Every man jack jerked up in surprise, finding their four companions returning lickety-split, like Ol’ Beelzebub himself was right on their tails, one of their number clinging the best he could to his horse’s withers as they lumbered down the slope. Behind them came the six strangers. And just behind that half-dozen … it seemed the whole damned hillside suddenly sprouted redskins.
“Fort up! Fort up!” came the cry from nearly every throat as the four trappers sprinted their way.
The twenty spun about, studying things this way, then that—when most decided they would have to make a stand for it right there with the river at their back.
“Pull off them packs for cover!” one of them bellowed.
But Bass knew right off there weren’t enough packs to make barricades for them all. Not near enough supplies lashed to those pack saddles, and sure as hell not any beaver bundles to speak of. One last-ditch thing to do.
“Put the horses down!”
One of the bold ones gave voice to their predicament.
“Shoot the goddamned horses!” another voice trumpeted as the four scouts reined up in a swirl of dust.
That’s when Titus could make out the yips and yells, the taunts and the cries—all those hundreds of voices rising above the dull booming thunder of thousands of hooves.
A tall redheaded youngster next to him came out of the saddle and was nearly jerked off his feet when his frightened mount reared. From the look on the man’s pasty face Bass could tell this might well be the most brownskins he’d ever seen.
“Snub ’im up quick and shoot him!” Bass grumbled as he lunged over to help the redhead.
“Pistol?”
“Goddamned right.” Then Titus turned his back and double-looped his own mule’s lead rope around his left hand as he dragged the pistol from his belt with his right.
“Drop de goddamned hurses. Ebbery one!” Fraeb repeatedly roared, as the first animals started falling.
From the corner of his eye, Bass watched the redhead obey. As the mount’s legs went out from under it, the horse nearly toppled the trapper. But the redhead scrambled backward in time, spilling in a heap atop Titus’s thrashing horse.
“You got a pack animal?” Bass demanded.
The redhead lunged onto his feet, craning his neck this way and that, then shrugged.
“Get down and make ready to use that rifle of your’n,” Titus ordered, then turned to bid farewell to the mule just a breath or two before the screeching horsemen dared to break across the flat into range of their big, far- reaching rifles.
He laid a hand on the mare’s neck as she breathed her last, stroking the hide until she no longer quivered. Gazing out over the slopes where the warriors gathered just beneath the ranks of their women, children, and old men—he saw her.
Clearly a woman. Dressed in the short fringed skirt that exposed her bare copper legs draped on either side of her brown-spotted pony. A short, sleeveless fringed top hung from her shoulders, where her unbound hair tossed on every hot breeze. Make no mistake: that was a woman. While the warriors were stripped to their breechclouts and moccasins, wearing medicine ornaments and power-inducing headdresses, the one intently watching the action from the hillside was clearly a woman—and probably a powerful one to boot.
Around her stood more than a double handful of attendants, young women and boys, all on foot. Together they joined in her high-pitched chants. She must be imploring the warriors to fight even harder, dare even more with each renewed assault.
“You see dat she-bitch?” the gruff voice asked in a masked whisper.
Bass turned to see Fraeb settling in beside him between the horse’s fore-and hind legs.
“Who she be, Frapp?”
The old German stared at the hill for a moment before answering. “She der princess.”
“Princess?”
“Ya. Princess dey fight for.”
Titus couldn’t quite believe it. “She’s giving the orders to all the rest?”
“Make medicine for them win.”
And Titus had to agree. “Yeah, medicine. I’ll bet if one of us knocked her down—these bucks see their own medicine shrivel up like salt on a green hide.”
“She come close your side—you knock her down, ya?” Fraeb asked as he rocked back onto his hands and knees to crawl off.
Licking his dirty thumb and brushing it over the front blade at the end of his rifle barrel, Bass vowed, “See what I can do for you.”
Back over at the far end of the oval, after the horsemen had made their third deafening rush on the corral, Henry Fraeb once more was squealing out orders, ordering some men to hold off—thereby making sure they would have at least half the guns loaded at all times. No more than a dozen were to fire at once, he reminded them again and again. No less than a dozen had to be ready should the whole hillside decide to make a great rush for them.
Charge after charge, the five hundred thundered down the long slope and across the river bottom toward that maze of deadfall and tree stumps, daring to ride ever closer to that corral of buffalo robes, blankets, and bloating carcasses. As the morning wore on, the ground in front of the dead stinking horses and mules reminded Bass of a field of barren cornstalks. Just as many arrow shafts quivered in those huge animals the mountain men had sacrificed to make this stand.
Well before the sun had climbed to mid-sky, two of the trappers lay dead, and the rest were grumbling with thirst. The river lay seductively close at their backs. Its gurgle almost close enough to hear—were it not for the grunts of the sweating men as they reloaded their rifles or hurriedly refilled their powderhorns from the small kegs among the scattered baggage. A peaceful, bucolic gurgle as the creek trickled over its gravel bed … were it not for the rising swell of war cries and the soul-puckering power of the coming thunder of those hooves.
“Dey comin’ again!” Fraeb would announce what every last one of the twenty-one others could see with their own eyes as the summer sun beat down on that corral of rotting horseflesh and desperate, cornered men.
“Remember,” Bass turned to whisper at the redhead nearby. “Wait till you got a target.”
“What’s it matter?”
He turned and looked at the youngster’s face. “It’ll matter. Each of us takes one of the bastards out with every run they make at us … it’ll matter to ’em.”
Titus watched the redhead swallow hard and turn away to stare at the oncoming horsemen. Sweat droplets stung his eyes. Grinding the sleeve of his calico shirt across his forehead, Bass calmly announced, “They call me Scratch.”
“Scratch?” the redhead repeated. “I heard of you.” His eyes went to the black bandanna covering Bass’s head. “Word has it you lost hair.”
Grinning, Bass nestled his cheek along the stock of his rifle, squinting over the front rank of horsemen. “That was a long time ago, friend.”
He found another likely target: tall, muscular youth brandishing what appeared to be an English trade gun in one hand as his spotted pony raced toward their corner of the corral. The Sioux and Cheyenne were clearly going to make another long sweep across a broad front again, tearing up grassy dirt clods as they streaked past the long axis of the barricades where most of the trappers lay or knelt behind the carcasses.
The redhead’s rifle boomed. Then it was Scratch’s turn to topple his target.
“Name’s Jim. Jim Baker,” the redhead turned to declare. “I’d like to say I’m glad to meet you,” he explained as he rolled onto his back to yank up his powderhorn and started to reload. “But I don’t figger none of us gonna get outta here anyways.”
“You listen here, son,” Bass snapped. “I been through more’n any one man’s share of scraps with red niggers—from Apach’ on the Heely, to Comanch’ over in greaser country, clear up to the goddamned belly of Blackfoot land itself. We ain’t beat yet—”
“How the hell we gonna get outta here?” Baker demanded as he jammed a ball down his powder-choked barrel. “We ain’t got no horses to ride—”
“We’ll get out, Jim Baker. You keep shooting center like you done so far … these brownskins gonna get tired
