Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

  Just before he turned away, Williams said, “See you in the morning.”

  “You ’spectin’ trouble?” Purcell asked as the leader turned his back on them.

  Bill contemplated the flames a moment before he answered. “We’re bringing our stock in close, ’specially them broodmares we need. Those Injuns figger on riding off with our horses, I don’t aim to make it easy for ’em.”

  “We’ll sleep light, Bill,” Titus said.

  The bunch at the fire remained quiet in their own thoughts for some time until Silas Adair stood and stretched. He tugged down on the brim of his battered, black-felt hat. In the fire’s light it appeared the hat had been singed at the back where it caught on fire when he used it to fan some flames of a time. “C’mon, Roscoe—we best go get our blankets.”

  Bass watched the two men trudge away to the nearby fire. Then he turned to the trio left with him. “You fellas promise me something.”

  “What’s that, Scratch?” asked Jake Corn.

  “Trouble ever comes—no matter when, no matter where … you fellas promise me you’ll watch my back.”

  “A fight starts,” Kersey began, “there ain’t no Injun gonna get close enough—”

  “I ain’t talking ’bout Injuns, Elias,” Titus interrupted. “I need you to watch out for Thompson and his weasels.”

  “That’s just what we aim to do,” Corn vowed. “ ’Cause I figger you for a man what’d do the same for any of us.”

  Likely, those warriors were sitting out there in the dark, watching every precaution the trappers took to bring their stock in close to camp and post guards around those animals. More than once Bass chuckled to himself how that must irritate the piss right out of those Ute who had plainly come into camp with no better purpose than to eat the trappers’ food, drink the trappers’ coffee, and count the trappers’ guns. Something about the redskins had convinced him they were a thieving lot, right off … and if they coveted anything the white men had along for their journey to California, it was the guns. In the constant warfare waged against their Apache neighbors, those rifles and pistols and smoothbores would more than tip the scales in the Utes’ favor.

  How it must gall the hunting party to watch the white men prepare for trickery even though the double-tongued Ute leaders had professed only the strongest of affections for those trappers who passed through their land!

  Twice during his watch that night, Titus was certain at least one of the warriors was making a crawl for the horses. A sound out of place, maybe an odor brought him on the shifting breeze. Both times he would bring the rifle’s hammer back to full cock and noisily stride toward that side of the remuda. That second time he was sure enough of what he’d heard that he dropped to his knees, lowered his head, and peered at that strip of horizon where the pale, starlit sky met the darker earth. There he spotted three of them lying among the sage, really nothing more than shadows humped upon the ground.

  The temptation to shoot and wound one of them, even kill one of the slippery bastards, was almost more than he could endure. But Bass was sure they saw him too, had to hear him approach before his moccasins ground to a halt on the flinty hardpan, sure that’s what brought the trio to a stop in their crawl toward the animals. Maybe just fire a warning shot somewhere between them …

  “You two-tongued sonsabitches!” he bellowed instead. “You don’t get and stay gone, I’ll wear your hair my own self afore morning!”

  From either side of him he heard running feet as Kersey and Coltrane sprinted out of the dark to join him.

  Huffing, Elias asked breathlessly, “You see something?”

  “Three of ’em,” Bass replied, kneeling and motioning the others down close to the ground with him. “Lookee there.”

  “If that ain’t a yank on the short-hairs!” Kersey exclaimed.

  Scratch asked the other two, “What you figger we oughtta do with ’em?”

  “Run ’em off,” Kersey declared loudly as he stood in the dark, punching a wide hole out of the starry sky as Bass peered up at the man. Elias stomped toward the warriors as voices grew sharp in camp behind them.

  “You sneaky bastards,” Kersey was grumbling out loud, his s’s whistling past a broken front tooth.

  Scratch was just turning, drawn to look over his shoulder with the approach of footsteps coming out from camp, when he heard the telltale thwung of a twisted rawhide bowstring. On instinct he flung himself to the ground beside Coltrane. In that same instant he heard Kersey yelp.

  Bass watched the trapper collapse to the ground, lost from sight along the skyline. But he could hear Elias groan, twisting, his body grinding noisily in the sage and dirt out there in the dark.

  Coltrane was already moving, lunging off the ground into the night. A second bowstring snapped in the dark.

  Scratch started to rise, crying, “I’ll kill ever’ one of you bust-ass red-bellies!”

  Of a sudden the night glowed for an instant as the pan on Roscoe Coltrane’s rifle ignited and the muzzle spat a long tongue of bright yellow flame. The roar of his weapon was immediately answered with a loud screech.

  As he started toward the noises, Titus watched Coltrane take form out of the dark as the wide barrel of a man went to his knee over a clump of sage. Skidding to a halt, Bass saw that it wasn’t brush at all, but Elias Kersey balled up on the ground, clutching at his hip.

  Coltrane’s eyes flicked up.

  “I took an arrow,” Kersey grumbled between clenched teeth.

  Scratch was already bringing the flintlock Derringer up—

  —as Kersey added, “Don’t know how bad I’m hurt.”

  At first he only heard them as he inched cautiously away into the dark. Then he saw one materialize, and suddenly another. They were doing their best to drag the third one off but were making a noisy rescue of it. In that next heartbeat they must have heard him slipping up behind them because they stopped, both of them dropping their wounded comrade and reaching for their weapons as they spun into a crouch. On their knees the small warriors were no taller than the scrub oak and bristly sage. …

  But Titus thought he knew one of those shadows out there was more than some leafy brush. He brought the rifle to his shoulder.

  Without taking time to think, Titus laid the front sight on the dark clump, clenched his eyes against the coming glare, and pulled the trigger in one fluid motion. The moment the gun boomed and shoved against the crook of his shoulder Scratch opened his eyes, watching one of the shadows tumble backward with a loud gust of air slammed from the warrior’s lungs.

  In an instant all became pandemonium behind him in the direction of camp. For a fleeting moment he had just started to turn to look back over his shoulder. That’s when another sliver of the night peeled away from the ground with a hair-raising shriek. An arm held high and brandishing a stone club, the Ute bolted toward the trapper, bounding over the sage and brush with ease.

  Taking one step back, Scratch shifted his empty, rifle to his left hand and with his right yanked out that short belt pistol. Dragging back the hammer with his thumb, he held … watching how the shadow raced closer and closer, dodging side to side, screaming his vengeance.

  Wait, wait till he gets close enough to make a sure shot of it. Closer … wait—

  Extending his arm he followed the target through the next heartbeat … until the emerging shadow suddenly became bare chest and naked legs. Holding on a spot midway between breechclout and that screaming mouth—he squinted his eyes shut to the coming glare and pulled the trigger.

  Immediately opening his eyes, Scratch could almost make out the man’s face, and the look of utter surprise on it, as the Ute’s legs went out from under him and he toppled backward in a sprawl, kicking at a clump of sage.

  “Bass!”

  It was Peg-Leg’s voice.

  “Over here!”

  Out of the dim glow emanating from the flickering light of their campfires appeared the wooden-legged booshway and four others, all of them huffing as th
ey followed their ungainly leader through the maze of scrub brush to reach the scene.

  “They get any horses?”

  Bass recognized the voice of Philip Thompson. He answered, “Not a goddamned one.”

  Smith teetered to a halt beside Titus to say, “Did they get any of the men?”

  “One for sure—Kersey.” And he pointed back off to the left.

  Thompson stepped up to Smith’s elbow, leaning in so his taut face was lit with starshine. “And how many of them Yutas you let get away, Bass?”

  His eyes narrowing, Titus looked away from Thompson and gazed evenly at Smith. “We saw three of ’em. Coltrane dropped the first one—”

  “Afore, or after, Kersey was hit?” Thompson interrupted.

  “Elias was awready down afore Roscoe pulled down on ’em,” Bass explained to Peg-Leg, doing his damnedest to ignore the proximity, the very sneer of the other man.

  “How’d you come to fire your gun?” Smith inquired.

  “They was dragging off the one Coltrane shot,” Titus explained. “I figgered to teach ’em some manners when it comes to jumpin’ fellas like us.”

  “How many of ’em get away?” Thompson demanded.

  Now Bass gazed back at the man. “Can’t rightly say ’bout your side of camp, Thompson. But speaking for my watch on horse guard, not a one of them thievin’ brown-skins is still breathing.”

  “I damn well didn’t realize just how handy you was to have around, Titus Bass,” Thompson replied, dripping with sarcasm. Then he started to snigger as he turned on his heel and started back for camp, followed by the others who had raced up with Smith.

  Peg-Leg hobbled past Scratch. “Let’s go see for ourselves what you’ve dropped out here.”

  They found his second kill no more than a few yards away, the first warrior out farther in the cold and the dark.

  Smith sighed as he stared down at the body. “You want the skelp?”

  “What the hell’m I going to do with this wuthless nigger’s hair?”

  Shrugging, Peg-Leg said, “Don’t matter what we do now, I s’pose. The rest of them Yutas gonna dog our back trail here on out.”

  “An’ if we bring them California horses back through this same country,” Titus grumped, “likely them Yutas gonna make things even harder on us … all over again.”

  * Present-day Tavaputs Plateau, in east-central Utah.

  7

  They had laid in camp that dawn, particularly watchful with the coming light for any attack from the Ute.

  But while they could hear the dim, distant chant of the off-key and mournful death songs, the trappers didn’t see a thing of the unsuccessful horse thieves.

  Even before the sun rose, booshway Williams had made a decision. “Keep cutting up your meat, boys,” Bill told the edgy, sleepless men. “Lay it out to dry and keep your guns primed. I figger us to stay here. Our flints are fixed just dandy right where we are.”

  The old trapper had that right. Here the Americans had water, shade from the early-summer sun, enough to eat, with a little grazing for their animals too. Damn foolish for the men to risk abandoning this place if they hadn’t finished jerking the buffalo for their long journey … especially if those Ute were still out there, waiting to spring an ambush somewhere on down the trail.

  Throughout that day the twenty-four of them took their rotation at horse guard while the rest continued the monotony of their butchering. Thin slices of the lean buffalo were suspended on a framework of green limbs erected over smoky fires. Even more of the meat lay out in the sun, exposed to arid westerly wind. Near sundown one of the men hollered out, warning that he sighted a handful of horsemen appear on the crest of a nearby hill. The camp fell quiet while the two dozen came to stand and watch. As twilight faded, the distant horsemen disappeared from view, dropping out of sight behind the knoll.

  “Keeping an eye on us,” Smith advised. “Sleep if you can tonight, fellas—but we’re making a running guard till first light when we can move out.”

  After the Ute had slipped in so close the night before, it was natural that some of the trappers were outright jumpy their second night of guard duty. The slightest sound emanating out of the dark, even a sudden shift in the cool, desert breeze, snapped a man alert—aware of just how loud his own heart was pounding. It finally grew light enough that Smith and Williams awakened all the men to prepare themselves for a possible attack. But as the hills brightened around them, no warriors appeared. Near or far.

  It was time to push on.

  The men bundled their meat, kicked dirt on their fire pits, then saddled up before the sun made its call on the day. Twenty-four of them prodded their horses and pack animals into the high plateau country, keeping the Green River in sight on their left as they continued south, every step taking them farther and farther from the cool, beckoning mountains.

  While the remainder of the remuda would loyally follow, the men put their efforts into keeping the broodmares out front. They were the animals ready to bolt away, turn around, and race for home to reunite with their colts. From time to time one of the mares would get it in her head that she was going to peel away from the rest and start back at a lope for the familiar, quickly tearing away at a wild gallop through the sage once the trappers attempted to turn her nose back to the south. It was dusty, exhausting work for the saddle horses pressed into this terrible duty of tearing mares away from their colts. All for the sake of stealing more of their four-legged breed from California masters.

  Six more mornings, middays, and long afternoons spent picking their way through the deeply scarred plateau before they were able to drop onto the bottom of what had the appearance of being a great three-sided bowl. Far to the east lay a few faint and jagged heights along the horizon. To the west stood the last great peaks of the snow-blanketed Wasatch Range. And ahead of them waited more of the low buttes and ridges as they pressed on down the Green through a land sunburnt anew, searching for a grand and muddy river.

  Near evening two days later they struck the Colorado, camping near that junction where the Green willingly gives itself to a greater torrent rushing for the sea.

  “You ever been on the Heely* far south of here?” asked Jake Corn that night.

  In that heartbeat he remembered an old friend, and a long-ago journey into the land of the Apache.†

  “Yeah,” Titus said quietly, his gaze climbing to the myriad of stars overhead. Wondering just which one of them might belong to Asa McAfferty. “I trapped on the Heely of a time with a good man. We run traps together for a few seasons.”

  Corn leaped up so he could stride over and squat right beside Titus. “Ever you two see a Munchie?”

  “M-munchie?” Scratch snorted. “Some kind of furred critter—”

  “Injuns,” Kersey corrected with a matter-of-fact air.

  Now Scratch was bewildered. Wagging his head in consternation, he said, “Never heard of no Munchies.”

  “Was hoping you’d see’d ’em,” Corn admitted.

  Purcell nodded. “Me too.”

  “Hell, I see the way your stick floats now,” Bass said. Tapping a finger against his temple, he continued, “These here Munchies are hoo-doos and such—”

  “They’re real!” Purcell snapped, shaking the stem of his blackened clay pipe at Bass.

  Titus peered at the nonplussed look on Reuben’s face, then quickly glanced at Kersey, and Corn. Finally, his eyes came to a rest on Adair. “You ever run across any M-munchies, Silas?”

  “I ain’t see’d ’em neither,” Adair confessed, straight-faced, his copper-red hair gleaming in the fire’s light. “But—merciful a’mighty—I have knowed a half dozen coons said they seen the Munchies for their own selves.”

  “Munchies,” Bass repeated the word again. “If they’re Injun … what sort of brownskin they be?”

  “Well now,” Kersey sighed, looking around the group. “Rest of you boys tell me if I get any of this here story wrong.” He wagged his head as he studied Bass’s fa
ce. “Can’t rightly believe that here sits a man what trapped down on the Heely and didn’t ever see him a Munchie.”

  Titus suddenly felt a compulsion to defend himself before this council of true believers. “Maybe I did, an’ just didn’t know it.”

  Adair snorted. “From what I’ve heard: if’n you had see’d a Munchie, you’d damn sure know it!”

  The others chuckled as darkness came down on that desert country quickly cooling with the disappearance of the sun.

  “J-just how would I know a Munchie to see one?”

  Corn cleared his throat, “Elias—you go right on and tell the man.”

  Quickly rubbing a dirt-crusted finger beneath his nose, Kersey began to tell Titus Bass about that tribe of highly civilized, white-skinned Indians reputed to live in a deep canyon just beyond the valley of the Gila.

  “I hear they eat off plates made of solid gold!” Purcell interrupted. Above his square-set jaw sat a mouth little more than a tiny crease in that expanse of chin. Even when he smiled—as he did right now—his mouth did not turn up at its corners. Instead, the narrow crease merely widened.

  “And with forks of gold too!” Corn insisted, shoving back from his forehead some of his coal-black hair just becoming dusted with a little gray at the temples, but most remarkable for the narrow white streak that emanated from the center of his brow.

  Kersey waved a hand for quiet, then leaned toward Bass. “Every one of ’em wears gold earrings, bracelets, armbands, and anklets. Gold belts tied around themselves too.”

  And Elias went on to explain that the Munchies were a peace-loving people who had somehow miraculously survived for centuries in the midst of the cruel Apache.

  “Centuries?” Bass echoed. “How long’s that?”

  Elias continued, describing how the Munchies were not Indians at all but descendants of a band of Roman adventurers who claimed they had sailed to North America fifteen hundred years before Columbus bumped into the eastern shores of the Americas. Rather than return home, they had intermarried with southwestern Indians. A peace-loving people, the Munchies didn’t even have a word in their tongue for “enemy.” And they no longer possessed any weapons.