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moment there was silence. Then the air erupted and the crowd surged forward, closing in on the old breed, the women babbling excitedly, the men pumping his hands and slapping him on the back. Our presence was forgotten. A half-full whiskey bottle was produced from some hoarder’s lodge and, after it had been admired for awhile, was presented to the victor with a flourish. He seized it in a bloodied right hand and tipped it up, letting the contents gurgle down his throat without seeming to swallow. Two more tilts and he slung the empty vessel away over his shoulder. It bounced once in the grass and rolled after the retreating form of the vanquished breed as if pursuing him. Everyone seemed to find that amusing. Everyone, that is, except the old man, who caught the eye of a dark-skinned young woman standing on the edge of the crowd and jerked his head toward the injured man. She nodded and moved off to follow him. The old man’s will, it appeared, was law—rare among Indians, where a leader usually led by example only and would not presume to issue anything so harsh as an order.
    â€œHey, Pere Jac!” called Hudspeth, dismounting.
    â€œA.C.!” The aged métis squinted through the gathering gloom. “A.C., is that you?”
    â€œWho the hell else would waste a bullet on your worthless hide?” He started leading his buckskin in that direction. I stepped down to follow.
    Pere Jac barked something in French to the man nearest him, who took the reins from Hudspeth and those of my bay and led them toward camp.
    â€œThey will be fed and rubbed down well,” the old man explained.
    He had a French accent you couldn’t suck through a straw. “How are you, A.C.? That was respectable shooting.” He seized the marshal’s outstretched hand and shook it every bit as energetically as his own had been shaken moments before.
    â€œNot as good as it looked,” said the other, wincing as he disengaged his hand from the other’s grasp. “I was trying to put one between his eyes.”
    â€œI am glad that you did not. He is my sister’s only son.” He looked at me curiously. He was almost a foot shorter than I, but built like a warhorse. He had well-shaped features despite the numerous bruises and swellings, and eyes of washed-out blue in contrast to the mahogany hue of hisskin. His jaw was fine, almost delicate, his face shot through with tiny creases and wrinkles, as if it had been crumpled into a tight ball and then smoothed out again. His gray hair, dark with sweat, hung in lank strands to his shoulders. Perspiration glistened on his skin in the firelight and trickled down the cleft that divided his chest into twin slabs of lean meat. Yet he was not the least bit winded.
    Hudspeth introduced us and we shook hands. His grip wasn’t much, if you were used to sticking your hand inside a corn-sheller and turning the handle.
    â€œPage Murdock,” he said, with unfeigned interest. “You are the man who brought Bear Anderson out of the Bitterroot Mountains last winter, one step ahead of the Flat-heads.”
    I said that I was. I could see that those were the words someone was going to carve on my tombstone.
    â€œAnd yet you do not look like a foolish man,” he observed.
    I grinned. “Pere Jac,” I said, “you and I are going to get along.”
    â€œMy name is Jacques St. Jean. Marshal Hudspeth and these others insist upon calling me Pere Jac because for a brief period in my foolish youth I sought the clergy. The clergy, alas, did not share my enthusiasm. Now I content myself with reciting the Scriptures and instructing my people in the ways of the Lord.”
    â€œThat was some Bible-reading we caught just now,” said Hudspeth dryly.
    â€œMan is an imperfect animal, full of hostility and sin. He must be given the opportunity to cleanse himself of both from time to time if he is ever to pass through Purgatory.”
    â€œYou do this