blue-beaded rosary with its cheap steel cross, counted the beads with grim concentration. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee