Death Rattle

by Terry C. Johnston

  After dark it began to snow again. He sensed the inward pressure of time. Never having owned a pocket watch, not a man who was mindful of a calendar either, Titus nonetheless felt a compression of his soul as the cold knifed its way into the marrow of him. He should have been home by now. Not having the slightest idea where that realization sprang from … Scratch nonetheless knew he should have been back to Absaroka by now.

  He passed a fitful night, tossing in the robes and blankets with those two leggy pups. The storm moderated by first light as it rolled on east. The exertion made Bass warm as he loaded up the horses, one by one with their Indian pack saddles, then strapped on their bundles and made ready the saddle horse and the pups’ baskets. They set off across a new snow that had rubbed the little dogs’ furry bellies earlier that morning before he ensconced them in their blankets and baskets for the journey.

  His decision was made before the sun appeared behind the thick storm clouds. There would be no trip that would take him to Fort William at the mouth of the Laramie on the North Platte, no trip east from the direct route he had charted in his mind. He didn’t have the time for such a luxury. Winter was on its way to the northern plains, and he needed to strike for home as fast as he could push the animals.

  In a matter of days he had them skirting around the far end of the Black Hills,* gradually stretching out the daily march even though the number of hours between dawn and dusk was perceptibly shrinking. They could move faster now, cover more ground, the Cheyenne horses hardened to the trail, accustomed to their loads. After all, he knew these hills and bluffs, knew every creek and rivulet as he hurried cross-country, guided by the map long ago burned in his mind.

  At last he struck the upper North Platte, and in two more days he put that river at his back—scurrying, scurrying west for Turtle Rock and Devil’s Gate, following the Sweetwater in its icy climb into the naked, scrub-covered expanse that would transport a man to the Southern Pass.

  But Titus would not be near so patient as to wait for the Sweetwater to make it to the top of the pass before he would turn north. Instead, he struck out across country, praying his memory of the land would not fail him. North by northwest through each shortening day. That first night after abandoning the Sweetwater, he bedded down the weary horses at dark without water. They were too weary to care. The dogs whimpered some, however, tongues lolling—but quieted as soon as he tossed them the raw gut of a skinny antelope buck he had chanced across just before sundown.

  Near midmorning the following day, he spotted the telltale brushy border of a creek, that dull gray of leafless branches huddling close to the snowy ground as the watercourse meandered its way across the unbroken white expanse that stretched ever onward toward the harsh blue of the prairie sky. A bone-dry westerly wind prevented the horses from smelling the moisture until they were almost on top of the little creek.

  In a matter of moments every one of the animals was lined up, licking at the icy crust, hammering at the discolored slake with their hooves to get down to water … what little water still flowed over the pebbled creekbed. The dogs were yowling piteously, clawing at the tops of their baskets by the time he got to the pups and dropped them onto the icy crust of snow. The old, gentle horses were careful for the impetuous puppies as the pair darted between legs and hooves to drink first at one place, then scampered to another, lapping at the skimpy flow.

  On his knees after cracking the ice with his tomahawk, Scratch leaned out and lowered his face into the ragged hole. Water so cold it made his back teeth ache clear down to the jawbone. He came up gasping, raking his blanket mitten down his mustache and into his beard, both instantly caked with ice in that freezing wind blustering off the hillsides—

  There in the mid-distance, he saw them gathered beneath the hulking, bruised, blue-black clouds. The mountain slopes. They had to be the Wind Rivers. Two days, three at the most, and he would be at the cache. The cache. It was one more milestone to put at his back, each landmark announcing he was drawing closer and closer to home.

  The cache. Here he had buried his traps and all the other weighty truck he had not wanted to pack across the desert to California. With Bill Williams’s help, he had taken a day to dig that shallow hole before they pushed on south to the appointed rendezvous with the other raiders at both Davy Crockett and Robidoux … suddenly it all seemed so long ago. The desert crossing early in the summer, the raids and fighting, then recrossing the desert with all their horses. Striking for the mountains and home. He’d made it east of the Rockies, but he was still far from home.

  He let the animals drink and drink. He owed them that much, he decided. Then Bass called the pups to his feet and picked them up, one by one, settling them inside their baskets. For some reason, it struck him just how much they had grown: if they stood on their rear legs, each of the pups could easily leap out of the baskets that weren’t holding them much longer. Perhaps by the time they reached the cache and he had his plunder resurrected from that hole in the ground, he could give the pups a try on their own—following the horses north.

  Bass mounted, led the pack animals across the narrow creek, and struck for the foot of the mountains.

  Late morning of the third day, he recognized the distant landmarks here several leagues south of where the fur companies had held two of their rendezvous. Summer of ’30 had been a good one, times were clearly getting better—the mountain men were basking in their glory days. But by July of ’38, when the traders and trappers once more gathered in these nearby meadows, dark and ominous shadows had appeared over the mountains. Most of the free men realized the writing was already carved in the wall. The beaver trade was dying. Over the last few years there had gradually been less and less to hurraw about, less to celebrate and revel in, with far less whiskey to kill the pain that came of such a slow, agonizing death.

  By sundown a day later, Bass had everything dragged out of the small cache, dividing the square-jawed iron traps and all that extra powder and lead among the baggage he would strap on the packhorses come morning. At twilight Titus celebrated inching that much closer to her and the children.

  Here in the lee of the mountains his horses had plenty of grass blown clear by the winds groaning off the eastern slopes of the Wind River Range. Nearby they had a narrow creek, fed by a spring that would keep the creek open most of the winter. Now they were ready to point their noses directly north—following the Wind River into Absaroka itself. He could have done with a little whiskey to toast his efforts this night beside that empty hole in the ground, but Bents Fort coffee would have to do.

  That night as he lay in the robes and blankets, scratching the furry ears of those two weary dogs, Bass stared up at the patches of starry sky that appeared through wide gaps in the drifting clouds. For the first night in a long, long time he felt assured that this truly was the same sky she would be looking up at this moment too. No more did months separate them. Now it was only a matter of weeks—days really, or so he wanted to convince himself.

  Hopeful the miles would pass beneath him all the quicker for it.

  Bad as his joints pained him—especially the stiffness in those hard, raw-knuckled hands, not to mention the afflictions suffered a’times in both his knees and the aggravation that came and went in that left hip—Scratch nonetheless did not tarry at the medicinal oil springs lying north of that old rendezvous site.

  Memories were wrenched up just in passing on by the smelly, sulphurous tar pits. In much the same way Titus sensed the ghosts of the past as he stood beneath the low-slung, midday sun resplendent on the bright snow in that meadow where the Popo Agie joined the Wind River. How many hooves and horses, lodges and lean-tos, trappers and traders had trampled this grassy lowland … but those were matters of a bygone time. He whistled the dogs close as he slowly rose to the saddle, grown melancholy with remembrance as he set off again.

  Way it seemed, most of his life was already at his back, day by day steadily moving beyond all that he had left behind—friends and fights
and freezing streams—realities and recollections that only made the possibilities of what lay ahead that much sweeter.

  Titus knew how the pups must feel: for the first time they were allowed their own legs on this northbound journey. He’d realized he would have to check their paws and pads at each stop throughout the days ahead, looking for telltale signs of frostbite from tromping across the patches of ice, stretches of bare, frozen ground, and crusty snowdrifts everywhere they’d turn. Their skinny, wolfish legs would have to grow all the stronger too, what with the endurance that would be required of them if they were to travel with Titus Bass. To have them strike out across the ground on their own seemed the only way to toughen up their pads for this last part of the trail taking them north into the heart of winter. At first they might have only enough bottom to last until the mid-morning halt—but he knew that day by day the pups would harden for both the trail and what new life awaited them in Absaroka.

  The dogs were eager to begin their march each morning, but by midday they were tongue-lolling and near done in as they collapsed near his feet the moment he dropped from the saddle. Titus packed them in their baskets most of the afternoon. As one day tumbled onto the next, he found them able to last a little longer. A good thing too, he reflected. Those half-big dogs would soon outgrow the pack baskets he had traded off of Goddamn Murray. They weren’t roly-poly puppies anymore. He had burned off their store of baby fat. Mile by mile, they had become lean and hard.

  By the time he led them through the Pryor Gap, Titus knew the dogs could survive without him if they had to. Should something happen to him, they would make it on their own. That gave him peace of mind: knowing that if he were no longer around, the animals wouldn’t fall prey their first few days in the wilderness. The pups just might end up having some hair of the bear too, might possess what it took to survive in this raw, wild land.

  Once he had started into the Gap, Bass began to train an ever-more-alert eye on the blue horizon, searching for any sign of smoke or dust, something that might foretell of a village in camp or some Crow on the move. Yellow Belly’s people could be anywhere in this stretch of country now, he reminded himself. Deep in winter the band might push far south of the Gap, seeking out those protected valleys as the weather intensified its icy fury. But for now, he figured that the village would still be migrating across more open country. Anywhere west from the Bighorn. Pushing on, Titus continued down that river to its junction with the mighty Yellowstone.

  From those high southern bluffs he halted to let the horses blow and water while he had himself a look with his brass spyglass. Dragging it from his possibles bag, Scratch snapped open the three long, leather-wrapped sections and began to search the north bank of the Yellowstone, slowly scanning to his right as the Bighorn flowed off to the northeast. Then he inched it around to the south, searching the lower Bighorn valley. Still nothing.

  They had to be west of there, he decided. Turning to the left, Titus began to scan the north bank of the Yellowstone for any sign of movement, human or otherwise. Twisting the sections into focus on the horizon, he inched the spyglass across to the southern bank of the wide, icy-blue river. In due time the Yellowstone would ice up for the season.

  How desperately he wanted to find them, spot some wispy tower of smoke perhaps, that his eyes strained and grew tired. So tired for the strain in the winter light, from his willing it to be so, that his eyes began to water in the dry cold as the sun sank behind a bank of purple-blue storm clouds. Certain that, by morning, they would have more snow on the ground. For now he could find them shelter somewhere down below.

  As he started the horses away, descending through a defile, Scratch decided that was likely what the Crow themselves had done: gone in search of some sheltered valley where they might have more protection from the winter storms sure to roll through with more regularity now.

  From firsthand experience, he knew both the river and mountain bands generally spent the early part of the winter out in the open country. But as soon as the storms began to batter the Yellowstone country with some regularity, the Crow migrated to those sheltered valleys in the lee of mountains. True enough, Yellow Belly’s bunch could be over east visiting and trading with Tullock at the mouth of the Tongue—but the odds of that were a might slim. They usually put off that sort of journey for the leanest times—late in the winter—after the women had plenty of furs tanned, ready for bartering.

  Yonder to the northwest along the Yellowstone lay that country where, he recalled, Bridger’s brigade had wintered back in the early part of ’37. Titus thought back fondly on that cold time when he was hunkered in among the Crow with his family and decided to pay a visit to see some old friends where the trappers had set up their winter quarters nearby. Ol’ Gabe himself, Shad Sweete, big Joe Meek, and others too hadn’t been regaling one another with tales of bygone glories for very long at all when some Blackfoot showed up.

  “That there weren’t no leetle war party, mind you, boys,” he said now to the dogs loping near the saddle horse’s legs. “It were a hull shitteree of them bad-hearted niggers. Fact be—there was more of them red niggers’n any of us ever laid eyes on!”

  Late of a subfreezing winter day those warriors had gathered in force just downriver, clearly intending to wipe out one of the largest contingents of Americans ever to boldly penetrate the southern extreme of that country claimed by the Blackfoot. The sun went down, and the temperature plummeted with it. As darkness closed in around them, the Blackfoot drums began their haunting echoes.

  “We could hear ’em beatin’ on their parfleche and screaming their war songs,” Scratch explained to his canine audience as they continued downslope. “Such noisome sounds could turn a lesser man’s heart to water—hour after hour of that goddamned music, just knowing that come morning there was more’n enough Blackfoot to wipe all of us out three or four times over.”

  Then one of the trappers had shouted for the others to look north into the night sky. The horizon was ablaze with pulsating lights, resplendent with exploding streamers of throbbing color. But downriver a short distance, it appeared those northern lights gradually began to change hue. As the trappers watched, the sky bowed directly over the Blackfoot war camp erupted in a brilliant crimson.

  “Damn, if it didn’t seem like the heavens themselves was bleeding!” Titus declared dramatically as he related the story to those two dogs.

  It had proved to be a long, sleepless, and brutally cold night. And with the gray of dawn, while the ice fog began to swirl and shift, the trappers saw the Blackfoot coming—led by a war chief who had a white robe wrapped about his shoulders.

  “We figgered that was it, boys. The last sunrise any of us niggers would ever lay eyes on. But, ’stead of rolling on over us, them Blackfoots squatted right down and had themselves a war council not far from our barricades.”

  After some spirited debate, the war chief advanced alone to a spot midway between his warriors and the Americans. In sign he explained that the spirits must not be pleased with their plans to attack the trappers. The chief and his headmen had decided that blood-red sky arched over their end of the river valley was nothing less than a bad omen.

  “An’ them niggers did skeedaddle, just like that!” he clucked, trying his best to snap his fingers within the thick blanket mittens. “Happened, just like I told it—not far yonder there, on the north bank of the Yallerstone.”

  Corne morning, he’d continue west along the Yellowstone, Titus decided. About the only way to search was to make the sweep and look for sign. Maybe come across some evidence of hunters ranging out from camp. Spot enough smoke to account for a village. Cut some trail sign—

  He studied the lowering sky at the western rim of a world shrinking smaller and smaller as his day came to an end. The tops of those far mountains had disappeared beneath a bank of heavy clouds. Snow would be atop them by nightfall. With no possibility of cutting trail sign after the storm.

  As his eyes began to scan the countryside
immediately ahead for a sheltered nook, he figured the best he could hope for was that in two—maybeso three—days after the storm had waned, the Crow men would again venture out to hunt as the weather faired off. But for the next day or so while the storm left icy remnants of its passage through the countryside … both game and hunters would be laying low.

  It was nearing twilight when he found a copse of trees big enough to bring all those horses under cover, an open spot in the middle big enough where he would eventually scrape back the crusty snow to build his fire and spread out his bedding. The first item of necessity was to stretch out a long length of one-inch rope between several of the trees surrounding the center of the copse where little of the old snow covered the grass the horses would dig at. By the time he was done bringing the horses into his makeshift rope corral, Titus felt himself breaking a sweat. And his work had hardly begun. Sometimes, everything needed doing at once.

  As the dogs scampered off to sniff among the nearby willow while the light continued to fade, Bass tore off his elkhide coat and mittens. The wind was coming up—a sharp, brassy tang announced a hard, dry snow on its way.

  Wearing only the buffalo-hide vest for warmth now, he tore at the knots in the hitching ropes with his bare fingers, hoisting the loads from the horses’ packs, uncinching the saddles and heaving them outside the rope corral. When the last loads hit the ground, Bass dragged all the baggage he wouldn’t need into four piles, then carried the rest toward the base of three cottonwoods that might as well have grown from the same root system, their trunks stood so close. Together the three would make a fine reflector for his fire in the coming storm.

  Storm. Fire. Wood.

  But first he needed to water the horses—

  Titus heard the dogs barking enthusiastically, a different and excited tone from their throats—almost playful. They must have found themselves a porcupine, he thought as he untied two of the horses and led them out of the corral by their halters, heading for the creek less than sixty feet from his shelter.