Ride the Moon Down Read Online Free PDF Page B

Thornbrugh’s men had strung up for shade in the middle of their encampment.
    He watched the American ground-hobble his animal where it could graze nearby, then patted the blanket beside him. “Sit.”
    “You John Bulls got any tobaccy wuth smoking?” Bass inquired.
    “Get me some tobacco for this guest with such terrible manners,” Thornbrugh roared, laughing.
    As the American filled his pipe, Jarrell said, “As soon as I arrived here, I asked after you. But as the days slipped past, I feared more and more you’d lost your hair.”
    “Wagh! If’n that half-breed giant named Sharpecouldn’t raise this nigger’s hair last summer, ain’t a Injun gonna take what’s left of this poor scalp!”
    He slapped Bass on the leg, sensing such an exquisite joy in seeing this friend after a long, long year of separation. “You’ve brought many pelts to trade?”
    “Nope, I ain’t got but a few left to barter off.”
    “Not a good year for you and young Paddock?”
    The American smiled. “It was a damn fine year for the two of us, Jarrell. But I left most all of them plews behind in Taos with Josiah.”
    “Taos,” he repeated, confused. “Josiah’s not here with you?”
    Having puffed on his pipe to get it started with a twig from the nearby fire, Titus Bass began to tell the story of all that had taken place since last summer’s raucous trading fair. From that chase after an old Shoshone friend turned horse thief, through their deadly hunt for an Arapaho war party in the Bayou Salade, on to those Christmas and New Year’s celebrations in the little village of San Fernando de Taos, where Scratch had run onto an old friend believed dead. A chance meeting that spurred Scratch all the way back to St. Louis through the maw of winter, then off to the west again for the massive mud fort the Bent brothers had erected beside the Arkansas River—completing that deadly journey in hopes of putting some old ghosts to rest.
    “This Silas Cooper shot you?”
    The American tugged up the hem of his cloth shirt to show the vividly pink bullet wounds.
    A dark-skinned stranger stepped beneath the shady bower, leaning in to inspect one of the puckers as he commented, “You got nothing better to do, Jarrell—but go and look at this man’s bullet holes?”
    Thornbrugh snorted, “By the stars, the bullet made that wound came a hairsbreadth from killing my friend here. Introduce yourself proper, Thomas.”
    “Thomas McKay,” the man declared, holding his hand out as he backed a step.
    Watching the American grab McKay’s hand, Jarrell explained, “This be Titus Bass—”
    “Yes, I’ve heard of you,” McKay replied, his dark Indian eyes narrowing. “You come to Vancouver to visit the Doctor.”
    “Two winters back it was,” Bass stated. “A good man, the Doctor. He is what you see of him.”
    “Thomas here is leading the Doctor’s brigade this year,” Thornbrugh explained.
    “We ain’t been doing much in the way of trading,” McKay confessed as he took a dipper of water from one of the company’s laborers and drank. Wiping the dribble from his chin, he said, “But we didn’t figure to scare up much trading from you Americans anyway.”
    Bass looked at Thornbrugh. “Company men bound to deal with their own traders. Them what trap for American Fur gonna trade for company supplies. And Rocky Mountain Fur gotta trade with Sublette.”
    “Last year them Rocky Mountain Fur partners had contracted with that Yank named Wyeth to buy supplies off him this summer,” McKay said. “But Sublette come in a couple days ahead of Wyeth, so Fitzpatrick started trading off pelts even before Wyeth got to the valley.”
    Thornbrugh wagged his head. “So now Wyeth has all those goods Rocky Mountain Fur said they’d take off his hands, with no one to trade with.”
    “How ’bout the free men?” Bass inquired. “Where they been trading their furs?”
    Jarrell could tell by the set of Scratch’s jaw that the unfairness of