Buffalo Palace (80 page)

Closer, closer … come on now, he heard himself think in his head as she and her unmounted courtiers inched down the slope, their shrill voices all the more clear now in the late afternoon air. If he held high and waited for that next gust of hot wind to die … he might just hit her. If not the warrior princess, then drop her horse. And if not her spotted pony, then one of them others what stood around her like she was gut-sucking royalty.

He let out half a breath and waited for the breeze to cease tugging on that thin braid of gray-brown hair that rested against his right cheek. Bass set the back trigger, then carefully slipped his fingertip over the front trigger, waiting—

When the rifle went off, he bolted onto his knees to have
himself a look, not patient to wait for the pan flash and muzzle smoke to drift off on the wind.

Her brown-spotted pony rocked back onto its haunches, suddenly twisting its head and neck as the double handful of courtiers scattered—diving and scrambling off in every direction. As if plucked into the sky, the warrior princess herself sprang off the pony the moment its forelegs pawed in the air a heartbeat, then careened onto its side.

A few of those young men and women immediately surrounded the princess and started dragging her up the slope, away from the fighting, out of range of the white man’s far-reaching weapons.

Scratch watched her reluctantly back away, amused at how she continued to stare over her shoulder as she was yanked up that hillside, her eyes transfixed on the tiny corral where the trappers were holding out. Perhaps she even wondered just which one of the cursed whiteskins had killed her beautiful pony. Likely heaping her vilest curses on the man who had gone and soured her powerful medicine that she had been using to spur the naked horsemen to perform their death-defying charges.

“And well you should do your share of the damned killing, Jim Baker,” Bass replied to the redhead as he rocked backward and dragged the long barrel off the horse’s front shoulder.

Scratch swatted at a dozen flies hovering around his sweaty face and tugged the stopper from his powderhorn between his teeth. “Because killin’ ever’ last one of these bastards we can drop afore sundown comes is the only way this bunch of half-dead hide hunters is gonna slip outta here when it gets slap dark.”