With a pained snort Jack tossed his head and growled, “Who the hell you ’specting wants hair so bad up this way—”
Twisting near fully around at the shrill cry, Bass found a warrior leaping from the rocks right above them. Simms caught the Blackfoot in his arms as they both slammed into the ground, the Indian’s knife crudely raking Isaac’s shoulder, opening up a bloody gash. In that next instant Gray swung the butt of his flintlock across the back of the warrior’s head—driving the enemy off Simms with an audible crunch and a spray of blood. In a fury Isaac was on top of the warrior, dragging the enemy’s head back to expose the neck, suddenly slashing a knife across the warrior’s throat.
“Scratch!”
He whirled at Graham’s cry, just as Rufus fired. A second warrior on the rocks above them jerked as the lead ball struck him, driven back a step, then crumpling to his knees. Yet as the Blackfoot clutched his bloody fingers over the wound in his side, he still managed to cock the tomahawk over his head, hurling it down into the knot of white men.
While the wounded warrior pitched backward from sight, the tomahawk spun itself against the boulder right behind Gray, then struck Elbridge a ricochet blow. Solomon leaped to Gray’s side as the man slumped to the ground—a huge knot already puffing across his brow and temple, blood beginning to ooze down the side of his face.
“He’s out,” Fish muttered as he yanked the loaded pistol from Elbridge’s hand.
“Red niggers whittling us down,” Hatcher groaned in resignation.
Two more painted warriors appeared at the far side of the ring of boulders, poking their heads over only long enough to take aim, pull back the strings on their bows, and let their arrows fly. Although noisy and frightening, the two shafts clattered harmlessly into the rocky fortress.
“There!” Rowland shouted.
Where the warrior with the tomahawk had been a moment before, now three more popped into view. Two more arrows flew in among the trappers, and a Blackfoot with a musket fired his shot—the big lead ball splattering against the rock beside Jack Hatcher.
Immediately souatting beside Hatcher, Caleb Wood dusted some rock fragments off Jack, saying, “We sit in here like a bunch of nesting hens, the fox gonna get us eventual.”
Hatcher’s eyes flicked over the others quickly. “You coons got any idees, now’s the time to be spitting ’em.”
“I say we get the hell out of here,” Graham suggested, his eyes raking the tops of the rocks, ready for the appearance of more warriors. He resolutely tugged down on his beaver hat with the rawhide brim scraped so thin, it was almost translucent. “Make a run for it.”
“We can’t: they’ll catch us out there one at a time,” Bass declared, wagging his head as he kept his eyes on the south rim of the rocks. “In here we got us a chance.”
Hatcher drew in a quick breath of torment as he shifted his hip. “I got things figgered the same way as Scratch. Leastways in here they gotta fight to get to us. Not much of one—but we got a chance.”
“The ones of us what can, we gotta climb the sides of these rocks,” Bass instructed, pointing toward the skyline with the barrel of his rifle. “Up there we can keep ’em from crawling over the rocks.”
“Might work,” Kinkead admitted, pursing his thick lips in determination. “Let’s climb.”
Rufus Graham led them, scrambling up the rocks to a high position. Wood and Rowland chose to climb off in another direction. Simms and Fish, Bass and Kinkead, all spread out until the seven of them had the ring of boulders better protected, no longer sitting below, at the mercy of the enemy as the Blackfeet climbed up the rocks and fired down on their quarry. From up near the top of the boulders, the white men could now watch their enemy breaking out of the trees.
A fella didn’t get him all that many chances to win big at a card game, Titus thought as his eyes raked the tree line—spotting some shadowy movement, listening to the Blackfeet hollering to one another. True enough, a man don’t get a chance less’n he hangs his bare ass right out over the fire like this once’t in a while.
Coming here to the mountain west all on his lonesome had been the biggest gamble he figured he’d ever made. Bigger even than leaving home at sixteen. But the bigger the gamble, the sweeter the stakes.
Off to his left two warriors skulked from the morning shadows toward the rocks, pretty much unseen for the thick brush. They scrambled to slip into a crevice that would put them between Caleb and Titus. Laying his left hand flat on the top of the boulder, then resting the forestock on the back of that hand, Bass took a quick sight target on the chest of the one who wore no leggings as he started to slip out of the brush there at the base of the crevice. Son of a bitch wore only moccasins, a breechclout, and a headdress made of a spray of turkey feathers tied to the back of his head.
It surprised him when Wood’s gun echoed the blast from his own rifle. As the turkey-feather headdress twisted and slumped at the foot of the rocks, the other warrior turned on his heel and scampered back for the tree line.
Stuffing his hand back into his shooting pouch, Scratch scooped up as many of the balls as he had left and brought them out. There in his cupped hand he estimated he had fewer than two dozen shots left. Quickly glancing over the others perched near the top of the boulders nearby, Bass wondered if they were in any better shape for to make a long fight of it. He doubted that any of them would have enough shots to last until nightfall. And even then, there was a damn good chance the Blackfeet might just come to call once darkness hid their movements.
No matter that he and the rest had knocked a few off their ponies, or had shot a couple here after reaching the rocks—the warriors still had the trappers outnumbered better than four, maybe five, to one. Having to make every shot count, every last lead ball left among them now … that was stretching the odds even thinner.
“What other choice you got?” he asked himself in a whisper.
Little matter that none of them would likely see the sun go down on this day.
In all those years spent working and gambling beside the Ohio River, across all those seasons of drinking and whoring and playing the pasteboards in St. Louis—it had always been his way to stay in the game until the last raise of the night had been plopped down onto the table, until the last call had been made. And he’d just have to see this through to the end too.
The sun had climbed halfway to midsky with the trappers fighting off the Blackfeet that way—one or two at a time … here or there. Then things fell quiet. The forest became eerily silent.
Not that they couldn’t hear the snort and movement of ponies yonder in the timbered shadows. But for the longest time, no warriors raced from the trees to assault the rocks.
“Maybe they’re fixing to ride away,” Fish suggested.
“You might be right, Solomon,” Graham replied. “Niggers figger they can’t get to us in here.”
“I don’t like the smell of it,” Bass declared.
Rowland regarded Titus a moment from his nearby perch. “Me neither,” he finally said.
Down below them Hatcher yelled, “Say, fellas—look who decided to wake up!”
Gray was slowly wagging his head, rubbing the huge, blood-smeared knot on the side of his brow, then inspected his fingers. “Damn, this hurts too much, boys. Must mean I’m still alive.”
“You hold a gun?” Wood asked.
“Gimme minute or two more—I likely can,” Gray explained.
“It’s a good thing too,” Scratch said. “I figger them niggers is playing some jigger-pokey to fool us.”
“They ain’t gonna be fool enough to rush us,” Graham protested.
“Ye fellas just leave me a loaded pistol down here,” Hatcher instructed, gritting his teeth. “If’n they’re coming—I want me least one shot. Take least one of them niggers with me afore I go under.”
Elbridge handed Jack one of his big smooth-bored horse pistols before he turned and slowly climbed up the gentle slope of the boulders to join the others. When he had reached the top, Gray asked quietly, “You figger it’ll come from all sides, Scratch?”
“Don’t know how to caliate that.”
Caleb Wood ventured his guess. “I s’pose they will come at us from all sides, Elbridge. That way they keep every last one of us all pinned down when the rush comes.”
“Nawww,” Simms protested. “They’ll run at us from one side, figgering there ain’t enough guns to shoot ’em all if’n they’re quick ’nough.”
“Listen!” Graham hushed them.
