and threw at the knife wielder, before turning to Yellow-Beard - he only heard them splash as they hit the river. Yellow-Beard ducked his first punch - 'Waugh, Sambo, wait your turn!' - but when January came at him he pushed the girl aside and whipped out his knife. January scooped up the limb of a deadfall tree as Yellow-Beard lunged at him, rammed its broken end at that broken-nosed, blond-bearded face.
The trapper cursed and staggered back, then came on again, murder in his red face. January had his own knife out already, though he had never used it as a weapon - in New Orleans, or anywhere he'd been in the United States, he wasn't even permitted to carry it - and in any case he saw the original dark-haired knife-wielder pelting up dripping from the river at him, to stab him from behind. January ducked, sidestepped and was aware of a fourth man emerging from the trees behind him, to throw himself into the fray. January had a glimpse of long black hair, a black beard that seemed to start just below the eyes and shoulders the size of a cotton bale: the man who'd joked with the trapper Carson about Carson's Indian wife. The huge newcomer caught Yellow-Beard by the hair, slashed with a knife of his own—
Then Yellow-Beard and the dark little rapist were dashing away across the rocks to the river, splashing in its shallows in their fervor to escape.
Cheering in the trees behind him told January that the fight had, in fact, attracted an audience. He turned, took note of the volunteer rescuer at his side - a human grizzly nearly his own six-foot-three-inch height, with a prognathous jaw and the small, brown, glittering eyes of an animal - then faced the crowd of a dozen trappers, all whooping and waving and shouting, 'You sure showed 'em, Manitou!' and, 'Good fightin', nigger!'
'I catched her for you!' yelled somebody, and sure enough, two of the camp-setters hauled the half-naked girl to the fore, struggling despairingly in their grip. 'You won her, fair and square, nigger!'
The big black-haired trapper Manitou turned to regard January with those cold brown eyes, and January said, 'Let her go.' He walked toward the crowd, held out his hand. The girl looked about fifteen, and he could see the bruises her attackers had left on her face. 'If I won her, I say let her go.'
'She gonna get away!' protested someone.
Someone else yelled, 'Watch it!'
Three Indians appeared from the brush at the water's edge. Someone in the crowd called out, 'Oh, hell, now you gotta pay for her,' but the voice sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden hush. Knives whispered in the crowd. Rifle barrels came down ready for firing.
The smallest of the Indians stepped forward, a stocky, heavily pockmarked man in his thirties, a skinning knife in his hand. The other two - bare-chested as he was, and wearing feathered caps of a kind January hadn't seen before - moved off to both sides, rifles held ready to answer fire.
January said, louder, 'I said let the girl go.' The girl cried out something, and the man holding her cursed. The trapper Manitou crossed the distance between himself and the other mountaineers, wrenched the girl free and shoved her in the direction of the Indian men.
'God damn your hairy arse, Manitou, the nigger won her fair an' square—'
The girl stumbled in the sandy soil of the riverside. January reached down to help her to her feet, and when the two Indian rifles leveled on him he opened his hands to show them empty as she fled from him to them.
Without a word Manitou turned away, as if none of this concerned him any longer, and shoved his way off through the crowd.
January turned back to the four Indians. 'Are you all right?' he asked the girl, who stared at him with uncomprehending eyes.
The pockmarked man snapped, 'She is well, white man.'
Robbie Prideaux moved up out of the crowd to January's side, his rifle pointed; Carson and another man put themselves on his other side. 'Well, here's damp powder, an' no fire to dry it,' Prideaux murmured. 'The runty one with the pockmarks is Iron Heart. He's chief of the Omahas. You watch out for him, hoss.'
Iron Heart put the girl behind him. The two other Indians flanked her, and slowly, in silence, the four of them backed away to the river's shallows, then waded in them away upstream.
'That was good fightin',