chest was a two-legged Indian in smoked buckskin who slowly emerged from the brush in a crouch, then sank to his knee.
Now his heart began hammering so loudly, he was certain the Indian could hear it. Starting to sweat in the cold of those shadows, Titus found himself every bit as scared as he was mad that his gunshot had drawn the redskin to the clearing.
This way, then that, the Indian’s own dark, black-bead eyes searched the timber enclosing the clearing, before he inched forward a bit more, easing toward the deer. Kneeling over the gutted animal, the Indian put a bare hand down into the gut cavity.
He’s feeling how warm it is. How long ago I kill’t it.
All the while the Indian’s eyes kept moving across the glade, watchful and attentive. From the looks of the warrior, Titus figured the man could be anywhere between his age and his father’s. Hell, he thought—he never had been very good at guessing such things as a person’s age.
Swallowing hard, he suddenly realized this was the first real Indian he had laid eyes on. Not that he hadn’t seen some come wandering into the settlements back in Boone County. The sort what had taken to white man’s clothes and even wore hats. But never had he seen a red-skin like this: complete in fringed buckskins, with a deer- skin vest tied with thongs, the lower part of his leggings lashed tightly around his ankles and calves with long whangs.
Titus glanced down at his own smooth britches, figuring fringe would only snag in the thick underbrush. Nodding to himself, he decided that tying them up that way made for easier, quieter hunting too, as the Indian moved through the thick timber.
Quietly settling on the far side of the doe, the Indian laid his bow across his thighs, then dragged a big knife from the scabbard at his waist. Beginning at the long opening Titus had made from neck to anus, the Indian started working to free the green hide from the carcass on either side of the rib cage.
Why, this son of a bitch was fixing to take his meat! That damned hide didn’t matter—but it was the meat the others were expecting him to show up with at camp shortly!
A goddamned red thief! All that grandpap told me ’bout Injuns is true—thievin’ sonsabitches!
Now his temples pounded more from anger than from fear. That was his meat.
Mine—what’s ’bout to get stole from me!
Clenching his teeth was the only thing that kept him from hollering out right then and there—to tell that Indian the doe was his. Instead, Titus struggled to fight down that impulse, his mind racing to sort out what to do with a problem he had never before confronted. A man could figure out an answer to everything, he reminded himself. If he just had enough time, and thought on it hard enough. It wasn’t like he was the smartest fella in school back there in Rabbit Hash. Not the quickest, but he could learn, once he put his mind to it. And this couldn’t be any different, he told himself.
Just maybe he could show himself and somehow work it so the Injun and he could split up the doe. At least he’d have half the meat that way … and a damned good story to tell the others when he finally showed up downriver a ways.
Yet just about the time he was convincing himself of the wisdom he would show by negotiating half the doe with the Indian and was finally ready to show himself, Bass snapped to a sudden stillness.
A chirping whistle floated from the nearby woods.
That’s a Injun. Damn, if there ain’t another’un out there.
As he crouched lower in his stand of brush, frozen and wide-eyed, Titus watched the would-be thief stop and listen, then eventually put a hand to his mouth, answering in the same chirping birdcall. Another whistle came from the forest, this time from a different direction than the first. This second call, too, was answered by the meat thief.
It was with the keenest curiosity that Titus stared at the four warriors who emerged from the woods to join the first. One of them carried what appeared to be an old smoothbore musket. For a few moments all five appeared to share some words, yet their talk was so quiet, he could hear nothing of it. From the far timber came another chirp, which one of the newcomers answered. They all turned to gaze toward the north.
Like them, Titus watched that fringe of the timber, when his wonder turned to nothing but cold, dry fear in his belly. Swallowing hard around the lump swelling in his throat, he counted six more of them emerging from the shadows—four carrying short bows, and another two with guns, what appeared to be a pair of old French fusils. Half of them already dragged some haunches of meat and green hides they had rolled up, all of it placed on improvised sleds they had constructed from saplings cut down and lashed together with ivy and grapevine. It would be easy enough to pull those sleds over the brush and what little icy snow slicked the ground.
They all came to the doe, talking a little louder now that there were so many to discuss what had been found by one of their number. Still, he could not make out much of the words at all, only fragments of sounds that meant nothing to him in the least. Except to realize that these were red men. Hunters and warriors. The sort his grandpap had fought back in the Shawnee War and two years later in the Cherokee War. These were the sort of Indian the white settlers were driving right up against the Mississippi, he figured. Not the sort of Indian to take kindly to a solitary white hunter caught alone and far from his own.
The breeze tousled their hair, some of which was left long. For others the hairstyle of choice was a roach greased so that it stood straight up from the forehead to taunt any would-be enemy into taking that war trophy. Yet none of them wore any paint. From his grandpap and the old men, Titus had heard so much about the hideous paint—looking now to study each of the faces of the eleven who continued to argue something with growing urgency.
One of them pointed—south. An older man wagged his head emphatically, pointing off in another direction. Back to the north.
A third stepped forward, gestured to the doe, then gestured to the south with his bow. Several of the group grunted their agreement with whatever he had declared, for they nodded as they inched up to stand behind him.
Honest-to-goodness Injun warriors! It sent a new shiver down his spine.
A heartbeat later it began to sink in. They were discussing him! Talking over who must have killed the doe. They had to realize the hunter was somewhere close—simply because the carcass was still warm when found. They had to figure the hunter couldn’t have got very far before the deer was discovered.
He wasn’t sure he breathed at all, afraid even to do that right then in his hiding place. With growing certainty Titus feared these warriors were sure to hear his heart hammering against his ribs if it continued to get any louder—what with the way the blood rushed up his neck cords and roared in his ears, thundering in his temples.
Some of them crouched to study the ground around the gut-pile and the carcass, then peered off into the forest, talking to one another, gesturing. There wasn’t any one thing he could put his finger on to tell him that they knew of him—maybe just the way they turned their heads to regard the woods around them, the way their voices got quiet, the way the eight of them strung their bows and the other three slowly brought up their long-barreled guns, those huge muzzles swinging out toward the timber surrounding the small glade like wide black eyes.
He could not remember ever finding himself on this end of a gun before—staring down the barrel of a weapon that might well be used against him.
With that moment came clarity of thought, the sharp-honed realization they were bound to discover him once they spread out and crossed those few rods between them and where he crouched in hiding, his legs beginning to cramp in pain. He had to act.
Simple, untarred fear was what compelled him to move at last. Nothing as complicated as the consideration of his options. To his uncluttered mind in this, his first confrontation with real Indians, Titus decided he had no options. It was run or die.
As he exploded from the brushy undergrowth, heading back toward the river at a sharp angle to the southwest, Titus heard them shout to one another behind him. Surprised, confused for the moment—perhaps even afraid there might be more than one. How he hoped their fear might delay them, if only for a moment or so to contemplate what they should do, how many they might be facing down, if there might be more enemies lying in wait for them to make a mistake. Oh, how he wanted them to be seized with some of the uncertainty, nay—the outright fear—that drove his cramped legs into frantic motion.
Leaping, dodging, sprinting, making for the far-off riverbank still at least a mile away. How far down the
