Deep enough that the man’s head snapped back, eyes wide, lips moving bereft of sound this time.
There was enough other noise now.
Scratch could hear the shouts of the trappers somewhere behind him. And off toward the creek came the shrill cries of the rest of the Blackfoot.
Their fat was in the fire now.
Damn if they hadn’t managed to stir up the hornets’ nest without getting off with the horses.
Of a sudden it sounded as if he were surrounded by the rain-patter of running steps. Out of the gray gloom emerged huge black shadows. Snorting, wide-eyed, with frosty vapor jetting from their mouths, more than two dozen ponies shot past as Scratch dodged this way, then that, to keep from getting trampled. He thought he recognized some of the voices cracking the darkness, yelling to one another as they raced to get ahead of the stampeding herd.
All bets were off now.
He damn well knew he couldn’t count on his own horse being back there where he had left it with the others.
As the last of the ponies blew past him in the dark, thundering through the tall willows, Bass knew he was alone, and on foot.
Realizing what that meant for no more than a heartbeat before he heard the Blackfoot cries coming closer and closer. Footsteps, the rustle of underbrush, the strident call of anguish, rage, blood lust.
He looked down at the dead warrior, hoping to find some sort of firearm. Nothing more than that knife and a quiver strapped over his shoulder, filled with arrows and a short bow.
Jerking around at the nearing clamor, Scratch decided the time would never be better to make a run for it—just as more than a half-dozen warriors burst from the far brush on foot.
“Bass!”
The voice yanked him around as he was turning to plunge into the willow thicket for his rifle.
Trying to get any sound free past the clog in his throat was an impossible feat as he stammered Hatcher’s name.
Jack burst out of the brush on horseback between Titus and the onrushing warriors. “Up, coon! Heave up now!”
“My gun!”
“Get it, sumbitch!”
By the time he whirled back with it, Jack held out a hand from the back of the Blackfoot pony he controlled with no more than the single buffalo-hair rein. In a frightened circle it pranced around Bass one time, then a second, as Jack struggled for control and Scratch stuffed the knife into its sheath. The two men locked one another’s forearms while Titus hopped round and round at the center of the circle.
The cries grew louder, renewed now that the prey was in sight.
“Dammit—get up here or we’re both wolf bait!”
“G’won … I can’t—”
With a mighty grunt Hatcher reared back, dragging Bass off the ground enough that he was able to swing one leg over the hind flanks of the pony, his free hand reaching out to seize Jack’s buckskin shirt. Both of them jabbing heels into the horse’s ribs, they lunged into the willow thicket.
Arrows smacked the branches around them. Gunfire boomed behind them, the air on either side of their heads alive with the tormented whine of lead balls.
“Far as hitting anything with a gun, never met me a Injun wuth a red piss!” Hatcher roared as the willow whipped their arms and legs and cheeks unmercifully.
Bass’s left side burned in the cold—like a sudden, raw opening of tender flesh. Gazing down at the wound while he laid his hand over it, Bass waited a moment, then brought the hand away, feeling the pain already, even before he saw the dark stain on his palm.
“Should’ve left me behind,” he grumbled as he secured a better hold on Hatcher just as they broke free of the willow onto the sagebrush plain.
“Hell with you, nigger!” Hatcher grumbled. “I ain’t never left no man ahin’t … and I ain’t about to start now. Mangy as yer carcass is—wuthless, no-good—”
“There they are!” Scratch exclaimed through gritted teeth, fighting the pain in his side where the bullet’s path made him want to cry.
“Damn if it ain’t!”
Far ahead of them galloped more than forty horses, their hooves hammering the flaky hardpan ground as they were driven by the whooping cries of the other four trappers struggling to keep the Blackfoot ponies from scattering this way or that at either side of their path.
For a moment Bass turned slightly to peer over his shoulder behind them. He was beginning to feel faint, wanting nothing better than to have Hatcher stop so he could climb off, lie down, and sleep. Instead Titus bit down hard on his lower lip—startling himself with the pain that for a moment made him forget the terrible fire in his side.
“W-we gonna make it, Jack?”
Hatcher turned his head quickly to look behind them. “I do believe, Titus Bass!”
“You mean we pulled that off?”
“Less’n them sumbitches got more ponies—and I do believe we got ’em all—they ain’t coming after us but on foot!”
Suddenly Titus was growing light-headed and the ground was starting to spin beneath the pony’s hooves as it struggled beneath the weight of two men. “I ain’t … ain’t …”
“Hang on!”
“Can’t hang much more—”
“Ye hit?”
“’Fraid so, Jack.”
“Eegod, Scratch!” he screeched, yanking back on the single buffalo-hair rein.
His eyelids grown so heavy. “K-keep goin’!”
“I wanna see how bad ye’re—”
“We’re gonna have company soon if’n you pull up.”
Hatcher jerked his head around, gazing down their backtrail, spotting the distant figures Bass had sighted only moments before. Horsemen. There weren’t many—but enough to make for trouble.
Jack sighed, “Ye gonna hold on?”
“Like a goddamned tick.”
“Hep-ha!” Hatcher cried, jabbing his moccasins into the horse’s belly, jolting a sudden burst of speed from it.
Burying his face in Hatcher’s bony back, Titus drank in deep drafts of air, realizing that it was no longer night. Sometime in the last few minutes, the sky had begun to brighten in prelude to sunrise. Now they’d be all the easier to track for that handful of riders. Ponies the trappers hadn’t driven off. And where there was a handful, a man could always figure there might likely be more.
He wondered how Kinkead was doing, remembering the sight of that arrow shaft quivering every time Matthew drew in a ragged breath, shuddering every time he exhaled. How they had struggled to hold the big man down to pull it out. All the blood as Hatcher dug the stone head out of the thick muscle. Arrow or bullet—who was to say what was better … what a man could survive …
“Help me get him down!”
Some of the black curtain was pulled back, and Bass came awake as the hands grabbed him, feeling himself pulled, allowing himself to fall against them clumsily. The others laid him out as Hatcher slid from the heaving pony’s bare back. It was plain the creature didn’t take to being so close to these strange-smelling white men. It nearly pulled Jack off the ground with its first lunge, snorting and rearing back.
Hatcher balled up his hard-boned fist and smacked the animal with a powerful haymaker of a blow, landing it right behind the nostrils.
Staggering to the side, the pony righted itself, more wary now of the man who still gripped its buffalo-hair rein.
“Take this, Caleb.” Jack handed that rein to Wood. “Solomon, turn Scratch on his side.” He knelt beside Bass. “Lemme have a look-see while the rest of ye get ready to welcome Bug’s Boys to our li’l hidee-hole.”
“That makes only three guns, Jack,” Rowland complained.