Read The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare for Free Online Page A

but dangerous.
    “Where’s the Stinking Water?”
    “Well, hoss, ain’t so far. Over that divide to the north, and down the Big Horn.”
    The country to the north was flat sagebrush plain, dry, hot, and hellish in August. Beyond it high peaks rose, some with eternal snow.
    “How many sleeps?” Tal meant to be careful where he stepped.
    “Not so many, lad. She’ll know. Iron Kettle will know. Not so many.”
    Tal made a skeptical face. On second thought, it would be nuts to strike out alone. As Hairy was nuts, generally.
    Besides…
    “Naw, Hairy, I can’t.” He shook his head decisively. “I got to go to rendezvous. I got to find out…”
    Shouts. Guns firing.
    Somewhere ahead.
    Tal pulled Rosie out and spotted Cap’n Fitz at the head of the column. Cap’n was holding up an arm, but taking no action.
    Tal looked to his priming. He waited—and waiting hurt.
    In two or three minutes men came sliding on horseback down the sand hills toward the brigade. They were whooping and shooting in the air. White men. Friends.
    Quickly the word came back. Frapp’s brigade was just ahead. Rendezvous had come to them.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    bewitched with the rogue’s company
    — Henry IV, Part 1 , II. ii
    The partners, Fitzpatrick and Frapp, sat long and traded news. Fitz told why he had to go to Santa Fe and so was late. Frapp told about the difficult spring trapping season, about how he and Gabe and Milton and Gervais had struggled, about everyone waiting for Fitz to show up at rendezvous, and about hiring a medicine man to tell the partners where Fitz was.
    Tom Fitzpatrick, Henry Fraeb (pronounced Frapp), Gabe Bridger, Milton Sublette, and Jean Gervais were the partners of Rocky Mountain Fur Company, which had bought out ’Diah Smith’s outfit.
    Before long it was all over camp how Fitz was mad at the way his partners had squandered company money to find Fitzpatrick.
    “You hired a what?” Fitz spat.
    “A Crow man great of medicine,” answered Frapp. Frapp was a German, and sometimes his English was twisted. “When you ware late, ve vas werry vorried. ’Fraid maybe you ware gone under.”
    “How many company horses did you pay for this nonsense?” Fitz himself was an unbeliever. It was his opinion and observation that those who subscribed to the Christian superstition slipped easily into Indian superstition.
    “Yah, vell, this fellow he conjure much.”
    All the mountain men knew how it worked. The old fellow would screech and dance and mesmerize himself with the beat of the drum until he passed out—that might take days—and then call his fevered dreams a vision. Some of the old hands told the newcomers this story with superior glances. It had worked, hadn’t it? Fitz’s lot had been on the wrong road.
    While the partners made their plans, their men ate, smoked, and gossiped. Tal was excited by these fellows, these authentic men of the Shining Mountains in a fire-hardened brigade of several dozen, complete with Indian wives and children. Some of them looked half Indian themselves, dressed in breechcloths and leggings, shod in mocassins, their hair down past their shoulders. A tough lot, Tal thought, seasoned men of sanguine disposition, worthy to be among:
    Scots, what hae wi’ Wallace bled,
    Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
    Welcome to your gory bed,
    Or to victorie.
    Tal looked forward to hearing these men tell of titanic battles with Indians, of fierce struggles against the elements, of miracles and miseries, of comrades lost and saved. He longed to be one of these comrades himself, and felt pride in anticipation.
    Over pemmican and coffee Louie announced the partners’ plan. There would be no rendezvous this year—it was too late. Frapp would turn back to the mountains with the supplies Cap’n Fitzpatrick had brought and distribute them as other brigades were encountered. Fitz would head to St. Louis now with last year’s peltries, sell them, and return to supply next year’s rendezvous.
    Some of