Nate’s misgivings seemed to be unfounded. They reached Fort Ashworth without incident. When the news spread among the mountaineers that their hated enemy had fallen into the merciless hands of the Bloods, there were whoops and cheers, and a number of trappers discharged their guns into the air.
Richard Ashworth was in his quarters, relishing a sip of his precious Scotch, when the first shots sounded. Sitting upright so abruptly that he nearly tipped his chair over, he hastily capped his flask, slid it into a pocket, and bolted outside, fearful that the fort was under attack. He was stunned to see his men beaming and hollering and jumping up and down like young children.
Ashworth, spying King and Henry Allen, hailed them. “Good heavens! What is this all about?”
Nate was tired and hungry and anxious to see his wife, but he took the time to relate what had happened. He had gotten so used to Emilio Barzini being at Ashworth’s shoulder all the time that he didn’t give the Sicilian’s presence a second thought.
Henry Allen laughed when Nate mentioned Little Soldier being taken by surprise by the returning Blood. “Ain’t it grand?” he declared, his Southern drawl more pronounced than usual. “That coon won’t be plaguing us anymore. No, sir!” He slapped his thigh in glee. “Maybe we should hold us a frolic!”
“A what?” Ashworth said.
“A regular rip-snorting jollification,” Allen clarified.
Ashworth still didn’t understand. But Nate lit up like a shelf full of candles. The idea was so wonderful that Nate was almost sorry he hadn’t thought of it himself. “Hoss, you are a shrewd one! A frolic is just what we need. It’ll give the boys a chance to let off some steam before they settle down for the long trapping season ahead. And the women will be tickled silly.”
“See here,” Ashworth interjected. “What exactly are we talking about?”
“Celebrating,” Nate said. “Holding a party.”
Ashworth blinked. “Is that wise? I mean, what if the Blackfeet should hear us?”
“We won’t be making any more noise than we did constructing the fort,” Nate noted. “And our hunters have been shooting off guns for weeks now without being discovered.” He gazed out the gate at the vista of valley and mountains. “We’re so far into the Bitterroots that it’s doubtful the Blackfeet will find out were here for a long time. I reckon a frolic might be just what the sawbones ordered.”
Ashworth could see that the frontiersmen were thrilled, but he didn’t share their enthusiasm. “We’d be taking a great risk,” he pointed out.
Nate was already thinking of the tasty eats the women would whip up. “Haven’t you ever heard that all work and no play is bad for the soul? A body needs to his let down his hair now and then or his innards can get twisted into knots.”
Ashworth had heard some feeble arguments in his time, but King’s homespun wisdom was atrocious. “Listen. I really regret having to do this, but I’m afraid I must put my foot down. There will be no celebration. And that’s final.”
Nate glanced at the Tennessean, whose disgust was transparent. “Don’t you trust my judgment any longer?” he asked the greenhorn.
“Of course,” Ashworth said. “It’s just that I have too much at stake to endanger our enterprise with a few hours of needless carousing.”
“Needless?” Nate countered. “When was the last time these people had a chance to relax and enjoy themselves?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Ashworth said, annoyed that the mountain man was making an issue of it. “I hired them to work, not to indulge themselves.”
Emilio Barzini had listened to the exchange with interest. He didn’t give a damn about the grungy trappers and their heathen women. The dispute, though, gave him an opportunity to put Nate King in his proper place. Stepping up beside Ashworth, he said brusquely, “You’ll do as Mr. Ashworth wants, whether you like it or not.”
Nate stiffened. “No one asked for your opinion.”
“It’s not mine that counts,” Emilio said smugly. “It’s Mr. Ashworth’s. And if he says no, the only celebrating that will be done will be over my dead body.”
Henry Allen’s right hand, unnoticed by anyone else, had fallen onto a flintlock. “That can be arranged, you walking slab of meat! Lift a finger to try to stop us and you’ll be the only man in camp with a nose in the middle of his forehead.”
Ashworth saw the Sicilian start to lift his right arm and remembered the stilettos Barzini carried up each sleeve. He quickly stepped between them. “Enough of such talk!” He couldn’t believe that two grown men were ready to kill each other over such a trifle.
Emilio almost disobeyed. He’d meant to antagonize Nate King into doing something rash. It had never occurred to him that the Southerner might challenge him. “I don’t like being threatened,” he said.
Nate resented the giant’s attitude. “Then maybe you should learn to keep your mouth shut until someone asks your opinion,” he stated.
An insult was on the tip of Emilio’s tongue, his right hand inches from the hilt of the blade up his shirt.
“Enough!” Ashworth practically screamed. Without thinking, he turned and gave Barzini a push to get the Sicilian to back down. It was like trying to push a building. The giant didn’t budge. “Must I keep reminding you that the Brothers would not take kindly to your rank disobedience? You will desist this instant!”
Emilio stared at Ashworth’s bobbing Adam’s apple. He couldn’t wait to squeeze it between two fingers until it popped like an overripe fruit. “As always,” he said, making no attempt to conceal his sarcasm, “your every wish is my command.”
Nodding, Ashworth faced the trappers. “It’s obvious you’re determined. Very well. Against my better judgment, and to preserve harmony in our camp, I will accede to your request.” He paused, positive he was making the biggest mistake of his life, but at a loss to know how else to deal with the situation. Widespread unrest might result otherwise. “You may hold your frolic.”
Word spread like wildfire. A mountaineer by the name of Fester, who never went anywhere without his cherished fiddle strapped to his back, was picked to organize the music for the affair. Winona volunteered to see to it that the womenfolk made enough sweetmeats and cakes.
Shortly after sunset, the festivities commenced. Richard Ashworth perched on a crude bench in front of his quarters to watch. Accustomed as he was to formal parties where elegance was the byword, he was dumbfounded by what followed.
First, the band practiced awhile. It consisted of two fiddles, a flute, a bearded rowdy who pounded away on a pair of small Indian drums, and a set of bagpipes furnished by a mountaineer of Scottish extraction.
Ashworth almost cackled when they started playing. He compared the sound to a legion of cats with their tails caught in meat grinders. But as the mountain men warmed to the task, their music took on a pounding beat that somehow struck a resounding chord in his breast. He caught himself tapping his toe to the rhythm and immediately stopped.
As the expedition members gathered in a large circle, Ashworth saw several men passing out jugs. When one came near him, he called out, “Say, my good fellow! What is that you have?”
The man, acting as sheepish as a thief caught in the act, slowly came over. “The handle is Bowen, sir. Rufus Bowen.” He held out the jug. “You’re welcome to keep it if you want. We had to make do with berries and roots, but it goes down real smooth after six or seven swallows.”
With that, the trapper was gone, melting into the crowd before Ashworth could think to stop him. Puzzled, Ashworth pulled the cork and put his nose to the hole. A scent reminiscent of red wine made his mouth water. “They couldn’t have,” he said to himself, and tipped the jug to his lips.
Ashworth had never tasted liquid fire, yet that was exactly the sensation he had as the contents burned a scorching path down his throat. His stomach flip-flopped. His eyes watered. His nose felt as if it were being pricked by a thousand pins.
He tried to take a breath and swore that his lungs had collapsed. A massive hand, smacking him squarely on the back, jarred him back into possession of his faculties.
“Are you all right?” Emilio asked. The man looked as if he just swallowed a goose egg.
“Fine,” Ashworth sputtered, his voice suddenly like sand paper. Shaking his head, he gawked at the jug. “How could they?” He had given specific orders that no alcohol of any kind was to be consumed so long as the mountain men were in his employ. Scott Kendall, and later Nate King, had told him that he might as well try to stop the mountaineers from breathing as get them to give up liquor, but he had insisted. Sobriety bred efficiency, in his estimation.
Emilio overheard the question and answered. “It explains all those baskets of berries the women brought back from the woods. I wondered why there were so many.”
Ashworth didn’t bother to mention that the Sicilian had misunderstood. He, too, had seen women bearing large baskets crammed to the brim with small reddish berries of a type he was unfamiliar with, and other baskets containing long roots, equally as unknown back in the States. It had never occurred to him that they would be put to use in the way they had. The ingenuity involved staggered his perception of the mountain men as unschooled louts.
A squeal of delight raised Ashworth’s gaze to the open space, where couples were lining up to dance. When he saw Nate King’s wife take King’s arm as daintily as any true lady, he didn’t snicker. It was beginning to dawn on him that there was much more to these people than he had ever imagined.
The music screeched in earnest and the couples swirled into motion. For a few moments Ashworth had the illusion of being at a grand ball in one of the swankest clubs in New York City. In his mind’s eye, he saw wealthy men attired in the finest of fashion whirling powdered, coiffured, pale-skinned beauties. Then he blinked, and before him were lusty men in greasy buckskins swinging raven-haired, bronzed savages in buckskins.
By rights, Ashworth told himself, he should find the scene highly amusing. Even contemptible. Yet it held an odd attraction he couldn’t explain—a certain quaint charm that stirred his soul in a manner it had never been stirred before.
For all their earthy habits, for all their gruff flaws the mountaineers and their women were really no different from the cream of society back east. Should he hold it against them that they were rough around the edges? No, he thought not. Rather, he admired them for their natural earthiness, for their total lack of pretense. They never pretended to be other than what they were. In that respect, they were more inherently honest than the high-society crowd Ashworth associated with back home.
A fiery tingling in Ashworth’s throat made him realize that he had taken another swallow from the jug without being aware of doing so. This one went down easier than the first, but it still moistened his eyes and made his insides feel as if they were about to explode. The taste was tart but pleasant.
Ashworth treated himself to a third gulp and a fourth. Before long, half the jug was gone, and he was stomping his feet to the music, as well as humming along. His head felt strangely light and airy, his thinking was clear.
Raising the jug, Ashworth kissed it. He had found a marvelous substitute for his prized Scotch. Perhaps, he mused, he could get one of the squaws to provide him with a steady supply. He’d pay handsomely.
Suddenly Ashworth sensed another person was close to him. He started on seeing Nate King, Henry Allen, and a mountaineer he didn’t know, as well as two Indian women. “My word!” he said, grinning. “You shouldn’t sneak up on someone like that!”
Nate King picked up the jug and shook it. He wasn’t surprised that their leader had indulged, just at the amount that Ashworth had downed. Half a jug was enough to put the average mountaineer flat on his back. “I’m sorry to bother you,” King said, “but Harvey has a proposition.”
“A what?” Ashworth said. It was a bit of a shock for him to discover that the music had stopped and everyone was helping himself to refreshments. Maybe he wasn’t as clearheaded as he liked to think.
The scarecrow of a trapper who had accompanied King cleared his throat. “An offer for you, Booshway—or actually, it’s my daughter who wants to do it, not me. I told her a refined man like yourself probably wouldn’t be interested, but she wouldn’t pay me no heed. You know how women are. When they take a notion into their heads, there isn’t a man alive who can change their minds. I never have figured out why our Maker made them that way, but there must be a purpose. If—”
Ashworth held up a hand to silence the man before Harvey talked him to death. “Pardon me, my good fellow. But could you get to the point?”
Harvey nodded. “Fair enough. Red Blanket wants to tickle your hump ribs in a way that won’t make you laugh.”
Ashworth felt certain that he was befuddled by their concoction. He had no idea at all what the man was talking about. “She wants to what?”
Henry Allen nodded at the entrance to Ashworth’s private quarters. “She wants to live in your lodge.”
“My what?” Ashworth said, beginning to comprehend, but convinced that they couldn’t possibly be saying what he thought they were saying.
Nate took it on himself to set the greenhorn straight. “Red Blanket wants to live with you, if you’ll have her.” He saw the New Yorker’s eyes widen in amazement, and he went on before the man made a comment that would bring the wrath of her people down on all their heads. “Hear us out,” he added quickly.
Too befuddled to collect his wits, Ashworth nodded. “Be my guest.”
“Red Blanket’s mother is a Flathead, and her people are a bit more”—Nate had to rack his brain for a delicate term—”forthright about these kinds of matters. If a woman takes a shine to a man, she isn’t always shy about letting him know. And Red Blanket has taken a fancy to you.”
Richard Ashworth looked at the jug. Was it possible, he asked himself, that he had passed out and was dreaming? He studied the young woman, who had a complexion as smooth as the most expensive china and black hair that would be the envy of any socially prominent woman he had ever met. She met his gaze with a frankness that was shocking, on one hand, and oddly stimulating, on the other.
“Don’t ask me why she likes you,” Nate went on. “She’s taken it in her head that you’re the man for her, and she’d be honored if you’d take her for your woman.”
“My word!” Ashworth exclaimed, at a loss to know the proper form of etiquette in such a situation.
Nate hunkered to look their leader in the eye. It was important that Ashworth understand what was at stake. “You can say no if you want to, just so long as you do it politely.” He stressed the last word and was relieved to see understanding blossom in the other man’s eyes. “Say the wrong thing and you’ll wind up insulting not only her and her mother, but the Flatheads as well. And since they go out of their way to be friendly to all whites, we like to return the favor. Savvy?”
“Yes,” Ashworth said, winking. He assumed that King was going into detail to spare his feelings, to let him know there was an easy way out.
Harvey stepped forward. “Then what will it be, Booshway? You could do a heap worse. We’ve raised Red Blanket proper, and she’s as decent a girl as you’re going to find anywhere. I’ve never let her sell herself to the men as some of the girls her age do just to get themselves a lot of foo-foraw.”
Ashworth squared his shoulders and elevated his chin to convey an impression of dignity. He planned to decline, to tell the upright father and the doting mother that, while he was as flattered as could be, he had his duty as leader to think of. He fully intended to say no. It was the word in his mind, the word his mouth was supposed to utter. Yet incredibly, he heard himself say, “I’ve be delighted to have the young woman move in with me.
Nate King figured that their leader was too drunk for his own good. “Are you sure it isn’t the firewater talking?” he asked, at the risk of offending Harvey.
Ashworth had a second chance. He opened his mouth to say that was exactly the case, that their peculiar liquor had rendered his mind virtually numb, that he wasn’t thinking straight. Instead he replied, “Nonsense. Have her move her things in whenever she wants.”
Red Blanket showed her fine white teeth. Her mother clasped her hands and smiled. Harvey stood straighter, saying, “However much you want to give will be fine by me. Like I told you, we’re not interested in gewgaws.”
Constantly being unable to make sense of what was being said vexed Ashworth. Just once, he wished, they would speak plain English. “I’m sorry—”
Nate again intervened. “It’s customary to give her folks something. The more you give, the more you honor them.”
A kernel of suspicion formed in Ashworth’s mind. Despite Harvey’s claims to the contrary, it was entirely possible that the trapper had offered his daughter just to increase his own worldly goods.
“A horse, a knife, some blankets—anything will do,” Nate elaborated.
Ashworth took a sip to stall so he could ponder. Placing the jug on the bench, he rose, fully expecting to keel over. But his legs worked well enough for him to shuffle to the doorway and beckon King. When Emilio Barzini made as if to follow them, he waved the Sicilian off. “No, no, just Mr. King and myself, if you don’t mind.”
Nate had no idea what the man was up to. Telling Harvey to wait, he followed their leader in. The flickering glow from the fire outside enabled him to see the greenhorn stumble to a table and bend to fumble with a lantern.
“Close the door, would you?”
The Sicilian was framed in the entrance, and he did not appear happy. Nate, at a loss to know why, gripped the latch. “You heard the man,” he said, shutting the door almost in the giant’s face. Ashworth stepped to his cot, leaned down, and pulled his matched set of costly leather carrying cases out from under it. Patting them, he asked, “Do you know what’s in here?”
It was a mystery to Nate. He’d seen how Ashworth fawned over them and concluded they must contain Ashworth’s stock of Scotch. “No,” he responded.
Placing a finger to his lips, Ashworth said, “Shhh!” Then he snickered. “It’s a secret. Promise me that you won’t tell anyone.”
“You have my word,” Nate said, hoping the New Yorker wasn’t about to down a lot of Scotch on top of the rotgut he’d already consumed. The man would be sick for a month.
Ashworth fiddled with the clasp. Either his finger had changed to lead or the button was a lot harder to work than it ever had been. As last he got it open and flipped the flap back to expose his secret. “See this?”
Nate had to move closer. Where he thought there would be bottles of Scotch, he saw hundreds of dollars in coin and scrip. “Planning to start your own bank?” he joked.
“It’s all I have left in the world, all that remains of my initial capital,” Ashworth confided. “Six hundred eighty-seven dollars out of fifteen thousand. But if all goes well, in two years I’ll return to the States with over one hundred fifty thousand dollars’ worth of beaver pelts. Even allowing for the money I must repay the Brothers, plus interest, I’ll have more than enough to continue living in the style to which I have grown accustomed.” Finally, Nate had a clue to as to who the Brothers were. They had backed Ashworth’s venture. But right away he saw a major flaw in their enterprise, and he was about to reveal it when Ashworth nudged him.
“I brought you in here, King, because I value your advice. How much should I pay for the woman? A hundred dollars? Two hundred?”
“Ten should be enough.”
Ashworth arched a brow. “That’s all? But I thought the more I pay, the better.”
“She wants you, hoss, not your money. And you heard Harvey. He’s not looking to fleece you. Ten dollars will make him as happy as a lark.”
Ashworth counted out the right amount, then closed the case. “Now remember. This is our little secret.” Draping an arm over the mountain man’s broad shoulders, he steered Nate to the door. “I can’t thank you enough for having my best interests at heart, and I want you to know that I’ll never forget it.”
Not quite sure what the man meant, Nate smiled and said, “Any time.” In his experience, it was better to humor those who were liquor-soaked. As they stepped from the small room, the greenhorn clapped him on the back.
“Just think, my friend! We stand on the threshold of prosperity! Nothing can obstruct us now! Absolutely nothing.”
Nate could envision a few thousand obstructions, every one of them painted for war and thirsting for white blood. So far, their luck had held. But for how much longer? Time would tell.