Ride the Moon Down

by Terry C. Johnston

  Now as the others closed on him, in that long flintlock rifle Titus found himself holding no more than a long and very heavy club. Leaning to the right, he dropped out of the saddle and landed with most of his weight on the uninjured leg. But when he slapped the pony on the rump and sent it away, then started to step backward as he clawed at his side for the powder horn, the wounded calf gave way as soon as his weight was momentarily shifted onto it.

  Pitching into the snow, Scratch realized he had no time to reload the long-range weapon. He dropped the rifle to the ground beside him, rolled onto his knees, and futilely tore at the flaps of his coat with both mittens, scrambling clumsily to seize the weapons tucked in that wide leather belt secured around the outside of his coat. Stuffing each of the mittens under an armpit, he tore them from his hands just before dragging the two big pistols from his belt, raking back the hammer on the right one.

  At that moment the Blackfoot collided with the two ends of the Crow line, smashing into those two horns of the crescent.

  Scratch took aim at a target closing on him, a round-faced warrior wearing a blanket cap and swinging a stone war club with a long elk-horn handle. That first pistol ball struck the warrior under the armpit, spinning him so violently he struggled vainly to clutch at the pony’s mane as the animal clattered past and the man bounced loose. Ten yards behind Bass the warrior spun to the ground, tumbling across the snow.

  More shrieking yanked Scratch about to find another warrior with his bow strung, its arrow drawn back against its string to form a sharp, two-sided vee. Swapping the pistols, Bass ripped the hammer back and pulled the trigger—an instant after the string snapped forward.

  Flinging himself backward, Bass fell into the snow as the arrow slammed into the icy crust between his knees.

  For a heartbeat he stared at the quiver of the shaft and its fletching, then jerked up to find the bowman on top of him, slashing out with the bow. Twisting to the side out of its way, Titus watched the warrior coming off the pony, flying spreadeagled through the air, that bow at the end of one outstretched arm.

  He slammed into the white man, driving the air from their lungs as Scratch rolled them over, throwing his arm behind him to find his knife. Instead, his fingers struck the frosty head of the belt ax.

  The muscular Blackfoot grabbed the white man’s throat with one hand, his fingers closing around the windpipe as the warrior began to flail at the white man’s head with the bow in blinding flashes.

  Dragging the ax into his hand, Titus swung wildly, eventually slamming the side of the blade against the warrior’s head. In bringing his arm back for another blow, he twisted the tomahawk in his hand. This time the blade sank deep, splattering hot blood and brain matter into Bass’s face.

  He had to unlock the dead man’s legs from his before he could struggle to his knees and wrench up the first of the pistols. With some of the Blackfoot retreating back down the hill into the flat where more of their number were fighting furiously against the trap that had closed around them, some of those who were dismounted were taking cover behind the huge buffalo carcasses rising like dark, hairy boulders against the bloody snow.

  With that first pistol reloaded and stuffed into his belt, Bass lunged across the Indian’s body to scoop up the second pistol. After blowing snow from the pan, he reloaded it, snapped the frizzen down over the pan again, and jammed it into his belt. Back up the hill a few yards lay the rifle, its barrel buried in the snow right up to the lock’s hammer.

  “White man!”

  He looked up to find Strikes-in-Camp gleefully reining his pony to a halt nearby.

  The young warrior asked, “Where is your horse, white man?”

  “I fight better on foot,” Bass growled.

  “Forget your firearms,” Strikes snarled. “Come with me and fight the enemy close today! Come fight like a real man!”

  With a wild laugh the warrior spun his horse around savagely, kicking it in the ribs as he shot back down the slope toward the hottest of the fighting.

  By then Pretty On Top and the others had driven the Blackfoot back, throwing them against the warriors Whistler and Turns Plenty led. They had the Blackfoot surrounded. On the hillside above him the women were screaming, keening, crying out to their men.

  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.

  Bass realized his mistake the instant Strikes-in-Camp recognized him.

  The young warrior’s eyes narrowed into slits and his bruised face drew up into a sneer.

  There would never be any gratitude from that man for the one who had saved his life.

  “Why were you the one who saved me?” Strikes-in-Camp growled as he shoved away the hands of those warriors who were steadying him on his feet.

  Bass turned away, shaking his head in disgust. “Your father needs help.”

  “Why did it have to be you, white man?” the words slammed him in the back.

  The white man stopped, turned to confront Whistler’s son. “You are a Crow warrior,” Scratch explained as it grew still around them. “Your uncle was my friend. Your father, he is my friend.”

  “Perhaps it would have been better for me to die than to be saved by you!”

  Grimly Titus said, “One day you might just get your wish, Strikes-in-Camp.”

  “Pote Ani!”

  He spotted Pretty On Top and Windy Boy riding his way through the litter of carcasses and bodies, both Crow and Blackfoot. “Both of you, up the hill—help Whistler!”

  The young warriors turned, spying the older man. Immediately they kicked their ponies into a lope across the side of the knoll. Leaping to the ground, the two of them helped steady the wounded man who held fast to his horse with only his arms, his legs no longer able to respond. As Scratch started up the hill, Whistler put out one arm to grip Pretty On Top’s shoulders and leaned off the horse, sliding to the ground with a deep pain graying his face.

  “Rest, friend,” Bass said softly as he knelt beside his father-in-law. Quickly he turned to Windy Boy. “Go—bring us one of the Blackfoot travois and a pony to hitch it to. And bring two of those green buffalo hides. We must make Whistler as comfortable as we can for his ride home.”

  The young warrior leaped onto his pony and wheeled away as Pretty On Top stepped up behind the white man’s shoulder. Across the valley the women were screaming wildly, turning to flee like a scattered nest of sow bugs as the victorious Crow warriors galloped toward them, sweeping up on both sides to capture the enemy squaws.

  But here on the slope with Whistler, it grew still while the sun eased out of the sky and the air seemed so very cold of a sudden.

  The warrior reached up and gripped Scratch’s forearm. “I don’t know if I can make that long journey home.”

  “You will.”

  “My s-son?”

  “He is alive, and he will live,” Bass responded, placing his hands on Whistler’s bleeding hip. “Just as you will live.”

  “Did … did my son fight well? Or did he fight foolishly?”

  Titus looked up at Pretty On Top.

  The young warrior bent down to declare, “Strikes-in-Camp fought well against the enemy, Whistler.”

  The old warrior closed his eyes, then clenched them tight as a spasm of pain volted through him. When it had passed, he sighed and opened his eyes. “I am glad. It would not be a good thing for us both to be killed in the same battle.”

  Bass could see that the lead ball had crashed through the side of Whistler’s hip but had not exited. It lay somewhere inside his gut. And the top of that left leg had been shattered by the bullet’s path. Of all the men he had known who survived injuries to live full lives without part of an arm, without part of a leg … Titus had never known of a man who had lost all of a leg, right up to the hip.

  The warrior whispered, “You will tell Crane?”

  “You can tell her yourself—”

  “Tell Crane that I loved her.”

  “We’ll be back to the village soon—”

  “Promise me you will tell her,” Whistler interrupted, squeezing on Bass’s forearm with a bloody hand.

  Titus felt the bitterness start to fill his chest, the utter senselessness of it. And ag
ain he realized that a man knew when he was about to die. No matter what he might say, there was no convincing Whistler that he would make it home.

  “Promise me you’ll tell my daughter what happened here,” he pleaded. “And in the summers to come, you’ll tell your daughter about me.”

  Scratch started to choke. “I … I’ll tell her what a fine man she had for a grand … grandfather.”

  “It’s so cold,” he said.

  And Scratch remembered how Josiah had uttered the very same words. “We’ll have you warm soon. Just hold on to me and we’ll get you some robes, and start a fire—”

  “Where is my son?”

  “He’ll be here soon—”

  “I want to see my son before I die.”

  “We’ll get him,” Bass promised. “Now, you just do your best not to fall asleep yet.”

  “But I am tired,” Whistler confessed. “So very tired.”

  “A man should be tired. It was a long journey you led us on,” Scratch said, turning quickly to see more than a dozen others coming up the side of the slope toward them. He could feel the sting of those first tears. “And a mighty battle you took us into.”

  “Wait … I find it hard to see you, Pote Ani—”

  “I’m right here, Whistler.”

  The warrior sighed again, the death rattle in his chest. “I hear your voice, but I do not see you so well anymore. But there, just ahead of me—wait. I see the green hills.”

  Turning slightly, Scratch looked to see where Whistler was pointing with his shaking hand. Nothing but the deepening indigo sky behind the cold, barren, snowy hills.

  “Yes,” Titus said in a harsh whisper, his throat clogged suddenly. “I—I can see the hills too, Whistler.”

  “Do you see him?”

  Bass turned and looked off again in that direction. “See who?”

  “There,” the warrior whispered. “It’s my brother.”

  “You see Ara—” Suddenly he caught himself in saying the dead man’s name, realizing the grim significance of that vision. “You can see He-Who-Is-No-Longer-With-Us?”