Death Rattle tb-8

by Terry C. Johnston

  This wasn’t any Indian camp. That much was for sure. Maybe he’d stumbled onto the army’s winter quarters up here near the Arkansas. Some of the soldiers Kearny had left behind to protect the nearby settlements at Bents Fort and the Pueblo.

  Running onto these dragoons would be so much the better.

  He reached the first of the tents before a dog slinked up to growl, daring to get close enough to sniff this strange creature that skulked out of the darkness. Swinging the rifle, he laid the narrow butt alongside the dog’s head with a resounding crack. It whimpered and bellied off with a pitiful whine,’ its tail tucked between its legs.

  “Who goes there?” a voice suddenly called out from the darkness.

  “Y-you a s-soldier?” Bass stammered with a dry tongue and an unused voice box.

  A form loomed out of the night, taking shape from behind one of the tents. There were rustles of other movement farther behind the man.

  “Soldier?” the man said as he inched closer. “I ain’t no soldier, mister. S’pose you tell me who you are?”

  “You’re American, ain’cha?” Titus asked. “You t-talk like American.”

  The man snorted as a dozen others hurried up to join him, each of them carrying some sort of firearm. “ ‘Course we’re American. What the devil are you?”

  “I w-was … American,” he admitted. “Of a time … long, long ago. Born back to Kentucky. Seems so far away now. So many years too … years since I was American.”

  The thirteen of them had him all but surrounded now, jostling close, shoulder to shoulder, as each of the strangers strained to make him out in the dimmest of light thrown off by those stars overhead.

  “Where you come walking in from?” one of them asked.

  “Taos. South. There’s been bad trouble,” he rasped. “Americans killed. Injuns and Mex greasers. Been killing Americans.”

  “Taos—that’s more’n hundred fifty miles off!” another voice exclaimed.

  “I come for help,” he admitted. “Was making for the Pueblo. Got friends there can help me. Don’t know how I got off my track and run across your camp.”

  “The Pueblo?” the first, familiar, voice echoed. “You just missed it, off over there. We ain’t camped far from the Pueblo.”

  “Gloree,” he sighed as his breath came easier. “Thort at first I was in a army camp. Dragoons come to take Mexico away from the Mexicans.”

  “Army? No, we ain’t nothin’ but the army of God,” a new voice spoke up as some of the other men parted for the newcomer.

  “Army of G-God?” he repeated, baffled completely.

  “We’re the Saints,” someone declared. “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”

  “S-saints?” he repeated in a whisper, his head almost dizzy with confusion.

  Weakened, thirsty, hungrier than he had been in many a winter … Bass almost doubted he was still standing.

  Saints?

  Oh, sweet Jehoshaphat! Was this how it was to die?

  Maybeso he was really lying half dead and delirious, out of his mind, somewhere on that journey north! Maybe this was part of the horrible dream that came with dying.

  Saints, they came and helped a man get done with the living.

  Maybe he was so close to death that he just dreamed this cluttered collection of tents and log huts, these dogs barking and this group of Americans. Maybe all his weary, hungry brain could do was to paint this strange, foreign picture while he was passing through the frightening veil into death.

  Saints?

  “That’s right. Saints,” another voice affirmed. “Some folks call us Mormons—”

  “This poor man doesn’t need a theological lesson now, Hyram,” a new and unfamiliar voice boomed from the dark.

  The crowd parted for the huge bulk of him as he stepped into the breech.

  “Said he was looking for the Pueblo,” one of those closest explained. “Says he’s got friends over there.”

  “You’ve got friends here too,” the big man assured. “And we’ll see you get yourself over to the Pueblo.” He turned his bulk toward the others in that dark starshine and bellowed, “Oran, go fetch your springless wagon and hitch up a team. I want you to carry this stranger to his people at the Pueblo.”

  Dumbfounded, Bass stood there staring, still not sure this was real, that he was on the Arkansas, that the Pueblo was even close at hand.

  Then the wide, pan-faced man with the shovel jaw turned back to Titus and studied him up and down intently before he said, “It’s now up to the might of our hands that we’ll see this man helped upon his way … for it was by the grace of God alone that this stranger has stumbled out of the wilderness and into our hands … alive.”

  * The short-lived Greenhorn settlement, on Greenhorn Creek in present-day Colorado.

  34

  Looking back on his life, many were the times when Scratch knew there was no other reason for him shinnying out of danger by the skin of his teeth but for the mighty hand of something larger than himself. With his delivery from the winter wilderness, he couldn’t help but think that he was being told something.

  Now the hard part would be trying to find out just what he was being told.

  At that dark, early-morning hour, men from that overland-bound camp of Mormons carried Titus Bass back to the Pueblo. With more dogs barking alarm, they banged on the open gate, throwing their voices into the empty placita, finally arousing the first of the post’s inhabitants to appear at a darkened doorway.

  “But they’ve got the army down there!” exclaimed Robert Fisher the moment the wagon driver announced he’d brought in a survivor who had stumbled in with news from Taos that the Mexicans and Indians were butchering all the Americans they could get their hands on.

  “Has this man been drinking?” Fisher asked, refusing to believe what few details the Mormons had already learned from the lips of the old mountain man.

  Then the trader hobbled from the placita, a capote wrapped over his faded longhandles, hurrying to the wagon where he finally laid eyes on the messenger. And stared a moment.

  “You ’member me, don’t you, Fisher?”

  Suddenly, the trader’s face brightened with recognition. His face went gray with worry, knowing this was no drunken prank. “Met you years ago. You’re Mathew’s old friend.”

  “I … I come to tell of some tumble news—”

  “Kinkead!” Fisher interrupted as he wheeled about and screamed through the open gate. “Kinkead! Manz! Get up, everyone! Get up!”

  One last time the trader glanced at the old trapper as Scratch started scooting off the end of the springless wagon; then Fisher bolted away, shouting, “There ain’t an American left alive in Taos!”

  Within seconds the other traders, their wives and children, hangers-on and passers-through, were staggering into the darkened courtyard. Bleary-eyed and mumbling as they shared the shocking news brought by the men from Mormon Town, the crowd inched close as Mathew Kinkead lunged up to confirm what his trading partner had already learned from the man who had just appeared out of the winter wilderness.

  “Josiah? His family?”

  “They was safe in the hills when I left ’em few days back.”

  “What you figger we oughtta do, Scratch?”

  Titus wagged his head, looking around at those worried faces in the dark, suddenly aware of just how fruitless his journey here might have been—

  “Grab that Mexican!” a voice suddenly cried out.

  There was a brief, fierce scuffle as traders and trappers and freeloaders scampered after a pair of Mexicans who were attempting to slink out the gate unnoticed. Both were immediately pitched to the ground and pummeled until Francisco Conn and Joseph Manz put a stop to the beating. Fisher and another man dragged a third Mexican out from behind a stack of firewood. All three stood shoulder to shoulder in their homespun jerga, pleading in Spanish to the Mexican wives of the Pueblo traders, cowering as the Americans argued in loud, strident voices over just what to do
with their prisoners.

  “Lock ’em in the fur hold,” Kinkead ordered. “But first off see there ain’t nothing in there for ’em to get their hands on. Them greasers can rot in there till we know what’s become of Taos.”

  Men scattered this way and that, lamps were lit, and Americans returned with rope to tie up their prisoners, ankles and wrists, before they hobbled away with their handlers to the tiniest hovel in the Pueblo.

  It wasn’t long before Titus himself was under a roof, using a brass ladle to slurp water from an olla, a tall clay water jug, and watching as strips of last night’s meat was laid on a plate before him. Meanwhile others rolled up their colchónes, those thin mattresses stuffed with hay, stacking them against the wall. Split wood was laid on the coals in the small trading room’s open-faced oven, quickly driving the chill from the place while more and more men—traders, trappers, and Mormons too—crowded in hip to hip to hear the details of the bloody rebellion.

  Mathew asked, “Beckwith’s old partner?”

  Scratch swallowed that bite of dried meat. “Sheriff Lee?”

  Kinkead nodded. “He had a Mexican wife. A daughter, and a young son.”

  “We brung his wife out. The boy too,” Scratch explained. Then he wagged his head. “Don’t know about the daughter.”

  “She was married to an American,” Mathew groaned.

  “Lee didn’t say nothin’ ’bout her. Only asked us to get his wife and boy out.”

  George Simpson surmised, “Maybe they weren’t in town when the trouble brewed.”

  “Lee join up with you and Paddock later on?” Kinkead asked.

  “ ’Less he got away north after I started for the Arkansas,” Titus declared, “I don’t figger he slipped outta Taos with his hair.”

  “Lee,” one of the nameless men whispered the sheriff’s name in the silence of that room filled only with the quiet sounds of breathing and the crackling fire.

  “They’ve gotta pay,” another man growled.

  A new voice vowed defiantly, “We’ll make ’em pay.”

  “There ain’t ’nough of you to whip them niggers,” Scratch grumbled, hauling them all up short.

  “We gotta do something,” Mathew said.

  “What ’bout Turley?” Fisher asked.

  Bass dug at his cheek whiskers with a dirty fingernail still crusted with a dark crescent of the doe’s blood. “Last I saw of the Arroyo Hondo, the greasers and them Pueblo niggers was shootin’ up his place. ’Less any of Turley’s men got out right when they was jumped, I don’t figger they stood a chance again’ so many.”

  Joseph Manz moaned, “Turley too!”

  One of the faces stabbed forward into the firelight as the stranger said, “Leastways, the governor hisself was down to Santa Fe. When he hears what they done to his half-breed young’uns, he’ll be riding right out front of them dragoons!”

  “That’s right!” a new voice cheered. “Governor Bent will see ever’ last one of them niggers hang for what they done!”

  “Charles Bent was in Taos,” Bass told them.

  The crowded room fell to an awestruck hush.

  “Ch-charlie Bent too?”

  “Don’t know for certain,” Titus declared. “But that was the plan Sheriff Lee heard tell of. The greasers was waitin’ till the governor was back in Taos afore they let the wolf out to howl.”

  The quiet was oppressive again, for the longest time. So quiet, Bass could hear one of the Mexicans calling out from the tiny fur room on the far side of the quadrangle, begging for his life, whimpering and sobbing, while one of the other prisoners cursed his cowardice.

  “Someone’s gotta ride down the river and tell William ’bout his brother,” Kinkead said softly.

  Pounding his fist on the table, surprising them all, Manz said, “Maybe there’s enough fellas down there!”

  “Damn right! They can meet us on the trail,” Kinkead replied.

  “None of you realize what you’re goin’ up against,” Titus declared. “There ain’t ’nough of you here, not near ’nough down there at the Picketwire. Shit!” he exploded with exasperation, slinging his arm to the side, sweeping the half-empty pewter plate from the table where it clattered into a corner by the adobe fireplace. Hushing them all.

  Bass let his head collapse into his hands, miserable. “I never should’ve left ’em. Why in hell did I ever think comin’ up here was gonna do any good?”

  Kinkead had his arm across his old friend’s shoulder. “I’m going, Scratch. My wife’s got family down there. I owe it to her to find out what’s happened.”

  “You’ll get yourself kill’t,” Scratch said as he raised his head and looked around the room. “All of you. Go ride in there and that mob of angry niggers cut you into pieces with their farm tools.”

  Kinkead angrily seized the front of Bass’s buckskin shirt in one fist. “What the hell you come to tell us this news of killing in Taos if we wasn’t supposed to do nothing ’bout it?”

  Bass locked his gnarled hand around Mathew’s wrist and gently tugged it from his shirt. “Only thing you can do, is be down there—waitin’—when them soldiers come marching up from Santy Fee.”

  Kinkead spread his big bear paw of a hand on Titus’s cheek, apologizing with his eyes for exploding. Scratch smiled, saying quietly, “ ’S’all right, Mathew. I know just how you feel when you ain’t sure how the hell to do right by your family. When you don’t know which way to turn.”

  In the end, they decided to hurry down for the valley of the San Fernandez … where they’d wait in the hills for more of their number to ride down from Bents Fort. All of these frontiersmen and traders vowed to keep watch south of the village for the expected approach of the army.

  With a young courier bundled against the frightening temperatures and carrying a satchel of dried meat to sustain him on his way, word was dispatched to William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain downriver at their adobe fortress. Then efforts turned to preparing for their own march south into the land of the rebellion.

  “The Mormons ain’t coming,” Fisher explained to those in the placita when he returned two hours later as the horses were being saddled. “Their leaders say they hardly have ’nough men left after the rest marched off to fight with Kearny in California.”

  “We’ll do what we can with what we got,” Kinkead vowed grimly.

  At sunup they moved out for the valley of San Fernandez de Taos.

  And by the late afternoon of the third day, halting only to rest the horses for a few of those darkest hours each night, that pitifully small posse from the Pueblo was within striking distance of the Mexican settlements, when Bass spotted two riders coming down the slope of the foothills. When one of the horsemen tore off his hat and began to wave it at the end of his arm, Scratch was no longer unsure.

  “That Paddock?” asked Kinkead.

  “An’ I bet that’s Joshua with ’im. The boy’s growed into a fine lad.”

  Mathew reached over and clamped his mitten on Titus’s forearm. “That means your family’s safe, Scratch. They’re all safe.”

  Bass turned to gaze at Kinkead. Knowing how Mathew had suffered through the loss of a wife. His own eyes began to brim so much he had to blink hot tears away to see clearly as those two distant horsemen kicked their animals into a lope, hooves spewing up high, cascading rooster tails of snow as they hurried down the slope toward the motley party of rescuers.

  “I ain’t never coming back to Mexico, Mathew,” Scratch vowed, gazing beyond those two distant riders, searching the foothills where his family was hiding. “I ain’t never setting a foot down here again.”

  Both of those mongrel Indian dogs yipped and howled at his return, jumping and leaping around the feet of his horse until Scratch finally vaulted out of the saddle and caught all three of his children in his arms at once.

  Oh, how good they felt against him, especially the way little Flea placed his tiny hands on his father’s cheeks and said in uncertain English, “I know you come back, Popo.
I know you come.”

  That’s when Scratch’s eye climbed over the small child’s head, finding his wife patiently waiting, wrapped in her blanket, tears streaming down her soot-smudged cheeks. He stood among his children, then lunged toward her, enfolding his wife in his arms. Both of them breathless at this reunion.

  “I always knew I’d make it back to you,” he declared in a whisper.

  Her cheek against his neck, Waits-by-the-Water said, “I always knew you would make it back to me. But … the days and nights—they don’t grow any easier without you here.”

  Around them now the trappers, frontiersmen, and traders from the Pueblo were dismounting noisily. That big bear, Mathew Kinkead, wrapped up the Paddock children two at a time in his fierce embrace before he came over to kneel in front of the three youngsters he did not know.

  He said, “You must belong to Titus Bass.”

  “Ti-Tuzz, yes,” Magpie repeated in her father’s unfamiliar tongue.

  As Scratch and Waits stepped up, Mathew ripped off his mitten and took the girl’s small hand in his big paw, caressing it. “What is your name?”

  She started to speak it in Crow, then stopped and said it in English.

  “Magpie,” Kinkead repeated. “That’s a pretty name for such a pretty young lady. Do you know you were born in my house?”*

  “You are Mateo?” she asked haltingly, her eyes flicking to her parents.

  “Yes. I am Mateo Kinkead.”

  “I am Magpie,” she said again in English, with more certainty now. “Born in Mateo’s lodge, in Ta-house.”

  Kinkead stood, resting a hand on Flea’s shoulder. His eyes touched Bass’s. A lone tear slipped from one eye. “I remember that night … a long time ago, Magpie. In a time and a Taos long, long ago.”

  Behind the hills far across the valley the sun was easing its way down on the hills with winter’s aching quickness.

  Titus turned and stepped over to Paddock, putting his arm around his old friend’s shoulder. “You have ’nough meat here to feed all these new mouths tonight?”