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 mouth 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.