“That packhorse can carry more.” Shad raised his voice as the wind came up.
“Like you said, we ain’t got the time,” Bass argued. “Let’s get while we can still find our way back to that notch.”
The moment the last word was out of his mouth on a stream of breathsmoke, Scratch saw the first of them slip out of the dancing snow. Gray-black, their muzzles coated with hoarfrost. Their heads slung down and forward, brought this close to man by the luring fragrance of fresh blood.
“Scratch?”
“I see ’em, goddammit.”
“Them bastards is what I was smelling,” Sweete admitted with a loud snort as he dropped his skinning knife into its scabbard at the back of his belt.
“You got your pistol in reach?”
Shad nodded slowly. “Hooked on my belt.”
Mentally measuring the distance from where he stood in the fold of the cow’s neck to the rear flank, Titus shuddered when another five, no—six more wolves slinked up through the fog. “You get to the guns?”
“Think I can.”
“Easy, coon. Easy at it.”
Two of the biggest ones were slipping round to get behind Shad—just the way those creatures worked over any poor dumb brute that happened to land in their path. While most of the hunting pack held the victim’s attention, one or more played the sly and got up behind their prey, where they could make a blinding dash, slashing at rear tendons, hamstringing the victim while others leaped up to sink their fangs in the back of the neck.
Shad was slowly reaching out for his rifle when Titus announced, “Watch them two—”
“Where—”
The first one streaked in low, its belly almost dragging the ground, jaws opened as it lunged for Shadrach’s ankle. As Sweete attempted to spin away, the wolf instantly locking down on his foot, the second predator had already sprung high—its powerful momentum carrying it right on over the man and the cow’s carcass too, landing in the bloodied, trampled snow. In a high-pitched, feral yelp of pain, Shad hammered away at the wolf clamped onto his leg. When that did not break its hold, Sweete seized the ruff at the back of the wolf’s neck with his left hand while his right scrambled to lock around the butt of his belt pistol.
Having wrenched his own pistol off his wide leather belt, Titus dragged back the flintlock’s hammer and quartered to confront the snarling wolf starting its lunge for him. The .54-caliber ball slammed into its furry chest just below the neck, the impact’s force twirling the wolf’s body in midair. As he attempted to twist out of the way, the furry body hammered against Bass’s hip. Two more of them crouched menacingly less than ten feet away now, snarling yet wary of the man who instantly dropped the empty pistol and dragged out both of the butcher knives he carried in rawhide scabbards at his back. Clutching both of those long, much-used weapons in his bare, bloody hands, Scratch began to snarl at the wolves, feinting with this knife, then with that. Each time one of the wolves appeared ready to leap, he swung a knife in a wide arc. Inch by inch the lanky-legged predators steadily worked toward the two trappers, at the same time Titus inched his way backward in the direction of their rifles.
“Scratch!”
Just as he was twisting about to look for Shadrach, Titus watched the wolf free its hold on Sweete’s ankle— and immediately whirl about to seize hold of the big man’s forearm. Shad shrieked anew as he shook the arm violently, attempting to dislodge the predator’s teeth from his flesh.
“Use your goddamned pistol!” Bass ordered over his shoulder.
Shadrach grumbled, “Shit—I’m trying to get to it!”
Finally freeing his pistol, Sweete hauled back on the hammer of the big weapon, jammed its muzzle under the beast’s jaw, and blew a lead ball right on out of the top of the wolf’s head. As the animal collapsed, its jaws still locked on the man’s arm, it toppled Shadrach over with its weight.
A swirl of ground snow blinded Titus for a moment as the closest wolf growled, leaping for Sweete as the man hit the ground. Landing on the trapper’s back, it sank its teeth in Shad’s shoulder as Titus dove for his rifle. Wheeling it in an arc, Bass brought the hammer back from half cock and didn’t wait to set the front trigger. Instead he pulled the back trigger with a powerful surge of adrenaline while bringing the muzzle down on the wolf snarling atop Sweete’s back.
The bright muzzle flash flared against the murky snow scene as Shadrach sank to the ground beneath the dead animal’s weight.
“Load me!” Scratch bellowed, dropping the rifle over the cow’s carcass so that it landed right beside Sweete.
“Don’t think I can move my arm,” he groaned. “The shoulder, can’t move it—”
“Your pistol?”
“Only one is empty,” Shadrach admitted.
“Try your best to hold the rifle up ’cross’t your arm, Shad,” he begged. “The rest of this pack don’t know your gun’s gone empty.”
“H-how many more?”
“I see’d four more of ’em out there in the snow,” he replied, watching the dark shadows lope back and forth, no more than fuzzy blurs in the dancing snow.
“I—I’m bleeding bad, Scratch.”
“Where?” he asked, not taking his eyes off those ghostly attackers.
“First’un got my leg,” he answered weakly. “Likely I can wrap it tight. The last’un got my shoulder … it didn’t have time to rip out a hunk of meat. But—when that first’un got his teeth in my arm … hell, I can’t feel a thing from my shoulder on down.”
“That’s good, you don’t feel the pain so bad,” he soothed, worry already worming in his belly. “Wrap your other hand around your arm, Shadrach. Clamp down tight—see if that holds off the bleeding.”
As Sweete did what Bass suggested, Titus went about quickly reloading. But after pouring in a measured antler tip of powder, he decided not to waste any more time fishing out a patch lubricated with bear grease from the pouch that hung at his right hip. Instead, he started the ball into the muzzle with his thumb, then rammed it home with the straight-grained hickory wiping stick.
“What’s your caliber, Shad?”
“Six … sixty-two.”
“Shit,” he grumbled as he clambered over the cow’s partially bared carcass. “Gonna have to dig a ball out for your gun. Pistol too?”
“It’s the same. Sixty-two.”
“Good man,” he whispered as he knelt beside Sweete, quickly peering down at the arm his friend had clenched between the fingers of his big right hand. “Allays good to have the same caliber for rifle and belt gun too. H-how’s that bleeding?”
“Dunno. Can’t tell yet.”
“Hold down on it tight for a little more,” he sighed, fearing the worst would come through in his voice. “Lemme get all our guns loaded, then we’ll have me a look at what you gone and done to yourself.”
It took some doing, getting both rifles and those two big belt pistols reloaded as the wind drove icy snow against his bare hands. What with his trembling from the cold and the shaking from his fear in not knowing how bad off Shadrach might be, the process took longer than it should have.
“Don’t see ’em no more,” Sweete whispered as Titus laid Shad’s rifle back against the man’s bloodied leg.
He looked up quickly. “Them wolves?”
“Sounds like they took off.”
“I ain’t paid that much attention.”
“You get the pelts for me,” Sweete asked.
As he looked over at his friend’s eyes, Bass said, “Forget the goddamned pelts—” then shut his mouth. “It’s getting dark. Maybeso I can come back in the morning for ’em, Shad. Right now, I best take a look at these here holes them no-good prerra wolves chewed in your hide.”
