“You’re gonna live to tell ’em,” Titus growled as he turned back toward the mutilated carcass.
Dropping to one knee near the dead man’s hip, Bass swiftly made two slashing arcs with the skinning blade, freeing both penis and scrotum together in one ragged trophy.
“Here’s all this bastard’s got left for power now,” he said, shaking the warrior’s manhood.
Then he violently stuffed it into what was left of the dead man’s face. He adjusted it there, ceremonially, not having the lower jaw to clamp it in place. Bass stood to admire his handiwork: how he had carefully laid his enemy’s manhood across what was left of the bloody face, how he had gutted the warrior. All of it would speak a powerful message to any man who happened across this scene … that is, before the predators came and finished what he had begun.
After wiping off the knife and stuffing it back into its sheath, Scratch retrieved the buckskin bag from the ground and stuffed it under his own belt. Then he stopped and studied the dead warrior one more time. Those leggings weren’t all that bloodied. And the moccasins might be serviceable.
He knelt and dragged the cut ends of the rawhide belt thong from the knotted loops at the top of the leggings, then scooted himself down to the dead man’s feet, where he grabbed the heel of the moccasins and yanked them off the dirty brown feet. One at a time he urged the soft buckskin sheaths down the legs until they were both free and slung over his shoulder. He got back to his feet, stuffing the decorated moccasins inside his shirt.
“Go. Go on back to your people now.”
Holding his arm out toward the distance, pointing across the creek in the direction the riders had come, Bass sensed the hot fire in his veins beginning to subside. Moving over to stand above the wounded man, he watched those black eyes a moment longer, then looked down at the blood smearing the warrior’s legging where he had crushed the lower leg.
“Gonna have to drag yourself from here on out,” he said quietly, a strange calm come over him now. “G’back and tell your people what happened here. Show ’em that busted leg of your’n. Tell ’em I got the bastard what took my hair. You tell ’em his medicine’s mine now.”
“Damn—but would you look at Scratch!” Elbridge Gray said as he slowly rose from their circle of downed timber where they had spread their sleeping robes.
Titus slowly came into the fire’s light and reined his saddle horse to a halt.
Hatcher scrambled to his feet too, his eyes narrowing in concern. “Ye awright, nigger?”
“He looks hurt, Jack,” Caleb declared, stepping closer. “Lookit the blood all over ’im.”
“Ain’t mine,” Scratch explained. “Ain’t none of it mine.”
Isaac craned his neck to look back at the pack mule. “Hannah ain’t carrying no game. How you come to have so much blood on you?”
“I had me a scrap,” Bass answered as he leaned back and peeled the moist scalp off the saddle horn where he had placed it for his ride back to their camp. Placing his fist inside it, he raised the long, glossy hair into the firelight.
“What the hell is that?” Solomon asked, the farthest away at the other side of the fire.
“Whose the hell is it?” Hatcher corrected.
Kicking his left leg to the right to clear the saddle horn, Bass dropped to the ground. “The bastard what scalped me.”
He watched the sets of eyes flick to the blue bandanna, then come back to rest on his face.
“Ye made some mess of yerself,” Jack advised as he stepped closer, reaching out to brush the hair with his fingers.
Wood was next, moving up just before the rest crowded in. “How you so dad-blamed sure this was the one what got your scalp?”
“Yeah?” Rufus agreed. “That’s coming on two year ago.”
“I know,” Titus reassured them as he pushed through the group and settled onto a downed log at the fire’s edge. “A man just knows.”
“I be damned: Scratch got him back the warrior what got him,” Caleb declared as he came up to sit beside Bass.
“I knowed one day I’d kill the bastard what took my hair.”
“Awright, Scratch,” Hatcher said sympathetically. “We’re yer friends: we’ll believe you when ye say you know it was the one—”
“It was the one,” he snapped. Yanking the leggings from his shoulder, Bass flung them to the ground at his feet. “There, see for your own damn selves.”
Graham asked, “You … you took the red nigger’s leggings?”
“There,” and Titus pointed at the quillwork illuminated by the flickering firelight as the last of twilight seeped to black of night. “That’s just the way I been remembering them colors every night since the son of a bitch cut my hair off my head. Every last blessed night I see that strip of quills in my sleep. See them colors sewed up just like that.”
“Warrior wears his colors,” Hatcher agreed thoughtfully, nodding. “Every red nigger has his own design too.”
Solomon looked askance at the legging. “That really come off the one what took your topknot?”
“Many a time I told you boys since you found me in that buffler valley—I was knocked out to the world, but I come to while the son of a bitch was scraping off my scalp. I saw with my own damned eyes the colors on them leggings. He was hunkered right by my head.” Titus reached inside his shirt, tore out the moccasins, and hurled them onto the leggings by his feet. “I saw the nigger’s mockersons too!”
“I ’member ye telling us,” Hatcher assented.
“Every damn night since … I seen that nigger’s leggings, seen his mockersons in my head, and nary of it would go away and leave me be.”
“Now we know why,” Fish replied. “You was bound to get your chance at the nigger.”
“Solomon is right,” Jack agreed. “Ever’ man should have him his chance at those that done him wrong. Just one chance to even the score.”
Caleb snorted, “Looks to me like Titus done better’n just even up the score! I’d say Titus gone and got the better of it all!”
“Where’d you leave ’im?” Rufus asked.
“Right where he and ’Nother jumped me.”
“’Nother’n?” Hatcher asked. “How many red niggers did ye lay into?”
And as Elbridge brought him a scalding cup of coffee, Bass told them of the horsemen’s approach, how they attempted to outflank him and run him down about the time he noticed the warrior’s leggings and moccasins. He told it all—everything from breaking the second man’s leg, to gutting and butchering the scalp taker.
“Then ye just up and left that other’n to crawl off?”
Bass nodded. “He ain’t going anywhere very fast. I don’t figger that brownskin’s gonna drag hisself outta the Bayou afore we set off ourselves for the Popo Agie.”
“Rendezvous ain’t long now!” Rufus cried.
“Wha’cha gonna do with that scalp?” Caleb asked. “Make you some hangy-downs, some scalp locks to sew to your shirt, maybe ’long your shoulder and down the arms?”
“Dunno,” he said. “Ain’t thought that far.”
Hatcher handed the scalp back to Bass as Scratch tugged nervously at the blue bandanna. Wagging his head, Titus said, “Lost my patch o’ beaver fur, boys. Can’t for the life of me … I took off the bandanny to show the one nigger where his companyero skelped me. Must’ve lost it then.”
“You want me to see to cutting you ’Nother from a poor plew, Scratch?” asked Solomon.
“No,” Hatcher responded instead as the others turned to regard him with curiosity. “Bass won’t be needing no more beaver fur to wear over that little skull spot on his noodle no more.”
He studied Jack cautiously. “I won’t?”