Authors: Terry C. Johnston
The name stuck, through all the seasons. With the coming and going of all those faces. Scratch—
Another snuffle from the horses.
They’re restless with the wind, he thought, shoving the blanket down off his legs and reaching for his moccasins. Horse be the kind of critter gets itself spooked easy enough in the wind, unable to smell danger. What with all this night moving around them, rustling—
One of them snorted loudly, in just that way the Shoshone cayuses did when all was not well.
He rose without knotting the moccasins around his ankles and snatched the pistol from beneath the wool blanket capote he had rolled for a pillow, then swept up the long, full-stocked flintlock rifle he curled up with between his legs every night. After that deadly battle with the Blackfeet, Scratch had even given the weapon its own name, calling it Ol’ Make-’Em-Come.
One of the other men stirred, mumbling as he turned over within his blankets, and fell quiet again.
Bass stepped from the ring of bodies, around the far side of their camp rather than heading directly for that patch of ground where they had driven their animals and confined them within a rope corral before turning in for the night.
“Better for a man to count ribs than to count tracks,” explained Jack Hatcher.
Far more preferable that a careful man’s animals should go without the finest grazing possible than to discover those animals were run off by skulking brownskins. Putting a feller afoot in a hostile wilderness. Forced to cache most all his plunder, then follow those horses’ tracks with only what a man could carry on his own back.
Was that hiss more of the wind soughing through the trees up ahead? Or … could it have been a whisper?
In the darkness, and this cold, Scratch knew a man’s ears might well play tricks on him.
Scratch stopped, held his breath, listened.
Behind him in camp he thought he heard one of them stir, throwing back his bedding, muttering now in a low voice that alerted the others. They were coming out of their deep sleep as quiet as men in a dangerous land could.
From beyond the trees the wind’s whisper grew insistent now. Then a second whisper—and the gorge suddenly rose in Bass’s throat. Whoever was out there realized the camp was awakening. He brought up the long rifle and stepped into the gloom between the tall trees, cautiously.
With a shriek the uneasy quiet was instantly shattered. A boom rocked the trees around him, the dark grove streaked with a muzzle flash.
The bastards had guns!
One of the trappers in camp grunted as the rest shouted and cried to the others, all hell breaking loose at once as shrill voices screeched battle calls from the dark timber.
In a crouch, he lunged forward. Not back to camp as more guns began to boom. But making for the horses.
The red niggers were after the remuda!
Behind him the voices of his friends grew loud as they met the assault—an instant before the dark shapes of the animals took form, congealing out of the darkness. Milling four-leggeds … then a two-legged took shape, and a second, he saw among the stock: slapping, yelling, driving some of the horses out of the rope corral. More of the huge shadows hopped within their sideline hobbles, attempting
to break to freedom, straining to join those captured animals the raiders goaded into the darkness.
He recognized Hannah’s bawl. That high, brassy cry the mule gave when frightened—like that day Silas Cooper was about to kill the mare, or that day Bass lost his scalp and was left for dead.
Stepping to the edge of that copse of trees, he recognized her big, peaked ears on a nearby shadow. One of the raiders struggled to keep his hold on the mule’s horsehair halter. Scratch stepped sideways, close enough to make out the warrior’s body, seeing how young he was.
“Let go of ’er!”
Whirling around in a crouch, the youngster reached for the tomahawk at his belt, the metal head glinting with starshine as it flashed out at the end of the arm he swung back over his shoulder.
At Scratch’s hip the rifle boomed, its flash bright as midday—temporarily blinding Titus as he shoved the rifle into his left hand, snatching the pistol from his belt with his right. Ahead of him the raider crumpled in half, hit low in the gut with a ball of lead more than a half-inch round. Flopping to his side, the wounded man struggled to reach for the tomahawk that landed inches from his fingertips, the other arm clutched across his abdomen.
Bass leaped out of the trees, landing with a foot on the raider’s wrist. Instantly the Indian took the free hand and struggled to reach the knife scabbard flopping at his hip. Hannah snorted, bobbing her head, yanking back at her picket rope with that recognition of blood.
Not about to waste another shot on the thief, Scratch stuffed the pistol into his belt, raised the rifle above his head in both hands, then savagely drove the metal butt plate straight down into the warrior’s face. And a second time as the Indian twisted and thrashed, his last ragged breaths spewing from the crushed hole in his head like frosty streamers. After a third and harder blow, he no longer moved.
Stepping over his victim, Bass pulled the pistol free, crouched slightly, and slipped forward again into the darkness. To this side and that he shoved the frightened, chivvied
animals, forcing a path through their midst. A hobbled horse clumsily lunged out of his way, and into that gap suddenly leaped another warrior, a long dagger clutched in one hand, a tomahawk held in the other. From side to side he rocked, gazing wickedly at the white man with a crooked smile.
Bass squeezed the trigger as he brought the pistol up. When the ball struck the warrior high in the chest, it drove him backward off his feet to land among the legs and hooves of the hobbled animals.
“Simms!”
It was Hatcher’s voice somewhere behind his right shoulder.
“Here, goddammit!”
“Ye see Bass?”
“He ain’t with me,” explained the voice coming from a different side of camp.
How he wished he had picked up his powder horn and shooting pouch before he’d left his bedding. Unable to reload, Titus instead leaned down and pulled the knife and tomahawk free from the warrior’s hands, then straightened and yelled, “Jack! I’m over here!”
“Bass?” Hatcher cried. “Was that Scratch’s voice?”
“Sounded like him—”
The voice had to be Kinkead’s, nearly muffled with the gunshot.
“Goddammit!” that booming voice screamed.
“Matt!”
A new voice asked, “You see Bass over by you, Rufus?”
While the trappers called to one another back in camp, no more than fifteen feet in front of him, Titus watched a warrior appear out of the night and those shadows clinging among the trees. The Indian crouched, stopping long enough to study the small clearing where the trappers had made their camp. From there it was plain to see that the horse thief had John Rowland’s narrow back all to himself. Raising his short horn bow, the warrior drew back on the string.
On instinct Bass flung his arm back, hurling the knife
at the target. Too quickly. Off its mark, the weapon clattered against a nearby tree. The enemy jerked to the side, wheeling to find the white man behind him. Drawing back on his bow string once more, he now aimed the arrow at Scratch.
Startled at the noise, Rowland turned. “Shit!”
As he leaped to the side, Titus grumbled, “Never was any good with stickers—”
And with that he flung the tomahawk at the raider, striking the horse thief low in the chest.
“Scratch is over here!” Rowland sang out as the warrior crumpled forward onto his face.
Behind them on the far side of their camp, four of the trappers squatted behind some baggage. Among them Hatcher rose. He intently watched the night shadows as Bass emerged from the trees, his eyes raking the meadow for more of the enemy.
“That the last of ’em?” Hatcher asked.
“Dunno,” Elbridge Gray admitted below him, squatting there as he shoved the ramrod down the muzzle of his rifle.
“Keep yer goddamned eyes peeled on that line of trees,” Hatcher commanded, slapping Solomon Fish on the shoulder as he turned. “Kinkead? Where the hell’re you?”
“I don’t see him nowhere,” Caleb Wood cried with fear in his voice.
From across camp Rufus Graham shouted, “He go out with them horses?”
“Horses,” Bass muttered angrily at himself, whirling around. Then he turned back suddenly to yell at Rowland. “Your gun loaded, Johnny?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Come with me,” Bass growled, growing more angry with himself as he dashed away. “The goddamned horses.”
As the two white men drew close, the animals neighed and whinnied—some recognizing their smell, others still frightened. They milled nervously in what was left of their rope corral strung in a wide circle, looped tree to tree to
tree. That one section cut by the raiders was not enough for the horses to dare snatch at their freedom: with a hand still clutching the end of the rope he had cut, one of the warriors lay dead. The foreign smell of the Indian, perhaps that faint hint of his blood on the wind, kept the rest of their nervous animals from bolting past the body sprawled on the forest floor.
“How many you figger the niggers got?” Rowland asked as he moved among the horses, quieting them—patting necks, stroking withers and flanks.
“Likely a handful,” Bass replied, worried. For he still hadn’t seen her among the others.
Simms was suddenly at the far side of the corral, ducking under the rope. “Mule’s over here, Scratch!”
“Damn,” he croaked thickly, shoving his way through the rangy Indian cayuses, fighting his way to the mule. He stopped, finding he could breathe again just at the sight of her.
Reaching Hannah’s side, Titus laid an arm affectionately over her neck, hugging the animal.
“Kinkead’s hurt,” the stocky Simms said as he came to a halt beside Bass. “Hurt bad.”
“He gonna make it?”
“Hatcher don’t know yet,” Simms admitted, his pale, whitish-blond hair aglow in the night.
“Damn.” Scratch turned toward the far side of the corral. His eyes found Rowland. “Me and Johnny stay here while you get some more rope.”
“They cut through more’n one place?”
“No,” he answered Simms. “We’re lucky. Who was they anyway?”
Isaac shrugged. “From the quick look-see I got of the two of ’em we dropped … likely they was Blackfoots.”
He swallowed hard. Blackfoot again. “G’won—get the rope, Isaac.”
Simms turned and moved away without a word.
Blackfoot.
What were the chances this had been a different raiding party from the one that had struck Hatcher’s outfit weeks ago as they were trapping their way northwest from
Shoshone country? Slim chance, if any. When Goat Horn had brought his warriors across those days and nights of hard riding to pull the trappers’ fat out of the fire, reaching the white men as the Blackfoot raiders were circling in tighter and tighter to make the kill … what were the chances that those angry, defeated Blackfoot had been driven on north, back to their own country?
And what were the chances they had doubled back to try again?
“They was Bug’s Boys awright,” the rail-thin Rowland said behind him.
Turning, Bass saw John standing over one of the bodies.
“You get this’un, Scratch?”
Titus stepped over to the Indian lying sprawled on the ground. “The first’un,” Bass admitted. “Didn’t kill him right off with a ball. Not much more’n a boy.”
“Ain’t much left of the young’un’s face.”
Swallowing, Titus declared, “He come on a man’s errand.”
“Damn if he didn’t. Looks of it—this here boy was ready to chop you into boudin meat.”
Shaking his head, Bass turned away, watching Simms approaching. “It don’t make the killing any easier, Johnny.”
“By jam—these niggers’re wuss’n animals,” Isaac declared as he came to a halt. “Blackfeets is like painters and wolves, Scratch. No better. A little smarter mayhaps. But they ain’t wuth no more’n a critter.”
“Isaac’s right,” Rowland said, bobbing his head of unkempt hair. “And your hand put two of ’em outta their misery this night.”
“Two?” Simms echoed with interest, stroking at his long, pale beard.
Jabbing a bony thumb over his shoulder, Rowland explained, “’Nother’un’s back there—nigger was fixin’ to lay me out when Bass finished him.”
“Damn. If that don’t take the circle!” the overly solemn Simms said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “Two of ’em. C’mon, let’s get this here rope up quick. Jack wants
us back in camp so we can figger what’s to do about them horses the others got off with.”
In minutes Bass was kneeling at Kinkead’s feet with some of the others. Titus asked Hatcher, “How he be?”
“I’m fit as any the rest of you sonsabitches,” Kinkead grumbled as he pulled out the thick twig he had been clenching between his teeth. For the moment this stocky man was sitting propped back against a pack of beaver, Caleb Wood behind one shoulder for support. Matthew turned his chin toward the other shoulder and growled, “Leave me be, Mad Jack! You never was any good with a knife—”
“Shuddup, child,” Hatcher ordered. “An’ quit yer hitchin’! Ye’re making this wuss’n it has to be.”
Kinkead gasped in pain, flung his head back with a groan, and shoved the twig back between his teeth as Hatcher proceeded to dig into the dark, moist wound on the big man’s muscular chest. From it fluttered the long shaft of a Blackfoot arrow—buried deep in the right breast.
“Hold him still, goddammit!” Hatcher ordered, exasperated. “Help me, Bass. Hold him down!”
Now there were three restraining that bull of a man almost as wide as he was tall.
“You gonna finish it sometime afore the damn sun comes up?” Bass eventually asked in a grunt as he tried to stay atop Kinkead’s strong legs.
“I can feel the goddamned arrow point,” Hatcher admitted, shifting the knife blade this way, then that, with one hand, his other gently tugging now and then on the shaft. “I don’t wanna pull the goddamned thing free ’thout the arrow point. Hold him down, or I ain’t gonna get this done afore a month of sunrises!”
Kinkead growled like a wounded bear, hissing around his twig at Hatcher as Jack rose to his knees above the man, brought back his arm, and suddenly slammed a fist against Kinkead’s jaw.