Ride the Moon Down by Terry C. Johnston Read Free Book Online

him. “You figger to be a trader now?”
    With a wag of his head Titus answered, “Just Josiah. He’d tempted Lady Fate’s fickle hand enough while we rode together. Time was for me to give him his leave.”
    Scratching the beginnings of his potbelly, Elbridge asked, “Who you riding with come autumn?”
    “On my own hook, boys.”
    “By jam—just you and the woman?” Isaac inquired.
    “And our girl.”
    “You ought’n throw in with us, Scratch,” Caleb observed.
    “That’s right,” Gray said. “Bridger knows you. He ain’t got nothing ’gainst a man packing a squaw along.”
    With a shake of his head, Titus quieted their suggestions. “Time’s come for me to go it alone. Moseying with a brigade’s gonna be the best for most fellas. But there’s hard-assed pricknoses like me what’re better off on their lonesome. Thanks for the asking. If I was to lay down my traps with any bunch, it’d be you boys … and only you boys.”
    Solomon asked, “Got time for some whiskey?”
    Titus looked at the five slowly, his eyes narrowing. “You figger this here nigger got stupid in the last year? Course I got time for some whiskey and some stories. Then I ought’n be on my way to find Wyeth.”
    “But Billy Sublette’s got his trade tents just past the bend in the creek,” Caleb said. “Hell, he’s so close I could throw a rock and likely hit one of his whiskey kegs!”
    “No thanks,” Bass said as he turned around and took up both the reins to the horse and Samantha’s lead rope. “From what I heard ’bout the underhanded jigger-pokey Sublette pulled on Wyeth—I don’t care to have nothing more to do with Billy Sublette.”
    “So I s’pose you’ve heard there ain’t no more Rocky Mountain Fur?” Isaac asked.
    “But we’re still working for Bridger’s company,” Rufus explained.
    “From the sounds of things,” Bass said, “Fitzpatrick and Bridger can call their company what they want … but Billy Sublette still owns ’em and calls their tune.”
    Elbridge suddenly placed the flat of his hand against Bass’s chest to bring Scratch to a halt. “Then I take it you’re a nigger what won’t drink none of Billy Sublette’s whiskey.”
    Titus thought on it a moment, careful that his face remained gravely pensive. “Is Sublette’s whiskey as good an’ powerful as it ever was?”
    “Damn right it is!” Caleb roared.
    “Then I ain’t above accepting a free drink of that low-down thieving Sublette’s whiskey,” Bass declared boldly, “not when I get me the chance to drink that whiskey with the likes of you boys!”
    *
BorderLords

3

    As the sun had eased down on rendezvous that day of revel and reunion, Bass had crawled atop the bare back of the buffalo-runner, looped Samantha’s lead rope around his hand, and groggily pointed them north. It was twilight before he reached their tiny camp where Waits-by-the-Water had a fire going and thick slabs of antelope tenderloin sizzling in his old iron skillet.
    “You find the trader you went in search of?”
    “No,” he said to her voice at his back as he loosened knots securing those packs he had tied to the back of the mule. Crow words came hard with his thick, swollen tongue that wasn’t near as nimble as it had been when he left camp hours ago, so he settled for English. “Ran onto some old friends.”
    She stepped up to him, their daughter straddling one of Waits’s hips, clinging like a possum kit to her mother. For a moment she only stared at her husband’s eyes, then leaned in close, inches from his face, and sniffed.
    Bass jerked his head back. “What you doing?”
    With a tinkle of laughter Waits replied, “You’ve beendrinking the white man’s bi’li’ka’wii’taa’le, the real bad water!”
    “Just because you don’t like whiskey don’t mean I cain’t enjoy having some ever’ now and then!” he protested slowly, struggling to keep his tongue from getting as tangled as were the knots his fingers