Black Fox charged down the slope and leaped from his pony in such haste that he almost stumbled and fell. Taking his war ax in hand, he strode angrily toward the fallen white man, intent upon bludgeoning him to death. He paused for a moment when he saw the mutilated bodies of his friends. Unable to control his anger, he threw his head back and screamed his rage to the heavens—for the young boy was his wife’s brother. Then he straddled the helpless white man, and raised his ax for the lethal blow.
“Wait,” Little Hawk said, and grabbed Black Fox’s wrist. Startled, Black Fox stared at his friend, confused by his action. “He may not have done this evil thing,” Little Hawk said. Looking around him then as the rest of the hunting party gathered to watch, he explained. “If he killed our brothers, where is the meat? The antelope is gone. Where are the scalps that were taken?” He waited a moment for a response before concluding. “I think someone else killed them, and he has only found them, the same as us.”
Black Fox was still intent upon extracting vengeance. “Maybe that is true,” he allowed, “but what does it matter? He is a white man, and probably a friend of those who did this.”
“Turn him over,” Little Hawk said. Black Fox got off Matt and rolled him over on his back. Matt’s eyelids fluttered briefly, then opened wide as he regained consciousness. He immediately tried to spring up, but was held firm by Black Fox and one of the other hunters. Little Hawk gazed into the wounded man’s face for a long moment. “This is the white warrior who killed the evil men at the trading post and burned it to the ground. It was he who gave us these rifles and ponies.” Black Fox hesitated, not sure now what to do. Little Hawk continued to argue the wounded man’s case. “I think he is hunting the men who did this.”
Held securely by the Blackfoot warriors, Matt was helpless to resist. There was blood in his right eye from the scalp wound where the second bullet grazed him, and his shoulder felt numb. He did not understand the Blackfoot tongue, so he had no idea what the discussion was, nor why the fierce-looking Indian with the ax had decided not to kill him. He figured he was done for unless by some miracle he was given an opportunity to make a break for his life. His miracle came in the form of broken English, spoken by the Indian who had had the discussion with the fierce one.
“You see me before?” Little Hawk asked. Matt, staring up at the seemingly hostile faces gathered over him, slowly shook his head. Little Hawk raised his rifle in the air. “You give me rifle, burn store.” Matt remembered then. At the time, his mind had been so filled with rage that he had taken little note of the faces of the Indians that had been at Bordeaux’s. It came to him now; this was the Indian who had hidden behind the counter. He nodded slowly. Little Hawk smiled and pointed to his chest. “Little Hawk,” he said, then pointed at Matt.
“Slaughter,” Matt replied.
There was a low murmuring of voices behind Little Hawk. The Blackfoot warrior raised an eyebrow and turned to those gathered around. “Igmutaka,” he announced softly, pronouncing the Lakota word. He turned back to Matt. “Igmutaka?”
Recognizing his Sioux name, he nodded and answered, “That’s what the Sioux call me. My name’s Slaughter.”
“Release him,” Little Hawk said. “He is enemy of the Sioux, not the Blackfoot.” Feeling himself free, Matt sat up, still wary of what might come next. He tried to get to his feet, but the effort reminded him of the bullet in his shoulder, and he sat back down. Little Hawk knelt down to examine the wound. “Bad, we shoot,” he said, searching for the right words. Matt realized he was trying to apologize for shooting him. Then Little Hawk asked, “Who shoot my people?” He pointed at the bodies.
Still uncertain if he was tracking three men or two men and a packhorse, Matt tried to answer. “Bad men,” he said. Using sign language then, he was finally able to tell Little Hawk that he had been tracking the men who had killed the three Blackfoot hunters.
“White men?” Little Hawk asked.
“Yes, white men—maybe two, maybe three.”
With the help of sign language, a skill Matt had learned after living with Zeb Benson and the Crows, and a necessary asset in understanding Molly, Little Hawk told Matt that he would take him back to his village to heal his wound. Matt tried to protest that he had to continue after the bounty hunters, but the Blackfoot warrior convinced him that he was in no condition to do so. “Black Fox will go after these men,” Little Hawk said. “You must heal.”
Matt was in no position to argue. His shoulder, having been numb moments before, was now paining him with every move of his arm. He had been so close to catching up with Zeb’s murderers, that the frustration of letting them go was more painful than his wounds.
Reading the white warrior’s face, Little Hawk nodded and said, “Black Fox will find them.”
Knowing it useless to resist, Matt relented. The fierce warrior took six others with him, and followed the trail left by P. D. and her sons. The rest of the Blackfoot hunting party loaded their dead on their ponies and, with Matt on the paint, returned to their village.
* * *
“I ain’t got time to get to no doctor,” P. D. said as she examined the swollen shoulder around the bullet hole. In spite of the pain from the wound, she was feeling stronger than days before. “I need to get this damn bullet outta there now,” she decided. “Arlo, you’ve seen me cut enough lead outta wounds to know how to do it. Clean off my knife and let’s get it done.”
None too enthusiastic about it, Arlo balked. “Ma, I ain’t no good at nothin’ like that. I’m afraid I might do somethin’ wrong.”
“What are you worrying about?” she snapped. “I’m the one who’s hurtin’. Hell, I’ll tell you if you’re about to kill me.”
“I’ll do it,” Bo volunteered. Sitting by the fire, he had listened to the exchange between his brother and P. D. with some amusement.
“I expect I shoulda known you’d do it,” P. D. said. “All right, then, you cut it outta me, but you use my knife. I don’t want you mixin’ none of that Injun blood with mine.”
Far from squeamish about operating on his mother’s shoulder, Bo was more than willing to perform the surgery. He enjoyed anything that required using a knife. Producing a bottle from her saddlebag, P. D. took a couple of stiff drinks, and announced that she was ready. Bo set to work, eagerly cutting into the wound. P. D. remained steely quiet while watching her son probe deep into her shoulder to find the slug. Both sons were astonished by their mother’s seeming immunity to the pain as she stared unmoving and unblinking into the bloody hole made by the knife. When Bo finally found the slug and dislodged it, she calmly instructed him to pour some whiskey into the wound. “That always seems to help it heal faster,” she calmly commented while the fiery liquid blistered the open wound. “Now you can heat that knife up in the fire.” The only indication that she felt any pain was a sudden tensing of her body when Bo cauterized the wound.
“You can tie a rag around her shoulder,” Bo said to his brother. “If you ain’t too squeamish to do that.”
Arlo didn’t bother to answer Bo’s barb. He knew he wasn’t shy when it came to cutting or shooting, and he knew Bo knew that. Bo would never understand that it was different when it came to their mother. Arlo would always find it difficult to do anything that might inflict pain on her. He obediently went to his saddlebags to look for something suitable to use as a bandage. Finding nothing, he looked in Bo’s saddlebags, where he discovered Bo’s spare shirt. With a trace of a smile upon his lips, he ripped it in two and poked one half back in the saddlebag. The other half he used for his bandage. That done, with Bo none the wiser, they settled in for the night.
* * *
“Hey, what the hell . . .?” Bo exclaimed when he pulled the remains of his good shirt from his saddlebag. Then it struck him. He turned at once to stare at P. D.’s bandage. Next he turned his irate gaze upon his brother, who met his accusing stare with a wide grin. “Why you low-down son of a . . .” Unable to finish the sentence in his fury, he launched his body at his grinning brother. Expecting the attack, Arlo blocked the wild right hand Bo threw, and slung the smaller man aside, rolling him over in the ashes of the fire. Yelping with pain, Bo scrambled away from the fire, frantically brushing the hot coals from his coat. On his feet again, he drew his pistol. “Now, by God, we’ll see once and for all who’s the big dog around here.”
“Put it away, Bo.” P. D.’s stern command effectively caused her irate son to pause. A rebel, but not to the extent that he could defy the steely voice of his mother, Bo stood where he was for a long moment, still with the pistol aimed at Arlo. “Put it away, I said,” she repeated, this time punctuating it with the metallic sound of her revolver cocking.
Another few frozen moments passed—Bo’s pistol pointed at Arlo, P. D.’s pistol pointed at Bo. Then, suddenly, Bo’s irate expression softened into a sheepish smile. He released the hammer on his pistol and lowered it. “Damn, Ma, I wasn’t really gonna shoot him,” he lied, “but you saw what the big jackass did. That was my good shirt.” He holstered the weapon. “You wasn’t really gonna shoot me, was you?” he asked then.
“Don’t you doubt it for a minute,” she replied, her voice cold and without emotion.
“You crazy bastard,” Arlo said, “I oughta break your neck for pulling that damn gun on me.” Moments before, he had been shaken, staring death in the face. Now he wanted restitution, in spite of the fact that his bullying had placed him in that dire situation.
“You oughta try,” Bo answered. “One of these days Ma ain’t gonna be around to save your ass.”
“Hush!” P. D. suddenly commanded, and held up her hand to silence them both. “Listen!”
At first there was no sound other than the soft gurgle of an eddy caused by a large rock near the water’s edge. Then the sound that had caught P. D.’s attention was repeated. It was the sound of her big blue roan’s inquisitive whinny. It was soon followed by a similar whinny from the other horses. “Somebody’s comin’,” P. D. warned. “Bo, scramble up that bank and see what you can see.” When it came to scouting or tracking, Bo was always the first choice, since he seemed to have a knack for it that was absent in Arlo. Although in a weakened state, P. D. had regained enough strength to handle a rifle, even though it would be with one hand. She reached for it then with her good hand while directing her eldest son. “Arlo, back outta that firelight. Them horses hear somethin’.”
Bo was gone for no more than a few minutes before he reappeared out of the darkness that cloaked the riverbank. “Injuns,” he whispered. “I counted seven of ’em, and they’re comin’ this way. I figure they saw our campfire, ’cause they’re walkin’, leading their horses, like they was fixin’ to sneak up on us.”
“Must be friends of them three we left back there,” P. D. said. “How far away are they?”
“Hundred yards, I reckon,” Bo replied. “Maybe a little more.”
“Well, we’ll just have to set up a little welcome party for ’em,” P. D. said. Wasting no more time, she hurriedly positioned her sons in the willows by the river so they could lay down a cross fire over their camp. With Arlo’s help, she settled herself behind a low bluff where she could prop her rifle on the sand. Ready to receive their company, she cautioned Bo and Arlo to hold their fire until the Indians reached the campfire.
P. D. and her sons had barely gotten into position when the first Indian appeared. Moving silently in the darkness, Black Fox paused near the top of the riverbank to study the camp. There was no sign of anyone about the small fire that had now died to form a soft glow in the pitch black of the bluff. Thinking the white men to be asleep, he focused his gaze upon the dark lumps that were three saddles and blankets. In the darkness he could not see with any definition, but judging by the dying campfire, he assumed that the lumps were three sleeping men.
“Move quickly,” he whispered when the others caught up to him. “They are all sleeping. If we move all at once, we can kill them with our war axes before they know we’re upon them.” He looped his pony’s reins over a willow limb, and with ax in hand, led his party of warriors toward the fire.
A slow grin formed upon Bo’s face as a line of dark shadows suddenly materialized above him on the low bluff. He counted the silhouettes as they filed down toward the fire—five, six, seven, all accounted for. A real turkey shoot, he thought. P. D. had said to wait until the Indians reached the fire before shooting, but Bo could see no reason to wait. All seven of the warriors he had spotted before were parading unsuspecting right before him. So he put the front sight of his rifle on the last Blackfoot in line and squeezed off the first shot.
Instant pandemonium erupted on the darkened riverbank as Bo, anxious to kill as many of the warriors as he could, set off the killing rain of rifle fire that came from the willows.
That damn Bo, P. D. thought when the first shot rang out. Working with only one effective arm, she would have preferred to let the Indians get closer before she fired. With little choice left to her, she aimed at the center of the line of warriors and fired. Several yards away, Arlo opened up with his Winchester while she fumbled to crank another round into the chamber. Then, caught up in the resulting massacre, she ignored the wounded shoulder and blazed away using both hands.
Caught in a blistering hail of rifle fire, Black Fox went down with a slug in his left thigh. It no doubt saved his life, for he could hear the snapping sounds of bullets ripping the air overhead where he had been standing. Behind him, he heard the screams of pain as his followers were systematically cut down by the devastating barrage of lead. It was over in a matter of seconds and the war party all lay dead and dying on the riverbank, all save one. Black Fox rolled over into a shallow gully, and began a painful crawl back to his pony. There was nothing he could do for his friends. The only obligation left to him was to try to save himself.
“By God,” P. D. exclaimed as she walked up to examine the bodies, her wounded arm bleeding again from the exertion. “These godless heathens come in here thinkin’ they can murder innocent folks.” Seeing a slight movement from one of the bodies, she pumped two more shots into the dying warrior.
“Ma,” Arlo said, “your shoulder’s bleedin’ again.”
“Ain’t nothin’,” she replied, still caught up in the excitement of the killing. “It ain’t painin’ me a’tall.”
“There ain’t but six bodies,” Bo observed. “Where’s the other one?”
His question was answered for him by the sudden sound of a horse’s hooves as Black Fox galloped away in the darkness. Bo immediately spun around and emptied the remaining bullets from his magazine in the direction of the sound. “Should I saddle my horse?” Arlo asked, ready to give chase.
“Naw, let him go,” P. D. decided. “I’m pretty sure he was hit. I saw every one of ’em go down. He’ll most likely run off somewhere and die.” She turned her attention back to the bodies lying sprawled on the ground. “I reckon them Injuns learned who to mess with all right. You boys drag ’em away from the fire. Throw ’em over the bank yonder so’s I don’t have to smell ’em. It’s a while yet till daylight. We’d best get some sleep.”
“I want them scalps,” Bo interjected.
“Well, you’re gonna have to climb down there and get ’em,” Arlo said, already dragging a body to the edge of the bank.