Ride the Moon Down (29 page)

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.

Sensing the broad blade crunch through bone, Bass drove the weapon into the naked chest with all that left arm and both shoulders could muster—toppling the horseman as he ripped downward with the tomahawk.

Even as the rider landed on his back, he had both hands locked around Bass’s wrist as he struggled to pull the tomahawk from his rib cage. Spewing bloody, gurgling oaths, the warrior struggled with an unheralded fury in his final moments.

With his strong left arm imprisoned by the enemy, Bass reached at the back of his belt with the injured right hand for his thin-bladed skinning knife, pulled it from the sheath decorated with brass tacks.

In that instant the trapper’s knife hung frozen above
him, the warrior relaxed his grip on the white man’s left wrist—staring transfixed at the weapon poised above him.

Driving the blade deep into that notch at the base of the Indian’s throat, Scratch yanked and pulled with all his might, savagely tearing back and forth, slashing the windpipe that wheezed with a last rush of air, severing thumb-thick arteries that gushed free those last tremulous pumps of a heart not yet stilled.

Hot blood splattered him with such force that he was blinded as he tumbled back from the horseman’s body.

Landing on his side, Bass heaved for wind. Resting on his right elbow, he dragged his left forearm across his eyes, clearing them of crimson spray.

A few feet away the warrior lay motionless on his back—totally still but for the quivering flex of the fingers on both hands that once had gripped the white man’s wrist, still but for the tremble of his lips as they fought to speak unuttered words in that deadly silence suspended between killer and killed.

He began to catch his breath, the thunder slowly diminishing in his ears. Staring at the dying man, Scratch grew aware of the breeze quietly nuzzling the branches of the surrounding trees. Aware that the warrior’s pony had come to a stop near Samantha and contentedly tore at the short new grass emerging at the border of the old snow still crusted in a dirty, ragged line at the edge of the tree shadows.

Eventually he realized that in staring at the horseman’s bloody chest, he was noticing something odd, something out of place. There above the abdomen smeared with the splatter of glistening crimson, some of the copper flesh was not near as dark as the rest.

Rocking onto his knees, Titus crabbed over to the warrior and studied that skin. Scarred—perhaps by hanging himself from a sun-dance pole. Then he suddenly realized those scars covered more flesh than sun-dance punctures high on the pectoral muscles.

There was even something of a pattern to them.

With his bloody right hand Scratch swiped at some of the spatter of thick, congealing blood. It took another
swipe with his left hand to remove enough of the blood to see what lay beneath it.

That lighter skin did form a pattern across the warrior’s cinnamon-colored chest.

Shoving aside both flaps of the warrior’s buffalo-fur vest, he quickly rubbed away more of the blood.

“Goddamn,” he whispered, stunned.

Scratch raised his face to the sky deepening suddenly with the sun’s last whimper, its crown just disappearing over the distant peaks.

When he opened his eyes again, Bass laid both of his palms flat against the two scars.

“This were a brave man, Grandfather,” he said in no more than a whisper. “He lived them many winters you gave him after I handed the bastard back his life. Tol’t him to go back to his people, so he could tell ’em the story of all I done to the nigger what took my ha’r.”

Removing his hands from the scars, Titus gazed down once more at T and the B he had scraped in this warrior’s chest many summers ago when he had finally taken his revenge on the scalper.

“I hope you saw fit to let him have children, Grandfather,” he whispered. “Brave man what had to drag hisself back to his village. Maybeso he crawled till someone come out looking for him. A brave man ought’n have children.”

Such a warrior had some mighty powerful medicine.

Bass sensed the chill drag its finger down his spine like a drip of ice water. He turned suddenly to look over his shoulder as if he had been warned.

Likely more of them. Where there were two, there would be more. And if they didn’t start looking for these two dead men tonight, they surely would be coming at first light. From the sign he had run across the last few days, these two might even belong to that hunting party working this side of the mountain.

With a shudder he stood, already feeling regret that he would have to endure another night wrapped in his buffalo robe and blanket rather than enjoying the comfort of a small fire. He needed to get back up to the rocks where
he had camped, throw everything together, and get as far from there as he could before sunup.

The Arapaho’s pony was skittish as he approached, but with its long loop of rein played out on the ground, Scratch was able to bring the animal close and tie it off to Samantha for companionship. Slowly inching alongside the nervous horse, he stopped. Brushing his hand across the half robe the warrior had draped across the horse’s back, the trapper suddenly realized what he had yet to do.

“Easy, boy,” he whispered as he gently dragged the long section of buffalo hide from the animal’s back, turned, and gazed at the line of trees gone to shadow.

There in the dusk he knew he didn’t stand a chance finding any of those lodgepole or aspen with limbs big enough. And he sure didn’t have time to waste cutting branches and lashing together some lattice to construct a tree scaffold. Besides, he told himself, the others would be coming along tomorrow, and odds were they would undo all that Bass would attempt to do now.

Still, he realized he must do what he could do.

A brave man deserved a proper burial, especially if he was buried by the man who had killed him.

What one warrior did for another.

As an inky twilight deepened, in the distance he spotted a tangle of boulders that had torn themselves away from the mountainside above him aeons ago. The top of those rocks would have to do. As good a place to offer up the body to the elements as any man could ever want, as good as any brave warrior could ask.

As he struggled to lift the body, to hoist it over his shoulder, then onto the back of the pony, Titus found his right hand growing numb, the hot pain diminishing the more he demanded of the hand. After making his first ascent to decide upon the best route to reach the top of the boulders, Bass laid the buffalo hide on the gently arched crown of the highest rock, then returned for the body.

Looping the end of his rawhide rope under the dead man’s arms, he dragged the body to the bottom of the boulders, then began to climb. As he reached a narrow shelf, he would turn and haul back on the rope, bringing
the body up behind him. Once it lay at his feet, Scratch climbed a little higher. Then hoisted the warrior too. Higher and higher still, until he finally heaved the body onto the edge of that tallest boulder.

Turning his back on the faint light of that band of sky in the west, he stared to the east and smiled with satisfaction. It was good: here the sun would not be blocked as it rose come morning.

Flipping the buffalo robe fur side up, he stretched it out to its full length, then dragged the body atop the hide so the warrior’s feet would point to the east, greeting the morning sun.

For a few minutes he remained there, catching his breath while the air grew cold, that last bit of early-spring warmth sucked out of the earth with the onrush of night. Finally Titus started to slide back down, knowing what he had to do.

He would gather up the enemies’ weapons, strip the first man of any tradable clothing, then search for the second Arapaho pony before he led the two animals and Samantha back to the rocky outcrop where he had pitched his temporary camp. There he would tie everything onto the mule and ponies, then ride downslope through the night.

Maybe the time had come for him to get moving anyway.

Wasn’t going to be healthy for him to lollygag around this part of the country for some seasons to come.

“White wim-men?” she parroted back the two English words she heard so many of the trappers around her shouting at that moment.

“Yep,” Bass told his wife. “They say some white womens gonna be here soon.”

Waits-by-the-Water noticed how his green eyes narrowed with concern as he stared toward the mesa bordering the eastern edge of the river valley.

In Crow she asked, “You Americans really do have white women?”

He looked at her quizzically. “Course we do. Mothers and sisters. Only ones what don’t grow up to be wives are the ones what become whores.”

“Whores—I never heard that word from your tongue before.”

“A woman what lays with a man for the money he pays her,” and he turned his eyes away, staring at the growing bustle of activity as the electrifying news spread.