“How many you figger?”
“More’n two of us can handle.”
“We got a bunch of guns—”
“But there’s only two of us to fire ’em,” Shadrach interrupted.
“Easy now,” he soothed. “We don’t even know what they be. Maybeso they’re just some Snakes—following that buffler herd to make meat.”
Sweete sighed in relief. “You’re right. I just let that Sinclair get me jumping at shadows. I reckon that’s it: only Snakes, trailing them buffler down to the fort.”
“We ain’t got no reason to think them are Sioux tracks,” Bass warned.
Those recent seasons in Crow country had made for a lot of work for little beaver. Times past, he would have had more than twice the plews to show for his efforts, what with all the miles put behind him. Even after replacing those traps the Blackfoot had discarded, Bass still found he was forced to push higher to find the dammed-up meadows and lodges, forced to plunge farther and farther into the recesses of the mountains to find what beaver remained after years of relentless extermination of the creatures. More than once Titus had cursed others, then cursed his luck, and eventually cursed himself for stripping the creeks and streams and rivers of the flat-tails during those golden glory days.
But how was a man ever going to replace those belongings stolen and destroyed by the Blackfoot if he couldn’t find enough beaver to trade for the blankets and traps, kettles and beads, finger rings and hawksbells he had possessed before the Blackfoot had raided Absaroka?
Tullock had treated him more than square in their dealings at Fort Van Buren, but there was only so much the trader could do when the price of beaver was on the slide and the cost of goods was rising with every season supplies came north on the Missouri. No matter the pinch they both found themselves in, the company tobacco was good and Tullock’s private stock of rum was the best Titus had tasted since he had learned to drink Monangahela on that flatboat ride down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans.
“I heard Beckwith’s back in the mountains,” Samuel Tullock had declared that summer evening when Bass rode over to Van Buren for some white company.
“Jim Beckwith? You was the one told me he’d give up on the mountains and gone back to St. Louis.”
“He did. But the story is he growed tired of it. Beckwith’s come back to the mountains.”
“He come back to hook up with that band of Mountain Crow?”
Tullock shook his head as he swallowed some rum. “No. Word has it when he come west last summer, he went out the Platte Road. They say he’s down at Fort Vasquez with them fellers—trading to the Arapaho and shining on some Cheyenne gals, I reckon.”
“Hard to figger, ’cuz ever’thing I ever knowed of him—he was real tight with them Crow.”
“Damn tight. Had him a handful of wives, and the Crow made him a war chief, some such,” Tullock agreed.
“Why the hell didn’t Beckwith come on back north, where he had him a good life?”
“Only thing I been able to figger since I heard he come back is that Beckwith don’t wanna have nothing to do with this country up here where the smallpox was.”
“Ain’t the pox all done, Sam’l?”
Nodding, Tullock replied, “The pox is done, Scratch … but now there’s talk around the tribes that it was Beckwith brung the pox to the Injuns up here.”
“Beckwith?” Bass squeaked in disbelief. “He weren’t even in this country back then. You and Levi told me one of the company boats brung the pox up the river a year ago.”
Grudgingly Tullock agreed. “I know. Cain’t be Beckwith brung the pox.”
“But the truth don’t matter none to the company, does it?”
The trader shook his head. “No it don’t, Scratch. Truth is, the company done everything it can to pin this terrible thing on Beckwith.”
“So now your booshways come out smelling sweet,” Bass grumbled at the weighty injustice of it all, “seeing how they made damned sure the tribes believe it were Beckwith brought ’em the spotted death.”
Jim Beckwith. Purty Jim Beckwith. Had him a sweet, sweet life with the Crow before he gave it up to try things back in St. Louis—
“Scratch!”
Blinking, Bass jerked at the sound of Sweete’s cry, torn out of his reverie. Turning slightly, he found the big man pointing with the muzzle of his huge rifle.
Across the winding bed of Vermillion Creek the narrow valley rose sharply. Atop those low bluffs on the far side at least a dozen horsemen were coming to a halt.
Feathers hung from hair and shields and lances. Scalp locks waved beneath ponies’ jaws, tormented by the gusts of icy wind. And every last goddamned one of those warriors sat there in the cold with frost streaming from his mouth as they all began to yell in exultation … suddenly jabbing heels into their ponies as they raced down the dull, reddish ocher of that hillside—coming on, coming on—close enough that Titus could see they were wearing paint.
Lots of damned paint. Those red niggers were decked out like no Injuns he had ever seen before.
One thing for certain—those sure as hell weren’t Snakes riding down off the hills to make a white man feel welcome!
*
*
30
“Into the draw!”
As that command shot from his lips, Bass was already wheeling his pony in a circle so tight, the horse nearly raked its knees on the frozen ground. Yanking sharply with his right hand to force the horse around, Titus tugged the boy back against him so hard he heard little Flea gasp.
“Hang on, son!” he growled.
From behind, Scratch could hear the horsemen reach the narrow stream, charging their ponies right into the water thinly covered by a wind-rippled slake of dirty ice. How he wished they had one or two more hands along to aim the rifles.
At the brushy mouth of the draw he tore back on the reins, almost dragging the pony back onto its rear haunches in the skid. He waved the woman and girl on past him, followed closely by Samantha and the half-dozen packhorses. For the moment the warriors were bunched as they forded the stream, the first horsemen just then emerging from the Vermillion, leaping onto the bank, pony legs and bellies streaming water—those first painted warriors drawing back the strings on their small bows.
Out in the open between those bowmen and the mouth of the coulee Shadrach Sweete looked ungainly on his snorting, heaving horse as it lumbered toward the wash beneath its rider’s bulk. The big man was sitting funny, most of his weight shifted to that right stirrup where he was all but standing as he bobbed across the last few yards. Inch by inch his saddle shifted farther and farther to the right, the cinch scraping against the pony’s belly while that right stirrup dropped closer and closer to the ground with every heaving leap of the horse.
Less than ten yards from the mouth of the wash the saddle spun under the animal’s belly and the big man spilled into the gray, weathered sage with a grunt. With its saddle rocking under its belly like a clanger in a bell, the pony clattered into the draw to join its four-legged companions.
“C’mon, Shadrach!” Titus screamed as he handed Flea down to Waits-by-the-Water the moment she hit the ground.
Vaulting from the off side of the pony an instant later, Bass ripped the mittens from his hands and dragged the long muzzle of the flintlock from the blanket roll lashed behind his Spanish saddle. Scratch figured the fall had momentarily knocked the wind out of the man … but he wasn’t prepared to find Sweete still crumpled on the ground. Unmoving.
