back of his teeth against the sharp pain as the enemy worked at ripping his jaw off.
Striking out with his clenched fist, the Bannock knocked the tomahawk out of Bass’s hand, then seized the white man’s upper arm in his grip.
Unable for the moment to make use of his knife, Scratch flung both arms around the powerful chest, locking his free hand around the other wrist, starting to squeeze as he bit down all the harder on the thumb.
With a shrill wail of agony the Bannock popped his head forward savagely, smacking his broad forehead against Titus’s brow. Bits of shattered glass and fractured, mirrored light spun outward from his eyes as he jabbed a knee into his enemy, again, and then a third time—hearing the man grunt with each blow, feeling each strike shudder through that bare, sweaty chest he gripped within his arms.
As the Bannock cocked his head back, Titus released his grip, the fingers on his free hand shooting past the Bannock’s hair, immediately snatching hold in time to yank back as the warrior tried again to smack his forehead.
At the same instant he felt the Indian’s fingers close around his ear. Digging, tearing with almost as much pain as there was in that quivering thigh of his as Scratch lumbered onto his knees, sweeping the knife in a huge arc toward his enemy’s back. He sensed the blade drag along a rib for a moment before it plunged on through the taut muscle there in the lower back.
Scratch yanked it free, then drove the knife downward again, this time fighting to drag it to the side as the warrior stiffened, his whole body gone rigid while Titus struggled to turn the weapon this way, then that, twisting the blade through the soft tissue below that hard-strap muscle.
The enemy pitched to the side suddenly, stared up at the white man with glazed eyes as he took three quick gasps of air, then breathed no more.
It was quiet for a heartbeat; then Bass became aware of the fading hoofbeats, the raucous shouts of the others as they trudged his way up the slope. Off to his right he watched Isaac Simms rise out of the tall grass, lift an arm with a tomahawk in his hand, then swing it down savagely.
“Ain’t none of these alive now, Jack,” Simms called when he finally stood fully.
Fish and Wood were the first to reach Scratch.
“Who … who else hurt?” he asked.
Solomon dragged up one of Bass’s arms, and together with Caleb, they lifted Titus out of the grass. “No one. You’re the only nigger got enough stupids to wait out here for ’em to ’sprise you the way they done.”
“Everyone awright?”
Wood replied this time, “Maybe a scratch or two.”
“The horses?” Titus asked. “An’ my mule?”
“They didn’t get a damn thing for their trouble,” Fish growled.
Bass tried to turn partway around in their arms. “Get my guns—”
“We’ll get yer guns,” Hatcher snapped as he came up out of the deepening gloom. “Get him down to the fire, boys.”
“Damn, if I ain’t the ailin’ one again, Jack.”
“That’s right,” Hatcher said quietly. “But this time we ain’t got time to sit around waiting for ye to heal up.”
Solomon asked, “What you aimin’ to do, Jack?”
“We’ll build us a big fire and cut that arrow out’n his leg—so we can be long gone afore morning light.”
6
Two of them brought all their stock right into camp and began to load the pack animals in the bright glare of that roaring fire Bass was certain would mean the death of them all, backlighting the white men as some went about preparing for the trail, others busy with heating a little water in a kettle to use in Jack’s surgery.
“Hold ’im down, boys,” Hatcher ordered when he finally dragged his thin-bladed skinner from the edge of the coals.
Bass struggled for a moment as five of them seized him, shoved him back onto the grass there beside the fire pit. He knew what was coming.
“Sorry we gotta do it this way, friend,” Hatcher explained, his merry green eyes gone dark with concern. “We ain’t got time to soften yer brain on whiskey.”
“Hell, you ain’t got no whiskey left anyway,” Scratch said between gritted teeth, struggling slightly against the others as his eyes narrowed on the blade headed for his leg. Then he quickly glanced at the other faces hovering near his—knowing there wasn’t a lick of sense in fighting them all.
Hell, he realized he’d do the same for any of them—whatever it took to save a friend’s life.
“Get that legging off’n his belt,” Hatcher commanded, his lean face gone taut and gray in the firelight, eyes narrowing on the job at hand.
It all went so slowly after that. Brutally, brutally slow. With the legging straps unknotted and the tube of deerskin tugged down around his knee, it was clear to see the ends of the splintered arrow poking from the two blackened, bloody holes.
Hatcher dragged the back of his hand across his dry lips and murmured, “Gimme yer ramrod puller, Caleb.”
In a moment Wood returned with the small pair of anvil-forged pliers a trapper used to give himself leverage on his hickory ramrod in pulling a ball back out of the long-barreled flintlocks that were the constant companions to these men far beyond the frontier.
With the fingers of his left hand, Jack pressed down on the bloodied skin around the hole on the front of the thigh, spreading the edges of the wound a little, and began digging into the torn flesh with the narrow, open jaws of the puller. Each time he squeezed down on the handles, thinking he had a bite on the shaft, all he dragged out was reddened splinters.
“Dammit,” he grumbled quietly. “Roll ’im over for me.”
Bass gritted his teeth as they twisted him onto his belly and sat back down on his shoulders and legs.
Jack tapped Rowland on the arm. “Get outta my light, Johnny.”
Rowland shifted his weight on the wounded leg.
“That’s better,” Hatcher said. “Ye’re a lucky nigger, Titus Bass.”
“T-this don’t feel like lucky.” Then he twitched with the sudden flare of pain.
“Didn’t hit that big bone,” Hatcher explained as he leaned over the wound, pressed down on the flesh around the hole with his weight, and dug in with the puller.
Scratch ground his teeth together as the pain continued to swell, rising to a feverish red heat, glowing in overlapping waves that rose right up through his buttock and into the pit of him, spreading deep through his belly. Again and again Hatcher dug—yanking and swearing with each attempt, only to dig again. Each time coming up empty-handed.
“Sumbitch!” Jack grumbled, the bags under his eyes going liver-colored with frustration. “Caleb Wood! Get me my pouch yonder.”
When the shooting bag was laid on the ground next to Scratch, Hatcher began digging through it all the way to the bottom as Bass raggedly caught his breath while the sharp pain slowly subsided. He watched Hatcher drag a short ball starter out of the pouch.
“Roll him on his right side, fellas,” Hatcher said, of a sudden his voice much calmer than it had been since this operation had begun.
While they gently rolled him onto his right hip, Titus stared at that ball starter: a short six-inch length of hickory ramrod embedded in a small hardwood ball that fit comfortably in a man’s palm.
“Wha—what you gonna do now with that?”
“I can’t pull that arrow outta ye,” Jack explained, holding the starter in the light, “so I figger to hammer it out.”
“H-h-hammer?” Titus squeaked.
“Hold him down,” Hatcher said, refusing to answer the question. “This is gonna hurt him, bad.”
