Buffalo Palace

23

With a wild, whooping screech, a single horseman burst out of the trees on the slope off to Hatcher’s left.

Bass watched the warrior kicking his heels into the pony’s ribs as he hunched forward, drawing back the raw-hide string on his short bow as he swung it in an arc over the pony’s bobbing head, the animal carrying him rapidly across the grassy flat that still remained between him and Hatcher.

With that war cry Jack exploded into a dead run—so tall and skinny, his movements were almost spiderlike. Grabbing free the pistol stuffed in his belt—still he kept sprinting for camp.

Voices cried out, screeching behind the rest of them. As Scratch’s blood went cold, it seemed the whole forest instantly came alive with more horsemen exploding from the trees. Perhaps two dozen or more. Maybe as many as half a hundred. No matter how many—the odds were clearly stacked against these men racing for their lives. They’d been caught flat-footed, away from camp without their rifles and pouches at a moment of grief … having nothing more than a single load in each of their belt pistols.

Blood-chilling yelps and high, tremulous trilling made the hair bristle on the back of Scratch’s neck. How he wanted to turn and look at the attackers—but dared not, knowing he had to run faster, despite the slippery grass beneath their moccasins. And in those first few seconds the eight got themselves strung out now, some on the left and some on his right.

That solitary horseman ahead of them released his arrow with a wild, demonic shriek. Jack grunted, stumbling the instant it struck him—the arrow slamming into the back of his bony hip. He was still tumbling over and over across the grass as the warrior shot past the trapper on his flying pony.

Watching that shaft sink itself deep, hearing his friend fall with no more than a grunt, seeing the long-legged Hatcher crumple to a stop—it made the gorge rise in Scratch’s throat. He didn’t care to run anymore. Better to turn and fight. But unlike the others, he realized he didn’t have a belt pistol. The damned Arapaho had taken it—that and a good piece of his scalp.

Reaching around to the back of his belt, Titus snagged the tomahawk in his right hand, yanking the handle from the small of his back. As soon as he felt the reassurance of the weapon in his palm, he planted his left foot and rolled off it, pivoting the moment he skidded to a stop. He had the space of three hammering heartbeats before the first horseman closed on him.

The top half of the warrior’s face was painted red from brow to upper cheeks, yellow hailstones splotching the lower half—in front the Blackfoot’s hair was pulled up in a provocative clump tied there above his brow and those dark, menacing eyes. Back from a muscular brown shoulder swung the arm that at this distance looked as thick as a tree trunk. At the end of the arm waved a long stone club coming for the white man on a whistling arc.

Titus ducked at the last moment, feeling the handle graze the top of his skull as it passed, tearing the blue bandanna off.

But it did not matter, because Scratch was already swinging—both arms driving the tomahawk into the front of the rider’s body. Belly, or chest, Titus did not know at that instant. Only that he felt the bladed weapon jar in his death-grip, sensed the hot spray of blood splattering over his hands and wrists, heard the surprised gush of air burst from the enemy as the tomahawk was yanked from Bass’s hands suddenly slick with blood and gore.

Spinning on around, he watched the rider topple from side to side, staring down at the tomahawk buried in his chest—then slowly cartwheel to the right, off his pony.

Scratch’s upper arm cried out for attention. An arrow whispered past, just cutting through the buckskin shirt enough to carry away a track of skin with its flight. Scooping the bandanna up from the ground and stuffing it into his belt, he yanked out the knife with the other hand, watching the mass of horsemen break apart like oil dropped on water, a few moving off for each of the white men.

“Bass!”

Over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the blond head, saw Solomon going to his knee beside Hatcher. Beyond them at the edge of the trees two forms flitted behind trees and turned. Fish was waving Titus on as soon as he had Jack rolled over. Scratch saw Hatcher move.

One of the pistols roared in that clearing. Whirling again in a crouch, Titus watched another horseman tumble backward off the rear flanks of his pony, heels over head into the grass.

“Scratch!”

For a moment he couldn’t see any of the rest and wondered where they were. Fish was struggling to hold Jack down as Hatcher thrashed on the ground, fighting Solomon to get his arm back to the arrow in his hip. Then another pistol barked from behind the tree just ahead. The horsemen were closing on them now as Bass reached Fish, throwing his weight against Hatcher as they rolled him onto his side.

“Get the—get the—”

With both hands clutching the arrow’s shaft. Fish brutally snapped it off—a loud and distinct crack in the midst of the war cries and the pony hooves and the shouts of the other white men somewhere in the trees beyond them. Hatcher’s back bowed up in sudden pain, and he thrashed his legs again wildly.

“You alive, Jack?”

In an instant Hatcher became still. His eyes were red, moist with pain as he stared up at Bass, grabbing for the front of Scratch’s shirt. “Eeegod! If this don’t hurt like hell!”

Fish turned from looking at the horsemen bearing down on them and bellowed, “Let’s get him outta here!”

Grabbing for Jack’s right arm, Scratch yanked the pistol from Hatcher’s grip. “Gimme this!”

“Don’t take it from—”

As his thumb raked back the large goosenecked hammer, finding it already at full-cock, Bass began his turn, there on his knees beside the other two. He found the closest, riding low alongside his pony’s neck, a long dark tube held out from his right hand.

Closer, closer he came … then the puff of smoke from the tube. The dull thud of the ball furrowing the earth there between Bass and Hatcher.

Closer still as the Indian realized he had missed, jerked back, sitting up to yank brutally on the single rein, attempting to turn the pony before—

But Bass was already rising, the right arm out straight, elbow locked, sensing when to pull the trigger at the very moment the warrior sat upright, making more of a target.

The ball struck him high in the chest, there below the vee of the collarbone where he wore a brass gorget around his neck, catapulting the warrior off to the left side as his pony continued its turn to the right.

“That was purty!” Hatcher cried out, both arms lunging for Bass—to hold on, to pull himself up. “Gimme my pistol.”

Slapping it back into Jack’s hands, Bass took the knife from his left and slid it into its scabbard just as Fish hollered.

“Scratch!”

Hatcher and Bass both grunted as another horseman pitched off his pony right over them, arms spread wide, flying into the trappers as the pony leaped past. For that fleeting moment Titus thought how bad the Indian stank of dried meat and buffalo grease on his hair. Cold, dried sweat—days old now. Then all three of them were tumbling into Hatcher together: Jack whimpering every time Bass or Fish or the warrior rolled over that broken shaft in his hip.

But Hatcher was still all spidery arms and legs—thrashing and heaving about, attempting to throw off the Indian as Scratch struggled to secure a hold on the warrior’s right arm: the hand that held a large iron knife. One of the biggest Titus had ever seen. With his right hand clutching his own knife, Bass seized hold of the warrior’s hair, right up at the top of his forehead where the horseman had it bound up with a weasel skin.

They rolled off Hatcher as Fish flew in the other direction, both of them wheezing from the strain, the weight, the bare-boned knowing they were locked in something from which only one of them would emerge.

Somewhere behind him Bass heard another gun roar. Not a pistol, but the sure-enough boom of a rifle. He wondered if it was another warrior’s smoothbore musket. They didn’t have rifled weapons—

Suddenly the warrior twisted himself on top of Bass, his left hand shoving Scratch’s head back into the forest floor. Bass felt the pine needles and dirt grind against the ring of flesh surrounding his bare skull, shooting through him with the heat of a dying star, as if his scalp were being torn from him all over again.

With his strength failing in the left arm as he held that big knife away from his face and neck, Bass surprised the warrior by letting go of the weasel-wrapped hair. In that instant the Indian glanced upward to find the white man’s hand—Scratch smashed the knife handle down into the Indian’s forehead. Again into the side of his eye socket … sensing the warrior’s struggle weaken.

Again and again he pounded the hard bone handle into the side of the enemy’s head, splitting open the skin over the eye, across the temple, blood coursing down over the ocher and brown face paint applied in crude lightning bolts.

The warrior’s left hand came loose first, releasing Bass’s hair, then shooting down to clamp around the white man’s throat.

Again Titus smashed the handle into the enemy’s face, feeling the cheekbone give way beneath his blow.

An instant later the warrior’s right arm weakened some more, beginning to drop as the Indian’s body seeped a little more of its strength.

Tightening his fingers around the knife handle, Bass brought the blade down now, striking savagely, slashing the warrior across the jaw, down the great muscles of his neck, across his windpipe.

Blood splattered over him as the warrior gasped his last, noisy breath, jerking back in black-eyed shock, yanking the empty hand from Bass’s neck to his own to vainly attempt to stop the spurts of bright blood.

Then his dark eyes widened all the more in sudden surprise, slowly looking down at the white man below him as Titus drove the knife home—right into the warrior’s belly … yanking, jerking, working it crudely from right to left, opening the cavity up, blood and gore spilling out as Bass kicked himself free of the dying man.

“Eeegod!” Hatcher gushed hoarsely. “You kill’t that red-belly!”

“Him … or me,” he gushed, hauling in snatches of breath.

“C’mon!” Fish yelled, trying his best to get himself under one of Hatcher’s arms.

Bass slipped under the other, and together they raised Jack off the ground as he cried out in pain. Whirling clumsily, they dragged Hatcher toward the trees where Elbridge Gray emerged with a rifle in each hand.

“Get down!” Gray ordered.

Thinking that was a stupid thing for any man to tell him when he and Fish had Hatcher suspended between them, Bass glanced over his shoulder—finding a half-dozen horsemen coming for them at a hard gallop.

“Down!” Elbridge screamed again.

Fish was the first to obey, pitching forward, dragging Hatcher and Bass with him as Simms stepped out of the trees with a rifle in one hand, a stubby, short-barreled weapon in the other.

But Gray didn’t wait on Bass to get all the way down. As soon as Scratch collapsed to his knees, Elbridge fired the shot that struck the closest warrior. His pony pitched sideways into another horse. Now Simms brought the long, heavy rifle up in his right hand, pulling the trigger as it reached the top of its arc.

Like a steam piston he let the right arm sink as he brought up that short weapon and fired it. A wide spray of orange light lit the shadows as four ponies screeched in pain and dismay, twisting and rearing, their warriors fighting for control as the animals pitched their riders off this way and that.

“Get moving!” Simms bellowed as he stuffed that strange short weapon under his right arm and pulled a pistol from his belt.

“Git on! See Hatcher gets back to camp!” Gray ordered. “We gotta make a stand there.”

Just as Bass was clambering to his feet, feeling naked without a weapon, Jack suddenly had hold of the front of Scratch’s bloody shirt, pulling himself up so he could peer into Titus’s face. “’Member them rocks?”

“Rocks?”

Hatcher had to be crazy with pain to be talking about rocks.

Jack struggled to hold on to Titus’s shirt. Pain had turned his face into a gray, pasty mask of agony. “Where I come found you at sundown, you idjit!”

“Rocks—yeah,” he said, remembering.

“Take us there—”

Bass interrupted, “We won’t ever make it.”

For a moment Hatcher’s eyes closed slowly as if he were weakening, then opened again, a thin veil of teary pain clouding them. “We don’t get to them rocks, goddammit … we won’t none of us make it.”

For an instant more Bass gazed deeply into Hatcher’s red-rimmed eyes—when he realized just how fight Jack was at that moment.

“Follow me!” Titus ordered as he dragged his gaze from Hatcher and raked it across Solomon Fish.

Jack croaked, “Tell … tell ’em—”

Bass stood, yanking the tall Hatcher up on his shoulder as Fish stood beneath the other arm to prop himself under Jack.

Titus hollered, “Jack says we drop back to the rocks!”

“No!” Wood shouted, emerging from the trees, one of his arms hanging bloody, useless, at his side. “We make our stand in camp!”

“Get your pouches!” Simms hollered, wheeling away from Caleb. “We’re going to the rocks with Hatcher!”

They pushed past Wood in a rush as Caleb swore at them, but when Bass twisted his head to look over his shoulder, he found the trapper right behind them. While Fish and Bass dragged Hatcher on through the center of their camp, the rest scattered here and there to scoop up weapons and shooting pouches. Behind them the warriors were clearly working up for another rush.

“They coming again!” Jack whimpered in pain. “B-be ready!”

“We ain’t gonna make it,” Wood bellowed.

“C’mon!” Bass cried to those behind him now as they reached the timber on the far side of camp. “It ain’t that far!”

“Too … too far!” Jack suddenly said.

At that moment he looked down at Hatcher. It seemed that as he watched, all the starch went right out of the man. His face turned a doughy gray, eyes sunken into his skull.

“No, goddammit!” Bass shouted at Jack, yanking Hatcher up by the collar of his buckskin shirt, shaking him for good measure. “We’re gonna make it! Just like you said: we’re gonna make it to the rocks!”

“L-leave me—”

“No!” Scratch shouted him down as the others reached them, their arms loaded with longrifles, belts, and sashes bristling with pistols and axes.

Gray’s eyes were wide with worry as he looked at Hatcher, then turned to flick a look behind them. “How far?”

“Too far,” Hatcher answered, sinking low between the two who propped him upright.

“It ain’t too far!” Bass shouted. “C’mon!”

Across those last two hundred yards … then only a hundred, they could hear them coming. Yelping and crying out in dismay at the death of their companions—screeching louder still when they burst into the white man’s camp, tearing through it looking for the white man’s guns. Perhaps knowing already where the cornered quarry was headed. Rushing on out of that camp to herd the trappers as they would herd deer.

The growing noise of their coming only served to bristle the hair on the back of Scratch’s neck. That, and to drive him onward with Hatcher on his shoulder. Bass was beginning to gasp for breath, his belly sickening with the effort, his head dizzying from lack of air when the boulders leaped into view ahead. Off to the right.

From there they might have a chance.

“I see ’em!” Kinkead bawled.

The forest behind them seemed to erupt with the cries of warriors as they rushed after their prey, hearing that shrill announcement from the pursued.

Simms was the first to climb up the outside shell of rocks, sliding down into the wide crevice that would take them into the center of the natural fortress. Setting his weapons aside, he reached down to pull Rowland and Kinkead in; then all three turned to helped Fish and Bass shove Hatcher up the five-foot wall of granite like a child’s rag doll. With Jack propped up against the rocks, the others handed in their weapons and vaulted up themselves—just as the warriors exploded from the trees.

There were fewer of them now than there had been. But there wasn’t any man counting. Hell, Bass thought, when you’re jumped by that many, dropping a few from their ponies don’t make all that much of a dent in the odds.

But the warriors stopped dead in their tracks, some circling left and some going right, while most of them stayed right there in the center—staring at the rock fortress. Kneeling, a few snapped off some arrows at the trappers hunkering down in the rocks. The stone tips clattered against the boulders, spun crazily in among the trappers. Noisily yelling, the Indians screeched war cries and bloody oaths.

“What’re they?” Scratch asked, taking his rifle from Rowland.

“Cain’t rightly say,” Wood replied, wagging his head and shoving a ball down his barrel.

“Hell,” Jack coughed below them at the bottom of the crevice. “We damn well know what them sumbitches are.”

“Hatcher’s right,” Gray agreed as he slid up between Kinkead and Bass. “Blackfoots.”

“Blackfeets,” Bass repeated, finally slipping the blue scarf from his belt and knotting it around his head once more.

With a pained snort Jack tossed his head and growled, “Who the hell you ’specting wants hair so bad up this way—”

Twisting near fully around at the shrill cry, Bass found a warrior leaping from the rocks right above them. Simms caught the Blackfoot in his arms as they both slammed into the ground, the Indian’s knife crudely raking Isaac’s shoulder, opening up a bloody gash. In that next instant Gray swung the butt of his flintlock across the back of the warrior’s head—driving the enemy off Simms with an audible crunch and a spray of blood. In a fury Isaac was on top of the warrior, dragging the enemy’s head back to expose the neck, suddenly slashing a knife across the warrior’s throat.

“Scratch!”

He whirled at Graham’s cry, just as Rufus fired. A second warrior on the rocks above them jerked as the lead ball struck him, driven back a step, then crumpling to his knees. Yet as the Blackfoot clutched his bloody fingers over the wound in his side, he still managed to cock the tomahawk over his head, hurling it down into the knot of white men.

While the wounded warrior pitched backward from sight, the tomahawk spun itself against the boulder right behind Gray, then struck Elbridge a ricochet blow. Solomon leaped to Gray’s side as the man slumped to the ground—a huge knot already puffing across his brow and temple, blood beginning to ooze down the side of his face.

“He’s out,” Fish muttered as he yanked the loaded pistol from Elbridge’s hand.

“Red niggers whittling us down,” Hatcher groaned in resignation.

Two more painted warriors appeared at the far side of the ring of boulders, poking their heads over only long enough to take aim, pull back the strings on their bows, and let their arrows fly. Although noisy and frightening, the two shafts clattered harmlessly into the rocky fortress.

“There!” Rowland shouted.

Where the warrior with the tomahawk had been a moment before, now three more popped into view. Two more arrows flew in among the trappers, and a Blackfoot with a musket fired his shot—the big lead ball splattering against the rock beside Jack Hatcher.

Immediately souatting beside Hatcher, Caleb Wood dusted some rock fragments off Jack, saying, “We sit in here like a bunch of nesting hens, the fox gonna get us eventual.”

Hatcher’s eyes flicked over the others quickly. “You coons got any idees, now’s the time to be spitting ’em.”

“I say we get the hell out of here,” Graham suggested, his eyes raking the tops of the rocks, ready for the appearance of more warriors. He resolutely tugged down on his beaver hat with the rawhide brim scraped so thin, it was almost translucent. “Make a run for it.”

“We can’t: they’ll catch us out there one at a time,” Bass declared, wagging his head as he kept his eyes on the south rim of the rocks. “In here we got us a chance.”

Hatcher drew in a quick breath of torment as he shifted his hip. “I got things figgered the same way as Scratch. Leastways in here they gotta fight to get to us. Not much of one—but we got a chance.”

“The ones of us what can, we gotta climb the sides of these rocks,” Bass instructed, pointing toward the skyline with the barrel of his rifle. “Up there we can keep ’em from crawling over the rocks.”

“Might work,” Kinkead admitted, pursing his thick lips in determination. “Let’s climb.”

Rufus Graham led them, scrambling up the rocks to a high position. Wood and Rowland chose to climb off in another direction. Simms and Fish, Bass and Kinkead, all spread out until the seven of them had the ring of boulders better protected, no longer sitting below, at the mercy of the enemy as the Blackfeet climbed up the rocks and fired down on their quarry. From up near the top of the boulders, the white men could now watch their enemy breaking out of the trees.

A fella didn’t get him all that many chances to win big at a card game, Titus thought as his eyes raked the tree line—spotting some shadowy movement, listening to the Blackfeet hollering to one another. True enough, a man don’t get a chance less’n he hangs his bare ass right out over the fire like this once’t in a while.

Coming here to the mountain west all on his lonesome had been the biggest gamble he figured he’d ever made. Bigger even than leaving home at sixteen. But the bigger the gamble, the sweeter the stakes.

Off to his left two warriors skulked from the morning shadows toward the rocks, pretty much unseen for the thick brush. They scrambled to slip into a crevice that would put them between Caleb and Titus. Laying his left hand flat on the top of the boulder, then resting the forestock on the back of that hand, Bass took a quick sight target on the chest of the one who wore no leggings as he started to slip out of the brush there at the base of the crevice. Son of a bitch wore only moccasins, a breechclout, and a headdress made of a spray of turkey feathers tied to the back of his head.

It surprised him when Wood’s gun echoed the blast from his own rifle. As the turkey-feather headdress twisted and slumped at the foot of the rocks, the other warrior turned on his heel and scampered back for the tree line.

Stuffing his hand back into his shooting pouch, Scratch scooped up as many of the balls as he had left and brought them out. There in his cupped hand he estimated he had fewer than two dozen shots left. Quickly glancing over the others perched near the top of the boulders nearby, Bass wondered if they were in any better shape for to make a long fight of it. He doubted that any of them would have enough shots to last until nightfall. And even then, there was a damn good chance the Blackfeet might just come to call once darkness hid their movements.

No matter that he and the rest had knocked a few off their ponies, or had shot a couple here after reaching the rocks—the warriors still had the trappers outnumbered better than four, maybe five, to one. Having to make every shot count, every last lead ball left among them now … that was stretching the odds even thinner.

“What other choice you got?” he asked himself in a whisper.

Little matter that none of them would likely see the sun go down on this day.

In all those years spent working and gambling beside the Ohio River, across all those seasons of drinking and whoring and playing the pasteboards in St. Louis—it had always been his way to stay in the game until the last raise of the night had been plopped down onto the table, until the last call had been made. And he’d just have to see this through to the end too.

The sun had climbed halfway to midsky with the trappers fighting off the Blackfeet that way—one or two at a time … here or there. Then things fell quiet. The forest became eerily silent.

Not that they couldn’t hear the snort and movement of ponies yonder in the timbered shadows. But for the longest time, no warriors raced from the trees to assault the rocks.

“Maybe they’re fixing to ride away,” Fish suggested.

“You might be right, Solomon,” Graham replied. “Niggers figger they can’t get to us in here.”

“I don’t like the smell of it,” Bass declared.

Rowland regarded Titus a moment from his nearby perch. “Me neither,” he finally said.

Down below them Hatcher yelled, “Say, fellas—look who decided to wake up!”

Gray was slowly wagging his head, rubbing the huge, blood-smeared knot on the side of his brow, then inspected his fingers. “Damn, this hurts too much, boys. Must mean I’m still alive.”

“You hold a gun?” Wood asked.

“Gimme minute or two more—I likely can,” Gray explained.

“It’s a good thing too,” Scratch said. “I figger them niggers is playing some jigger-pokey to fool us.”

“They ain’t gonna be fool enough to rush us,” Graham protested.

“Ye fellas just leave me a loaded pistol down here,” Hatcher instructed, gritting his teeth. “If’n they’re coming—I want me least one shot. Take least one of them niggers with me afore I go under.”

Elbridge handed Jack one of his big smooth-bored horse pistols before he turned and slowly climbed up the gentle slope of the boulders to join the others. When he had reached the top, Gray asked quietly, “You figger it’ll come from all sides, Scratch?”

“Don’t know how to calíate that.”

Caleb Wood ventured his guess. “I s’pose they will come at us from all sides, Elbridge. That way they keep every last one of us all pinned down when the rush comes.”

“Nawww,” Simms protested. “They’ll run at us from one side, figgering there ain’t enough guns to shoot ’em all if’n they’re quick ’nough.”

“Listen!” Graham hushed them.

Even the pony noises had faded then. No birdcalls from the surrounding forest, no longer the stomping and snorting of the Blackfeet ponies. The valley fell quiet as a tomb. A dead man’s tomb.

They turned their heads this way and that, looking, listening—growing more anxious with every breath.

“What’s happening?” Hatcher demanded, alone down in the hollow. “Why’d ever’thing get so quiet—”

A shrill whistle blew, and all the Blackfoot war cries arose in unison, shutting off the rest of Jack’s question.

“If’n that hoss don’t take the circle!” Caleb growled. “They comin’ in from all sides, Jack!”

Bass jammed his hand down into his pouch and scooped out more than ten of the heavy lead balls, stuffing them into his mouth where they would be ready to spit down the barrel of his rifle.

Waving his horse pistol, pain and determination painted there on his gray face, Hatcher bellowed, “I know we can take ’em, boys!”

Gray cheered the rest. “Damn sure take as many as we can afore they get us!”

Outside of a winter camp of Ute or Crow, or that Shoshone village hunting buffalo, Titus Bass hadn’t seen that many warriors at one time, in one place, ever before. No two ways of Sunday about it: there were more Blackfeet racing toward the boulder fortress than Scratch had thought there could be in their war party. Either there had been more warriors back among the trees all along, or more Blackfeet had come in to join up with the first ones who ambushed the trappers.

Careful, careful, he reminded himself, holding the front blade on the closest bare, brown-skinned chest. The flintlock shoved back into his shoulder the instant before he was laying it at his side and scooping up the pistol—finding himself a second target.

On all sides the trappers were firing their guns, cutting down the first ranks of Blackfeet, then immediately pouring down a quick measure of powder before spitting a single ball from their lips into the muzzles of rifles or pistols and spilling priming powder into the pans of their weapons. The guns erupted once more, taking a fraction more of a toll on the enemy wave that drew closer and closer in those screaming, shrieking, booming, and frantic seconds of reloading.

More than four times the trappers poured powder and spat lead balls into their weapons, ramming the charges home before taking instant aim and firing on instinct. Four times only before they were forced one by one to lay aside their firearms to take up knives and tomahawks as the red wave of the warriors climbed high enough over the fallen bodies strewn across the rocks themselves.

A few were swinging their rifles about like long clubs, and all about them the air turned red with the enemy’s hideous screams of blood lust, reminding Bass of that first skirmish with the Chickasaw, recalling how Ebenezer Zane’s boatmen had said that a man would never forget hearing his first Chickasaw war whoop.

When the first wave spilled back, tumbling against one another, the trappers had to wait those last, long seconds for the warriors to spider their way up to the white men at the top of the rocks—about half of the trappers struggling to reload this one last time while the others rose to their knees with knife and tomahawk, crouched tensely to receive the brunt of the charge.

The Blackfeet weren’t singing out the war songs now as they turned about to hurl themselves at the boulders. No songs, for this was something deadly. Five or more were scrambling toward Bass himself.

As his mouth went dry, Scratch thought of the Ute woman—how Fawn had tended to his wounds, recalling the softness of her touch at all the wounded places on his body, remembering how nothing else mattered when he lay coupled with her. His tongue went pasty when he realized he would never see her again. Never lay another trap. Not see the sun go down on this day … or the others to follow.

As he gazed down at all those painted warriors scrambling up the boulders to get at them, Bass realized he was staring death in the face. Such injustice this was. Not yet ready to die, for he hadn’t yet learned what it meant to live. Much less had he learned what it meant to die.

The first ranks hurtled against the trappers with the grunting exertion of bare muscle pitted against muscle. Back and forth Scratch raked the tomahawk from side to side: connecting with bone and flesh, slashing at skin and sinew as warriors fell back and more leaped up behind them. From his knees he scrambled to his feet, splattered with hot blood, beginning to yell for the first time—answering their cries with his own fevered killing lust. First one, then two, and finally three bodies lay at his feet as the others surged in, lunged for him.

A warrior fell back, Bass’s tomahawk still buried in his face as the Indian tumbled down the slope.

Ducking the war club that whispered overhead, Bass slapped the skinning knife into his right hand and leaped into three of them. The trio swung wildly with their own weapons—pounding at his back, slashing at the wild wolverine suddenly among them. Bass locked his arms around legs, twisting, pulling, throwing his shoulder into the bare knees he held to with death’s grip. Not letting go even when two of the Blackfeet lost their balance and began to fall, Bass slid, careened, tumbled down the side of the rocks with them.

They dug fingers at his eyes, yanked savagely at his long hair, pummeled him with their fists as they all came to a stop together, one of the warriors colliding with a tree trunk so hard, the breath was knocked out of him with a gasp.

The hold on him released, Scratch leaped back, slashing, lunging to the side to slash again. Then he fell back a step in a crouch, like a crazed animal, from the warrior he had just opened up, the Blackfoot staring dumbly down at his belly as purplish intestine slithered out of the long, gaping wound.

Another warrior lunged onto his back, arm locked around Bass’s neck, and they both fell as Titus rolled—momentarily staring up into the face of the Blackfoot, who drew back a tomahawk at the end of his arm as he came astride the trapper. Bass swung his arm, wildly jabbing again and again with his left fist, smashing it into the warrior’s jaw—just before another face appeared above him: a second warrior seizing Scratch’s left arm and forcing it down beneath all of his weight, pinning it against the ground.

The first Blackfoot with the bloodied nose and mouth once more drew back the tomahawk—then froze.

In the midst of all the noise and commotion and that deafening hammer of Bass’s heart, there came the rush of a rising cacophony of shouts, war cries, and death songs spilling from the forest beyond them. Shots echoed from the tree line. Surprised, the two warriors pinning Bass to the ground jerked, looking over their shoulders at the shadowy forest behind them as if they could not believe.

Everywhere in the boulders Blackfeet hollered, screamed in dismay. In that next instant the warrior clutching the tomahawk above Bass twitched slightly, his eyes widening, then slumped across Scratch as if his strings had been cut—an arrow fluttering deep in his back as he gurgled his last breath.

Releasing Bass’s arm, the remaining warrior grabbed hold of the first, turning him to the side to have himself a look, and realized—then leaped to his feet, screaming and waving his arms at the rest.

In every direction the Blackfeet were wheeling back from the rocks. Like drops of spring runoff, they came sliding down the rocks, desperately breaking into a sprint as they raced for the timber beyond the boulders.

The crescendo of screams and war cries burst from the trees an instant before the feathered, painted warriors.

Lunging up on his elbows, kicking wildly to free his legs from the body sprawled atop them, Bass struggled to slide backward as this new rush of warriors rolled toward him and the others defending the boulders. Volving onto a shoulder, he flung an arm across the grass to snag the tomahawk from the warrior, ripping a huge knife from the dead man’s belt—all that he would have now to defend himself against this new wave of the enemy.

Kicking his legs free, Bass scrambled to his knees, crouching, growling—preparing to fight his last seconds, then fall under the sheer weight of their numbers.

Yet … the warriors exploding like blurred light from the shadows turned and hurtled right by him, then sprinted past the boulders—following the fleeing Blackfeet. They were retreating with the others.

Of a sudden one of the warriors skidded to a stop close at hand, whirled, and screamed at Titus—something he did not understand. Titus brought up the tomahawk and knife, hissing almost catlike as he prepared for the strike. Bass jerked as a second warrior seized him from behind, the painted warrior gripping the white man’s bloodied shirt, exuberantly pulling him partway off the ground, locking his powerful hand around Scratch’s wrist as the Indian … began to laugh.

Unable to free his knife hand, Bass believed he was about to be killed by a man who would laugh crazily as he slit his throat.

That … laugh … then he twisted to look carefully at the man holding him, studying the face beneath the smeared war paint—this one laughing joyously in his face. Was it really?

Slays in the Night?

And as the Shoshone warrior gazed down at him with that broad, open smile, Bass felt the first sting of tears.

By God, these were … Snake!

A few more guns barked and roared in the middistance as the Shoshone raced after their ancient enemies, killing all that they could, driving off the rest of the Blackfoot war party.

Slays in the Night leaned back, helping the white man get to his feet. The Shoshone warriors whirled up and around on all sides of them now—more warriors rushing out of the trees, sprinting headlong after the retreating Blackfeet. Bass found it difficult to catch his breath, to hear anything more than the loud clatter of his heart in his ears, the hammer of running feet and the screeching war cries.

Then, as that clamor of running battle began to fade, Scratch began to make out the familiar voices of the white trappers yelling above them, the rest of Hatcher’s bunch realizing they had been saved, prancing and dancing there at the top of those boulders, pairs of them pounding one another on the back and whooping with joy at their miraculous deliverance.

Slays in the Night laid a hand on Bass’s shoulder and looked into the white man’s face. “Bass.”

Titus seized hold of that hand gripping his shoulder, and barely above a whisper he croaked the only words that mattered right then: “Thank you.”

His mind was a blur of questions.

Watching the other trappers ease Jack Hatcher down the granite slope of the boulders in a blanket hammock, Bass struggled to come to grips with having prepared himself to face death as bravely as he could one moment, and the next finding that he had suddenly been given another chance. Twice before that he was sure of, his fat had been pulled out of the fire. Others had happed along, or maybe he had simply blundered into them … but no matter that it was they or he, Scratch had no doubt that each time he had been snatched from the jaws of death.

As the white men gathered about Hatcher there at the bottom of the rocky fortress where they had prepared to sell their lives dearly, the Shoshone began to return one by one. A warrior here and a warrior there stepped out of the trees holding a bloody scalp aloft—shouting for the others to see what he had claimed from an enemy’s body in the way of spoils and booty. The Snake shouted and sang, then spit on most of those Blackfoot scalps brought in across the next minutes as the trappers recounted their own fierce struggle among themselves. Now and again a warrior led in one of the enemy ponies as well, abandoned by the Blackfeet in their flight.

Wagging his head so that the tail on his long wolf-hide cap shook down his back, Solomon Fish hollered, “If this don’t take the goddamned circle! These here Snakes show up just when them Blackfeets was ready to raise our hair!”

“Ain’t we the lucky ones!” Simms shouted.

Hatcher just nodded his head happily. “Cain’t believe it, boys! Talk ’bout yer Lady Luck smiling down on us: all the way up here—and to have Goat Horn’s bunch run onto us this way!”

“I don’t rightly get it,” Elbridge admitted, running a bloody finger beneath the big bulb of his nose scored with tiny blue veins. “We ain’t been trapping nowhere near where them Snake was heading with their village.”

“Cain’t you see that’s why we’re so damned lucky!” Caleb boasted.

“Hell if we ain’t ’bout as lucky as can be!” Kinkead agreed. “They must’a been close … close enough to hear the guns and come running.”

“Damned lucky for us they was out hunting close enough to save our hash!” Simms declared.

Soon the happy warriors, shouting with that flush of victory, had a large pile of bows and clubs, a few English muskets, many tomahawks and knives, not to mention shields, pad saddles, and other horse tack. It was clear to any of the trappers that this had been a major war party plunging south toward Shoshone and Crow country.

“Tell me, Jack,” Scratch, said as he knelt beside Hatcher, something not making a lot of sense to him. “I don’t rightly remember what these bucks did on that buffler hunt last year … but I can’t rightly say I ever saw these here Snake wear paint and put on their fancy war clothes when they was fixing to go on a meat hunt.”

Hatcher’s eyes bounced across the nearby warriors, some grave doubt beginning to cloud his face. Just as he began to open his mouth, he shut it again. Shifting himself on his elbow, he strained to listen to what the many Shoshone tongues were saying.

“I ain’t for sure just yet, Scratch,” Jack began, his voice strangely quiet, “but I got me the idea this wasn’t no—”

As suddenly as they had appeared out of the forest, the Snake warriors around the trappers became quiet as hushed word of something was whispered among them with the speed of a prairie fire. They fell completely silent as a young man on foot led a pony and its rider into the crowded clearing at the foot of the boulders.

“Ain’t … ain’t that the old medicine man?” Titus asked in a whisper the moment he recognized the frail man atop the horse.

“Sure ’nough is,” Caleb Wood replied in a whisper.

In the hush of that high-country forest the young man who was apprenticed to Porcupine Brush helped the old one off the animal’s back and steadied him on his thin, birdlike legs. Then the blind man began to sing softly, shaking a buffalo-bladder rattle around and around in a circle as his apprentice helped him shuffle slowly through the gathering that parted before him. Goat Horn, the Shoshone war chief who had led his warriors there, stepped forward so he could walk on the other side of the shaman until they stopped right before Hatcher’s blanket.

Between the chief and shaman a few words were quickly spoken in a whisper.

“What’s he say?” Fish leaned down to ask of Jack.

Hatcher translated, “The ol’ codger asked who was still alive, and Goat Horn tolt him we all was.”

Porcupine Brush appeared much gratified at that answer, his wrinkled, wizened face brightening with a wide smile as his sightless eyes seemed to look left to right slowly, as if they somehow could see, perhaps as if they were in search of one white man in particular.

Mumbling something to his young apprentice, the shaman was shuffled over so that he could face Bass. Letting go of the young one’s arm, Porcupine Brush’s old fingers worked at the knot in the thongs holding that sacred white buffalo calf robe over his shoulders. Sliding the robe off his arms, he nonetheless clutched it in a bundle to his breast as he spoke with a soft, thready voice to the nine white men there, where they had been prepared to die.

“Wants us all to sit with him,” Hatcher said, motioning them to join him on the ground.

Handing the calf robe to his apprentice, the old man sat a few feet from Hatcher and Bass. On the ground in front of the shaman the young man spread the beautiful curly hide of the sacred buffalo calf. When the shaman was told all the white men were sitting before him around the calf skin, he raised his face to the sky above and began to sing his prayers. Through every chorus of his difficult song, the shaman rubbed his gnarled hands back and forth across the white hide, at times stuffing those swollen knuckles of his fingers deep into the thick fur.

Putting his lips up behind Hatcher’s ear, Graham asked, “What all’s he saying?”

Shaking his head a minute as if struggling to understand, Jack tried to explain. “All he was doing was just praying a bit ago … but, but now he’s saying … he wants to tell us that—that he knowed we was in trouble.”

“He kn-knowed?” Wood echoed.

Hatcher nodded, his eyes half closing in disbelief. “Says something ’bout his spirit helper four days ago.”

Gray roared happily, scratching at his ample belly, “Whatever it was—I’m sure as hell glad the ol’ codger’s spirit helper was up to talkin’ that day!”

“Hush!” Jack ordered. “Says … wait: ol’ man here says he was told we was in a fix days ago.”

A sense of something grand and very holy enveloped Titus Bass at that very moment. As certain as he had ever been about anything in his life, Scratch suddenly felt a great power there about them. At long, long last he stood in the presence of that great and unexplained mystery. Perhaps it was even the force that guided the way of all things.

“Sure,” Hatcher continued. “Makes sense these here Snakes knowed we was in a fix long afore this morning, don’t it? How the hell else was they gonna get to us in time?”

Simms turned to ask, “You don’t figger they was out hunting, Jack?”

“No—the ol’ feller says they come straight here, ready for war. And they knew right where we was s’posed to be,” Hatcher replied, his voice going softer as he peered down at the calf robe, sounding a little less sure of himself now as they stood upon this strange ground. “I don’t have me no idea how in heaven … but the old’un says they knowed we was about to be rubbed out by their enemies—the Blackfeets.”

“How he know all this?” Wood inquired.

Graham asked too, “Yeah—how this here ol’ man know about us days ago when we ain’t even made it here yet?”

From out of the very air around them, Bass understood. Without the slightest hesitation he quietly said, “I s’pose his spirit helper told him.”

The rest turned toward Scratch—staring, unbelieving, and about ready to scoff until Hatcher asked a question of the shaman in the Shoshone tongue. The old man smiled, his blind eyes pooling with tears as he answered.

Then Jack turned to look up at Titus Bass with great wonder, even stunned amazement, on his face as Scratch leaned across the hide, taking one of the old hands in both of his.

“Tell ’im it’s me, Jack—the one what’s got hold of his hand,” Titus said.

When Hatcher explained, tears spilled from the shaman’s blind, milky eyes onto his wrinkled cheeks.

“The old’un says he knowed about Scratch here—Porcupine Brush calls Titus the white man’s buffler shaman—that he knowed when Scratch needed their help,” Hatcher explained, wagging his head slowly. When he brought his eyes up to look at Titus, Jack said, “Since’t he was the one what the All Powers chose to bring the medicine calf to the Snakes—”

Gray interrupted, “Hold on there—you’re telling us that something tolt him about Scratch and the B-blackfeets coming to jump us?”

“Yup,” Hatcher solemnly answered Gray’s question. “Porcupine Brush says behind his blind eyes he saw all what was to happen to Titus Bass. Says he was told ’bout this four days ago.”

Isaac Simms asked, “Just who in hell told the ol’ man ’bout all of this?”

“Not who tol’t him, Isaac. But what tol’t him,” Jack said as he reached out and laid his hand atop Scratch’s. “Porcupine Brush knew all ’bout it …. ’cause he was tol’t by Titus Bass’s white medicine calf hide.”