Voices grew louder. Someone had heard.
Stuffing the blood-slicked blade back into its leather sheath, Bass shoved a shoulder against a pony to move it aside as he dived through their midst, racing to the tree where he seized the two rifles. After raking back the hammers, he was in motion through the pony herd—stuffing fingers through the trigger guards, setting the back trigger on that most trusted of his weapons.
He heard them coming. Footsteps whined on the frozen snow. Watching the trees and rocks, his breath coming hard and fast as he raced forward, Titus struggled to discern what shadows were—
Hauling the rifle up, he touched the front trigger with his right forefinger, the rifle exploding with a blinding flare. He was almost on the warrior before his eyes adjusted back to the darkness. The one he had blown a hole through was on his knees, shrieking, his voice crackling with pain. Others answered from the camp as Bass approached the wounded man.
The Blackfoot reached out and grabbed Bass’s ankle.
More footsteps coming. A gunshot on the far side of the fires.
Scratch turned about, brought his left leg up and drove it downward with brutal force, smashing the Blackfoot’s jaw as he dropped the empty rifle beside the body. The hands freed his ankle and Bass dived forward, sprinting toward a sudden volley of gunfire and yells of men.
As he burst from the timber into the first dim glow of the fire’s light, he heard the child’s scream, his wife’s garbled shout. A shadow landed before him, its batlike flicker causing Titus to jerk the second rifle up, that left finger twitching before he had the weapon fully to his hip.
Orange flame spewed from the muzzle—the shadow before him collapsing with a shriek of pain, clutching at a knee. Pitching the empty second rifle to his left, Titus reached at the back of his belt, clawing the ax free with his left hand as he dragged the first pistol from the back of his hip with the right. Sweeping the hammer to full cock, he dashed across those last two yards swinging the ax downward, its blade catching the wounded warrior across the temple and top of the ear, embedding itself in the man’s skull with an audible crunch of bone. He yanked with a twist, unable to free the weapon—then heaved the dying warrior aside.
Magpie was screaming as he lunged into the light. She was scrambling after her mother, spilling onto the snow as Waits-by-the-Water was dragged by the hair to the far side of the fire behind one of the warriors.
He locked his elbow, held the muzzle of the pistol on the moving target that clutched a hand in the woman’s hair, a graceful English tomahawk held in the other. The Blackfoot turned to the trapper suddenly in the firelight, his mouth o-ing like a black hole as he shrieked a wild cry.
Eyes darting side to side, Bass could not find Strikes-in-Camp. Nothing but noise, some blur beyond the far edge of the light.
Now Scratch had been spotted by another warrior to his left. The tall enemy whirled, sprinting long-legged toward him with a club in motion over his head. Flung forward, it was already on its way when Bass swept the pistol toward the new target, pulled the trigger. Then rolled to the side as the club tumbled into him, the rawhide-wrapped stone glancing off his hip as he struck the ground, that empty pistol bouncing from his hand.
From the front of his belt he pulled a second pistol as the warrior flew toward him, bare hands extended like claws, grimacing and growling like a wild beast. Titus managed to get the hammer pulled back a frantic breath before the Blackfoot descended on him. Yanking on the trigger, the pistol exploded the moment the muzzle jammed against the enemy’s chest. As the warrior collapsed his full weight on the trapper, the Indian’s back erupted, blood splattering in an orange spray backlit by the leaping flames of their fire.
With his wife’s screams ringing in his ears, Bass shoved the body off him, dropping the pistol and pulling the third from the back of his belt as he scrambled to his knees. The weapon held out at the end of his right arm, he swept the muzzle to the right to find the warrior still struggling with the woman who locked both of her hands around the man’s wrist as he fought to free the arm that held the shiny tomahawk, a weapon he clearly meant to use on her.
Lunging to his feet, Bass darted to his right to circle the fire as one of the Blackfoot emerged from the darkness beyond the flames. He stood for a moment looking over the scene, long enough to find the white man—then vaulted past the warrior holding the woman and started for the trapper. Bass brought the pistol to bear on that blur-But Magpie seized the warrior by the leg, almost tripping him at the moment Scratch fired the pistol. Instead of hitting the man squarely, the ball raked across his shoulder, knocking the warrior backward a step as he cried out in pain. He suddenly rocked forward and seized the child by the hair, dragging Magpie backward until he could loop an arm around her.
“Goddamn you,” Titus growled, low and feral in his throat as he dropped the empty pistol. He watched the warrior proudly brandish the knife he clutched in his hand. It was already slick, shiny with blood. He knew it had to be the Crow’s. Bass was on his own to finish it now.
How many had Strikes-in-Camp killed? Would any more of them leap into the fight?
With the swiftness of river runoff, the little girl whirled on the warrior, sinking her teeth into his wrist. He held her by one hand, and she bit into his other. Screaming, the Blackfoot shook the girl at the end of his arm again and again, as if trying to dislodge a buffalo tick. He began kicking at her with his feet as he stumbled to the side, screaming at her. Suddenly he bent and planted his teeth on her arm. The child yelped in terrible pain, immediately releasing the warrior.
Bass pulled the trigger, aiming at the blur that was the warrior’s back. The man flexed backward, almost as if suspended in midair on one foot, then spun around, dragging the girl down with him as he fell, blood smearing his chest, flecked across Magpie’s face.
She lay whimpering beside the dying man as he gurgled, bright blood oozing from his lips while the light continued to gray in the east.
“Ti-tuzz!”
He wheeled, finding the warrior pitching the woman backward onto the ground. The Blackfoot hauled her up by her hair and flung her backward a second time, a little closer to the fire.
Pitching the empty pistol at his feet, Scratch pulled the last firearm from his belt and started around the body of the dead warrior where Magpie cowered, crying as she watched her mother dragged to the edge of the largest of the fire pits.
With the heel of his left hand Bass snapped the huge flintlock hammer back, then extended his right arm just as the warrior hurled the woman into the flames.
With a terror-filled shriek Waits-by-the-Water clawed to hang on to the warrior the moment he freed her, scrambling to escape the fire, the back of her hair and blanket coat already aflame.
Bass leaped across those last few yards, landing squarely upon his wife’s back, driving her to the ground, the stench of burned hair and flesh stinging his nostrils.
A shadow blotted out the firelight over the two of them as Titus rolled off the woman, the pistol’s muzzle wavering for a moment as the Blackfoot’s arm descended with that shiny English tomahawk a glittering blur. Bass hurled himself to the side as the blade whined past, slashing a loose fold of his shirt, slicing through some fringe on that arm bringing up the pistol.
He pulled the trigger there below the warrior’s arm, the muzzle no more than inches from the Blackfoot’s rib cage. As the bullet smashed through the chest, blood spewed from the man’s mouth the instant he was driven backward, landing in a heap.
Watching the warrior’s legs twitch for a moment, Bass rolled to the side, finding Waits-by-the-Water whimpering, clutching at the back of her head. Her blanket coat still smoldered as he dropped the empty pistol and took her into his arms there on the snowy ground.
Collapsing against him, she began to cry inconsolably as Magpie staggered up to fold herself against them both.
“Take your hands away,” he told his wife as he tried pulling her wrists from her head.
“It hurts
so—”
“I won’t touch,” he reassured her. “Only to look.”
A patch the size of his palm had been burned from her head, the flesh red and oozy. All around it the hair was singed close to the scalp. It would grow back—but he figured that patch would soon turn to scar tissue.
“My hair?”
“It will grow back,” he told her.
Waits gathered Magpie beneath one arm as the child’s whimpers quieted.
“You were not alone,” his wife whispered wearily.
“Your brother,” he told her. “I am afraid—”
Waits-by-the-Water pulled her cheek from his chest, pointed into the darkness. “He was there.”
Magpie sat up, stood, and stared her father in the eye. “Where is my brother?”
Wrapping his arm around the girl, Bass said, “He stayed with our horses. Samantha is taking care of him while he sleeps.”
“I want to see him,” Magpie pleaded.
Scratch said to his wife, “Why did the enemy take the two of you, but they did not steal the boy?”
“He was sleeping when the Blackfoot rushed into our camp. Magpie was sitting near him beneath a small shelter beside the brush when the enemy came toward me—which gave Magpie a moment to cover up the boy and push him into the bushes.”
“You did this, Magpie?” he asked the girl. “You saved your little brother?”
“You found him safe?”
Bass felt the mist at his eyes. “Right where you left him, daughter. Where I could find him. Your father thinks you are such a brave girl, Magpie. When we reached that place, Strikes-in-Camp and…” He had suddenly remembered; “I must see to your brother. Stay here by the fire.”
“I want to see my brother—”
“Stay here with your mother.”
Titus scrambled up and turned away quickly. In a few minutes Bass trudged back into the firelight, struggling under the weight of the large warrior slumped across the white man’s shoulders. Slowly he knelt by the others, allowing Strikes-in-Camp to settle back on a robe near the fire.
“He is shot,” Bass declared as Waits-by-the-Water knelt over her brother.
The man’s eyes half-opened, rolled, then fixed on the woman. “I do not have much time.”
Slipping an arm beneath his head, Waits raised her brother into her lap. “You came to help.”
Bass told her, “He came even though he was already dying of the sickness one of the warriors gave him days ago.”
She turned her head slightly, looking off to the darkness. Scratch realized she was gazing in the direction where the three bodies of the dead Blackfoot lay wrapped in their blankets—felled not in battle, but by a ghastly silent killer.
Strikes gripped his sister’s arm. “This is far better: to die fighting our oldest enemy rather than to die slowly with the fever, my flesh rotting with decay. It is not a good thing for a man to die helpless against that terrible sickness.”
“No,” she sobbed, her tears starting to spill. “I am proud that you will die in battle, an honorable man—protecting our people, protecting your family.”
“Sister, I am sorry I wronged you when you came to visit our mother,” he whispered, his voice weakening. “Forgive me for my fear.”
“This sickness makes everyone afraid of shadows,” Bass declared. “I don’t think we can blame a man who does something out of fear for his family.”
“I w-was wrong,” he gasped.
“I forgive you, brother,” she said, laying her fingertips on his cheek. “You … you are so cold.”
Strikes-in-Camp smiled bravely. “A good thing, now that I am dying.”
“The enemy, they were consumed by such a hot fever before they died,” she explained.
“Better that the cold hand of death take me in battle than the fire in this sickness.”
They watched him close his eyes wearily. For a few minutes his breath came more and more shallow, each gasp a wet rattle as his chest filled with blood. Then Strikes half opened his eyes again, stared up at his sister. “Tell my wife I loved her. Tell my children … say they must remember the touch of their father to the last of their days.”
“I—I will tell them,” Waits promised.
“Sister, I go now,” he whispered, his lips barely moving. Then his eyes rolled slowly to gaze over at the trapper. “Friend Ti-tuzz … I go now to ride the war trail with He-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here.”
Bass bent over, laying his lips beside the warrior’s ear. “Go now, friend. It is time. Soon you will climb into the forests to hunt with your father forever. Very soon you will ride beside him into battle against the enemy. It is time to go, my trusted brother.”
About the time Scratch was returning to the fire with Flea and the two animals early that morning, Stiff Arm came riding in with Pretty On Top and more than thirty Crow warriors. They had spent most of the night high among the stunted cedar and pine on the far side of the pass, waiting until there was enough light to cross over the ridge and continue their pursuit.
With a genuine measure of relief mingled with concern, the white man hurried to prevent the warriors from approaching the infected camp.
“Stay back!” he ordered. “Come no closer—the killing sickness is strong here!”
Stiff Arm and Pretty On Top halted the others, then crossed the last thirty yards on foot to reach Scratch on the far side of the Blackfoot camp.
“How did you make it back to the village, to reach us here so quickly?” Titus asked of the two warriors. “I believed you were going to be at least a full day behind us.”
Pretty On Top answered, “Stiff Arm did not have to return to the village. These men were among hunting parties already out in the hills. Some of us were already following the tracks of the Blackfoot when we heard the gunfire of your fight with the enemy. So Stiff Arm did not have to lose time going all the way back to our camp because we met him on the trail.”
“You must know that my wife’s brother is no longer alive,” Bass explained.
“D-did he die from the sickness the enemy gave him?” Stiff Arm asked.
“No, He-Who-Is-No-Longer-Here died killing the Blackfoot.”
Stiff Arm nodded. “I told the others the story of the Blackfoot ambush, and how your wife’s brother killed two of the enemy who had the sickness from the white man.”
Bass smiled as he looked at the many warriors. “And these men chose to come with you—even though they were following the sickness?”
“Yes,” Stiff Arm answered. “Most decided to come along, to be as brave as your wife’s brother had been. But I really thought you would be in your camp, caring for him. It worried me when the enemy’s trail passed right through your camp and we did not find you there. For a long time it worried me that the two of you would bring your woman and children along to track down the Blackfoot—so we hurried fast and hard behind you, sleeping only when it grew too dark to see your trail.”
Shaking his head, Scratch explained, “We did not bring my family. The Blackfoot captured them in my camp. The enemy took them from me. He-Who-Has-Been-Killed decided to die in battle against the Blackfoot instead of letting the sickness kill him.”
“This camp is not clean?” Pretty On Top observed nervously.
“No,” and Bass shook his head. “You and your warriors must stay over here, upwind of the sickness and the enemies.”
As the warriors dismounted, Stiff Arm and Pretty On Top reminded them that the Blackfoot were infected. There would be no hacking apart the enemy this day. In silence the thirty-two assembled some distance from Waits-by-the-Water while she finished binding Strikes-in-Camp’s body within a blanket and a buffalo robe for the journey back to his village. As Magpie sat talking with Flea, Bass stripped weapons from the Blackfoot, claiming all the firearms, knives, and tomahawks for himself. Bows and quivers he carried over to the war party, dropping the weapons on the crusty snow for the Crow to argue over.
Later, Pretty On Top called the trapper to return to t
he group. “Ti-Tuzz, none of these men want the Blackfoot weapons.”
“They are afraid of the sickness?”
“Yes. Keep them for yourself.”
Shaking his head, Bass replied, “I don’t want the bows. Don’t want nothing else—no clothes, no coats or blankets. I will burn them.”
Stiff Arm asked, “Will the flames kill the sickness on them?”
“I can only pray it will.”
While the restless, frightened warriors huddled upwind of the Blackfoot bodies, Scratch inspected what baggage the enemy war party had along, searching for what had been stolen from him. A half dozen of his Mexican traps and most of his beaver, along with a good supply of tacks, lead and powder, coffee, ribbon and beads. Not everything, but enough discovered among the dead to confirm they had already divided what they had plundered from his camp at the time they kidnapped Waits and Magpie.
While Stiff Arm’s warriors started fires and ate at the edge of the clearing, the white man finished saddling and packing his animals for the return journey across the pass. Over the back of the dead man’s prized war pony Bass tied Strikes’s body. Hoisting Magpie into Pretty On Top’s lap for the first leg of the trip back across the mountain, Scratch took the blanket cocoon from Waits, helped his wife to her feet, then followed her slowly to her pony. There she seized the tall pommel, preparing to climb into the saddle, but instead gasped as if struggling to catch her breath.
“C-carry the child w-with you,” she whispered, her voice low and raspy. “I am v-very … tired.”
He watched her wearily pull herself into the saddle, then her eyes smiled weakly at him. He knew she had to be exhausted from her harrowing ordeal. Bass turned with Flea’s blanket and robe cradle across his arm, starting for his pony when Magpie screamed in fear and the warriors cried out in warning.
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