A sigh of relief gushed from him, and that next moment Bass heard the faintest trace of sound from the sage. Almost as if he could hear the man breathing hard as he pulled himself along the frozen ground. Those sounds disappeared the moment Scratch turned, began moving in their direction through the growing darkness.
Bass was all but upon the warrior before he made out the horseman sprawled among the low clumps of sage. Bass stopped there near the Indian’s moccasins. His eyes slowly swept the valley, straining to find any more attackers. Realizing his blood pounded in his ears, that he still held the empty pistol at the end of both extended arms, Scratch slowly brought the weapon down—staring now at the warrior who had his eyes fixed on the white man.
“Bass?”
“Up here,” he said tersely.
Then softly, so much in a whisper that Titus wasn’t sure at first, the warrior began to sing. More a discordant chant as the man huffed his medicine song, obviously in great pain.
“Where you, Bass?”
“Keep coming—you’ll find me.”
With two more steps Scratch stood directly over the warrior. In the enemy’s belt were a knife and a tomahawk, neither of which he had pulled to defend himself. As Titus started to kneel over the warrior, the man jerked his fingers to the handle of that knife, but Bass grabbed the wrist before the weapon could clear the scabbard.
“Goddamn, it got dark quick,” Sweete grumbled as he slid over the side of the draw, stood painfully, getting his bearings.
“There ain’t no more of ’em to worry about down your way?” Scratch asked as he stuffed his pistol away in his belt, then quickly pried the warrior’s fingers loose from the knife handle.
He ripped the tomahawk from the belt and stood.
“There’s maybe two still down there in the brush,” Sweete explained as he came to a stop on the other side of the warrior.
The Indian’s eyes flicked in fear as the tall trapper stared down at him. Then the warrior’s eyes quickly filled with loathing.
Scratch said, “I figger it’s time for us to make a run for that post.”
“Why—we can hold off them two niggers ’thout making our balls sweat.”
“Think hard on it, Shadrach,” he whispered. “What Injuns did we figger these are?”
“Likely them Sioux the Snakes warned was riding through this country.”
“And if them Sioux was coming all the way over here where they never been a’fore … you figger there’d be only ten or a dozen of ’em come?”
Sweete sighed. “No. They’d send a whole shitteree of ’em.”
“So when these don’t show up tonight, things gonna get hot around here,” Titus explained. “I’m gonna make a run for the fort with the young’uns.”
“What about this’un here? You wanna finish him?”
For a moment more Bass thought on it. “Time was, I would have. Might kill me a nigger like this again one day … but this’un I’ll let go.”
“Just free as you please?”
Of a sudden it struck him what to do. “No. If the rest of them Sioux find this nigger alive—find all the rest of ’em dead—I want this son of a bitch to tell all the rest what happened.”
“Like that story you tell when you found the bastard what scalped you,” Shad declared.
“I’m gonna make sure this’un will never walk right again.” Bass knelt over the man. “So he’ll never run in his life. Help me turn him over.”
“What you fixing to do?” Sweete asked as he roughly rolled the smaller man over, held the Indian down with his weight.
Scooting down to the warrior’s feet, Titus pulled up the bottom of his blanket legging, then dragged down the top of the man’s winter moccasin, exposing the taut strap of tendon at the back of the ankle. Grabbing the Sioux’s foot with his left hand, he braced it and himself as he brought his skinning knife down, raking it brutally across the back of the tendon, severing it completely as the warrior grunted with a muffled cry.
“Man what can’t walk,” Bass declared, rising, wiping the knife off across his own legging, “that man can’t never be a warrior no more.”
31
Times was hard. Goods come at a king’s ransom and peltries was low. But never would there be a shortage of Injuns!
’Cept up north where some said the Blackfoot was no more. Even so … it didn’t take both of Bass’s eyes to see that the Sioux and Shians could turn into devils their own selves and drag hell right out of its shuck.
That long, cold night Flea rode with his mother. Times when a boy gets scared good, seemed what he needed most was the arms of a woman wrapped around him. Magpie held her own, stayed quiet atop her own pony as they hurried to mount up again, putting out on the trail down Vermillion Creek for the trading post. She’d make some man a fine wife one day, he thought as they urged their horses into a gentle lope that night beneath the cold stars. Already she was a female who did her level best to understand what needed doing … and did it without a complaint.
That long night he thanked the sky more than once that Magpie had a lot of her mamma in her.
From where Sweete rode at the back of the pack, grunting down his pain, the big man kept an eye peeled so that no one would slip up on them out of the dark. Then, just before dawn, they loped into the narrow, high-rimmed valley of the Green through this only portal along the Vermillion, and spotted that crude stockade standing beside the river less than a mile off. Shad kicked his horse into a full gallop, racing to catch Bass at the head of the pack.
“Trouble?” Scratch asked, his eyes flicking to the big man, then watching the gray horizon bobbing behind Sweete’s shoulders.
“I just been listening hard all night,” he announced as he pulled back on the reins to ease his big horse down into a lope alongside Bass. “Think we been follered all the way.”
“The two of ’em?”
“Yep,” Shad replied. “I figger they dogged our trail hoping to find a place to jump us again when we dropped our guard.”
“No figgering to it now,” Titus explained. “Lookee there.”
Twisting in the saddle, Sweete turned to look behind them at that place along the skyline where Bass was pointing. Two shadowy horsemen reined up atop the bluff as the trappers and their party continued into the valley.
“Thunder’s balls—they was there all night, Scratch.”
Nodding, Titus said, “Only reason they pulled off was they see’d the fort, see’d all the stock out grazing.”
“And they don’t reckon to pick a fight when the odds is so bad against ’em.”
“Trouble is,” Scratch growled, “if them bastards didn’t know this here fort was here, they know now.”
Across the meadow that surrounded the post on three sides, most of the horses and mules busily grazing in that dawn’s light lifted their heads at the clatter of hooves, then began to drift away from the path of the oncoming strangers streaming toward them at a lope. Inside the stockade ahead a voice called out, followed by the bleat of a goat.
Bass hadn’t heard that sound … since Taos that winter of thirty-four. Better than five years ago. There were traders up and down the South Platte, two posts here west of the mountains, so just how was Josiah faring now? Had he made a go of it with those trade goods down in the Mexican settlements?
The narrow gate at the east side of the stockade was shoved open, and a lone figure stepped out guardedly, a rifle in hand as Bass and Sweete slowed their outfit.
