And as the Shoshone warrior gazed down at him with that broad, open smile, Bass felt the first sting of tears.
By God, these were … Snake!
A few more guns barked and roared in the middistance as the Shoshone raced after their ancient enemies, killing all that they could, driving off the rest of the Blackfoot war party.
Slays in the Night leaned back, helping the white man get to his feet. The Shoshone warriors whirled up and around on all sides of them now—more warriors rushing out of the trees, sprinting headlong after the retreating Blackfeet. Bass found it difficult to catch his breath, to hear anything more than the loud clatter of his heart in his ears, the hammer of running feet and the screeching war cries.
Then, as that clamor of running battle began to fade, Scratch began to make out the familiar voices of the white trappers yelling above them, the rest of Hatcher’s bunch realizing they had been saved, prancing and dancing there at the top of those boulders, pairs of them pounding one another on the back and whooping with joy at their miraculous deliverance.
Slays in the Night laid a hand on Bass’s shoulder and looked into the white man’s face. “Bass.”
Titus seized hold of that hand gripping his shoulder, and barely above a whisper he croaked the only words that mattered right then: “Thank you.”
His mind was a blur of questions.
Watching the other trappers ease Jack Hatcher down the granite slope of the boulders in a blanket hammock, Bass struggled to come to grips with having prepared himself to face death as bravely as he could one moment, and the next finding that he had suddenly been given another chance. Twice before that he was sure of, his fat had been pulled out of the fire. Others had happed along, or maybe he had simply blundered into them … but no matter that it was they or he, Scratch had no doubt that each time he had been snatched from the jaws of death.
As the white men gathered about Hatcher there at the bottom of the rocky fortress where they had prepared to sell their lives dearly, the Shoshone began to return one by one. A warrior here and a warrior there stepped out of the trees holding a bloody scalp aloft—shouting for the others to see what he had claimed from an enemy’s body in the way of spoils and booty. The Snake shouted and sang, then spit on most of those Blackfoot scalps brought in across the next minutes as the trappers recounted their own fierce struggle among themselves. Now and again a warrior led in one of the enemy ponies as well, abandoned by the Blackfeet in their flight.
Wagging his head so that the tail on his long wolf-hide cap shook down his back, Solomon Fish hollered, “If this don’t take the goddamned circle! These here Snakes show up just when them Blackfeets was ready to raise our hair!”
“Ain’t we the lucky ones!” Simms shouted.
Hatcher just nodded his head happily. “Cain’t believe it, boys! Talk ’bout yer Lady Luck smiling down on us: all the way up here—and to have Goat Horn’s bunch run onto us this way!”
“I don’t rightly get it,” Elbridge admitted, running a bloody finger beneath the big bulb of his nose scored with tiny blue veins. “We ain’t been trapping nowhere near where them Snake was heading with their village.”
“Cain’t you see that’s why we’re so damned lucky!” Caleb boasted.
“Hell if we ain’t ’bout as lucky as can be!” Kinkead agreed. “They must’a been close … close enough to hear the guns and come running.”
“Damned lucky for us they was out hunting close enough to save our hash!” Simms declared.
Soon the happy warriors, shouting with that flush of victory, had a large pile of bows and clubs, a few English muskets, many tomahawks and knives, not to mention shields, pad saddles, and other horse tack. It was clear to any of the trappers that this had been a major war party plunging south toward Shoshone and Crow country.
“Tell me, Jack,” Scratch, said as he knelt beside Hatcher, something not making a lot of sense to him. “I don’t rightly remember what these bucks did on that buffler hunt last year … but I can’t rightly say I ever saw these here Snake wear paint and put on their fancy war clothes when they was fixing to go on a meat hunt.”
Hatcher’s eyes bounced across the nearby warriors, some grave doubt beginning to cloud his face. Just as he began to open his mouth, he shut it again. Shifting himself on his elbow, he strained to listen to what the many Shoshone tongues were saying.
“I ain’t for sure just yet, Scratch,” Jack began, his voice strangely quiet, “but I got me the idea this wasn’t no—”
As suddenly as they had appeared out of the forest, the Snake warriors around the trappers became quiet as hushed word of something was whispered among them with the speed of a prairie fire. They fell completely silent as a young man on foot led a pony and its rider into the crowded clearing at the foot of the boulders.
“Ain’t … ain’t that the old medicine man?” Titus asked in a whisper the moment he recognized the frail man atop the horse.
“Sure ’nough is,” Caleb Wood replied in a whisper.
In the hush of that high-country forest the young man who was apprenticed to Porcupine Brush helped the old one off the animal’s back and steadied him on his thin, birdlike legs. Then the blind man began to sing softly, shaking a buffalo-bladder rattle around and around in a circle as his apprentice helped him shuffle slowly through the gathering that parted before him. Goat Horn, the Shoshone war chief who had led his warriors there, stepped forward so he could walk on the other side of the shaman until they stopped right before Hatcher’s blanket.
Between the chief and shaman a few words were quickly spoken in a whisper.
“What’s he say?” Fish leaned down to ask of Jack.
Hatcher translated, “The ol’ codger asked who was still alive, and Goat Horn tolt him we all was.”
Porcupine Brush appeared much gratified at that answer, his wrinkled, wizened face brightening with a wide smile as his sightless eyes seemed to look left to right slowly, as if they somehow could see, perhaps as if they were in search of one white man in particular.
Mumbling something to his young apprentice, the shaman was shuffled over so that he could face Bass. Letting go of the young one’s arm, Porcupine Brush’s old fingers worked at the knot in the thongs holding that sacred white buffalo calf robe over his shoulders. Sliding the robe off his arms, he nonetheless clutched it in a bundle to his breast as he spoke with a soft, thready voice to the nine white men there, where they had been prepared to die.
“Wants us all to sit with him,” Hatcher said, motioning them to join him on the ground.
Handing the calf robe to his apprentice, the old man sat a few feet from Hatcher and Bass. On the ground in front of the shaman the young man spread the beautiful curly hide of the sacred buffalo calf. When the shaman was told all the white men were sitting before him around the calf skin, he raised his face to the sky above and began to sing his prayers. Through every chorus of his difficult song, the shaman rubbed his gnarled hands back and forth across the white hide, at times stuffing those swollen knuckles of his fingers deep into the thick fur.
Putting his lips up behind Hatcher’s ear, Graham asked, “What all’s he saying?”
Shaking his head a minute as if struggling to understand, Jack tried to explain. “All he was doing was just praying a bit ago … but, but now he’s saying … he wants to tell us that—that he knowed we was in trouble.”
“He kn-knowed?” Wood echoed.
Hatcher nodded, his eyes half closing in disbelief. “Says something ’bout his spirit helper four days ago.”
Gray roared happily, scratching at his ample belly, “Whatever it was—I’m sure as hell glad the ol’ codger’s spirit helper was up to talkin’ that day!”
“Hush!” Jack ordered. “Says … wait: ol’ man here says he was told we was in a fix days ago.”
A sense of something grand and very holy enveloped Titus Bass at that very moment. As certain as he had ever been about anything in his life, Scratch suddenly felt a great power there about them. At long, long last he stood in the presence of that great and unexplained mystery. Perhaps it was even the force that guided the way of all things.
“Sure,” Hatcher continued. “Makes sense these here Snakes knowed we was in a fix long afore this morning, don’t it? How the hell else was they gonna get to us in time?”
Simms turned to ask, “You don’t figger they was out hunting, Jack?”
“No—the ol’ feller says they come straight here, ready for war. And they knew right where we was s’posed to be,” Hatcher replied, his voice going softer as he peered down at the calf robe, sounding a little less sure of himself now as they stood upon this strange ground. “I don’t have me no idea how in heaven … but the old’un says they knowed we was about to be rubbed out by their enemies—the Blackfeets.”
