“Damn right we did,” Hatcher agreed. “Something happen to me—ye don’t leave ’thout them horses.”
Rowland wagged his head, saying, “But if they kill’t the two of you—”
“Then that just means they got their hands full for the time being,” Bass interrupted. “If them brownskins are busy taking what’s left of my scalp, boys—you damned well better see to riding off with their horses.”
Hatcher looked a moment into each face. “Ye all understand what Bass is saying? Hell breaks loose, me and Scratch here are on our own. Ye boys just get, and get fast. Ye drive off the ponies, why—Bug’s Boys in there won’t have ’em nothing to ride and no way to keep up with ye.”
“Can we count on you meeting us back to camp?” Wood asked hopefully.
Hatcher shook his head. “Something goes wrong—don’t count on seeing my mud-ugly mug again, Caleb. Just have ye a drink for me come ronnyvoo this summer.”
Caleb stepped forward, held out his hand to Hatcher in that sudden, shy sort of way. “Don’t do nothing stupid, Jack.”
“Like jumping more’n thirty Blackfoots by ourselves?” Hatcher snorted with a grin that always made the man’s mouth a wide and friendly bow. “Ain’t nothing stupid ’bout that, is there, boys?”
The four shook hands with the pair, who silently turned and disappeared into the willow on foot. Bass followed Jack, a slow step at a time, careful of their footing, toes feeling their way along in the dark, working this maze through the brush a yard at a time until Hatcher stopped and turned.
“This gonna be close-up work.”
“I know,” Titus whispered. He pulled the old knife from its rawhide sheath.
“Ye done this afore?”
Bass shook his head. “No. Not really.”
“Just like sneaking up ahin’t someone,” Jack explained. “Nothing much to it.”
“I figger there’s allays a first time,” Scratch said.
Hatcher smiled. “Just make sure ye’re around for a second time, friend. I come to like ye, Titus Bass.”
He laid his hand on the tall, thin man’s shoulder. “I come to like you some myself, Mad Jack.”
Hatcher held out his hand, and they shook swiftly, suddenly conscious once more of what lay before them. “I’m gonna work on past the herd to yonder where I figger they got ’em a second guard.”
“Where’s the first gonna be?”
Pointing, Jack said, “Not far, over by that ledge, I’d wager.”
“You want me to wait for you to get to the far side?”
“No. Ye kill that son of a bitch, and kill him quick. Sooner he’s dead, sooner we’re sure that one won’t make a sound to rouse the others.”
“Meet you back with the rest?”
“Less’n something goes wrong, Scratch,” he answered. “Then ye get the hell out of there the best way ye can.”
“Same goes for you, Jack. Something haps to me—see yourself that the boys split up what little I got to my name.”
He smiled quickly. “I awready got call on yer rifle, Scratch.”
“And my mule too?” Titus asked with a grin.
“Hell no, ye lop-eared dunderhead. Who the hell’d want that cantankerous bitch?”
An uneasy moment of quiet fell between them; then Titus said, “Watch your back, now, you hear?”
“Ye watch yer’n.”
Bass stared at the black hole among the tall willow where Hatcher had disappeared for what seemed like a long time. The breeze rustled the leafy branches around him as he endlessly tried to sort out sounds, like picking mule hair off a saddle pad, staring now and again at the dim form of the rocky ledge not all that distant. Then back again at the hole in the night Hatcher had punched through to disappear.
Scratch wondered, if it was so cold, then why in hell was he sweating the way he was?
2
Scratch Thought he heard the horse guard well before he ever saw him.
He stopped, listening intently to the dark. Listening not only with his ears, but with every inch of exposed flesh, his skin alive and prickling at the nearness of danger. He tried to remember to breathe, and when he did, Bass found the air shockingly cold. Sniffing deeply of the gloom, he thought he could smell the dried sweat, the days-old grease that told him the warrior was near. Or was it only his imagination, galloping wildly now that he was inching ever closer to this moment of reckoning?
Not that he hadn’t killed before. But this was something entirely different.
When violence confronted a man, it usually did so suddenly, without warning and forethought. One moment a man stood square with the world around him. And with his next breath, things went awry, everything off-kilter and askew in that instant. A man found himself swept up in the immediacy of the moment and responded to protect either himself or those dear to him. Just as he had done when the Chickasaw had slipped on board Ebenezer Zane’s Kentucky flatboat.
One moment he’s fighting off sleep with heavy eyes and the gentle bobbing of that flat-bottomed broadhorn laden with marketable goods bound for the port at New Orleans … and the next moment he’s shooting and stabbing, clubbing and slashing at the heathens who have stolen out of the night.
So this was the first time in his life that Bass ever had time to plan, to think, and to fret on it. Killing had always been what he had done when presented with no other choice. Now it became something altogether different, when he was no longer the one confronted by the violence created for him—now that he was the one slipping out of the dark. Not that these Blackfoot didn’t deserve to die, he reminded himself as he took another two steps forward … and suddenly saw the shape of the man.
Stopping almost in midstep, Bass held his breath a long moment. Waiting, he watched the warrior, studying to be sure there was no chance he might have been heard. Waiting to be certain the breeze was still in his face. He took another step, paused, then moved to within two short yards of the raider. The horses were just beyond him.
He leaned the rifle against a tree, wondering where Hatcher was. Wondering how long he should wait there before … how much time he would have before the warrior moved farther away, or the animals scented him, or all hell broke loose because one of the others were discovered.
Swallowing down the sharp-edged ball of thorny fear lodged in his throat, Bass brought both arms up, his left ready to snare the Blackfoot, the right hand filled with his old knife.
The horses brought their heads up suddenly as Titus was starting the knife back in its arc. An instant later a cry shattered the night. The Blackfoot in front of him visibly jerked, then started to wheel to his right, about to sprint off for camp. He spotted Bass at the same moment Scratch was lunging forward, his arm already swinging down in a frenzy, snatching hold of the Blackfoot’s war shirt, yanking the Indian close as the knife became a blur.
In that moment of the white man’s hesitation, the enemy managed to bring his forearm up. Bass’s wrist collided with it as the tip of the knife grazed the side of the warrior’s neck. But the Blackfoot’s right arm was free, grabbing for his own scabbard as they danced in a tight circle. The moment the man’s knife came up in that free hand, Titus shoved his enemy backward, slamming his knee into the warrior’s groin.
Stumbling a step, the warrior sought to protect himself as Scratch pursued him back, back—still holding on to the war shirt—yanking the warrior to the side as he raked his knife across the Blackfoot’s gut. He felt the sudden warm splash across his own cold hand.
Until now the enemy hadn’t made a sound; but this was something that reminded him of a grunt from the old plow mule, a little of the squeal. Sinking to his knees, the Blackfoot stared down at his hands, found them filling with the first purplish-white ribbons of gut spilling from the deep, savage wound. Dull-eyed, he looked up at the white man just as Bass heard the rumble burst free of his own throat: stepping forward to savagely slash the old knife from left to right across the enemy’s throat.