“I don’t think the enemy shot him at your camp,” the Crow observed. “With an arrow so deep in him, the dog could not live to make that long a journey.”
For a moment Titus gazed up at Strikes-in-Camp, his eyes imploring, begging the unknown. Then Bass looked down at the dog again and said, “They shot Zeke here. Today. Not long ago. They found him following them. See the tracks? One of them turned around and returned here to kill him.”
Then the trapper gazed down at the animal, finding that Zeke’s eyes were glazed no more—but had somehow become clear and bright. Bass happily rubbed the dog’s muzzle, believing the worst was over when Zeke licked his roughened hand, lovingly. But an instant later the eyes glazed over once more and the tongue stopped licking. Then Zeke went limp in his lap. For a moment Scratch watched the eyes, waiting with a hand on the dog’s chest—hoping that the heart would resume beating.
Finally, Titus admitted, “He’s gone.”
The warrior tugged on the white man’s shoulder, saying, “We must go.”
Bass pulled his knees from under the dog and stood. “Not yet. Zeke must be treated right.”
Without saying a word, Strikes-in-Camp stepped back as the white man brushed by him.
Some ten yards away among the twisted, wind-stunted cedar, a shelf of gray granite emerged from the slope. Trudging across the loose talus, Bass reached the shelf where he began to lay one layer of the shale after another until he had raised a low altar. The boy was starting to fuss again by the time he turned from the shelf and started back toward the snowy trail.
“We must go now, before it grows late,” the Crow reminded.
“Not till I’ve seen to the dog.”
“You do for the dog what you would do for a man?”
He knelt, hoisting Zeke into his arms. Then stood to stop before the warrior. “I’d do the same for any friend. Just like I put the whitehead your people sent me to kill in a tree scaffold. He was an old friend—”
“But there are no trees tall enough here.”
“That’s why those rocks will have to do,” Titus grumbled, that cold hole growing inside him, pushing past the Indian to trudge up the slope with the dog’s body across his arms.
He stretched Zeke across the top of that wide bed of loose shale, then gently laid a hand over the dog’s eyes. “We come some ways together,” he whispered in English as the wind grew stronger on that bare, exposed slope. “Maybeso you was getting old anyways—your time’d come. But no man had him the right to kill a dog like he kill’t you, Zeke. I want you to know I’ll rub out ever’ last one of the bastards—”
But he couldn’t get any more words out. Angrily, he turned away from the stone cairn and clattered down the slope. After scooping some snow into his bare hand, he let the cradled boy lick at it, swiping at his own runny nose with the back of the other mitten.
Titus bent and kissed the boy on the cheek, then stuffed a foot into the stirrup.
He rose to the saddle, saying, “Let’s go get your mother back.”
The reddish glow from the two fires below them reminded Scratch of the color of polished Mexican gold. A pair of them, their flames wavering in the distance down among the first line of trees the war party would have reached as they’d descended from timberline at dusk. But seen from above, the flickering light illuminated no more than indistinct shadows.
As they lay watching the fires, Bass and Strikes-in-Camp brooded on how to make their attack.
They couldn’t slip much closer without the clattering, sliding shale alerting the Blackfoot in the timber below. Either they would have to leave the animals there and cross the next mile or so on foot in the dark, or they would have to circle wide to west or east to make their approach on horseback.
“Better to take the horses with us. Get close as we can,” the Indian said. “We may need them if they see us and ride off again.”
Gripping the Crow’s forearm, Titus suddenly needed to know, “Why are you willing to risk your life against these great odds to take back your sister … when you would not allow her to come into your camp?”
“I am sick now,” he confessed. “It does not matter that you are sick or she is sick. I am sick now.”
“At your village, before—you were afraid of dying from the sickness.”
“No more am I afraid. The enemy who brought this to our country should die. I will kill as many as I can before I breathe my last.”
Wagging his head, Bass said, “I don’t understand your thinking: how you close your heart off to your sister when she brought you no harm. But now you are ready to die to save her and our daughter.”
Strikes stared into the white man’s eyes in the starlit cold. “It gives me pain to realize I have been a coward. I want to help free my sister while I still have strength. My skin is beginning to grow hot. Hotter all day.”
Pulling off a mitten, Bass reached out, fingertips touching the warrior’s face, finding the skin was feverish. “You must last until morning. We’ll attack them as soon as it is light enough to see. You must hold on to your strength until then.”
The warrior nodded. “I will be strong till then.”
“And when it comes time for you to die,” Titus vowed, “I will stay with you.”
“Stay with me?”
“To your last breath,” Bass declared. “Then I will tie your body in a robe, take you back to your people—”
“They must not become sick,” Strikes protested.
“But you will not give them the sickness after you have died … and your people must know of your courage in the face of the death that you know is sure to overcome you.”
“Come, then,” Strikes declared as he stood. “We will lead our horses down to the timber along that ridge to the east. We can reach their camp in time to kill them all before sunrise.”
Bass followed him back to their animals, where they took up the lead ropes and started down the slope, angling off to the right, walking among the tangle of boulders that stood out in bold relief against the pale, icy-blue snow. By the time they reached the timber and had circled on back to the west, Scratch realized several hours had elapsed. Throughout that long night the stars had slowly rotated in a slow crawl across the heavens.
Stopping to listen again, with their noses in the air, the two of them could hear the snuffling of the Blackfoot ponies, an occasional voice carried on a gust of wind, the same wind that brought them the smell of wood smoke.
Strikes leaned close and whispered, “Leave the horses here. Boy too.”
It suddenly struck him: what to do with Flea? How could he think of carrying the child with him—taking the chance of the infant’s cry alerting the enemy? But to leave the boy alone with the animals …
There was little other choice.
What if the Blackfoot killed the child’s mother at the moment of attack? What if they ended up killing the father during the fight? Then it was all the better that the enemy discover the child with the pony and the mule. Flea could grow up among the Blackfoot, marry and have children of his own—
If he did not die of the pox first.
There really was no other choice. Scratch knew he would leave the child suspended from his saddle. And should the boy awaken, perhaps the pony’s occasional movement would provide enough gentle motion to lull Flea back to sleep.
Moving slowly, Bass took the loops off the pommel, clutching the blanket-wrapped bundle against him for a long moment. When the child stirred, Titus reached into his pouch and pulled out a small strip of dried meat. He stuffed it into the side of the blanket where the child could find it. Then he held the boy in front of him, kissed Flea on the cheek, and hung the crude buffalo-robe cradle from his saddle once more.
“I am ready.”
“I pray morning comes before my strength is gone,” the Indian said as they started away from the animals, their arms loaded with weapons.
Instantly Bass held a rifle barrel out in front of the warrior, stopping Strikes in his track
s. “You realize what we are about to do. Remember when you said that you wanted to come as far as you could, and when you could no longer sit in the saddle, you wanted me to go on alone?”
“Yes.”
“I am not alone. And neither are you. We will kill them all before the sun rises for the day. Their scalps will be on our belts before another day begins.”
Strikes said, “It is good that a man is not alone when he embarks on his last battle.”
“I will always remember that you chose to be here to die, rather than to die in your blankets.” Then Bass started across the snow for the timber.
They didn’t stop until they spotted the glow of the two fires against the treetops. Without a word between them, both men stacked their weapons against a small boulder. Bass tapped the Crow on the breast, then pointed off to the left. Tapping his own breast, the trapper pointed off to the right. Strikes nodded and turned away.
Bass was the first to return to the boulder. In the deep cold he sat shivering, wondering about Flea back with the animals … worried about the Crow warrior—his ears constantly alert for any sound emanating from the night, when Strikes finally came out of the cloudy gloom.
“Did you find their guard?” Titus asked.
“Yes. One man.”
“I found another on the north side. He walks a little to keep himself warm.”
With a nod Strikes whispered, “Did you get close enough to look at the enemy?”
“No, not that close. You?”
“Close enough to see there are no longer ten warriors,” he explained. “At least, I saw three bodies tied in blankets on the ground. Away from the campfire, where they tied their ponies.”
“A small body?” he asked, his skin cold with apprehension.
This time the Indian shook his head. “No child in the blankets. Three large bodies. Men.”
“Did … did you see your sister at the fire?”
“No.”
“But you did not look at the three bodies—”
“No,” and this time the warrior reached out to grip the white man’s arm. “If the child is alive, then the mother is alive too.”
“Why can you be so sure?”
“A woman can give birth to many Blackfoot warriors.”
He stared down at the Indian’s hand on his forearm, the words sinking in, then gazed back into the Crow’s eyes. “All right. To go through with this, I must believe that she is alive. That Magpie lives too. I will trust you on this—even though I don’t know that I can ever trust you again.”
Strikes-in-Camp was startled. “Why do you distrust me?”
“You are a thief.”
The warrior leaned his face closer, nose inches from the trapper’s. “What did I steal?”
“You and Stiff Arm, with the others who were killed when the Blackfoot attacked, you were going back to your village after you had robbed me of my traps.”
“Your traps?”
“You wanted to drive me away,” Bass argued. “Because it’s not a good thing to kill your sister’s husband.”
Shaking his head, the Indian said, “I did not steal your traps.”
“The others, they stole them for you.”
“I—did—not—steal—from—you.”
“Not to drive me farther and farther away from your village?”
“You will believe me only if your heart wants to believe me,” the Crow sighed. “No one I know stole your traps. The only men in that country near your camp who would have taken your traps have now taken your wife and your daughter.”
It struck like a slap of cold wind. “The Blackfoot.”
“I am not ashamed to steal a white man’s horses, or his rifle if he is careless,” Strikes boasted, wiping a hand across his feverish face. “But I would never stoop to robbing anything from my sister’s husband.”
He had to admit, it did make a lot of sense. The Blackfoot. Too quick to accuse those he knew had shunned his wife, Titus could now see that the jagged edges of those pieces had only seemed to fit perfectly—until this moment …
“White man,” the warrior said, tightening his grip on the arm, “some time ago you told me you would stay with me when it is my time to die of the sickness.”
“Yes. I will stay by your side.”
“But you said this to me when you believed that I had stolen your beaver traps?”
“You are the brother of my wife. You honored me the day I made the marriage vow to your sister. Why is it so hard for you to believe that I would stay with you until your death, that I would return your body to your wife and children, to your mother?”
“All this time you believed I was a thief?” the warrior asked in a whisper. “How could you believe that I would rob from you—when you had honored me? Before the entire village of my people the day of your wedding—you honored me. How can you ever think I would steal from you?”
“I … I—”
“White man, I would protect you with my life,” he explained, gripping the trapper’s arm. “You must believe that.”
“I want to believe you, Strikes-in-Camp.”
“You must,” he said to Bass, pointing at the sky graying in the east, “because it is time to put your life in my hands.”
27
How small he felt, nothing less than ashamed, as he crept through the darkness, quietly moving through the trees and boulders, inching his way toward the guard who stood watch north of the Blackfoot camp.
Ashamed that he had ever believed Strikes-in-Camp had become a thief to drive him out of Absaroka.
Bass heard the snuffle of a pony. He stopped, scolding himself that he must remember to concentrate, must pay heed to the rise and fall of the breeze. Couldn’t allow the Blackfoot ponies to smell him and raise a warning.
For the two of them to get a jump on the seven, he had to push everything else out of his mind now. Concentrate only on those who had stolen his traps, taken his packs of beaver and his plunder. Robbed him of everything—including his wife and daughter. Mostly his wife and daughter.
Before leaving the boulder, the two of them stripped off their coats and divided the weapons. There were six pistols and four long weapons—two rifles, a smoothbore trade gun and a smoothbore English fusil. Ten balls to account for those seven. Trusting what Strikes had encountered—that three of the Blackfoot were already dead and wrapped in blankets for their final journey home—then the two of them must surely be carrying enough firepower into this fight to tip the odds in their favor.
Titus had Strikes-in-Camp stuff two of the pistols into the sash he knotted around his coat, a smoothbore clutched in each hand. In addition to one pair of pistols Bass carried at the back of his belt, he stuffed his knives and a camp ax. Beneath the front of his belt he jabbed another pair of pistols, then took up the two rifles, nodded farewell to the warrior, and slipped into the darkness.
Slowly letting his breath out now, he felt for the breeze, listening for another sound from the enemy’s horses. After an agonizing wait Titus decided the animals hadn’t winded him. His eyes slowly crawled across the snow to the next tree—measuring the distance, calculating his route. Couldn’t stand to get caught out in the open. He had to bring down the horse guard, maybe even drive the ponies right through the enemy’s camp to cause confusion, give the two of them a little more of an edge … then he knew he couldn’t take the chance of one of those horses trampling right over Magpie in the dark.
She should be sleeping by the fire. And the horses wouldn’t go anywhere near the fire. Magpie and Waits might be all right if they were near the fire—
But if they weren’t, could he chance it? When the ponies came charging through the camp, wouldn’t they know enough not to get anywhere close to the fire?
He heard one of them clear his throat. Low voices drifting over from fireside. A voice calling out to the guard from camp. The guard answered. He could follow the sounds of the one moving out from camp. Perhaps they were rotating their guard—
Then he saw them. They stopped there in the dim light of those broken clouds, nothing more than shadows that moved while the trees and rocks did not. He could drop them both from where he stood, but that would put him too far from camp to make certain none of the Blackfoot killed his wife or daughter at the moment the enemy knew they were under attack. Hard as it was, he swallowed down that instinct to start the killing there and then.
Bass knew he had to reach the edge of the firelight before he opened the ball. He had to see if he could spot which of the shadows around the fire were his loved ones before the terror began. He was trusting in the Crow that he too would do everything in his power to know which of the forms were the warriors before the soft lead balls went smashing into bone and muscle, sinew and blood.
He shivered with the aching cold, staring intently, his breath shallow, afraid of making a sound, of making breathsmoke. Now there was one shadow. It turned and stepped back among the horses where the shadow disappeared.
Scratch was moving at the same moment, hoping that the warrior’s movement across the snow might dull the sound of his own approaching footsteps. Tree to tree he crept, waiting and listening for a moment … then slipping across the snow another few yards, to the next tree or boulder.
Leaving the two rifles propped against some cedar, Bass crept the last few yards, searching for the guard’s shadow among the ponies. The animals parted on the pale ground, exposing the warrior. Scratch started forward with long strides, dragging a heavy butcher knife from the back of his belt.
When he was within two arm-lengths of the warrior, the shadow whirled, a club swinging up at his side, clutched in the man’s hand. Lunging those last two strides, with shoulders hunched as he shot forward, Titus crouched to spring—meeting the Blackfoot with a noisy impact that knocked the wind from them both.
Shoving his empty hand beneath the man’s chin to shut off any call the Blackfoot might make, Scratch drove the knife low into the warrior’s groin and ripped upward with the blade, splattering himself with the warm blood and juices.
The Blackfoot grunted and the club clattered twice against the white man’s back, then fell onto the snow the moment the warrior backstepped, his arms clutching at his sundered belly as he went to his knees. Scratch was behind him in that next heartbeat, clamping his left hand around the warrior’s mouth, dragging the big blade across the crinkling of cartilage in the windpipe with an audible hiss of air—that last breath to escape the enemy’s lungs.
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