against its string to form a sharp, two-sided vee. Swapping the pistols, Bass ripped the hammer back and pulled the trigger—an instant after the string snapped forward.
Flinging himself backward, Bass fell into the snow as the arrow slammed into the icy crust between his knees.
For a heartbeat he stared at the quiver of the shaft and its fletching, then jerked up to find the bowman on top of him, slashing out with the bow. Twisting to the side out of its way, Titus watched the warrior coming off the pony, flying spreadeagled through the air, that bow at the end of one outstretched arm.
He slammed into the white man, driving the air from their lungs as Scratch rolled them over, throwing his arm behind him to find his knife. Instead, his fingers struck the frosty head of the belt ax.
The muscular Blackfoot grabbed the white man’s throat with one hand, his fingers closing around the windpipe as the warrior began to flail at the white man’s head with the bow in blinding flashes.
Dragging the ax into his hand, Titus swung wildly, eventually slamming the side of the blade against the warrior’s head. In bringing his arm back for another blow, he twisted the tomahawk in his hand. This time the blade sank deep, splattering hot blood and brain matter into Bass’s face.
He had to unlock the dead man’s legs from his before he could struggle to his knees and wrench up the first of the pistols. With some of the Blackfoot retreating back down the hill into the flat where more of their number were fighting furiously against the trap that had closed around them, some of those who were dismounted were taking cover behind the huge buffalo carcasses rising like dark, hairy boulders against the bloody snow.
With that first pistol reloaded and stuffed into his belt, Bass lunged across the Indian’s body to scoop up the second pistol. After blowing snow from the pan, he reloaded it, snapped the frizzen down over the pan again, and jammed it into his belt. Back up the hill a few yards lay the rifle, its barrel buried in the snow right up to the lock’s hammer.
“White man!”
He looked up to find Strikes-in-Camp gleefully reining his pony to a halt nearby.
The young warrior asked, “Where is your horse, white man?”
“I fight better on foot,” Bass growled.
“Forget your firearms,” Strikes snarled. “Come with me and fight the enemy close today! Come fight like a real man!”
With a wild laugh the warrior spun his horse around savagely, kicking it in the ribs as he shot back down the slope toward the hottest of the fighting.
By then Pretty On Top and the others had driven the Blackfoot back, throwing them against the warriors Whistler and Turns Plenty led. They had the Blackfoot surrounded. On the hillside above him the women were screaming, keening, crying out to their men.
Surrounded by the enemy, goaded by their women, the Blackfoot could only be made bold by their desperate straits—or stupid, willing to grasp at any chance before they died.
One of them was about to do just that.
Near the center of that buffalo killing field the Blackfoot warrior stood, waving his smoothbore fusil at the end of his arm, his mouth a wide O as he hollered at the rest who were beginning to withdraw from the shelter of their buffalo carcasses and stream toward their leader. It reminded Scratch of a black cloud of sparrows as they dipped this way, then that, low in the sky overhead. Suddenly the leader took off, his warriors strung out on either side of him, racing for the hills.
In an instant Bass could see that they really weren’t making for the distant slope. Instead, they were sprinting for the weakest part of the Crow line where Strikes-in-Camp and a handful of others were all that stood between the Blackfoot and escape. On the far side of the valley, Scratch could tell that Whistler saw things taking shape at the same moment. The old warrior was yelling and waving even as he started his pony loping to head off the enemy.
Bass was already on his way down the hillside, whistling in the cold air, licking his lips to whistle again for the pony which raised its head and started his way.
Instead of waiting for the others, instead of slowly backing up the slope to delay the clash, Strikes-in-Camp taunted his fellow warriors into joining him in a headlong dash toward the Blackfoot spearhead coming their way. Near the bottom ground the enemy swept around the half-dozen Crow, swallowing them whole the way a mountain lion swallowed a deer mouse in one bite.
The Crow warriors disappeared beneath a roiling mass of arms and weapons, dragged one by one from their horses.
Whistler and the others were closing in on the slaughter as some of the Blackfoot broke from the six unhorsed Crow and lunged up the slope to make their escape. The older warrior waved at the enemy seeking to flee—sending more than ten of his fighters to seal off any chance of escape. Then Whistler continued into the fray to save his son and the others.
Dragging himself atop the pony as the injured calf cried out in pain, Scratch slapped the rifle’s buttstock against its rear flank to put it into a gallop as they raced across the bottom, weaving through the bloody buffalo carcasses.
As more Crow reached the scene, the Blackfoot spread out to meet the charge the way a pebble dropped into a still pond would radiate widening rings around it. Bodies struggled on the ground at the center of the melee, Blackfoot finishing off the six Crow.
Into that contest Whistler plunged on horseback, swinging a long war club first on one side of his horse, then on the other, as he desperately cut himself a swath through the enemy to reach his son.
Bass was starting to rein up when he saw that Blackfoot leader who had rallied his warriors leap to the side, coming into the open. The short fusil he had been waving was now shoved against his shoulder. And aimed at Whistler.
Smoke puffed from the muzzle.
Even as the low boom rang out, Bass watched the impact jerk Whistler up straight, his war club tumbling from his hand as he fought to stay atop the horse. With both hands he clawed for the single horsehair rein he had dropped. In desperation both hands knotted themselves into the pony’s mane as it pranced round and round in a tight circle, more Blackfoot closing in on the war-party leader.
Scratch drove his pony over two, then a third warrior, spinning them aside, crushing one beneath the runner’s hooves as he lunged to reach the injured Whistler. Reaching the scene as a pair of the enemy on foot were clawing at the wounded horseman, attempting to yank Whistler off the back of his frightened horse, Scratch pulled the loaded pistol free, aimed, and fired at a narrow back. The enemy warrior nearly crumpled in half backward as he spilled into the snow beneath the pony’s hooves.
Reining aside, Scratch swung the empty pistol, smashing its barrel against a second warrior’s head with the loud crack of a heavy maul striking tight-grained Kentucky hickory. The warrior stumbled backward, wheeling round to gaze up at the white horseman as he collapsed across a jumble of legs and arms as others wrestled in the snow.
“Go!” Bass ordered Whistler. “Get to the hillside—”
“I … I can’t hold on,” he said weakly, beginning to sink off the side of his pony.
“Get to the hillside!” Scratch repeated. “Don’t let go until you are at the top of that hill!”
Then the white man slapped the back of the pony with the pistol’s long barrel, making it leap away. He watched Whistler clutching both his arms around the horse’s neck as it bounded through the milling warriors. Shiny blood streamed down the Crow’s leg, slicking a huge, dark patch that ran down the pony’s side as it raced up the gradual slope, away from the fighting.
A few yards away the Crow were just striking the Blackfoot who had swallowed up Strikes-in-Camp and his companions. The six were nowhere to be seen. Titus figured they were likely dead already as he jabbed heels into his pony’s ribs and loped toward the bitter hand-to-hand fighting as the Blackfoot suddenly turned from mauling the few to preparing to meet the many.
Racing in at an angle, Bass reached the enemy just as the Crow clattered into the Blackfoot formation. Slowly, slowly the enemy backed, swinging, slashing, shrieking with all the fury they had left as their women continued to yell and scream from the nearby hill.
On the ground nearby, two of the enemy still struggled over one of the Crow, both of them working at pinning down the arms and legs as they swung their weapons for the kill. Dragging their victim over onto his side, one of
