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is going to mean there'll be work for you when you
get back to the settlements, you may find yourself left standing.'
    Later
January had learned that Shaw, too, had been approached - 'Only, he offered me
a fifty-dollar bonus if I'd bring some skins with me when I come. An' he sort
of implied that he took my refusin' in bad part.'
    Bad
part or not, Titus was all smiles today. Possibly - January learned later -
because he'd just hired the small trader Pete Sharpless's clerk away from him,
leaving the Missourian to do all his camp-work himself. Titus complimented
Hannibal on his marriage, said he much looked forward to hearing the two musicians
play at the banquet in Bridger's honor that evening (just as if Jim 'Gabe'
Bridger, now a Company employee, had not come very close to being scalped by
Indian allies of the AFC while he was still leading brigades for the
now-defunct Rocky Mountain outfit), and invited Gil Wallach and Abishag Shaw to
the festivities as well.
    'He
planning to poison you?' asked Hannibal interestedly, when the Controller had
taken his leave, and Wallach laughed.
    'He'd
do it if he could figure out a way not to kill half his allies in the process,'
the little ex-trapper said. 'No, I rode with Old Gabe in '32, up in the
Beaverhead Mountains. I'm guessing he's asked all his old compadres to this
fandango tonight. And I'm guessing, too, Titus invited every trader in the camp,
up to and includin' John McLeod of Hudson's Bay - though it'll choke him on
Captain Stewart's foie gras, to look down on us all sittin' there drinkin' his
liquor.' And he grinned to himself at the thought as he got to his feet and
headed up the path to open the store.
    'Be
that all as it may,' remarked Shaw quietly, uncoiling his tall height to
follow, 'it'll give us a chance to look over the camp an' see who it couldn't be.'

'It
would help,' said January that evening as they set out on foot down the
trampled pathway toward the AFC camp, 'if your brother were just a little more
observant - or if Boden had something convenient like a deformed ear or a
broken nose or a mole on his chin. Or one blue eye and one brown eye, like the
villains in novels. Because medium height,
medium build, brown hair and beard, brown eyes, straight nose could be a description of
Hannibal ten years ago. Or Jim Bridger. Or the pilot of the steamboat we took
up the Missouri - how old is Boden?'
    "Bout
thirty-five. Tom's age. Old for the mountains.'
    Killin' bad, Johnny had told his brother. But
having seen, in the past three days, what the camp considered not much worth
bothering about - including Blezy Picard accidentally murdering Ty Farrell, Jed
and Blezy attempting to rape an Indian girl, and three of the Mexican trader
Byron de la Vega's engages driving a grizzly bear from the woods through the
Hudson's Bay camp for a joke - January guessed that whatever it was, it
involved more than just shooting someone from behind a tree.
    And
in fact, no man in the camp would be discomposed by being shot at from behind a
tree, anyway. Earlier that afternoon, one of Robbie Prideaux's friends had shot
his hat off just to see him jump, which he hadn't.
    'I'm
guessin',' went on Shaw after a time, 'that Boden's either passin' as a trader
hisself, or clerkin' for the Company or for McLeod of Hudson's Bay - dependin'
on what him an' this Hepplewhite between 'em had planned. Hepplewhite sounds good an' British anyhow . . . but so does Shaw. An' for all what Tom says about shootin' him dead first chance I get, I can't
turn my back on it, that he's got at least one partner in this an' maybe more.
Maybe lots more.' He spoke softly, though behind them, Wallach and Hannibal
were joking in French with Morning Star and her sisters, Sioux girls tall and
slim as willow trees with feathers braided in their straight, midnight hair.
    'Tom
give me a page of Boden's handwritin'. Beyond that, if'fn you come up with any
good way of tellin' for sure who it is, Maestro, I surely hope you'll share