Startled at the noise, Rowland turned. “Shit!”
As he leaped to the side, Titus grumbled, “Never was any good with stickers—”
And with that he flung the tomahawk at the raider, striking the horse thief low in the chest.
“Scratch is over here!” Rowland sang out as the warrior crumpled forward onto his face.
Behind them on the far side of their camp, four of the trappers squatted behind some baggage. Among them Hatcher rose. He intently watched the night shadows as Bass emerged from the trees, his eyes raking the meadow for more of the enemy.
“That the last of ’em?” Hatcher asked.
“Dunno,” Elbridge Gray admitted below him, squatting there as he shoved the ramrod down the muzzle of his rifle.
“Keep yer goddamned eyes peeled on that line of trees,” Hatcher commanded, slapping Solomon Fish on the shoulder as he turned. “Kinkead? Where the hell’re you?”
“I don’t see him nowhere,” Caleb Wood cried with fear in his voice.
From across camp Rufus Graham shouted, “He go out with them horses?”
“Horses,” Bass muttered angrily at himself, whirling around. Then he turned back suddenly to yell at Rowland. “Your gun loaded, Johnny?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Come with me,” Bass growled, growing more angry with himself as he dashed away. “The goddamned horses.”
As the two white men drew close, the animals neighed and whinnied—some recognizing their smell, others still frightened. They milled nervously in what was left of their rope corral strung in a wide circle, looped tree to tree to tree. That one section cut by the raiders was not enough for the horses to dare snatch at their freedom: with a hand still clutching the end of the rope he had cut, one of the warriors lay dead. The foreign smell of the Indian, perhaps that faint hint of his blood on the wind, kept the rest of their nervous animals from bolting past the body sprawled on the forest floor.
“How many you figger the niggers got?” Rowland asked as he moved among the horses, quieting them— patting necks, stroking withers and flanks.
“Likely a handful,” Bass replied, worried. For he still hadn’t seen her among the others.
Simms was suddenly at the far side of the corral, ducking under the rope. “Mule’s over here, Scratch!”
“Damn,” he croaked thickly, shoving his way through the rangy Indian cayuses, fighting his way to the mule. He stopped, finding he could breathe again just at the sight of her.
Reaching Hannah’s side, Titus laid an arm affectionately over her neck, hugging the animal.
“Kinkead’s hurt,” the stocky Simms said as he came to a halt beside Bass. “Hurt bad.”
“He gonna make it?”
“Hatcher don’t know yet,” Simms admitted, his pale, whitish-blond hair aglow in the night.
“Damn.” Scratch turned toward the far side of the corral. His eyes found Rowland. “Me and Johnny stay here while you get some more rope.”
“They cut through more’n one place?”
“No,” he answered Simms. “We’re lucky. Who was they anyway?”
Isaac shrugged. “From the quick look-see I got of the two of ’em we dropped … likely they was Blackfoots.”
He swallowed hard. Blackfoot again. “G’won—get the rope, Isaac.”
Simms turned and moved away without a word.
Blackfoot.
What were the chances this had been a different raiding party from the one that had struck Hatcher’s outfit weeks ago as they were trapping their way northwest from Shoshone country? Slim chance, if any. When Goat Horn had brought his warriors across those days and nights of hard riding to pull the trappers’ fat out of the fire, reaching the white men as the Blackfoot raiders were circling in tighter and tighter to make the kill … what were the chances that those angry, defeated Blackfoot had been driven on north, back to their own country?
And what were the chances they had doubled back to try again?
“They was Bug’s Boys awright,” the rail-thin Rowland said behind him.
Turning, Bass saw John standing over one of the bodies.
“You get this’un, Scratch?”
Titus stepped over to the Indian lying sprawled on the ground. “The first’un,” Bass admitted. “Didn’t kill him right off with a ball. Not much more’n a boy.”
“Ain’t much left of the young’un’s face.”
Swallowing, Titus declared, “He come on a man’s errand.”
“Damn if he didn’t. Looks of it—this here boy was ready to chop you into boudin meat.”
Shaking his head, Bass turned away, watching Simms approaching. “It don’t make the killing any easier, Johnny.”
“By jam—these niggers’re wuss’n animals,” Isaac declared as he came to a halt. “Blackfeets is like painters and wolves, Scratch. No better. A little smarter mayhaps. But they ain’t wuth no more’n a critter.”
“Isaac’s right,” Rowland said, bobbing his head of unkempt hair. “And your hand put two of ’em outta their misery this night.”
“Two?” Simms echoed with interest, stroking at his long, pale beard.
Jabbing a bony thumb over his shoulder, Rowland explained, “’Nother’un’s back there—nigger was fixin’ to lay me out when Bass finished him.”
“Damn. If that don’t take the circle!” the overly solemn Simms said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “Two of ’em. C’mon, let’s get this here rope up quick. Jack wants us back in camp so we can figger what’s to do about them horses the others got off with.”
In minutes Bass was kneeling at Kinkead’s feet with some of the others. Titus asked Hatcher, “How he be?”
“I’m fit as any the rest of you sonsabitches,” Kinkead grumbled as he pulled out the thick twig he had been clenching between his teeth. For the moment this stocky man was sitting propped back against a pack of beaver, Caleb Wood behind one shoulder for support. Matthew turned his chin toward the other shoulder and growled, “Leave me be, Mad Jack! You never was any good with a knife—”
“Shuddup, child,” Hatcher ordered. “An’ quit yer hitchin’! Ye’re making this wuss’n it has to be.”
Kinkead gasped in pain, flung his head back with a groan, and shoved the twig back between his teeth as Hatcher proceeded to dig into the dark, moist wound on the big man’s muscular chest. From it fluttered the long shaft of a Blackfoot arrow—buried deep in the right breast.
“Hold him still, goddammit!” Hatcher ordered, exasperated. “Help me, Bass. Hold him down!”
Now there were three restraining that bull of a man almost as wide as he was tall.
“You gonna finish it sometime afore the damn sun comes up?” Bass eventually asked in a grunt as he tried to stay atop Kinkead’s strong legs.
“I can feel the goddamned arrow point,” Hatcher admitted, shifting the knife blade this way, then that, with one hand, his other gently tugging now and then on the shaft. “I don’t wanna pull the goddamned thing free ’thout the arrow point. Hold him down, or I ain’t gonna get this done afore a month of sunrises!”
Kinkead growled like a wounded bear, hissing around his twig at Hatcher as Jack rose to his knees above the man, brought back his arm, and suddenly slammed a fist against Kinkead’s jaw.
Spitting the twig free, the wild-eyed Kinkead almost succeeded in getting up despite the other three. Unfazed by the blow, he angrily spat, “What the hell you go and do that for—”
Jack swung his fist again, harder this time, connecting with a crack like a cottonwood popping in the dead of winter. Kinkead’s eyes rolled back, and his head sagged to the side, all that dead weight propped back against Caleb Wood.
“Now I can get done what needs doing ’thout him jabberin’,” Hatcher said as he resituated himself over Kinkead. “You boys can’t keep him still … by bloody damn I’ll put him to sleep my own self.”
In a matter of moments Hatcher’s deft touch had extracted the arrow. All that probing and digging left a mess of Kinkead’s chest, but both shaft and arrow point were free. “Get yer medeecins, Isaac,” he ordered. “Patch him up and get him covered quick.”
