“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 mo
uth 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, shak
ing 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.”
Buffalo Palace Page 59