The three trappers were awake and in action before the Blackfoot war cry was half over. They all reacted instinctively, rolling out of their robes and grabbing their rifles. They moved instantly to cache, heading for the cover of the surrounding trees and brush.
Then Blackwood realized he had left Anna behind. He was not used to having her along. Had he been with Red Quiver, he would not have had to worry about his woman. Red Quiver would have taken care of herself, slipping into the brush as swiftly and silently as the men.
“Good goddamn Christ,” Blackwood muttered. He swung around and started charging back toward Anna. The woman sat there, eyes wide in terror, her mouth gaping as though she wanted to scream but no sound would come out. “Anna!” Blackwood roared as he saw a Blackfoot heading toward her.
Suddenly, a tall, wiry warrior-boy materialized in front of him. Enraged now, Blackwood slammed to a stop and quickly crushed the Indian’s face with a powerful forearm. He shoved the dazed, half-dead warrior to the side and started running toward Anna again.
A new explosion of fury rocked Blackwood as he saw two Blackfeet already dragging Anna away with them. His woman was screaming and sobbing, looking back over her shoulder for him.
Blackwood dropped to one knee and brought his rifle up. He fired almost as soon as the buttstock touched his shoulder. The warrior on Anna’s right tumbled forward and lay still.
Tossing his rifle aside, Blackwood howled and put on an extra burst of speed, silently cursing the longtime limp that slowed him some. He rapidly caught up with Anna, the one warrior, and another who had taken the first’s place when he was shot. Without qualm, he split one Blackfoot’s head with his tomahawk. Then he turned toward the other.
The Blackfoot tossed Anna down like a broken weapon and spun to face Blackwood. He was rather short and pretty stout and looked fearsome with the thick lines of black and red paint running up and down his face. He wore a shield on his left forearm and carried a war club with a stone head in his right hand. With a fierce scowl, he swung the club at Blackwood’s head.
Blackwood brushed the blow away with his left forearm as if it were a slightly larger than normal gnat. He moved in and smashed his forehead into the Indian’s. The Blackfoot staggered backward a bit, trying to clear his suddenly foggy brain and regain his balance.
Blackwood didn’t give the warrior time to do either. He simply stepped up and tomahawked the Indian to death, taking two big swings to do it. Then he spun, ready to grab Anna and cache until the four of them could elude these bloodthirsty Blackfeet. But two other warriors were now dragging her away, and three more were heading toward him in a rush.
“Waugh” Blackwood roared as he waited to greet them. He pulled a pistol with his left hand when one of the charging Blackfeet nocked a bow and suddenly fired at him. Blackwood was slower, but more deliberate, and drilled the Indian cleanly through the chest.
The others were just about on him now, and he tossed the pistol aside. “Come on, boys,” he muttered. “Jist come on. The wolves’re gittin’ hungry.”
When the three clashed, Blackwood’s rage made him seem invincible. He hacked and bit and kicked until the two warriors were merely bloodied clumps at his feet, pieces of their chopped flesh scattered around a wider area.
So maniacal was Blackwood’s fury that four other Blackfeet, who were racing up to help their friends, suddenly turned and ran, not wanting anything to do with this demon. Their medicine had turned sour, at least for the time being, and they did not want to trust their luck to a demented white man.
Blackwood looked for more Blackfeet to kill—and for Anna, so that he could rescue her from these bloodthirsty savages. But she was nowhere to be seen. Then he spotted several Blackfeet riding fast toward the southeast. The others still in the whites’ camp were streaming away from the site.
Suddenly, Blackwood stood alone in the middle of the trappers’ camp. Hatred for the Blackfeet—an ingrained thing for him, as well as just about every other mountaineer—blazed through him, bringing his blood to a boil. “[Very strong profanity] ,” he bellowed.
“Calm down, ye bloody damn fool,” Gallagher snapped. He was almost as angry as Blackwood—though with far less sense of loss—mainly because he took it as a personal affront that they had been trapped like this. He knew they were lucky to still be alive and wearing their hair. Most mountaineers who got caught unawares as they had been usually were not so fortunate.
“Calm down my ass, you senseless sack of shit. These here are the goddamnedest worstest [strong profanity] doin’s this chil’s ary come across. And you want me to jist make my [strong profanity] rage go away, you skunk eatin’ son of a bitch?”
“Tis done and over with, boyo,” Gallagher said harshly. He knew he was treading on dangerous ground.
He had heard Blackwood curse so vituperously only once before, and what had happened to the object of his vilification was not pleasant to see. Gallagher knew that, if he pressed too hard, Blackwood would, in his rage, have no compunction against bludgeoning him to death.
“It ain’t over with, ol’ hoss,” Blackwood said threateningly.
“Aye, ’tis, Jim,” Gallagher said, his tones more soothing. “So ye need to calm yourself down and try’n put it from your mind.”
“Waugh! Blackwood spat, his voice a dangerous rumble. “I nary thought I see the day when you’d lose your sense and your cojones at the same [strong profanity] time. Goddamn, I can’t say that this new Mick Gallagher shines with this chil’, and I don’t think this ol’ hoss can go callin’ you friend anymore.”
“Don’t be such a goddamn fool,” Gallagher retorted in a huff. His anger was growing, too, and it made him somewhat less concerned about what Blackwood’s reaction would be.
Blackwood shrugged. “I’m goin’ after my Anna. You fainthearted critters can ride along if you’re of a mind to. If you don’t want to do that, jist git outten my way.”
Lugo ignored Blackwood’s words and moved in front of the burly mountain man. “You are not goeeng anywhere, amigo,” he said tightly. He was also well aware of the danger he was placing himself in, considering Blackwood’s mood. “We are in too much danger as it is.”
“Move, you bean-fartin’ bastard, or I’ll mash you into the goddamn dirt.”
“Ah, compadre, use your cabeza, viejo caballo—head, ol’ hoss. You are wise in thee ways of the wilderness and of thee savages. You must know—or you would if you stopped to think a minute—that there are many more Blackfeet out there. Thee ones that attacked us were almost enough to overpower us. Hell, they would have overrun us if they hadn’t been more interested in what they could steal.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn how many of them pustulant critters there are. I ain’t about to let such ass-suckin’ bastards git away with any such doin’s. And there’s the little matter of my Anna. If I can git to them bastards afore long, I can take her back before—”
“Listen to yourself, ye bloody stupid bastard!” Gallagher shouted, hoping that increased volume would get through to Blackwood where reason would not. “Ye’re the one who’s lost his reason, boyo. Ye’ve gone plumb loco.”
“There ain’t a goddamn thing you can say to me,” Blackwood growled, “you spineless, blackhearted Irish sot, that’ll keep me from goin’ after my Anna.”
“Ye said that before, ye great bloody lummox. Why don’t ye listen to reason for once?”
“Sí’„” Lugo hastily tossed in. Still jittery because of the adrenaline pulsing though his system, Lugo struggled to calm himself down so he could think better. There had to be something he could say to prevent his friend from taking on this folly. Finally, an idea formed in his mind.
“If you go after those pendejo Blackfeet by yourself,” Lugo said slowly, still formulating as he went along, “you will die.”
“That don’t mean a goddamn thing to me now, ‘Berto,” Blackwood said honestly.
“I believe you, amigo. But think about it. If you get rubbed out, the Blackfeet will do to Anna what they will do anyway. So you will have died for notheeng.”
That got through to Blackwood, but only a little. The fury that churned inside him would allow no more than that. Still, he hesitated for a few moments before saying anything. When he did, the words were flat and ugly sounding: “You sayin’ I should jist run off and forgit all about Anna? That what you’re sayin’, ol’ hoss?”
“Sí—for now.” Lugo paused, thinking hard and fast. “We will stay here a couple of days, making meat and recovering from our leetle wounds.”
“Then what?”
“Then we go after thee Blackfeet,” Lugo added. “They will theenk we are afraid of them and have gone away. Then, when they think we are not around—¡golpe! We will attack them.” He held out his hands, palms upward, and shrugged, indicating that his plan was incredibly simple. But deep down, he wasn’t at all sure it would work. What he hoped to do was buy himself and Gallagher a little time to try to talk Blackwood out of this senseless and almost certainly fatal—to the three of them—action.
“Them putrifyin’ Blackfeet will have violated Anna long before that,” Blackwood said, already knowing in his heart that he could do nothing to prevent that.
“Sí,” Lugo said harshly. It wasn’t that he was without compassion, it was just that he knew these hard truths had to be voiced and that pretending it might be some other way would cause more harm than good in the long run. “But if we left now, by the time we found them and got set for a battle—even one we can’t win—she will have been violated already.”
“Mayhap not,” Blackwood said forlornly.
“You know that’s a foolish hope, amigo,” Lugo said a little more softly. “But if we follow my plan, you weel be alive to take revenge on thee Blackfeet.”
Blackwood stuck his rifle butt in the dirt and leaned on the muzzle. He pondered what Lugo had said for some minutes. He looked out across the land toward the way the Blackfeet had gone and could see his life disappearing before his very eyes. Even if he could rescue Anna before she was killed, married off to some Blackfoot chief, or traded to another tribe, she would have been sorely abused. And every day longer it took to find her would be another day full of abuse for her.
He realized suddenly that the last thought was particularly stupid. Being violated by the Blackfeet several times was probably not much worse than having it happen the first time.
Blackwood wasn’t sure he could live with Anna, or feel the same about her, if she had been defiled by the Blackfeet. He felt certain, however, that he would be willing to try, and he thought he could overcome his disgust at the situation after some time. What really saddened him was that, deep in his heart, he was absolutely certain that Anna would not be able to face him if she had been so degraded. He would try to convince her otherwise, but there was nothing that could make him believe that she would want anything to do with him or any other man once she had been debased by the Blackfeet.
There was one other thing he knew was a dead certain fact: Because of those thoughts, he knew that Anna was lost to him forever. It was something he did not want to even consider, though knowing Anna even somewhat, he still was positive that she would never be his again, no matter how much he might wish it was different.
He straightened, pushing himself up from his rifle, and just left his hands resting lightly on the muzzle. “All right, amigos, we’ll do it,” he said, his voice hollow, as if coming from some strange, faraway place in which everyone’s heart and soul were in torment. It sent a chill through Lugo and Gallagher, as if they had just walked across a grave whose occupant was stirring restlessly.