“Si, my friend. Man finds himself a place his heart’s at peace, like you done,” Bass finally admitted softly, “that man best be about putting down some roots.”
“We watched your bunch ride through the pass for to steal the horses,” Hezekiah declared late the next night when Williams and Smith finally stopped the herd to give them and the men a few hours of rest. “An’ we watched you coming back again with all them horses. Figgered we might as well pick off a few of those Mexican horses from you ourselves.”
“You and your red niggers was gonna steal some of our horses?” demanded Henry Daws.
The white men gathered at the two fires fell quiet while the Negro slowly turned toward Philip Thompson’s group.
“Ain’t that just like a Neegra!” Thompson himself cawed, made bold in the company of so many friends. “Go an’ steal what another man’s got by his own sweat!”
The others cackled with Thompson.
“You had plenty ’nough,” Christmas said, easing round to the fire once more.
“Don’t turn your back on me, you wuthless black son of a bitch!” Thompson growled. “I’ll teach you to—”
“Stay where you are,” Bass warned as he lunged to his feet, swallowed hard, and inched his hand toward the butt of that pistol stuffed in his belt.
“What? The ol’ man’s gonna stick up for this black-assed bastard!” Thompson roared, half bent with laughter.
“No, he ain’t,” Christmas claimed, his back still turned on Thompson. “No man’s gotta stick up for me.”
That dashed cold water on Thompson’s raw laughter. “What’d you say to me, you black bastard?”
Now Hezekiah turned to peer over his shoulder. “Afore I come to California—I run onto lots of stupid white men like you. Whorin’ and drinkin’ up an’ down the Mississap.”
Bass watched how the firelight played off the growing red of Thompson’s face.
“Black nigger or red nigger,” Thompson growled, his hand tightening around the handle of his knife. “Neither one wuth the trouble it takes to kill ’em.”
Titus turned toward the man, his pistol in plain view now, warning, “You aim to get to Hezekiah, gonna have to come through me first.”
Easing his knife out of its rawhide scabbard, Thompson said to the men on either side of him, “If Bass yanks on that belt gun, you fellas shoot ’im dead.”
John Bowers and Samuel Gibbon both grinned, leveling their rifles at Scratch. Bowers said, “Be glad to ’blige him, Phil. Be glad to.”
With that crooked smile widening, Thompson took another step toward Hezekiah—
“You gonna get yourself killed,” Bill Williams warned him as he stood suddenly at the edge of the fire.
Tom Smith put his hand on Williams’s arm. “You damn well better stay out of it, Bill. Phil’s been wanting to cut his way into Bass for some time now.”
“Ever since Bass stole back them horses from us at Robidoux’s fort,” Thompson confessed.
Williams protested, “I recollect there was a hull bunch of others took ’em back from us ’sides Bass—”
“But none of them bastards ever been standing so close to me as Titus Bass is right now.”
Scratch asked, “That’s et on you ever since, ain’t it? What me and Meek and Joe Walker all done to you,”
“Too damn long.” Thompson’s crooked smile grew cruel. “So I’ll cut this black bastard’s throat … then I’ll open you up like a gutted hog.”
“The man’s good with a knife,” Williams warned out of the corner of his mouth. “Damn, damn good, Scratch.”
For a moment, Bass glanced at the eyes of the others as they pointed their rifles his way. Then he stared at Thompson while he told Williams, “I ain’t never been partial to knives myself, Bill. But I allays hold my own in a fight. The rest of you,”—and he waved both arms to the other white men who were still gathered close—“just back off now. Give us some room for this li’l fandango Thompson wants to dance with me.”
“Watch that Neegra!” Felix Warren bawled as Hezekiah rose to his feet.
“I’ll kill the black nigger myself, Phil,” Pete Harris offered.
“Just keep Bass out of it till I’ve cut this black-assed bastard into li’l red pieces.”
As he slowly withdrew his own knife from his belt, Christmas asked, “He really good with a knife, Titus Bass?”
“Dunno, Hezekiah. Never see’d much fight in the man,” Bass goaded, hoping his words might well prod Thompson into a blind lather. “He’s always give up when it’s come down to real fighting.”
“G-give up?” Thompson squealed like a stuck pig, twisting his big knife this way and that in the firelight.
“Always let others do your fighting for you, ain’cha, Thompson!” Titus needled.
“Gonna kill you my own self here an’ now—”
As the tall white man started toward Bass standing at the left side of the fire pit, Christmas surprised everyone by suddenly shoving Titus aside. That muscular heave sent Scratch sprawling into the legs of some bystanders as Hezekiah sprang into what open ground lay between the two white men—landing in a crouch, his skinning knife out before him. A weapon only half the size of Thompson’s huge butcher’s blade.
The trapper stopped, then a wicked smile slowly came across his face as he lumbered forward, feinting first this way, then that, side to side as he slowly advanced.
“Hezekiah—no!” Bass cried out in desperation as more of the California Indians appeared at the edge of the light.
Dick Owens bellowed, “Kill ’im, Phil!”
With a wild lunge, Thompson made a wide swipe with the butcher knife. Christmas vaulted backward as the white man’s arm shot past in a blur, angling up the tip of his smaller knife so that it raked the underside of Thompson’s forearm. With an anguished gasp, the trapper turned the wound over to inspect it there by the firelight, his eyes narrowing less in pain than in growing fury.
“Awright, you black sack of assholes,” he grumbled. “You want me kill you first so bad—”
But Thompson was interrupted and kept from moving from that spot when Bill Williams bolted forward, pistol in hand. The instant the muzzle was jammed against Thompson’s ribs, the trapper’s mouth stopped moving. Nothing more than a round, wide hole in Thompson’s face as his eyes glared down at the pistol and the hand that held that weapon.
“Leave ’im go, Solitaire!” Smith demanded. “This ain’t none of our goddamn business.”
“Drop the knife, Phil,” Williams ordered, ignoring his partner.
Smith stepped closer in the next heartbeat. With his hand on his own pistol and a harsh edge to his voice, he said, “Maybeso I didn’t make it so clear, Bill. I said this weren’t none of our business.”
That’s when Williams finally turned to glare at Smith. “I’m making it my business, Peg-Leg. You got a problem with that, then you can take it up with me soon as I blow a goddamn hole in Thompson’s lights.”
“Y-you taking sides in something ain’t your affair,” Thompson hissed at Williams.
“He’s right, Solitaire,” Smith warned. “You’re coming down on the wrong side of things here. I ain’t gonna let you take the Neegra’s side on this.”
Pulling a pistol from his belt, Scratch declared, “Peg-Leg, it’s Thompson on the wrong side all the way ’round. I won’t stand for no man—Thompson or you—bringing harm to the fella what pulled our hash out of the fire yesterday morning.”
“You think hard on that, Peg-Leg,” Williams advised. “You an’ Thompson ’bout to pull some soft-brained stunt. A damn fine way to thank the man what brung all these Injuns to help us throw back the greasers.”
“They even saved your miserable life, Thompson,” Bass growled.
“I wanna see your blood soaking into the dirt under my feet, Titus Bass,” the trapper growled, twisting his big knife this way and that in the air.
“G’won back to your fire,” Williams ordered.
“Now, dammi
t! I told you, Solitaire,” Smith snarled. “I’m leading this outfit too an’ I say Thompson don’t have to go nowhere—”
Ignoring his partner, Williams interrupted by saying, “Told you go back to your fire, Thompson. Now get!”
For a moment, Thompson glared down at the pistol pressed into his ribs, then into Williams’s face. Finally …“Awright.”
As he turned on his heel, Thompson roughly shoved Bill’s pistol aside, then slid the butcher knife back into its rawhide sheath.
Williams peered over at Smith. “Spit it on out, Peg-Leg. Like a mouthful of hornets—’pears you got some trouble with me.”
“Wasn’t none of yours to—”
“I made it mine.”
Titus took a step closer to Smith. “Sounds to me you don’t figger we owe our lives to Hezekiah Christmas?”
The one-legged trapper peered at the tall Negro with growing disdain. “Don’t owe nothing to none of these red niggers,” he grumbled. “ ‘Specially don’t owe a thing to no black-assed renegade run off to live in the blanket with these Digger Injuns.”
Bass watched Smith pivot away on his wooden pin. “Don’t understand you, Peg-Leg.” He waited until the redheaded trapper stopped and looked over his shoulder at him before he said, “We just come out of Californy with the biggest herd anyone ever stole … so we should be having us a hurraw right about now ’stead of fixin’ to kill a friend what came to—”
“That black son of a bitch ain’t no friend of mine!” Thompson roared from the nearby fire.
“Last I’ll say is that son of a bitch and his red niggers better be turning back where they come from afore first light when we push on,” Smith warned.
Just as Titus was opening his mouth to speak, Christmas beat him to it by saying, “We turning back, that’s for sure. That desert down there ain’t fit for the likes of man or horse, neither one. I ain’t gonna waste the life of one of my men to help your sorry white asses from here on out. Come morning—you won’t have to worry none ’bout Hezekiah Christmas and his mansos.”
Smith dragged the back of a hand beneath his nose in a gesture of real disdain. “Make sure you ain’t here come sunrise.” With that said, he returned to the other fire where he stood with his back to Williams and the rest.
“I go bed down out there with my men,” Christmas quietly told Titus.
“You’re welcome to sleep here with us—”
“No, we ain’t welcome here with any of you,” Hezekiah interrupted, beginning to step away.
Bass caught his bare, brown arm. “Promise me you won’t leave afore we said our farewells.”
Christmas’s eyes flicked aside to stare over Bass’s shoulder at the distant fire where Smith and Thompson stood among like-minded men. He finally gazed at Scratch. “Come morning, we’ll say our good-byes … one more time, Titus Bass.”
Scratch awoke with a start, twitching as the long arm locked around his neck. Sensing the pressure of the butcher’s knife’s sharp edge press against the bottom of his windpipe there just below the muscular arm that imprisoned his head.
“How’s it feel to know this gonna be the last breath you ever take on earth, Titus Bass?”
He stared up into the dimly lit face of Philip Thompson, watching the firelight and shadow flicker across the cheekbones, the cruel curve of the lips as the man gleefully sneered down at Bass.
“You’re a cockless woman, Thompson,” he cursed, raspy with the sharp pressure against his throat. “Sneaking up on a sleepin’ man so it can’t be no fair fight.”
“Gonna cut your throat,” Thompson promised. “Like shooting a mad wolf. Don’t have to be no fair fight to kill a mad wolf.”
When Scratch slowly started to raise his right hand, he felt Thompson shove down on his throat with the knife, sensed the sharp edge press into the skin.
“I’ll cut you afore you get that damned hand in the air,” Thompson vowed. “Just want you be lookin’ into my face when I split you open … so I can watch you die—”
A sudden gasp burst from Thompson’s lungs, his eyes grown as big as Mexican dollars. On instinct alone, Scratch instantly twisted into Thompson’s arm, raking the butcher knife across his throat as the big trapper went taut above him. A second, putty-wet slap made Thompson jerk a second time, his mouth dropping open as his eyes started to roll back in their sockets.
Shoving his elbow into Thompson’s ribs, Bass felt the man’s rigid muscles suddenly sag. He shoved himself out from under the trapper and rolled onto his hip, gasping for breath and putting his fingertips against the damp flesh wound gaping across his throat.
Two short arrows protruded from Thompson’s back, halfway above midline, both buried deep.
The trapper sank to the side as his eyes went white.
Bass glanced at the fingers he took away from his neck wound, finding his flesh smeared with blood. Then in disbelief he looked over his shoulder, finding Hezekiah standing at the edge of that corona of firelight, a third arrow nocked in the bowstring, held at ready. Behind him stood an arch of more than a dozen of his warriors, the strings of their bows pulled taut to their cheekbones.
He finally sucked in a deep breath of air, shocked at how good it felt. How could he have been so foolish to sleep so hard that Thompson got the jump on him? Was it that he believed he was among friends—safe enough here, far from Blackfoot country? With Thompson ready to make good on his threats, how could he have allowed himself to drop his guard?
For what seemed like a long, long time, the only sound besides his own ragged breathing was the crackle of the two fires, dry cedar popping sparks into the black of that desert night beneath a milky quarter-moon. Bass peered up at Hezekiah, the deepest of unspoken gratitude for the bowman in his eyes.
Then his attention was drawn away to the far side of their encampment—finding Felix Warren and Frank Curnutt standing stock still there at the edge of the flickering light. Warren had a pistol in his right hand, a tomahawk in his left. Curnutt held only his round-barreled smoothbore.
Titus swallowed hard, then growled, “You niggers keeping watch to make sure Thompson kill’t me?”
The two didn’t say a thing. Didn’t move a muscle either. Instead, they kept staring at Bass, looking to the Indians, and glaring at the big, baldheaded Negro.
“Speak up, fellas,” Bill Williams ordered as he emerged into the firelight. “Answer the man’s question.”
Curnutt started to wag his head, not as if he were denying a thing. Only a gesture of futility.
“You was in deep with Thompson, wasn’t you?” Titus demanded, clambering to his feet. “Fixing to murder me together.”
“N-no,” said Warren. “Only Thompson. We knowed he was gonna kill Bass but we was only—”
“But that Neegra kill’t Thompson!” Curnutt squealed with anguish. “Kill’t a white man!”
“Sounds to me like what Thompson was fixin’ to do was murder,” Williams growled, watching Smith hobble into the light. “How ’bout you, Peg-Leg?”
Smith wagged his head with reluctance. “Ain’t really murder when it’s atween two fellas, Bill.”
“Wasn’t no fair fight—that Neegra shootin’ Thompson!” Warren protested.
“You fellas almost had you a hand in this bastard killing me,” Bass grumbled as he started around the fire for Felix Warren.
Both Curnutt and Warren started to move, but immediately realized Williams had his two pistols pointed at them. They stared at the muzzles while Bill said, “When a nigger jumps a man in his sleep—’thout it being a fair fight … that’s a murder, any way you lay your sights, Peg-Leg.”
“Tell you what, you sonsabitches.” Bass stopped some twelve feet from Warren and Curnutt. “I’ll give you a better chance’n you and Thompson was gonna give me.”
“I’ll kill you, you come any closer,” Curnutt warned with a high, feral pitch in his voice.
Titus snorted with a raw gust of laughter, saying, “I ain’t gonna kill you like you niggers was gon
na do me.”
“You want me take their guns?” asked Jake Corn as he stepped up.
Curnutt’s and Warren’s eyes flicked here and there around them as they watched the other Americans gather close, imploring Thompson’s other comrades.
“Maybeso we better, Jake,” Williams decided. “Don’t let us have no trouble outta you two.”
At first both men refused to let go of their weapons when Corn and. Coltrane hurried in to grab hold of the firearms and that tomahawk.
“I’d as soon kill you both right now my own self,” Williams warned.
Smith lunged into the compact group, shoving Jake and Roscoe away as he protested, “These two ain’t done nothing to Bass, nothing to any one of you!”
“Get outta the way, Peg-Leg,” Williams demanded. “They don’t drop them guns—you’re likely to get hurt too when I start shootin’.”
Peg-Leg whirled on Williams. “M-me? Y-you ’pear to be forgetting just who the hell’s the brains in this here outfit—”
“Shuddup, Peg-Leg. I ain’t got no more stomach for you,” Williams snapped. “Clear outta the way.”
Smith took a long moment to stare into the muzzles of those two pistols Williams held before him, then back into the old trapper’s face. “Got no more stomach for me? W-what’s that mean? Why, you’d been nothin’ weren’t it for me asking you to ride along to California with me!”
“That tears the blanket, Peg-Leg. You go your way and the rest of us go ours.”
“Go my own way? You’re talking crazy, Solitaire! You can’t mean … dammit, most of them horses belong to me!”
“Fair is fair, Bill,” Titus said as he came up to stand beside Williams. “Let him have his rightful share afore you send him off.”
“Send me off?” Smith’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Send me off, is it? You low-down back-stabbin’ Diggers! None of you have any of them horses weren’t for my hand in leadin’ you all to California!”
“Just be satisfied I don’t do to you what Thompson was gonna do to me or Hezekiah … all because you been covering his back ever’ step of the way,” Bass stated.
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