up here, is gonna turn up dead 'fore he makes the camp?'
His eyes met Veinte-y-Cinco's, asking what she had heard, and she leaned her own elbows, like him, on the bar at their backs. 'Slim ones, pilgrim,' she said. 'Slim ones.'
Chapter 8
The boxing match with Manitou Wildman - set for noon of the following day - almost didn't take place after all. Sufficient sums were involved that the gamblers were insisting on an hour when no chance ray of sunlight would take either fighter in the eyes. But an hour before the sun reached zenith, Veinte-y-Cinco came breathless and shaking into the Ivy and Wallach store tent with the news that Edwin Titus had been seen a few minutes before taking Pia into his quarters. 'Take a walk, Mick tells me.' The woman turned her head, as if she could see back to the AFC camp. 'Take a walk, just like that. Come back in an hour, he says—'
Shaw said, very quietly, 'Jesus,' slung one rifle on his back and picked up the other. 'You watch the place,' he ordered Jorge on his way to the horse line. Silently, January fetched his own weapon and followed. John McLeod, who'd been at the back of the tent talking to Gil Wallach about mules, whistled to a couple of the Canadian trappers; Prideaux and his camp mates joined the group as they were saddling up. January hoisted Veinte-y-Cinco on to the rump of his horse behind him, and close to thirty men rode downriver to the AFC camp.
'Titus, he never comes around for none of us girls,' Veinte- y-Cinco whispered, clinging to January's waist. 'He says we got the pox—'
January guessed this to be true, something which made faithfulness to Rose less difficult, notwithstanding the protective sheaths on sale at the store. The corollary to that fact - that, as a child, Pia was probably the only female in the AFC camp who wouldn't be poxed - had already crossed his mind.
And while Titus was not exactly Mick Seaholly's boss, without the Controller's financing - and his protection on the road - the saloon keeper would never have been able to get his liquor and his girls up to the Green River from Taos. Certainly, he would not be able to do so in future years.
And, anyway, it was known throughout the camp that Mick Seaholly would sell his own sister for the price of a Long-Nine cigar.
Unlike the Indian women, the Taos girls had nothing to offer the mountaineers in the way of camp-keeping, moccasin- making and the endless ancillary work of preparing beaver skins for the market. Their chief value lay in that they were cheaper than buying an Indian bride, and you didn't have to be constantly giving presents to their families.
They had no families.
Only Seaholly.
And, in Veinte-y-Cinco's case, Pia.
Through his back, January was aware of the woman's trembling. Without Seaholly's protection, it wouldn't be long before a woman on her own would find herself selling her body for pemmican - to those who simply didn't drag her down to the cottonwoods for free. January knew women in New Orleans who'd have greeted the situation with a shrug ... or a demand for a cut of the proceeds.
The posse found Edwin Titus outside his tent, faced off against Hannibal Sefton . . . and Manitou Wildman. Seaholly, slouched nearby, would clearly have dealt with the fiddler had Wildman not been looming silently at his elbow. 'You heard the girl, Sefton,' Titus was saying impatiently. 'She's perfectly willing—'
'She's perfectly dosed to the hairline with opium—'
'Are you suggesting that I held her nose and poured it down her throat? I could have you up for libel.'
'In what court?' retorted Hannibal. 'If there's no law against raping a drugged child, there's certainly not any statute against my saying so.'
'You have to go back to New Orleans sometime, Sefton. And when you do, you'll find—' He turned his head as Shaw, January and McLeod dismounted and strode toward the tent; January saw his thin mouth twist with anger. Then at once it smoothed as Veinte-y-Cinco ran forward—
'Pia! Corazon!’
Seaholly grabbed the woman by her arm. She wrenched at his grip, and Titus laid a hand on her shoulder: 'Senora Vasquez, thank Heaven you have come!'
While Veinte-y-Cinco stared at him, startled speechless at this turnabout - didn't she think that's what he'd say if she showed up with armed force? - McLeod almost spat the words, 'Damn it, Titus, I knew you Yanks were scoundrels—'
'Scoundrels?'