The Shirt On His Back (15 page)

Or
madness.

Shaw returned to
the fire pit and stirred carefully through the ashes with the tip of his knife.
'Panic, too, not to scalp an' mutilate him, with all the Indians in the world a
couple miles away to put the blame on. Might as well leave a sign tacked to his
chest sayin':
A White Man
Done This.
You think any of our friends down the camp would panic if
they killed a man?'

'Only if they
found out too late that he actually knew the way to Clarke and Groot's secret
beaver valley.'

Keeping
together, Shaw and January worked their way around the outer perimeter of the
clearing, Shaw checking the ground for sign and January checking the woods in
all directions for Blackfeet - not, he reflected, that 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.'

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 'em in a line and file 'em past the body
for a viewin'? That way we'll hear right away, if'fn anybody knows him.'

'Good God, man,
why would anyone in the camp know him?'

'He sure didn't
come up to the mountains for his health.'

'If he did,'
remarked Hannibal, 'he should sue his doctor.'

'It is
asqueroso
,' cried Charro
Morales. 'Disgusting. Can you not let the poor old man rest in peace?'

'Anybody new
come into the camp today?' asked Shaw as Tom Fitzpatrick and Jim Bridger moved
off into the gathering crowd to get the men into a rough line. Looks were
exchanged, heads shaken.

Mick Seaholly
pushed his way into the growing crowd around the bier, caught Shaw's elbow:
'We've got a spare markee down at the AFC camp and more room than this. I'll
give you two hundred dollars to move him down there.' January opened his mouth
to protest and saw Shaw glance sidelong at Titus - who, to his credit, looked
totally revolted at the suggestion.

But then, he'd
managed to convey a near approximation of total revulsion yesterday when
accused of attempting to drug and rape a thirteen-year-old girl.

'Or let me set
up a bar in your store and I'll split the proceeds fifty percent.' Seaholly
gestured behind him to a couple of the AFC camp-setters just coming up with
kegs and tin cups, clearly prepared for anything.

Shaw bowed to
the inevitable. 'Fine with me, but you gotta ask Gil Wallach. Looks like the
only way we're gonna make money this summer.'

'Asqueroso,
'
muttered Morales, but went off to get a barrel of his own liquor in case
Seaholly ran out.

For the
remainder of the day, January and Hannibal took turns standing by the unknown
man's bier, watching the faces of those who passed. Whichever of them wasn't on
duty at the bier side, sat on a packsaddle by the line and told the story three
hundred and fifty times: they'd found the body in a clearing on the other side
of Horse Creek, by the signs he'd been killed sometime in the night, always
making sure to exclaim that it sure hadn't been done by Indians.

'Looks a bit old
for the game, doesn't he?' remarked Sir William Stewart as he emerged from the
fly. 'Wonder where he's left his razors?' By the way he spoke in passing to
Edwin Titus, it was clear to January that he believed his host's version of
what Pia had been doing in Titus's tent.

And why not
?
Even as a
child, January had been aware that white gentlemen believed white gentlemen;
and that the face a white gentleman showed his white gentlemen friends
frequently concealed horrors done in the privacy of what he considered his
exclusive domain.

He replied, 'I
wondered that myself, sir.'

'Not to speak of
his valet.' Stewart blew a line of cigar smoke and glanced down the row of
waiting men with speculation in his dark eyes. 'Since there are at least two
other trade caravans due to arrive in the camp - and since it's clear our Senex
Incognito isn't going to keep - I wondered if you'd like me to get Mr Miller to
take a likeness of him?'

'I think that's
a brilliant idea, sir, if Mr Miller would be willing,' said January. 'Thank
you.'

So Mr Miller was
summoned - actually, he was only a few yards down the line, waiting his turn -
and made sketches of the old man as he lay, and of what he had probably looked
like in life, while men walked past exclaiming: 'What the Sam Hill—?' and
'Where in blazes did he drop from?' and 'He ain't been scalped . . .'
(Good,
thought
January,
you go repeat that around the camp
if you please . . .)

And everybody
went to the store tent next door and bought liquor at three dollars a pint.
Even allowing for a fifty-percent split with Seaholly, it was definitely the
best profits Ivy and Wallach had made all summer.

January was
taking his shift beside the body when he heard the buzz of voices outside
suddenly rise. Past the line of men, he saw three Indians approaching on foot.
Beaded belts, naked to the waist . . .

Iron Heart and
his Omahas.

Hannibal got up
immediately and went to them, realizing - January guessed - the obvious fact
that it was better to risk a few grumbles from the whites in the line about
Indians getting in for a look ahead of them, than to risk combat in the line
itself if they waited among whites for any length of time. The trappers by and
large got along well with the Indians of whatever tribe they dealt with, though
many of the AFC men sided with the Crow in saying that you couldn't trust a
Flathead as far as you could throw a piano . . . But enough men were visiting
Seaholly's end of the store tent
before
they got in line that it was best to nip trouble in the bud.

But Iron Heart
only looked down at the ruined face and said, in his Mission Indian English, 'It
was a white man who did this.'

'Your people
heard nothing?' asked January. 'Saw nothing? The man did not fall from the sky.
He must have left a camp in the woods, horses, probably at least one other man.
Your hunters have seen no sign of this? Camped as you are above Horse Creek,
you might see what others might not.'

'We have seen
nothing.' The pockmarked face was expressionless. 'The only sign we have found
has been of the Blackfoot, and of hunters - we think perhaps Crow or Flathead
on the other
side of the river to the north. If this grandfather were killed by a white man,
it does not mean that he who stole his horses and killed his companions was the
same white man who killed him. There may be more dead men in the gullies than
one, Winter Moon. And more than that,' he added quietly, 'before the camp here
breaks.'

'Will you tell
me if you find anything?'

'And why should
I do that?' Iron Heart looked coldly up into his face. 'Why should it concern
me if every white man in this camp dies and lies rotting on the ground, as my
people lay among our tents and rotted along the banks of the Platte when the
white man's fever came through our homeland? You destroy what you touch, white
man, including one another. One day you will destroy the land itself.'

He turned and
walked from the square shade of the stretched cover, back upriver toward their
distant camp.

'Hard point to
dispute,' murmured Shaw, who had materialized as quietly as a shadow at the
rear of the fly. 'Though, mind you, I didn't care for that business about how
maybe there's a couple more deaders up the gullies. You think some of your
in-laws might be prevailed on, Sefton, to go have a look 'fore night comes on?
I think between keepin' things orderly here, an' makin' sure Seaholly ain't
left for ten seconds by hisself in the store tent - Clopard's in there with him
now

I think we're
here 'til mornin' at least.'

'Do we bury our
friend come morning?' January had been using a pine bough to switch away the
flies that swarmed around the old man's face, but knew that by morning, in the
July heat of the high mountain valley, the maggots that had been laid before
the corpse had been discovered would start to hatch. There were other
unpleasant symptoms of mortality as well, and the ants no one could do anything
about.