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  Breckinridge recognized the voices of Morgan Baxter and Roscoe Akins. A moment later Amos Fulbright joined in, calling, “Hey, there! Breck Wallace!”

  The three voices came from slightly different directions. Breckinridge figured they had returned to camp from checking the other traplines, then when he didn’t show up, too, they had come to look for him. They knew which direction he had gone when he left that morning, so it wasn’t difficult to follow his trail.

  He untied his wrist from the branch and looped the powder horn strap around his neck again. Standing up carefully, he balanced on a branch and parted some of the other growth to look out across the valley.

  His keen eyes spotted a man wearing a buckskin jacket and a broad-brimmed hat of brown felt about a quarter of a mile away. That was Morgan Baxter, Breckinridge thought.

  He held on to the tree with one hand and cupped the other to his mouth as he shouted, “Morgan! Hey, Morgan! Over here in the trees!”

  Morgan’s head lifted, telling Breckinridge that he’d heard the shout. He turned and called to the other two men, then started loping toward the trees, carrying his rifle.

  “Morgan, don’t get too close!” Breckinridge yelled. “There’s a bear!”

  He kept calling the warning until Morgan slowed down and waved to the others to be careful, as well. Morgan came to a stop about a hundred yards away and cupped his hands to shout, “Breck, where are you?”

  The bear’s head swung toward him. Folks said that bears couldn’t see very well, but that they had excellent senses of hearing and smell and relied on them to locate enemies. Breckinridge didn’t know for a fact that any of that was true, but this bear heard Morgan, no doubt about that.

  “Stay back!” Breckinridge called again. “Don’t come any closer!”

  “Good Lord!” The exclamation came from Fulbright. “That griz has run him up a tree!”

  “Breck, are you all right?” Akins called.

  The bear’s head swung back and forth as she tried to figure out where all the humans were. The way the voices were coming from different directions seemed to have confused her. That gave Breckinridge an idea.

  “Boys, keep yellin’! Whoop it up!”

  The three trappers followed Breckinridge’s suggestion. They whooped and hollered and created a racket that echoed back from the hills at the edge of the valley.

  At the foot of the tree, the bear lurched one way and then another, growling and occasionally bellowing in frustration. She wasn’t sure which way to turn because she had no way of knowing which of the humans represented the greatest threat to her cub. Her exasperation led her to rise up on two legs, paw viciously at the air, and let loose with a tremendous roar.

  Then, muttering almost like a person again, she dropped back to all fours and started toward the creek. Breckinridge figured she had decided her best course of action would be to return to her cub and forget all about these crazy two-legged critters.

  Morgan, Akins, and Fulbright waited until the bear was several hundred yards away before they approached the tree Breckinridge had climbed. Breck was still up there in the branches, gazing off into the distance.

  “You can come down now,” Morgan called to him. “The bear’s gone.”

  “Or are you stuck?” Fulbright asked with a grin on his whiskery face.

  “No, I ain’t stuck,” Breckinridge replied with a little annoyance of his own. “I just noticed somethin’. Looks like somebody else heard all the hollerin’ that was goin’ on.”

  He lifted a long, muscular arm and pointed at a thin, broken column of smoke rising in the distance.

  Smoke signals. Indians were talking to each other over yonder . . . and Breckinridge had a pretty good idea what they were talking about.

  Chapter Three

  Since the battle that had left most of the party dead on the way out here, Breckinridge and the other three survivors hadn’t had any more trouble with the Indians. They had run into a few Crow, but the word had spread through the tribe that the man they called Flamehair was considered a friend.

  This wasn’t really Crow country, though. From what Breckinridge had heard, the most common tribe around here was the Blackfoot—and they were ornery varmints who didn’t consider anybody a friend except themselves, neither red nor white.

  The smart thing for the four trappers to do would have been to stay together all the time, as a war party was a lot less likely to attack a group of four well-armed men than they were a lone trapper.

  But doing that meant it would take them four times as long to gather the same number of pelts, and that was just plumb wasteful. Besides, they hadn’t seen any Indian sign in this valley, so it had seemed safe enough for them to split up whenever they ran their lines.

  Until now.

  Luckily, the four of them were together at the moment, and they needed to stay that way. Breckinridge shinnied most of the way down the tree and then dropped to the ground. His hands were sticky from pine sap, so he started wiping them on his buckskin trousers.

  “Is that smoke what I think it is?” Morgan Baxter asked worriedly.

  “I reckon it must be,” Breckinridge replied. “I don’t know for sure, havin’ never seen smoke signals myself, but I can’t figure what else it could be.”

  Akins said, “They’re smoke signals, all right. I was out here a couple years ago, and the bunch I was with saw smoke like that for a couple of days before a bunch of Arikara jumped us. Did good to get out with our hair, we did.”

  “Not that you had a whole hell of a lot to lose,” Fulbright said, referring to the thin blond growth on Akins’s skull.

  “This is no time for joking,” Morgan said. “We were told this was Blackfoot territory, so if anybody’s responsible for those smoke signals, it’s probably them. They’re hostile to whites.”

  “And to everybody else,” Breckinridge added. “We’d best get back to camp. If we’re in for a fight, we want to have as much powder and shot at hand as we can.”

  What he said made sense. He trotted out into the meadow to pick up the rifle and pistols he had thrown aside when the bear was chasing him, and then all four of them moved quickly up the valley toward their campsite.

  A bluff topped with trees and rocks reared up next to one of the creeks, and that was where they had made camp when they reached the valley a couple of weeks earlier. The location was handy to water, and the trees and rocks would provide cover if they needed it. The height advantage, although it wasn’t dramatic, wouldn’t hurt anything, either.

  The four men reached the stream on which their camp was located and followed it, trotting along the grassy banks. The creek twisted around a bend up ahead, dropped down a short, rocky waterfall, and then traced a fairly straight, level course across a mile-wide meadow to the camp.

  As the trappers entered the little cut at the top of the waterfall, Breckinridge spotted something and threw out an arm to stop the others.

  “We’re too late,” he said. “They’re already over there.”

  “How can you see that?” Akins asked sourly. “The camp’s a mile away!”

  “I’ve got good eyes,” Breckinridge said simply.

  It was true. He had been blessed with exceptional sight, hearing, and smell. He figured that was the Good Lord’s way of outfitting him for the perilous existence in the wilderness he now knew he was meant for. He had never felt as much at home as he did out here in the high country.

  “Can you tell how many of them there are?” Morgan asked.

  “Not for sure. At least half a dozen, I’d say. They’re movin’ around, though, so it’s hard to get an exact count.”

  “What’re they doin’?” Fulbright said.

  “Just rummagin’ around right now.”

  “They’re going to steal our supplies,” Morgan said. His voice was bleak. “The damned thieves. They’ll probably take all our pelts, too.”

  They had several dozen pelts already dried and rolled up for transport, and four or five more scrape
d, stretched out, and pegged down to dry. Not enough to make or break anybody, but still worth a significant amount of money. Enough that Breckinridge didn’t want to lose it.

  His eyes narrowed in thought. After a moment he said, “Here’s what we’re gonna do. You three fellas stay out of sight, circle off to the west, and then come at the camp from that direction. There’s a considerable amount of trees and brush over there, so maybe you can get fairly close without those varmints noticin’ you, especially since they’ll be busy lookin’ at something else.”

  “What are they going to be looking at?” Morgan asked suspiciously.

  “Me,” Breckinridge said. “I figured I’d walk across that meadow beside the creek, big as life and twice as ugly, so they’ll watch me and not pay any attention to you boys.”

  “That’s crazy,” Morgan argued. “As soon as you get close enough, they’ll just shoot you.”

  “Maybe not. From everything I know about Injuns, they’re a curious lot. They’ll want to know why a lone white man is walkin’ in like that, bold as brass. They may think I don’t know they’re there, in which case they’ll lay low and let me get closer ’fore they make themselves known. Anyway, I’m gonna keep ’em occupied so you fellas can sneak up on ’em.”

  “White men sneakin’ up on Indians,” Akins muttered. “It’s supposed to be the other way around, ain’t it?”

  “Most of the time,” Breckinridge admitted. “But if it’s good enough for them, I reckon it’s good enough for us.”

  Morgan rubbed his chin and frowned in thought. After a moment he nodded slowly and said, “It might work. What happens if we’re able to get up close?”

  “Wait until they come out in the open to jump me, and then you can cut loose at ’em,” Breckinridge said. “That’ll take ’em by surprise and give me a chance to run in and start whalin’ away on ’em.”

  “This may be pretty unlikely, but . . . what if they’re friendly?”

  “Well, then we won’t kill ’em, of course. There’s always a chance they ain’t Blackfeet. Might be Shoshone or some such. In which case we might even be able to do some tradin’ with them.”

  Fulbright scratched at his thick black beard, grimaced, and asked, “How will we know whether or not they’re friendly?”

  “You’ll be able to tell,” Breckinridge said confidently. “If they ain’t, there’s a good chance they’ll be doin’ their damnedest to kill me.”

  Chapter Four

  Breckinridge waited until the other three men had waded across the creek, moved down the slope, and headed off to the west, crouching and using every bit of cover they could find as they trotted along.

  Once they were out of sight, he canted his rifle jauntily over his shoulder and marched down the hill in plain sight. He followed the creek across the meadow, strolling along as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He even whistled a little tune, although he was still too far away from the camp for the Indians to hear him.

  When he was a little more than halfway across the meadow, he noticed that the interlopers had stopped moving around. He looked close but couldn’t see them anymore. That lack of activity convinced him that the Indians had noticed his approach.

  Either they had hidden and were watching him as he came closer, or they had decided to leave. He didn’t think the sight of one lone white man would have spooked them, so he was betting on the former.

  He glanced to his right, where Morgan, Akins, and Fulbright ought to be working themselves into position. He didn’t see them anywhere, which was good. It meant they were staying out of sight, and if he couldn’t see them, neither could the Indians.

  It suddenly occurred to Breckinridge that if anything happened to his three friends, if they were delayed for any reason, he could easily be walking into an ambush in which he was greatly outnumbered.

  In that case he would just have to make the best of it. He still couldn’t think of any other plan that would have been better. He and the others couldn’t afford to abandon everything that was in the camp. Their continued survival depended too much on it.

  Breckinridge had fallen silent, but he started whistling again as he came within earshot of the bluff. He veered to his left, away from the stream and toward the game trail that led to the top of the shallow rise.

  Something flicked through the air toward him, causing his instincts and reflexes to take over. He twisted aside as fast as he could, which was barely fast enough to keep from being impaled by the arrow that flew past him. The shaft came so close it brushed the fringe on the front of his buckskin shirt.

  Well, that answered the question of whether or not the Indians were hostile, he thought.

  More arrows flew toward him. He dived forward so the deadly missiles sailed over him and buried themselves in the ground behind him.

  Whooping and howling, the savages leaped out of their hiding places and charged down the game trail toward him. Since he had successfully dodged their arrows so far, they must have decided it would be better to finish him off at close quarters.

  Breckinridge pushed himself up on one knee and lifted his rifle. It was already loaded and primed, so all he had to do was pull back the hammer as he socketed the curved butt against his shoulder. He settled his sights on the chest of the warrior who was leading the charge and squeezed the trigger.

  The rifle boomed and kicked hard against him. The Indian went over backward as violently as if he had run full-speed into a low-hanging branch. Breckinridge knew the heavy lead ball had found its mark.

  The Indians were still far enough away that he thought he had time to reload before they could reach him. He set about doing so, making an effort to keep his nerves under control and remain calm and cool as he measured a charge of powder from the horn.

  He didn’t look at the Indians but instead watched what he was doing. As long as they were letting out those bloodthirsty yells, he didn’t have to see them to know how close they were getting.

  More rifle shots suddenly rang out from across the creek. Breckinridge knew his friends were joining in the fight. As he used the flintlock’s ramrod to tamp a patch-wrapped ball down the barrel, he glanced up and saw that a couple more of the warriors had tumbled to the ground.

  That left half a dozen of them on their feet, however, so he still had a fight on his hands.

  Pistol shots boomed now as Morgan, Akins, and Fulbright charged out of some cottonwoods on the far side of the creek. Breckinridge primed his rifle and raised it again.

  The nearest warrior was about thirty feet from him. The man let fly with a tomahawk just as Breckinridge pressed the trigger. That caused him to duck and threw his aim off a little. Instead of hitting the Indian in the chest, the ball blew away a fist-sized chunk of his skull above the left eye. Momentum made the man race forward a few more steps, already dead, before he pitched face-first to the ground.

  Either way, the Indian was a goner, Breckinridge figured.

  He set the rifle on the ground and pulled out his pistols as he rose to his full height. He leveled the guns and fired.

  One of the warriors went down with blood fountaining from his throat where Breckinridge’s shot had torn it open. Another staggered, his right shoulder shattered where the ball had struck it. He stayed on his feet, though, and used his left hand to pluck a knife from his waist as he closed with Breck.

  Steel rang against steel as the Indian stabbed down at Breckinridge, who used the barrel of one of the empty guns to turn aside the blade. With his other hand, Breck swung the other pistol against the side of the man’s head. Bone crunched under the smashing impact and the warrior’s legs folded, dropping him into a limp sprawl.

  Another warrior slashed at him with a tomahawk. Breckinridge twisted aside and kicked the man in the belly. As the Indian doubled over, Breck brought up his right knee and smashed it into his jaw. The warrior went down, knocked out cold.

  By now, Morgan, Akins, and Fulbright had splashed across the creek, and they launched themselves into the thi
ck of the melee. Fulbright carried a tomahawk like the Indians, and the big, black-bearded man wielded it efficiently, shattering a warrior’s skull with it. Akins used the brass-plated butt of his rifle to batter another of the Indians to the ground. Morgan Baxter fired a pistol into the chest of a third man.

  That left Breckinridge facing only one of the warriors, but this one was a big, strapping fellow who drove him backward by viciously slashing a knife back and forth. Breck dropped his empty pistols, timed his move, and suddenly lunged forward to grab the Indian’s wrist. He dropped backward, planted a booted foot in the man’s stomach, and levered him up and over.

  The warrior let out a startled cry as he found himself flying through the air. He crashed down on his back with enough force to knock the breath out of his body and leave him stunned.

  Breckinridge rolled over, snatched his own knife from its sheath, and leaped at the fallen warrior. The knife rose and fell, late afternoon sunlight winking on the blade as it did so. Breck plunged the knife into the warrior’s chest. The man spasmed, kicked, and died.

  That left only one of the Indians alive, the man Breckinridge had knocked out a few moments earlier. Breck pulled his blood-dripping knife from the corpse of the man he had just killed, pointed with it, and warned his friends, “Keep an eye on that one. He’s still breathin’.”

  “We can do somethin’ about that,” Fulbright said. He leaned over and split the Indian’s skull with one swift stroke of his tomahawk. The warrior would never regain consciousness now.

  Breckinridge grunted in surprise and said, “I didn’t figure you’d kill him.”

  Fulbright wrenched his ’hawk free and straightened.

  “What’d you expect me to do?” he asked. “Did you plan on torturin’ the varmint to death, like they might’ve done to you if they’d caught you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, we couldn’t let him go. He’d have run right back to the rest of his bunch and told them where we are and that we’d killed a bunch of his friends. We’d have had to move our camp, and that probably wouldn’t have done any good. They’d have tracked us down to settle the score anyway. I can tell from the decorations on their clothes and the way they wear their hair that they’re Blackfeet. Those varmints never forget a grudge. I’ve heard some of the old-timers say they still hate white men ’cause of somethin’ that happened when ol’ Lewis and Clark came through here thirty years ago.”