He breathed again, relieved, and went back to trimming the hide from the two back legs, then sawed off the huge tail. But instead of pitching this tail out with the gut-pile, Titus decided to save it, perhaps cook it tomorrow after they had climbed high enough, far enough that no skulking redbelly would follow.
Gathering tail, hide, and trap, he stood and heard his knees crackle in protest. The years of cold, wading and working in frozen streams, were exacting their toll on his joints. Tortured more every season with aching, icy stabs of pain, he worried how long his body would be able to endure, how long before he could no longer provide for those who counted upon him.
He glanced over at the big Derringer rifle leaning against the brush, then decided against gathering it up, pushing instead for the pack mule, his arms already burdened. At Samantha’s side he dropped the trap with a clatter, then spread the green, sticky hide across her wide rump, hair side down. On the gummy flesh he laid the beaver tail and quickly rolled it within the hide.
Pulling back the top of the trap sack, Titus dropped the green plew inside—crying out with pain as the iron tip of an arrow slashed a furrow along his right shoulder, pinning his right hand against the wide wooden packsaddle support.
Gritting his teeth with that exquisite trail of fire scorching its way up his arm, Scratch jerked around, hearing the war cry burst from the brush at the edge of the clearing. Just one voice. A lone figure among those leafless trees, nocking a second arrow against the bowstring.
Twisting back to look at his right hand, bloodied and impaled on the arrow shaft that quivered with every pulse of his bright red blood, quivered with every shudder of uncontrollable pain that sent its tremor through the arm. Gently he flexed the fingers a little, finding that every one of them still moved. Just a little, what with the pain it caused—but they moved.
He seized the shaft with his left hand, slid the fist down until it smeared the blood oozing from the wound, and pulled. The arrow did not budge.
When the second arrow struck the mule’s flank, they yelped in pain together as Samantha jerked, kicking a hind leg, slashing his shin with her hoof as she tried to escape the cause of her torment. With each buck she made and tremor that shot through her muscles, he grunted anew with his own pain.
Behind him the warrior suddenly screamed again, shouting this time a rhythmic, off-key war song as he jabbed another arrow against the bowstring and brought the weapon up.
Slapping the mule, driving his knee up against her belly, Scratch got Samantha turned a quarter circle before she threw her weight back against him, angrily twisting her head around to stare at him with wide, cruel eyes—as if she couldn’t understand why he wasn’t doing more to ease her pain.
The third shaft struck the far side of the packsaddle with such force that it quivered as she lunged in a sidestep against him, knocking his feet out from under him, suspending her master from that shaft buried in the wooden packsaddle frame.
Grunting in torment, he scrambled to regain his footing. His wet moccasins slipping on the damp grass, Bass choked down the hot ball his stomach hurled against his tonsils. A wave of icy pain had begun to numb his brain. Scratch’s eyes glazed over with stinging tears as he finally planted his feet and stood, instinctively reaching for the belt pistol with his left hand—yanking the weapon free as the mule twisted, shoving him backward so hard he lost his balance again.
Pushing himself upright, Titus blinked his eyes clear, finding the warrior dropping his quiver off his shoulder to the ground.
At that moment Bass went dry-mouthed, suddenly hearing the approach of another pony, another voice—this second still disembodied somewhere in the trees behind the first attacker.
Narrowing his gaze on that bowman who was straightening after removing the quiver so he could drag a brass-headed tomahawk from the back of his belt, for the first time Titus realized how the cards were stacked against him.
One-handed.
With only one shot.
And now a second warrior had appeared back in that dapple of light and shadow among the skinny lodgepole and bone-bare quaky.
The bowman was already in motion, his arm cocked overhead as he sprinted toward the white man and the mule, screaming with guttural bravado over a sure kill.
No more than fifteen yards between them.
Scratch firmly squeezed his sweaty left hand around the pistol butt.
Ten yards …
But he had to relax that grip to clumsily thumb back the hammer mounted on the right side of the weapon.
Five yards—
With the frizzen flush against the pan, and the hammer back to full cock, he didn’t allow himself the time to hold and aim as he plopped his pistol arm down atop the mule’s rump.
The warrior dodged to his right, starting to careen around the rear of the mule.
Whirling to his left with the target, Scratch pulled the trigger.
Samantha shuddered, jerked sideways at the gunshot, prompting another wave of nausea through him as the icy pain flushed clear up to his shoulder the moment she settled back to all four.
On the far side of the mule the bowman skidded to a stop, backed one step, then a second, when he collapsed backward, a dark stain spreading on the left side of his chest. There he thrashed and gurgled a moment before the second attacker emerged from the tree line.
Free of the tangle of lodgepole and aspen, the horseman brutally kicked his pony. This second attacker did not wear a war shirt—only a buffalo-fur vest that flapped open with the rhythm of the gallop as he brought the forestock of his muzzle loader down to rest on the crook of his bare left arm—racing toward the open ground where the white man and that mule began to dance in a tight circle.
Yelling at Samantha didn’t help settle the mule, but it was nonetheless as loud as that Arapaho war cry.
Flinging the empty pistol aside, the trapper wrapped his left hand around the shaft and gave it another mighty heave. Unable to budge the arrow.
He had no weapon but his knife now. His rifle was propped against the distant brush, his camp ax lay a few yards closer among a small pile of float-sticks. Both weapons might as well have been on the other side of those peaks for all the good they could do him now.
If he couldn’t free the arrow from the packsaddle, he had to free his hand.
Clenching his teeth, Scratch threw a shoulder into the mule’s ribs to turn her, putting Samantha between him and the oncoming horseman for the moment—then snapped the shaft off just above his bleeding hand.
He tasted sour, stinging bile as he dragged his right hand up the short section of arrow, over the frayed splinters, and it was free.
Dragging in a huge breath to push back the warm, liquid unconsciousness he realized was about to overwhelm him, Titus looked at the rifle. Saw it was too far. And realized the camp ax lay too far away too.
Now that the mule had danced them around part of a tight circle, Bass found himself staring down at the dead warrior.
Leaping aside, dodging right, then left, as the horseman approached, Titus gave the warrior nothing more than a moving target as he raced by.
Once the horseman shot past and was wrenching back on his single rein, Scratch lunged for the dead bowman. Skidding onto his knees, he peeled back those fingers locked around that tomahawk handle, one by one, until he ripped the weapon free of the death grip.
Wheeling in a crouch, he found the horseman had turned, kicking his pony savagely, coming back for another try with his short-barreled rifle. Bass dodged, the warrior swerved, swinging the weapon’s muzzle toward the white man as he started his pass—
Scratch was already leaping, that left arm swinging, planting the brass-headed tomahawk under the two bare brown arms crooked to hold the rifle on its target.