Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

  That deep, abiding cold, and a silence like no other.

  On occasions at his solitary fire as winter’s darkness sank in around him early of an afternoon, he would look back upon those nine days of dragging his travois and the followers behind him, marching away from the country of the Little Snake, steadfastly pointing his nose for the country of the Green. Heat and dust, the sting of the alkali making his nose bleed, dust caking his mouth, burning his slitted eyes as they bore into the distance beneath that high, relentless sun. Eyes vigilantly searching the wavering, shimmering skyline for landmarks, for horsemen, for friends or foes.

  Each day he found the others strung out behind him a little more. Some were just slow working up the wherewithal to start out in the morning, to kneel, pick up their travois load, and put that first step behind them. So a few were slow in making it in to their pitiful camp each evening as the light came down. They straggled in for hours after dark. And the following morning, they would straggle out—always following the deep tracks his drag scored in the flaky, wind-scoured topsoil.

  He would look back over his shoulder at times, watching them coming, strung out like a few uneven beads on a thong grown too long, most of them wavering, lunging ahead a step at a time as the dust stived up from their moccasins, from the ends of every pole … and he would think how strange was the appearance of this dark, staggering creature—like some long, disjointed, many-legged centipede dragging itself through the pale, yellow sand … body parts irrevocably following its head.

  Dragged along by the sheer power of his will alone.

  Persistent he became, if nothing else. One step at a time. One morning, one midday, and one afternoon at a time. Eat the dried horsemeat and promptly fall into the sleep of a man beyond weary, his mind grown too numb from the heat and the thirst to think on little else but to dread the coming dawn when he would have to scoop down inside himself once more and determine if he could push on this one more morning, this one more midday, and finally this one more afternoon as the sun burned itself a red track across the western sky.

  It was afternoon when he thought he recognized the river valley from the low butte he had climbed, hopeful after these nine nights of fitful sleep, awakening at every cough, with every rustle of a man in his blankets—worrying if he should post a night guard … and in the end finding himself so hungry, so parched, so goddamned weary that he only worried in his dreams.

  But there it was on that flat above the cutbank where the stream flowed into the Green. On that patch of bottom ground stood the dark shadow of those cottonwood logs piled one atop the other to form a small square … so reminding him of Bonneville’s post squatting far to the north along this same Green River.

  “L-lookee there,” he croaked as Jake Corn and Jim Baker stuttered to a halt with their dust-caked travois.

  “D-don’t see it too good,” Corn confessed, licking his cracked lips and squinting his red-rimmed, alkali-burned eyes. “Can’t see no roof.”

  “That’s ’cause there ain’t no roof, Jake.”

  Baker’s face went gray with disappointment. “Where’s Bridger, them others stayed back with him—”

  “Way I lay my sights, they give up and pulled out sometime back,” he explained as two more trappers lunged to a halt nearby and took to gazing at the scene below. “But lookee there: that smoke low off again’ the hills—”

  “Don’t see no smoke,” a Frenchman interrupted.

  “There, miles up the valley.” And Titus pointed. “Look in the trees and you’ll see it.”

  “S-so far away … still,” another man grumbled.

  “What you take ’em for, Scratch?”

  He looked at Baker, then grinned weakly. “Likely Snake. S’pose we keep on till we can pay our respects on their camp.”

  It was nearly dark, with the last shreds of the longest shadows of the day clinging to the low places, when he heard the first dog bark. It so reminded him of coming home from a long day of squirreling in the thick woods, hearing ol’ Tink start to bark and bay as the old hound burst ahead, smelling home before he even reached the clearing and spotted the cabin and barn amongst the clutter of elm and oak.

  A second dog had taken up the warning, and soon a dozen or more of the half-wild curs were yipping, their cries echoing off the low bluffs framing the valley where the last copper light was disappearing from a ragged string of clouds to the west. He shuddered to a halt between Baker and Corn the moment they heard the hoofbeats. Out of the tall willow and cottonwood more than ten of them streamed, spreading out in a broad front, bristling with weapons as they confronted the strangers staggering up one by one behind Bass.

  First whack, those Snake had to see just how bad off these white men were. White men on foot? Glor-eee! That had to be something for them warriors to witness. Bass recalled a smattering of their tongue, inched through enough of his clumsy sign language too, to explain how they’d been jumped by the Sioux, forted up behind the horses and mules they were forced to sacrifice, then how they had dropped the pony being ridden by that warrior princess who surely had to be directing the battle. All of that before the trappers made beasts of themselves and started dragging their burdens back north.

  How many days?

  In response to the warrior’s question, Titus pulled the short twig from where he had it safely stuffed inside his wide belt, and quickly brushed the pad of his thumb over the notches he had carved each night before he fell into a stupor of sleep, gazing up at the sky he hoped she was watching too.

  Ten … this will be ten since we sent the Sioux packing.

  There are more of you?

  Bass had nodded. Then twice he flicked up the fingers on both hands as he held them out before him.

  The horseman signaled the others on both sides of him, and most of the riders nudged their ponies away, streaming past on either side of the trio, hurrying on down the river valley to gather up the rest of the stragglers.

  Turned out it was Rain’s camp. The old man who came to Fort Davy Crockett two years ago reporting that white men he had taken in for the night, fed, and given his finest hospitality had shown him their appreciation by stealing some of his horses.* Two women helped the crippled, slow-moving old man out of his lodge to stand before the first dozen of the trappers who limped into that camp, trailed by a parade of children and barking dogs.

  “I have seen your face,” Rain said as he studied Titus Bass up close with his rheumy eyes. “Two winters ago: did you ever steal my ponies?”

  “No, I was not one of those who stole your horses,” Bass said in his halting Shoshone tongue, emphasizing it with his sign. “But, I went with the men who took your horses back from the white men who stole them from you.”

  “I knew I had seen your face,” Rain replied, clutching the arms of the two women unsteadily. “It was a good thing you took those ponies back. Because the others dishonored themselves by stealing my ponies—no white man could ever again come into this country with his own horses and ride back out. I would make his ponies mine.”

  “You see, it is plain we need horses.”

  “You walked a long way from this fight against the Lakota?”

  “La … kota?” Titus echoed the word.

  “That is what they call themselves,” Rain answered. “We made a prisoner of one of them two summers ago. He explained, this Sioux word is the white-man name for his warrior bands. But, the Creator gave his people the name of Lakota. He died bravely at the hands of my people. I fear they will be a strong enemy if they come into this country to try taking it from us.”

  “Do you have horses to trade?”

  Rain grinned, all but toothless in that wrinkled walnut of a face. “So if the Lakota did not ride off with your trade goods, I think we could find enough horses for you to call your own.”

  It was not a big village, but neither was it small. That night the Shoshone ignited a big fire at the edge of camp where they heated some antelope stew, broiled some buffalo steaks, and welcomed t
he white men back from the maw of the desert. Stuffed beyond belief, Titus watched as some old men brought out their drum, plopped it down near the fire, then began to play, drawing the young men and women of the band to the hypnotic music. Some of the more energetic, younger trappers got up to stomp and gyrate with the Shoshone, but Scratch eventually dragged his blanket and buffalo robe off down the creek to the far side of camp where things weren’t near so noisy.

  When he awoke later to the throb of the drum, every bit as thirsty as he had been on their ten-day walk, Bass knelt beside the stream and drank until his belly ached. The second time he awoke, he found himself ravenous and ready to put away another three pounds of buffalo flank steak. At the trappers’ fire, he discovered that most of the old drummers had retired, but at the drum sat an enthusiastic ring of white men, both French and American, hammering out a rhythm for the sweating, enthusiastic Shoshone youngsters who had every intention of making a night of it.

  After stuffing himself a second time to the point of a bellyache, Scratch trudged back through camp to sprawl on his buffalo robe and blanket, asleep almost as soon as he hit the ground. He did not awaken until the sun had fully risen and a troublesome fly would simply not leave him be.

  For the white men that next day was given over to more eating and sleeping, and not until the second morning did they began negotiating in trade for some of the Shoshone horses. The first item of business was to mutually determine what value the animals would have in the pending trade talk. That agreed upon, the trappers and the Shoshone leaders had next to settle on the value each individual trade item would have. These two long discussions lasted into the evening of that second day, so it was decided they would begin the actual barter on the following morning.

  Bass figured Rain had seen to it he came out on the better end of the bargain, getting a lot more horse than most of the other white trappers. And three of the finest animals to replace the mule and saddle horse he had sacrificed at the Little Snake.

  Needing to make some meat for his journey north, Bass went hunting with two young warriors before dawn on the fourth day. They had five antelope down and gutted, strapped across the backs of their horses, and were on their way back to camp when Titus asked, “Ever hear of a Snake warrior by the name of Slays in the Night?”

  The older of the pair nodded. “He was my uncle.”

  “W-was?” Titus inquired. “He is dead?”

  With a shrug, the warrior answered, “As good as dead. He left his band many summers ago, taking some young men with him who wanted to plunder the white men wherever your people could be found.”

  The other youngster spoke up. “He has never returned, none of those who went with him either. So we think they are all dead.”

  It was some time before Scratch declared, “I knew your uncle. Knew him long, long ago. His woman made good pemmican.”

  “You have not seen my uncle in a long time?”

  He studied the young man’s face as they led their horses down the long slope toward the brown, fire-smoked lodges of the Shoshone camp. “I don’t remember for sure, but I think I saw him eight summers ago.”*

  “We were just boys then,” the youngest said. “That was about the time he left to go steal from the white men.”

  Clearing his throat, Bass halted. “I must tell you: your uncle and his warriors tried to steal from me.”

  “Did he get away with your horses and trade goods?” the nephew asked quietly.

  “No. I had to kill some of the young men who rode with him,” Bass explained. “At the time they took my horses, I did not know the raiding party was led by my old friend Slays in the Night. There were two of us. We killed some of the warriors with him. But when I found out it was my old friend … I left him afoot to live or die by his own hand.”

  The young nephew was long before he replied, “It was right.” When the three of them had continued toward the village, he added, “A man must not steal from his friends.”

  To Bass, that was the worst sort of theft. Many times after seeing Slays in the Night for the last time, Scratch had brooded on it—wondering if the warrior hadn’t known just whose animals he was stealing. Was he sure who his victim was? Or, had it only been coincidence?

  Several times in the last two years, he had brooded on how those white trappers had preyed on Rain and the old man’s hospitality. The worst sort of treachery, committed against those who were trusting. So good of heart they fall prey to those who say one thing and do another. Let such thieves steal from enemies or strangers—not from friends.

  Chances were Slays in the Night had come through his ordeal of being put afoot by Bass that summer so long ago. Even still, it had been so many years since their confrontation that the odds weren’t very good the Indian could have survived long in his newfound lust for booty and plunder.

  What was it that made men change from good to bad? Was it simply because the world around them was no longer the same and some men believed they must change too? Of a time he would have put his life in the Shoshone warrior’s hands. But Slays in the Night had become another person, the way Asa McAfferty had changed seasons before.

  So why was it that Bass looked at everything, looked at everybody, around him and wondered why he was the only one not grown different over the years? Did the changing nature of the fur business, did its decline and utter ruin, mean that those men in the fur trade had to change? Did events that were bigger than any one man always have to alter the lives, the very character of puny humans?

  Or could one man hold out against the rest of the world, at least his world of these western mountains? Sure he could, Bass decided. But he would have to figure out something else to do if beaver plews were never again to make a man and his family a decent living. What else was a man to do, when no one wanted to buy the beaver he trapped?

  A trapper was what he had been for more than seventeen winters now. How could he expect himself to pack up and return east when it felt as if these mountains were all he ever knew? Or how could he abandon the Rockies and migrate to Oregon country with Doc Newell and Joe Meek? He didn’t know where to go to find the answers … but he did know someone who might help him sort through the knots that had his thoughts so tangled.

  Late that winter after returning to Absaroka, he had taken, the family with him when he tramped east from the Crow camp near the foot of the Bighorns, striking out for the mouth of the Tongue where Samuel Tullock squatted inside Fort Van Buren, waiting on the Indian trade to recommence come spring.

  “I wanted to see a white face, listen to some white talk,” Scratch explained as he blew smoke from that first, deep pull at the pipestem. “Maybeso, to hear just what news there lays on the upper rivers, to hear it from the lips of the company its own self.”

  The trader snorted as he sipped his hot coffee there at the fireplace with Titus. “I sure as hell ain’t the company, Scratch!”

  “You’re the by-god American Fur Company to this here country, to these here Injuns.” He stared into the bowl of his old clay pipe a moment before he finished. “You’re the bone and sinew to the beaver business.”

  “Beaver’s down,” Tullock admitted gravely. “Ain’t likely to ever come back, Scratch.”

  Titus had looked around the small trading room and asked, “Buffler?”

  “Just as many as the Crow and others have to trade.”

  After sipping at his scalding coffee, Titus asked, “What happens when you’ve forced the Indians to kill all the buffler for their skins? What then?”

  But Tullock had snorted with a wide smile. “Ain’t no way that can happen. Too damned many of the big snaggles—”

  “But it happened to beaver, Sam’l. Time was, you ’member we never thought we could trap ourselves out the flat-tails.”

  “Damned sad thing it is too,” Tullock commiserated. “There ain’t all that many beaver left nowdays … and what beaver there is don’t bring much of a price no more.”

  The American Fur Company set a depress
ingly low value on his beaver—despite how Tullock might want to help—but Scratch needed supplies.

  “Give me the best dollar you can on these here plews, Sam’l,” he pleaded. “I need fixin’s afore I head south to trap this spring.”

  “Where you figure to go?”

  “Down the Bighorn to the Wind River.”

  As Tullock began separating the furs from those two small packs Bass had packed to Van Buren, the trader asked, “You ever think of trying Blackfoot country?”

  “Smallpox didn’t kill ’em all, did it?”

  “No, not all,” the trader admitted.

  “I value what I got left for hair,” Bass declared. “Blackfoot country will have to get a lot more peaceful afore I go gamble my hide up there.”

  The easy beaver was a thing of the past. It was clear that a man would have to work all the harder if he was going to trap the prime grade of fur the traders were still wanting. Any plews that didn’t measure up, the company men simply refused to take off a trapper’s hands.

  But he ended up with enough credit that he could purchase what he needed for his outfit that spring, as well as have enough left over to spoil Waits, Magpie, and Flea with a few small presents like ribbon, finger rings, tiny mirrors, some brass bracelets, and a pair of small penny whistles for his children. That and a new white blanket for his wife, the one with narrow red stripes across the entire length of it, just the blanket Waits-by-the-Water had been wanting for some winters now.

  When they put Fort Van Buren behind them three days later, Scratch had his fixings for a brand-new season in the mountains, along with a few geegaws and some pretty foofaraw for his woman and young’uns, not to mention a good-sized pack of beaver pelts trader Tullock didn’t put much store in. Titus decided that he would take them and the rest he still had back in the Crow camp with him when he headed south. Maybe another trader would put more value on the days in the freezing streams, the nights in those solitary camps, the stretches of lonely country he had traveled to find those beaver.