Ride the Moon Down (66 page)

Scratch flicked his eyes to the front blade, laying it within the notch at the bottom of the buckhorn rear sight, and poked his finger inside the front of the trigger guard. The closest horseman was starting to lean off his pony, the
bowstring taut, his left arm straightened at his groggy target on the ground.

The moment the rifle roared, Sweete jerked awake. “Balls of thunder!”

Hearing the woman clatter up behind him, Titus turned, finding her arms filled with six long weapons. Leaning the empty rifle against the side of the wash, he quickly took the six from her, standing them in a row. With a loaded one in hand, he turned back to find the bowman had toppled into the sage, those closest around him reining their horses aside as they bawled in rage at the white men.

Shad crawled backward a few yards, starting away from the draw to snag his rifle from the sage, then struggled to stand onto one leg, dragging himself up hand over hand on the long-barreled flintlock. Pivoting, he hobbled into motion, lunging step by step toward the mouth of the wash.

“Goddammit!” Scratch bellowed. “Don’t you lollygag, Shadrach!”

As the big man approached, Bass suddenly recognized how pasty Sweete’s face was—almost the color of that pale limestone of the Ohio River valley.

Four of them were coming, swiftly snapping into focus over the tall man’s shoulders. Bobbing side to side, they weaved atop their ponies, galloping straight for the lone white man. Shoving the second rifle against his shoulder, Bass felt inside the guard, finding this weapon did not have a set trigger. An arrow hissed into the sage at the big man’s lumbering feet. Another phtted against the wall of the wash near Bass’s head where it quivered inches from his eyes.

Instinctively, Titus wheeled the rifle, pinning the front blade onto that bowman’s chest, and pulled the single trigger.

With a shrill cry the horseman toppled to the side off his pony, bounced once in the sage, then sprawled for a moment before he began to crawl slowly back from the mouth of the wash, blood smearing the frozen ground as he bravely retreated.

Bursting into the open, Scratch sprinted toward the big man. When he reached out with his arm, looping it around Shad, his left hand struck the arrow shaft, causing Sweete to emit an inhuman cry.

“Jehoshaphat—you’re hit!”

Swallowing down that gush of pain as they hobbled into the wash together, Shad growled between clenched teeth, “You idjit! Figger I’m out there lollygagging on a Sunday stroll all for nothing?”

“Had me no idee you was out catching arrows, Shadrach,” Bass apologized, helping him to collapse onto the good hip. “Woman!”

As Sweete groaned behind him, Waits was there in a heartbeat, handing him a third rifle and standing the empty weapon beside the first. He could see she had looped the strap of her shooting pouch over her shoulder. Turning her back on the men now, she yanked the stopper from the powder horn in her teeth and poured the black grains into a large brass measure that hung by a thin cord from her pouch strap.

Clicking back the hammer on the loaded rifle, Bass glanced at his children, finding Magpie huddled against the side of the draw and clutching Flea on her lap, both of them nearly hidden by a blanket Waits had draped over them and some brush.

Kneeling beside the wounded man, Scratch gripped Shad’s knee. “What you figger to do with that arrow?”

“This’un?” Sweete said, holding up the long, bloody, headless shaft.

“Damn if you ain’t pulled it!”

Wagging his head, Shad said, “Nope—broke it.”

“Save the goddamned thing, Shadrach. You’re gonna wanna bite down on it when I go to digging in your hip with my skinner.”

The big man’s eyes went half-closed as he said, “Maybeso I can pray I’ll just bleed to death … or pray these goddamned Injuns kill me a’fore you get your knife in me—”

“You gonna be wuth a damn with that rifle of your’n?” he shut Sweete right up as he pivoted onto one
knee and brought his own weapon up, hearing the approach of the pounding hooves.

“Them stupid niggers hurt me—” he bawled. “You goddamned right I’m gonna hurt ’em back!”

“I don’t wanna waste two balls on one of the bastards,” Scratch warned. “Which one you want?”

“You take that’un with the purty feathers round his head, and I’ll bust the one with that red blanket.”

At the last moment another warrior crossed his pony in front of the one wearing that wild spray of turkey feathers like a halo at the back of his head. Bass quickly shifted the front blade, held for that breathless moment, and squeezed the trigger. With its explosion the rifle shoved back into the notch of his shoulder with a completely different feel than he was accustomed to.

Beside him, Sweete’s weapon roared.

Instantly Shad was dragging his pouch away from that wounded hip, the fingers of both hands crusted with his own frozen blood. “Hold ’em off while I reload!”

“Waits!” he shrieked in warning, wheeling the instant he heard the children cry, the empty rifle held out before him.

She was dropping to one knee as the muzzle of the weapon she clutched swung upward in a jagged arc. With the buttstock pressed against her hip, she fired over the heads of the children—aiming at the horseman who had just skidded to a halt at the brow of the wash, directly over Magpie’s head.

The lead ball struck the Sioux pony just below the eye, slamming the animal’s head to the side as it crumpled, the warrior leaping off as his horse flopped into the sage. With a grunt he clambered off his knees, tore an arrow from his left hand, nocking it against the bowstring he drew backward with one smooth motion.

Lunging to the side, Titus threw his shoulder against his wife, pitching Waits-by-the-Water to the ground as he yanked a pistol from his belt. Dragging back the hammer, he pulled the trigger as the bowstring snapped forward. The arrow pierced the flap of his elk-hide coat as the ball caught the warrior just below the breastbone, crumpling
him in half as he was driven backward from the brow of the wash.

“You loaded yet, Shadrach?” he cried as he reached down to pick the woman out of the brush and wheel her behind him.

“I am now!”

Shoving the empty pistol into her hand, Bass dragged the second loaded pistol from his belt, never taking his eyes off the top of the draw where the warrior had landed. Up there the only sound was the gentle pawing of the pony that lay dying in the sage, one solitary leg flexing across the flaky, frozen ground.

“Load,” he whispered to her as he stepped away, “then take a gun to him!”

The moment she nodded in understanding, he was moving in a crouch, roostering another ten yards into the brushy wash where he pulled himself up the side of the draw.

Behind him Sweete’s rifle roared, and he heard Shadrach whoop.

Slowly he hoisted himself against the hard-packed erosion of that coulee until his eyes could peer over the top. Off to his left lay the pony, totally still now. Far beyond it whirled six or seven of the horsemen, gathering among the willow and brush on the north bank of Vermillion Creek.

In that cold silence he heard the gurgle. Poking his head up a little farther, Scratch spotted the warrior less than five yards away. Lying on his back in the sage, the wounded man had drawn his knees up, clutching his belly with both hands, dark, glistening ooze creeping out between the fingers. As Bass hitched himself over the lip of the draw, the dying man slowly flopped his head from side to side, groaning, gurgling, and coughing as more of the shimmering ooze seeped from the side of his mouth, onto his bronze cheek, spilling down his neck into his unfettered hair.

Hooves pounded on the hard ground with a dull, hollow thud.

Clumsily whirling, Scratch clutched the side of the wash with his left hand as he dug in with the toes of his
moccasins. And found another horseman bursting into view on the far side of the wash.

Scratch heaved upward, dragging himself onto the top where he lay on his belly, planting his two elbows against the flinty ground, leveling the pistol at the warrior who appeared surprised to find the white man there.

Yanking back on his rein so suddenly that he almost lost his balance, the horseman struggled to hang on to his pony as it reared, then reared again. Bass fired the pistol as the warrior was catapulted into the air. The pony staggered aside, spilling onto its forelegs. Dragging its muzzle out of the sage, the wounded horse struggled back onto its legs, spinning into a retreat.

Titus immediately wished he had used the lead ball on the warrior who clambered to his feet now and staggered away, dragging a leg painfully, clutching a hip with one hand.

“Where are you, Scratch?”

The moment he twisted to crane his head over the edge of the wash, Bass heard another boom from the mouth of the draw. Below the spreading patch of oily gun smoke, Sweete handed the woman the empty weapon and took a loaded rifle from her. Below him he could make out Flea’s inconsolable whimper and Magpie’s voice attempting to soothe her little brother.

Realizing his mouth was dry, that he was breathing fast and shallow, Scratch quickly surveyed their plight. While the coulee had given them some temporary shelter the moment the war party had charged, that coulee might well be their mass grave if the horsemen were able to take up positions above them. Like shooting fish in a rain barrel.

There were six or seven of them retreating from the open ground where Sweete had spilled another warrior from his pony. Six of them, he counted carefully now—a half dozen reining up at the tree line. Likely the horsemen didn’t know they were still within range of the trappers’ big guns … then again, they might well realize it but figure the white men weren’t going to empty one of their guns attempting to shoot at them across this distance. It
appeared the milling warriors were arguing, pointing, planning. Far off to the left he watched the unhorsed warrior hobbling toward the creek, the wind shoving a black braid across the middle of his face.

“Goddammit, Scratch!” the big man’s voice called out. “You alive?”

Rolling to his left, Bass noisily slid down the side of the coulee. Magpie choked off a sob in her throat as he skidded to a stop before her, crouched, and hugged the children.

“Stay here,” he whispered in Crow. “You’re safe right here.”

“Hush! Father needs you to be quiet, Flea,” she reminded the boy as Titus continued to the mouth of the draw.

“Damn you, Bass!” Sweete growled. “Least you could’ve done was answer me—”

“I was a little tied up with two of ’em, Shadrach,” he snapped.

Sweete’s eyes instantly flicked to the deep interior of the brushy wash, up to the bare rim of the gully. “What you figger we can do?”

Glancing down at the blood smear across the big man’s blanket capote, he gazed into Sweete’s eyes. “I don’t figger you’re much for getting around right now.”

Shad reluctantly shook his head.

“Best you stay here,” he explained, motioning Waits to come over. “Tween the two of you, keep them rifles loaded—always have two of ’em ready.”

For a moment Sweete studied the middistance, staring at the horsemen gesturing and yelling among themselves. One of them broke from the group and started toward the north, racing to reach the warrior who hobbled across the sage on foot.

Shad said, “Two guns. That still leaves four of them niggers. They split up and slip around on top of the hill up there—”

“That’s four we know of,” Bass interrupted, worried to the soles of his feet. With a burst of inspiration it came to him. “I dropped one of their horses up there, Shadrach.
Maybeso I can hunker down behind that carcass where they won’t see a thing till they’re right on top of me, and I can throw some lead at ’em while they skedaddle back out of range.”

“You’re only gonna have one chance at it,” Sweete warned. “Once they know you’re up there, them Injuns either stay shy of you or … they’ll come ride you into the ground.”

“Here I figured you had some faith in me, Shadrach.”

His lips pressed into a grim line, Sweete nodded. “I do got faith in you, Scratch. Don’t you ever doubt it.”

“Waits-by-the-Water,” he said in Crow, turning to the woman, “are all the weapons loaded?”

She nodded. “Give me your belt guns and I will load them too.”

“When you do, keep them for yourself,” Bass said. “If things turn out badly”—and his eyes flicked at the children—“make sure the young ones do not suffer from these enemies.”

Laying a hand on top of his, Waits said, “We have seen one another through worse than this, husband. None of us are afraid.”

Those words reassured him, perhaps because he himself was damned scared.

“There are five loaded pistols in my saddlebags,” he said, squeezing her cold hand. “Get them. I will take two with me and leave the others with you.”

Then he turned to his partner and said in English, “Soon as she’s loaded these here two pistols, you’ll have five. I’m taking two with me, and three of them rifles.”

Nodding once, Sweete said, “Between us, we oughtta cut down the last of these bastards purty quick.”

Bass glanced at the sky, finding the pale, buttermilk-yellow globe sinking toward the west beyond the hills on the far side of the creek. “I’d sure like to drive them off a’fore nightfall. Maybe we could slip on in to the post when it gets good and dark.”

“How far you figger it to the fort?”

After calculating a few moments, he sighed. “Don’t know. Maybe ten miles.”

“That’d take half the night, less’n we run flat-out.”

“You figger it better to lay here waiting till morning—when more of ’em might show come sunup, or try to slip off and make a run for it?”

Shrugging, Sweete answered, “I don’t figger we got anything but bad choices to make right now.”

He laid a hand on the big man’s shoulder. “Then let’s see how many of them red niggers we can knock down a’fore it gets dark.”

For a moment Sweete laid his bloody paw atop Bass’s hand. “You watch your topknot, Scratch.”

With a grin he started away for the rifles. “Keep ’em busy as you can out front, and I’ll doe-see-doe with the rest.”

“Bass?”

Titus stopped in a crouch and turned there on the floor of the wash.