Blood-chilling yelps and high, tremulous trilling made the hair bristle on the back of Scratch’s neck. How he wanted to turn and look at the attackers—but dared not, knowing he had to run faster, despite the slippery grass beneath their moccasins. And in those first few seconds the eight got themselves strung out now, some on the left and some on his right.
That solitary horseman ahead of them released his arrow with a wild, demonic shriek. Jack grunted, stumbling the instant it struck him—the arrow slamming into the back of his bony hip. He was still tumbling over and over across the grass as the warrior shot past the trapper on his flying pony.
Watching that shaft sink itself deep, hearing his friend fall with no more than a grunt, seeing the long-legged Hatcher crumple to a stop—it made the gorge rise in Scratch’s throat. He didn’t care to run anymore. Better to turn and fight. But unlike the others, he realized he didn’t have a belt pistol. The damned Arapaho had taken it—that and a good piece of his scalp.
Reaching around to the back of his belt, Titus snagged the tomahawk in his right hand, yanking the handle from the small of his back. As soon as he felt the reassurance of the weapon in his palm, he planted his left foot and rolled off it, pivoting the moment he skidded to a stop. He had the space of three hammering heartbeats before the first horseman closed on him.
The top half of the warrior’s face was painted red from brow to upper cheeks, yellow hailstones splotching the lower half—in front the Blackfoot’s hair was pulled up in a provocative clump tied there above his brow and those dark, menacing eyes. Back from a muscular brown shoulder swung the arm that at this distance looked as thick as a tree trunk. At the end of the arm waved a long stone club coming for the white man on a whistling arc.
Titus ducked at the last moment, feeling the handle graze the top of his skull as it passed, tearing the blue bandanna off.
But it did not matter, because Scratch was already swinging—both arms driving the tomahawk into the front of the rider’s body. Belly, or chest, Titus did not know at that instant. Only that he felt the bladed weapon jar in his death-grip, sensed the hot spray of blood splattering over his hands and wrists, heard the surprised gush of air burst from the enemy as the tomahawk was yanked from Bass’s hands suddenly slick with blood and gore.
Spinning on around, he watched the rider topple from side to side, staring down at the tomahawk buried in his chest—then slowly cartwheel to the right, off his pony.
Scratch’s upper arm cried out for attention. An arrow whispered past, just cutting through the buckskin shirt enough to carry away a track of skin with its flight. Scooping the bandanna up from the ground and stuffing it into his belt, he yanked out the knife with the other hand, watching the mass of horsemen break apart like oil dropped on water, a few moving off for each of the white men.
“Bass!”
Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the blond head, saw Solomon going to his knee beside Hatcher. Beyond them at the edge of the trees two forms flitted behind trees and turned. Fish was waving Titus on as soon as he had Jack rolled over. Scratch saw Hatcher move.
One of the pistols roared in that clearing. Whirling again in a crouch, Titus watched another horseman tumble backward off the rear flanks of his pony, heels over head into the grass.
“Scratch!”
For a moment he couldn’t see any of the rest and wondered where they were. Fish was struggling to hold Jack down as Hatcher thrashed on the ground, fighting Solomon to get his arm back to the arrow in his hip. Then another pistol barked from behind the tree just ahead. The horsemen were closing on them now as Bass reached Fish, throwing his weight against Hatcher as they rolled him onto his side.
“Get the—get the—”
With both hands clutching the arrow’s shaft. Fish brutally snapped it off—a loud and distinct crack in the midst of the war cries and the pony hooves and the shouts of the other white men somewhere in the trees beyond them. Hatcher’s back bowed up in sudden pain, and he thrashed his legs again wildly.
“You alive, Jack?”
In an instant Hatcher became still. His eyes were red, moist with pain as he stared up at Bass, grabbing for the front of Scratch’s shirt. “Eeegod! If this don’t hurt like hell!”
Fish turned from looking at the horsemen bearing down on them and bellowed, “Let’s get him outta here!”
Grabbing for Jack’s right arm, Scratch yanked the pistol from Hatcher’s grip. “Gimme this!”
“Don’t take it from—”
As his thumb raked back the large goosenecked hammer, finding it already at full-cock, Bass began his turn, there on his knees beside the other two. He found the closest, riding low alongside his pony’s neck, a long dark tube held out from his right hand.
Closer, closer he came … then the puff of smoke from the tube. The dull thud of the ball furrowing the earth there between Bass and Hatcher.
Closer still as the Indian realized he had missed, jerked back, sitting up to yank brutally on the single rein, attempting to turn the pony before—
But Bass was already rising, the right arm out straight, elbow locked, sensing when to pull the trigger at the very moment the warrior sat upright, making more of a target.
The ball struck him high in the chest, there below the vee of the collarbone where he wore a brass gorget around his neck, catapulting the warrior off to the left side as his pony continued its turn to the right.
“That was purty!” Hatcher cried out, both arms lunging for Bass—to hold on, to pull himself up. “Gimme my pistol.”
Slapping it back into Jack’s hands, Bass took the knife from his left and slid it into its scabbard just as Fish hollered.
“Scratch!”
Hatcher and Bass both grunted as another horseman pitched off his pony right over them, arms spread wide, flying into the trappers as the pony leaped past. For that fleeting moment Titus thought how bad the Indian stank of dried meat and buffalo grease on his hair. Cold, dried sweat—days old now. Then all three of them were tumbling into Hatcher together: Jack whimpering every time Bass or Fish or the warrior rolled over that broken shaft in his hip.
But Hatcher was still all spidery arms and legs—thrashing and heaving about, attempting to throw off the Indian as Scratch struggled to secure a hold on the warrior’s right arm: the hand that held a large iron knife. One of the biggest Titus had ever seen. With his right hand clutching his own knife, Bass seized hold of the warrior’s hair, right up at the top of his forehead where the horseman had it bound up with a weasel skin.
They rolled off Hatcher as Fish flew in the other direction, both of them wheezing from the strain, the weight, the bare-boned knowing they were locked in something from which only one of them would emerge.
Somewhere behind him Bass heard another gun roar. Not a pistol, but the sure-enough boom of a rifle. He wondered if it was another warrior’s smoothbore musket. They didn’t have rifled weapons—
Suddenly the warrior twisted himself on top of Bass, his left hand shoving Scratch’s head back into the forest floor. Bass felt the pine needles and dirt grind against the ring of flesh surrounding his bare skull, shooting through him with the heat of a dying star, as if his scalp were being torn from him all over again.
With his strength failing in the left arm as he held that big knife away from his face and neck, Bass surprised the warrior by letting go of the weasel-wrapped hair. In that instant the Indian glanced upward to find the white man’s hand—Scratch smashed the knife handle down into the Indian’s forehead. Again into the side of his eye socket … sensing the warrior’s struggle weaken.
Again and again he pounded the hard bone handle into the side of the enemy’s head, splitting open the skin over the eye, across the temple, blood coursing down over the ocher and brown face paint applied in crude lightning bolts.
The warrior’s left hand came loose first, releasing Bass’s hair, then shooting down to clamp around the white man’s throat.
Again Titus smashed the handle into the enemy’s face, feeling the cheekbone give way beneath his blow.
An instant later the warrior’s right arm weakened some more, beginning to drop as the Indian’s body seeped a little more of its strength.
