warrior was lurching off, hand plastered against his side—joining others in retreat.
Guns roared and men yelled in three tongues. At times the air was filled with arrows hissing past his ear and over his head, fired from the short bows of one side or the other. The work was agonizingly slow and dirty for the first hour until the Blackfeet backed themselves right out of the brushy cover and began a full-scale retreat.
In crazed confusion they led the trappers and Shoshone across more than four miles of rolling countryside at the upper extent of Willow Valley that afternoon. For the most part it was a game of chase, with little shooting … until the enemy reached the shore of a small lake. There beneath the trees and undergrowth at the lakebank they took cover, turned, and prepared for the coming assault.
As the trappers and their allies closed on the lake, it was easy to see the Blackfeet were going to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Behind the scrub brush they hid, down behind the carved, earthen banks they took this final refuge—and from there began to harass their tormentors. The battle heated up like never before.
Squatting behind a small boulder and clump of sage, Bass took a few moments to watch others crawling in on their bellies as the Blackfeet arched arrows into the air, sailing up, then falling down upon their intended targets. All the time the Shoshone cried out their grief at the five scalps taken within sight of their village—and the Blackfeet boasted that there would be more deaths before the sun set on that day.
“There’s no way we can get close!” Daniel Potts shouted his frustration nearby.
Others grumbled, fired at the brushy cover, or just shouted back at the eerie war cries and chants floating up from both sides of the battlefield. For the better part of an hour it went poorly, an individual here or there making his own brave attempt to worm his way toward the brush and the lakeshore bulwarks. All were driven back by the defenders … until the Blackfeet themselves suddenly emerged from their shadowy cover and hurled themselves against a weak place in the trappers’ line.
“Get us some help!” came one man’s frantic wail.
Bass crabbed to his feet, running all bent over toward the sound of the gunfire and loudest shouting. Across the sagebrush dotting the open ground came another ten or a dozen trappers—all hurrying to the cries for help. Some of them stopped for a heartbeat, thrust their rifles against their shoulders, and fired into the wild, screaming, ghoulish charge of the Blackfeet.
Those cries of enemy warriors raised the hair on the back of Scratch’s neck. Something so primitive, primordial, something that reminded him of the Arapaho warrior who, though already dying, had flung his war club at Titus …
Bass dropped to his belly, yanking the buttstock under his arm, into the crook at his shoulder as the handful of warriors came screaming toward three or four trappers—one of them swinging over his head what appeared to be a long-handled war club with sharp iron spikes driven through its round head like an ancient ball of mace.
Pulling the trigger, Bass watched the bullet catch the warrior high in the chest, shoving his upper body back with its velocity as the soft lead flattened out … the Blackfoot’s legs continuing to pump forward nonetheless—until he landed flat on his back, squirmed and kicked convulsively a few moments as Bass brought the muzzle to his mouth and blew.
From the corner of his eye he watched the warrior quit twitching as Bass dropped powder down the barrel and drove a ball home.
“Beckwith!”
Titus turned to find the one called Sublette calling. Off to his left, the mulatto fired a shot from behind some willow, then turned to shout in reply.
“Over here, Billy!”
“I see you,” Sublette shouted, then pointed off toward another of the enemy dead. “See that dead nigger?”
“Yup! I do.”
“What say the two of us go get that red nigger’s scalp afore them friends of his drag him off!”
Beckwith’s coffee-colored face creased with a wide smile, his head bobbing. “Fine notion, Billy! A real fine notion!”
The two laid aside their rifles, then crabbed onto their hands and knees. Crawling from one bit of scrub brush to the next, Sublette and Beckwith took separate paths to reach the last bit of cover closest to the warrior’s body. It was there that Sublette bellied down flat on the ground and began crawling into the open.
“C’mon, Beckwith,” he growled. “I cain’t haul ’im in on my own!”
Plopping to his belly, Beckwith joined Sublette by crawling into view. An arrow flew over the white man’s head just as he reached out for the warrior’s ankle.
“Goddamn, that was close!”
Beckwith seized the other ankle and frantically began dragging the body back some two feet at a time. From the far brush at the lakeshore, the Blackfeet realized what was taking place and set up a horrible roar: howling in dismay as their comrade slowly disappeared toward the brush where the Shoshone and their white allies lay hidden.
But while Titus watched, it became clear that warrior wasn’t dead. The Blackfoot began shaking his head groggily.
“Jim!” Bass shouted in alarm.
It was as if the Indian came to in the space of a heartbeat and immediately realized what was to be his fate. Twisting his torso as he was being dragged, the Blackfoot reached for tall tufts of grass, strained for a hold on the low branches on the brush—anything he could seize that would slow him down.
“Sonuvabitch ain’t dead!” Sublette huffed in surprise. “Kill ’im, Beckwith!”
“With what?” the mulatto demanded as the warrior kicked out with his legs. “I left my gun back there like your’n.”
“Where’s your pistol?”
The warrior began to thrash even harder now. “Ain’t got it!”
“Stab ’im!” Sublette ordered. “Cut his throat!”
Like a blur a Blackfoot warrior leaped from behind some nearby cover to snap off a shot from his trade musket, the ball slapping through the brush near Beckwith—then the warrior kept on racing right for the two trappers.
Sublette growled, “Jesus and Mary!” as he began to rise to his knees, his hand slapping for knife and tomahawk at his belt.
At that moment the warrior leaped over some more low brush, balls whistling past him. As he landed flat- footed, the Blackfoot gripped his musket’s barrel in both hands and swung it high over his head, bringing it down on Beckwith’s back with a loud crack before the mulatto could scoot out of the way.
With a grunt of pain Beckwith fell back, losing his grip on the wounded warrior’s ankle. His face drawn up in shock, the mulatto rolled and rolled again to get away, crabbing up onto his knees, then lunging forward painfully, onto his feet to retreat even more.
“Come back here, Beckwith!”
Sublette was on his knees too, pushing against the warrior, both of them with a lock on the enemy’s empty trade musket. Slowly the white man rose to his feet, straining to pull the Blackfoot off balance.
“C’mere, you yellow coward!” he shrieked. “Beckwith!”
Twisting this way, then twisting another, the two struggled muscle against muscle.
“I swear, Beckwith—I’ll kill you myself for this!”
Then the warrior smashed his heel down hard on top of Sublette’s moccasin, causing the trapper to yelp, hop, and yank one hand off the musket. With a great wrenching the Blackfoot tore the rifle away from Sublette, then shoved, sending the trapper sprawling onto his back.
Just as the warrior raised the weapon over his head, preparing to savagely bring it down on Sublette, Beckwith flung himself back into the struggle. Flying over the low brush, the mulatto drove his head and shoulder into the warrior, sending the enemy hurtling, his musket sailing in another direction. Without delaying to find his weapon, the Blackfoot scrambled to his feet and retreated at a dead run.
Three balls nicked the bushes around the two trappers as they redoubled their efforts to drag the wounded warrior back to cover.
Crabbing over to where the pair had disappeared in the brush, Bass found Sublette and Beckwith whispering loudly with another trapper.
