When the bullet struck the horseman in the upper arm, the ax spun loose from his grip. Already on its way, the heavy, bladed weapon began to tumble, careening crazily toward the trapper. Too close and no time to duck now.
The handle slapped him on the front of his right shoulder as he started to twist aside, knocking Bass off balance, spinning him violently, pitching him on around to the side like one of his sister’s stocking dolls no more than a breath before the warrior leaned completely off the side of the horse, arms outstretched, his legs releasing their grip on the pony as he collided into the white man.
With his weight the Indian speared Bass into the ground, driving the air from Scratch’s chest in a great explosion. The man immediately jerked back, sweeping a leg over him to straddle the trapper as Titus fought for breath, blinking to clear the star shower from his eyes … realizing the warrior had a knife in his hand and was starting his lunge forward with a cry of blood lust.
Seizing that thick brown forearm slashing the huge knife downward, Titus braced himself, trying to squirm free beneath the warrior’s weight and those muscular legs pinning him to the slick grass. As he twisted this way and that, Bass suddenly felt the fingers seize his throat like a claw closing down his air supply.
Remembering how death had loomed at the hands of the Mexican soldier.
A hot pain spread down across his chest where the Indian squeezed with his knees, where Scratch realized he wasn’t able to draw in another breath—no chance of air getting past the searing agony of that claw shutting down his throat.
Drops of the Arapaho’s sweat mixed with greasy earth paint plopped onto Scratch’s face as he flung his head back and forth, trying desperately to free himself from the warrior’s grip on his neck right below the jaw. As he arched his back violently, one leg suddenly broke free and he flung himself up against the warrior. Scratch drove the knee into his enemy, then a second, and a third time, feeling the warrior’s grip on his throat weaken with each blow.
At the same moment he drove his knee up, Bass relaxed his own grip on that brown wrist … fooling the warrior.
Reacting immediately, the Indian yanked back the arm clutching the knife. Already Scratch was driving the arm back with his own weight and with the might in his two arms, hurling the top of the handle right into the Arapaho’s temple with a resounding thunk. The large round base of the elk antler used for the handle split the flesh, instantly spraying blood over the trapper. When the warrior jerked in surprise and pain, Titus yanked the brown arm forward, then hurtled it backward again, this time into the corner of the eye socket.
At that moment the strong legs began to loosen from their spider-lock around his middle. He savagely drove the knife handle into the bloody face a third time—smashing the forehead just above the eye. The skin opened up, oozing at first; then blood gushed from the ragged wound.
Weaving a moment, the Indian gurgled something as his head bobbed back loosely as if it hung by disconnected wires. Scratch twisted to the side, tearing himself free of the claw at his throat, spinning himself loose, releasing the knife arm before he rolled away across the grass.
Tumbling onto his knees, he vaulted forward, leaping onto the warrior’s back just as the bloody face spun around. Bass seized the wrist of that hand holding the knife, squeezing, struggling from behind the Indian to jab the weapon back into the enemy’s belly, to rake it across his chest, spear it deep between the ribs. With every attempt the Indian fought to control the blade, yanking it upward. His own undoing.
With a sharp blow the knife handle smashed against the warrior’s jaw, and all fight went out of him. Like a wet sack of oats he spilled to the side, his eyes rolling back—out cold.
Rocking to his knees, Bass grabbed a handful of the black hair, jerked the face toward him, and drove his fist into the sharp nose. Again. Then a final blow of fury as he tasted the sting of bile that had been at the back of his throat all along.
Standing at last over his enemy, the trapper kicked the warrior in the ribs, then the gut, and finally drove his moccasin into the man’s jaw. The Indian gurgled on his blood, his jaw moving slightly as if trying to speak.
The breeze murmured through the leaves.
Alarmed, Scratch immediately knelt, prying the knife from the warrior’s hand and whirled in a fighting crouch, expecting the approach of another.
But he found himself alone on the creekbank. Save for the two fallen warriors, Bass was alone. The only sounds around him were the chuffing of the animals, the hammer of his heart against his ribs … and that breeze slipping through the aspen overhead, calling out his name.
Whispering it in celebration.
Carrying his name forth in victory.
* Sign for Southern Arapaho.
* Sign for Northern Arapaho, symbolizing the pockmarks scarring the chest of long-ago chief who had survived a bout of smallpox.
13
Ol’ Make-’Em-Come had done its work slick as scum on blood soup.
That much was plain to see when Bass hurried over to the warrior he had blown off the back of the pony.
Not all that much left of the man’s face, what with the way the soft lead ball had flattened as it smashed right on through the bottom of the jaw. Nearly all of the lower half of the Arapaho’s face was gone in a shredded, bloody pulp. Only a small part of the jawbone and some slivers of flesh still hung from the front of the skull below the hole where most of his nose had been.
Little wonder, Scratch thought. The bastard was sitting no more than five times the length of his fullstock from him when he pulled the trigger.
The wonder of it was slowly beginning to soak in.
His eyes crawled on down the muscular frame of the younger man. Perhaps somewhere in his midtwenties, no older than thirty, for certain. Bits of dried grass and dust furred his dark and sweaty body, fuzzing what bloody smears were left of his war paint. A strong man.
Suddenly Titus thought how outsized he would have been if he had been conscious enough to make a fight of it that day after being wounded and knocked from his horse.
Instead, the warrior had figured him for dead, taken the prized topknot, and left the white man where he lay beside the river.
Funny how things worked out …
Cautiously, Titus looked around him, turning this way … then that, his eyes roaming, carefully scanning the horizon for any movement, any life … any crack in the veil between this world and that.
Maybeso there was some spirit, some power, some being watching over and protecting him back then. Watching over him even now.
He tore his eyes away from the tree line behind him, listening to the hush of the wind creeping through the quakies. And stared back at the Arapaho he had killed. The man who had left him as good as dead.
Something decorated with fringe and beads lay partially hidden by the warrior’s body. Bass planted the toe of his moccasin under a hip and gave a shove. There at the waist hung a long bag looped through the side of the man’s belt—something on the order of eight or so inches wide, it lay there twisted in the fall of the body. Bass knelt, turning it over, feeling the large brass beads and the strands of thick hair as he pulled it free.
Brown hair. Loose, wavy curls. A white man’s. There was no mistaking that.
With the bag draped over one hand, he brought his fingers up and touched the curls hanging at the side of his head. Then rubbed the scalp and his own hair at the same time.