The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,42

he'd be able to see them coming until he got an arrow in the back. The needles seemed to be scratched about by animals larger than foxes, but because of last night's rain it was impossible to tell who had passed that way, or when. 'Is reading sign something they teach white boys in Kentucky?' asked January softly, when Shaw straightened up.

'It is if the family's gettin' half their food out of the woods.' He moved from tree to tree craning his skinny neck to look at the trunks, as if seeking some further mark. 'Then, too, my uncle Naboth was kidnapped by the Shawnee as a child, raised among 'em for a year an' a half - family never could teach him to sit in a chair after that, my daddy said. He taught us . . . Johnny was wild to be kidnapped by Indians, too,' he added with a half grin. 'Even if he had to travel clear to the Nebraska Territory to arrange it. Tom—'

He turned, bringing his rifle up before January was even aware that there'd been movement in the trees.

It was Morning Star.

'Crazy Bear is gone from his camp,' she said. 'His blankets are there, and his food also. Last night's fire was burned out; even the ashes are cold.'

'He could be down at the camp.'

'We'd'a passed him.' Shaw glanced back through the trees, to where ravens were regathering around the corpse. 'Damn birds,' he added, and the three companions returned to the body's side. 'But I would be most curious as to who-all else has turned up at the camp today, an' what they have to say about what our friend here was doin' out in the woods all by hisself. What you got to say about his glove, Maestro? An' them stains on his hands?'

'I think the yellow ones are acid,' said January. 'Gomez - the man I studied surgery with before I went to Paris - had some like it. The others I don't know. The glove's expensive - a dollar a pair at someplace like Au Cheval de la Lune in New Orleans. But it's old; you see where it was mended, and how the dye's worn off on the finger edge and thumb where reins would go?'

With great care he removed the other glove from the left hand.

'Somebody missed somethin',' remarked Shaw as the sun through the lodgepole pines gleamed softly on the gold of a wedding band.

'Shall we take that off him?'

Shaw sighed. 'If'fn we don't, somebody back at the camp is bound to, the minute we turns our backs.'

January grinned. 'You been a policeman too long, sir.'

Chapter 10

Five dollars says Beauty Clarke done it,' offered Jed Blankenship. 'This pilgrim cut his trail last night—'

'Don't be a dolt, Blankenship,' sighed Jim Bridger. 'Does this old buzzard look savvy enough to cut Beauty Clarke's trail?'

The knot of trappers holding a shooting contest near the mouth of Horse Creek had been the first to sight the little party of Sioux as they'd crossed the stream with their burden. By the time they'd reached the Ivy and Wallach camp, the knot had grown to a procession, with Robbie Prideaux running ahead to alert Hannibal, so that a fly could be rigged under the trees near the store tent and trestles set up to receive the robe-draped litter. The Reverend Grey had been sent for - he was found, as usual, preaching a temperance sermon outside Seaholly's - and gazed in horror at the face of the man o'n the bier. January had laid a folded bandanna from his pocket over the worst of the damage done by foxes and birds. Grey lifted it momentarily and laid it hastily down again.

'No,' he whispered, his usual sanctimoniousness completely shattered by pity and shock. 'No, this isn't Asa Goodpastor. I've never seen this poor man before in my life.' He looked as if he wanted to do something like close the corpse's eyes, but of course that wasn't possible.

By this time most of the camp was arriving at a run. Booze, whores, five-card monte and shooting matches were one thing, but a wanderer in the woods who hadn't been killed by Indians was a nine days' wonder and trumped any amount of Mick Seaholly's liquor.

'Fitz, get some of your boys to get these people out of here,' snapped Edwin Titus in disgust. He and the Company's senior trapper, Tom Fitzpatrick, had been two of the quickest arrivals.

'Rather'n do that,' suggested Shaw, 'whyn't we get