Stamping Ground by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online

often?”
    â€œEvery other Wednesday, without fail.”
    â€œHow about sin?”
    â€œSin is for Tuesday. But you have not come all this way to speak of religion, A.C.”
    â€œWe need an experienced tracker, Jac, and unless there’ssomeone around here who reads sign as good as you I guess you’re it.”
    â€œThat is what I thought. Come with me to the river.” He signaled for a torch to be brought. When one was handed him, he motioned the others to remain where they were and strode away, carrying the flaming instrument. As we hastened to catch up: “How much are you offering this time, A.C.?”
    â€œI was thinking four cases.”
    â€œA man’s thoughts are his own,
mon ami
. But that one is beneath notice.”
    â€œThat’s the price we agreed on last time!”
    â€œThe last time was four years ago. It costs much more to subsist in these days of revolution and expansion.”
    â€œWe’re talking about whiskey, not money. And you got no more bellies to fill now than you had four years back. All right, six cases. But that’s as high as I go. We’re talking about taxpayers’ money.”
    â€œI do not think that ten cases would upset the economy.”
    â€œTen cases!” Hudspeth stopped walking. At the base of the grassy slope, the Red River hissed and gurgled at high water. But the métis kept walking, so he had to sprint to catch up.
    â€œSeven cases,” he said.
    Pere Jac made no reply.
    â€œEight, damn it! But you’d better guarantee results.”
    We were at the river now. The old man handed me the torch and stepped off the bank, Levi’s, moccasins and all. He dipped his swollen and bleeding hands into the water and splashed it over his face and chest.
    â€œEight it shall be,” he said at last. “But I guarantee nothing.” He dug a finger into his mouth, withdrew a loosened tooth, saw it was gold, and thrust it into a hip pocket. “Who are we going after, A.C.?”
    â€œA Cheyenne by the name of Ghost Shirt.”
    The dusky-skinned woman Jac had sent earlier to look after the wounded breed appeared bearing a bundle of clothing. She held out a calico shirt while he stepped outof the water, and helped him on with it. I figured her for his granddaughter; she turned out later to be his squaw. He shook his head at her offer of a dry pair of leather leggings, accepted a military-style red sash instead, and knotted it about his waist. “I think, A.C.,” he said finally, “that you had better give us the whiskey in advance.”

Chapter Four
    We were Pere Jac’s guests for the night, which meant that despite our protests, he, his woman and his three children slept outside and the lodge was ours. This was the same structure we had seen being repaired earlier by the boy who turned out to be Jac’s son Lucien. Sleeping on buffalo robes didn’t come easy after an extended period of city life, but I’d got along on worse and so had Hudspeth. We drifted off in short order—me from exhaustion after the unsettling activity of the past few days, the marshal after reacquainting himself with the flask in his pocket.
    It rained sometime during the night without our knowing it. There were puddles on the ground the next morning and the air had that damp metallic smell, but the sultry and unseasonal heat that had dogged me since leaving Montana had not been washed away. If anything, the atmosphere was more oppressive than ever. It hung from last night’s burned-out torches, beaded on the outside of the lodges in droplets of moisture, clung like moldy rags to our throats and the insides of our nostrils when we tried to breathe.The very act of taking in oxygen was exhausting. Two steps outside the shelter I felt as if I hadn’t slept at all.
    Our host and his family were wet but cheerful—the métis’ natural state—and greeted us warmly in order of rank. We muttered