Death Rattle (28 page)

“Don’t feel nothing broke,” he said to the guide, then looked up at Kersey, who sat atop his horse just behind Frederico.

Elias asked, “That Injun ride?”

Bass asked Frederico, then looked up at Elias. “Yeah. Says he can ride.”

“We better get back to that fort if’n we’re gonna free them women,” Corn said.

Adair came to a halt by Elias. “The longer we take, the behinder we’re gonna be from the rest of the fellas and that herd.”

Titus helped Frederico stand, then said, “Rube—get one of the soldier horses for the Injun.”

“Let’s get going,” Corn prodded.

“Wait,” Scratch suddenly declared.

“Wait?” Purcell whined as he yanked a soldier horse over.

“Get the clothes off these here soldiers,” Titus ordered.

Adair repeated, “Their clothes?”

Scratch started to explain, “Four of us gonna be soldiers when we go riding in there proud as prairie cocks—”

“What about the other two of us?” Corn asked. “How we gonna get all of us in there?”

“A couple of gringos got caught by the
soldados—
that’s how we’re all gonna get in there.”

Elias Kersey’s face lit up like a full winter moon illuminating a fresh snow in the northern Rockies. “Four soldiers guardin’ their two prisoners! Yee-awww! If that won’t be a yank on the devil’s short-hairs!”

Scratch was the first to spot the lone sentry posted atop the adobe wall as the seven horsemen approached the soldier post.

“They’re watching us now,” he warned the others in a low voice.

“Hope them Mex buy this,” Kersey growled.

Dressed in the stolen uniforms, Elias and Coltrane were riding just in front of Frederico, who was flanked by Jake Corn and Reuben Purcell, both of whom still wore their buckskin leggings and poor cloth shirts. All three had short sections of rope looped, but unknotted, around their wrists, making it appear they were bound prisoners. Behind these three rode the last pair of impostors: Titus Bass and Silas Adair.

Back at the scene of the fight, the trappers discovered that neither the round-bellied Corn or the gangly-limbed Purcell could fit into any of the bloodied uniforms. As it was, the four who did strip out of their buckskins to pull on pantaloons and soldier jackets found the Mexicans’ clothing a trifle snug. But, Scratch reminded them, they would be undertaking their ruse for no more than a short ride: only until the gate was open and they were inside the compound.

It wasn’t until they were within the shadow of the front wall when Corn suddenly asked, “What if they got ’em a password?”

Shit—why hadn’t he thought of that? Why hadn’t Jake asked about it before. Bass was angry with himself.

But that lone sentry stationed atop the wall’s interior banquette did not call out. All he did was slowly walk along the top of the wall, staying right above the horsemen, moving toward the gate, holding that musket and bayonet across his chest. When he stopped directly over the gate, he called out to those inside.

“What’d he say?” Adair demanded in a harsh whisper.

“Told ’em open up,” Bass growled, the hair at the back of his neck prickling with warning.

Wood scraped against wood as the huge bolt was
withdrawn, then massive iron hinges creaked as one side of the gate in the wall swung open.

“This is it, boys,” Titus whispered to them.

Kersey and Coltrane started their horses forward together, but that sentry on the ground shouldered back the gate only far enough to admit one horse at a time. Titus felt himself sweating. This precaution wasn’t a good sign of an open-armed welcome. Next through was Frederico, followed by the two white prisoners.

A voice called out in Spanish. Another voice hollered in reply. He damn well knew it wasn’t any of the trappers. Hurry, hurry, his mind raced—wanting to get inside to hear what was being asked of the first impostors.

Scratch was the last to slip through the narrow opening, finding the others strung out in the compound. He turned quickly in the saddle—a guard behind him at the gate. The only other guard in sight on the low, narrow banquette above them. As the gate swung closed with a thunk and the guard leaned his rifle against the wall so he could manhandle the log bolt into place, Scratch told himself his wariness was getting far too old. It had played him for a fool this time. From the looks of things, this was going to be prime pickin’s.

At the exact moment the guard at the gate picked up his rifle again, the sentry atop the banquette leveled his weapon on the horsemen and cried out in a shrill voice.

Eight soldiers suddenly appeared in doorways on three sides of them. In that blink of an eye, ten old Spanish muskets were pointed at them.

“What’d he say! What’d he say!” Purcell demanded with a shriek.

“They want us to drop our guns,” Bass translated.

“We’re rawhide if we do,” Corn grumbled from the corner of his mouth.

“These greasers damn sure gonna hang us later,” Scratch said boldly. “Or we can die here and now like men.”

Kersey said, “You heard ’im, fellas—”

One of the soldiers interrupted with a shrill shout: demanding the Americans drop their weapons.

“On three, fellas,” Bass ordered in a calm voice that would give no warning to the soldiers, “we’ll make our play. One. Two … three!”

Up came all their weapons as the trappers ducked aside. The Mexicans had an advantage in the brief standoff: their muskets were already aimed at the Americans. Like parched corn rattling in a frying pan, the guns popped on all four sides of them—the trappers’ weapons booming as Bass watched smoke and flame and shredded patches jet from the muzzles of the enemies’ smoothbores. The horses cried out, lead landing among them—wheeling, rearing, shoving against another.

One of the men in front of Titus grunted; the breath was driven from the lungs of another. They still had an advantage, he told himself as he slapped the rifle into his left hand and the horse started backing up, bumping into another. He and his friends were loaded for bear. While the soldiers only carried those muskets, the trappers all had more than one weapon.

Pistols came out of belts and sashes, held at the end of their arms as those soldiers still alive disappeared back into darkened doorways. All of them yelling at one another. The sentry on the banquette and the guard at the gate did not fare so well.

“We’ll have to hunt ’em down one at a time!” Corn cried out.

Whirling in the saddle, Scratch aimed his pistol at the sentry and fired. As the ball struck him, the soldier was slammed back against the adobe wall, then bounced forward, pitching off the low banquette to strike the ground flat, unmoving.

Purcell was hit, clutching his side as he slumped against the withers of his horse. Adair was sprawled on the ground, the fingers of both hands interlaced over a nasty wound in his thigh.

“Don’t give ’em time to reload!” Titus warned, sprinting for one of the doors.

Instinct told him and the others that they needn’t race for those doorways where a soldier lay blocking the entrance, or sat crumpled against the doorjamb. The empty
doorways meant the trappers would have to go in after the others.

In the lamp-lit, shadowy interiors, a fleeting drama was played out as metal and wood collided, men grunted in exertion, groaned in pain, boots and moccasins scuffing the hard-packed clay floors.

Mule-eyed, the soldier caught reloading in the corner of the room looked up as Bass rushed him, raising up his musket to parry the long skinning knife Scratch waved in front of him. The musket knocked the knife hand aside and the ball of a fist slammed low into the trapper’s gut.

More than mere pain, the fist drove the air out of his lungs. Gasping, Scratch stumbled back two steps, blinking against the flash of shooting stars. He saw the soldier turn and pitch the musket aside, scrambling for the wall where a long scabbard hung from a peg. The saber grated free of its sheath at the moment Bass lunged forward, arm high overhead, bringing the skinning knife down in a blur.

The blade caught the Mexican in the top of the shoulder. He buried it to the hilt as the soldier struggled to get the other arm raised, to bring the saber into action. Just when the saber reached chest level, Titus seized the man’s wrist in his left hand.

Using the buried knife for leverage, Scratch drove his left knee into the enemy’s groin. As the Mexican stumbled back a step, whimpering in pain, Scratch shoved the enemy’s arm up, up with that saber until it lay across the soldier’s neck.

Then brutally ripped it sideways.

Hot blood splattered over them both as the air in the man’s lungs wheezed from the gaping, bubbling wound.

Letting go of the soldier, he watched the Mexican fall, the eyes growing glassy and lifeless. Bass placed his foot on the man’s shoulder and pulled his knife free. Wiped it on the soldier’s jacket, turned, and crouched at the doorway, peering into the afternoon sunlight.

With the next heartbeat he was astonished to see a shabby, disheveled woman appear at a nearby doorway.

“Celita!” cried Frederico.

The woman took one step, then a second into the courtyard, wearing a loose-fitting, smudged, sooty dress that many times had been ripped and torn.

With that second step she suddenly stopped and peered over her shoulder furtively. Out of the shadowy rectangle behind her emerged Celita’s sister.

“Mayanez!” the Indian sobbed and started toward the two women. Then immediately halted in his tracks.

Right behind the small female stood a large, bare-chested man, his muscular arm locked around Mayanez’s throat. In that hand pressed against her ear he clutched a knife, while at the end of the other outstretched arm, he held a pistol pointed at the back of Celita’s head.

Frederico growled something in Spanish as he rocked onto the balls of his feet, both hands flexing into fists and claws, fists and claws.

“What’d he say?” Kersey demanded.

“The Injun says that’s the blacksmith,” Bass translated.

Corn demanded,“How’s he know that?”

“When Frederico come here a while back,” Scratch declared, “that bastard was dragging one of the sisters off by herself for a little fun.”

“This big son of a bitch figgered to dip his stinger in one’r both of these gals while them soldiers was away chasing horse stealers?” Kersey asked as he inched closer to Bass.

“Easy to see he’s a hard user, Elias,” Bass sighed, his mind working, squeezing down on their predicament with the two women.

Corn started, “This messes things up real good—”

But Frederico interrupted, sputtering something in his worked-up, incomplete Spanish.

Nonetheless, Titus caught enough words. In his own halting Spanish, he told the Indian, “Stay put now.”

“This
genizaro
^*
speaks my language too,
chaguanoso?”
the blacksmith growled.

“Si, he does—”

“Like you, gringo,” the Mexican said.

“Chaguanoso,”
Titus repeated the word the blacksmith had used. “What’s it mean?”

“You’re a horse stealer,” said the blacksmith. “A low form of life, horse stealer.”

“Better than a big-talking man who hides behind women.”

The big Mexican grinned. “You want these women, eh?”

“Yes, we came for the women.”

The blacksmith’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Aren’t there enough Indian women where you come from, gringo? Can’t you get some for your own fun?”

For an agonizing few moments Bass translated that in his mind, turning it over and over to make sure he got it right. Then he said, “We came to take the women away with us—”

“Get your own women,
chaguanosos!”

“No,” Bass shot back, twisting the knife in his right hand. “We come to take these two women back to their people.”

Slowly the blacksmith’s eyes crawled to the Indian. From there he glanced at Purcell and Adair both crumpled on the ground, bleeding. Then his eyes quickly danced over some of the soldier bodies scattered across the compound. Those black, forbidding eyes that so reminded him of Emile Sharpe’s glare eventually came back to rest on the old trapper.