Brody answered for the dry-mouthed riders, “He’s with Campbell!”
Someone hollered, “Bob Campbell’s bunch?”
Brody explained to the anxious group, “Campbell’s brigade was up to Flathead country last winter.” Then he squinted into the bright light, staring right up at the breathless rider. “You boys taken any dead or wounded?”
Wagging his head, the second rider answered, “Don’t rightly know. There was some thirty of us to start with, I s’pose. Campbell sent us riding soon as we was jumped.”
“You sartin they’re really Blackfoot?” a man cried out.
“Nary a man in this company don’t know him Blackfoot from Digger!” someone shouted angrily. “Bob Campbell says they’re Blackfoot, then they’re Blackfoot, by God!”
“Where?”
The first rider pointed north. “Fifteen mile, maybe.”
“That’s a long ride,” Porter replied. “A hard one at full-out too.”
Brody nodded. “Best we get started, boys! Let’s leave back a dozen or so to stay with camp and the extra animals.”
“Bring in them horses and mules what we ain’t riding!” Porter ordered.
Brody turned, his eyes scanning the crowd until he found Mad Jack. “Hatcher! Your bunch planning on throwing in for this fight?”
“Don’t see why not,” Jack responded. “We ain’t the kind to let Blackfoot have their way with no American. To hell with Bug’s Boys!”
An instant and spontaneous roar erupted from the seventy-some trappers knotted around those two weary riders and played-out horses.
Bass pushed through the throng to reach the knee of one of the horsemen, saying, “Get yourself down and watered. We’ll bring you up a fresh horse afore we’re ready to ride out.”
“You comin’ with us, Titus Bass?”
Turning, Scratch found Daniel Potts headed his way, followed by a handful of familiar faces. “You boys riding out to the fight?”
“No booshway gonna order me to stay back to camp and nursemaid no cavvyyard when there’s Blackfeets to fight! Damn right I’m going!”
Bass cheered, “I’ll ride with you.”
“Be quick about it,” Daniel ordered. “I don’t want the others to have the jump on us!”
Splashing his way across the creek and sprinting into the meadow, Bass hurriedly freed the long halter rope from the iron picket pin he had driven into the ground near their camp, leaped atop the pony’s bare back, and loped it back to his blanket shelter at an urgent trot. After dropping his shooting pouch and horns over his right shoulder, then gathering up his pistol and the fullstock Derringer rifle, Scratch vaulted onto the warm, bare backbone of his saddle horse. This time he would ride far and hard without that secondhand Shoshone snare saddle. Without stirrups, he kicked his heels into the pony’s ribs.
“Hep! Hep-hawww!”
By the time the first of the trappers were streaming north along the eastern shore of Sweet Lake, Flathead warriors were mounting up at the edge of their village. Women and children darted here and there, bringing their men shields and bows and quivers filled with war arrows. Everywhere dogs were underfoot, barking and howling, somehow aware of the importance of this moment as the Flathead men quickly completed their personal medicine, got themselves painted and dressed for battle, then sprinted off to fight their ancient enemies.
What a sight that determined cavalcade made that summer morning! Beneath a brilliant sun the colors seemed all the brighter in the flash of wind-borne feathers and scalp locks and earth paint, the showy glint of old smoothbore muskets and shiny brass tomahawks and fur-wrapped stone war clubs waved high beside those long coup-sticks held aloft in the mad gallop just as any army would carry its hard-won banners before them as it rode against its foe.
Mile after mile Scratch raced at the head of a growing vee of horsemen as more trappers burst out of camp, mingling with the mounted Flathead warriors, the widening parade streaming behind Bass and Potts leading the rest at the arrow’s tip. Here and there the land rose gently, then fell again until they reached the bottom of a draw, where they had to leap their horses over each narrow creek feeding the long, narrow lake from the hills beyond. After urging all they could out of their horses for more than the hour it took them to cover the fifteen miles, those at the head of the cavalcade heard the first of the gunshots in the distance.
And moments later the rescuers galloping in heard the first war cries of the Blackfoot raiders.
As they reached the top of a gentle rise, the low plain spread out before them: less than a mile away the scene was easy to read. The Blackfoot already had possession of most of the trappers’ horses and mules, having driven them to the northwest, off toward the shore of the lake where the herd was protected by a handful of their warriors. On their broad backs were still lashed the fat packs of beaver—the fruits of two long, lonely seasons of back-breaking labor by Robert Campbell’s brigade.
The rest of the attackers clearly had the white men surrounded in a small cluster of rocks. It was hard for Bass to tell just how many men were hunkered down within that tightening ring he could see was drawing closer and closer.
Suddenly a lone warrior stood up in the grass, waving his arms wildly, pointing at the middistance. He had spotted the first few rescuers: more white men joined by Flathead horsemen.
One by one more than a hundred warriors quickly bristled from the brush and grass, beginning to sprint in an effort to meet boldly the new assault showing itself on that hilltop Bass had just abandoned as he and the first riders raced down the slope toward the raiders, toward that small ring of boulders and stunted brush where Bob Campbell’s men fought for their hides.
“Ride right through ’em?” Potts hollered at Titus.
With tears streaming from his eyes as the dry wind whipped them both in the face, Scratch glanced behind him at the dozen or so others, then nodded. “Don’t you dare pull back on that rein as we shoot through, Daniel!”
“Whooeee!”
“Heya!” Bass hollered himself at the sudden new surge of adrenaline warming his veins, kicking the tired horse in the ribs, leaning forward as they bounded over the tall grass, heading straight for the enemy, who began to clot together to form a phalanx on foot that was inching its way toward these new targets.
Scratch felt his empty stomach knot as more and more of the warriors joined the numbers already headed their way. His head pounded with more than the lack of sleep, more than a hangover from the potent grain alcohol, more than the hammering of the last hour’s race to lift this siege.
As he neared that wall of Blackfoot, Bass spotted the dark carcasses beyond the warriors in the tall grass—the bodies of dead horses lying here and there around those rocks where the trappers had just spotted the approach of their rescuers. Closer and closer he and Potts sprinted for the Blackfoot line … close enough now to hear their shrill war cries, close enough to hear the whooping of the trappers whose mouths O’ed in celebration as the first of them stood within their rocks, waving rifles and broad-brimmed hats.
Less than eighty yards remained between Bass and the Blackfoot.
A ball whined past, splitting the air between him and Potts. Then a flying covey of arrows arched out of the grass, bursting from half a hundred bows, speeding across the stainless blue of the summer sky, quickly reaching their zenith before they began to fall.
Fifty yards from the enemy.
The bowmen were many, but the horsemen were quicker. They were already ahead of those first arrows, which hissed into the grass at their heels.
No more than twenty yards remained as Bass leaned forward, pressing himself against the pony’s withers, laying his sunburned cheek along the damp, lathered neck, his toes digging into the animal’s ribs.