With that same awkwardness, Yellow Paint Elkskin wheeled his pony above his dying companion, then faced the oncoming enemy. The warrior slowly dismounted to kneel over Red Coat. As Bass thundered down on him the Blackfoot struggled with something at the front of Red Coat’s blood-soaked sash. Yellow Paint Elkskin’s arm became a blur as it shot up in an arc, a long yellow tongue of flame spewing from the weapon in the Indian’s bare brown hand.
Bass sensed it slam into his chest, but not in a painful, gut-numbing way. Instead, as if the warrior had swung a long, stout limb of hickory at Titus as the white man rode past. Connecting with his breastbone so unmistakably solidly that its impact immediately made him weak to the soles of his moccasins. With a jerk he clamped down on the pistols with both cold hands, gritted his teeth around that braided rein, and did his best to lock his legs around the girth of his pony’s rib cage. But instead it was as if some unseen hand reached out and had him by the nape of the neck, yanking him loose and flinging him off the back of the horse.
The air exploded from his lungs in an audible gush as he hit the hard, frozen snow and slid more than five feet, ultimately stopping against a clump of eight-foot-high willow growing at the edge of the frozen beaver pond. Frantically sucking in a breath, he blinked that one eye clear and tried to look down at his chest. It was hard to breathe. Pulling apart the folds of his blanket coat and the buffalo-hide vest, he saw it … and it took his breath away. A small black hole was seeping a little red. But not near enough, he cheered himself—
Then heard the warrior’s shrill cry.
Rolling onto his left elbow, he flexed the fingers of both hands, found he had the pair of pistols still locked in them despite his fall from the pony … but discovered he had little strength to drag his legs under him. They were sluggish, almost like something once rigid or stiff now gone soggy and limp. They moved for him a little, and far too slowly as he attempted to rise. That war cry growing louder.
Bass managed to get turned slightly, recognizing the hard breathiness of the Blackfoot as the warrior bore down on him, a short war club held high overhead. Two blades, big ones, steel daggers, one protruding from each side of the club’s head, swung high in the air, where they sliced their way through the swirling dance of the wind-driven snowflakes. All of a sudden his stomach wanted to lurch with the sour, thick taste of blood gumming up the back of his throat.
He knew he’d been shot in the lights. The way a man would bring down his family’s supper. About the only way a man dropped as big a beast as a buffalo. Here he was … the old bull, he brooded. The old bull brought down by a shot to the lights.
But Titus forced back down what little contents his stomach held and squeezed his eyes shut an instant. Gasping for a breath as some blood and a little stomach bile gushed from his nostrils, the old mountain man pitched forward on hands and knees, coughing up red and yellow phlegm, managing to pivot onto one knee as the warrior loomed right in front of him.
His left hand bucked with the heavy powder charge in the pistol. On instinct he brought up the right hand at the target too, then caught himself for a heartbeat. Yellow Paint Elkskin was so close Bass could see his face, realize how young he was, less than half his own age … that smooth, flawless, un-lined flesh suddenly turning gray as his moccasins slipped out from under him and he pitched backward with the force of the lead ball at such close range. Bass was showered with icy snow the man’s spinning feet kicked up right in front of the trapper as the warrior crumpled backward with a grunt, hit the ground, then slowly kicked himself backward on the snow, using both of his legs in an ever-slowing cadence.
Turning at the sound of the hoofbeats, Scratch quickly reloaded the pistol with powder and ball as he prepared himself to find Slays in the Night, ready to tell his old friend that, sure, even though he’d been shot in the chest, it wasn’t all that bad. He’d make it through to night … if Slays and the others could only get a fire going to warm him. Titus was just beginning to sense the deepening cold growing there in the very core of him—
But it was Green-Stripe Blanket bounding out of the timber, cutting to his right around the edge of the pond and the tall reeds, then suddenly reining up in a spray of icy snow and pond water. Bass blinked, spotting the smear of blood soaking the warrior’s upper arm, as the Blackfoot wheeled his pony, called back up the hill.
Slowly, his head as unresponsive as a hundredweight pack of beaver hides, Scratch turned slightly … and found Painted Robe walking out of the scrub timber where Slays in the Night had followed the two. At the end of his left hand unmistakably hung the old Shoshone’s full scalp, the long black-and-gray hair dragging the new crust of snow.
He was alone. Except for Pretty On Top and the others. But the sounds of their fighting came from so, so far away. He was alone, with this pistol, and his two knives, and the short-handled tomahawk that rubbed against the base of his spine. Alone with these last two Blackfoot. Yet both of them did not matter. Only one now. Painted Robe. Because that warrior carried an old friend’s scalp.
The Blackfoot talked to one another. Not as if Bass could understand the two warriors, even really hear what they had to say in the shockingly cold air that seemed to cocoon around him all the more tightly, air so cold it was hard for him to catch his breath, nothing more than little gasps now. But—he watched their mouths moving as Green-Stripe Blanket urged his pony ahead a few more yards, then stopped halfway between the white man and the body of Yellow Paint Elkskin. As Titus’s head began to weave and he felt the immense cold seeping down from his chest and into his belly, Green-Stripe Blanket nudged his horse into motion again, angling up the side of the hill slightly, moving out of Bass’s vision now—gone to that left side where there was no seeing unless he managed to turn his head … that refused to budge.
Then he heard Painted Robe’s moccasins crunch on the crusty snow and willed himself to look at that enemy. The warrior was yelling something to the unseen horseman. Then the Blackfoot started walking again, coming boldly around the upper end of the beaver meadow, where some of the stunted trees had been felled by the industrious flat-tails. One of them was still behind him, he remembered. And turned with a jerk that made his head swim.
But he found Green-Stripe Blanket had remained motionless, his pony standing uneasily over the bloodied body of Buffalo Horn Headdress. He yelled something at Painted Robe, then pointed off to the body of Red Coat.
Painted Robe cried angrily, shaking the Shoshone’s scalp.
But Scratch’s eye was drawn back to Green-Stripe Blanket as the warrior dropped to the ground. He tugged on the knot in that bright red sash that held the blanket around his waist and pulled a pistol from the sash as he freed the rein from his other mitten. That enemy was closer, Titus decided, and started to twist his upper body around so he could aim his last pistol at the nearer of his two enemies.
Yet while Green-Stripe Blanket stood only a matter of yards away, the warrior did not raise his pistol to fire. Instead he merely stared, his eyes glowing like coals there inside the hood made from the hide of a gray prairie wolf. Studying the white man.
I’m being given this chance, Scratch thought. This one last chance before he shoots—
The pistol bucked in his hand, and Green-Stripe Blanket visibly flinched as the ball passed harmlessly over his shoulder.
Damn, he thought as the realization that he had missed slapped him. Scratch crumpled forward onto his hands in the snow as he started to heave, his stomach spewing what little it held, blood and bile dripping from his lips and out of his nostrils too, steamy and warm on the frozen snow between his knees. He coughed, gagging some more—then recognized the sound of footsteps.
Turning his heavy head in that direction, he expected to find Green-Stripe Blanket come to finish him off with his pistol, but instead it was Painted Robe, carrying that long, black-and-gray scalp in one hand and a small-headed tomahawk in his right—the blade and some of the haft glistening with frozen blood. Fixing his gaze on that limp, blood
y scalp, Titus wrenched himself backward, unsteadily rocking onto his knees until he managed to hold himself steady and reached around to the small of his back with his left hand, feeling for his own tomahawk. He needed it now that he held his last loaded firearm. With the heel of that hand clutching the tomahawk, Scratch shoved back the hammer to full cock and brought his wobbly arm up, the muzzle of the weapon weaving side to side across its target.
He’d already killed the bastard who killed his woman. And before he died he’d finish off the one who had scalped Slays in the Night. That done, it didn’t matter what Green-Stripe Blanket did behind him. Hell, his mind rumbled with the thought, he was halfway to dead already. More’n that now … ’cause he was already halfway to dead when he put the Crow camp behind him and rode after these raiders, knowing in his marrow this was the last time he would ride away from his wife’s people.
Real Bird had forewarned him, told the white man of that awful dream. But across the last three days there wasn’t a one of the Crow warriors who remembered the old prophet’s vision of doom for Titus Bass. There was simply too much misery and loss, too much blood someone must atone for, that any man who had long ago heard of Real Bird’s vision would think to warn the old trapper that he best stay in the village with his children and protect the camp. But here the old rattle-shaker’s dream was, come to pass—
He wearily pulled back on the trigger, heard the klattttch of the hammer as it fell against the frizzen. But the pistol didn’t fire. Nothing more than a muffled phfffft of what little powder lay in the pan. For an instant he stared down at it, finding the black grains mixed with icy flecks of snow, realizing everything had been ruined when he tumbled off his horse into the trampled snow beside the frozen beaver pond—
The warrior’s cry caused him to jerk up, but not in complete surprise. He had expected this.
Already Painted Robe was lunging his way … then suddenly stopped no more than five feet away and, for some crazed reason, stood staring down at the white man. His eyes wild, he yelled something to Green-Stripe Blanket, but Bass did not care enough to worry about the one still behind him. He heard that wounded warrior trudging on the crusty snow, heard his steps as that unseen one, who wore the skullcap of a wolf tied around his head, circled to his left until he stood far back of Painted Robe’s shoulder. That’s when Painted Robe raised the scalp up at the end of his arm, held it straight out from his shoulder, shook it, and cursed. Finally he spit on the hair, a second time, then flung it aside into the beaver pond.
With his one good eye, Bass watched the scalplock sail through the snowy air, land among those stalks of dried, frozen rushes, tangled among them and suspended for a moment before it fell to the thin layer of dirty ice.
“You stupid, ignernt idjit,” Titus growled, finding himself renewed as he spoke for the first time to these enemies. “You figger that’s a Crow scalp, don’cha?”
Painted Robe’s eyes narrowed as he shifted the tomahawk in his right hand.
With a snort of wild, unrestrained laughter, Titus pulled free the tomahawk from the back of his belt and roared, “Joke’s on you, nigger! Joke’s on you!”
As he was attempting to raise his tomahawk and heave himself onto one foot, Painted Robe snarled and lunged forward, the warrior’s tomahawk cocking back in an arc as the Indian loomed over him. The handles of their weapons clattered together an instant before the two men collided. Bass spilled backward, Painted Robe atop him, the Blackfoot doing his best to swing the tomahawk at the end of his wrist. Suddenly Bass flung his head forward, slamming his forehead against the side of the warrior’s jaw. Painted Robe hesitated.
And Scratch swung with his tomahawk, connecting with the back of the Indian’s head, but only a glancing blow with the side of the blade, stunning the warrior.
With a pained grunt, the Blackfoot roped his left arm around the back of the white man’s neck and yanked Bass’s head off the ground as he raised the tomahawk in his right hand, preparing to slam it down into the trapper’s face. But Titus shoved his open mouth right against the warrior’s chin, clamping down with all he was worth, feeling his teeth grinding through the thin layer of flesh and muscle, tightening on bone.
He heard the man crying out, felt the Indian’s hot breath there on his forehead as he chewed and clamped harder still, trying all the while to swing his own tomahawk with what strength he had left as the Blackfoot struggled, wriggled, thrashed—
Then Scratch felt it tear him in half.
As the white man released his grip on the Indian’s chin, he cried out in shock. The lower half of his face smeared with blood, the warrior pulled back slightly. Like the bullet wound, Bass did not want to look. He knew already. Even though he had yet to feel the pain of it, he realized he had been dealt a second mortal wound. The terrible cold seemed to envelop his whole belly as he willed his left arm to squirm free from where it was imprisoned between their two bodies, so it could rise into the air clutching his tomahawk.
One of their voices screamed as he brought down the weapon in the last, desperate act of a doomed man, driving the bottom point of the blade into the crown at the back of the Blackfoot’s head. Perhaps it was Green-Stripe Blanket who had cried out a warning to his friend. Bass wasn’t for sure. He couldn’t see the other warrior.
Or, it might have been Painted Robe himself who screamed as he saw the tomahawk on its way and could not get his head out of its path. Or, perhaps he yelled in surprise and pain the instant the sharp blade was being driven through his skull and into his brain. Bass felt the hot splatter of blood and brain. …
But none of that mattered now as Painted Robe collapsed backward, his legs tangled with the white man’s as all strength drained out of the trapper. The Blackfoot spilled one way, Titus slowly sank onto his elbow, rolled onto his back away from the warrior, and let out a long raspy sigh.
Hard to breathe, growing harder still. His chest filling up with blood. Shot in the lights.
Gradually the fingers of his right hand crawled to his belly, feeling the amazing warmth, the gushing wetness, the bubbles of gut spewing from the deep, long, ghastly wound that had opened him up from side to side. Scratch closed his eyes, wishing he could have held Waits one more time. Wishing he could have spent just one more night lying against her before this last day had been given them both. Just one more night with her—
Sensing a presence, Scratch slowly opened his eyes, blinking his one good one until it focused on the hazy form that moved over him, then stopped. Green-Stripe Blanket stood frozen over the old man for a long, long time. Staring down at the white man. Then the Blackfoot’s hand started down for the trapper’s throat.
In a futile move, Bass seized the Indian’s wrist, held it as tightly as he could while the Blackfoot used his other hand to pull himself free of the trapper’s grip. It wasn’t hard; almost all Scratch’s strength was gone. His head flopped back into the bloody, trampled snow. Titus knew he was too weak to delay, much less stop, what was to come. But a strange calmness seeped through him as he realized death was now. Assured of it all the more when Green-Stripe Blanket reached around the back of the white man’s head and seized hold of the collar of Bass’s greasy warshirt.
Ain’t you got a surprise comin’? Scratch thought as he was rolled onto his side. Figger to tear off my hat to scalp me now … an’you’re gonna find I awready been scalped!
He felt his fur hat get torn off, then started to snort with this one last joke on his murderers when the Indian suddenly dropped to a knee so he could stare intently into Bass’s face. The young warrior reached out tentatively, as if unsure of what he was about to do, then gently tugged the faded black silk bandanna off the old trapper’s head. The Blackfoot’s eyes widened … but not in fear or surprise. Instead, in something like … like recognition.
For a moment the Blackfoot’s eyes grew big with wonder, even awe, as he looked this way, then that—as if afraid the Crow war party would come racing over the brow of the nearby hills and discover him …
but eventually his dark eyes came back to rest on the white man’s face once more. Not near as wide now, no longer filled with amazement. Strangely, they had grown soft.
Titus gagged, felt his riven stomach lurch as he did his best to turn his head aside, puking up a great glob of blood onto the Blackfoot’s arm, the one that still gripped him by the back of his collar. Sensing how weak he was becoming, how much the temperature had fallen since he had ridden down on these five raiders, Scratch watched with dulled senses as the Indian scrambled onto his feet, turned, and with that hand still gripping the back of Bass’s collar … started to drag the white man across the crusty snow.
Slowly, yard by yard, lunge by lunge, the young man got the old trapper turned. As the Blackfoot started up the long, shallow slope toward the stand of some saplings and taller timber, away from the rushes and willow, escaping the dirty ice of that frozen beaver pond, one of the white man’s useless legs at a time slowly straightened out and trailed along behind him. He was helpless now. No matter what the Blackfoot decided to do with his body, it could not matter. He was good as dead already.
That dirty trench of new snow he was leaving behind told the story, smeared with gobs of his blood. How he struggled to maintain enough strength to hold in the long, warm, greasy coils of his own sundered gut, warm, steaming intestine that squirted out between his hands, escaping the pressure of his arms, spilling to his left side where Painted Robe had opened him like one of his grandpap’s Christmas hogs … trailing beside him in the snow. Oh—how he didn’t want his guts to be dragged through the bloody trench up this long, sagebrush-covered slope as the fat, frozen, fluffy flakes of snow collected on his coupled arms, steaming on the purplish coil of his warm gut that he could no longer contain.
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