Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

  Those first miles, those first hours, all through the first three days, Scratch was constantly reminding himself how good a thing it was that he had gone for help alone. Easier to cross a snowy country barren of much timber and cover when he was by himself. To take along a whole cavvyard of folks and animals could only draw the wrong sort of attention. Not only those rebel Mex and their Pueblo henchmen, but Cheyenne or Comanche hunters too. If some warriors caught him out on his own, chances were Scratch could make a good run for it, or stand off a small hunting party by his lonesome. But, with a woman and young’uns along … it just made all the calculations real messy.

  In those first hours of darkness after he tore himself away from Waits-by-the-Water, Titus kept dwelling on the expression on of her face as he did his best to explain why he was leaving without her after he had given her his vow. It made him feel all the worse that she hadn’t ranted and stomped in anger. When she accepted his decision, taking his measure with those red-rimmed eyes he feared were ready to pool, it made him feel downright hollow and guilty.

  “This ain’t like the horse stealing in California,” he tried his best to make her understand as twilight’s cloak sank in around them. “Back then, you didn’t know where I was going.”

  “This is different?”

  “Different, yes. Now you know where I’m going and why.”

  “Doesn’t make being apart from you any easier.”

  He had sighed, “Just remember I’m doing it for you and the children. And for those wives and mothers and children who got butchered back there in Taos.”

  “We could make it with you,” she whispered so the children would not hear her plea. “Better than waiting for these enemies to find us in the foothills. Better to keep moving than to die here.”

  “It is dangerous everywhere,” he had argued, pulling her against him. “But far more danger waits out there on this journey north. I simply don’t know where the enemy is, how far they’ve roamed, or if they are searching for anyone who might’ve fled the valley.”

  “I will wait,” she sighed against his chest in resignation. “Again.”

  Kissing the top of her head, Bass whispered, “This time, don’t mourn me before you know I’m dead.”

  He nudged her chin up with a finger, gazing into her eyes. She reluctantly smiled.

  “No, I won’t cut my hair, or scar my flesh, this time if you are late.”

  He promised her, “This time … I won’t be late.”

  No matter what became of his ride to the Pueblo on the Arkansas, or even downriver to that mud-walled fortress at the mouth of the Picketwire, he vowed he wouldn’t make any of them wait very long there in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristos.

  That first night his horse made good time beneath the guiding stars. For many of those early hours, he kept his mind busy trying to sort out how far it was to the river, to where Americans clustered at the edge of what had been Mexican territory—before the army came and claimed it for the United States, before that army left again and Mexican feelings grew raw and angry at their new overseers. Had to be more than a hundred miles, easily. Probably closer to one hundred fifty.

  But, he told himself too, they had already covered a little distance out of Taos. Every little bit he put behind him was that much less he had to endure.

  Because of where he found himself at dawn the first morning, Scratch led his horse into the foothills. The going was rougher, a lot slower to be sure, but up on the slopes he could keep on moving instead of hiding out the day as a man would have to down below on the valley floor. Across the hillsides there was simply more cover. And he had a better view of things for miles around too. If he kept his eyes moving, and stopped to let the horse blow every now and again, he could keep on moving and not be forced to wait out the brief hours of daylight. He had to keep going. Everyone he loved was counting on him to get through.

  Hour by hour, the journey began to take its toll: his horse began to grow weary. Already the snow lay deep on the western slopes of the Sangre de Cristos, and it continued to snow from time to time throughout that second day and into that second night. Then late in the morning of the third day, not long after he had rested the horse near a narrow stream fed by a small spring, the bone-weary horse stumbled, pitching him free as it went hind flanks over withers.

  Landing hard on the icy snow and skidding among the sage, he had the air knocked out of his lungs. Bass lay there in the cold several moments, waiting for the sparks of bright, hot light to clear from his eyes. Slowly he sat up and brushed the snow from his hair, off the side of his face—so shockingly cold on his bare skin. Titus rolled off his aching hip and started crabbing toward his rifle and the fur cap—

  Then froze on all fours, watching the horse scramble up from the sage and stunted piñon. Onto three legs, the fourth dangling like a marionette’s limb. Clearly broken just below the joint, flopping as the horse righted itself, then shuddered in pain.

  He angrily swept up the cap and jammed it down on his head, his gut already churning as he cursed his damnable luck. Then Titus scolded himself for that stupid selfishness as he read the fear, the outright pain, evident in the horse’s eyes. Good, steady Cheyenne pony. Not some young, wild thing. Not any green Mexican horse. Instead, an animal bred for these mountains and high plains …

  And it had carried him this far. As far as it was going to take him.

  For what felt like a long time, he stood there with his arm wrapped under the pony’s neck, patting its strong muscles that frequently quaked with shudders of pain. He whispered to it softly, words strung together with little meaning, nothing more than their soothing sound as his eyes warily raked the valley below them. Bass found nothing moving but some antelope and a few white-tail deer.

  He scanned the snowy slopes above him, and hoped the gunshot would not carry. It would be better to use his knife … but that way only seemed to prolong the agony. This animal deserved better. It had carried him north from the land of the Arkansas and the Cheyenne, crossed and recrossed the land of the Crow in the intervening years—hunting, trapping, and always migrating. This pony deserved to die quickly, deserved to be put down with mercy.

  It took only a matter of minutes to untie the buffalo robe and his few fixings from behind the saddle, dropping them onto a patch of scrub piñon so they rested out of the snow. After pulling the pistol from his belt, Scratch had to use his pan brush to clean out the dusting of icy flakes clotted around the pan and frizzen before he recharged the pan with powder. Then stepped back over to the wide-eyed pony, patted its neck one last time.

  “Thank you,” he whispered as he set the broad muzzle of the .54-caliber pistol just below the ear and pulled the trigger before he gave himself any more time to think about what he was doing.

  Shuddering violently, the animal weaved for a flicker of a moment, then collapsed heavily to the ground.

  “Thank you,” he repeated as he turned away from the head, quickly reloaded, then stuffed the pistol in his belt.

  Over his shoulder he laid the wide, rawhide strap that was lashed around both ends of the roll of buffalo robe. Then picked up the long rifle. And continued north. On foot.

  Folks were counting on him to see this through.

  There were many times in those first hours after leaving the Cheyenne pony’s carcass that he regretted not carving some meat from one of its lean haunches. He had survived on horsemeat before. Wasn’t near so bad, a man got hungry enough.

  With every step as he waded through snow that billowed around his knees—placing each moccasin ahead of him, then sinking forward until the foot contacted the ground, dragging the trailing foot out of the deep snow, across the icy crust, to plunge it ahead—step after step, he doggedly marched north. And with every hour, every mile, every exhausting breath, he used up more and more of his slim reserves of energy.

  Oh, there were times he believed he could not take another step—when he gave himself a chance to blow, resting against a large clump of scru
b pine, squatting there as he chewed on his dried meat, licking at the snow to wash it down before he forced himself to get back onto his feet and continue on. One time he awakened, scared to death because he hadn’t remembered falling asleep. Confused and disoriented as he blinked at the dim globe of the sun half hidden behind a thick streamer of clouds … desperately trying to remember where the sun had been when he stopped for a few bites of stringy meat.

  Try as he did, Titus couldn’t remember.

  He felt the tears of frustration start to well up in his eyes as he shoved himself back onto his feet. And he pressed on, more determined than ever that he could cover as much ground on two legs as the pony could on four. Determined that he could do this without sleep. He had done it before when he was younger, back in those days when he and McAfferty slipped through the gauntlet of Apache country without much sleep. He had done it before. Bass told himself he could do it again.

  When the young doe crossed his path the next afternoon, stopping suddenly no more than thirty yards ahead, Scratch did not resist. He brought her down with a quick snap shot, then lunged across the snowy terrain to watch that one big brown eye start to glaze as he laid his rifle across her flanks, wrenched out his knife, and made that first long incision from throat to pelvis. The warm, steamy entrails spilled out upon the blood-tinged snow.

  Tearing his blanket mittens from his hands, Titus stuffed his cold, rigid fingers into the warmth of that pile of steaming guts, held his face close to the entrails, letting his stiff, rawhided face sense the blessed caress of the dead animal’s last warmth. When he opened his eyes again, he shoved back the sleeves on his capote and buckskin shirt, then dug for the liver. He cut it loose, dragged it out, slippery and steamy, cradling it a moment in both trembling, blood-soaked hands as he considered its meaning to him. Then Titus ravenously sank his teeth into its juicy heat.

  One bite, then a second, and a third he tore from the raw meat—then suddenly turned his head aside as his cramped, revolted stomach violently flung itself upward, rejecting the hot, raw, bloody meat after being empty of most everything for much of the past two days. Dumbly, he stared down at the hot, yellow-tinged bloody flesh he had vomited into the snow.

  Maybe he could take the liver along … oh, how he didn’t want to abandon the meat. Ounce for ounce, in his weakened condition, the liver was the one part of the doe that would offer him the most energy. Yes, he could wrap it up in a small skin bag, eat it raw, suck its juices and blood, sometime later after his stomach had grown reaccustomed to food.

  After swabbing some cold snow across his face and beard, greedily licking and sucking the blood-tinged flakes from his fingers, Scratch dragged the skinning knife back and forth, peeling the hide away from a rear haunch. When enough of the red, raw meat was exposed, he stabbed the tip of the knife into the thick muscles and carved himself out a double handful of warm flesh.

  With it laid atop the pile of gut, he went back to peeling more of the green elastic hide from the muscle. When he had a patch big enough, Titus trimmed it free and stretched it on the ground. Then he cut an inch-wide, three-foot-long strip of green hide. Laying both the liver and the haunch roast in the middle of his crude square of hide, he gathered up the edges and lashed it closed with the strip. This he tied securely to his buffalo robe.

  But before he stood again, he cut himself a long, thin strip of meat from that sundered haunch. Finally back on his feet, with his load settled across his shoulders and the rifle back in hand, Titus brought the raw, lean meat to his mouth and began to suck. Slowly at first, aiming to let his stomach grow accustomed to the warm blood and juices.

  Assured his belly wouldn’t revolt, he stumbled away from the carcass and pushed on.

  Just past sunrise the next morning he smelled wood-smoke on the wind. From the top of a knoll where he bellied to the skyline, Titus spotted the tiny cluster of mud-and-wattle huts, a collection of dogs and outdoor ovens in the crude shape of mud beehives—and realized it had to be a Mexican settlement. From the adobe chimneys rose thin streamers of breakfast fires. How taunting, how seductive, that alluring fragrance of woodsmoke.

  Would these people know of what had happened down in Taos? Were any of these pelados in revolt against the Americans too?

  He argued with himself, wanting to shout down his empty, protesting belly, telling it to stop arguing with him … then finally scooted back away from the skyline and plodded down the backside of the slope. Titus lumbered miles out of his way, staying behind a low range of hills, avoiding that tiny settlement* and its Mexican inhabitants.

  That day had dawned clear and cloudless, cruelly bright as the light bounced off the snow. He stopped to drag his mittens off while he caught his breath. Then poured a little powder from his horn into his left palm. He spit into the powder and mixed it up with a fingertip, swabbing that finger in a crude crescent below his right eye. He washed off the black goo in the snow, pulled the mittens over his hands, and pushed on.

  But by midday the intensity of the sun had grown so cruel as its light reflected off the seamless, pristine white landscape that the powder painted beneath his eye was no longer effective. Dropping his buffalo robe to the snow, leaning his rifle across its bulk, he settled onto his haunches and dug into his wool possibles pouch, sewn from pieces of an old white blanket. While his leather shooting pouch hung at his right side, this second bag hung at his left, where it contained a second fire-starting set, extra tools and strips of rawhide whang, an extra bullet mold, and some cast balls. As well as two spare bandannas. Black and silk, and huge, he had bartered them off St. Louis traders summers long ago when supplies were still hauled out to rendezvous on the Wind, the Popo Agie, and the Green.

  For a long time he stared down at the bandanna he pulled out of the pouch, feeling its texture with his fingers. Silk. Damn worm makes silk that put us beaver men out of work. Drove us out of a life.

  Finally he dragged out his skinning knife and picked a few stray deer hair from the guard where they were frozen in a thin layer of frozen, crusty blood. Scraping them off with his fingernail, Titus next cut the bandanna in half, diagonally, from one corner to another, and stuffed the section he didn’t need back in his possibles pouch. Then he trimmed off a four-inch-wide strip at the widest part of the bandanna and put the small, remaining triangle of black cloth into the pouch, securing the wide flap with its huge button made from the rosette found at the base of an elk antler.

  He brought the long ends of the strip together, found the middle, then laid it across his knee. Measuring out the width of two fingers from that middle, he stabbed a crude slit some three inches long. Four finger widths from the end of that slit, he started to cut another slit—then he remembered it didn’t matter. It had been many years since he needed a slit for his left eye. Titus trimmed the cloth away so that he had one narrow gap no more than a half-inch wide.

  Resting his knife atop his thigh, Scratch held the bandanna up to his eyes and positioned it. Looking left, then right. Ought to work fine. Quickly stuffing his knife back into its scabbard, Titus dragged off the coyote cap, then tied the long ends of the mask at the back of his head, knotting it atop the knot holding the bandanna around his entire skull, covering that patch of bare bone. He shifted the mask, stretching the silk cloth over his brow, satisfied he could see well enough through the narrow slit, then pulled his coyote cap back onto his head.

  Standing, he gazed out onto the brilliant expanse of white wilderness and spotted the far range of hills. Even with the brilliant glare, his heart leaped because he knew those hills. At their foot he would find the Pueblo. Friends. Americans. Old comrades and compatriots who would rally their forces and ride back south to retake Taos from the butchers and murderers and fiends who had made war on not just government officials and soldiers—but on private citizens … on helpless women and children too.

  Friends were gathered there inside the Pueblo on the Arkansas.

  As the sun sank, the pain in his eye gradually lessened. He
stopped to blow and pull the mask down from his eyes. It only took a man one time to suffer from snowblindness to teach him that he would do just about anything so he’d never suffer the pain and helplessness again. Like gritty, liquid sand trapped beneath the eyelid—grains that would not wash away with all the tears his burning, inflamed eyes produced. Damned slow to heal too. Days it took.

  But he had managed to prevent it that day, first with the powder goo, and then with the sun mask. He had made it through that cloudless, sunny day without growing blind—forced to wait out more days before he could see well enough to move on.

  With the black scarf hung around his neck, Scratch had trudged on into the waning of the light. Hopeful at first, it was long after twilight when he accepted that there wasn’t much chance for a moonrise that would shed enough light to brighten his way across the uneven ground.

  With every dozen steps, a feeling grew inside him that he should have already reached the Arkansas. Time and again, Bass halted to catch his wind, staring with that one good eye to the west. Hoping to discern some blackened landmark rising against the pale evening sky.

  He stumbled on beneath a bright dusting of stars that nonetheless failed to shed any of their light on the snowy land he crossed. At times he stopped and scooped up a handful of snow to give his parched mouth a little moisture. Dry and harsh was every breath of air in this high, arid country.

  He was gasping when he imagined he heard a dog bark. Then a second dog answered that first with its own low, throaty warning.

  The hair at the back of his neck bristled. Could be an Indian camp. Cheyenne or Arapaho down here in this country, he warned himself.

  But at the brow of the next rise he stopped and stared, thinking he could make out the neatly organized rows of some dingy gray wall tents, interspersed with a few darker huts partially constructed from logs at the bottom of the slope. He could smell woodsmoke now. And hear dogs raising a clatter.