Death Rattle (2 page)

But he and Shad had hacked their way out of that war party and made a desperate run for the fort.

Sioux.

If that didn’t mean things was changing in the mountains, nothing else did. Why—to think of Sioux on this side of the divide. Damn, if that hoss didn’t take the circle—

Titus picked one out. Made a fist of his left hand and rested the bottom of the fullstock flintlock on it as he nestled his cheekbone down in place and dragged the hammer back to full cock.

Down the barrel now that rider somehow didn’t look to be Sioux. Most of them on this end of their grand, fronted charge didn’t appear to be similar to the warriors who had jumped him and Shad two years back. He guessed Cheyenne.

The way they started to stream past, peeling away like the layers of a wild onion Waits gathered in the damps of the river bottoms, he’d have to lead the son of a bitch a little. The warrior took the outside of the procession, screaming and shaking his bow after each arrow he fired.

Titus held a half breath on that bare, glistening chest—finding no showy hair-pipe breast ornament suspended from that horseman’s neck. Instead, the warrior had circled several places on his flesh with bright red vermillion paint. Likely his white, puckered, hanging scars, directly above each nipple where he’d strung himself up to a sun-dance tree. And a couple more, long ones though, down low along his ribs. Wounds from battle he proudly exhibited for all to see. Let his enemies know he was invincible.

Bass held a little longer, then raised the front blade of his sights to the Indian’s head and eased off to the right a good yard. What with the way the whole bunch was
tearing toward the white men’s corral at an angle, there was still a drop in the slope—

He was surprised when the gun roared, feeling the familiar slam of the Derringer’s iron butt plate against the pocket of his right shoulder.

What with the muzzle smoke hanging close in the still, summer air, Bass was unable to see if his shot went home. But as the parade of screaming horsemen thundered past his side of the breastworks, he did notice that a handful of ponies raced by without riders. One of those animals had likely carried the big fella with the painted scars.

Farther back in the stream, other horsemen were slowing now, reining this way and that to avoid a horse that had plunged headlong and flipped, pitching its rider into the air. Some of the warriors slowed even more; two-by-two they leaned off their ponies to scoop up a wounded or dead comrade, dragging his limp body back across the coarse, sun-seared grass that crackled and snapped, hooves clawing at the powdery dust that rose in tiny puffs with each hoofbeat, the dead man’s legs flying and flopping over every clump of sage, feet crazily bouncing, wildly sailing against the pale, summer-burnt-blue sky.

Few of their arrows made it all the way to the breastworks they had formed out of those sixty or more animals. The half-a-thousand clearly figured to make this a fight of bravery runs while the waterless white men slowly ran out of powder and lead.

At first some of the trappers had hesitated dropping all the horses and mules. They bunched their nervous animals together, tying them off nose-to-nose, two-by-two. But with those first frantic, wholesale charges, the Sioux and Cheyenne managed to hit enough of the animals in the outer ring that the saddle horses and pack mules grew unmanageable, threatening to drag off the few men who were struggling to hold on to them. Arrows quivered from withers and ribs, from bellies and flanks.

Then the first lead balls whistled in among Fraeb’s men. Damn if those red bastards didn’t have some smoothbore trade guns, fusils, old muskets—English to be sure. Maybe even some captured rifles too—taken off
the body of a free man killed here or there in the mountains. One less free trapper to fret himself over the death of the beaver trade.

Arrows were one thing, but those smoothbore fusils were a matter altogether different. While such weapons didn’t have the range of the trappers’ rifles, the muskets could nonetheless hurl enough lead through their remuda that those Indians could start whittling the white men down.

There were a half dozen horses and mules thrashing and squealing on the ground already by the time the St. Louis-born German growled his thick, guttural command.

“Drob de hurses!” Fraeb shouted. “Drob dem, ebbery one!”

Many of those two dozen mountain men grumbled as they shoved and shouldered the frightened animals apart in a flurry. But every one of them did what they knew needed doing. Down the big brutes started to fall in a spray of phlegm and piss as the muzzles of pistols were pressed against ears and the triggers pulled. A stinking mess of hot horse urine splashing everyone for yards around, bowels spewing the fragrant, steamy dung from that good grass the horses pastured on two days back.

In those first moments of sheer deafening terror, Bass even smelled the recognizable, telltale odor of gut. Glancing over his shoulder, he had watched as the long coil of purple-white intestine snaked out of the bullet hole in that mule’s belly so that the animal itself and other horses tromped and tromped and tromped in nervous fear and pain, yanking every last foot of gut out of the dying pack animal’s belly.

He had quickly poured some powder into the pan of his belt pistol, lunged over a horse already thrashing its way into eternity, and skidded to a halt beside the very mule that had been his companion ever since that momentous birthday in Taos.

Stuffing his left hand under the horsehair halter, his fingers went white as he jerked back on the mule’s head, shouting in what he hoped would be a familiar voice, a
calming voice. As a horse went down behind Titus, one of its slashing hooves clipped the trapper across the back of his calf and he crumpled to his knees. Gritting his teeth with the pain as he struggled back onto his feet, Bass yanked on the mule’s halter again and shouted as he pressed the muzzle of the short-barreled .54 just in front of the mare’s ear.

“Steady, girl,” he whimpered now. Tears streaming. Some of anger. Some of regret too. Lots of regret. Then pulled the trigger.

He had gripped the halter as she pitched onto her forelegs, her back legs kicking some, struggling to rise, until she rolled onto her side. Nestled now in the shadow of her body lay that dirty, grass-crusted rumple of her gut.

Titus knelt quickly at the head, staring a moment at the eyes that would quickly glaze, watching the last flexing of the wide, gummy nostrils as the head slowly relaxed, easing away from him.

“Good-bye, girl,” he whispered, the words sour on his tongue.

Bass patted the mule between the eyes, then quickly vaulted to his feet and wheeled around to reload. Prepared to continue the slaughter that was their only hope of living out this day.

He remembered another mule, the old farm animal that had grown old as Titus had grown up on that little farm back near Rabbit Hash, Boone County, Kentucky, beside the Ohio River. And then he sensed a cold stab of pain remembering Hannah. The best damned four-legged friend a free man could ever have in these here mountains. Hannah—

The trappers dropped them all. Fraeb and some others still hollered orders above the tumult. Every man jack of them knew what was at stake. The resistant, dying animals must have smelled the dung and the piss, must have winded the blood of their companions already soaking into the dust and sun-stiffened grass of this late-summer morning. They dropped them one-by-one, and in twos as well. Until there was a crude oval of carcasses and what baggage the men could tear off the pack animals and get
shoved down in those gaps between the big, sweaty bodies that would begin stinking before this day was done and night had settled upon them all like a benediction.

Twenty-four of them pitted against half a thousand Sioux and Cheyenne. Not to mention a hundred or more Arapaho who had showed up not long after the whole shebang got kicked off with that first noisy, hoof-rattling charge. Damned Arapaho must have been camped somewhere close and come running with all the hurraw and the gunfire.

Titus grinned humorlessly and pushed aside the one narrow braid that hung at his temple. The rest of his long, graying hair spilled over his shoulders like a curly shawl. All of it tied down with a faded black silk bandanna that also held a scrap of Indian hair over that round patch of naked skull left him so long ago. He thought on that bunch of Arapaho who had caught him alone many, many summers before—and stole his hair. Remembering how he eventually ran across the bastard who had taken his topknot … how he had lifted this small circle of hair from the crown of the scalper’s head. Recalling how glorious it had been to take his revenge.

So Titus grinned: maybeso some of the bastard’s relatives were in that bunch watching the Sioux and Cheyenne have at the white man’s corral. Wouldn’t be long now before those Arapaho would figure it was time to grab some fun of their own.

Glancing at the sky, Bass found the blazing sun over his shoulder. Long as they’d been fighting already, and it wasn’t yet midmorning. That meant they were staring at a double handful of dead-slow hours behind these packs and stinking carcasses. And with the way the first of the women were starting to bristle along the crest of that hilltop yonder, the warriors weren’t about to ride off anytime soon, not with the whole village showing up to chant and sing their men on to victory, on to daring feats of bravery, on to suicidal charges that would leave the bodies of one warrior after another sprawled in the grass and dust of that no-man’s-land all around the trappers’
corral. Bodies fallen too close to the rotting breastworks for other riders to dare reclaim.

Titus blinked and wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the sleeve of his faded, grease-stained calico shirt. And saw the flecks of blood already dried among the pattern of tiny flowers. The mule’s blood. Bass glanced quickly at the sun once more, wondering if this was the last he would ever lay eyes on.

Would he ever see the coming sunset as he had promised himself summers and summers ago when he managed to ride away from that scalping, a half-dead shell of a man clinging to Hannah’s back? Would he ever see another black mountain night with its brilliant dusting of stars as he lay by the fire, staring up at the endlessness of it all, Waits-by-the-Water’s head nestled into his shoulder just after they had coupled flesh to flesh? Would he ever again see their children when they awoke each morning, clambering out of their blankets and tottering toward him as he fed the fire and started the coffee—eager to fling their little brown arms around his neck, squeezing him with what he always took as their utter joy in having another day to share together.

Together.

Oh, he wished he was with the three of them now.

How thankful he was that he had compelled Waits to remain behind with the little ones. If the three of them were here among these twenty-four ill-fated men now …

With the breakup of that last pitiful rendezvous shared by a few holdouts in the valley of the Green River, Bass had watched old friends disperse on the winds. Some gave up on the mountains and pointed their noses back east to what they had been. Others like Meek and Newell set a new course for Oregon country where the land was fertile and free.

But a hardy few had determined they would hang on, clinging to the last vestige of what had been their finest days. What had been their glory.

Never again would the big companies dispatch their
trapping brigades into the high country. There was no money to be made in trading supplies for beaver pelts at a summer rendezvous on the Wind, the Popo Agie, or some fork of the legendary Green. Bridger and Fraeb formed a new partnership and brought out that last, undersized pack train from St. Louis in ’40. Afterward, while Bridger led a small band of trappers north, Fraeb and Joe Walker started for California with a few men of their own.

Bass marched his family north with Gabe’s undermanned bunch. And when Bridger turned off for Black-foot country, Titus had steered east for Absaroka and the home of the Crow, his wife’s people. There would always be beaver in that country—even if he had to climb higher, plunge deeper into the shadowy recesses than he had ever gone before. And, besides—traders like Tullock were handy enough with his post over at the mouth of the Tongue. He’d continue to trap close to the home of his wife’s folk; trade when he needed resupply; and wait for beaver to rise.

The way beaver had before. The way it would again.

They had a fair enough winter that year—cold as the maw of hell for sure, but that only meant what beaver he brought to bait were furred up, seal-fat, and sleek. When the hardest of the weather broke, he took a small pack of his furs down to Fort Van Buren on the Yellowstone, only to find that Tullock couldn’t offer him much at all in trade. So Titus bought what powder and lead he needed, an array of new hair ribbons for his woman, a pewter turtle for Magpie to suspend around her neck, and a tiny penny whistle for Flea.

How Bass marveled at the way that boy of his grew every time he returned to the village from his trapline or a trading venture. At least an inch or more every week Titus rode off to the hills. Even more so when he returned from a long journey to the Tongue. Flea was four winters old now, his beautiful sister to turn seven next spring, looking more and more like her mother with every season.

Where it used to break his heart at how Waits-by-the-Water
first hid her pox-ravaged face,
^*
it now gave him comfort that she had made peace with what the terrible disease had cost her: not only the marred and pocked flesh but the loss of her brother. Every time Bass returned from the hills, come back from the wilderness to the bosom of his family, he quietly thanked the Grandfather for sparing this woman, the mother of his children, from the cursed disease that had decimated the northern mountains. And, he never neglected to thank the All-Maker for the days the two of them had yet to share.

With the arrival of spring following that last rendezvous, he decided to mosey south, taking a little time to trap if the country looked good—but intending above all else to be in the country of the upper Green come midsummer when Bridger planned to reunite with Fraeb. On the Green last year before going their separate ways, there had been serious talk of erecting a post of their own.