A sudden gasp burst from Thompson’s lungs, his eyes grown as big as Mexican dollars. On instinct alone, Scratch instantly twisted into Thompson’s arm, raking the butcher knife across his throat as the big trapper went taut above him. A second, putty-wet slap made Thompson jerk a second time, his mouth dropping open as his eyes started to roll back in their sockets.
Shoving his elbow into Thompson’s ribs, Bass felt the man’s rigid muscles suddenly sag. He shoved himself out from under the trapper and rolled onto his hip, gasping for breath and putting his fingertips against the damp flesh wound gaping across his throat.
Two short arrows protruded from Thompson’s back, halfway above midline, both buried deep.
The trapper sank to the side as his eyes went white.
Bass glanced at the fingers he took away from his neck wound, finding his flesh smeared with blood. Then in disbelief he looked over his shoulder, finding Hezekiah standing at the edge of that corona of firelight, a third arrow nocked in the bowstring, held at ready. Behind him stood an arch of more than a dozen of his warriors, the strings of their bows pulled taut to their cheekbones.
He finally sucked in a deep breath of air, shocked at how good it felt. How could he have been so foolish to sleep so hard that Thompson got the jump on him? Was it that he believed he was among friends—safe enough here, far from Blackfoot country? With Thompson ready to make good on his threats, how could he have allowed himself to drop his guard?
For what seemed like a long, long time, the only sound besides his own ragged breathing was the crackle of the two fires, dry cedar popping sparks into the black of that desert night beneath a milky quarter-moon. Bass peered up at Hezekiah, the deepest of unspoken gratitude for the bowman in his eyes.
Then his attention was drawn away to the far side of their encampment—finding Felix Warren and Frank Curnutt standing stock still there at the edge of the flickering light. Warren had a pistol in his right hand, a tomahawk in his left. Curnutt held only his round-barreled smoothbore.
Titus swallowed hard, then growled, “You niggers keeping watch to make sure Thompson kill’t me?”
The two didn’t say a thing. Didn’t move a muscle either. Instead, they kept staring at Bass, looking to the Indians, and glaring at the big, baldheaded Negro.
“Speak up, fellas,” Bill Williams ordered as he emerged into the firelight. “Answer the man’s question.”
Curnutt started to wag his head, not as if he were denying a thing. Only a gesture of futility.
“You was in deep with Thompson, wasn’t you?” Titus demanded, clambering to his feet. “Fixing to murder me together.”
“N-no,” said Warren. “Only Thompson. We knowed he was gonna kill Bass but we was only—”
“But that Neegra kill’t Thompson!” Curnutt squealed with anguish. “Kill’t a white man!”
“Sounds to me like what Thompson was fixin’ to do was murder,” Williams growled, watching Smith hobble into the light. “How ’bout you, Peg-Leg?”
Smith wagged his head with reluctance. “Ain’t really murder when it’s atween two fellas, Bill.”
“Wasn’t no fair fight—that Neegra shootin’ Thompson!” Warren protested.
“You fellas almost had you a hand in this bastard killing me,” Bass grumbled as he started around the fire for Felix Warren.
Both Curnutt and Warren started to move, but immediately realized Williams had his two pistols pointed at them. They stared at the muzzles while Bill said, “When a nigger jumps a man in his sleep—’thout it being a fair fight … that’s a murder, any way you lay your sights, Peg-Leg.”
“Tell you what, you sonsabitches.” Bass stopped some twelve feet from Warren and Curnutt. “I’ll give you a better chance’n you and Thompson was gonna give me.”
“I’ll kill you, you come any closer,” Curnutt warned with a high, feral pitch in his voice.
Titus snorted with a raw gust of laughter, saying, “I ain’t gonna kill you like you niggers was gonna do me.”
“You want me take their guns?” asked Jake Corn as he stepped up.
Curnutt’s and Warren’s eyes flicked here and there around them as they watched the other Americans gather close, imploring Thompson’s other comrades.
“Maybeso we better, Jake,” Williams decided. “Don’t let us have no trouble outta you two.”
At first both men refused to let go of their weapons when Corn and. Coltrane hurried in to grab hold of the firearms and that tomahawk.
“I’d as soon kill you both right now my own self,” Williams warned.
Smith lunged into the compact group, shoving Jake and Roscoe away as he protested, “These two ain’t done nothing to Bass, nothing to any one of you!”
“Get outta the way, Peg-Leg,” Williams demanded. “They don’t drop them guns—you’re likely to get hurt too when I start shootin’.”
Peg-Leg whirled on Williams. “M-me? Y-you ’pear to be forgetting just who the hell’s the brains in this here outfit—”
“Shuddup, Peg-Leg. I ain’t got no more stomach for you,” Williams snapped. “Clear outta the way.”
Smith took a long moment to stare into the muzzles of those two pistols Williams held before him, then back into the old trapper’s face. “Got no more stomach for me? W-what’s that mean? Why, you’d been nothin’ weren’t it for me asking you to ride along to California with me!”
“That tears the blanket, Peg-Leg. You go your way and the rest of us go ours.”
“Go my own way? You’re talking crazy, Solitaire! You can’t mean … dammit, most of them horses belong to me!”
“Fair is fair, Bill,” Titus said as he came up to stand beside Williams. “Let him have his rightful share afore you send him off.”
“Send me off?” Smith’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Send me off, is it? You low-down back-stabbin’ Diggers! None of you have any of them horses weren’t for my hand in leadin’ you all to California!”
“Just be satisfied I don’t do to you what Thompson was gonna do to me or Hezekiah … all because you been covering his back ever’ step of the way,” Bass stated.
Silas Adair asked, “What you figger’s fair for the three of ’em, Bill?”
“These here two can go with Peg-Leg in the morning, I s’pose.”
Bass watched their shoulders sag with something akin to relief. “You figger to cut ’em loose short of fixin’s?”
“W-what’s that mean?” Felix Warren demanded.
“Take their guns from ’em,” Williams instructed. “We’ll give ’em back come morning. Leave you a dozen balls and enough powder for those shots. Give each of you something to ride, along with a ol’ horse or two for vittles to get across the desert.”
“What you fixin’ to do with me, Solitaire?” Peg-Leg demanded haughtily.
“You get the same,” Williams stated flatly. “No more. No less.”
“We’re partners, Bill!” Smith roared. “I led this hull bunch out to California—”
“You been doing your damnedest to get sideways with me near ever’ step of the way back, Peg-Leg. None of these fellas know much of what you been cookin’ up in your head,” Williams menacingly said to his longtime friend.
“These here are my friends, Bill!” Smith roared. “I can’t let you—”
“You can’t let me?” Williams interrupted quietly. “Tell you what you can do. You can take what horses I’ll give you, and it’s yours to decide if’n you take these two bastards along with you or not.” Williams glanced over at Warren and Curnutt, then returned his steady gaze to Smith. “If’n it were me, I’d leave these snake bellies to make things out on their own. Them an’ Thompson put you in a real fix, now didn’t they?”
Smith’s hands clenched into balls of fury in front of him. “Sounds like you’re stealing all my horses from me, Solitaire.”
Before Williams had a chance to utter a word, Bass stepped up and stuck his face right up close to Smith’s, saying, “Way I see it, Bill’s making it more’n fair to give you and these two back-killers a fighting chance at that desert out there. If’n I was you—come mornin’, I’d take him up on it … and get.”
