Surrounded by the enemy, goaded by their women, the Blackfoot could only be made bold by their desperate straits—or stupid, willing to grasp at any chance before they died.
One of them was about to do just that.
Near the center of that buffalo killing field the Blackfoot warrior stood, waving his smoothbore fusil at the end of his arm, his mouth a wide O as he hollered at the rest who were beginning to withdraw from the shelter of their buffalo carcasses and stream toward their leader. It reminded Scratch of a black cloud of sparrows as they dipped this way, then that, low in the sky overhead. Suddenly the leader took off, his warriors strung out on either side of him, racing for the hills.
In an instant Bass could see that they really weren’t making for the distant slope. Instead, they were sprinting for the weakest part of the Crow line where Strikes-in-Camp and a handful of others were all that stood between the Blackfoot and escape. On the far side of the valley, Scratch could tell that Whistler saw things taking shape at the same moment. The old warrior was yelling and waving even as he started his pony loping to head off the enemy.
Bass was already on his way down the hillside, whistling in the cold air, licking his lips to whistle again for the pony which raised its head and started his way.
Instead of waiting for the others, instead of slowly backing up the slope to delay the clash, Strikes-in-Camp taunted his fellow warriors into joining him in a headlong dash toward the Blackfoot spearhead coming their way. Near the bottom ground the enemy swept around the half-dozen Crow, swallowing them whole the way a mountain lion swallowed a deer mouse in one bite.
The Crow warriors disappeared beneath a roiling mass of arms and weapons, dragged one by one from their horses.
Whistler and the others were closing in on the slaughter as some of the Blackfoot broke from the six unhorsed Crow and lunged up the slope to make their escape. The older warrior waved at the enemy seeking to flee—sending more than ten of his fighters to seal off any chance of escape. Then Whistler continued into the fray to save his son and the others.
Dragging himself atop the pony as the injured calf cried out in pain, Scratch slapped the rifle’s buttstock against its rear flank to put it into a gallop as they raced across the bottom, weaving through the bloody buffalo carcasses.
As more Crow reached the scene, the Blackfoot spread out to meet the charge the way a pebble dropped into a still pond would radiate widening rings around it. Bodies struggled on the ground at the center of the melee, Blackfoot finishing off the six Crow.
Into that contest Whistler plunged on horseback, swinging a long war club first on one side of his horse, then on the other, as he desperately cut himself a swath through the enemy to reach his son.
Bass was starting to rein up when he saw that Blackfoot leader who had rallied his warriors leap to the side, coming into the open. The short fusil he had been waving was now shoved against his shoulder. And aimed at Whistler.
Smoke puffed from the muzzle.
Even as the low boom rang out, Bass watched the impact jerk Whistler up straight, his war club tumbling from his hand as he fought to stay atop the horse. With both hands he clawed for the single horsehair rein he had dropped. In desperation both hands knotted themselves into the pony’s mane as it pranced round and round in a tight circle, more Blackfoot closing in on the war-party leader.
Scratch drove his pony over two, then a third warrior, spinning them aside, crushing one beneath the runner’s hooves as he lunged to reach the injured Whistler. Reaching the scene as a pair of the enemy on foot were clawing at the wounded horseman, attempting to yank Whistler off the back of his frightened horse, Scratch pulled the loaded pistol free, aimed, and fired at a narrow back. The enemy warrior nearly crumpled in half backward as he spilled into the snow beneath the pony’s hooves.
Reining aside, Scratch swung the empty pistol, smashing its barrel against a second warrior’s head with the loud crack of a heavy maul striking tight-grained Kentucky hickory. The warrior stumbled backward, wheeling round to gaze up at the white horseman as he collapsed across a jumble of legs and arms as others wrestled in the snow.
“Go!” Bass ordered Whistler. “Get to the hillside—”
“I … I can’t hold on,” he said weakly, beginning to sink off the side of his pony.
“Get to the hillside!” Scratch repeated. “Don’t let go until you are at the top of that hill!”
Then the white man slapped the back of the pony with the pistol’s long barrel, making it leap away. He watched Whistler clutching both his arms around the horse’s neck as it bounded through the milling warriors. Shiny blood streamed down the Crow’s leg, slicking a huge, dark patch that ran down the pony’s side as it raced up the gradual slope, away from the fighting.
A few yards away the Crow were just striking the Blackfoot who had swallowed up Strikes-in-Camp and his companions. The six were nowhere to be seen. Titus figured they were likely dead already as he jabbed heels into his pony’s ribs and loped toward the bitter hand-to-hand fighting as the Blackfoot suddenly turned from mauling the few to preparing to meet the many.
Racing in at an angle, Bass reached the enemy just as the Crow clattered into the Blackfoot formation. Slowly, slowly the enemy backed, swinging, slashing, shrieking with all the fury they had left as their women continued to yell and scream from the nearby hill.
On the ground nearby, two of the enemy still struggled over one of the Crow, both of them working at pinning down the arms and legs as they swung their weapons for the kill. Dragging their victim over onto his side, one of the Blackfoot struck the back of the Crow’s neck with a glancing blow. Scratch watched all the fight pour out of the valiant warrior. The second Blackfoot raised his heavy tomahawk at the end of his arm, its iron blade glinting dully in the falling sun as Scratch pulled out his second pistol, dragged at the big gooseneck hammer, and seized the trigger.
He felt it buck in his hand as it spat fire and a billow of gray smoke.
Clawing at his back, the Blackfoot twisted about wide-eyed to stare at Bass a moment before he pitched into the snow, dead beside the Crow he was ready to kill.
Yet the first was already seizing hold of the Crow’s tall, greased, provocative forelock, yanking the warrior’s head back as he dragged a huge dagger from its scabbard, prepared to cleave the Crow’s throat like a bled pig his grandfather would prepare for the smoke shed.
Scratch threw the empty pistol at the Blackfoot. Its barrel slashed across the warrior’s cheekbone, making him jerk aside for an instant, gazing up at the white man descending on him.
That instant was all Bass needed.
He rode the pony right over the Blackfoot, shoving himself sideways out of the saddle as the warrior fell backward the moment the horse stomped over him. Seizing the hand that held the dagger in both of his, Scratch slammed it against the snowy, frozen ground again and again until the knife tumbled out. Then with a bare fist he smashed the warrior in the face, watching the man’s cold skin split and ooze blood across the nose, over an eye. Again and again he smashed that young warrior’s face until the Blackfoot no longer struggled.
Scooping the dagger from the snow, Titus raked it across the warrior’s throat, opening a gush that flooded the ground beneath his knees, the snow turning a dirty brown beneath both the dead Blackfoot and that Crow he had been ready to butcher.
Dragging his wounded leg beneath him, Bass grabbed the dead man’s shirt and pulled him off the Crow before he seized the Crow’s shoulders and turned him around.
Strikes-in-Camp.
The dark eyes fluttered open, crimson ooze seeping from a big gash over one eye, snow crusted against that bruised, puffy side of his face. His shirt was bloody where a long gash had been opened up in his side, and his breath came short and labored as those eyes struggled to focus on the face of the man who had just saved him.