Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

  A handful of dark-skinned Indians from the pueblo moved past, slowing to give Bass and his family a brusque appraisal, then hurried into the narrow mouth of a street that took them out of the square and into a maze of lanes and courtyards.

  When Titus turned to speak to the old man, he found the pelado already stepping into the crowd. “Gracias, gracias!”

  “What did he tell you?” Magpie inquired.

  Grinning at his wife, Titus said, “He has a store! Josiah has a store now.”

  “Which one?”

  “There—that one!” And he started them toward the western side of the square.

  “It is his alone?”

  “Just look! It’s plain he’s done very, very well,” Scratch said, proud enough to bust his buttons.

  Arrayed above the brick-red clay tiles of that porch running the entire width of the building was a wooden sign, its paint beginning to show years of sun and weathering. The four of them stopped out in the sun with Titus as he translated its words to them.

  “Paddock’s Emporium,” he said in English before explaining in Crow. Scratch pointed to those two large words at the very top of the sign. Then below it, he read, “Trade goods, notions, general merchandise of all description.”

  Right below those bold English words, he spotted smaller letters that had to comprise Mexican words. “Perhaps Josiah gets more of his business from American traders than from these Taos Mexicans.”

  “Will he be here?” Waits asked, tugging on his elbow as she stepped onto the low porch spread beneath the wide tile awning.

  “Let’s see for ourselves,” he replied, following her between a knot of shoppers and those stacks of barrels and crates cluttering the crowded porch.

  They stepped through the open doorway, when he was immediately struck by the heady perfume of cedar burning in the two small mud fireplaces, each in its corner at the back of the store. His eyes raked over each person, then suddenly he recognized her across the counters and displays. Oh, how the years had changed the young Flathead woman who fell in love with Josiah back in Pierre’s Hole so many summers ago now.

  As he stood there with his family crowding to a stop around him, Looks Far Woman happened to glance up and he caught her eye. She stared blankly a moment—then her eyes widened like a wild horse’s on the run.

  He instantly put a finger to his lips, signaling her not to call out. With a hand clamped over her mouth to keep from screaming in excitement and surprise, Looks Far Woman nodded eagerly. Then Titus put both his arms up in a gesture, as if to ask, “Where is he?”

  She grinned as she pointed to the far corner where three vaqueros huddled around a taller man, whose long hair spilled to his shoulders. Paddock’s back was to him.

  “Wait right here, children,” he whispered to them before he took three steps to the center of the store, where he stood in the open.

  “I heard tell of a goddamned lazy, no-account, pork-eatin’ son of a bitch from Saint Louie claims he’s proprietor of this here mercantile!” Bass roared.

  As his voice boomed, it instantly silenced every voice in the shop, every patron riveted in place—all wheeling suddenly to stare at him in a mixture of confusion and outright fear. All … save for that tall, broad-shouldered American.

  Scratch waited for his old friend to turn around so he could have a good long look at the man, to measure the passage of time on Josiah’s face. It had been more than twelve years now, after all … but Paddock stood frozen in place, his back still to Titus.

  Near Josiah’s elbow a tall, thin youngster appeared around the end of a wooden shelf holding bolts of cloth. His eyes narrowed menacingly on the gray-headed fur trapper dressed in buckskins. “You know what’s good for you, mister,” the young man warned, “you’ll back right on out of here before my pa walks over there to toss you out on your ear!”

  “Joshua?” Titus asked in little more than a whisper, inspecting the boy up and down in utter disbelief. “Is that really you? Damn, but I used to hold you when you was a squawlin’ li’l bear cub—”

  The boy grabbed his father’s arm, saying, “Who is this, Pa?”

  Baffled that Josiah hadn’t turned around immediately, Scratch stared again at the back of Paddock’s head while more of the Mexican customers backed away from the shopkeeper. Titus was just opening his mouth to speak—

  The very instant Paddock growled, “Seems I can place that voice now … though it’s been years. Sounds to me like it belongs to a boneheaded, dog-ugly, side-talking, beaver-loving idjit who never had the good sense to come in out of a winter blizzard.”

  Slowly Paddock turned around, his eyes already misting. “Appears I’m that son of a bitch you’re looking for.” His voice was clearly growing raspy with emotion as he found it hard to speak. “I’m proprietor of this mercantile for no other reason than what that dog-ugly, big-hearted bonehead done for me so many, many years ago!”

  They collided in the middle of the store, crashing bone to bone with a resounding crack as the taller, more muscular Paddock threw his arms around the shorter, thinner man, rearing backward as he swept Titus into his arms—hopping and dancing around and around.

  Looks Far Woman was already moving, flushing down the backside of the long counter, her arms waving convulsively in the air, braids flying and tears streaming down her cheeks as she squealed in delight. Wait-by-the-Water herself streamed down the front of the counter that separated them, blubbering nonsense at this long-overdue reunion.

  Near the center of the store Magpie stood dumbfounded, gripping one brother’s hand in her right, the youngest’s hand in her left, as all three stared in rapt amazement at the noisy, confusing scene unfolding before them. In the next few moments a group of youngsters came to join the tall adolescent who stood almost as tall as his father. Both groups of children alternately glared at one another, then looked at their backslapping fathers, and over to their weeping, blubbering mothers, before they glared warily at one another again.

  “I feared you was dead!” Josiah exclaimed breathlessly while he came to a halt with Bass at the end of his arms.

  “Me? How many times was it I had to tell you I ain’t near good enough to go to heaven—an’ the devil don’t want me around neither!” Scratch cried, laying his gnarled hand along Paddock’s bare cheek. “Damn, if you ain’t a sight after all these years, Josiah.”

  “Twelve! Can you believe it’s been twelve years, old man?”

  Turning slightly, Titus waved an arm across the store. “Just lookit what you done for yourself.”

  “What we’ve done,” Josiah argued as he waved Looks Far over.

  “You’re still as pretty as the day I first laid eyes on you in Pierre’s Hole!” Scratch declared as he pulled the Flathead woman into his arms and promptly squeezed the breath out of her. “You’ve done a fine thing, Looks Far—sticking by this wuthless polecat’s side through the last dozen winters!”

  “It came hard at first,” she said in mock seriousness, but good English, then winked at Titus. “All the early years, settling in a new life, around new people and a new tongue too … but,”—and she took a step backward to loop an arm inside Josiah’s elbow—“my husband always kept me big with child, so I couldn’t leave!”

  “Child?” Waits echoed in English, recognizing that word from her husband’s language.

  “We have five now,” Looks Far disclosed. Her face went sad momentarily when she said, “We lost one before I grow too big in my belly … and another was stillborn. But all told, we had four healthy children come to join Joshua.”

  “Joshua.” Titus repeated the boy’s name, turning to look eye to eye with the tall youngster. “It can’t really be you.”

  “Come over here, son,” Paddock prodded his firstborn. “I want you to shake hands with this old friend of ours.”

  Joshua stepped away from the cluster of his brothers and sisters, stretching out his long arm with that big hand as he asked, “It really true what you said, mister: You knew me whe
n I was a baby?”

  “I was the one what taught you to quit squawling one night when you was scared of the stars.”

  “S-scared of the stars,” Joshua scoffed as he shot a warning glance at his siblings.

  “I remember that now, son,” Paddock said, looping his long arm across the youngster’s shoulders. “The night of falling stars, and you wouldn’t stop bawling for your mother or me, so this man poured water on your head till you shut right up.”

  “He poured water on your head?” one of the young boys repeated with a smirk.

  Titus glanced at the boy and said, “It’s a ol’ Injun trick. They can’t have babies crying and squawking to alert any enemies, so they teach all their young’uns not to cry out. Ever’ time they make a noise, them babies get water poured on their heads so the young’uns learn to hush real quick.”

  Turning to his father, that young boy gushed, “He really did pour water on Joshua’s head, Pa?”

  “Come on over here, Ezekiel,” Paddock said to the youngster smirking at Joshua.

  “So you’re named Ezekiel?” Scratch asked, dropping to one knee. “How old are you, son?”

  He glanced up at his father. Josiah nodded. Ezekiel looked squarely at the stranger and held out his hand. “I’m nine years old, sir.”

  “Sir? Sir? Why, will you listen to that?” Bass cried. “This boy’s got better manners than his ol’ man ever did! Ezekiel, remind me to tell you some evening the story how your father come to run across me in the mountains. He wasn’t at all the sort to practice a lick of good manners back in them days. Well, now—I’m mighty pleased to meet you, Ezekiel. Do folks call you Ezekiel?”

  The boy cleared his throat and declared, “Only my parents, sir. My mother and father. All my friends call me Zeke.”

  “Zeke, is it?” Titus rose to his feet and looked at Josiah. “You gone and named your boy after my dog?”

  “A dog?” Ezekiel squeaked in disbelief.

  “They named Ezekiel after a dog!” squealed Zeke’s older sister as she started giggling.

  “No, son,” Josiah assured with a chuckle. “I always been partial to that name. It’s a good name, a strong name too. That’s why we gave it to you.”

  Then Scratch explained, “I had a dog named Zeke back when your father an’ me was runnin’ the mountains, I want you to know.”

  “Ol’ Zeke,” Paddock said wistfully. “I remember that gray mutt now. Rescued him from a waterfront dogfight in Saint Louis, didn’t you? Then we brung him west, all the way to the mountains with us that spring.”

  “Damn, if we didn’t,” Titus said softly, the memory stabbing him of a sudden after all these years.

  “Where is ol’ Zeke? He lope down to Taos with you, Scratch?”

  Swiping a gnarled finger beneath his nose, Bass cleared his throat and said, “Zeke’s … he’s gone, Josiah. Been some years now. B-blackfoot kill’t him sometime back.”

  Waits-by-the-Water stepped up to her husband’s side to explain, “The dog, follow Blackfoot. Blackfoot come took me, me and Magpie too. Dog go follow Blackfoot.”

  Josiah shook his head, not able to understand, so Bass explained, “Those black-hearted sonsabitches come an’ stole my wife and my li’l daughter one winter. I didn’t know it, but Zeke took off ahead of me, followin’ that war party, hanging on their back trail till they shot ’im with a arrow. Damn poor way for that critter to die … suffering like he done.”

  “You caught ’em, didn’t you?” Josiah asked. “I know you made ’em pay for what they done to your family. To Zeke.”

  “Damn right, I made ’em all pay, Josiah. You know I ain’t the kind to leave no nigger standin’ when I got my dander up.”

  Paddock laid a hand on Bass’s shoulder. “He was a damn good dog to the end, Scratch. Just the way we knowed he’d be afore we put Saint Louis behind us. I always figured he’d lay his life down for you or yours one day.”

  Titus swiped a tear that had spilled from one eye and said, “He was a damn fine dog. Better a dog’n I ever deserved, I’ll tell you.”

  Paddock turned to Ezekiel and explained, “So if you want to think you were named after a brave and big-hearted, ol’ gray dog named Zeke—then so be it, son. Because that was one special damned dog.”

  Wiping another tear away in remembrance of the old cur, Scratch agreed, “That’s right. Zeke’s a fine, fine name for a young man like yourself.”

  Ezekiel grinned, looking up at his father. “Don’t you see? You just give me ’nother reason why you and mother gotta call me Zeke instead of Ezekiel.”

  “All right, Zeke it is,” and Josiah tousled his young son’s hair.

  Of a sudden Titus remembered a dark face from the shadowy past. His eyes widening as he wheeled on Josiah, he asked, “Where’s that Neegra we brung here to Taos with us? The one we saved from the Pawnee—”

  “Isaiah Bass?” Josiah spoke the name. “You recollect how he took your name the day you rode north outta Taos?”

  “Isaiah Bass,” he repeated that name softly. “Claimed he was gonna work with you setting up your shop here.”

  “Isaiah did just that,” Josiah explained. “Stayed on for a couple years, anyway—afore he come to me one day, asking to take his leave.”

  “His leave? Goin’ where? For to do what?”

  “Lighting out for Fort Hall with some traders hauling goods up north. For the first time since we brought him to Taos in thirty-four, Isaiah told me how bad he wanted to find a place where folks weren’t so mean to him, like the Mexicans had been.”

  “These greasers made it hard on Isaiah, him bein’ a Neegra?”

  Paddock nodded. “So I outfitted him and sent the man off with them traders,” Josiah declared. “Last I’ve seen of him.”

  “Damn shame these greasers run him off with their ways. Isaiah was a good man.” Scratch cleared his throat, blinked, and said, “So … tell us who these other young’uns are, Josiah—them standing back there with such good manners.”

  Paddock went on to introduce his oldest daughter, Naomi, who he explained was some eleven and a half years old; then his youngest daughter, Charity, who was seven and a half years old; and finally, while Looks Far stepped away to take care of a customer, Josiah introduced their youngest.

  “Come up here, boy,” he asked. Positioning the short youngster right in front of his legs, Josiah announced, “This here’s Titus Mordecai Paddock. He’ll soon be four years—”

  “T-titus Mordecai Paddock?” Scratch echoed.

  “Yes,” Josiah answered quietly. “I give him Mordecai for a middle name because he was the fella—”

  “I know,” Scratch interrupted. “The fella what you came to the mountains with. The one died on you that first winter.”

  “Mordecai was the one helped me get to the mountains,” Paddock explained, gently patting the small child on the tops of his shoulders.

  Scratch beamed. “An’ Titus? How come you give ’im my name?”

  The boy twisted slightly, gazing up intently at his father who towered above him. “You named me after this old man, Pa?”

  “Yes. You were named after the most important man in my life, son. I expect you always to remember that. This here’s the man who saw to it I lived through lots of things that would’ve killed lesser men.”

  Josiah sank to one knee and gathered his four-year-old in both arms. “Truth is, Titus—if it hadn’t been for this old man here … I’d never been alive to raise you.”

  29

  They completed introductions all around, both sets of children standoffishly sizing up their counterparts as all youngsters are prone to do. Then Looks Far called her eldest over to her, unknotting the string of a canvas apron around Joshua’s waist.

  “You take our old friends to the house. Move your tick and Ezekiel’s too—get them out of your room and into Naomi’s to give our guests a place to sleep.”

  “Yes, mother.”

  “We’re all going to sleep together in our room?” Ch
arity whined in that way of a child feeling put out.

  “If I did my ciphering correct, there’s only going to be five children in that one room, Charity,” Josiah scolded. “But there’s going to be a whole family in Joshua’s room for a while.”

  Scratch blurted, “We don’t mean to put you out—”

  “Damn! You ain’t putting us out!” Paddock exclaimed. “How I’ve yearned to lay eyes on you, so many times in the last twelve years … but feared you was dead.”

  Bass snorted with a little laughter. “It weren’t for no lack of trying by some red niggers, and a few white bastards too!”

  “He curse that way all the time, Father?” Naomi asked.

  “I’m sorry, Josiah,” Titus apologized sheepishly. “Forgot myself around the children. Most times with my own pups I’m speaking Crow so they don’t understand no American cussin’.”

  “You young’uns wanna know how to cuss at someone you don’t like?” Josiah asked his children. “You pay real close attention to this here old man, youngsters. He’s the cham-peen who’s gonna teach you to do it right!”

  “Go on now, Joshua,” Looks Far nudged with a big grin. “Take these friends to our place and get them settled. They must be tired from their long journey.”

  Scratch admired how well she spoke English after all these years of practice. “Looks Far—I’ll wager you’re pretty good at talkin’ Mexican too.”

  She smiled even bigger in that round face of hers and answered, “I get lots of practice with both. We hardly ever use any Flathead at all down here.” She winked at Titus.

  “You talk good ’Merican,” Waits-by-the-Water agreed in her own halting English she rarely used.

  Joshua quickly kissed his mother on the cheek, then asked, “How long will you be?”

  “We always close up at sundown,” Josiah explained to his son. Then turned to Titus, saying, “Looks Far is usually the first to head for home. She gets a fire and supper started before I lock things up here.”

  “We’ll be pleased to light a fire and heat up some victuals for your family,” Titus volunteered as they started toward the door. He halted at the door jamb and marveled at Joshua. “This big lad of a boy can show us where everything is. Damn, if he ain’t gonna be a big chunk of it, just like you was, Josiah.”