Death Rattle

6

With Bill Williams and Thomas Smith at the head of the column, the twenty-four men put Fort Uintah behind them. Titus Bass rode with those who brought up the rear with those eight broodmares, hanging off to the left where he and his own animals wouldn’t have to eat so much of the dust kicked up by all those hooves.

The stars twinkled faintly in the sky, and the moon would still be some time in setting as they took off down the west bank of the Green River. At their backs rose the Uinta Mountains, their peaks mantled with white as summer had yet to begin. Ahead stood a broad plateau^* that took on wondrous colors with the coming of the sun—smeared yellow, red-orange, and vibrant crimson too. The Green twisted and screwed its way through that barren escarpment, a land of stunted cedar and piñon joining the ever present sage. Until they began to ascend the heights into that plateau’s canyonland, the raiders would run across small herds of buffalo. But once on the other side and dropping to the Colorado River, the shaggy beasts would be no more. This would be their last chance to make meat.

Williams had them put into camp early that first afternoon. Their animals had yet to be hardened to the sort of trail that would become commonplace in the weeks ahead. And they needed to kill, butcher, and dry some meat for the lean times that were sure to come.

Three of the others who had been recruited by Peg-Leg were more than willing to mess in with Scratch. After making camp, they remounted with Bass to ride west into that short-grass country slashed by a maze of shallow washes and flash-flood erosion scars. Far ahead of them to the west lay the snowy heights of the Wasatch Range. All three of these companions had served the last years of the beaver trade with American Fur brigades, ofttimes with Jim Bridger leading the way. But this trio shared something much more indelibly in common with Titus that convinced him the three were good men to stand at his back no matter what might rear its ugly head on the coming adventure in California: They were counted among those who had managed to walk away from Henry Fraeb’s fight against the Sioux and Cheyenne on the Little Snake the year before.

They hadn’t covered many miles under a graying sky before running across a small herd of less than a hundred beasts nestled down in the cleft at the foot of the plateau. The bulls hung together in three bunches, grazing at the outskirts of the scattered herd. The cows and yearlings dotted the center of the lopsided bowl where the first of the red calves were dropping to new, lush, emerald grass watered every afternoon with the arrival of a brief, harsh thunderstorm.

Since trading his roan off the Shoshone late last summer, Scratch had discovered his saddle horse was not trained as a buffalo pony. No matter, he had reflected several times since. Here in his forty-eighth summer, he damn well didn’t relish running meat anyway. Besides, the wind was favorable. Coming out of the west. In their faces. They could do with a stand.

“Better we hobble the horses yonder in that brush and make our creep up that draw,” Bass suggested.

Elias Kersey nodded, his now faded top hat wagging, and all three dismounted with Titus, leading their saddle horses and pack animals into the shadows of the coulee. Quickly tying them off nose-to-nose, two-by-two, the four trappers emerged from the mouth of the draw in a crouch.

Scratch stopped them with a signal, then whispered, “Maybeso, we’ll only get one shot apiece when the guns go off—if’n they set to a run. Best you boys make your one shot count.”

“Just like shooting them Sioux,” Jake Corn whispered with a grin that warmed his whole face. His cheekbones were so high they gave his eyes such an Oriental slant that upon meeting last summer Scratch had first believed Corn was a half-breed, Canadian-born Frenchman. He was instead a river-bred Cajun with a dusky drop of Creole blood in his veins.

Without another word the four fanned out, waddling away in a crouch from one clump of brush to the next, slowly working their way into killing range on the cows and yearlings. If nothing else was handy, a bull would do. But the cows made far better eating, especially when they would be drying wide strips of their tender meat for the trail ahead.

Crouching right beside a clump of cedar, Scratch withdrew the wiping stick from the thimbles pinned at the bottom of his fullstock, .54-caliber flintlock that he had carried west that spring of 1825. For a moment as he settled on his rump, Bass let his eyes run over the scratches, nicks, and gouges, every one of those wounds to the reddish-hued curly-maple stock a story of survival against all that these mountains had thrown against him, survival against all that the warrior tribes had failed attempting to rub him out. “Make ’Em Come,” he had named this beloved rifle many winters ago. Through all the terrors and the joys of his seasons in the Rockies, this weapon had remained at his side like a steadfast friend, whether Bass was making meat or saving his hair.

Like him, the fullstock rifle carried its own scars—a silent testament to the many seasons the two of them had endured when lesser men had given up, or gone under. Come a day he figured he would run onto a good gunsmith at one of the trading posts and have the weapon rebored, the worn rifling freshened after so many years of hard use. Just running his hand down the forestock as he brought it to his shoulder now, allowing his fingers to brush over the buttstock as he nestled his cheek into place … it was as if he were caressing the hard-written story of his life, even to touching the scars and wrinkles that had turned his own leathery, lined face into a veritable war map of his years spent crossing and recrossing the high lonesome.

That long and angular man, Reuben Purcell, was the first to get off a shot, not far away to Bass’s left. One of the big females shuddered, took no more than a half dozen faltering steps, then eased onto her knees and keeled over.

Titus took a few breaths to survey the nearby cows, quickly deciding on one as the buffalo grew nervous. Another rifle thundered, and he didn’t even glance over to see which man it was or what animal he had hit. Some of the cows were starting to inch toward the first buffalo Purcell had dropped. A few others were moseying over to sniff at the second cow dropped.

Bracing one end of the ramrod on the ground as the wind picked up, Bass made a fist at the top of the wiping stick, laying the bottom of the forestock atop the fist as he eased back the hammer to full cock. Nesting the frizzen down upon the pan where the priming powder lay waiting next to the touchhole, he pressed against the back trigger, thereby setting the front hair trigger to trip the sear and spring in the lock with his slightest touch. With his cheek pressed against the stock, he laid the front blade down between the curved antlers of the buckhorn rear sight, with a tilt just so that put the blade into the tiny notch at the bottom of the buckhorn.

Only then did he let out half a breath as his finger slipped over the front trigger, barely inching the rifle to the side so the front blade held on that wide girth just behind the beast’s front flank. The rest of the breath seeped out as he held, waiting for his squeeze on the trigger to—

The rifle bellowed, a whisper of smoke spewing from pan and a spray erupting from the muzzle. The breeze had picked up enough that the gunsmoke disappeared quickly enough for Titus to watch the low-velocity round ball strike the cow’s hide where a puff of dust exploded. She sidestepped once, then again, and with the third time shook her great head, slinging blood from her nostrils and lolling her red tongue from her open mouth where more blood dripped into the dirt and grass.

Across the bowl, a streak of lightning tore the darkening sky asunder as he started to reload. Beyond the hunters, the buffalo grew all the more restless with a sudden, sharp crack of thunder. Although they milled around, no longer content to graze, the buffalo hadn’t stampeded away. Within seconds the sky started to pelt him with tiny drops of rain. He quickly dropped a second cow. No doubt about it now: They’d be skinning and butchering at the height of the coming storm.

He hunched over his rifle, carefully sprinkling more priming powder into the pan, then dropped the frizzen protectively before standing to start back for the animals. In the cold, blowing rain the four managed to butcher out the boss, tongue, humpribs, and rear flanks from every one of their kills, besides some length of intestine they planned to prepare that night around the fire. In the distance, both north and south they overheard faint gunfire as others made meat and the thunderstorm passed on by. Each stiff gust of breeze made the blood-smeared men shudder in their rain-soaked clothing, then the sun sank low enough that it popped from the bottom of the clouds, painting the plateau country with vivid shades of yellow, red, and a dark, bruised purple.

With their pack animals unable to carry any more of a burden, the four bloodied trappers mounted up, ready to turn their noses back for camp when Jake Corn pointed.

“Lookee yonder, boys.”

Bass’s eyes narrowed at the high ground in the mid-distance. “Sure ’nough don’t look to be any of our fellas, does it?”

“I make out more’n thirty of ’em,” Elias Kersey announced.

“They ain’t the friendly sort, we’ll have to leave off the horses and meat to make a run for it,” Rube Purcell said gravely. “That be the preacher’s truth.”

“Don’t go fretting yourself just yet,” Scratch chided, recalling how that previous summer the four of them had watched as half-a-thousand enemy horsemen rode down on Fraeb’s two dozen.

“Bass is right,” the squarish Kersey agreed. “They ain’t movin’ much. Just watching.”

“Who you reckon they are?” Purcell asked, standing beside his saddle horse. Everything about the man was long, rail-thin, or ran at right angles.

“They meant us trouble,” Titus confided, “that bunch’d already be tearing down here for our hair.”

Kersey declared, “That’s ’sactly why I figger ’em for Yutas.”

“Sure they ain’t some of them Sioux or Cheyennes run onto us last summer?” worried Corn.

Scratch shook his head, “We’re too damn far west, south too, of the raiding ground for those niggers. Could be Bannock, but—I think Elias got it right. We’ll know more when we get up close.”

“Get up close?” Purcell repeated, his eyes suddenly growing large in that overly long face, with a jaw that reminded Bass of the bottom of a coal-oil lantern.

“We got meat to haul back to camp,” Bass explained.

Purcell climbed into the saddle saying, “W-what if there’s trouble from ’em?”

“Then … there’ll be trouble,” Scratch asserted flatly.

“Let’s cover some ground, fellers,” Kersey ordered.

The four hadn’t yet reached the base of the hill they would skirt to reach camp, leading their slow-paced pack animals, when the Indians disappeared from the ridgetop on their right.

“That ain’t a good sign,” Jake Corn groaned.

“No two ways about it,” Bass echoed. “Man needs to worry when he can’t no longer see them brownskins.”

By the time the four brought their plodding pack-horses around the base of the hill and camp was in sight, they spotted the warriors a ways ahead, making straight for the columns of smoke, coming on at an angle that cut across the dusty plain. Strange thing was, the horsemen were spread out in a broad line instead of riding single file the way Indians normally traveled. That was a bit worrisome. Right about then he wished he was back in that camp already—at least he’d have the extra rifles and pistols he packed along everywhere.

In the distance he watched a tall, skinny figure emerge from the brush. Beside him hobbled the other, one-legged, booshway of this horse raid. They stopped and each held up an arm in greeting as the horsemen halted some fifty feet from the two white men. Those warriors on either end of the broad front turned to watch the approach of several hunting groups returning from different compass directions.

As Bill Williams and Peg-Leg carried on a conversation by sign with the Indians, Bass led the other three and their animals around one end of the warrior line. A few of these strangers turned on the damp, bare backs of their ponies to glower at the four of them and their supply of butchered meat.

Coming to a halt behind their two leaders, Bass leaned down and asked of Williams, “You make ’em for Yutas?”

“They is. But faraway southern cousins to the ones we know up north,” Bill declared as Smith continued slowly motioning with his hands. “Hunters from a bunch we run onto three years back on our trip out to California. They remember the one they call the Tree-Leg.”

“Tree-Leg, they call him,” Kersey repeated. “Mebbeso it’s good news to have them figger our booshway for a friend.”

Williams wagged his head. “Ain’t necessarily so. They’re mad as spit-on hens that they was out hunting and our bunch’s gone and run off some of their buffler—killed some buff they say is rightfully theirs.”

“To hell with ’em,” Bass growled with indignation. “Wasn’t a feather or a braid nowhere near where we four dropped our buffler!”

“Tell ’em we left the hides,” Purcell announced. “Ain’t any use to us, so they can have ’em.”

“Rest of the meat too,” Corn offered.

Smith turned to talk to Williams as more of the trappers drew close, making some of the warriors who carried only bows anxious at their approach. “Their feelings been stomped on, Bill. This head nigger won’t take any hides, or what’s left of meat—”

“We’ll make the son of a bitch a few presents,” Williams explained, “then maybe him and his bucks’ll move on.” He turned back to the warriors, and his bony hands began to gesture.

Scratch watched Bill tell the Ute horsemen that he would not speak to any man who would come riding up to his camp shouting that the white men were thieves for killing a few buffalo. But, he continued with his hands, Williams told the Ute leader that he would make presents to a friend who visited the white man’s camp to smoke in peace.

“And drink some coffee,” Smith reminded.

Williams whirled on him. “Don’t you ’member the way these niggers drink coffee! We damn well don’t have near enough to be brewin’ up a batch for ever’ bunch of scalawags we bump into down the road!”

But in the end, coffee would be a suitable peacemaker. While some of the trappers set coffeepots on to boil at three of the fires, the Ute horsemen dismounted and hobbled their ponies nearby before entering the camp and settling on their haunches around the flames as twilight continued to swallow the land.

“What say, Elias—you make us some o’ your dumplings outta the gut we brung back?” Rube Purcell suggested after they had a fire crackling and were starting to slice their fresh meat into thin strips for quick drying.

“Dumplings?” Bass echoed. “You mean boudins?”

“Naw. Rube’s had my dumplin’s before,” Kersey offered, pushing some of his long, blond hair out of his eyes. “I do have me a li’l flour.”

“Real dumplin’s?” Titus marveled, his mouth watering. He winked at Purcell and said, “Figgered you was just pulling on my leg.”

While the water in the coffeepots started to roll, Jake Corn and Rube Purcell diced the liver into small pieces, along with short sections of the greasy intestine, as well as some of the lean backstrap, combining it all with a bit of the fleecy fat trimmed right off the boss, or humpribs, of the buffalo. At the same time Elias Kersey was mixing up his flour and water, along with a dash or two of their precious salt, forming a dough he rolled into palm-sized balls.

On the other side of the fire Scratch had been busy scraping all the rich, thick marrow from heavy bones he cracked open with a small camp axe. Each greasy clump of yellow marrow Titus scraped out with the tip of his knife quickly melted once he dropped it into the cast-iron skillet at Kersey’s knee. The well-seasoned skillet began to spit and spew at the edge of the flames the moment Kersey plopped more than a dozen of his dumplings into the hot grease. The fragrance of their frying was almost more than Titus could bear, making his mouth water as it hadn’t in a long, long time.

As a veteran of their first raid into California, Philip Thompson hung near the fires where Smith and Williams had seated their brown-skinned guests. While two of the Ute leaders parleyed with the white men, the rest of the warriors spoke quietly among themselves. From time to time some of them even peered curiously over their shoulders at the fire where Kersey and his bunch were tending to their supper.

“You don’t figger ’em for pulling some shenanigans, do you?” Jake Corn asked as he tied up the ends of those last sections of gut they had filled with diced meat and fleece before they would be stuffed under the coals of their fire.

Bass shrugged. “Never know, but this here bunch don’t number much more’n us. If they figgered to get the jump on us, they’d made a rush on our camp a while back.” Then he pointed to the dumplings, “Ain’t they ready yet, Elias?”

“Yeee-awww! If that man ain’t hungry for my vittles!” Kersey howled. “I’ll be skinned if they ain’t. C’mon and help yourselves, fellas.”

The rail-thin Reuben Purcell was the first to begin stabbing at those dumplings, pulling them from their frying pan, spearing them into his tin cup, then settling onto his haunches across the fire as two other trappers moseyed up to the fire, plainly sniffing the air.

The shorter one’s eyes twinkled as he peered at the skillet where Kersey set the last of the dumplings to fry in the popping grease. But he nonetheless remained silent as his wide-shouldered, bandy-legged partner spoke up.

“Merciful a’mighty—that smells good! Wha’chu made, fellas?”

“Dumplin’s,” Jake Corn said, grease dripping off his lips, spilling into his chin whiskers.

“I’m Silas. Silas Adair,” the talkative one explained, then licked his lips as his eyes never left Kersey’s frying dumplings. “If that smell don’t get a man’s hungers up.”

“Tell you what, boys—have you something to add to the pot,” Bass offered, “you’re more’n welcome to sit and share what we got cooked for ourselves.”

With his tree-stump-thick arm,. Adair nudged the stocky trapper on the shoulder. “Roscoe, go fetch us some gut and a few ribs too.”

The quiet one nodded and quickly turned away.

Purcell said, “He don’t talk?”

“Coltrane ain’t a mute,” Adair replied. “But, he ain’t ever been one to talk much at all.”

“Sometimes, that’s a good thing,” Bass observed as he watched Coltrane scooping up a length he cut from the coil of buffalo intestine, dropping the gut into a small kettle at a nearby fire where Philip Thompson and his bunch were entertaining a number of the warriors.

“Any one of them fellas’d cut your throat if that Thompson so much as asked ’em to,” Corn declared right out of the blue.

Bass turned suddenly to look at the man seated to his right. “That’s a strange thing to say to me.”

“Jake is right,” Kersey agreed. “That bunch of hard cases sticks with Thompson like ticks gone fat on an ol’ bull. They’re gonna jump you when that sumbitch says to jump you.”

Scratch put a bite of dumpling in his mouth and sucked the grease from his fingers before he said, “Don’t matter what those bastards try, or when they do it. I’ll be ready.”

“Yeee-awww!” snorted Kersey. “That’s what I liked about you right from the start over there in the fight we had when Fraeb was rubbed out. There ain’t no shuffle-footing about you, Titus Bass. You’re a man what sees things for what they are. This is this, and that is that. I tell you, I much admire that in a man.”

Bass glowed at the compliment, feeling his cheeks grow hot with the blush that spread beneath his gray beard. “Most all my friends, they call me Scratch.”

“Scratch, is it?” Silas Adair asked. “Why, I didn’t know you was the one I heerd of called Scratch.”

“What’d you hear ’bout him?” Purcell asked, his mouth stuffed with dumpling as the quiet Roscoe Coltrane returned, setting down his kettle filled with intestine and humpribs.

Pushing an unruly sprig of copper-red hair out of his eyes, Adair grinned at Bass and winked. “Heerd how you died, two or three times. That’s what I heerd tell.”

“Only three times, they say?” Scratch echoed. “Hell, I’ve riz up from the dead more’n that!”

“Help yourselves, fellas,” Kersey suggested, gesturing at the sizzling skillet.

They watched Adair and Coltrane greedily dig in, scooping dumplings from the grease. Around the fire the six of them ate and ate till they belched, making room for more of the greasy dumplings, their lips, indeed the entire lower half of their faces, shiny in the firelight. About the time the last of Kersey’s dumplings had been speared from the skillet, Jake Corn was kneeling at the far side of the pit, using a long twig to scoop his boudins out of the coals. As he speared each one with the tip of his knife, picking it up to plop the footlong section of broiled intestine onto a man’s plate, steam hissed from the tiny puncture wound Corn had poked in the stiffened, crackling tube of gut.

It was well after dark when Smith and Williams finished their parley with the leaders of the Ute hunting party. Illuminated by the low flames of a half dozen small fires, the white men got to their feet with the warriors who rose and moved off for their ponies. Bill Williams called three of his men close, then momentarily watched them step away into the dark before he shambled over to the fire where Titus and the five others sat smoking their pipes in the afterglow of their hearty repast.

“Need three of you to take the next watch,” Bill ordered. “After a couple hours go by, those three I sent off gonna come back here and get the next watch. That bunch’ll come wake me when their time’s done.”

Bass nodded to Kersey.

Elias looked up at Williams. “Me and Scratch here will go.”

As Kersey was glancing over the rest of the men, Williams said, “You need one more.”

“How ’bout you, Roscoe?” Bass inquired, staring at the solemn one.

Without any change in his expression, even looking up from the fire where he knelt with a twig to relight his pipe, Coltrane nodded.

“That makes three of us, Bill.”

Just before he turned away, Williams said, “See you in the morning.”

“You ’spectin’ trouble?” Purcell asked as the leader turned his back on them.

Bill contemplated the flames a moment before he answered. “We’re bringing our stock in close, ’specially them broodmares we need. Those Injuns figger on riding off with our horses, I don’t aim to make it easy for ’em.”

“We’ll sleep light, Bill,” Titus said.

The bunch at the fire remained quiet in their own thoughts for some time until Silas Adair stood and stretched. He tugged down on the brim of his battered, black-felt hat. In the fire’s light it appeared the hat had been singed at the back where it caught on fire when he used it to fan some flames of a time. “C’mon, Roscoe—we best go get our blankets.”

Bass watched the two men trudge away to the nearby fire. Then he turned to the trio left with him. “You fellas promise me something.”

“What’s that, Scratch?” asked Jake Corn.

“Trouble ever comes—no matter when, no matter where … you fellas promise me you’ll watch my back.”

“A fight starts,” Kersey began, “there ain’t no Injun gonna get close enough—”

“I ain’t talking ’bout Injuns, Elias,” Titus interrupted. “I need you to watch out for Thompson and his weasels.”

“That’s just what we aim to do,” Corn vowed. “ ’Cause I figger you for a man what’d do the same for any of us.”

Likely, those warriors were sitting out there in the dark, watching every precaution the trappers took to bring their stock in close to camp and post guards around those animals. More than once Bass chuckled to himself how that must irritate the piss right out of those Ute who had plainly come into camp with no better purpose than to eat the trappers’ food, drink the trappers’ coffee, and count the trappers’ guns. Something about the redskins had convinced him they were a thieving lot, right off … and if they coveted anything the white men had along for their journey to California, it was the guns. In the constant warfare waged against their Apache neighbors, those rifles and pistols and smoothbores would more than tip the scales in the Utes’ favor.

How it must gall the hunting party to watch the white men prepare for trickery even though the double-tongued Ute leaders had professed only the strongest of affections for those trappers who passed through their land!

Twice during his watch that night, Titus was certain at least one of the warriors was making a crawl for the horses. A sound out of place, maybe an odor brought him on the shifting breeze. Both times he would bring the rifle’s hammer back to full cock and noisily stride toward that side of the remuda. That second time he was sure enough of what he’d heard that he dropped to his knees, lowered his head, and peered at that strip of horizon where the pale, starlit sky met the darker earth. There he spotted three of them lying among the sage, really nothing more than shadows humped upon the ground.

The temptation to shoot and wound one of them, even kill one of the slippery bastards, was almost more than he could endure. But Bass was sure they saw him too, had to hear him approach before his moccasins ground to a halt on the flinty hardpan, sure that’s what brought the trio to a stop in their crawl toward the animals. Maybe just fire a warning shot somewhere between them …

“You two-tongued sonsabitches!” he bellowed instead. “You don’t get and stay gone, I’ll wear your hair my 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 thwung of a twisted rawhide bowstring. On instinct he flung himself to the ground beside Coltrane. In that same instant he heard Kersey yelp.

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.