“Four,” Hatcher corrected. “Caleb, tie that jughead off and get yerself a spot to watch the backtrail.”
Somewhere beyond them back down the trail, the sun was breaking over the edge of the earth. But here past the mouth of this narrow canyon, it was still shadow. Breath vapor steamed in frosty halos surrounding every head. Bass grunted as he was turned, his eyes struggling to focus as he looked up, around at the faces dancing in a watery haze over him.
“It come clean through, boys,” Jack declared, finding the exit wound on Bass’s belly.
“Damn lucky, ain’t he?” Solomon Fish exclaimed, supporting the wounded man’s shoulders.
“Titus Bass lucky?” Hatcher snorted as he leaned close to examine the entrance wound, pushing this way and that with his fingertips. “Any other man I’d call lucky if’n he was hit by a Blackfoot ball that went right on through his side the way this’un did. But from what we know about this son of a bitch, the way he lived to tell of a ’Rapaho scalpin’, hung like a tick on the back of that damned bitch of a mule long enough to be in the right place and the right time when the Snakes shot that white medicine calf … and then got his fat pulled from the fire with the rest of us last spring when that white medicine calf’s hide told them grateful Snakes when we was all about to go under … hell, Solomon! I never knowed any man more lucky than Titus Bass!”
Elbridge Gray turned to say, “Born under a good star, that child was.”
“Damn if he wasn’t,” Jack sighed, leaning back. “’Pears to me that ball went right on through ’thout striking anything but skin and muscle.”
Caleb whistled low in amazement. “Almost makes a man wanna keep him around for our own good luck.”
Hatcher nodded, pushing some of Bass’s long, stringy hair out of his eyes as Titus struggled to focus on the brigade leader. “Damn right, boys—this here’s a good man to have along.”
“J-jack—”
Hatcher leaned close. “I got bad news for ye, Scratch.”
“Bad?”
“Ye’re gonna live, ye mangy, flea-bit no-count.”
“Gonna make it, am I? By damn that’s good news—”
“That is less’n the Blackfoots catch up to us and pin us down till they can finish ye off.”
Bass squinted his eyes against the rise of pain. “We ain’t gonna let ’em, are we?”
Jack grinned, his overly large teeth the color of pin acorns. “Not by a long chalk, we ain’t.” He turned. “Caleb—crawl on up there and see what them riders are up to at the mouth of the canyon.”
Scratch heard Caleb Wood move off. “I got my pistol, rifle too, if’n any of you can use ’em.”
“Hell, Bass,” Gray spouted. “You ain’t hurt so bad you can’t hold on to ’em your own self.”
Fish added, “Might be you’ll get a chance to use ’em yet.”
A few long minutes later Titus fluttered open his eyes slightly, fighting to focus on Hatcher’s face hovering over his. “You get your horse guard?”
“Didn’t get the chance,” Jack replied. “I spooked a horse, so that red son of a bitch jumped out into the meadow on me. Right about the time a second one showed up.”
“Second one?” Rowland asked.
“I figger it was another guard coming out to take him his turn at watch,” Jack explained. “Boys, there ain’t two ways about it: plain as paint I’m ’bout as unlucky as Titus Bass born under a good star!”
“Let’s hope his star gonna shine down on all of us,” Caleb huffed as he crabbed back into that ring the trappers formed around Bass.
Solomon asked, “More coming?”
Wood nodded, licking his dry lips. “See’d ’em. Coming a ways off.”
“How many?” Rowland demanded in a rising voice.
“It don’t matter how many,” Hatcher declared as he rose from his knees. “We can’t none of us stay here to let ’em finish us off.”
“What about Bass?” Fish asked.
Jack looked down at Titus. “What about it, Scratch?”
He struggled to rise on an elbow and tried out a weak grin on all of them. “Boys, if Mad Jack here says we best be making tracks—then we best be on our way.”
“Get the horses!” Elbridge hollered as he wheeled about, sweeping up a rein.
“Put them Blackfoot ponies out in front of us and keep ’em going,” Jack ordered. “No matter what, keep them ponies going.”
Hatcher was the next up after throwing his saddle onto a fresh mount. He had Fish and Wood heft Bass up behind him.
“Now, get me one of them picket ropes,” Jack said. “Wrap it round us both so ye can tie him to me.”
“D-do me up tight, fellas,” Bass demanded of them, knowing the chances were good that he would grow too weak to hold on to Hatcher by himself. “I don’t wanna fall off so them Blackfoot niggers get me.”
They made a half-dozen loops around the two men, then knotted the ends in front of Hatcher so he could free himself or Bass if the need arose.
“Get a leg up, boys!” Jack cried. “Move them ponies out!”
Wide-eyed, Solomon said, “Only one way out of this here canyon, Jack.”
“We’ll run right into them niggers waiting for the rest to come up!” Caleb shrieked.
“That’s just what I figger Jack wants to do,” Solomon shouted.
Hatcher nudged his heels into the horse. “Right, the first whack! Do our best to run right on over ’em on our way out! Hep! Hep-ha!”
As the horse’s powerful flanks surged beneath him, Bass locked his fingers around the loops of rope imprisoning Hatcher’s chest. Ahead of them the others were yelling and screaming, driving the horses before them, sure to scare the billy-be-hell out of the half-dozen or so Blackfoot waiting at the mouth of the canyon.
“You really gonna ride right into ’em?” Scratch asked against the back of Hatcher’s neck.
“Damn right we are!” he said, turning his head slightly. “A goddamned sit-up, straight-on ride-through!”
Cautiously, Bass loosened the hold he had with his right hand and slid it between himself and Hatcher until he filled his hand with the butt of the flintlock pistol.
“Hold tight, son!” Jack warned. “We’re about to do-si-do!”
What few war cries the Blackfoot raised were swiftly drowned out by the hammer of hooves on the flaky hardpan of the earth’s crust as the horses and trappers galloped into the open, heading right for their enemy who waited among the sage and buckbrush in the day’s new light. Hatcher’s men shouted back with their own bravado, hurtling through the few who had dared to follow them.
A lone gunshot. Bass figured it had to be one of the boys. The Blackfoot simply didn’t have that many weapons, and chances were good they wouldn’t dare try to shoot their weapons from horseback anyway. What Jack had said was true: Indians simply weren’t much in the way of marksmanship.
“Take a lookee there, Scratch!” Hatcher called.
He turned his head, immediately catching sight of the warrior racing toward them at an angle—putting himself on a collision course not that far ahead. In one hand the Blackfoot held the elk-antler quirt he used to whip the pony’s rear flank. And in the hand that clutched the pony’s rein, the warrior also held a long wooden club from, the end of which protruded a long, wide knife blade. Two feathers streamed back from his long, unfettered hair while the pony raced around and over the stunted sagebrush.
“Maybe I should ride right into him?” Jack mused.
“You do, you’ll knock me off,” Scratch replied.
“I’ll wager that’s what he’s fixin’ to do.”
All the jarring, jolting, side-to-side hammering inflicted on his wound was about to overwhelm Bass. For a moment he bit down on his lower lip again, then said, “You pull up—I’ll shoot the son of a bitch.”