The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,26

a little Meyerbeer, before the storm breaks? Something from Robert le Diable, maybe?'

'It'll be our pleasure.'

Hannibal had barely got halfway through the ballet of the mad ghosts of the dancing nuns, however, when the storm did break. McLeod surged to his feet shouting, 'And that's your way, then? To hell with what your government promises, to other nations or to the Indians themselves, so long as your bloody Company gets its profits—'

In the corner, January could see young Mr Miller sketching frantically: waving arms, men lining up behind their chiefs, Indians looking in at the door . . .

'And I suppose the trustees of the Hudson's Bay Company are in the trade to improve the lot of the heathen by their sterling example?' Titus said.

'As you've improved the lot of the Crows, by paying them with liquor to murder those who stand in the Company's way?'

'You've been listening to your Flathead friends.' Titus, coolly sober - January wondered if he, like Hannibal, had quietly paid one of the clerks to fill his cup with brown spruce- water instead of liquor - glanced scornfully at the Flathead chief Kills At Night. 'I never met an Indian yet who didn't claim that Americans had done him wrong. Yet they keep clamoring around the gates of the Company forts, begging to be wronged again, I presume. I only stated the obvious: that America's right to the Oregon Country has been demonstrated, over and over again, in the sight of history—'

'Don't you give me your bilge water about history!'

'Don't want to bring up who's lost two wars on this continent?' The Controller raised his sparse snuff-colored brows. 'Well, I can understand that.'

McLeod - usually the most equable of men - lost his temper then and lunged at Titus. Kills At Night, who'd been following the discussion closely, was on his feet in the same moment, and if the Flathead chief had been a little less fuddled with Stewart's cognac, and a little quicker at pulling his knife free of its sheathe, he would have been killed. Shaw, sitting close to them, had both hands over Kills's knife-wrist, pinning the weapon and at the same time blocking the line of fire of three trappers who'd brought their rifles up at the first movement of attack; January was among the men who launched himself to drag McLeod back from strangling Titus. The noise within the shelter was nothing to the sudden wave of howling and shouts from outside, where ten or a dozen of McLeod's Flatheads sprang to their feet and the Company's Crows sprang to theirs.

Stewart shouted, 'Damn it!' as both groups of warriors flung themselves at one another in the darkness, and he caught up his rifle - nobody at the banquet was more than twelve inches from a loaded weapon - and leaped over a log bench and outside into the fray. Others tried to follow, and January, Shaw, and the glum-faced newcomer Warren Wynne formed a rank at the edge of the firelight: the last thing anyone needed, January thought, was for trappers intoxicated on expensive port and cognac to charge into twice their number of Indians drunk on Company firewater.

For a moment it was touch-and-go: he could hear McLeod shouting outside, and also Jim Beckwith, the Company trapper who was also a chief among the Crows (and who was probably responsible for a great deal of the alcohol being circulated outside). But he was watching Titus, and though it wasn't easy to distinguish expressions in the glow of firelight, the Company comptroller didn't stand like a man who was ready to charge into a fight.

He was hanging back, watching and listening to see how things would develop.

It was at this point that the Reverend William Grey came storming into the tent, like Moses descending from Sinai to discover the Israelites disgracing themselves around the Golden Calf.

'Strong drink is a mocker, saith the Lord!' Grey lifted his gaunt fact to Heaven. 'Partake not of strong drink, saith the Lord, lest ye die\ Publican!' the minister thundered, one long finger stabbing at Titus. 'Whoremaster! Is this how you keep them your slaves, then? Poisoning the bodies and the minds of God's children with your evil swill?'

'That's coming it a bit strong,' muttered Stewart, 'for a man who refused to stay in the Oregon country because he said the Nez Perce were devils incapable of salvation—'

'Evil is he who destroyeth the body, but more evil still, he who casteth the soul down into Hell,