Even the pony noises had faded then. No birdcalls from the surrounding forest, no longer the stomping and snorting of the Blackfeet ponies. The valley fell quiet as a tomb. A dead man’s tomb.
They turned their heads this way and that, looking, listening—growing more anxious with every breath.
“What’s happening?” Hatcher demanded, alone down in the hollow. “Why’d ever’thing get so quiet—”
A shrill whistle blew, and all the Blackfoot war cries arose in unison, shutting off the rest of Jack’s question.
“If’n that hoss don’t take the circle!” Caleb growled. “They comin’ in from all sides, Jack!”
Bass jammed his hand down into his pouch and scooped out more than ten of the heavy lead balls, stuffing them into his mouth where they would be ready to spit down the barrel of his rifle.
Waving his horse pistol, pain and determination painted there on his gray face, Hatcher bellowed, “I know we can take ’em, boys!”
Gray cheered the rest. “Damn sure take as many as we can afore they get us!”
Outside of a winter camp of Ute or Crow, or that Shoshone village hunting buffalo, Titus Bass hadn’t seen that many warriors at one time, in one place, ever before. No two ways of Sunday about it: there were more Blackfeet racing toward the boulder fortress than Scratch had thought there could be in their war party. Either there had been more warriors back among the trees all along, or more Blackfeet had come in to join up with the first ones who ambushed the trappers.
Careful, careful, he reminded himself, holding the front blade on the closest bare, brown-skinned chest. The flintlock shoved back into his shoulder the instant before he was laying it at his side and scooping up the pistol— finding himself a second target.
On all sides the trappers were firing their guns, cutting down the first ranks of Blackfeet, then immediately pouring down a quick measure of powder before spitting a single ball from their lips into the muzzles of rifles or pistols and spilling priming powder into the pans of their weapons. The guns erupted once more, taking a fraction more of a toll on the enemy wave that drew closer and closer in those screaming, shrieking, booming, and frantic seconds of reloading.
More than four times the trappers poured powder and spat lead balls into their weapons, ramming the charges home before taking instant aim and firing on instinct. Four times only before they were forced one by one to lay aside their firearms to take up knives and tomahawks as the red wave of the warriors climbed high enough over the fallen bodies strewn across the rocks themselves.
A few were swinging their rifles about like long clubs, and all about them the air turned red with the enemy’s hideous screams of blood lust, reminding Bass of that first skirmish with the Chickasaw, recalling how Ebenezer Zane’s boatmen had said that a man would never forget hearing his first Chickasaw war whoop.
When the first wave spilled back, tumbling against one another, the trappers had to wait those last, long seconds for the warriors to spider their way up to the white men at the top of the rocks—about half of the trappers struggling to reload this one last time while the others rose to their knees with knife and tomahawk, crouched tensely to receive the brunt of the charge.
The Blackfeet weren’t singing out the war songs now as they turned about to hurl themselves at the boulders. No songs, for this was something deadly. Five or more were scrambling toward Bass himself.
As his mouth went dry, Scratch thought of the Ute woman—how Fawn had tended to his wounds, recalling the softness of her touch at all the wounded places on his body, remembering how nothing else mattered when he lay coupled with her. His tongue went pasty when he realized he would never see her again. Never lay another trap. Not see the sun go down on this day … or the others to follow.
As he gazed down at all those painted warriors scrambling up the boulders to get at them, Bass realized he was staring death in the face. Such injustice this was. Not yet ready to die, for he hadn’t yet learned what it meant to live. Much less had he learned what it meant to die.
The first ranks hurtled against the trappers with the grunting exertion of bare muscle pitted against muscle. Back and forth Scratch raked the tomahawk from side to side: connecting with bone and flesh, slashing at skin and sinew as warriors fell back and more leaped up behind them. From his knees he scrambled to his feet, splattered with hot blood, beginning to yell for the first time—answering their cries with his own fevered killing lust. First one, then two, and finally three bodies lay at his feet as the others surged in, lunged for him.
A warrior fell back, Bass’s tomahawk still buried in his face as the Indian tumbled down the slope.
Ducking the war club that whispered overhead, Bass slapped the skinning knife into his right hand and leaped into three of them. The trio swung wildly with their own weapons—pounding at his back, slashing at the wild wolverine suddenly among them. Bass locked his arms around legs, twisting, pulling, throwing his shoulder into the bare knees he held to with death’s grip. Not letting go even when two of the Blackfeet lost their balance and began to fall, Bass slid, careened, tumbled down the side of the rocks with them.
They dug fingers at his eyes, yanked savagely at his long hair, pummeled him with their fists as they all came to a stop together, one of the warriors colliding with a tree trunk so hard, the breath was knocked out of him with a gasp.
The hold on him released, Scratch leaped back, slashing, lunging to the side to slash again. Then he fell back a step in a crouch, like a crazed animal, from the warrior he had just opened up, the Blackfoot staring dumbly down at his belly as purplish intestine slithered out of the long, gaping wound.
Another warrior lunged onto his back, arm locked around Bass’s neck, and they both fell as Titus rolled— momentarily staring up into the face of the Blackfoot, who drew back a tomahawk at the end of his arm as he came astride the trapper. Bass swung his arm, wildly jabbing again and again with his left fist, smashing it into the warrior’s jaw—just before another face appeared above him: a second warrior seizing Scratch’s left arm and forcing it down beneath all of his weight, pinning it against the ground.
The first Blackfoot with the bloodied nose and mouth once more drew back the tomahawk—then froze.
In the midst of all the noise and commotion and that deafening hammer of Bass’s heart, there came the rush of a rising cacophony of shouts, war cries, and death songs spilling from the forest beyond them. Shots echoed from the tree line. Surprised, the two warriors pinning Bass to the ground jerked, looking over their shoulders at the shadowy forest behind them as if they could not believe.
Everywhere in the boulders Blackfeet hollered, screamed in dismay. In that next instant the warrior clutching the tomahawk above Bass twitched slightly, his eyes widening, then slumped across Scratch as if his strings had been cut—an arrow fluttering deep in his back as he gurgled his last breath.
Releasing Bass’s arm, the remaining warrior grabbed hold of the first, turning him to the side to have himself a look, and realized—then leaped to his feet, screaming and waving his arms at the rest.
In every direction the Blackfeet were wheeling back from the rocks. Like drops of spring runoff, they came sliding down the rocks, desperately breaking into a sprint as they raced for the timber beyond the boulders.
The crescendo of screams and war cries burst from the trees an instant before the feathered, painted warriors.
Lunging up on his elbows, kicking wildly to free his legs from the body sprawled atop them, Bass struggled to slide backward as this new rush of warriors rolled toward him and the others defending the boulders. Volving onto a shoulder, he flung an arm across the grass to snag the tomahawk from the warrior, ripping a huge knife from the dead man’s belt—all that he would have now to defend himself against this new wave of the enemy.
Kicking his legs free, Bass scrambled to his knees, crouching, growling—preparing to fight his last seconds, then fall under the sheer weight of their numbers.
Yet … the warriors exploding like blurred light from the shadows turned and hurtled right by him, then sprinted past the boulders—following the fleeing Blackfeet. They were retreating with the others.
Of a sudden one of the warriors skidded to a stop close at hand, whirled, and screamed at Titus—something he did not understand. Titus brought up the tomahawk and knife, hissing almost catlike as he prepared for the strike. Bass jerked as a second warrior seized him from behind, the painted warrior gripping the white man’s bloodied shirt, exuberantly pulling him partway off the ground, locking his powerful hand around Scratch’s wrist as the Indian … began to laugh.
Unable to free his knife hand, Bass believed he was about to be killed by a man who would laugh crazily as he slit his throat.
That … laugh … then he twisted to look carefully at the man holding him, studying the face beneath the smeared war paint—this one laughing joyously in his face. Was it really?
Slays in the Night?
