spear, but when they reached the first of the shallow river-branches, he and Hannibal took the precaution of damming the moving water with rocks before going after the fish. They caught four, mostly by hitting them with sticks or simply scooping them up on to the bank, before a couple of bears ambled down out of the woods to investigate the new fishing-spot.
'Aren't you going to go after one of them with your bowie? Kit Carson would.'
'You go to hell.'
They bore their catch back up to the treeline. In the last of the daylight, January set as many snares as he could manufacture from the string in his pockets.
'Will this help?' Hannibal drew from his coat pocket a long, crumpled strip of black silk.
'What is it?'
'Pia was wearing it as a sash,' said the fiddler. 'She said Moccasin Woman gave it to her. After reading Bodenschatz pere's letter to you - during which we were so rudely interrupted - I intended to visit the Delaware camp and ask her where she came by it, but I suspect it belonged to the old man. That it was one of the bindings used to tie the splint on to his leg.'
'That being the case,' said January, 'it must have been Moccasin Woman who got his shirt off him. Nice rolled hem,' he added, examining the silk. 'Tiny and strong.' With his knife he slit the narrow roll of the hem free of the rest of the cravat, fashioned three snares out of it - the delicate cord it yielded was about ten feet long, all around both sides of the cravat and tried to recall everything Robbie Prideaux had said about where to set snares and how to make sure their intended victims rabbits and ground squirrels - didn't catch human scent.
Only when the sun went behind the mountains did January light a fire, trusting the trees to disperse what smoke might be visible. He spitted the fish, emptied his pockets of the remaining cama bulbs and buried them in the coals.
On the higher hills, not far away, wolves howled.
Closer to, in the darkness among the thin-growing trees, gold eyes flashed - something small, a fox or a marten - then abruptly bolted away.
January realized that the night-chirping of the birds had silenced.
The thin woods were utterly still.
The fire was tiny - they couldn't have seen it ...
Everything in him was shouting: but they did . . .
Don't we even get to eat our fish? But even as his soul cried out in protest, cold readiness jolted in his veins. He nudged Hannibal's foot with his own, touched his finger to his lips - saw the other man's eyes widen with an unspoken: oh, Jesus . . .
Too soon to be the Omaha, unless they'd ridden like the wind and known exactly where to search for them. Which meant the Blackfeet.
His hand slipped down to his spear, and he tried to determine from which direction the attack would come.
'Best you douse that fire, Maestro,' said a soft voice from the darkness. 'Iron Heart an' his braves is less'n three miles away.
Chapter 22
Dear God—'
Shaw stepped quickly into the firelight, January barely getting a glimpse of his thin face scruffy with sandy beard, his long hair tied back in a straggly braid, before he kicked out the flames and buried the coals. He had an impression of half-healed cuts and bruises, of a shirt torn open over corded muscle and too-prominent bone, of one rifle in hand and two others slung on his back. 'Get the fish an' let's pull foot,' Shaw whispered, "fore they tracks you by the smoke. You all right?'
'I been better.'
'The worst is not, so long as we can say, "This is the worst,"' quoted Hannibal, whom death itself probably would not have found without a poetic allusion. 'Yourself?'
'Breathin'.'
This was all any of them said for the next several hours. Shaw led them east through the thin timber, where the waning moonlight glimmered between shadows like the abysses of Hell; along the granite backbone of a ridge; and down into a dry draw, where stones along what had once been a stream bed would obscure their tracks. They ate on the move. Twice Shaw signaled them to halt, and in the silence January heard the rustling movement of some animal ahead of them among the trees. Shaw passed him a rifle and powder horn - by the brass studs on the stock January knew it was Goshen Clarke's but January