out.
“C’mon, you girl you!” he bellowed as loud as he could, feeling nis words ripped away from his lips the second they were spoken. “Get up here, Hannah! Get up! Hep, hep, girl!”
Again and again he called out, assuring her—reassuring himself that she could keep up with him despite her packs as he put more and more ground behind him, racing back downstream.
For the longest time, in and out of the brush and trees, up and down one rise after another, across shallow draws and sandy islands when he decided to ford the river itself, Bass glanced over his shoulder—finding the solitary horseman still coming. How the wind pulled at his shiny black hair feathered out behind him the way a raven’s wing would glimmer in sunlit flight. His pony’s bound-up tail bobbing instead of flying loose on the run. Just a glimpse … but it looked to be the warrior carried a bow and a handful of arrows in his right hand, that arm held out for balance most of the time, except when he swept it back and struck the pony on the rear flank—urging more and more speed from the straining animal.
From side to side Hannah bravely lunged after Titus, laboring under her two packs that bobbed and weaved, pulling her in one direction, then the other. Already he could see the first foamy flecks of lather gathering at her chest harness. Ribs heaving, nostrils slickened, muzzle gulping air as she hung as close as her remaining strength allowed.
But when he looked back at Hannah the next time, the horseman had disappeared.
Bass blinked sweat from his eyes, then clumsily dragged his sleeve across his face with the arm that clutched the rifle, bobbing up and down like a Boone County child’s dancing toy. Maybeso it was a trick. He glanced at the nearby hillside, just to be sure the warrior hadn’t taken another route. Then Bass twisted to the other side—and still did not find the horseman.
But it was plain Hannah had started to fade.
As much as she tried, strained, lunged into the race, she was falling farther and farther behind him. And that made Scratch afraid the fourth horseman would then be able to capture her as her strength faded. As much as she would try to stay far from the Arapaho—it would likely be a futile effort once all her bottom was gone and she could run no more.
Then she would be snared just like those other horses and mules….
And that caused him his first doubt for what he had done in releasing the pack string.
Dry-mouthed, Bass no more hammered the horse with his heels. No more did he whip the rein back and forth, from side to side and flank to flank. He glanced back. Hannah was dropping behind all the farther.
He was drenched with sweat as he let the weary horse slow of its own, twisting in the saddle to watch the backtrail where he had been riding along the south side of the river, his eyes moving everywhere at once. He licked his dry lips and gulped. Thirsty as he’d ever been—or perhaps it was just the fear.
The horse fought him a minute as it slowed all the more, tired of the race and thirsty too. Then Titus brought it around and slowly halted. Hannah came up within moments and stopped, heaving, lather at her halter, foam darkening the leather straps of her pack harness.
Had they made it out?
Just he, the mule, and this saddle horse?
Maybeso it was a good ruse, you savvy son of a bitch, he congratulated himself—still watching the far side of the river from the shadows where he sat on the played-out horse. Hannah snorted in her fatigue.
But every bit as soon as he was patting himself on the back, he heard the echoes of those doubts. Very little time did he give himself for celebration.
There was a good chance he had been wrong in freeing the pack string, part of him said. After all, he had done it almost on instinct. And now—able to think more about it, maybeso even to second-guess himself and the consequences of just what he had done—that act of self-preservation might not have been the wisest of choices.
But what other choices had there been? the other side of him demanded.
Run or fight. Damn well black-and-white, cut-and-dried. Four-to-one odds, at the outside. Hell, there might have been even more of the red niggers off somewhere. Chances good of that, he told himself—justifying his wheeling about and skedaddling all by his lonesome.
An Arapaho war party of ary four warriors come to Ute country? Just four of ’em?
About as likely as one of Annie Christmas’s whores showing up in a Natchez church to preach for Sunday meeting!
Nawww, he’d made the right decision….
So why did it feel so wrong down in the gut of him?
That familiar, booming voice rang inside his head as surely as if Silas Cooper were right there, speaking inches from his ears.
Someone had trusted him with near everything they owned—save for their weapons they took with them on that float down to a trader’s post. Near everything Silas, Billy, and Bud could tally up as their own in this life … and Scratch had gone and abandoned it back there: horses, truck, plunder—all of it.
What with the three of them gone off with them packs of beaver to trade high on the upper river before rendezvous, this sure as hell wasn’t feeling the way a man ought to treat the fellas who had saved his life more than once.
Goddammit.
Slamming his heels back into the reluctant horse’s ribs, Bass reined around toward the river, loping past Hannah, who looked up at him almost humanly—her eyes clearly registering a very big question. If not asking what he was doing and where the hell he was going … then he was certain the mule was asking him just what kind of damned fool he thought he was.
“Stay or come,” he muttered under his breath after she was left behind and he was urging the saddle mount back into the river crossing. “I figger you’ll do only what you wanna do anyway—you cross-headed, stubborn she- critter.”
He figured there was no good decision in this, no clear path to take. And that, Scratch knew, always made for a mess of things in the end, he brooded as he came up the far bank and slowed the horse to a walk—moving carefully, quietly as possible, back into what was plainly enemy country.
If he was lucky, he might just stay out of the way of that solitary warrior long enough for the horseman to give up and turn back to rejoin the other three. Then Bass could lay to until the sun began to sink. From there he’d follow their trail to the spot where the Arapaho had gathered up that cavvyyard of horses and taken off with them. Having some idea where they were headed, Titus could track them, even as it grew dark … perhaps even after nightfall.
One way or the other, odds were better than even that he could draw up to them by the next day. With both belt pistols, his rifle, and a pair of knives, he gave himself a chance at making a stand against the four warriors come the dark, especially if he could And them separated and making camp, gathering firewood, or just off to take a piss in the brush. No matter that it was four to one by the thinking of others, Bass figured he had to try.
He had been trusted with nearly all that the other three had in the world after all their seasons in the mountains. Wouldn’t they do the same for him? Hadn’t they done damn well the same when they had saved his life?
He had to try.
Whether it was coming through the Falls of the Ohio in that sleeting snowstorm with Ebenezer Zane’s boatmen … or helping to fight off that angry band of Chickasaw along the Mississippi—Bass always chose to try. Sometimes the worth of a man wasn’t so much measured in the successes or the failures he tallied … as it was in the simple fact that he had tried.
And when you stirred up that virtue with that solid notion of having had others put their trust in you—then there really was no decision left him. Really no choice but one. So in the end, if he were to go under before the sun fell any farther in the sky … by damn, he’d make him a good show of it.
Scratch drew himself up and rode on, ready to trail those horsemen and that cavvyyard until he could steal it
