that he wondered if he would ever focus them again.
Upstream. He kept staring upstream through that cleft in the low, waist-high rocks. Watching the light change as he gazed across the gray, shadowy, dreamy texture of boulders and brush and the river’s silvery path through it all.
Behind him one of the horses accompanied Hannah with its own plaintive whinny. They likely felt boxed in back against the tall overhang of the bluff—helpless now with that scent of the enemy growing strong in their nostrils.
Different this must be from anything they had smelled on the northern plains. Thankful too that these animals never grew accustomed to the odor of Indians—no matter where, no matter what tribe.
The light began to bubble a little more, defining edges to the gray of low boulders scattered on either side of the river, giving depth to the black splotches that were the low clumps of brush dotting the banks.
From between the brush and boulders emerged the angular shadows stepping into the midst of the silver ribbon. First there were two, then another pair, then six fanning out in an arrow pointed at the white men.
There surely had to be more.
“Asa!” he whispered harshly, shaking McAfferty’s shoulder.
As the trapper worked at opening his eyes, Bass grumbled, “We got company!”
Sputtering something with his thick, swollen tongue, McAfferty shoved his rifle toward Bass. “Take it.”
Turning quickly to stare at his partner, Scratch asked, “You got you your pistol?”
Painfully, McAfferty worked his fingers around the curved butt and struggled to hold it aloft. “I’ll get one of ’em for sure—they get close enough.”
“Get that other pistol of your’n too.”
“Saving it for me.”
“For you?”
McAfferty licked at his cracked, bloodied lips. “Don’t let these here ’Pache bastards take you alive, Mr. Bass,” he implored. “Better to go under by your own hand—”
“Shoot myself?”
“They’ll roast you over a slow fire if they take a notion to—”
“Shuddup!” Bass snapped. That was the last thing he wanted to hear. Suddenly his mouth was again as dry as it had been for the last three days.
Chastised, Asa closed his eyes and began to mutter,
The six slowly crept their way. He had to make each of the rifle shots count. His own. McAfferty’s rifle. And Asa’s big-gauge smoothbore. Along with Bass’s own flintlock pistol. And if Asa used his two pistols, they could account for all six of the bastards.
Pebbles and loose sand skittered down the side of the bluff over his left shoulder, jerking him around—
An unearthly cry raised the hair at the back of his neck.
Whirling, Bass watched the black wisp of shadow materialize out of the ashy gray of that line formed by the rocky outcrop thrust up against the dawn sky just above them. As he brought up his rifle and squeezed back on the trigger, he heard the others let out with their catlike calls from the stream behind him. With the weapon’s roar the warrior let out a shrill shriek as the Apache plunged on through the air, slamming against the muzzle of the rifle an instant after the soft lead ball plowed through his chest. Dead before he spilled to the ground at Bass’s feet.
Knocking Titus backward against a boulder.
McAfferty was kicking against his robes, shrieking, “God’s wrath falls on the necks of the Philistines!”
“Shoot the bastards!” Scratch bellowed as he wheeled about, dropping his rifle and sweeping up McAfferty’s rifle: dragging the hammer back to full-cock.
Breaking into a run, the six were yelping, slogging as fast as they could through the knee-deep river, making straight for the boulders where the white men waited.
Jamming the rifle against his shoulder, Titus aimed into the dim light at one of the black shapes bobbing atop the silvery surface of the water. Pulling back on the trigger suddenly, he felt the gust of wind at his back as the weapon roared, hearing behind him the grunt from his partner.
Squinting his eyes with that second brilliant glare of muzzle flash, Scratch whipped about on his heels, finding an Apache rising from McAfferty, rocking back on his knees and pistoning back an arm. At its end a huge stone club hung in the air.
Asa sat dazed from the first blow from the Apache, who leaped upon him from the narrow shelf of rocks directly behind them.
Wheeling, Titus lashed out at the warrior with the heavy octagonal barrel, slamming the Apache on the shoulder as he began his swing at McAfferty. But only enough to shove the warrior to the side, rolling him onto a hip to glare back at Scratch.
Springing to his feet like a mountain cat, the Apache cried out hellishly as he dived headlong for Bass, almost as if he sought to spear the trapper in the middle of the chest with his head.
They fell backward together against the boulder, catching Bass at the back of his hips, bending him on across the curve of the rock. Arcing the muzzle around a second time the instant the warrior drew back to make a try for his own belt knife, Scratch caught the Apache along the temple with a crack as loud as a maul colliding with a tight-grained hickory stump. Titus never watched the warrior settling into the sand at his feet.
He was already spinning back to find the rest.
Yanking back on the hammer—then suddenly remembering that he held an empty rifle.
Hurling it aside as McAfferty scrambled to his knees, wagging his head groggily, Bass scooped up the smoothbore. He was snapping back the huge goosenecked hammer as he caught sight of Asa rocking forward on his knees, the pistol coming out at the end of both arms—a jet of bright, incandescent yellow spewing from the big muzzle.
Shadows loomed even larger in the coming light of morning, playing off the gray of sky and dull shimmer of river surface. The first lunged into the air and landed in a crouch atop the low boulders, his wet moccasins clawing the surface, coiling instantly, then springing on toward the white men.
“Other pistol–”
Bass raked back on the smoothbore’s trigger as he shouted his command, watching the warrior rock sideways. As the Apache fell between the two trappers, gurgling, clawing at the damp sand, Titus turned aside. Lifting the empty smoothbore into the air by its barrel, he brought it down savagely on the warrior’s neck, then smashed the brass-plated butt three more times into the back of the Apache’s skull.
McAfferty cried, “My last shot!”
Pulling back from that last, sodden crush of the enemy’s head, Scratch turned in a crouch the moment McAfferty fired that second pistol of his. As he dropped the smoothbore into the sand beside Asa, Bass lunged for the handles of two of the tomahawks they had laid out in readiness beside the white-head.
Just as he rose and straightened, one of the last two Apache leaped out of the stream like a panther, howling in a crouch as he landed on the rocks, immediately snapping his bow string forward. On the dry air Scratch heard the
A searing cry warned of another behind him.
Spinning around, Titus had no more than a heartbeat before the eighth warrior sprang from the narrow shelf, falling spread-eagled out of the dawn sky for the white man. From the corner of his eye, Bass watched Asa’s arms jab forward, both hands clutching a skinning knife, blade pointed skyward as the Apache plunged downward.
The knife caught the warrior just below the breastbone, where the Apache’s weight and McAfferty’s sudden twist to the side drove the weapon deep, opening up the warrior’s abdomen as he collapsed against Bass, writhing on his knees.
The Apache’s arms flailed helplessly, a knife spilling out of one of the brown hands that clutched his wound. Stumbling backward, Scratch collided with the rocks. For a terrifying moment the warrior’s face seemed to hang in front of his, a dark river of black blood oozing from his lips as the eyes locked on Bass’s … then rolled back to whites as the body continued its slump to the sand.
His heart thumping, hot adrenaline coursing through his veins, Scratch stared down at the warrior crumpled
