The surrounding hills were covered with thick growths of pine, hemlock, silver fir, birch, maple, and cedars. To the north, he could see the endless horizon of the great lake. He had never felt comfortable in these far northern lands. Born in the warm hickory woodlands of the south, he’d never adjusted to the chill that stalked the blue shadows beneath the conifers and birch. He could sense it, waiting, knowing that the days need but shorten before it would creep out and smother the trees, soil, and stone.
Trader swiped at the cloud of mosquitoes humming around his head. He was handsome, with a finely formed face, strong jaw, and high forehead. Not particularly tall, he was wide shouldered and well muscled from years of plying a paddle against the current. His face bore only outlines of tattoos, as if they had been interrupted before being finished. His eyes were surrounded by forked-eye designs; and a bar ran from ear to ear high across his cheeks and over his broad nose. When he laughed, his teeth were white and straight, his lips mobile and full. Women smiled when they met his gaze, a quickening sparkle in their eyes.
He turned his attention to the depths of the hole. An oversize wolf might have worried such a lair out of the earth’s bones. The walls were irregular where stones and soil had been pried away. Trader shuffled his feet on the broken rock and squatted, a stone maul in one hand, a hardwood stake in the other. Bending, he picked a crack in the greenish stone and began driving the ash-wood stake into it.
“You work like a beaver,” an accented voice called from above. The man spoke in the pidgin common to the rivers, a mixture of Mos’kogee, Siouan, and Algonquin tongues that had adapted itself to the Trade over the generations. Like Trade itself, “Trade Tongue” was sacred. Those who spoke it did so with a sense of respect and awe. It was said that the gods listened in. Rumor had it that nowadays even some chieftains spoke in Trade Tongue when finalizing the most solemn of agreements, wanting the imprimatur of its Power.
Others insisted it was yet another trick that rulers had taken to, one they used when intent on fully duping their subjects.
Trader didn’t look up from his labor as he hammered the splintering stake into a widening gap in the rock. “I paid you a great deal to come and sweat myself to death in your hole. Don’t distract me. I want to enjoy every moment of my suffering.”
Trader didn’t look up as Snow Otter laughed, then said, “In a very short time you’re going to be wet to the bone. Rain’s coming. I can smell it.”
“So can I, but you don’t have to stay here. Go keep dry and warm. I’ll be down to the village by nightfall.” Trader glanced up, seeing Snow Otter where he crouched at the edge of the excavation. The man was fingering a white shell gorget that hung from a string around his neck. Yes, paid well, indeed. The southern chiefs would have killed him on the spot if they’d known he’d Trade a sacred artifact like that to a northern barbarian. The concave surface of the gorget bore an image of the three-tiered cosmos with a spiraled pole rising from the sacred fire cross in the center. The Four Winds were depicted by woodpecker heads on each side. The Mos’kogee believed the image to have Power. Not the sort of thing to be bartered off to a nonbeliever like Snow Otter.
Trader smiled at the depths to which he had fallen. Who would have thought?
“I have copper,” Snow Otter insisted. “Lots of it. Enough that you don’t have to labor like some southern war slave. Come away from here. Let’s go down to the village. My wife’s roasted whitefish wrapped in goosefoot leaves. She’ll lay it on a steaming bed of wild rice. I’ve got some of that raspberry drink left.”
“I thought you said we drank the last of it last night.”
A pause. “I might have miscounted the pots in my cache.”
“Just like you’d miscount those pieces of copper you want to Trade me.”
“You wrong me!”
“A man who knows you as well as I do would never wrong you by making a simple statement of the truth.” Trader reached for another wooden stake and glanced up at Snow Otter. The man looked as if he’d just suffered a terrible affront. “Oh, stop that. How many years have I been making the trip up here?”
“Five, perhaps six.”
“Yes, my friend, and in that time I have come to know you inside and out. You’ll do anything to come out ahead. I think you’d sell your souls if it meant gaining an advantage.”
“And you wouldn’t?”
If you only knew how foolish I’ve been. Trader chuckled, hearing the satisfying smack as he used the stone-headed maul to drive the stake into the crack, widening it further. “I just Trade to Trade.”