Death Rattle

by Terry C. Johnston

  The dogs persisted in their yipping and howling. If they’d found themselves a porky, or a smelly polecat either one, Titus figured, he would have heard them yelping piteously by now: their eyes and noses stinging with a spray of poison, or their sensitive muzzles punctured by a hundred tiny, sharp needles. Sometimes the only way to learn was the hard way.…

  He thought about that harsh wilderness reality as he continued to bring the horses, two-by-two, down from the corral to the creekbank where he had knelt and hacked at the thin ice with the tomahawk he carried slung in the back of his belt. He listened, looked about, as each pair of animals drank their fill.

  Most folks simply didn’t realize that in this sort of country, winter’s cold dried a body out even more than the heat of summer. Recognizing that he must do better in such matters, Scratch vowed he would water the horses more often through the days ahead—especially as he taxed them with their long search in the bitterest of northern cold.

  From even farther away now he heard the dogs bark … then went back to thinking how he had somehow survived while learning things the hard way. No matter what it was that confronted him—he had endured. From what knowledge he had acquired on his father’s farm in Boone County, Kentucky, to all that he had absorbed during his journey downriver with Ebenezer Zane’s boatmen. Soaking in what Isaac Washburn had to teach him before Titus ever ventured to the mountains, not to mention all the brutal mistakes he made learning his mountaincraft from Silas Cooper—no matter all those intervening years, Titus Bass had survived despite the odds continually pitted against him.

  Out here there always had been risks, perils, outright dangers that would surely chew up lesser men.

  So why was it that he was still standing, approaching his forty-ninth birthday? How had he managed to cheat death so damned often … when other men—those undeniably much stronger and those most certainly much smarter—had fallen prey to this wilderness, succumbed to the challenges and the dangers this raw land brandished as a weapon against man’s intrusion?

  When other men were bigger or faster, when that many more who had come and gone were clearly more learned of mind—why was it that Titus Bass had outlasted all but the hardy few who remained, steadfast holdouts like him?

  What had singled him out for this honor?

  From the echo of their barking, he could tell the dogs were making their way back. He stood listening to the dying of the light as the last pair of horses drank their fill. As the last rays of sun slowly drained behind the nearby bluffs, his old wounds began to ache with the great and deep cold that settled in the river valley.

  Had he survived merely because he was so vigilant and wary? Or, quite the contrary—had he survived because he had ignored the odds and refused to shrink from those dangers that caused lesser men to cower—taking risks that spared his life in the end, while other less daring souls fell to less ordinary circumstances?

  The two dogs burst onto the scene, causing the horses to snort in surprise, perhaps in disgust, at the canines’ playfulness. Titus turned and led those last two horses back to join the others as the dogs came up, bounding around him.

  “Here. Here, boys,” he said as he dropped the lead ropes and patted his knees, calling the dogs. Something on their muzzles, a difference to their noses.

  He wrapped an arm around the black-eyed one and held him close for an inspection. “Well, now—lookit you, Digger. What’s this?”

  Swiping his mitten across the black nose and into the pale fur behind it, Bass grew suspicious.

  Biting off his mitten, Bass dropped it at his knee while he licked his first two fingers and used them to wipe at the dog’s nose. Then he held the fingertips beneath his nose and smelled. Immediately brought the fingers to his mouth, tasting them lightly with the tip of his tongue.

  “Ashes, boys. You had your noses in a fire pit, ain’t you?”

  He let the darker pup go, snagged his mitten and pulled it on as he stood. Staring off in the direction where the pups had gone to investigate.

  Not that the ash could have been warm—sensitive as their noses were, these dogs wouldn’t have done that. Even so, had it been as recent as last night’s fire pit, still had been a whole day—hunters up and moving off at daylight, clearing out of this country …

  But, if they had been Crow hunters—why hadn’t they just returned to their village after their hunt instead of spending the night out in the cold?

  Maybeso it wasn’t a Crow fire. Damn, he hated feeling squampshus like this on what had become more and more like home ground after all these years.

  Looking around at this place he had chosen, Scratch sighed. He’d build a fire, cook his supper, and heat some coffee. Then take the precaution of building a straw man he would stuff beneath some robes to give the appearance of a man sleeping.

  That done and the fire banked, he’d slip off into the dark, back among the cottonwood shadows where he would dig a narrow trench after nightfall. Into that shallow hole he’d lay enough of the glowing coals he could scoop from the fire pit, then sprinkle a thin layer of dirt over them before spreading his sleeping robes atop the trench. That done, he’d sleep warm, hiding back in the dark, laying right where he could keep watch on the fire and campsite through the trees.

  Something told him. Maybe it was the fact he hadn’t found the Crow village by now. Compounded by the dogs investigating that ash from an old fire.

  Then again … maybe it was nothing more than that finely tuned edge of discomfort that had saved his life so many, many times before.

  * What the mountain men called the Laramie Range in southeastern Wyoming; not the Black Hills of today, which rise in extreme northwestern South Dakota.

  22

  Damn! He’d dozed off into a sleep too content and restful.

  Should have heard them coming.

  Bass listened to the night, his eyes straining at the dim corona of firelight that remained through the trees. Nothing moving yet.

  Only sounds. The nicker of a horse, soft as a sigh. Then from another direction—this time to his right—the groan of a misplaced moccasin on the icy snow. That meant there was two of ’em. At least two anyway.

  Already the dogs were alert, trembling in keen anticipation, whimpering low and feral in their throats there at his side, where they lay upon the robes. Before bedding down, Titus had tied them with lengths of rope to a pair of nearby trees, then wrapped bandannas around their jaws to clamp them shut when he inched back into the darkness last night. Oh, he could have tied them up close to the fire and the straw man, but these thieves might well have killed the pups outright. Dogs were noisy in an Indian camp—warning those in the village of all intruders. This enemy would go right after the pups if Titus had left them tied by the fire.

  Better that they were beside him where he could scratch their ears, reassuring them—even whisper to them to hush now that so much depended upon noise, or the absence of it.

  While his ears continued to listen for the slightest whisper of telltale sound, he watched the shadows around that copse of trees, that circle of radiant light from the fire he had banked. The glow was fading. A good chunk of time had passed since he slipped back into the shadows to wait out the night. There for a while he had come wide awake with every new sound emanating from the darkness. A restless, wary discontent huddled in the robes laid atop that warm trench of dirt and live coals.

  Must’ve made himself too comfortable, too warm, too secure and lazy. His two pistols jabbing him in the gut hadn’t been enough to keep him from sleeping. They were primed and ready for the close work—once the three long guns were emptied. How many would there be?

  Then he tried to assure himself there couldn’t be that many. If there were—it’s for certain the red niggers would have stepped right on into his camp, bold as brass to take his hair. Or, leastwise, to lift that straw man’s topknot.

  No more’n three of ’em. Maybe four at the most, he convinced himself. No more than four, or these niggers would have
been sassier. As it was, the thieves were cautious. And he had long ago learned to be all the more scared of a cautious adversary than to be wary of a boldly overconfident enemy.

  As he lay there, trying to work his mind around just how to make his play from the dark, the first of the intruders eased into the outer edge of firelight, just off to his left a little. The warrior moved cautiously, still back in too much of those shadows preventing Titus from determining what the man might be—Blackfoot, Assiniboine, maybe even Crow horse thieves.

  At the back of Digger’s throat, a low rumble grew. Good thing the wind rustled the leaf-bare branches enough to overwhelm the dog’s warning in that moment before Scratch grabbed Digger’s muzzle and squeezed it shut. The pup swallowed down the last of its growl.

  This Indian had much of his back to Bass as he stepped silently, studying that long form stretched upon the ground, at the far side of the fire from Titus. Then part of the tall shadow moved, and a long weapon appeared in the warrior’s hand. A rifle. Maybeso a smoothbore trade gun, short as the barrel was. Its muzzle was being leveled at the straw man wrapped up in those buffalo robes.

  It surprised Scratch when the Indian took one of his mittens from that smoothbore and waved it in gesture to the dark. Bass’s eyes shifted to the right, watching a second figure emerge from the dark. Out in front of him was a long-barreled weapon—definitely not a fusil. That was a rifle. Likely taken off some white man. Not a weapon bartered in the Indian trade.

  Only then did Titus realize his heart was loudly thumping in his chest. He was scared they could hear it too and realize he was behind them in the dark. As the second one took another step into the light, Scratch rocked up on his hip. With a step from the other, he brought out one of the pistols. Each time the Indians moved with a rustle or a shuffle of their own, the old trapper readied himself a little more—shifting the robe out of his way before dragging out that second pistol. If there were two in the light, likely there were others still back in the dark.

  Unless they were so cocky that they figured they had jumped a lone white man and he was as good as dead.

  The wind suddenly gusted through the nearby brush. With its groaning rise of sound, Scratch whispered sharply to the two bandanna-bound pups, “Shush!”

  Bass stood, slowly inching onto his feet, knowing the crackling of his knees and left hip had to be loud enough for the bastards to hear. No longer content to sit, both dogs were on their feet. Titus could tell their neck fur had ruffed.

  He waited breathlessly, watching the man to his left start quietly around the fire pit, his smoothbore held low, its muzzle almost on the ground. When he stopped, Scratch froze too. He was just out of the fire’s light. Any closer would expose him to the warriors and he would have to wheel to the right to fire at that second intruder. But from where he stood just inside the thick veil of darkness, he could get off both pistols at them without being forced to move for the second shot.

  The muzzle of that fusil climbed a little, and the Indian held. It seemed almost as if the son of a bitch hankered to savor this moment when he had the drop on the enemy.

  That’s when he realized they couldn’t be Crow. Once before—not knowing who he was or that he was married into the tribe—Crow warriors had stripped him of horses and left him afoot. If these raiders only wanted his horses, they could have taken them and been gone in the dark.

  Chances were damned certain these weren’t Crow horse thieves. These were killers. Scalp hunters.

  The hair rose at the back of his neck. Blackfoot.

  Bug’s Boys had killed more good men than he dared to count. Blackfoot took Jack Hatcher. Arapooesh. Whistler. And they killed Strikes In Camp with their pox. Blackfoot kidnapped his woman and daughter—nearly killed Waits-by-the-Water with their slow-dying sickness. No doubt about it: These red bastards had slashed and hacked their way through Titus Bass’s life from every which way. And here they were again. Not content to lift his horses, or ride off with all that trading-post plunder … the sons of bitches had a hankering to kill him.

  Their kind had tried it many times before and failed—

  The warrior slowly raised the muzzle until it was less than four feet from the buffalo robe tucked over the clumps of sage and brush he had tied and formed to look like a man—then fired.

  Standing near his knees, both dogs jerked, shuddering with the sudden explosion. They pressed themselves against his legs. Titus lowered his arms to momentarily reassure them both by scratching them with the pistols he gripped in both bare hands.

  Wincing from the bright muzzle flash, both Indians twisted to the side, covering their eyes with mittens. It was several moments before their eyes adjusted to the dark, when both warriors stepped closer, grumbling at one another. The second warrior brought up his weapon and warily held it on the straw man as the shooter poked the muzzle of his empty smoothbore under the edge of the buffalo robe and flung it back.

  The two of them had a moment to stare at the brush tied in several places with leather whangs to form the crude shape of a body, then gaze into one another’s faces—before Scratch took those two steps that brought him right to the edge of the firelight.

  “Lookin’ for me?”

  They immediately wheeled on him, utter shock clouding their copper-red faces. The second warrior’s long rifle came up as if strapped on a pulley.

  “You’re dead, you sonsabitches!”

  With that first pistol shot, Bass hit the rifleman high in the chest, hurtling the warrior backward a step where he spilled over some of the baggage circling the fire.

  Wheeling to his left, Titus found the first shooter lunging to the side. He had flung his smoothbore aside and was scratching at his belt to pull out the tomahawk with its dull, tarnished brass head.

  English. French, maybe.

  Such a weapon was Blackfoot for sure.

  A voice shouted from the dark. Then another from the far right. Shit—there were four of them after all.

  Bass ducked backward, retreating out of the light. Kneeling beside one of the old cottonwoods, he laid the empty pistol down on the snow and swapped the other to his right hand. Far, far better with it. He never had been a good two-handed shooter.

  There! He spotted that shooter with his ’hawk crouched at the edge of some of the trade goods, what there was of his form illuminated by the fire’s light.

  Off to his left some of the horses whinnied. Whoever was there, one or more of them, was no longer worried about the white man’s horses making any noise. The tomahawk man was hollering. His voice, high and strident. Bass could tell he was afraid, caught by surprise, seeing his friend killed, and now he had to fathom he was pinned down by the white man who was just waiting for him to break into the open.

  In the next moment, Scratch realized he needed more than that one pistol in hand. There were at least three of them still out there—each one capable of cutting him down. He whirled about on the balls of his feet, jamming the pistol into his belt and pulling out the larger of the two knives at his back.

  Back at his hidden bed, Titus grabbed Ghost’s rope in his left hand, sawing the blade against the woven hemp. As the rope came apart in his hand, he reached up and yanked the bandanna off the dog’s snout. Close at hand, Digger was lunging at the end of his rope, the length of it snapping taut with so much force it made a dull pung-pung-pung sound. He reached the second dog, tearing the bandanna off its muzzle, then made a grab for its restraining rope.

  Behind him at the fire, the killers were shouting now. One of them even screaming. Another voice broke into a discordant wail. A death song. The son of a bitch knows he’s gonna die.

  By the time Titus got turned back around and stuffed the knife in its scabbard, he wasn’t sure if he was hearing the dogs padding on the snow in the dark or if it was the enemy. He dropped to his knees there at the buffalo robes, flinging back the hides and feeling for the rifles he had exposed. He supposed at least two of them were coming. He could see no movement in the firelight
. As many as three. Those two out there in the dark, and now the tomahawk carrier had dived into the shadows, that inky black beyond the reach of the fire’s feeble glow.

  Weighing what he should do—go in search of them, or wait for them to stumble across him in the dark—Bass listened for the dogs. They would either make a nuisance of themselves in the dark, or they would get themselves killed. Suddenly he felt guilty for releasing them to attack the attackers. They were a threat to the thieves and would likely get—

  Then he made himself a promise on their behalf. If he heard a sound from one of the pups or a warrior, Titus vowed he would dash to the sound. He convinced himself that if he reacted quickly enough, the enemy wouldn’t have time to kill either of the dogs because they posed a threat.

  That was the pale-eyed Ghost’s growl. A man suddenly yelped in pain. A dull thud—an instant before Bass started forward in the dark. Then he heard Ghost whimpering in his own pain.

  Just as Titus shuffled through the trees at his left, he caught sight of a jumble of shadows at the far edge of the firelight. Ghost had one of them by the calf, his jaws locked tight as the warrior clumsily swung his fusil down on the dog’s back again and again, sometimes swinging wild, sometimes connecting. With each noisy thud, Ghost released a groan—but never did release the Indian. It must be excruciating to have those half-grown fangs buried deep into that calf muscle.

  From the veil of darkness Digger flew like a blur, striking that same warrior with such force that the Indian spilled over some baggage. As the scalp hunter tried holding off the second dog, Titus kept moving. Before he got to the edge of the light, the tomahawk holder appeared between the trees, his weapon held high as he lunged forward, making for Digger because the big pup had his warrior flattened on the ground, protecting his throat.

  At his right hip Titus brought up the rifle on instinct, instantly setting the back trigger before yanking on the front trigger without thinking, much less aiming as he clenched his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he found the tomahawk holder spinning, the upper part of his left arm bleeding. The warrior grumbled as he settled onto the balls of both feet wobbly, then brought the tomahawk back once more as he stumbled to a stop right over Digger.