tried a sucker’s move: an attempt to kick Will’s knife from his hand. Will hacked downward with his blade, opening a gash on One Dog’s forestep that showed bone through the blood.
One Dog’s kick had been a ruse. His blade slashed a six-inch groove across Will’s throat, barely opening the skin. But another couple of inches and the fight would have been over.
They circled again, this time a tad more cautiously, bent slightly forward at the waist, on the balls of their feet, ready to move in any direction, their knives in front of them chest high, extended a couple feet from their bodies.
One Dog’s eyes swung for the briefest part of a second to his audience and Will took that fraction of a moment to attack with a direct thrust at the Indian’s gut. One Dog was both agile and fast—but not fast enough to completely evade Will’s blade. They stepped apart, Dog with a five-inch laceration slightly above his waist, blood flowing copiously onto the scalps on his belt under the wound.
One Dog countered immediately, again aiming at Will’s throat or chest. Their wrists met, and each man exerted all the power he had against his opponent.
Will felt a jarring bolt of raw fear. His wrist was being pushed back toward his body minutely, almost imperceptibly, but it was moving toward him.
Will slipped the wrist contact, dropped into a crouch, avoiding the Indian’s thrust, and delivered a bone- revealing slash to Dog’s calf—the same leg he’d stuck early on in the fight.
They circled again. One Dog feinted low and then impossibly fast brought his knife upward to open a gash across Will’s chest, crushing two ribs with its force. Blood erupted the length of the cut and pain screamed from the fractured ribs.
The impact slammed Will to the ground and he scrambled to get his feet under him, but he was a heartbeat too late. One Dog fell on Will’s chest, one knee pinning his right arm—his knife arm—to the ground.
Now the Indian had all the time he needed to play with Will, to kill him slowly. “First,” he said, “I’ll take your ears.” He brought his knife down so that the edge didn’t quite touch the flesh of Will’s upper ear. “Now, white eyes with your false wampus and your partner and his bombs, you’ll pay for those you’ve killed. I can gather fifty men in a week to replace those you’ve murdered. You’ve accomplished nothing, white eyes.
It was then that a silver-gray juggernaut with a bloody mouth and a piece of rope hanging from around its neck slammed onto One Dog, knocking him off Will. The wolf dog struck first at the jugular, which was revealed for a half second when One Dog was still falling. Gushes of blood spurted but quickly slowed to strong flowing rivulets. But this time, Wampus wasn’t finished. As One Dog fell forward, the wolf dog sank his teeth into the back of the Indian’s neck and snapped his spine. Then he began to saw with his teeth into One Dog’s neck, shaking the body, bearing harder and harder until his trophy was free. He took One Dog’s head from his body, carried it to Will, and dropped it in front of him.
Most of Dog’s troops had run for their horses when the wolf dog appeared. The balance of them now ran after their peers.
“Holy mother of God,” Ray croaked, barely back to consciousness. “Holy mother of God.” He took some deep breaths. “You ever tie that boy again an’ I’ll draw on you, Will Lewis,” he said.
Will stumbled to Ray and cut his hands free. “Gimme a hand with these cuts an’ fetch our horses. I can’t walk worth a damn. We got ranch work to do, pard.”
Wampus lived to be fourteen years old and died quietly, sleeping next to Will’s bed in the ranch house Will and Ray had built. The wolf dog was never much good with cattle—too aggressive—but he followed the men each morning as they saddled up to check on their stock.
Wampus never “turned.”
