Simms turned away toward his bedroll.
Jack rose, wiped his skinning knife across his legging, and shoved it back into the scabbard at his hip. “The rest of ye, gather round.” He looked among them until he spotted Rowland. “How many they get away with, Johnny?”
Rowland shrugged and nodded to Bass.
Titus answered. “Maybe half a dozen, Jack.”
“Damn.” Hatcher was deep in thought a few moments. “Every man make sure yer loaded. Leave behind any extra guns ye got with Rufus and Isaac”
“Me?” Simms asked as he returned with his parfleche of herbs.
“You and Rufus gonna stay behind here with Matt,” Hatcher ordered. “Drag up some cover, case they double back to make another go at us.”
“Where you going?” Graham asked with that slight lisp of his as he started to drag a bundle of pelts over.
“Me and the others,” the tall, angular Hatcher said, “we’re going after them horses.”
Domesticated four-legged critters were worth their weight in beaver plews in this country. Horses or mules, it made little difference to this small band of American fur trappers.
Yet this was more than a matter of having a few of their animals stolen from them. The thieves had been Blackfoot—likely some of the same bunch who had struck them earlier that spring. Had that whole raiding party come at them this time, they could have run right over the white men like a herd of elk trampling across a meadow of wildflowers.
This had become a matter of honor. A matter of a warrior’s pride. It didn’t take very many seasons surviving in these mountains before a trapper came to understand that blood was the only language the Blackfoot understood. Force, and might, and blood.
If they let a small band of the enemy get away with a handful of horses …
Hell, there was never the slightest debate. The six saddled up and rode north toward the far-off spine of the distant mountains, feeling their way in the darkness, hoping that their guess was right. They could wait until first light to circle around camp and locate the enemy’s trail. Or they could push out now in the dark, gambling that they would pick up the trail a few hours from now when dawn finally overtook them—without wasting that time and miles by sitting on their hands.
As the first ballooning of light emerged out of the east, they reached the foothills on the southern slopes of the range, Hatcher riding at the head of the others, who were strung back from him in a vee like the long-necked honkers that had been winging their way north overhead for weeks now, returning to summer haunts.
“There!” Hatcher hurled his voice over his shoulder, throwing up an arm to stop the others as he reined up.
Clattering to a halt, the rest gazed down the open, grassy slopes broken by stands of timber, cut here and there with narrow freshets flowing bank-to-bank with spring runoff fed from the snowfields far above them.
“They’re covering ground,” Bass declared as he studied the distant figures.
“Damn if they ain’t,” the beefy Fish agreed.
Hatcher turned his horse around, his half-feral eyes moving from man to man to man accusingly, “Ye boys figger us to go on? Or do we cut our losses and turn back now?”
“It’s a long shot,” Rowland said almost apologetically.
“Yeah,” Wood stated. “Ain’t no guarantee we’ll ever catch up after all this riding—”
“They can’t run forever,” Bass grumbled, exasperated at their second-guessing. “I’m fixin’ to go, even if the rest of you don’t.”
“Just you?” Rowland squeaked. “You’d be teched—”
With a shrug Titus interrupted, “If’n it’s just me, I’ll wait till dark one night soon and crawl in, cut them horses loose. Ride back this way … ride back like hell itself.”
“Eegod, boys! Just like a Injun would do it his own self!” Hatcher said, a grin of admiration beginning to crease his face.
“Damn straight,” Bass said, grinning too, determination bright in his eyes.
A half-wild look in his eyes, Hatcher glanced over the others, the grin fading from his mouth as he said, “Bass is right. Those sumbitches can’t run forever. They’ll have to stop one day soon—for graze, or water, or just to climb down from the bony backs of our god-blessed ponies.”
“And then we’ll have ’em,” Gray said with sudden enthusiasm. He wore a cap he had stitched together himself from a scrap of old wool blanket, sewn with a peak on either side to crudely resemble wolf ears.
Rowland shook his head. “If’n we ain’t dead in the saddle afore then our own selves.”
Hatcher nudged his horse up close to Rowland. “Ye comin’, Johnny?”
“Ain’t a thing wrong in you turning back to help Isaac and Rufus see to Kinkead,” Bass declared protectively. “No man can fault you there.”
For a moment Rowland appeared to consider that option. Then he sighed, “I come this far awready.”
Titus quickly slapped Rowland on the back and turned to Hatcher. “C’mon, Jack—let’s go see this through.”
Dawn came and went, then midday with it. In the early afternoon they crossed a wide, shallow creek, tarrying only long enough to water their horses a little, not enough to make the animals loggy. No more than a few moments for man and beast to gulp down the cold, clear mountain runoff, enough to give the saddle horses a burst of newfound energy. They pushed on into the afternoon and watched as the sun began to tumble toward the horizon behind their left shoulders.
“How many more you figger?” Solomon Fish asked the others who were stretched on their bellies with him, all six having left their animals tied in a copse of trees far below them before they scrambled up the slope to the top of the rimrock that color of old, sun-dried blood.
Eyeing the warriors below, Elbridge Gray replied, “Baker’s dozen, at least.”
The lean-faced Rowland stared down at the two hands he held up, flipping up fingers slowly, then folding them back down as he mouthed his numbers. “That makes more’n … oh, shit! We ain’t got us—”
“Hush yer face, Johnny!” Hatcher snapped.
“Way I see it,” Bass declared, “with that other bunch what just come in to join up with them horse thieves, looks to be they evened up the odds now.”
Rowland gulped, “Even … evened up the odds?”
“Yepper,” Titus replied. “I figger things is about a draw now.”
Mad Jack cackled low, wagging his head, eyes merry in the deepening twilight. “Eegod—if’n ye don’t take the circle, Titus Bass! With us having even-up odds, just what ye got in mind for to get our horses back from that camp they’re making down there?”
“Wh-what I got in mind?” Scratch asked with a snort. “You’re the one with all the notions, Jack. I’m just here to help out. I ain’t no smart nigger now.”
“I was hoping ye was gonna show us ye was a lot more dad-blamed smarter’n me, coon,” Hatcher said. “’Cause I ain’t got no plan neither. No way. Nothing ’cept my hankering to sashay in there quiet as can be come slap-dark, cut loose what’s ours, an’ run the rest off so’s they can’t trail us.”
“Gotta be quick and brassy ’bout it,” Titus added.
“Pick yourself a strong one to ride out with,” Solomon advised gravely.
Caleb Wood finally spoke up, “Chances are good these red niggers gonna come fair boiling after us, on horse or foot.”
“No two ways about it, boys,” Jack reminded the rest, “we gotta drive off all their ponies.”
“Don’t know about you,” Bass said as he started scooting back down the slope, a bone-deep weariness penetrating to his core, “but this here’s one child gonna grab him a few hours shut-eye till it’s time to go crawling in there and kill us some Blackfoots.”
“Dead on my feet, my own self,” Hatcher agreed, flinging his arms back and stretching like a skinny, long- legged cat. “C’mon, boys. It’s been a long day awready. And from the looks of things, we’re fixin’ to lose some more sleep tonight.”
Bass lay curled up in the frosty, fireless dark with the others, listening to the men snort and clear their throats, turn about and flop over, doing their best to root around and get themselves comfortable on the cold,
