He swore he even heard the deer breathing before he saw the frost streaming from its glossy black nostrils, the chest heaving in fear, perhaps exhaustion too, as the doe bounded into the clearing and stopped, stiff-legged. In fright it twisted its head one way, then another, studying the open ground before it—then jerked its head over its shoulder to gaze along its backtrail with wide, frightened eyes Titus now watched above the front blade he nestled down in the narrow crescent of the backsight.
Just as it wrenched its head forward and twitched its tail—always a sure sign that the deer was about to set off once more—Titus squeezed back on the trigger.
In that next heartbeat it appeared he had missed, for the deer bounded off on all four legs. His greatest fear right then was that the doe had started away before he had touched off the shot. He peered through the brush and gray smoke, hearing his rifle shot swallowed by the timber and the cold, damp air.
But instead of the clatter of the deer’s hooves galloping off into the trees, the only sound that followed the fading gunshot was the silence that echoed back upon him. That, and the thrash of the deer’s legs as the animal struggled on the ground at the far side of the small clearing.
Immediately bolting from cover, Titus raced across the open ground, laid the rifle against some nearby brush, and knelt near the deer as the legs slowed their wild fight. A big brown eye stared up at him. He looked down at the ragged, bloody hole torn in the heaving, lower chest, then back to that eye. Already it was beginning to glaze. And then the legs moved no more.
Quickly he pulled out his big belt knife and slit the throat in order to drain off most of the blood from the carcass before he dragged the blade down the length of the body, from windpipe to rectum. Since this was a doe, which ran smaller than most bucks, he thought he might try carrying the carcass over his shoulder down to where he would find the boat crew having made camp for the night. By cutting off the head and gutting the animal, along with getting rid of the weight of the green hide, he could easily drape the rest of the kill over his shoulders and hurry it downriver.
He had never been the strongest youngster in Boone County, hardly the strongest right around the village of Rabbit Hash either. Truth was, Titus was mostly bone and sinew, with a few strap-leather-lean muscles knotted to his wiry frame. Because he was stronger in his legs than elsewhere on his body, Titus early on had learned he simply could not heft the weight other fellas his age could lift and carry, much less do what a full-grown man could. Standing just shy of six feet in his moccasins, but weighing less than 140 pounds by the wharfmaster’s scale at Louisville scant weeks before, Bass truly gave off the appearance of a much smaller man when he stood with his shoulders slightly rounded as he shrank back into himself, shy as he was. Because of his spare size and rail-thin frame, the youngster had learned to make do for the lack of muscle. No matter how much he ate in the last few years, no matter how much he demanded of his body, he never seemed to fill out and put on the pounds the way so many other Boone County boys had.
Didn’t matter anyhow, he reminded himself as he carried on with removing the internal organs and flinging them into a nearby gut-pile. Time would come, Titus knew, and he’d put on some weight, finally getting those muscles every man eventually earned.
Shadows lengthened across the cold ground while he worked, his breath beginning to frost before his face in his exertion. Yet his hands remained warm, working in the blood and the carcass as they did. He cut the last of the windpipe and lung free, then flung them onto the gutpile … when he froze.
Motionless. A new sound. Something that did not fit in with what he had been hearing from the surrounding forest as he labored over the doe.
Perhaps it was another deer, he convinced himself. Much the same sound too—moving through the brush and coming from the same direction as the doe had. Closer and closer. He might be lucky and get two of them, he convinced himself. Then he’d have to cut down a few saplings and make a crude sled he could use to drag both carcasses downriver to the boatmen’s camp.
Quickly he wiped most of the blood and gore from his hands in the frosty, icy leaves, then swept up his rifle before ducking back toward the brush where he had been hiding when the doe had made her appearance along the game trail.
What meat Zane’s men didn’t gorge themselves on that night, they could spend the evening slicing and drying by the fire. Maybe carry along the bigger hams with them on board, as long as they were out of the sun, tucked away under that oiled awning on the boat. Along with the dried strips of venison, those roasts would give them several meals across the coming days before Zane might have him again hunt for them.
Crouching there in the brush, he dragged the rifle up and pushed back the frizzen. Snugging his shooting pouch against his thigh, Titus pulled the stopper from the priming horn and sprinkled a dusting of powder into the pan—for the first time realizing he hadn’t reloaded after dropping the doe.
Damn!
Yet he had no more time to curse himself for his stupidity as the faint rustle came ever closer.
He grew angry with himself: if he didn’t get his rifle reloaded, he was going to miss his chance to drop a second deer. No matter that it might be a buck this time.
Quickly pouring powder into his palm, he found himself quaking slightly as he spilled the coarse black grains down the muzzle—then became still as a stone. His own eyes widened, his breath choked off in his chest as the creature stepped to the far edge of the clearing.
Instead of a four-legged buck moving beneath a set of antlers, what made young Titus’s heart freeze in his chest was a two-legged Indian in smoked buckskin who slowly emerged from the brush in a crouch, then sank to his knee.
Now his heart began hammering so loudly, he was certain the Indian could hear it. Starting to sweat in the cold of those shadows, Titus found himself every bit as scared as he was mad that his gunshot had drawn the redskin to the clearing.
This way, then that, the Indian’s own dark, black-bead eyes searched the timber enclosing the clearing, before he inched forward a bit more, easing toward the deer. Kneeling over the gutted animal, the Indian put a bare hand down into the gut cavity.
He’s feeling how warm it is. How long ago I kill’t it.
All the while the Indian’s eyes kept moving across the glade, watchful and attentive. From the looks of the warrior, Titus figured the man could be anywhere between his age and his father’s. Hell, he thought—he never had been very good at guessing such things as a person’s age.
Swallowing hard, he suddenly realized this was the first real Indian he had laid eyes on. Not that he hadn’t seen some come wandering into the settlements back in Boone County. The sort what had taken to white man’s clothes and even wore hats. But never had he seen a red-skin like this: complete in fringed buckskins, with a deer-skin vest tied with thongs, the lower part of his leggings lashed tightly around his ankles and calves with long whangs.
Titus glanced down at his own smooth britches, figuring fringe would only snag in the thick underbrush. Nodding to himself, he decided that tying them up that way made for easier, quieter hunting too, as the Indian moved through the thick timber.
Quietly settling on the far side of the doe, the Indian laid his bow across his thighs, then dragged a big knife from the scabbard at his waist. Beginning at the long opening Titus had made from neck to anus, the Indian started working to free the green hide from the carcass on either side of the rib cage.
Why, this son of a bitch was fixing to take his meat! That damned hide didn’t matter—but it was the meat the others were expecting him to show up with at camp shortly!
A goddamned red thief! All that grandpap told me ’bout Injuns is true—thievin’ sonsabitches!
Now his temples pounded more from anger than from fear. That was his meat.
Mine—what’s ’bout to get stole from me!
Clenching his teeth was the only thing that kept him from hollering out right then and there—to tell that Indian th
e doe was his. Instead, Titus struggled to fight down that impulse, his mind racing to sort out what to do with a problem he had never before confronted. A man could figure out an answer to everything, he reminded himself. If he just had enough time, and thought on it hard enough. It wasn’t like he was the smartest fella in school back there in Rabbit Hash. Not the quickest, but he could learn, once he put his mind to it. And this couldn’t be any different, he told himself.
Just maybe he could show himself and somehow work it so the Injun and he could split up the doe. At least he’d have half the meat that way … and a damned good story to tell the others when he finally showed up downriver a ways.
Yet just about the time he was convincing himself of the wisdom he would show by negotiating half the doe with the Indian and was finally ready to show himself, Bass snapped to a sudden stillness.
A chirping whistle floated from the nearby woods.
That’s a Injun. Damn, if there ain’t another’un out there.
As he crouched lower in his stand of brush, frozen and wide-eyed, Titus watched the would-be thief stop and listen, then eventually put a hand to his mouth, answering in the same chirping birdcall. Another whistle came from the forest, this time from a different direction than the first. This second call, too, was answered by the meat thief.
It was with the keenest curiosity that Titus stared at the four warriors who emerged from the woods to join the first. One of them carried what appeared to be an old smoothbore musket. For a few moments all five appeared to share some words, yet their talk was so quiet, he could hear nothing of it. From the far timber came another chirp, which one of the newcomers answered. They all turned to gaze toward the north.
Like them, Titus watched that fringe of the timber, when his wonder turned to nothing but cold, dry fear in his belly. Swallowing hard around the lump swelling in his throat, he counted six more of them emerging from the shadows—four carrying short bows, and another two with guns, what appeared to be a pair of old French fusils. Half of them already dragged some haunches of meat and green hides they had rolled up, all of it placed on improvised sleds they had constructed from saplings cut down and lashed together with ivy and grapevine. It would be easy enough to pull those sleds over the brush and what little icy snow slicked the ground.
They all came to the doe, talking a little louder now that there were so many to discuss what had been found by one of their number. Still, he could not make out much of the words at all, only fragments of sounds that meant nothing to him in the least. Except to realize that these were red men. Hunters and warriors. The sort his grandpap had fought back in the Shawnee War and two years later in the Cherokee War. These were the sort of Indian the white settlers were driving right up against the Mississippi, he figured. Not the sort of Indian to take kindly to a solitary white hunter caught alone and far from his own.
The breeze tousled their hair, some of which was left long. For others the hairstyle of choice was a roach greased so that it stood straight up from the forehead to taunt any would-be enemy into taking that war trophy. Yet none of them wore any paint. From his grandpap and the old men, Titus had heard so much about the hideous paint—looking now to study each of the faces of the eleven who continued to argue something with growing urgency.
One of them pointed—south. An older man wagged his head emphatically, pointing off in another direction. Back to the north.
A third stepped forward, gestured to the doe, then gestured to the south with his bow. Several of the group grunted their agreement with whatever he had declared, for they nodded as they inched up to stand behind him.
Honest-to-goodness Injun warriors! It sent a new shiver down his spine.
A heartbeat later it began to sink in. They were discussing him! Talking over who must have killed the doe. They had to realize the hunter was somewhere close—simply because the carcass was still warm when found. They had to figure the hunter couldn’t have got very far before the deer was discovered.
He wasn’t sure he breathed at all, afraid even to do that right then in his hiding place. With growing certainty Titus feared these warriors were sure to hear his heart hammering against his ribs if it continued to get any louder—what with the way the blood rushed up his neck cords and roared in his ears, thundering in his temples.
Some of them crouched to study the ground around the gut-pile and the carcass, then peered off into the forest, talking to one another, gesturing. There wasn’t any one thing he could put his finger on to tell him that they knew of him—maybe just the way they turned their heads to regard the woods around them, the way their voices got quiet, the way the eight of them strung their bows and the other three slowly brought up their long-barreled guns, those huge muzzles swinging out toward the timber surrounding the small glade like wide black eyes.
He could not remember ever finding himself on this end of a gun before—staring down the barrel of a weapon that might well be used against him.
With that moment came clarity of thought, the sharp-honed realization they were bound to discover him once they spread out and crossed those few rods between them and where he crouched in hiding, his legs beginning to cramp in pain. He had to act.
Simple, untarred fear was what compelled him to move at last. Nothing as complicated as the consideration of his options. To his uncluttered mind in this, his first confrontation with real Indians, Titus decided he had no options. It was run or die.
As he exploded from the brushy undergrowth, heading back toward the river at a sharp angle to the southwest, Titus heard them shout to one another behind him. Surprised, confused for the moment—perhaps even afraid there might be more than one. How he hoped their fear might delay them, if only for a moment or so to contemplate what they should do, how many they might be facing down, if there might be more enemies lying in wait for them to make a mistake. Oh, how he wanted them to be seized with some of the uncertainty, nay—the outright fear—that drove his cramped legs into frantic motion.
Leaping, dodging, sprinting, making for the far-off riverbank still at least a mile away. How far down the others had gone before they put to and tied up to await his delivery of their evening meal … he had no idea. Only a hope. Nothing he could call a real prayer—the way his folks prayed, or the prayers of that circuit man who came around to hold his Bible meetings, then went home with one family or the other, gone to dinner and a dry place to sleep before moving on to another village the following day.
No, what Titus did as he sprinted through the icy forest, trying his best to stay where the thin layer of wet snow did not blanket the ground near as deeply, was to try to will those four boatmen to sense the danger he was in. To call out to them with nothing more than his thumping heart, since he could not cry out with his throat grown raw from every gasp of the cold air he dragged into his lungs. So far away, they wouldn’t hear him anyway, he told himself.
But Titus could hear the hunting party coming: whooping, hollering, crying out in shrill voices. Those yelps, more than the crashing brush he heard whipping his pursuers, drove him onward. Wishing he had loaded the rifle as soon as he had shot the doe. At least he would then have one shot. One last shot before they came within reach of him. To drop one of his killers—a way to even things up, he thought.
But that didn’t matter either. He cursed his luck. Cursed his stupidity. None of it mattered because he hadn’t loaded his rifle. Never had to think about it before. Forests where he grew up, hunted, came of age as a woodsman—those wooded hills were no longer haunted by red men. His grandpap’s kind, and a few expeditionary army forces—they had pushed the Injuns farther west. Bass had simply never had to worry about bumping into redskins before.
He stumbled, spilling to one knee, the rifle skidding from his grasp in a skiff of snow iced across a patch of leafy brush. Lumbering to his feet, Titus told himself to forget the pain crying out from his knee. Scooping up the rifle and a handful of dead leaves, he pushed on through the woods, trying to forget the bare limbs and
thorny branches that whipped at his face.
They thundered behind him, breaking through the underbrush, some exhorting the others with chants and war cries—he swore he could even hear the hard breathing of a few of the closest ones, grunting as they chased him.
Plunging into a thicket of bramble, he felt the thorns claw at his jerkin, catch at the cuff on his britches, slash the back of his hands to ribbons as he swept ahead—struggling to hack his way through to the far side of the briars. Now he had a good-sized gash on one eyelid, and it was beginning to ooze enough that it hindered his vision from that eye. As slow as he was in breaking through to the other side—Titus was certain with his every step that he would feel a bullet catch him, maybe an arrow driving deep into those thin, sinewy muscles of his back. By their growing shrieks he knew they were closing on him faster than he would have ever imagined possible.
But then he remembered this was their forest. Not his. And he became all the more frightened—figuring they knew where he was going much better than he. Something cold clutching his belly in a knot made him fear some of the fastest ones might even get somewhere ahead of him and be waiting for him.
The breathing, the grunts, the yelps he heard at his heels, all made him fear that his first run-in with real Indians was going to be his last. Something he simply would not live to tell his grandchildren of, the way his grandpap had sat the young’uns around his knee and told them the chilling, hair-raising stories of just what a dark and bloody ground that Ohio River canebrake country had been of a time not all that long ago.
An angry whine sailed past his ear, followed a heartbeat later by the roar of a musket behind him. He’d never been shot at. Now he felt as if he had become the fleeing game, the bounding, hard-pressed buck or doe, pursued by the hunters, chased through the thickets, driven across the snow as his heart pounded in his chest until he was sure it was going to burst with its next beat.
Dance on the Wind Page 26