And before he realized it, he was sprinting again.
Heman Ovatt was already on the flatboat, lunging from the awning to the gunnel, something in his hands. There he threw the long object to Kingsbury, a second to Root. While Ovatt turned back to that awning of oiled Russian sheeting, Titus knew those had to be longrifles, muskets, smoothbores, fusils—firearms! As Ovatt reappeared at the gunnel with two more, Titus watched Kingsbury and Root scurry in his direction, where they dropped to their knees and brought their weapons to their shoulders.
Zane swung about with a rifle in his own hands, bringing it to his shoulder as Ovatt leaped over the side of the boat. The steersman hollered something. Titus wasn’t sure what he said. The words sounded garbled at first.
“Hold your fire, boys!”
Then he understood, as Kingsbury rose from his knee, his rifle still at his cheek.
“C’mon, Titus Bass! C’mon—you can make it!”
Hames strode toward Bass confidently, the muzzle of his weapon pointing at whatever might be pressing down on Titus from behind.
“Get on in here, Titus!”
He lunged past Kingsbury as Root got up from his knee and began to move backward, a step at a time. Ovatt and Zane were there to catch Bass as he stumbled against them.
“Get him on board!” the pilot ordered Heman.
Ovatt turned, clutching Bass as they careened down the riverbank past the big, warming fire they had built. How he wanted to stop, to rest, to feel the fire’s warmth. He found himself stumbling.
“Get up!” Ovatt hollered.
Zane became frantic, shouting, “Get yourself in the boat!”
He did as he was told, scrambling over the gunnel as the first shot rang out.
Yet it wasn’t fired by any of the four boatmen. The shot had come from the brush, where he glanced to see a whiff of smoke, saw glimpses of the Indians converging, then moving apart at the edge of the timber.
“Ease back to the waterline, boys,” Zane ordered his crew. “Hold ’em so they don’t break on us.”
The three of them continued to back slowly, slowly toward the flatboat, training their rifles on the timber, holding the Indians at bay. Bass stuffed a hand down into his shooting pouch, dragging out at least a dozen round lead balls he then popped into his mouth.
“Heman—you got them hawsers?”
Ovatt turned from the last of two lines securing the flatboat for the night. “Done, Ebenezer. I’m getting on up so I can pole us off soon as the rest of you’re here.” Heman leaped against the side of the flatboat and kicked a leg over the gunnel, rolling himself aboard.
Pulling the plug from his powder horn, Titus spilled more of the coarse black grains onto the deck than he got into his palm. Trembling more now with the exquisite excitement of their predicament than with anything resembling fear, he turned that quaking hand over the muzzle and poured the powder down the long barrel. One of the lead balls he popped from his lips and dropped down the muzzle without a patch.
Without taking his eyes off the enemy still clinging to the shadows, Zane said, “You get on up first, Reuben!”
They were less than five yards from the boat now—just about the time the Indians were making a clear, stand-up show of themselves at the edge of the timber. Yelling, screeching, pounding their chests and taunting the boatmen, a few even pulled aside their breechclouts and exposed their manhood at the whites from the river.
As Root turned his back on the Indians and raised his arms to clamber over the gunnel, Bass and Ovatt both reached down to help him get on board.
Titus asked, “What’s that mean, them showing us their … their privates that way?”
“Just their way of telling you they think you ain’t much of a man like them,” Root grumbled as he turned and crouched atop a pair of large oak casks, pointing his rifle at the edge of the timber.
“You next, Hames!” Ebenezer ordered, only his eyes moving back and forth as the two of them backed right to the water’s edge. He eased back a few more steps, the water lapping at his knees before he came to a stop.
“We can both climb on at once’t, Ebenezer!” Kingsbury protested.
“No!” he growled. “That’d take two guns off them red devils at once’t. Get!”
His lips pursed in resignation, Kingsbury turned and splashed out to the flatboat as it drifted lazily away from its moorings. He slogged through water midway up his thighs before he could toss his rifle up to Ovatt, then held up his arms for help.
Bass did his best to sprinkle a dusting of priming powder down into the pan while he kept his eyes darting across the crescent of Indians pointing muskets and arrows at the boat and its white men.
Kingsbury shrieked, “C’mon, Ebenezer!”
“You all got your guns ready?” Zane asked, cocking his head slightly so he could snatch a quick glance at the flatboat.
“Gotta come now, Ebenezer!” Kingsbury shouted. “We’re loose and drifting off!”
Bass’s heart leaped into his throat as he felt the river jostle the boat to the side as they inched out into the channel where the Mississippi’s pull became increasingly stronger. They were easing away from the pilot.
“Zane!” Root cried.
Ebenezer waited no longer. Suddenly wheeling, the steersman lunged around into the water, struggling as the river bottom sank deeper, desperate to reach the side of the flatboat before it drifted out of reach.
“I’ll get the rudder an’ work us back to shore!” Kingsbury shouted, starting for the stern.
“No, goddammit!” Zane bellowed, the water up to his waist as he fought his way into deeper and deeper water. “Keep your gun on them!”
The first bullet smacked into the gunnel, just past the pilot’s head. Titus snapped up, wrenched from watching Zane’s struggle to find the Indians emerging onto the open beach where the white men had tied up for the night. The arrows began to arc silently into the twilight. Making no noise until they struck the thick yellow timbers, snapping at times like dried cane stalks underfoot in the ripe, moist bottomland every winter. A few sailed down through the oiled awning with a brief hiss as they ripped through the heavy fabric.
“Listen to ’em, will you?” Kingsbury called out. “That’s a Chickasaw war whoop if ’n I ever heard one!”
“Shuddup and shoot, goddammit!” Ebenezer called out.
As Titus pulled the hammer back to full cock, he watched Root reach down and snatch the rifle from Zane, who now stood up to his armpits in the river. Bass whirled away as the boat twisted slightly, starting to come broad-side against the current, throwing the blade down into that back buckhorn sight—not knowing where the hell to hold on those tall figures. Sure as anything, he knew game: where to hold his sights on a turkey or squirrel, deer or even a black bear. But … those were men! Red bastards to be sure, just what Zane had called them. And they would’ve likely killed him and raised his hair if he hadn’t run so fast, what with being so damned scared. Shooting a man?
He held squarely on the middle of one of the bodies—an Indian who stood reloading his rifle. And Titus squeezed, clenching both eyes shut.
When he dared open them in the echo of the gun’s blast, he watched the Indian spin like a string top, his rifle cartwheeling out of his grip. Ducking down on one knee to reload, he saw from the corner of his eye Zane kick one leg onto the top of the gunnel. Then heard the pilot grunt.
More and more arrows slapped the surface of the water, thwacked into the side of the boat with a hollow, leaden sound.
“Jesus God, Ebenezer!” Ovatt cried.
“He done caught one!” Root said, desperation in his voice.
“Get us the hell out of here!” Zane snapped as they dragged him over the gunnel and onto some crates. “Hear me, Kingsbury! Get to that rudder!”
All at once the men seemed to explode in different directions, every one of them hollering as the Indians came on down the sandy bank to the water’s edge, shooting their old muskets and loosing their arrows, screeching and crying out in frustrated disappointment.
“Goddamned Chickasaws,” Zane growled as he rolled onto his belly.
That’s when Titus glanced away to the beach—then immediately looked back at the pilot, his mind suddenly
