Death Rattle

by Terry C. Johnston

  She began to whisper, “I can go with you—”

  But he laid two fingers upon her lips. “We talked of this last night. It’s better you remain here with the children, to live among your people while I go search place to place.”

  “We lived those seasons together years ago, never separated.”

  He nodded, then pulled her cheek against his chest. “That was before we became parents. Before you … you were almost taken from me. I promise you we will travel together again.”

  “You said you would take me back to Ta-house.”

  “Yes, and I will keep that promise.”

  “We will see our old friends again after all these winters,” she said. “When can we go?”

  He had realized she was trying in her own roundabout way to convince him to take her and the children along with all her talk of a far-off trip to see long-ago friends. So he said as gently as he could, “I don’t know.”

  “When you return? We go then?”

  “No, not then,” he answered quietly, but firmly. “But, we will go there someday. For now, I have to find a trader who will take my beaver. So I will work my way south, trapping as I go, always looking for a trader who will realize how hard I work.”

  “You could stay here with us,” she begged. “Hunt and ride off on pony raids like Apsaluuke men do with their days. You don’t need to hunt the flat-tails—”

  “I don’t think I can live a life like that.” He explained what she must surely know already. “I cannot give up and become Indian like the men of your tribe. Nor can I give in and become one of the many who go back east to scratch at the ground or own a store … don’t you see that I am a man in between who doesn’t belong in either world?”

  “Man in between,” she repeated thoughtfully, as if giving it careful consideration. “No, you are not meant to be a warrior who lives only for the battle or the ponies he might steal. And I agree that you could never go live among the white people again.”

  Gently wagging his head as he grasped her face between his hands, raising it so he could stare down into her eyes, Titus said, “I must go in search of a place for myself. Everything is changing around me. I am not of your world, but I am no more a part of the white world. I can only pray that I can find a new place now that everything has gone crazy around me.”

  “When will I see your face again?” she asked.

  “I hope to return before the coming winter,” he admitted, believing it would be so and that nothing could prevent him from keeping his vow to her.

  “When the leaves on the aspen and the cottonwood begin to turn yellow, every day I will look for you on the horizon, every day,” she choked out the words.

  He smothered her mouth with his, unable to speak for the hot ball stuck in his throat. Then he knelt there right in front of her and flung his arms around the children, embracing them fiercely. After kissing their cheeks, their foreheads, and their eyes, he stood again and pressed his lips against her mouth one last time.

  “Be-before winter.” His voice was raspy with regret as he quickly turned away, took up the horse’s rein, and climbed into the saddle.

  Ever since that morning, it had tortured him to think of just how many lonely nights he would have to endure until the coming winter turned the earth hard as iron. Until he lay against her damp skin all night through—

  The wind was not right, so those riders could not smell the smoke of the small fire Bass had left behind in his camp. Titus squinted in the late-afternoon light and did his best to study the distant horsemen picking their way in and out of the tall willow down there along the Popo Agie. From the way the heat waves danced up from the valley floor, it looked as if there could be three riders, maybe four. He couldn’t be sure.

  Black, swirling figures lost then spotted once more against the meandering braid of vegetation … until he realized there were only three animals. And only one of the horses carried a rider. The two others were strung out behind the man—

  The horseman had his knees folded high along the front flanks, his bony knees almost rubbing the horse’s withers. Only one man Scratch had ever known rode in such a way, his stirrups lashed so short he had the appearance of a too-large man riding an undersized pony and saddle. Bass almost wished he had taken the long spyglass with him when he stepped away from camp to hunt the wet places for greens and shoots. With it he could make sure …

  But, in his marrow, Scratch was already sure. It had to be.

  He stood there in those trees bristling upon the gentle slope above his camp, letting his eyes draw a line away from the horseman, scribing what had to be the rider’s path he would take down to the mouth of the next creek. Bass could easily reach the post on foot before the rider appeared out of the cottonwood there on the other side of the stream.

  Scratch heard one of the rider’s horses snort as he clambered to a halt and emerged into the open, crossing his arms and standing just so, casual though a little winded.

  “Howdy, Bill!” he called out as the rider came into sight of the creek crossing. “Har’ you now?”

  William S. Williams yanked back on his reins in surprise, his rifle raised up with lightning speed. “Goddamned you, nigger! Been a Injun, I could’ve gut-shot you for pulling such a prank!”

  “I’d been a Injun, Bill,” Bass roared, slapping both thighs with mirth, “you’d been gut-shot awready!”

  “Blazes, but you give a man a start: poppin’ up there right outta the ground.” And the skinny man slid his rifle back across the front of his saddle.

  “Didn’t do no such thing, Bill,” he replied with mock solemnity. “I see’d you from way back up the slope. You was making your way for my camp. Seems you just didn’t know it. C’mon across the crick an’ leg down off your horse.”

  Ol’ Bill Williams urged his horse into the fast-running stream, pulling the two packhorses behind him. Onto the south bank the animals clattered to a halt on the rocky cutbank. “Where you bedding down, Bass?”

  “Yonder in the trees,” he answered. “Your belly ready for some fodder?”

  “No coon in his right mind ever passes up a meal,” Williams admitted. “Never know when he’ll next have a chance to strap on the bag.”

  The late spring sun had settled behind the Wind River Mountains, and the cool air was sinking off the high places by the time they both sighed and pushed themselves back from the slabs of meat Titus had suspended over the coals on sharp sticks he had stabbed into the ground around his small fire pit.

  “I got coffee,” Bill declared.

  “Tobaccy too?”

  Williams nodded, slowly inching to his feet on crackling knees.

  Scratch inquired, “You been to a trader lately, have you?”

  “Not since last autumn it was. Laramie. I ain’t got much, but running onto ol’ friends is sure as hell good cause to break out the last of what I do have.”

  That had always been the mark of those hivernants, seasoned veterans of the mountains. They were willing to share the last of what powder and lead, coffee and tobacco they had with a compatriot. A man never knew when he might be the one who would be short of fixin’s one day.

  “Where you been since Laramie?” Titus asked as he came back from the creek, having filled the coffeepot with clear, freezing water racing down from those snow-fields high above them in the mountains.

  “Here and there,” Williams offered. “Spent time on the Rosebud, tarried some on the Tongue. Wintered the longest on the Tongue.”

  Titus set the pot on the fire and pulled off the lid. “You get up to Tullock’s post?”

  “Never did.” Then Williams stood and walked around the fire to one of his rawhide parfleches where he pulled free a large skin bag. He tossed it to Bass across the low flames.

  Pulling the drawstring loose, Titus smelled the aroma of coffee. He knelt at the fire near the pot and poured three heaping handsful into the pot before replacing the lid and yanking on the drawstring. “Where you away to now, Bill?”


  “West a ways.”

  They were quiet a long time, listening to the last calls of the tiny birds at the crossing, hearing the lick of the water coming to a boil, the tumbling of the coffee as the lid began its delicate dance. Bass grabbed a short twig and pulled the pot to the edge of the coals, then relaxed back against his saddle.

  “Last I see’d of you, Bill—was down to Taos,” Scratch remarked. “Become a trader your own self—growed wearisome of standing in freezin’ water up to your cock-bag.”

  Williams snorted with that. “Blazes, if nothin’ come of that endeavor! Packed up my plunder and hightailed it for the hills.” He sighed, stared at Bass a long time, then asked, “You ever run across that nigger what took your hair?”

  “I did, few years back,” he answered. “Fact be, I run onto him later on that spring after I first run onto you.”*

  Williams dug a louse out of his beard. “What ever come of it.”

  He turned and looked at Bill, a rueful smile coming across his face. “You soft-brained idjit! Here I sit right afore you. What you think happed?”

  “Just callated there’d well be a dandy of a tale behin’t you cutting that red nigger’s trail,” Williams explained.

  Titus had settled the grounds, poured them each a cup, and settled back against his saddle with his feet to the fire when he next spoke, “I … set things right.”

  Williams studied him a moment, then seemed to realized he would get little else for the time being. “A good thing, when a man sets things right.”

  He sipped his coffee, then asked Williams, “You’re laying your sights west to find better trapping?”

  “Ain’t going west for beaver, Scratch.”

  For a moment Bass gazed at the small packs of beaver pelts William had pulled off the pack animals and flung to the ground earlier.

  “Gonna take your plews to John Bull at Fort Hall?”

  Bill shook his head emphatically. “I don’t figger to go nowhere near Hall.”

  “Maybeso you do your best to keep your goddamned meat-hole closed ’bout where you’re going and what you aim to do when you get there, because I didn’t up an’ tell you how I killed the nigger what scalped me, left him gutted for the magpies and crows to pick over?”

  With a shrug, Bill said, “Naw, I was just sitting here reckoning on if you’d be one to come with me.”

  “Come with? Where, goddammit?”

  “Down to Fort Winty,”* Williams explained. “Got plans to meet some fellas there.”

  “Who?”

  “Peg-Leg, Dick Owens, Silas Adair, and others.”

  “What you fixin’ to do, if I throw in with you?”

  “Beaver’s all but dead, Scratch. I don’t plan to curl up an’ die with it,” Williams growled sour as green rhubarb.

  “Where you lay your sights?”

  “I hear there’s money to be had in California.”

  “That’s a long ride just to find you some Mexicans. What can you do in California you can’t do down to Taos or Santy Fee?”

  Williams’s eyes shimmered bright as Mexican tinwork in the flickering firelight. “Ain’t what we’re gonna do, Titus Bass … it’s what we’re gonna bring back.” Then his whole face lit up with a merry smile. “Horses.”

  Taking a long sip at his coffee, Bass was surprised to sense a surge of unexpected excitement ignite within him. He had to admit it had been a long, long time since he had felt this particular tingle of unbounded adventure. Since he had felt this sort of keen, sharp-edged tang stirring deep in his very soul, sensed this craving to be gone to far valleys and new dangers.

  “You want me to go steal horses in California with your bunch?”

  Bill Williams nodded eagerly, rocking up on his knobby knees so he could lean close. “I’d ride anywhere if I had a man like you at my back, Titus Bass.”

  For a long moment Scratch stared at those flames licking along the split limbs in the fire pit, realizing the anticipation was licking its way through him in much the same way with its own undeniable passion.

  “Awright,” Bass finally relented with a rasp to his voice, his throat constricting with unbridled eagerness. “I’ll be at your back when we ride into California to steal a few Mexican horses.”

  “I ’spect I better tell you it ain’t gonna be stealing them horses that’s the mean trick, Scratch,” Williams confessed, both his face and tone of voice gone solemn of a sudden. “It’s getting back out of California with them horses … an’ our hides too.”

  * Ride the Moon Down

  * One-Eyed Dream

  * Crack in the Sky

  * Fort Uintah, in present-day northeastern Utah.

  4

  What Ol’ Bill Williams had in mind wasn’t to merely ride into California and ride back out with a few Mexican horses and mules.

  No … he was instead consumed with a burning vision of leading the biggest, grandest raid ever: returning to the Rockies with a herd that would number in the thousands.

  South by west from the Popo Agie the two of them pushed hard across the next six days, starting when it grew light enough to pick their way into the dawn, remaining in the saddle until they grew so weary they no longer dared to grope through the darkness, sinking to the cold ground to spend another fireless night.

  Dried meat and creek water was all the fare this pair allowed themselves as they plodded across the great saddle of the Southern Pass, dropped over to the Sandy, continuing down to the Green. South from there to the narrow valley trappers had christened Brown’s Hole where they reined up outside the walled stockade of Fort Davy Crockett. Near the mouth of Vermillion Creek the two picketed their horses and lashed a wide strip of oiled canvas between three old cottonwoods to protect their pelts and supplies before moseying over to the post to see who might be about.

  The first peal of thunder leaped from a bank of dark, distant clouds rumbling out of the west. Already the dry, crackling air smelled heavy with the portent of rain. The breeze had picked up and the clouds were lowering by the time Bass and Williams approached the front wall. Titus pulled back on the thick strap of rawhide that had been nailed to the cottonwood logs, dragging open the narrow gate on its squeaky iron hinges. More than a dozen men, women, and children gathered in the courtyard turned with the noise.

  “That really you, Bill Williams?” one of the men cried out as he stood.

  “Gloree, if it ain’t Jack Robinson!” Williams answered the call. “Heard you was off with Carson.”

  “Didn’t neither of us do no good,” Robinson replied as the two stepped up. “So Kit’s sashayed on down to Taos to see ’bout some aquardiente and Mexican gals.”

  “A dangerous mix that’ll be for li’l Kit,” Williams replied. “I didn’t figger he’d stay a hunter for the Bents very long.”

  “I ’member you too,” Robinson said as he turned to Bass. “You’re the one they call Scratch.”

  With a wide grin Titus replied, “I’m sure as sin folks call me a lot of things!”

  “In that time we spent together,” Robinson explained, “Kit told me how you helped him in his duel with that parley-voo bastard named Shunar.”

  “That does take me back a ways,” Titus remarked a bit wistfully as many of the others were drawing close. “Seven—no, eight—summers it’s been.”

  “Don’t none of you coons go getting down in the face since there ain’t no more ronnyvooz,” Williams growled, slapping Bass on the back. “I figger we’re ’bout to raise some serious hell and put a chunk under it our own selves!”

  “Bill Williams!” A voice rose from the far side of the small compound. “An’ I’ll be go to the devil if it ain’t Titus Bass with him!”

  Scratch shouted, “Billy Craig, get your skinny pins on over here!”

  The group of strangers parted slightly as Craig stepped through, extending his hand to the newcomers. Quickly glancing over the group, Williams laid his bony paw on Craig’s shoulder and said, “You’ve gathered a good bunch, from what
I see, Billy. All old hands, that’s for sure.”

  “Wish’t I had more for to go with you, Bill,” Craig declared.

  “Any more fellers still to come in?”

  Craig wagged his head. “No one else who wants in on our ride.”

  “That be a shame,” Williams answered. “They’ll miss out on the best summer since the ronnyvoo of thirty-seven when we shot up that bunch of murderin’ Bannocks!”

  “Some of the rest who turned me down say they don’t wanna come because it’s a crazy idea of yours and Smith’s,” Robinson explained.

  Williams glared at him in disbelief. Then turned to another trapper as he said, “Didn’t you and Mitchell here tell ’em what we found in California that first time we went?”

  With an eager nod, Levin Mitchell said, “Horses and mules for the taking!”

  “After we get done having us a doe-see-doe with them see-nor-reetas!” snorted Jack Robinson.

  “I was hoping for to have at least twenty men, Billy,” Williams admitted.

  “Maybe Peg-Leg’s gonna find some down at Fort Winty for us,” Craig observed.

  “That where the one-legged nigger’s gone?”

  His head bobbing, Craig said, “Smith’s gone on ahead to see to getting the broodmares.”

  “There some Snake camps about?”

  Robinson explained, “Not a sign nearby. That’s why Peg-Leg put out for Robidoux’s post. Word was, there’s Yutas camped down there.”

  “What you want from the Yutas?” Titus asked. “Figger to get a few of them bucks to come along on your trip to Californy?”

  “What we need to buy or trade off them Yutas is a half dozen or so wet mares.”

  “W-wet mares?” Scratch responded. “I thought you’d get all the horses you wanted from the Mexicans.”

  “Told you we was going back for some big doin’s this time, didn’t I?” Williams said. “We callated the best way we can strip that many head of horses off them Mexican ranchos and back across the desert to these here mountains was to take us some wet mares along.”