The Shirt On His Back - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,61

women walked with bundles among the horses that drew the lodgepole travois. Dogs and children, silent alike, ghosts between the trees. Medicine bundles - feathers and bones twirling - on the end of travois poles and spears. Rifles held upright and ready.

When the last of the village was well out of sight, January and his companion slipped from cover, almost ran downstream-

—and swung around, rifles at ready, at movement in the green dawn shadows on the other side of the creek. 'You tolerable, Maestro?' January let out his breath in a sigh. 'Just.' Shaw came to the creek's edge as Frye and January waded across. 'Glad to see that warn't you they was settin' fire to.' Together the three climbed the few yards up to where Goshen 'Beauty' Clarke waited with his horse and his laden mules, nearly hidden among the trees. 'An' twice as glad to see you had the good sense not to try an' put that poor bastard out'n his pain.' Clarke had on his wolfskin hood, beneath which his long golden braids flowed down almost to his waist. On his feet he wore a pair of well-cut, and much-scuffed, black boots.

'You were bug-struck loco to even think about tryin', Shaw,' snapped the Beauty. 'Waugh! You near as dammit got us killed.'

'But I didn't,' pointed out Shaw mildly.

'I told you it couldn't have been Clem or any of the boys,' Clarke added grouchily. 'They's all camped in the next draw over. You didn't see them riskin' their tripes checkin' to see if that was me.'

'Well, don't mean they didn't,' replied Shaw. 'I 'spects they'll meet us at the campsite, if'fn the Dutchman wants see if they left your new boots behind.'

'Naw.' The Beauty shrugged. 'They didn't fit him. The coat doesn't fit him, neither, but he wanted somethin' out of it, an' he wouldn't listen to reason.'

'You tell my partner how you come by those boots, Clarke,' said Shaw. 'I found it right interestin'.'

As did January, when the trapper related in an undervoice - because Shaw and Frye were still listening for the slightest signs of trouble back down the trail that the Blackfeet had taken - the events of three nights ago. 'We thought at first that little speck of a fire mighta been somebody who'd been hurt,' explained Clarke. 'Or somebody who'd camped up, not realizin' how close he was to the rendezvous, like Robbie Prideaux, that time he made his confession to one of his camp- setters an' they both laid down in a blizzard, thinkin' they was dyin' fifteen feet from the gate of Fort Laramie one night. But there's this old man, layin' in a shelter under a deadfall, with his hands folded on his breast an' his throat cut from ear to ear. Stabbed in the back, too, though that didn't keep Clem from takin' his coat. We figured he was that Indian agent Titus was workin' himself up to a stroke over - no lookout of ours even if we hadn't been tryin' to ease on out of the camp, quiet like. There's one thing I got no patience with, it's Indian agents, pokin' around causin' trouble . . .'

'What time was this?'

'First light.'

'Any sign of a horse nearby?'

'We didn't see any, but we didn't look. The rain had slowed us down, an' we knew we still had a couple of those sneaky bastards on our tails, that's too dumb to find their own beaver.' He glared pointedly at Boaz Frye.

'His clothes wet or dry?'

'Damp,' said Clarke. 'Like he'd got under shelter pretty quick after gettin' wet.'

'You have trouble getting his boots off? Was that why you hauled him out of the shelter?'

'The left boot, yeah. His leg was splinted up, and his foot was swole - Clem had to hold on to his shoulders while I pulled at it. The old guy was dead,' he added defensively. 'It's not like it hurt him or nuthin'.'

January reflected that Jed Blankenship would have just cut off the swollen leg and removed the foot the easy way.

'Swelled a little or swelled a lot?'

The mountaineer thought about it for a moment, his hand stroking the stock of his rifle, which had been decorated with an elaborate design of brass nail-heads. 'A little, I'd say. I mean, we got his boot off him—'

Shaw raised a hand. All stopped, and on the morning air, above the animal smells of the empty campsite before them, January smelled fresh smoke. Instinctively, the four men spread out, moving