Ride the Moon Down

the Blackfoot struck the back of the Crow’s neck with a glancing blow. Scratch watched all the fight pour out of the valiant warrior. The second Blackfoot raised his heavy tomahawk at the end of his arm, its iron blade glinting dully in the falling sun as Scratch pulled out his second pistol, dragged at the big gooseneck hammer, and seized the trigger.

He felt it buck in his hand as it spat fire and a billow of gray smoke.

Clawing at his back, the Blackfoot twisted about wide-eyed to stare at Bass a moment before he pitched into the snow, dead beside the Crow he was ready to kill.

Yet the first was already seizing hold of the Crow’s tall, greased, provocative forelock, yanking the warrior’s head back as he dragged a huge dagger from its scabbard, prepared to cleave the Crow’s throat like a bled pig his grandfather would prepare for the smoke shed.

Scratch threw the empty pistol at the Blackfoot. Its barrel slashed across the warrior’s cheekbone, making him jerk aside for an instant, gazing up at the white man descending on him.

That instant was all Bass needed.

He rode the pony right over the Blackfoot, shoving himself sideways out of the saddle as the warrior fell backward the moment the horse stomped over him. Seizing the hand that held the dagger in both of his, Scratch slammed it against the snowy, frozen ground again and again until the knife tumbled out. Then with a bare fist he smashed the warrior in the face, watching the man’s cold skin split and ooze blood across the nose, over an eye. Again and again he smashed that young warrior’s face until the Blackfoot no longer struggled.

Scooping the dagger from the snow, Titus raked it across the warrior’s throat, opening a gush that flooded the ground beneath his knees, the snow turning a dirty brown beneath both the dead Blackfoot and that Crow he had been ready to butcher.

Dragging his wounded leg beneath him, Bass grabbed the dead man’s shirt and pulled him off the Crow before he seized the Crow’s shoulders and turned him around.

Strikes-in-Camp.

The dark eyes fluttered open, crimson ooze seeping from a big gash over one eye, snow crusted against that bruised, puffy side of his face. His shirt was bloody where a long gash had been opened up in his side, and his breath came short and labored as those eyes struggled to focus on the face of the man who had just saved him.

Bass realized his mistake the instant Strikes-in-Camp recognized him.

The young warrior’s eyes narrowed into slits and his bruised face drew up into a sneer.

There would never be any gratitude from that man for the one who had saved his life.

“Why were you the one who saved me?” Strikes-in-Camp growled as he shoved away the hands of those warriors who were steadying him on his feet.

Bass turned away, shaking his head in disgust. “Your father needs help.”

“Why did it have to be you, white man?” the words slammed him in the back.

The white man stopped, turned to confront Whistler’s son. “You are a Crow warrior,” Scratch explained as it grew still around them. “Your uncle was my friend. Your father, he is my friend.”

“Perhaps it would have been better for me to die than to be saved by you!”

Grimly Titus said, “One day you might just get your wish, Strikes-in-Camp.”

“Pote Ani!”

He spotted Pretty On Top and Windy Boy riding his way through the litter of carcasses and bodies, both Crow and Blackfoot. “Both of you, up the hill—help Whistler!”

The young warriors turned, spying the older man. Immediately they kicked their ponies into a lope across the side of the knoll. Leaping to the ground, the two of them helped steady the wounded man who held fast to his horse with only his arms, his legs no longer able to respond. As Scratch started up the hill, Whistler put out one arm to grip Pretty On Top’s shoulders and leaned off the horse, sliding to the ground with a deep pain graying his face.

“Rest, friend,” Bass said softly as he knelt beside his father-in-law. Quickly he turned to Windy Boy. “Go— bring us one of the Blackfoot travois and a pony to hitch it to. And bring two of those green buffalo hides. We must make Whistler as comfortable as we can for his ride home.”

The young warrior leaped onto his pony and wheeled away as Pretty On Top stepped up behind the white man’s shoulder. Across the valley the women were screaming wildly, turning to flee like a scattered nest of sow bugs as the victorious Crow warriors galloped toward them, sweeping up on both sides to capture the enemy squaws.

But here on the slope with Whistler, it grew still while the sun eased out of the sky and the air seemed so very cold of a sudden.

The warrior reached up and gripped Scratch’s forearm. “I don’t know if I can make that long journey home.”

“You will.”

“My s-son?”

“He is alive, and he will live,” Bass responded, placing his hands on Whistler’s bleeding hip. “Just as you will live.”

“Did … did my son fight well? Or did he fight foolishly?”

Titus looked up at Pretty On Top.

The young warrior bent down to declare, “Strikes-in-Camp fought well against the enemy, Whistler.”

The old warrior closed his eyes, then clenched them tight as a spasm of pain volted through him. When it had passed, he sighed and opened his eyes. “I am glad. It would not be a good thing for us both to be killed in the same battle.”

Bass could see that the lead ball had crashed through the side of Whistler’s hip but had not exited. It lay somewhere inside his gut. And the top of that left leg had been shattered by the bullet’s path. Of all the men he had known who survived injuries to live full lives without part of an arm, without part of a leg … Titus had never known of a man who had lost all of a leg, right up to the hip.

The warrior whispered, “You will tell Crane?”

“You can tell her yourself—”

“Tell Crane that I loved her.”

“We’ll be back to the village soon—”

“Promise me you will tell her,” Whistler interrupted, squeezing on Bass’s forearm with a bloody hand.

Titus felt the bitterness start to fill his chest, the utter senselessness of it. And again he realized that a man knew when he was about to die. No matter what he might say, there was no convincing Whistler that he would make it home.

“Promise me you’ll tell my daughter what happened here,” he pleaded. “And in the summers to come, you’ll tell your daughter about me.”

Scratch started to choke. “I … I’ll tell her what a fine man she had for a grand … grandfather.”

“It’s so cold,” he said.

And Scratch remembered how Josiah had uttered the very same words. “We’ll have you warm soon. Just hold on to me and we’ll get you some robes, and start a fire—”

“Where is my son?”

“He’ll be here soon—”

“I want to see my son before I die.”

“We’ll get him,” Bass promised. “Now, you just do your best not to fall asleep yet.”

“But I am tired,” Whistler confessed. “So very tired.”

“A man should be tired. It was a long journey you led us on,” Scratch said, turning quickly to see more than a dozen others coming up the side of the slope toward them. He could feel the sting of those first tears. “And a mighty battle you took us into.”

“Wait … I find it hard to see you, Pote Ani—”

“I’m right here, Whistler.”

The warrior sighed again, the death rattle in his chest. “I hear your voice, but I do not see you so well anymore. But there, just ahead of me—wait. I see the green hills.”

Turning slightly, Scratch looked to see where Whistler was pointing with his shaking hand. Nothing but the