Scratch Thought he heard the horse guard well before he ever saw him.
He stopped, listening intently to the dark. Listening not only with his ears, but with every inch of exposed flesh, his skin alive and prickling at the nearness of danger. He tried to remember to breathe, and when he did, Bass found the air shockingly cold. Sniffing deeply of the gloom, he thought he could smell the dried sweat, the days-old grease that told him the warrior was near. Or was it only his imagination, galloping wildly now that he was inching ever closer to this moment of reckoning?
Not that he hadn’t killed before. But this was something entirely different.
When violence confronted a man, it usually did so suddenly, without warning and forethought. One moment a man stood square with the world around him. And with his next breath, things went awry, everything off-kilter and askew in that instant. A man found himself swept up in the immediacy of the moment and responded to protect either himself or those dear to him. Just as he had done when the Chickasaw had slipped on board Ebenezer Zane’s Kentucky flatboat.
One moment he’s fighting off sleep with heavy eyes and the gentle bobbing of that flat-bottomed broadhorn laden with marketable goods bound for the port at New Orleans … and the next moment he’s shooting and stabbing, clubbing and slashing at the heathens who have stolen out of the night.
So this was the first time in his life that Bass ever had time to plan, to think, and to fret on it. Killing had always been what he had done when presented with no other choice. Now it became something altogether different, when he was no longer the one confronted by the violence created for him—now that he was the one slipping out of the dark. Not that these Blackfoot didn’t deserve to die, he reminded himself as he took another two steps forward … and suddenly saw the shape of the man.
Stopping almost in midstep, Bass held his breath a long moment. Waiting, he watched the warrior, studying to be sure there was no chance he might have been heard. Waiting to be certain the breeze was still in his face. He took another step, paused, then moved to within two short yards of the raider. The horses were just beyond him.
He leaned the rifle against a tree, wondering where Hatcher was. Wondering how long he should wait there before … how much time he would have before the warrior moved farther away, or the animals scented him, or all hell broke loose because one of the others were discovered.
Swallowing down the sharp-edged ball of thorny fear lodged in his throat, Bass brought both arms up, his left ready to snare the Blackfoot, the right hand filled with his old knife.
The horses brought their heads up suddenly as Titus was starting the knife back in its arc. An instant later a cry shattered the night. The Blackfoot in front of him visibly jerked, then started to wheel to his right, about to sprint off for camp. He spotted Bass at the same moment Scratch was lunging forward, his arm already swinging down in a frenzy, snatching hold of the Blackfoot’s war shirt, yanking the Indian close as the knife became a blur.
In that moment of the white man’s hesitation, the enemy managed to bring his forearm up. Bass’s wrist collided with it as the tip of the knife grazed the side of the warrior’s neck. But the Blackfoot’s right arm was free, grabbing for his own scabbard as they danced in a tight circle. The moment the man’s knife came up in that free hand, Titus shoved his enemy backward, slamming his knee into the warrior’s groin.
Stumbling a step, the warrior sought to protect himself as Scratch pursued him back, back—still holding on to the war shirt—yanking the warrior to the side as he raked his knife across the Blackfoot’s gut. He felt the sudden warm splash across his own cold hand.
Until now the enemy hadn’t made a sound; but this was something that reminded him of a grunt from the old plow mule, a little of the squeal. Sinking to his knees, the Blackfoot stared down at his hands, found them filling with the first purplish-white ribbons of gut spilling from the deep, savage wound. Dull-eyed, he looked up at the white man just as Bass heard the rumble burst free of his own throat: stepping forward to savagely slash the old knife from left to right across the enemy’s throat.
Deep enough that the man’s head snapped back, eyes wide, lips moving bereft of sound this time.
There was enough other noise now.
Scratch could hear the shouts of the trappers somewhere behind him. And off toward the creek came the shrill cries of the rest of the Blackfoot.
Their fat was in the fire now.
Damn if they hadn’t managed to stir up the hornets’ nest without getting off with the horses.
Of a sudden it sounded as if he were surrounded by the rain-patter of running steps. Out of the gray gloom emerged huge black shadows. Snorting, wide-eyed, with frosty vapor jetting from their mouths, more than two dozen ponies shot past as Scratch dodged this way, then that, to keep from getting trampled. He thought he recognized some of the voices cracking the darkness, yelling to one another as they raced to get ahead of the stampeding herd.
All bets were off now.
He damn well knew he couldn’t count on his own horse being back there where he had left it with the others.
As the last of the ponies blew past him in the dark, thundering through the tall willows, Bass knew he was alone, and on foot.
Realizing what that meant for no more than a heartbeat before he heard the Blackfoot cries coming closer and closer. Footsteps, the rustle of underbrush, the strident call of anguish, rage, blood lust.
He looked down at the dead warrior, hoping to find some sort of firearm. Nothing more than that knife and a quiver strapped over his shoulder, filled with arrows and a short bow.
Jerking around at the nearing clamor, Scratch decided the time would never be better to make a run for it— just as more than a half-dozen warriors burst from the far brush on foot.
“Bass!”
The voice yanked him around as he was turning to plunge into the willow thicket for his rifle.
Trying to get any sound free past the clog in his throat was an impossible feat as he stammered Hatcher’s name.
Jack burst out of the brush on horseback between Titus and the onrushing warriors. “Up, coon! Heave up now!”
“My gun!”
“Get it, sumbitch!”
By the time he whirled back with it, Jack held out a hand from the back of the Blackfoot pony he controlled with no more than the single buffalo-hair rein. In a frightened circle it pranced around Bass one time, then a second, as Jack struggled for control and Scratch stuffed the knife into its sheath. The two men locked one another’s forearms while Titus hopped round and round at the center of the circle.
The cries grew louder, renewed now that the prey was in sight.
“Dammit—get up here or we’re both wolf bait!”
“G’won … I can’t—”
With a mighty grunt Hatcher reared back, dragging Bass off the ground enough that he was able to swing one leg over the hind flanks of the pony, his free hand reaching out to seize Jack’s buckskin shirt. Both of them jabbing heels into the horse’s ribs, they lunged into the willow thicket.
Arrows smacked the branches around them. Gunfire boomed behind them, the air on either side of their heads alive with the tormented whine of lead balls.
“Far as hitting anything with a gun, never met me a Injun wuth a red piss!” Hatcher roared as the willow whipped their arms and legs and cheeks unmercifully.
Bass’s left side burned in the cold—like a sudden, raw opening of tender flesh. Gazing down at the wound while he laid his hand over it, Bass waited a moment, then brought the hand away, feeling the pain already, even before he saw the dark stain on his palm.
“Should’ve left me behind,” he grumbled as he secured a better hold on Hatcher just as they broke free of the willow onto the sagebrush plain.
“Hell with you, nigger!” Hatcher grumbled. “I ain’t never left no man ahin’t … and I ain’t about to start now. Mangy as yer carcass is—wuthless, no-good—”
“There they are!” Scratch exclaimed through gritted teeth, fighting the pain in his side where the bullet’s path made him want to cry.
