Care to come with us, whilst we takes tea with the Dutchman an' sees if old Mr Incognito was carryin' callin' cards in his coat pocket?' Shaw collected bridle and apishamore, and followed.
'No,' Manitou said. 'I been from my camp too long. Three days, you said?' He shook his head, his heavy brow creasing, like a drunkard trying to reckon the days of a binge. 'Winter Moon,' he added, 'you need one of these girls -' he slapped the shoulder of the taller of his two horses, a heavy-boned buckskin - "til you get back to the camp? If Beauty'11 lend you a bridle off one of the mules . . .'
'I appreciate the offer,' said January. 'Thank you. We owe you some pemmican, by the way—'
'Surprised a bear hadn't got it. You're welcome to it.'
'You stayin' at the camp awhile?' asked Shaw more softly - perhaps to exclude, January thought, Beauty Clarke and Boaz Frye, who had gone to check loads and cinches on Clarke's mules. 'For a fact I been wantin' to speak with you 'bout what happened down at Fort Ivy this winter, when Johnny Shaw was killed.'
Manitou paused in the act of laying down the apishamore on his other horse, a cinder-gray mare, and regarded Shaw with those deep-shadowed brown eyes. 'That'd be your brother.'
'It would.'
'You look like him.'
'I been told.'
'I wasn't in the fort when it happened.' When Wildman swung the saddle into place January noticed the catch in his movements, and the way he favored his left arm. Where the worn elk-hide hunting-shirt fell away from Wildman's throat, he saw clotted wounds. In places blood leaked through to stain the pale-gold hide. 'I was camped about a mile off, in the woods.'
'Why?' asked Shaw. 'From all Tom an' Beauty both say, it was snowin' billy-bejeezus an' cold as brass underwear.'
'Too many people. People—' Manitou readjusted the apishamore under the saddle, cinched the whole arrangement tight. 'I ain't fit to be around people. Never have been. Guess you know that,' he added, with a sudden shy grin that made his face look suddenly human again. 'I get mad . . . Better I keep my distance. You think it was Frank that did it? Tom's clerk?'
'It's who I'm up here lookin' for.' Shaw folded his long arms. 'Though I'd appreciate you kept that one silent as the grave. Why'd you think it might be him?'
'Man don't leave a fort in the middle of winter like that, 'less he's flushed out. One mornin' - before first light, durin' a break between storms, but more bad weather comin' in, you could smell it - I saw him pass 'bout a half-mile from my camp. I only knew him by that townsman's coat he wore: old, black wool with a fur collar. Heard later he'd said he got spooked, the boy bein' killed by Blackfeet like that. But I never saw no sign of Blackfeet. So I figured it was probably him. Hard luck on Tom. I know he was crazy 'bout that boy. Yourself too, I guess.'
Shaw nodded, without speaking.
'Why'd you think he's comin' here?'
'Johnny found letters of his, that sounded like there was gonna be some kind of trouble here at the rendezvous. Bad trouble, he said. Killin' trouble. Then this old buffer shows up dead, that seems to just fallen outta the sky. The name Hepplewhite mean anythin' to you?'
'Just the feller who made the furniture.' Manitou took the empty stew-gourd Shaw held out to him, knotted it in one of the saddle latigos, then swung himself up as lightly as a schoolgirl. 'If Frank's come into this country,' he went on, looking down at Shaw, 'likely your vengeance'll look after itself. Frank's a clerk. Got a clerk's hands. Can't see him lastin'. You come here, you lay yourself in the hand of God. He don't have far to look if he's after you.'
He leaned from the saddle to rub the buckskin mare's face gently with his knuckles as January readjusted the borrowed bridle around her head. 'Look after that lady for me, Winter Moon. Anybody beat the crap outta Blankenship for that trick with the mirror?'
'I heard Robbie Prideaux beat the crap out of him for something,' replied January. 'It could have been anything, given the number of things people have against that man.'
Wildman made a growly sniff, as close as he ever got, January suspected, to laughter. 'Could have, at that. He's another one the country'll get sooner or later. It was a