He knew he’d been shot in the lights. The way a man would bring down his family’s supper. About the only way a man dropped as big a beast as a buffalo. Here he was … the old bull, he brooded. The old bull brought down by a shot to the lights.
But Titus forced back down what little contents his stomach held and squeezed his eyes shut an instant. Gasping for a breath as some blood and a little stomach bile gushed from his nostrils, the old mountain man pitched forward on hands and knees, coughing up red and yellow phlegm, managing to pivot onto one knee as the warrior loomed right in front of him.
His left hand bucked with the heavy powder charge in the pistol. On instinct he brought up the right hand at the target too, then caught himself for a heartbeat. Yellow Paint Elkskin was so close Bass could see his face, realize how young he was, less than half his own age … that smooth, flawless, un-lined flesh suddenly turning gray as his moccasins slipped out from under him and he pitched backward with the force of the lead ball at such close range. Bass was showered with icy snow the man’s spinning feet kicked up right in front of the trapper as the warrior crumpled backward with a grunt, hit the ground, then slowly kicked himself backward on the snow, using both of his legs in an ever-slowing cadence.
Turning at the sound of the hoofbeats, Scratch quickly reloaded the pistol with powder and ball as he prepared himself to find Slays in the Night, ready to tell his old friend that, sure, even though he’d been shot in the chest, it wasn’t all that bad. He’d make it through to night … if Slays and the others could only get a fire going to warm him. Titus was just beginning to sense the deepening cold growing there in the very core of him—
But it was Green-Stripe Blanket bounding out of the timber, cutting to his right around the edge of the pond and the tall reeds, then suddenly reining up in a spray of icy snow and pond water. Bass blinked, spotting the smear of blood soaking the warrior’s upper arm, as the Blackfoot wheeled his pony, called back up the hill.
Slowly, his head as unresponsive as a hundredweight pack of beaver hides, Scratch turned slightly … and found Painted Robe walking out of the scrub timber where Slays in the Night had followed the two. At the end of his left hand unmistakably hung the old Shoshone’s full scalp, the long black-and-gray hair dragging the new crust of snow.
He was alone. Except for Pretty On Top and the others. But the sounds of their fighting came from so, so far away. He was alone, with this pistol, and his two knives, and the short-handled tomahawk that rubbed against the base of his spine. Alone with these last two Blackfoot. Yet both of them did not matter. Only one now. Painted Robe. Because that warrior carried an old friend’s scalp.
The Blackfoot talked to one another. Not as if Bass could understand the two warriors, even really hear what they had to say in the shockingly cold air that seemed to cocoon around him all the more tightly, air so cold it was hard for him to catch his breath, nothing more than little gasps now. But—he watched their mouths moving as Green-Stripe Blanket urged his pony ahead a few more yards, then stopped halfway between the white man and the body of Yellow Paint Elkskin. As Titus’s head began to weave and he felt the immense cold seeping down from his chest and into his belly, Green-Stripe Blanket nudged his horse into motion again, angling up the side of the hill slightly, moving out of Bass’s vision now—gone to that left side where there was no seeing unless he managed to turn his head … that refused to budge.
Then he heard Painted Robe’s moccasins crunch on the crusty snow and willed himself to look at that enemy. The warrior was yelling something to the unseen horseman. Then the Blackfoot started walking again, coming boldly around the upper end of the beaver meadow, where some of the stunted trees had been felled by the industrious flat-tails. One of them was still behind him, he remembered. And turned with a jerk that made his head swim.
But he found Green-Stripe Blanket had remained motionless, his pony standing uneasily over the bloodied body of Buffalo Horn Headdress. He yelled something at Painted Robe, then pointed off to the body of Red Coat.
Painted Robe cried angrily, shaking the Shoshone’s scalp.
But Scratch’s eye was drawn back to Green-Stripe Blanket as the warrior dropped to the ground. He tugged on the knot in that bright red sash that held the blanket around his waist and pulled a pistol from the sash as he freed the rein from his other mitten. That enemy was closer, Titus decided, and started to twist his upper body around so he could aim his last pistol at the nearer of his two enemies.
Yet while Green-Stripe Blanket stood only a matter of yards away, the warrior did not raise his pistol to fire. Instead he merely stared, his eyes glowing like coals there inside the hood made from the hide of a gray prairie wolf. Studying the white man.
I’m being given this chance, Scratch thought. This one last chance before he shoots—
The pistol bucked in his hand, and Green-Stripe Blanket visibly flinched as the ball passed harmlessly over his shoulder.
Damn, he thought as the realization that he had missed slapped him. Scratch crumpled forward onto his hands in the snow as he started to heave, his stomach spewing what little it held, blood and bile dripping from his lips and out of his nostrils too, steamy and warm on the frozen snow between his knees. He coughed, gagging some more—then recognized the sound of footsteps.
Turning his heavy head in that direction, he expected to find Green-Stripe Blanket come to finish him off with his pistol, but instead it was Painted Robe, carrying that long, black-and-gray scalp in one hand and a small-headed tomahawk in his right—the blade and some of the haft glistening with frozen blood. Fixing his gaze on that limp, bloody scalp, Titus wrenched himself backward, unsteadily rocking onto his knees until he managed to hold himself steady and reached around to the small of his back with his left hand, feeling for his own tomahawk. He needed it now that he held his last loaded firearm. With the heel of that hand clutching the tomahawk, Scratch shoved back the hammer to full cock and brought his wobbly arm up, the muzzle of the weapon weaving side to side across its target.
He’d already killed the bastard who killed his woman. And before he died he’d finish off the one who had scalped Slays in the Night. That done, it didn’t matter what Green-Stripe Blanket did behind him. Hell, his mind rumbled with the thought, he was halfway to dead already. More’n that now … ’cause he was already halfway to dead when he put the Crow camp behind him and rode after these raiders, knowing in his marrow this was the last time he would ride away from his wife’s people.
Real Bird had forewarned him, told the white man of that awful dream. But across the last three days there wasn’t a one of the Crow warriors who remembered the old prophet’s vision of doom for Titus Bass. There was simply too much misery and loss, too much blood someone must atone for, that any man who had long ago heard of Real Bird’s vision would think to warn the old trapper that he best stay in the village with his children and protect the camp. But here the old rattle-shaker’s dream was, come to pass—
He wearily pulled back on the trigger, heard the
The warrior’s cry caused him to jerk up, but not in complete surprise. He had expected this.
Already Painted Robe was lunging his way … then suddenly stopped no more than five feet away and, for some crazed reason, stood staring down at the white man. His eyes wild, he yelled something to Green-Stripe Blanket, but Bass did not care enough to worry about the one still behind him. He heard that wounded warrior trudging on the crusty snow, heard his steps as that unseen one, who wore the skullcap of a wolf tied around his head, circled to his left until he stood far back of Painted Robe’s shoulder. That’s when Painted Robe raised the scalp up at the end of his arm, held it straight out from his shoulder, shook it, and cursed. Finally he spit on the hair, a second time, then flung it aside into the beaver pond.
With his one good eye, Bass watched the scalplock sail through the snowy air, land among those stalks of dried, frozen rushes, tangled among them and suspended for a moment before it fell to the thin layer of dirty ice.
“You stupid, ignernt idjit,” Titus growled, finding himself renewed as he spoke for the first time to these enemies. “You figger that’s a Crow scalp, don’cha?”
Painted Robe’s eyes narrowed as he shifted the tomahawk in his right hand.
With a snort of wild, unrestrained laughter, Titus pulled free the tomahawk from the back of his belt and roared, “Joke’s on you, nigger! Joke’s on you!”
