Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

“Awright, you pork eaters,” Scratch roared at them with a wave of his long rifle. “C’mon, let’s go see what plunder them Injuns run off with.”

  As late summer crept its way into early autumn, the weather began to cool at the lower elevations—even more so in the high country where the horse thieves drove their herd from sunrise to slap-dark, clambering over one low range after another—plodding slowly up the western slopes until they reached a low saddle, then struggling to keep the eager horses together as they raced down the eastern side of the passes.

  This was, after all, country that both Ol’ Bill and Scratch knew like the backsights of their guns.

  At the tiny trading post, Antoine Robidoux’s grateful employees hadn’t hesitated in hauling out the clay jugs of aquardiente, that powerful, head-thumping concoction brewed down in the Mexican provinces. After all, they had been rescued by a band of dust-caked, desert-scarred beaver trappers. Gone this long drought after the whiskey in Pueblo de los Angeles, all those parched and dusty miles—their gullets were due a hardy scrubbing.

  Not only the whiskey, but they were due those two Santa Fe whores they had just rescued from the Ute warriors. In a pair of nearby rooms, the women spent that long, bawdy night on their backs, entertaining an unending string of American suitors. Paying for their pleasure to the tune of a horse for every carnal crack they had at the two whores seemed reasonable enough to the Americans. Why, each man jack of them was rich, rich in horses! What were two, three, even four horses these hungry men would leave behind by the time Bill Williams barked out his marching orders the next morning?

  Bass’s head hurt worse than ever that sunrise when he squinted into the graying dawn, then stared down at the mud-caked moccasin jabbing him in the ribs. He lay atop a thick mattress, its odor musty from old grass gone to molder, the faint stench of old puke, and more than one dousing in urine. Sometime last night he had managed to drag a blanket over him for warmth.

  He found himself lying on the floor of the tiny stable where the post patrons tied up their most valuable animals, not at all sure how he had come to sleep with these horses.

  “You ever close your eyes last night, Bill?” he asked, then hacked up the night-gather thick at the back of his throat. Hangovers caused him a little more pain with every year.

  “Not once,” Williams boasted proudly. “Laid down a time or two—but it weren’t to sleep!” He snorted with boyish laughter, then asked, “Why’n’t you come get yourself a poke with one of them gals?”

  “I’m a married man, Bill,” he answered, sitting up and grinding the heels of his hands into both eyes.

  “Taking hisself a Injun woman never kept no man from greasing his own wiping stick, Scratch.”.

  Bleary-eyed, he gazed up at Williams. “I don’t need to poke no woman bad as that.”

  “Your woman, she back with her own people?”

  “Yep.”

  Williams watched Scratch stand and dust off the hay from his clothing. “Who’s to say she ain’t back there right now curled up with one of them Absorkee bucks?”

  For an instant he flared with anger, then realized by the look on Bill’s face that, in his own way, Williams was just having his fun. “I didn’t know you better, maybeso I ought’n bust you atween the eyes for making a crack like that, Solitaire.”

  Williams winked. “Never settled down my own self, mind you—but, I do know any woman can get lonely.”

  “I don’t figger Waits-by-the-Water for that sort of woman.”

  “You sure ’bout that?” Bill asked. “After all, you are getting a little long in the tooth, Titus Bass.”

  Scratch looked his friend in the eye and said, “Maybeso you’ve never loved a gal like I love this’un, Bill. I’m sure of the woman she is. That’s why I’m going home to her and my young’uns soon as we get shet of these Californy horses.”

  “Damn, if that don’t take the circle!” Williams snorted. “Who’d a-reckoned when I’d met you up to the Bayou that you’d ever fill out to be a family man?”

  That morning after leaving Robidoux’s post, they crossed the Uncompahgre, then stuck with the south side of the Blue, gradually forced to lead their herd farther and farther from the water’s edge as the river cut its way through a deep, black canyon. Many days later when the channel split in two, they stayed with the south fork, a river the Ute called the Tomichi. The raiders pressed on, climbing to its headwaters, where the horses and men both grew breathless from their struggle into the high country. From that narrow saddle,* they dropped over to the eastern slopes where the raiders got their first glimpse of the narrow, winding ribbon of the upper Arkansas as it was gathering steam in its headlong race to the Mississippi far, far across the plains.

  From here on they had only to follow the river out of the mountains.

  Thirteen days later Titus caught sight of the low adobe walls raised around a cluster of poor adobe buildings when the raiders crested the top of a low rise. “What the hell are those?” he asked in surprise.

  “I’ll be go to hell,” Williams said in a low voice filled with marvel. “They gone and done it for certain.”

  “You know who that is down there, Bill?”

  He gave Bass a sideways grin and asked, “You ain’t been down in this country for a long spell, have you?”

  Bass shook his head, his eyes dancing over the mud-and-wattle hovels squatting inside the fort walls and out. Off to one direction a few cattle grazed on grass already smitten brown with autumn’s first frost. Two dozen sheep, along with a handful of goats, cropped the gentle slope directly behind the settlement. Even a few chickens pecked at insects near the gate.

  “What’s this post called?”

  “Ain’t rightly a trading post,” Williams answered. “Leastways, no one man owns it. Only thing I heard it called is the Pueblo. Story goes, Jim Beckwith and a few others come up here from Mexico to get things started.”

  Titus scratched a louse out of his beard. “Beckwith—the darkie what was a Crow chief?”

  “That’s him.”

  Scratch crushed the tiny louse between a thumb and fingernail. “Bet these here fellas didn’t figger they’d have to go head-on with the Bent boys!”

  “I heard they was coming here to do just that.”

  “If that don’t take the circle!” Titus exclaimed. “You s’pose these niggers be interested in some Californy horses?”

  The horsemen scattered the chickens and some goats as they started off the hillside more than a half mile from the crude settlement. After rounding the herd back on itself and bringing the weary horses to a halt, the dust-caked weary raiders made camp a good mile up a wide creek from the Pueblo. As they came out of their saddles, Bill guaranteed every man his opportunity to spend time in the settlement that night, or the following day—since they would be laying over before pushing on. Then he assigned a rotation of guards to watch over the herd before he signaled Bass to mount up and accompany him.

  “Let’s go pay us a visit,” Bill suggested. “See who’s about.”

  For the most part, the breeze drifted downhill, carrying with it the settlement’s stench. But every now and then as they approached, the wind would momentarily shift—and the odors of human waste, rotting carcasses, not to mention cow and goat dung, would all conspire to slap them in the face. Not that this wasn’t exactly how an Indian village stank after several weeks being rooted in the same spot. But then, the tribes always migrated when it came time to move on. From the looks of things, these white squatters had decided to stay put, no matter the stink.

  “Ho!” called out a thin figure stepping from the shadow of that bastion erected at the corner of the eight-foot-high adobe wall as the two riders approached in the late-afternoon light.

  Williams and Bass reined up. Bill held down his hand, “William S. Williams, Master Trapper.”

  “Bill Williams hisself,” the thin one replied, admiration spread across his face. “I’m Robert Fisher. And who you be?”

  “Titus Ba
ss.”

  “I’ll be damned. You’re the one what wears the scalp of the nigger took your hair, ain’t that it?”

  Patting the back of his head, Bass said, “How come you know of me?”

  “Partner of mine says he knowed you,” Fisher announced.

  Scratch’s curiosity was pricked, “Who that be?”

  “Said he trapped with you some years back,” Fisher explained. “Name’s Kinkead.”

  “Mathew Kinkead?” he echoed with a sudden surge of sentiment mixed with excitement. “He’s your partner?”

  “Yep.” And Fisher squinted up at Bass, his head twisting round on his neck so he could stare at the back of the horseman’s faded bandanna.

  “Mathew ain’t living down to Taos no more?”

  “Not for some time now.”

  “Kinkead bring anybody with him from Taos? Family?”

  “His woman, and they got ’em a daughter—”

  “No,” he interrupted with a snap, flush with a skin-prickling excitement that made him squirm in his saddle. “I wanna know if Mathew brung any other fellas with him from Taos—American fellas?”

  Robert Fisher thought mightily on that a moment, as if muscling over a great block of quarried marble in his mind before he answered. “No, I’m sorry. Don’t recollect him having no American—”

  “Where’s Kinkead now?” he demanded impatiently.

  The man turned slightly and pointed, “Last I saw of him earlier, Mathew was down by his buffalo pens.”

  “B-buffler pens?” Williams squeaked, high-pitched and scratchy as a worn fiddle string.

  Fisher nodded. “Where he keeps his buffalo calves.”

  “This I gotta see, Scratch!” Williams roared.

  “Saw all them horses you fellers was bringing down out of the hills from a ways back,” Fisher stated, stepping up to pat the dirty, sweat-caked neck of Bass’s pony. “Less’n you robbed horses from the hull Yuta nation … just where the hell you fellas run onto so goddamned many?”

  “Californy,” Titus declared.

  Now it was Fisher’s time to sputter. “C-california … these Mex horses? All of ’em?”

  “We run most of ’em off California ranchos,” Williams admitted.

  “Some was wild,” Bass said proudly. “They joined up on our way east over the mountains.”

  Bill added, “I figger most of them wild ones made it cross the desert.”

  “Lookit all of ’em!” Fisher gushed with astonishment, staring at the hillside.

  “What you see is less’n half what we took right under their noses,” Titus boasted.

  “Wait’ll the rest of the fellers see this!”

  “We’re camped up the creek a ways, mile or so,” Williams announced, pointing down the slope at the mouth of the nearby Fountain, where the creek flowed into the Arkansas on that broad valley floor. “We’ll graze our horses on what grass there is above you on that big flat.”

  “I’ll go fetch up the others,” Fisher offered. “Let ’em know you boys come—”

  “Don’t think you’ll have to,” Bass said as he spotted more than two dozen figures emerging from the fort gate, headed their way on foot, another ten to fifteen women, children, and a few men clambering out of a handful of buffalo-hide lodges pitched close to the post’s adobe walls. “Truth be … I think I see ol’ Mathew Kinkead’s ugly face coming now.”

  There wasn’t a thing that could compare with the strong embrace of an old friend, a companion who had ridden the high country with you, stood at your back time after time against great odds, a man you had trusted with your life.

  Scratch gazed at Kinkead’s face through damp, misty eyes, his cheeks wet with happiness as they slapped each other on the back and danced, danced, danced.

  “Easy now, easy,” the large bear of a man huffed as he lumbered to a stop. “Ain’t as y-young as we was back when we could pound each other to a frazzle, Scratch.”

  “I heard Rosa’s here with you,” he said, a little breathless too.

  The wide, toothy grin drained from Kinkead’s face. “Rosa … no. She’s gone.”

  “G-gone? Wh-where?”

  “Was took quick and merciful two winters after your Crow woman had that girl of your’n. Where’s she? You still packing that squaw?”

  He nodded only, struck a little numb in remembrance of sweet, round, warm Rosa Kinkead who had helped deliver his first child. “She’s … an’ my young’uns, they’re all up to Absorkee. Ain’t see’d ’em since early spring.” Then Scratch wagged his head. “Can’t hardly believe it—not when Fisher said Kinkead was here with his wife and daughter.”

  “That’s Teresita,” Kinkead explained. “We got us a daughter too, just like you.” He sighed, then said, “How long’s it been, my friend?”

  “Late spring,” Bass answered, “thirty-four.” In so many ways—made all the sweeter in staring at his old friend’s face—it seemed as if only a season or two had passed them by, instead of more than eight long, intervening years.

  What with that sudden, sad news about Kinkead’s Rosa, Titus was reluctant to ask …

  “Mathew,” he said quietly, gripping the big man’s wrist in his bony claw, “wh-what become of Josiah?”

  Quickly, Kinkead’s face brightened. “Josiah Paddock, you say?” And he snorted with laughter. “Now there’s a nigger made hisself a home in Taos!”

  “He—he’s still alive?”

  “Alive? Damn certain that tall drink of water’s still alive,” Mathew declared. “Leastways he was the picture of health last time I see’d him early in the summer.”

  With that flutter of excitement winging through his belly, Titus asked, “You saw him down to Taos?”

  “The goods we brung north for our trade room here, some of ’em we bought off Josiah, Scratch.”

  Titus felt his whole body smiling. “You saying—he’s made himself a place as a trader down to Taos, Mathew?”

  “Strike me deaf and dumb if he ain’t made a damned good trader down at San Fernando.” Kinkead laid a big hand on Bass’s shoulder. “Just the way you made it possible for him right before you lit out for the mountains. Y-you ain’t ever been back down to Taos since you come back from Saint Louis, come back from settling things with Cooper?”*

  Scratch shook his head, “No, I ain’t been back down there.” A surge of pride was sparkling its way through his chest with this grand, grand news about his old friend. “Mathew … what of his Flathead woman? And that li’l boy of his, Joshua was his name?”

  Kinkead’s head rocked back on his massive shoulders as he laughed. “Looks Far Woman talks Mex good as any greaser now! An’ Josiah’s been keeping her big with child nigh every year. Near as I callate, young Joshua got him least four brothers and sisters!”

  Impulsively, Scratch threw his arms around Kinkead again, squeezing mightily in the pure joy brought of good news.

  Mathew asked, “That where you’re headed? See Josiah down to Taos after all this time?”

  He took a step back from the big man to explain. “Your news will have to do for now. We’re on the tramp for Bents Fort with some horses to trade.”

  “I know it’d make the lad truly happy to lay eyes on you again, knowing the way he mourned your going when you pulled up stakes and headed back to the mountains.”

  “Make me a happy nigger to set my eyes on him again too,” he sighed.

  Kinkead offered, “If’n you want, I’ll ride south with you—”

  “Maybe one day soon,” Bass interrupted, torn between two regrets. “But too long I’ve been gone from my woman, and our young’uns. Too long. It’s time I point my nose for Absorkee afore Winter Man blows down on that north country. Tramping south for Taos gonna have to wait for ’nother day, Mathew.”

  “Truth be,” Kinkead admitted, “I didn’t much take to the notion of setting foot in the Taos valley again myself, Scratch.”

  Bass studied the doleful look on his old friend’s face for a moment before he asked, �
��You ain’t the kind to have no trouble with the greasers. So why you skeedaddle?”

  Kinkead shook his head as he toed the ground beneath a moccasin. “Just ain’t the same place it was of a time years ago.”

  “The Mex?”

  “Them, yeah,” Kinkead replied. “Them Pueblos too. The Injuns just outta town.”

  “Josiah and his family—they ain’t in danger?”

  “Hell no,” Mathew said reassuringly. “Them Mex look most favorable on Paddock, most favorable. Why, the lad’s a real pillar of that community.”

  Titus measured the way Kinkead grinned and puffed out his chest appropriately while he spoke those soothing words. It gave his heart no little pride to learn how well his old partner had carved out a life for himself in Taos. Why, of a time many winters ago, Scratch even looked upon Josiah as that younger brother he left behind in Boone County, Kentucky. And, when he owned up to it, there had been those times when, in many ways, he felt as if Paddock could well have been like a son.

  Natural to feel as if he could bust his own buttons with pride in what young Paddock had accomplished in the intervening years. Had Titus not convinced Josiah to remain behind in Taos back to thirty-four, no telling what might well have become of the lad: fallen to the Blackfoot when they rode to avenge the death of Rotten Belly or Whistler, even took by smallpox had he been along for that desperate chase to reclaim his family from the Bloods, or killed in his first running skirmish against the Sioux.*

  As it was, Josiah would likely die an old man’s death now, his gray, hoary head resting on a goose-down pillow as he drew his last breath there in his fine Taos home, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. The lad had stretched Lady Fate’s patience as far as any man had the right to do. Any man … save for Titus Bass.

  If ever there was a man who realized he would never pass over the Great Divide peacefully stretched out on a feather tick, surrounded by weeping loved ones … it was Titus Bass. Lady Fate simply didn’t hold anything of the sort in the cards for him. No quiet passing would be his legacy.

  Scratch swallowed the lump of sentiment clogging his throat and said, “Damn fine to hear Josiah’s made a life for hisself. Just the way it ’pears you done right here for yourself too, Mathew.”