Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Eat your fill, children,” Josiah reminded them, one and all. “Gonna be some time before we have our next hot meal.”

  Time and again the two men stepped outside together, walking to the corral where Titus had put a bridle or halter on every one of the horses and that mule he chose to carry their supplies. When the moment to escape arrived, all he, Josiah, and young Joshua had to do was to throw the thick tirutas, the very best wool saddle blankets woven of Navajo wool, and saddles on the animals’ backs.

  “Good chance it’ll never make a difference,” Titus had explained there in the darkness while the horses grew restless in their pole corral. “But you’re American—we’re American. Maybeso some of the bastards are keeping an eye on this place, laying plans to jump us. So I didn’t want them niggers to see we had our horses saddled and ready to ride.”

  Josiah had squeezed Bass’s arm in a sign of appreciation from long ago. “That’s just the sort of thinking has kept the rest of your hair locked on your thick skull, ol’ man. All these years I been down here … they made me less than watchful. I ain’t near so careful as I used to be when I was riding with you.”

  When slap-dark finally arrived and the sky turned utterly black but for a dusting of stars, they decided the time had come.

  “We gotta be miles from here afore moonrise,” Bass reminded them as he stepped inside the warm kitchen. “Magpie, you help your mother,” he instructed her in English. “Bank all the fires good and hot. Lots of smoke from all three. Now scoot.”

  Then he stood at the rear door with Josiah as Paddock buckled the wide belt around his wool coat and stuffed the two pistols at his waist.

  “I’m going to point ’em off due north,” Titus reminded his old partner. He pointed up high at the bright stars in the Seven Sisters. “I’ll have every one ride for the North Star, Josiah. You’ll be waiting under that North Star for ’em.”

  Paddock nodded grimly as Looks Far came up with his old Henry mountain rifle and shooting pouch. Josiah looped the strap over his shoulder, then took the long, fullstock flintlock in his mittens. After running his hand down the dark, curly-maple wood, Josiah looked up at Bass.

  “I remember when we got this for me.”

  “Pierre’s Hole,” Bass replied.

  “It’s been so damn long,” Paddock sighed. “I hope I remember how to shoot it.”

  “I’m praying you won’t have to, Josiah,” Bass declared. “But if you do—I ain’t got a doubt that it’ll all come back to you real quick.”

  Josiah bent to kiss and embrace his wife. Then he was out the door and into the darkness. Scratch listened to the quiet of that winter night as the horse’s hooves faded on the hard, icy snow blanket. Then saddling another horse, he returned to the house and walked the first of the children into the corral, to see them mounted and on their way. Josiah’s oldest girl would be the first to follow her father.

  “Naomi,” he whispered after he had hoisted the eleven-year-old into the saddle. “You ride good?”

  “Yes, Mr. Bass.”

  “That’s a good girl,” he said quietly. Then pointed into the sky. “You see them seven stars?”

  “The Big Dipper?”

  “Yes. You see that bright one?”

  “The North Star—yes. It’s so dark tonight, I see it real good.”

  “Ride for it, Naomi. Don’t stop for nothing. Your father’s out there underneath that star, waiting to gather you all up again.”

  “Yes, sir.” And she tightened hear wool mittens around the reins.

  “And Naomi—if’n you spot more’n one rider comin’ in your direction, it ain’t your father.”

  “Sir?”

  “You see two or more horsemen comin’ at you, I want you to kick the devil out of this Injun pony, you understand?”

  “K-kick him?”

  “You damn betcha. You just holler at him an’ keep kicking him till he’s running with you for that North Star.”

  “Y-y-yes, sir.”

  “And, girl”—he felt his throat clogging—“if you.gotta run away from some of those folks mean to harm you—don’t you dare let this horse slow down for nothing till you reach your father.”

  She swallowed hard and bobbed her head in the starlit darkness. He blinked back some tears while he squeezed her wrist and said, “Now’s the time, Naomi. Go find your father under the North Star.”

  One by one by one, he had seen them away. And one at a time Josiah had found them out there in the darkness lit by nothing but those stars and hope’s faint light. The three women rode out near the end, each mother holding her youngest behind her like a fat tick clinging to a cow in the season of the rut. Then Joshua followed them.

  As Bass waited, counting out the minutes, he stoked the three fireplaces one last time, banking the wood to assure a long burn. He lit candles and two more lamps. All the more reason the cowardly niggers would think the house was still occupied. Then it was time to bring the pack mule out of the low shed, saddle up his horse, and head into the night.

  That trip to the end of the Seven Sisters felt as if it took forever. Longer than any night’s ride he could remember.

  “They all get here?” he asked as Josiah and Joshua appeared out of the dark more than an hour later.

  “Yes. All come in fine,” Paddock said with relief. “I was getting worried about you. Figured when you took so long getting here, that they’d awready come to the house. So, me and Joshua—we was fixing to come back and help.”

  “Damn you, Josiah Paddock!” he growled as they reached the other horses and the people on foot among the brush. “Don’t you ever come back for me.”

  “But, I figured—”

  “You get yourself and this fine boy both killed … what happens to our women, to their young’uns?” he demanded sharply. “What the hell then, Josiah?”

  Only by nudging his horse up close could he see the shame written on Paddock’s face. Scratch sensed a sudden stab of regret. He squeezed down on Josiah’s wrist. “Ol’ friend, didn’t mean to bite down so hard on you. I should’ve remembered it’s been a long time since you’ve had to reckon on looking after such things as this.”

  Paddock’s eyes glistened. “I’m glad you’re here to do the thinking for both of us.”

  “C’mon, Joshua,” Titus said as he turned to the youngster, “the three of us gotta hide these women and young’uns while your father an’ me go have us a look at our back trail.”

  “How many of ’em are there?” Paddock whispered.

  Bass squinted, not sure. What with the darkness, the way those hissing torches flickered in the cold wind, spewing and spitting with each rising gust, their dancing light reflecting off the wind-crusted snow to create those weaving, bobbing shadows as the mob marched across the frozen prairie on foot … he could only guess how many were in that brazen, gutless mob.

  “More’n a hundred,” he sighed with futility. “Hundred twenty. Maybe even more.”

  He heard the air go out of Josiah beside him on the prairie. Scratch rolled onto his hip and gazed at the sky there above the mountaintops to gauge how long they had before sunup.

  Paddock whispered, “I was counting on us reaching Turley’s.”

  Titus nodded without taking his eyes off the distant flicker of torchlight as the mob neared the far reaches of Arroyo Hondo where Simeon Turley operated his mill and made a powerful whiskey. “I know. We could’ve held up there till help come.”

  “Simeon’s always got folks there who could’ve helped,” Josiah explained, desperation creeping into his voice. “Hired men, sometimes fellas pushing through.”

  Even in the dark it was plain to see a few dark figures emerge from Turley’s tall two-story stone building to hurriedly pull their horses and mules inside the structure.

  Titus whispered, “Likely whoever’s down there heard the niggers comin’ too.”

  “How we gonna get our people in there before that mob starts their attack?”

  Bass looked at Padd
ock a moment, then confessed, “We ain’t, Josiah. Those fellas down there with Turley right now, no matter how many there are of ’em—they ain’t got a chance again’ all them Injuns and Mex pelados. If’n we was in there right now—an’ I knowed how many was comin’—I’d be finding a way for our women and children to get the hell out.”

  “You figger those men are doomed?”

  “Good as,” Scratch answered, watching the front rank of torches start off the prairie, slithering like a many-scaled snake down the narrow, slanting road that took a horseman into the arroyo. But these weren’t horsemen. They were rabble, a mob come on foot. Which meant Bass maintained a small advantage in moving his people all the faster on horseback. Especially over the next hour or two while the murdering niggers were consumed with destroying Turley’s mill and butchering the men inside. Now was the time to flee.

  “North, Josiah.”

  “You know how hard it is to walk away from fellas who are my friends?” Paddock asked.

  “We don’t go now, find us a place to hide out up in the foothills at the north end of the valley … then you won’t be doing what’s right by your family.”

  “All right,” Josiah relented with a heavy sound to it as he shoved himself back from the icy edge of the arroyo.

  The first gunfire reverberated off the rocks on the far side of the ravine. Screams and oaths immediately erupted from the mob as they scattered and took cover. Some of the Pueblos and Mexicans returned fire on the stone house, lead balls splatting against the rocks.

  “Those boys’ll keep them niggers busy some,” Bass grumbled as he rocked onto his knees, then stood. “Teach that bunch of pelados to keep their heads down too.”

  “Thought you said Turley and the rest didn’t stand a chance. You change your mind?”

  Titus said glumly, “No. Only a matter of time afore more’n a hundred of the brownskins overrun ’em.”

  It had been eight days of hiding, more than a week filled with constant fear that they would be discovered. One thing for a man to be on the run himself; something entirely different when that man had women and little ones to protect.

  In the dark of that first night they had struck north along the east bank of the Rio Grande del Norte. At the third small stream cutting its way out of the Sangre de Cristo range, he and Titus turned them east, into the foothills where they could find more vegetation, which meant more cover come sunup, and maybe the chance of game when their food ran out.

  Back then Josiah Paddock didn’t know how long they were going to have to hold on. At least the weather moderated. No snow since that night before the rebellion. By the afternoon of their first day in hiding, Scratch was clearly growing about as tight as a rawhide bowstring while the hours dragged by.

  “I ain’t gonna make it hiding out like this,” Bass said in a whisper when he and Josiah had moved off from the families.

  “You got a better idea where we can go?”

  “No,” Titus said. “So I was thinking: I’ll go for help alone.”

  He asked the old trapper, “You figure me to watch over the rest?”

  “The women need you, sure as hell the children need you too,” Scratch explained. “No sense in two of us getting ourselves killed if the bastards are out there.”

  If the years they spent together had taught Josiah anything, it was that he wasn’t going to talk Titus Bass out of something once the man put his mind to it. Resolved to staying behind, Paddock said, “Where you heading?”

  “North,” Bass replied. “Ride for the Arkansas.”

  “Settlements there?”

  “See how many men I can bring back.” Then he sighed. “Won’t be anywhere near enough to fight them niggers. But maybe we can figger out a way to get back at ’em for the killing they’ve done till the army comes up from Santy Fee.”

  “We’ll make sure you got food for the trip.”

  “No,” and Bass shook his head. “Leave the food for the young’uns. I’ll make do on my own.” Then he gazed into Josiah’s eyes steadily. “Let’s use what light we got left to make our people comfortable as can be back in those rocks, Josiah. I’ll be off come dark.”

  For the next seven days Josiah took his son Joshua out to search for game trails, keeping their eyes open for the movement of men. Second morning into their ordeal, they spotted two columns of black smoke far, far to the south along the endless white horizon. But they heard nothing, saw nothing up at this end of the valley, so could only believe that the rebels were mopping up ranchos south of Taos instead of marching north toward the Arkansas—that longtime boundary with the United States.

  Time to time, Josiah brooded on how long they were going to have to endure the wilderness like this. Moving camp a mile or more each day, collecting wood, bringing water in, seeing to everyone’s needs in addition to hunting while their town food slowly gave out.

  You’ve done this before, he reminded himself. Time was, Titus Bass taught you to be pretty damned good at it too.

  Still, he wished the old trapper hadn’t gone. It was one thing to have Scratch there to lean on out here with the waiting and the wilderness. It was something altogether different to have no one but himself to rely upon.

  “This the way you used to live, Pa?” Joshua asked one afternoon as they sat watching a band of two dozen horsemen riding north up the valley past the rocks where the two of them hid themselves.

  “For a time, yes.”

  “When I was young?”

  He gazed at his son. “When you were a baby, Joshua.” Then Paddock stared at those disappearing horsemen again. “Till I figured out I didn’t want to tempt fate any longer. Not fair of me to put your mother and you in danger any longer.”

  “So that’s why we come to Taos?”

  “Like your mother’s told you children: We was already down here for a visit. So you might just say we stayed in Taos.”

  It was some time before Joshua spoke again, his throat raspy and raw with the cold, high, dry air. “Pa, you ever regret not going with Mr. Bass when he rode off?”

  “Someone had to stay with all you children and the women—”

  “No, Pa,” Joshua interrupted. “When Mr. Bass left you behind in Taos. You ever regret not going with him?”

  He gazed into his boy’s eyes and knew he could not speak anything but the complete truth. “There were times I missed him, missed the wandering, missed all the not caring. At times my missing that life got so bad it was like a cold stone lay in my belly … sometimes I wanted to be with him so bad it brought tears to my eyes, Joshua.”

  “But you stayed.” And Joshua laid his head against his father’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” Paddock finally admitted, his throat sour with sentiment. “I stayed for your mother—so she’d never have to fear for her life again. And I stayed for you, hoping you’d have a chance to grow up to grab what you wanted from life. Stayed for the rest of your brothers and sisters too as the years went by.”

  Joshua asked, “Sometimes a man makes the decisions he does for the people he loves?”

  “Not just sometimes, Joshua,” he replied quietly. “All through his days.”

  “I love you, Pa.”

  Josiah laid the rifle down against his bent knee and wrapped a second arm around his eldest. “I love you too, son.”

  That band of cutthroats they had spotted had to be heading north to hit the Ponil and Vermijo ranches that belonged to Bent, St. Vrain & Company, Paddock figured later that night when he sat crouched by their small fire. Gone to run off all the stock. Maybe even run over to attack the little settlement on Rio Colorado. Every now and then a few Americans took up winter residence there. The Mexican and Pueblo rebels ride through there, the trappers would be hash in no time.

  By the seventh day, Paddock could read the worry graying the face of Waits-by-the-Water. After dark that night Josiah squatted next to her by the fire as she cradled a sleeping Jackrabbit in her lap.

  “He’ll be back,” Paddock told her quietly,
hoping he wouldn’t disturb the others, who were asleep in their blankets.

  “If Grandfather Above … he let Ti-tuzz,” she struggled with the English words, “yes—he come back to us.”

  “We just have to wait,” Josiah tried his best to soothe.

  “Yes. Ti-tuzz come back. He promise.”

  Josiah wasn’t sure, but from the look in her eyes, Waits was concealing some deep pain, something more than just the worry, the longing to have him back.

  After some moments, he assured her, “What that ol’ man says he’ll do, you can believe he’ll do it.”

  The next two days in hiding crawled past. Then Josiah spotted more black figures snaking across the snow at the north end of the valley.

  “I see them, Father,” Joshua breathed beside him. “Raiders?”

  “Probably the same bunch we saw riding off up north to hit those ranchos,” he growled.

  They watched as the dark forms slowly drew closer and closer. From the way the horsemen rode with no formation to their march, Josiah was even more certain these were Mexican and Pueblo raiders returning to Taos from their hit-and-run attacks. But something nagged at him because the group looked smaller, less formidable, than it had when the raiders passed by three days earlier. The closer those horsemen got to his perch, the more Josiah thought the raiders were a ragged, motley bunch.

  Of a sudden, something pricked his distant memories about one of those horsemen who rode at the vanguard of the group. The way the man sat a horse, maybe the appearance of that coat he wore, and the fur cap upon his head. Altogether, they caused a tug at a distant, but indelible, memory.

  “I ain’t for certain, Joshua,” he said quietly, not even daring his own heart to leap with hope, “but I think Mr. Bass has come back to us.”

  33

  Sure he promised her he’d never again go anywhere without her and the children … but this was a horse of an entirely different color—a situation reeking with far too much danger to even entertain any thoughts of taking them along with him. There was no question that he could travel faster, with far less sleep, and not have to concern himself near so much with food, if he didn’t have his family along.