“M-maria—”
“Gimme your pistol!” Bass shouted again, then crouched and grabbed for the weapon stuffed in Rowland’s belt like a goat’s hoof.
Dropping his rifle at his feet as he started to rise, Scratch dragged back the huge hammer on the pistol and whirled at the shrill war cry ringing in his ears. Nearly upon them was a warrior whose skin was more mahogany than oak brown, racing toward the trappers on foot.
His finger twitched on the trigger … but he held—spotting a second warrior sprinting right on the heels of the first headed their way.
Scratch waited, waited—his whole body tensing as he struggled against the instinct to shoot … then fired the big horse pistol—its huge ball cutting a swath through the first Indian and smacking into the second, dropping them both within spitting distance of Rowland.
As the two Comanche tumbled out of the way onto the icy snow, behind them a mounted warrior charged up to skewer a Mexican horseman with his buffalo lance. With so much power behind the impact, the warrior was able to pick the Mexican out of his saddle, dangling the helpless soldier aloft momentarily on the end of that terrible spear, then fling the dead man off into an icy patch of pine needles before the trembling carcass could break the lance.
Realizing that now he was without a loaded firearm, Scratch dropped the pistol beside Rowland at the same time he snagged hold of John’s collar and pulled his head back so he could stare into the trapper’s eyes.
“Get your goddamned pistol loaded—or you’re gonna end up like her!”
Wagging his head slightly, Rowland let the tears pour out.
It was plain to see the man didn’t care if he ended up like his Maria then and there. Bass let go of John’s shirt, leaving the man to collapse over the bare, bloody body, his own chest racked with silent sobs.
From the back of Rowland’s belt he pulled free the throwing tomahawk and leaped to his feet, exploding into a sprint. The Comanche lancer who had speared the soldier was turning his horse, bringing that huge blood- slickened weapon around to find another target. The closest was another of the naked women stumbling away, tripping and pitching into the snow to crawl on her knees and hands across the frozen ground. Her feet must be as leaden as adobe bricks, Bass thought as he lowered his head, his eyes locked on the horseman, flying across the crusty snow.
At the instant the Comanche loped past, Scratch flung himself onto the pony’s rear flanks, his left arm locking around the warrior’s chest as he swung out sideways with the tomahawk—hurling it back in savagely as the warrior twisted and jerked, trying to free himself from the white man he suddenly found clinging to him like a buffalo tick.
The tomahawk sank into soft tissue.
Only his gut!
Bass swung out again, this time bringing it against some bone.
Ribs!
Again, and again—hacking the blade higher and higher as the man coughed and gurgled and thrashed … until the Comanche went completely limp. Scratch yanked the warrior and his lance off the horse. He hopped forward just as the pony leaped aside, snatching hold of the reins in his left hand, spinning the animal around in a tight circle.
Some of the Comanche were already spurring their horses into the trees out of the depression where Hatcher’s men had sprung their attack. Nearly half of the horsemen bolted right past the trappers. Those warriors who were left to fight were either the very brave, or the very dead.
In his own most private duel Ensign Guerrero slashed and jabbed and parried with his sword against two Comanche who swung at him with their clubs and tomahawks, all three of them still on horseback, spinning about and bumping, throwing the weight of their animal against the others, kicking out with their legs at the enemy.
Suddenly the officer froze, his face gone pasty as day-old bread dough the instant a third Indian behind the Mexican pierced him with a long lance. The Mexican gazed down at the bloody lance protruding from his chest, vainly pulling at the slick wood with his empty left hand as he began to slip to the side from the saddle, spilling to the ground. Sprawling there, kicking his legs futilely, Don Francisco Guerrero finally dropped his engraved sword so he could clutch the thick, bloody wood with both hands as his eyes glazed over, staring sightless at the lowering sky.
Bass drew back the tomahawk and hurled it at the closest of the three horsemen, watching it crack into the warrior’s back. The other two wheeled around immediately as Bass pulled his own tomahawk from his belt, ready for the charge they were sure to make.
One of them yelled at the other; then both put heels to their horses and raced toward the white man. He set himself, ready to spring to either side, ready even to pitch onto the ground when they reached him. But to his surprise neither one leaned off to swing at him with their club or tomahawk. Rather, they burst on past, kicking their ponies furiously.
Right on the heels of the rest of those already fleeing the battle with wild shouts.
“Hatcher!”
It was Kinkead’s voice he heard as he turned.
Matthew was pointing back into the timber where the Comanche had disappeared. They could still hear the hoofbeats. But instead of that hammering growing fainter, it was becoming louder.
“They’re coming back!” Hatcher exploded out of the dawn shadows, hollering and waving.
All the rest were looking back over their shoulders as the war cries and captives’ shrieks grew louder.
“Get the women!”
Bass spun to glance back toward the middle of the meadow, where he found three of the captives miraculously still on their feet—naked and shivering, trembling from fear and the cold, huddling and clutching one another.
“Where’s the children?” Bass screamed at Solomon Fish as the trapper sprinted up beside him.
The stocky man’s face went blank as he swallowed hard and replied, “Ain’t none of the li’l ones left.”
In disbelief Titus groaned, “They kill ’em all?”
Lumbering up, Graham shouted, “What ones they didn’t awready get off with!”
“Watch out!” Hatcher warned.
The three of them whirled around with Jack as a dozen horsemen exploded from the shadows at tree line, horses snorting frosty jets of steam from their nostrils, bearing their riders toward the men on foot, who set themselves for that charge. Behind the trappers arose the shrieks of the three naked captives as they saw the Comanche returning.
Behind the women the soldiers themselves screamed in terror of being overrun and immediately turned on their heels, abandoning the women just behind that last stand being formed by those nine Americans.
Scratch quickly searched for Rowland on either side of him as the horsemen urged more speed from their ponies, coming all the faster across that trampled ground. There, off to the side, he finally saw him—where Johnny was as good as dead, collapsed over the body of his dead wife.
“Stand steady and look ’em in the eye!” Hatcher bellowed.
“Take one of ’em with you when you go down, boys!” Isaac Simms shouted, that tobacco-stained, whitish beard of his quivering with rage.
Bass barely had time to take another breath before the horsemen crashed into them with a deafening tangle of shouts and cries, screams and groans. In that clamor the trappers ducked and dived out of the way, some spinning about to reach up, immediately yanking horsemen down from their ponies as the warriors twisted to this side, then that, on the backs of their horses, attempting to slash at the whites with tomahawks, jabbing with knives of Mexican steel, and swinging stone-crowned clubs or stout bows at their enemies.
Only five of the twelve made it past the desperate trappers; no more than a handful reached that undefended patch of snowy ground where the three terrified women suddenly whirled and sprinted off, with the horsemen right on their heels, scampering like rabbits surprised far from their burrow. Hatcher pulled out his huge knife and in one motion brought it back, then flung it forward with such force that its impact knocked a warrior off his pony.
As if a keg of powder exploded beneath them, the nine Americans sprinted after the Comanche, screeching like demons with the coming of that crimson dawning of the day.
A black-haired horseman reined up beside one of the fleeing women, slamming his horse into her, knocking
