The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,38

with a grin.

Veinte-y-Cinco was already at the camp, watching over a flushed and fretful Pia. The girl had a massive opium-headache and no very clear idea of what had happened to her: 'I remember talking to Titus, but he wasn't there before. I was just talkin' to a couple of his boys, outside Seaholly's—'

'Anyone buy you a drink, honey?'

The girl moved one thin shoulder, with an adolescent's impatience: what a stupid question. 'No. You know you told Mr Seaholly you'd kill him if he sold me liquor. We were drinking coffee, is all.'

January had tasted camp coffee. It could have been doctored with gunpowder, let alone laudanum, without altering the taste. 'It could have been anyone,' he said softly, when the girl had fallen asleep among the buffalo robes. 'Anyone Titus paid off.'

Veinte-y-Cinco cursed, quietly and without any real hope in her voice, then sat for a time with her chin on her drawn-up knees, gazing into the swept stones of the lodge fire-pit. 'But he's right,' she said after a time. 'That filth-eating— Titus is right. What kind of mother am I, that I can't even keep my child from harm? I brought her up here—'

'And she'd have been safer back in Taos by herself?' Hannibal and Morning Star ducked through the entry hole into the tent, carrying wood for that night's fire.

'I don't know—' The woman looked aside, in grief that had long ago exhausted its lifetime allotment of tears. 'I don't know what to do.' She made a move to rise. 'I got to get back. Can she sleep here tonight?'

'You both can,' said Morning Star. It was her lodge, after all.

'It's coming on to rain,' added Hannibal. 'Numquam imprudentibus imber obfuit . . .'

'Hoss!' yelled Prideaux's voice from outside. 'Hoss, you got to come! You got to - where'd he go? Hoss!' The red- haired trapper thrust his head through the entry hole. 'Hoss, this is it! It's startin' to rain, an' I just heard from that kid Poco - that camp-setter of Blankenship's - that Beauty an' the Dutchman sneaked around whilst everyone was at the fight an' bought up everythin' they'll need for a year's trappin'! Salt, whetstones, lead . . . They're headin' out tonight, with the rain to cover their tracks—'

January rolled his eyes. 'Weren't they supposed to be heading out three nights ago? When everyone went out and skulked around in the rain—'

'But tonight is really it!' Prideaux was so excited he could barely get the words out. 'I went out an' had a look at their camp an' that squaw of the Dutchman's is takin' down her dry in' racks!’

'When my mama started takin' in her dryin' racks from the yard,' remarked Shaw, ducking into the tent at Prideaux's heels, 'it generally meant there was rain comin' in, not that she was gettin' ready to light outta there in secret.'

'But this's their secret beaver valley!' insisted Prideaux, as if the Kentuckian had somehow missed the critical importance of that fact. 'You just wait 'til this child follows those boys to their secret valley, an' comes back next rendezvous with beaver skins big as buffalo hides! Wee-augh! How's your neck, hoss?' he asked in a more normal tone.

'After today I won't fear hangin'.'

'Well,' remarked Hannibal to Veinte-y-Cinco, when Prideaux finally left - on the run - to gather up what plunder he'd need to pursue Clarke and Groot into the hills, and the first spatters of rain rattled on the lodge skins, 'you might as well make yourself comfortable, m'am; it's not like there's going to be anything happening at Seaholly's with half the camp out in the woods. Come, amicus meus,' he added, turning to January as Morning Star knelt to kindle the fire, 'let's have some stories. Tell us about the strangest person you ever met . . .'

January woke to voices. The river's roar, to which he'd fallen asleep last night, thundered unabated, but the light that came through the semi-translucent lodge-skins told him that the sun was up and shining. He felt as if he'd fallen down a flight of stairs and broken his neck. On the other side of the fire, Veinte- y-Cinco and her daughter slept close together, a tangle of soft limbs and dark hair under a five-point trade-blanket. A short distance away, Hannibal was a knot of draped bones. Outside the tent he heard Shaw ask someone in French: 'An' no sign around the body?'

If he's speaking French, he'll be talking to Morning