“I am Cut Face, yes!” the partisan replied, stepping forward.
In troubled English the chief explained to Sublette, “Three of my warriors and two of our women—out gathering roots on the other side of camp—they are killed by the Blackfeet!”
“I know,” Sublette hurried to say above the crackle of gunfire on the far side of the village. “We are here to help you fight those Blackfeet!”
For a moment the Shoshone leader’s eyes roamed over the crowd. “You say that your warriors can fight, Cut Face? You say that they are great braves?”
“They are brave fighters.”
“Now let me see them fight—so that I may know your words are true.”
Clutching his rifle to his breast with one hand, Sublette swept the other arm in a wide arc to indicate the white trappers. “You shall see them fight, and then you will know that they are all brave men.”
“They are ready to die today?”
Nodding, Sublette answered for them all, “I have no cowards among my men. Yes, we are ready to die for our Snake friends!”
The chief turned briefly as the gunfire seemed to rumble all the closer, accompanied by the yells of men in battle. “Then bring your warriors to join mine.”
Sublette turned from the war chief and shouted above the battle’s din to the trappers, “Now, men—I want every brave man to go and fight these Blackfeet. We must whip them—so the Snakes can see that we can fight. By damn, we’ll do our best in front of the Snakes and the Blackfeet as a warning to all tribes that would cause an American trouble!”
“Let us at ’em!” a voice cried out.
“That’s right!” Sublette replied. “I want no man following me who is not brave. Let the cowards remain in camp!”
“No cowards here!” another shouted.
With a wave of his war club, the Shoshone war chief ordered, “Bring your ponies!”
“Follow me, men!” Sublette echoed as he leaped back onto his horse and reined away after the Shoshone warriors.
At the far edge of the village the trappers suddenly confronted a wide crescent of the Blackfeet pressing against the lodge circle. But there was surprise, even shock, in the eyes of the enemy as they saw the numbers arrayed against them: white men and Shoshone alike, streaming through the lodges like water through a broken beaver dam.
The painted, blood-eyed enemy began to inch back toward the willow and cottonwood. Farther and farther they retreated, foot by foot, yard by yard, darting among the shadows and behind what cover they could use skillfully. After those first few minutes Bass finally saw his first real target—something more than a flitting shadow.
Dropping to his knee, Titus yanked the hammer back, set the trigger, and squeezed off his shot in one fluid motion. He thought he saw the enemy warrior spin about, clutching his side as the gunsmoke billowed up from the muzzle. Then Titus lunged forward, eyes intently watching that spot where he had seen the enemy. There, yes—the warrior was lurching off, hand plastered against his side—joining others in retreat.
Guns roared and men yelled in three tongues. At times the air was filled with arrows hissing past his ear and over his head, fired from the short bows of one side or the other. The work was agonizingly slow and dirty for the first hour until the Blackfeet backed themselves right out of the brushy cover and began a full-scale retreat.
In crazed confusion they led the trappers and Shoshone across more than four miles of rolling countryside at the upper extent of Willow Valley that afternoon. For the most part it was a game of chase, with little shooting … until the enemy reached the shore of a small lake. There beneath the trees and undergrowth at the lakebank they took cover, turned, and prepared for the coming assault.
As the trappers and their allies closed on the lake, it was easy to see the Blackfeet were going to sell their lives as dearly as possible. Behind the scrub brush they hid, down behind the carved, earthen banks they took this final refuge—and from there began to harass their tormentors. The battle heated up like never before.
Squatting behind a small boulder and clump of sage, Bass took a few moments to watch others crawling in on their bellies as the Blackfeet arched arrows into the air, sailing up, then falling down upon their intended targets. All the time the Shoshone cried out their grief at the five scalps taken within sight of their village—and the Blackfeet boasted that there would be more deaths before the sun set on that day.
“There’s no way we can get close!” Daniel Potts shouted his frustration nearby.
Others grumbled, fired at the brushy cover, or just shouted back at the eerie war cries and chants floating up from both sides of the battlefield. For the better part of an hour it went poorly, an individual here or there making his own brave attempt to worm his way toward the brush and the lakeshore bulwarks. All were driven back by the defenders … until the Blackfeet themselves suddenly emerged from their shadowy cover and hurled themselves against a weak place in the trappers’ line.
“Get us some help!” came one man’s frantic wail.
Bass crabbed to his feet, running all bent over toward the sound of the gunfire and loudest shouting. Across the sagebrush dotting the open ground came another ten or a dozen trappers—all hurrying to the cries for help. Some of them stopped for a heartbeat, thrust their rifles against their shoulders, and fired into the wild, screaming, ghoulish charge of the Blackfeet.
Those cries of enemy warriors raised the hair on the back of Scratch’s neck. Something so primitive, primordial, something that reminded him of the Arapaho warrior who, though already dying, had flung his war club at Titus …
Bass dropped to his belly, yanking the buttstock under his arm, into the crook at his shoulder as the handful of warriors came screaming toward three or four trappers—one of them swinging over his head what appeared to be a long-handled war club with sharp iron spikes driven through its round head like an ancient ball of mace.
Pulling the trigger, Bass watched the bullet catch the warrior high in the chest, shoving his upper body back with its velocity as the soft lead flattened out … the Blackfoot’s legs continuing to pump forward nonetheless—until he landed flat on his back, squirmed and kicked convulsively a few moments as Bass brought the muzzle to his mouth and blew.
From the corner of his eye he watched the warrior quit twitching as Bass dropped powder down the barrel and drove a ball home.
“Beckwith!”
Titus turned to find the one called Sublette calling. Off to his left, the mulatto fired a shot from behind some willow, then turned to shout in reply.
“Over here, Billy!”
“I see you,” Sublette shouted, then pointed off toward another of the enemy dead. “See that dead nigger?”
“Yup! I do.”
“What say the two of us go get that red nigger’s scalp afore them friends of his drag him off!”
Beckwith’s coffee-colored face creased with a wide smile, his head bobbing. “Fine notion, Billy! A real fine notion!”
The two laid aside their rifles, then crabbed onto their hands and knees. Crawling from one bit of scrub brush to the next, Sublette and Beckwith took separate paths to reach the last bit of cover closest to the warrior’s body. It was there that Sublette bellied down flat on the ground and began crawling into the open.
“C’mon, Beckwith,” he growled. “I cain’t haul ’im in on my own!”
Plopping to his belly, Beckwith joined Sublette by crawling into view. An arrow flew over the white man’s head just as he reached out for the warrior’s ankle.
“Goddamn, that was close!”
Beckwith seized the other ankle and frantically began dragging the body back some two feet at a time. From the far brush at the lakeshore, the Blackfeet realized what was taking place and set up a horrible roar: howling in dismay as their comrade slowly disappeared toward the brush where the Shoshone and their white allies lay hidden.