“Damn if it ain’t!”
Far ahead of them galloped more than forty horses, their hooves hammering the flaky hardpan ground as they were driven by the whooping cries of the other four trappers struggling to keep the Blackfoot ponies from scattering this way or that at either side of their path.
For a moment Bass turned slightly to peer over his shoulder behind them. He was beginning to feel faint, wanting nothing better than to have Hatcher stop so he could climb off, lie down, and sleep. Instead Titus bit down hard on his lower lip—startling himself with the pain that for a moment made him forget the terrible fire in his side.
“W-we gonna make it, Jack?”
Hatcher turned his head quickly to look behind them. “I do believe, Titus Bass!”
“You mean we pulled that off?”
“Less’n them sumbitches got more ponies—and I do believe we got ’em all—they ain’t coming after us but on foot!”
Suddenly Titus was growing light-headed and the ground was starting to spin beneath the pony’s hooves as it struggled beneath the weight of two men. “I ain’t … ain’t …”
“Hang on!”
“Can’t hang much more—”
“Ye hit?”
“’Fraid so, Jack.”
“Eegod, Scratch!” he screeched, yanking back on the single buffalo-hair rein.
His eyelids grown so heavy. “K-keep goin’!”
“I wanna see how bad ye’re—”
“We’re gonna have company soon if’n you pull up.”
Hatcher jerked his head around, gazing down their backtrail, spotting the distant figures Bass had sighted only moments before. Horsemen. There weren’t many—but enough to make for trouble.
Jack sighed, “Ye gonna hold on?”
“Like a goddamned tick.”
“Hep-ha!” Hatcher cried, jabbing his moccasins into the horse’s belly, jolting a sudden burst of speed from it.
Burying his face in Hatcher’s bony back, Titus drank in deep drafts of air, realizing that it was no longer night. Sometime in the last few minutes, the sky had begun to brighten in prelude to sunrise. Now they’d be all the easier to track for that handful of riders. Ponies the trappers hadn’t driven off. And where there was a handful, a man could always figure there might likely be more.
He wondered how Kinkead was doing, remembering the sight of that arrow shaft quivering every time Matthew drew in a ragged breath, shuddering every time he exhaled. How they had struggled to hold the big man down to pull it out. All the blood as Hatcher dug the stone head out of the thick muscle. Arrow or bullet—who was to say what was better … what a man could survive …
“Help me get him down!”
Some of the black curtain was pulled back, and Bass came awake as the hands grabbed him, feeling himself pulled, allowing himself to fall against them clumsily. The others laid him out as Hatcher slid from the heaving pony’s bare back. It was plain the creature didn’t take to being so close to these strange-smelling white men. It nearly pulled Jack off the ground with its first lunge, snorting and rearing back.
Hatcher balled up his hard-boned fist and smacked the animal with a powerful haymaker of a blow, landing it right behind the nostrils.
Staggering to the side, the pony righted itself, more wary now of the man who still gripped its buffalo-hair rein.
“Take this, Caleb.” Jack handed that rein to Wood. “Solomon, turn Scratch on his side.” He knelt beside Bass. “Lemme have a look-see while the rest of ye get ready to welcome Bug’s Boys to our li’l hidee-hole.”
“That makes only three guns, Jack,” Rowland complained.
“Four,” Hatcher corrected. “Caleb, tie that jughead off and get yerself a spot to watch the backtrail.”
Somewhere beyond them back down the trail, the sun was breaking over the edge of the earth. But here past the mouth of this narrow canyon, it was still shadow. Breath vapor steamed in frosty halos surrounding every head. Bass grunted as he was turned, his eyes struggling to focus as he looked up, around at the faces dancing in a watery haze over him.
“It come clean through, boys,” Jack declared, finding the exit wound on Bass’s belly.
“Damn lucky, ain’t he?” Solomon Fish exclaimed, supporting the wounded man’s shoulders.
“Titus Bass lucky?” Hatcher snorted as he leaned close to examine the entrance wound, pushing this way and that with his fingertips. “Any other man I’d call lucky if’n he was hit by a Blackfoot ball that went right on through his side the way this’un did. But from what we know about this son of a bitch, the way he lived to tell of a ’Rapaho scalpin’, hung like a tick on the back of that damned bitch of a mule long enough to be in the right place and the right time when the Snakes shot that white medicine calf … and then got his fat pulled from the fire with the rest of us last spring when that white medicine calf’s hide told them grateful Snakes when we was all about to go under … hell, Solomon! I never knowed any man more lucky than Titus Bass!”
Elbridge Gray turned to say, “Born under a good star, that child was.”
“Damn if he wasn’t,” Jack sighed, leaning back. “’Pears to me that ball went right on through ’thout striking anything but skin and muscle.”
Caleb whistled low in amazement. “Almost makes a man wanna keep him around for our own good luck.”
Hatcher nodded, pushing some of Bass’s long, stringy hair out of his eyes as Titus struggled to focus on the brigade leader. “Damn right, boys—this here’s a good man to have along.”
“J-jack—”
Hatcher leaned close. “I got bad news for ye, Scratch.”
“Bad?”
“Ye’re gonna live, ye mangy, flea-bit no-count.”
“Gonna make it, am I? By damn that’s good news—”
“That is less’n the Blackfoots catch up to us and pin us down till they can finish ye off.”
Bass squinted his eyes against the rise of pain. “We ain’t gonna let ’em, are we?”
Jack grinned, his overly large teeth the color of pin acorns. “Not by a long chalk, we ain’t.” He turned. “Caleb—crawl on up there and see what them riders are up to at the mouth of the canyon.”
Scratch heard Caleb Wood move off. “I got my pistol, rifle too, if’n any of you can use ’em.”
“Hell, Bass,” Gray spouted. “You ain’t hurt so bad you can’t hold on to ’em your own self.”
Fish added, “Might be you’ll get a chance to use ’em yet.”
A few long minutes later Titus fluttered open his eyes slightly, fighting to focus on Hatcher’s face hovering over his. “You get your horse guard?”
“Didn’t get the chance,” Jack replied. “I spooked a horse, so that red son of a bitch jumped out into the meadow on me. Right about the time a second one showed up.”
“Second one?” Rowland asked.
“I figger it was another guard coming out to take him his turn at watch,” Jack explained. “Boys, there ain’t two ways about it: plain as paint I’m ’bout as unlucky as Titus Bass born under a good star!”
“Let’s hope his star gonna shine down on all of us,” Caleb huffed as he crabbed back into that ring the trappers formed around Bass.
Solomon asked, “More coming?”
Wood nodded, licking his dry lips. “See’d ’em. Coming a ways off.”
“How many?” Rowland demanded in a rising voice.
“It don’t matter how many,” Hatcher declared as he rose from his knees. “We can’t none of us stay here to let ’em finish us off.”
“What about Bass?” Fish asked.
Jack looked down at Titus. “What about it, Scratch?”
He struggled to rise on an elbow and tried out a weak grin on all of them. “Boys, if Mad Jack here says we
