slipping across the snow another few yards, to the next tree or boulder.
Leaving the two rifles propped against some cedar, Bass crept the last few yards, searching for the guard’s shadow among the ponies. The animals parted on the pale ground, exposing the warrior. Scratch started forward with long strides, dragging a heavy butcher knife from the back of his belt.
When he was within two arm-lengths of the warrior, the shadow whirled, a club swinging up at his side, clutched in the man’s hand. Lunging those last two strides, with shoulders hunched as he shot forward, Titus crouched to spring—meeting the Blackfoot with a noisy impact that knocked the wind from them both.
Shoving his empty hand beneath the man’s chin to shut off any call the Blackfoot might make, Scratch drove the knife low into the warrior’s groin and ripped upward with the blade, splattering himself with the warm blood and juices.
The Blackfoot grunted and the club clattered twice against the white man’s back, then fell onto the snow the moment the warrior backstepped, his arms clutching at his sundered belly as he went to his knees. Scratch was behind him in that next heartbeat, clamping his left hand around the warrior’s mouth, dragging the big blade across the crinkling of cartilage in the windpipe with an audible hiss of air—that last breath to escape the enemy’s lungs.
Voices grew louder. Someone had heard.
Stuffing the blood-slicked blade back into its leather sheath, Bass shoved a shoulder against a pony to move it aside as he dived through their midst, racing to the tree where he seized the two rifles. After raking back the hammers, he was in motion through the pony herd—stuffing fingers through the trigger guards, setting the back trigger on that most trusted of his weapons.
He heard them coming. Footsteps whined on the frozen snow. Watching the trees and rocks, his breath coming hard and fast as he raced forward, Titus struggled to discern what shadows were—
Hauling the rifle up, he touched the front trigger with his right forefinger, the rifle exploding with a blinding flare. He was almost on the warrior before his eyes adjusted back to the darkness. The one he had blown a hole through was on his knees, shrieking, his voice crackling with pain. Others answered from the camp as Bass approached the wounded man.
The Blackfoot reached out and grabbed Bass’s ankle.
More footsteps coming. A gunshot on the far side of the fires.
Scratch turned about, brought his left leg up and drove it downward with brutal force, smashing the Blackfoot’s jaw as he dropped the empty rifle beside the body. The hands freed his ankle and Bass dived forward, sprinting toward a sudden volley of gunfire and yells of men.
As he burst from the timber into the first dim glow of the fire’s light, he heard the child’s scream, his wife’s garbled shout. A shadow landed before him, its batlike flicker causing Titus to jerk the second rifle up, that left finger twitching before he had the weapon fully to his hip.
Orange flame spewed from the muzzle—the shadow before him collapsing with a shriek of pain, clutching at a knee. Pitching the empty second rifle to his left, Titus reached at the back of his belt, clawing the ax free with his left hand as he dragged the first pistol from the back of his hip with the right. Sweeping the hammer to full cock, he dashed across those last two yards swinging the ax downward, its blade catching the wounded warrior across the temple and top of the ear, embedding itself in the man’s skull with an audible crunch of bone. He yanked with a twist, unable to free the weapon—then heaved the dying warrior aside.
Magpie was screaming as he lunged into the light. She was scrambling after her mother, spilling onto the snow as Waits-by-the-Water was dragged by the hair to the far side of the fire behind one of the warriors.
He locked his elbow, held the muzzle of the pistol on the moving target that clutched a hand in the woman’s hair, a graceful English tomahawk held in the other. The Blackfoot turned to the trapper suddenly in the firelight, his mouth o-ing like a black hole as he shrieked a wild cry.
Eyes darting side to side, Bass could not find Strikes-in-Camp. Nothing but noise, some blur beyond the far edge of the light.
Now Scratch had been spotted by another warrior to his left. The tall enemy whirled, sprinting long-legged toward him with a club in motion over his head. Flung forward, it was already on its way when Bass swept the pistol toward the new target, pulled the trigger. Then rolled to the side as the club tumbled into him, the rawhide- wrapped stone glancing off his hip as he struck the ground, that empty pistol bouncing from his hand.
From the front of his belt he pulled a second pistol as the warrior flew toward him, bare hands extended like claws, grimacing and growling like a wild beast. Titus managed to get the hammer pulled back a frantic breath before the Blackfoot descended on him. Yanking on the trigger, the pistol exploded the moment the muzzle jammed against the enemy’s chest. As the warrior collapsed his full weight on the trapper, the Indian’s back erupted, blood splattering in an orange spray backlit by the leaping flames of their fire.
With his wife’s screams ringing in his ears, Bass shoved the body off him, dropping the pistol and pulling the third from the back of his belt as he scrambled to his knees. The weapon held out at the end of his right arm, he swept the muzzle to the right to find the warrior still struggling with the woman who locked both of her hands around the man’s wrist as he fought to free the arm that held the shiny tomahawk, a weapon he clearly meant to use on her.
Lunging to his feet, Bass darted to his right to circle the fire as one of the Blackfoot emerged from the darkness beyond the flames. He stood for a moment looking over the scene, long enough to find the white man— then vaulted past the warrior holding the woman and started for the trapper. Bass brought the pistol to bear on that blur-But Magpie seized the warrior by the leg, almost tripping him at the moment Scratch fired the pistol. Instead of hitting the man squarely, the ball raked across his shoulder, knocking the warrior backward a step as he cried out in pain. He suddenly rocked forward and seized the child by the hair, dragging Magpie backward until he could loop an arm around her.
“Goddamn you,” Titus growled, low and feral in his throat as he dropped the empty pistol. He watched the warrior proudly brandish the knife he clutched in his hand. It was already slick, shiny with blood. He knew it had to be the Crow’s. Bass was on his own to finish it now.
How many had Strikes-in-Camp killed? Would any more of them leap into the fight?
With the swiftness of river runoff, the little girl whirled on the warrior, sinking her teeth into his wrist. He held her by one hand, and she bit into his other. Screaming, the Blackfoot shook the girl at the end of his arm again and again, as if trying to dislodge a buffalo tick. He began kicking at her with his feet as he stumbled to the side, screaming at her. Suddenly he bent and planted his teeth on her arm. The child yelped in terrible pain, immediately releasing the warrior.
Bass pulled the trigger, aiming at the blur that was the warrior’s back. The man flexed backward, almost as if suspended in midair on one foot, then spun around, dragging the girl down with him as he fell, blood smearing his chest, flecked across Magpie’s face.
She lay whimpering beside the dying man as he gurgled, bright blood oozing from his lips while the light continued to gray in the east.
“Ti-tuzz!”
He wheeled, finding the warrior pitching the woman backward onto the ground. The Blackfoot hauled her up by her hair and flung her backward a second time, a little closer to the fire.
Pitching the empty pistol at his feet, Scratch pulled the last firearm from his belt and started around the body of the dead warrior where Magpie cowered, crying as she watched her mother dragged to the edge of the largest of the fire pits.
With the heel of his left hand Bass snapped the huge flintlock hammer back, then extended his right arm just as the warrior hurled the woman into the flames.
With a terror-filled shriek Waits-by-the-Water clawed to hang on to the warrior the moment he freed her, scrambling to escape the fire, the back of her hair and blanket coat already aflame.
Bass leaped across those last few yards, landing squarely upon his wife’s back, driving her to the ground, the stench of burned hair and flesh stinging his nostrils.
A shadow blotted out the firelight over the two of them as Titus rolled off the woman, the pistol’s muzzle wavering for a moment as the Blackfoot’s arm descended with that shiny English tomahawk a glittering blur. Bass hurled himself to the side as the blade whined past, slashing a loose fold of his shirt, slicing through some fringe on that arm bringing up the pistol.
He pulled the trigger there below the warrior’s arm, the muzzle no more than inches from the Blackfoot’s rib
