“Shunar!”
A hush descended upon the spectators like a blanket.
The voyageur hung limp as a length of buffalo gut at the end of the huge tormentor’s arm, as if no more than a clump of oiled canvas swaying in the hot afternoon breeze. Slowly, the Frenchman turned from the victim he had imprisoned at the end of his left arm to stare narrow-eyed at the one who had cried out his name.
Amid the sudden silence, Isaac Simms leaned in and whispered to Bass, “That’s Drips—company booshway!”
Still this giant named Chouinard did not release his fourth victim.
“Let ’im go, Shunar!” Drips demanded as he stepped within six feet of the giant, his hand resting on the butt of his belt pistol.
It was as if the entire crowd of hundreds, white and red alike, waited to draw a breath—watching this small, spare man dare to stop within easy reach of the monster.
Slowly considering the command, Chouinard gazed at his prisoner for a long moment, then flung the voyageur to the ground with an audible snap of bone.
“Goddamn you!” Andrew Drips shrieked as he went to one knee beside the crumpled victim.
Immediately the giant took a step to loom over Drips. The company leader jerked his head up to glare at the giant and yanked that pistol from his belt—holding it out at the end of his arm, the hammer coming back to full cock with one swift motion.
“I’ll kill you,” Drips said with studied coolness. “You big pigheaded Frenchman, don’t you doubt that I will shoot you between your goddamned eyes where you stand.”
“Maybe I grab your gun first,” Chouinard growled in reply, “keel you before you can pop your leetle gun.”
The pistol held steadily on its target as Drips slowly rose to his feet, never taking his eyes off the giant, nor the muzzle of that pistol from that spot between the giant’s slitted eyes.
“I’ll let you have this chance, you parley-voo bastard,” Jim Bridger said as he stepped from the edge of the crowd with his pistol drawn, flanked by the huge, bear-chested Meek and the smaller tow-headed Carson. “You so much as move torst Drips—I’ll drop you.”
“Lookee here,” Meek said on the far side of Bridger, wagging the end of his short-barreled smoothbore. “This here’s what I call a camp clearer, you son of a bitch. Loaded with a good handful of drop shot. I touch this’r trigger and it’ll cut you in half.”
“That’s right,” Carson added, his blue eyes flashing with menace. “Then the whole crowd gonna see you piss on yourself while you breathe your last.”
Drips slowly lowered his pistol, eventually stuffing it into his belt again as he said, “I figure Shunar here can see the deck’s stacked again’ him, don’t you, Frenchman?”
The giant smiled wickedly as his dark eyes glowered at Bridger, Meek, and Carson. “Amereecans. Like buffalo dung—you Amereecans are everywhere.”
“I oughtta shoot a gut-load of drop shot in you just for that!” Meek snapped.
“There’ll be no more blood here today!” Bridger ordered.
“Jim’s right!” Drips said as he knelt again beside that fourth victim. “Damn you anyway, Shunar. You better pray these men of mine recover enough to ride out of here for the fall hunt.”
“I have some fun—”
Shooting to his feet, Drips stood all but toe to toe with the giant, staring up at the huge man who stood more than a head taller, interrupting the Frenchman with a fist he shook beneath Chouinard’s chin. “And I’ll kill you if it happens again! I might kill you yet—goddamn you! Costing me four men. Even you aren’t worth four goddamned men!”
Drips lowered his fist, spun on his heel, and furiously spat, “You go costing me my men—I’ll put you down my own self!”
“If you want some help, Drips,” Meek growled, “I’ll be glad to kill him for free.”
Chouinard immediately raised his two fists like mauls and took a step toward Meek, but Carson and Bridger lunged forward a step at the same moment Drips whirled on the giant.
“I’ll give you a five count for you to get out of my sight, Shunar,” the booshway ordered.
“Ahh, but I come here to dance and drink some with—”
“There’ll be no dancing for you here today,” Bridger warned. “This here’s my wedding, and you ain’t welcome round here no more. Go back to your camp and make your own fun there.”
A childlike look crossed the monster’s face, something hurt, wounded. “Shunar no dance? No sing and drink?”
“You heard the booshway!” the bandy-legged Carson snarled, glaring up crane-necked at the giant who stood more than a foot taller than he. “Get outta here, Frenchie!”
For a moment more his breath heaved in his ironmonger’s barrel of a chest; then Chouinard hurled himself around and flung his way through the crowd, knocking men aside if they weren’t quick enough to leap out of his way.
“Damned good thing he’s gone,” Bridger sighed, relief in his voice.
Dragging a hand through his shoulder-length light-brown hair, the thirty-year-old Carson glanced at Meek and the others who stood close at hand, then glared at Chouinard’s back as the giant disappeared through the crowd. “That there’s a killing just waitin’ to happen.”
* Carry the Wind
10
“Where is that black-hearted sonuvabitch!” Carson roared.
Bass jerked around there in the shade of that awning strung over the trading blankets where he was consumed that morning with selecting between bolts of the fine woolen tradecloth or some of the coarser ginghams and calicos. Red-faced and slit-eyed, the diminutive Carson suddenly appeared, on the verge of exploding, as Meek, Newell, and others leaped to their feet, surrounding Kit.
“Who you looking for?” Tom Fitzpatrick demanded as he stepped around a plank counter toward Carson.
Shaking with anger, Kit growled, “The Frenchman! Shunar!”
“We got rid of him yestiddy, Kit,” Meek declared soothingly.
“Run him off,” Carson concurred. “But—he went and made trouble for hisself in the ’Rapaho camp.”
“’Rapahos?” Newell repeated. “Where you been sparking that purty squaw?”
A dark cloud immediately shadowed the short man’s countenance. “When Shunar left here, the bastard went down by the crik, close by the ’Rapaho camp. He laid a’wait there for dark to come, watching for Grass Singing.”
“She the squaw you had your eye on?” Meek asked.
“He figgered to catch her in the brush,” Carson declared, then went on to explain the rest of the story.
After breakfast that morning he had decided it was about time for him to take himself a wife, just like booshway Bridger had done the day before. After all, Kit reasoned, he had been in the mountains four years already, and a man could do with a good helpmate. So he had taken account of all that he possessed and what credit he could wrangle out of the company clerks, then packed it all aboard two ponies he led over to the Arapaho village.
“She had to know I’d be coming,” Carson told them. “I could see it in her eyes ever since them ’Raps come into ronnyvoo. The gal knowed I had my eye on her too. Already I been over to smoke twice’t with her pa.”
“But you don’t speak no ’Rapaho!” Meek hollered.
“Don’t have to,” Carson shut him off. “Plain as sign to the ol’ man I was there for his daughter. After coming two times, he sure as hell figgered I’d be back with my presents, be back to buy her for my wife.”
But when Kit had shown up at the lodge with his gifts earlier that morning, the girl’s father spurned Carson’s offering, angrily signing enough of the story to explain why he and his daughter wanted nothing more to do with white men. The old warrior made it plain enough as he held two fingers projecting from his lips to signify the forked tongue of the pale-skinned trappers, then ordered Carson to leave just before he began to sing a war song to his bow and quiver of arrows.