another until he had raised a low altar. The boy was starting to fuss again by the time he turned from the shelf and started back toward the snowy trail.
“We must go now, before it grows late,” the Crow reminded.
“Not till I’ve seen to the dog.”
“You do for the dog what you would do for a man?”
He knelt, hoisting Zeke into his arms. Then stood to stop before the warrior. “I’d do the same for any friend. Just like I put the whitehead your people sent me to kill in a tree scaffold. He was an old friend—”
“But there are no trees tall enough here.”
“That’s why those rocks will have to do,” Titus grumbled, that cold hole growing inside him, pushing past the Indian to trudge up the slope with the dog’s body across his arms.
He stretched Zeke across the top of that wide bed of loose shale, then gently laid a hand over the dog’s eyes. “We come some ways together,” he whispered in English as the wind grew stronger on that bare, exposed slope. “Maybeso you was getting old anyways—your time’d come. But no man had him the right to kill a dog like he kill’t you, Zeke. I want you to know I’ll rub out ever’ last one of the bastards—”
But he couldn’t get any more words out. Angrily, he turned away from the stone cairn and clattered down the slope. After scooping some snow into his bare hand, he let the cradled boy lick at it, swiping at his own runny nose with the back of the other mitten.
Titus bent and kissed the boy on the cheek, then stuffed a foot into the stirrup.
He rose to the saddle, saying, “Let’s go get your mother back.”
The reddish glow from the two fires below them reminded Scratch of the color of polished Mexican gold. A pair of them, their flames wavering in the distance down among the first line of trees the war party would have reached as they’d descended from timberline at dusk. But seen from above, the flickering light illuminated no more than indistinct shadows.
As they lay watching the fires, Bass and Strikes-in-Camp brooded on how to make their attack.
They couldn’t slip much closer without the clattering, sliding shale alerting the Blackfoot in the timber below. Either they would have to leave the animals there and cross the next mile or so on foot in the dark, or they would have to circle wide to west or east to make their approach on horseback.
“Better to take the horses with us. Get close as we can,” the Indian said. “We may need them if they see us and ride off again.”
Gripping the Crow’s forearm, Titus suddenly needed to know, “Why are you willing to risk your life against these great odds to take back your sister … when you would not allow her to come into your camp?”
“I am sick now,” he confessed. “It does not matter that you are sick or she is sick. I am sick now.”
“At your village, before—you were afraid of dying from the sickness.”
“No more am I afraid. The enemy who brought this to our country should die. I will kill as many as I can before I breathe my last.”
Wagging his head, Bass said, “I don’t understand your thinking: how you close your heart off to your sister when she brought you no harm. But now you are ready to die to save her and our daughter.”
Strikes stared into the white man’s eyes in the starlit cold. “It gives me pain to realize I have been a coward. I want to help free my sister while I still have strength. My skin is beginning to grow hot. Hotter all day.”
Pulling off a mitten, Bass reached out, fingertips touching the warrior’s face, finding the skin was feverish. “You must last until morning. We’ll attack them as soon as it is light enough to see. You must hold on to your strength until then.”
The warrior nodded. “I will be strong till then.”
“And when it comes time for you to die,” Titus vowed, “I will stay with you.”
“Stay with me?”
“To your last breath,” Bass declared. “Then I will tie your body in a robe, take you back to your people —”
“They must not become sick,” Strikes protested.
“But you will not give them the sickness after you have died … and your people must know of your courage in the face of the death that you know is sure to overcome you.”
“Come, then,” Strikes declared as he stood. “We will lead our horses down to the timber along that ridge to the east. We can reach their camp in time to kill them all before sunrise.”
Bass followed him back to their animals, where they took up the lead ropes and started down the slope, angling off to the right, walking among the tangle of boulders that stood out in bold relief against the pale, icy-blue snow. By the time they reached the timber and had circled on back to the west, Scratch realized several hours had elapsed. Throughout that long night the stars had slowly rotated in a slow crawl across the heavens.
Stopping to listen again, with their noses in the air, the two of them could hear the snuffling of the Blackfoot ponies, an occasional voice carried on a gust of wind, the same wind that brought them the smell of wood smoke.
Strikes leaned close and whispered, “Leave the horses here. Boy too.”
It suddenly struck him: what to do with Flea? How could he think of carrying the child with him—taking the chance of the infant’s cry alerting the enemy? But to leave the boy alone with the animals …
There was little other choice.
What if the Blackfoot killed the child’s mother at the moment of attack? What if they ended up killing the father during the fight? Then it was all the better that the enemy discover the child with the pony and the mule. Flea could grow up among the Blackfoot, marry and have children of his own—
If he did not die of the pox first.
There really was no other choice. Scratch knew he would leave the child suspended from his saddle. And should the boy awaken, perhaps the pony’s occasional movement would provide enough gentle motion to lull Flea back to sleep.
Moving slowly, Bass took the loops off the pommel, clutching the blanket-wrapped bundle against him for a long moment. When the child stirred, Titus reached into his pouch and pulled out a small strip of dried meat. He stuffed it into the side of the blanket where the child could find it. Then he held the boy in front of him, kissed Flea on the cheek, and hung the crude buffalo-robe cradle from his saddle once more.
“I am ready.”
“I pray morning comes before my strength is gone,” the Indian said as they started away from the animals, their arms loaded with weapons.
Instantly Bass held a rifle barrel out in front of the warrior, stopping Strikes in his tracks. “You realize what we are about to do. Remember when you said that you wanted to come as far as you could, and when you could no longer sit in the saddle, you wanted me to go on alone?”
“Yes.”
“I am not alone. And neither are you. We will kill them all before the sun rises for the day. Their scalps will be on our belts before another day begins.”
Strikes said, “It is good that a man is not alone when he embarks on his last battle.”
“I will always remember that you chose to be here to die, rather than to die in your blankets.” Then Bass started across the snow for the timber.
They didn’t stop until they spotted the glow of the two fires against the treetops. Without a word between them, both men stacked their weapons against a small boulder. Bass tapped the Crow on the breast, then pointed off to the left. Tapping his own breast, the trapper pointed off to the right. Strikes nodded and turned away.
Bass was the first to return to the boulder. In the deep cold he sat shivering, wondering about Flea back with the animals … worried about the Crow warrior—his ears constantly alert for any sound emanating from the night, when Strikes finally came out of the cloudy gloom.
“Did you find their guard?” Titus asked.
“Yes. One man.”
“I found another on the north side. He walks a little to keep himself warm.”
With a nod Strikes whispered, “Did you get close enough to look at the enemy?”
“No, not that close. You?”
“Close enough to see there are no longer ten warriors,” he explained. “At least, I saw three bodies tied in blankets on the ground. Away from the campfire, where they tied their ponies.”
