Behind the women the soldiers themselves screamed in terror of being overrun and immediately turned on their heels, abandoning the women just behind that last stand being formed by those nine Americans.
Scratch quickly searched for Rowland on either side of him as the horsemen urged more speed from their ponies, coming all the faster across that trampled ground. There, off to the side, he finally saw him—where Johnny was as good as dead, collapsed over the body of his dead wife.
“Stand steady and look ’em in the eye!” Hatcher bellowed.
“Take one of ’em with you when you go down, boys!” Isaac Simms shouted, that tobacco-stained, whitish beard of his quivering with rage.
Bass barely had time to take another breath before the horsemen crashed into them with a deafening tangle of shouts and cries, screams and groans. In that clamor the trappers ducked and dived out of the way, some spinning about to reach up, immediately yanking horsemen down from their ponies as the warriors twisted to this side, then that, on the backs of their horses, attempting to slash at the whites with tomahawks, jabbing with knives of Mexican steel, and swinging stone-crowned clubs or stout bows at their enemies.
Only five of the twelve made it past the desperate trappers; no more than a handful reached that undefended patch of snowy ground where the three terrified women suddenly whirled and sprinted off, with the horsemen right on their heels, scampering like rabbits surprised far from their burrow. Hatcher pulled out his huge knife and in one motion brought it back, then flung it forward with such force that its impact knocked a warrior off his pony.
As if a keg of powder exploded beneath them, the nine Americans sprinted after the Comanche, screeching like demons with the coming of that crimson dawning of the day.
A black-haired horseman reined up beside one of the fleeing women, slamming his horse into her, knocking the shrieking woman off balance. As she staggered to her feet, he leaned from his horse, reached over, and looped a dark arm around her naked body, wrenching the woman against the side of the pony.
She kicked and thrashed her bare brown feet as they left the ground, struggling with what strength she had left in her, pummeling the man with her fists as he yanked the horse around, intending to escape with his prize still dangling off the side of his pony.
As the other trappers swarmed toward the rest of the enemy, Bass shot away at an angle. Dropping his rifle behind him in that headlong dash, he pulled out his knife a breath before he leaped against the warrior, wrapping an arm around the Comanche’s dark neck.
With the woman struggling on one side, and the trapper yanking him down on the other, the horseman freed his prisoner and smashed his open right hand into the white man’s face—his fingers clawing and tearing, searching for the eye sockets. The Comanche swiftly found Scratch’s left eye with a thumb he jabbed savagely into the soft tissue.
At the same moment one of the grimy, char-smudged fingers found the corner of Bass’s mouth, where it began ripping at softer flesh.
Jerking his head to the side, Scratch almost pulled that finger free. Grunting in exertion, the warrior clawed his enemy’s face with renewed strength as Bass filled his hands with coarse black hair. Bass knotted the hair around his fingers, pulling that face closer, closer to his while he worked to free his right hand and the knife it held.
With a roar the Comanche smashed his head against the white man’s temple, stunning Titus. He began to blink his eyes clear as the warrior snapped his head forward again. But this time Bass was ready. Opening wide, he clenched his teeth around the bony, grease-painted nose like the jaws of a trap.
Screaming in pain, the Comanche rammed his thumb all the farther into the white man’s eye.
Now the agony in that one eye became so great, Scratch could no longer keep the other open. He squeezed them shut.
With his teeth locked around that big nose, Bass flung his weight this way and that, blindly yanking and tugging, trying to unhorse his enemy. Grinding his teeth ever tighter as he twisted about, he felt the grimy, war-painted skin tear loose across hard cartilage, tasted the sticky blood as it oozed from the torn flesh, warm and thick on his tongue as the hard tissue continued to crackle beneath Bass’s powerful jaws.
Twisting, jerking, yanking backward, Titus finally felt his top teeth grind down onto his bottom teeth—and snapped backward from the enemy’s face. With the warrior’s shrill scream, the smelly claw flew back from Scratch’s face: no more did those fingers spear his eye, no more did they rip at the side of his mouth.
With blood gushing from the middle of his face, the Comanche screamed in even greater pain.
With the severed nose still in his mouth, Scratch gave one final heave, leaping again as he yanked savagely on the warrior’s hair. Dragging the man’s head to the side with an audible snap, Bass felt the warrior’s muscles relax, freeing the woman and the pony at the same time.
Spilling backward, Bass fell to the ground, his fingers still tangled in the warrior’s long hair as the Comanche lumbered to his knees, grunting and huffing from that sudden hole in his face where blood streamed and air bubbled. With one hand he touched the terrible wound, looked at his fingers, then reached for his own knife.
Lunging out, Scratch slashed his-blade across the warrior’s blood-splattered buckskin shirt, bright crimson spurting from the wound opened beneath the garment. He raked the knife back again, higher still across the chest, as the warrior clumsily brought his knife out.
Then a third time, now across the side of the Comanche’s neck, severing the thick vein and artery in a brilliant spray of blood. The warrior gasped as he fell forward in the throes of a last convulsion, the knife still clutched in that hand held out before him.
As the Comanche plunged toward him, attempting to kill his killer, Scratch twisted aside. The warrior’s knife pierced the flap of Bass’s blanket coat before it plunged on into the icy ground, buried up to the guard. His eyes already dead, the Indian brushed past Titus, collapsing upon the handle of his own knife, those last terrible spurts of blood splattering across the long tail of Scratch’s coat as the body collapsed against his legs.
Shocked to find himself slammed into the snow, Bass tried to roll away, discovering that his legs and one arm were pinned beneath the dead man. He twisted and yanked desperately, trying to free himself … when a shadow flitted over him.
From the corner of his eye Bass watched arms drag the body back so he could roll away. He rose onto his hip and elbow, turning back, prepared to thank one of his friends—but his mouth froze open in surprise. Scratch found his rescuer a woman in her midforties, naked and blue-lipped, her arms, back, and face bloodied and tracked with swollen welts.
Embarrassed for her, Scratch was on his feet and yanking at the buckle to his belt before he was conscious of dropping the wide leather belt and its knife scabbard on the ground. Quickly he tugged the blanket coat from his shoulders and swept it behind the naked woman. After stuffing her arms down the sleeves, she wrapped it securely around her and looked up at him, muttering something in Spanish as her red, puffy eyes began to seep again.
It took only a moment before her voice faded to a shrill, tiny squeak of unutterable pain and the woman collapsed to her knees, pitching slowly forward until her brow pressed against the ground as she wailed inconsolably.
Not until that moment when the woman began to wail did he become conscious of the sudden quiet in the narrow depression where Hatcher’s men had sprung their trap. Nothing more on the cold wind but the soft noise of horses snuffling, the whimpers of the wounded, the soft crunch of footsteps across the icy ground.