own self afore morning!”
From either side of him he heard running feet as Kersey and Coltrane sprinted out of the dark to join him.
Huffing, Elias asked breathlessly, “You see something?”
“Three of ’em,” Bass replied, kneeling and motioning the others down close to the ground with him. “Lookee there.”
“If that ain’t a yank on the short-hairs!” Kersey exclaimed.
Scratch asked the other two, “What you figger we oughtta do with ’em?”
“Run ’em off,” Kersey declared loudly as he stood in the dark, punching a wide hole out of the starry sky as Bass peered up at the man. Elias stomped toward the warriors as voices grew sharp in camp behind them.
“You sneaky bastards,” Kersey was grumbling out loud, his s’s whistling past a broken front tooth.
Scratch was just turning, drawn to look over his shoulder with the approach of footsteps coming out from camp, when he heard the telltale
Bass watched the trapper collapse to the ground, lost from sight along the skyline. But he could hear Elias groan, twisting, his body grinding noisily in the sage and dirt out there in the dark.
Coltrane was already moving, lunging off the ground into the night. A second bowstring snapped in the dark.
Scratch started to rise, crying, “I’ll kill ever’ one of you bust-ass red-bellies!”
Of a sudden the night glowed for an instant as the pan on Roscoe Coltrane’s rifle ignited and the muzzle spat a long tongue of bright yellow flame. The roar of his weapon was immediately answered with a loud screech.
As he started toward the noises, Titus watched Coltrane take form out of the dark as the wide barrel of a man went to his knee over a clump of sage. Skidding to a halt, Bass saw that it wasn’t brush at all, but Elias Kersey balled up on the ground, clutching at his hip.
Coltrane’s eyes flicked up.
“I took an arrow,” Kersey grumbled between clenched teeth.
Scratch was already bringing the flintlock Derringer up—
—as Kersey added, “Don’t know how bad I’m hurt.”
At first he only heard them as he inched cautiously away into the dark. Then he saw one materialize, and suddenly another. They were doing their best to drag the third one off but were making a noisy rescue of it. In that next heartbeat they must have heard him slipping up behind them because they stopped, both of them dropping their wounded comrade and reaching for their weapons as they spun into a crouch. On their knees the small warriors were no taller than the scrub oak and bristly sage. …
But Titus thought he knew one of those shadows out there was more than some leafy brush. He brought the rifle to his shoulder.
Without taking time to think, Titus laid the front sight on the dark clump, clenched his eyes against the coming glare, and pulled the trigger in one fluid motion. The moment the gun boomed and shoved against the crook of his shoulder Scratch opened his eyes, watching one of the shadows tumble backward with a loud gust of air slammed from the warrior’s lungs.
In an instant all became pandemonium behind him in the direction of camp. For a fleeting moment he had just started to turn to look back over his shoulder. That’s when another sliver of the night peeled away from the ground with a hair-raising shriek. An arm held high and brandishing a stone club, the Ute bolted toward the trapper, bounding over the sage and brush with ease.
Taking one step back, Scratch shifted his empty, rifle to his left hand and with his right yanked out that short belt pistol. Dragging back the hammer with his thumb, he held … watching how the shadow raced closer and closer, dodging side to side, screaming his vengeance.
Wait, wait till he gets close enough to make a sure shot of it. Closer … wait—
Extending his arm he followed the target through the next heartbeat … until the emerging shadow suddenly became bare chest and naked legs. Holding on a spot midway between breechclout and that screaming mouth—he squinted his eyes shut to the coming glare and pulled the trigger.
Immediately opening his eyes, Scratch could almost make out the man’s face, and the look of utter surprise on it, as the Ute’s legs went out from under him and he toppled backward in a sprawl, kicking at a clump of sage.
“Bass!”
It was Peg-Leg’s voice.
“Over here!”
Out of the dim glow emanating from the flickering light of their campfires appeared the wooden-legged booshway and four others, all of them huffing as they followed their ungainly leader through the maze of scrub brush to reach the scene.
“They get any horses?”
Bass recognized the voice of Philip Thompson. He answered, “Not a goddamned one.”
Smith teetered to a halt beside Titus to say, “Did they get any of the men?”
“One for sure—Kersey.” And he pointed back off to the left.
Thompson stepped up to Smith’s elbow, leaning in so his taut face was lit with starshine. “And how many of them Yutas you let get away, Bass?”
His eyes narrowing, Titus looked away from Thompson and gazed evenly at Smith. “We saw three of ’em. Coltrane dropped the first one—”
“Afore, or after, Kersey was hit?” Thompson interrupted.
“Elias was awready down afore Roscoe pulled down on ’em,” Bass explained to Peg-Leg, doing his damnedest to ignore the proximity, the very sneer of the other man.
“How’d you come to fire your gun?” Smith inquired.
“They was dragging off the one Coltrane shot,” Titus explained. “I figgered to teach ’em some manners when it comes to jumpin’ fellas like us.”
“How many of ’em get away?” Thompson demanded.
Now Bass gazed back at the man. “Can’t rightly say ’bout your side of camp, Thompson. But speaking for my watch on horse guard, not a one of them thievin’ brown-skins is still breathing.”
“I damn well didn’t realize just how handy you was to have around, Titus Bass,” Thompson replied, dripping with sarcasm. Then he started to snigger as he turned on his heel and started back for camp, followed by the others who had raced up with Smith.
Peg-Leg hobbled past Scratch. “Let’s go see for ourselves what you’ve dropped out here.”
They found his second kill no more than a few yards away, the first warrior out farther in the cold and the dark.
Smith sighed as he stared down at the body. “You want the skelp?”
“What the hell’m I going to do with this wuthless nigger’s hair?”
Shrugging, Peg-Leg said, “Don’t matter what we do now, I s’pose. The rest of them Yutas gonna dog our back trail here on out.”
“An’ if we bring them California horses back through this same country,” Titus grumped, “likely them Yutas gonna make things even harder on us … all over again.”
* Present-day Tavaputs Plateau, in east-central Utah.
7
They had laid in camp that dawn, particularly watchful with the coming light for any attack from the Ute.
But while they could hear the dim, distant chant of the off-key and mournful death songs, the trappers didn’t see a thing of the unsuccessful horse thieves.
Even before the sun rose, booshway Williams had made a decision. “Keep cutting up your meat, boys,” Bill
