“What other choice you got?” he asked himself in a whisper.
Little matter that none of them would likely see the sun go down on this day.
In all those years spent working and gambling beside the Ohio River, across all those seasons of drinking and whoring and playing the pasteboards in St. Louis—it had always been his way to stay in the game until the last raise of the night had been plopped down onto the table, until the last call had been made. And he’d just have to see this through to the end too.
The sun had climbed halfway to midsky with the trappers fighting off the Blackfeet that way—one or two at a time … here or there. Then things fell quiet. The forest became eerily silent.
Not that they couldn’t hear the snort and movement of ponies yonder in the timbered shadows. But for the longest time, no warriors raced from the trees to assault the rocks.
“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.