Death Rattle (22 page)

Titus sighed, recalling the heady numbness of Workman’s corn whiskey down Taos way. “Maybe some pop-skull and a spree could take the edge off things for all of us afore we gotta leave Californy in a hurry.”

“Let’s circle to the south for to get back to camp,” Williams advised, eager to be on the way again. “See what horses there are for the taking.”

It was well past dark and the moon had risen when they found their way back to the others. Already Smith and Thompson had come in to report there had to be more than two thousand head of Mexican horses. The Americans and Frenchmen were growing anxious to get on with their raids.

From their springtime camps in the central Rockies, these men had ridden something on the order of a thousand
miles or more to reach Mexican California, the land of the horse. They had suffered hardship the likes of which few men would ever choose to endure. Besides being forced to drink their own urine and blood to cross the southern desert that early summer, these twenty-four had subsisted on skinny, played-out horseflesh and bitter-tasting cactus pulp. Not hard to understand that these trappers had grown restless, anxious to be gathering up horses and turning them east for the Bent brothers’ post on the Arkansas … eager to be doing just about anything instead of cooling their heels in these California hills.

“Peg-Leg, I figger it’s ’bout time for me to dust off the bad news and tell the boys what I got in mind,” Williams announced around a chunk of Mexican beef Silas Adair had managed to cut out of a nearby herd early that afternoon.

Smith nearly choked on his coffee as he sputtered at Bill’s surprise. “I found a lot of horses for the takin’, Solitaire. There ain’t no bad news in that!”

“Couple thousand ain’t near enough,” Williams grumbled dramatically, then quickly winked at Bass as the other men around them began to groan and grumble in disappointment. “I figger it still ain’t the right time to steal horses.”

Smith bolted to his feet, some coffee sloshing out of his tin. “Your brains run out your ears back there in all that desert, Bill? I tol’t you: We found us plenty horses south of here.”

“Ain’t yet the time, boys,” Williams repeated. “Not yet, sorry.”

“Dammit to hell!” Philip Thompson flung his whetstone down at his feet. “So when does the high-an’-mighty Bill Williams figger on it bein’ time to gather up the horses we come across the desert to steal?”

Williams slowly dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and chin, then licked the shiny grease from his hand and fingers. “We’ll go steal horses soon enough, boys. But not till me and Scratch lead you all down to a li’l California town to have ourselves a spree.”

“A sp-spree?” Peg-Leg sputtered.

“You mean likker?” Reuben Purcell asked.

“Mexican likker,” Titus confirmed with a smack of his lips.

With a bob of his head, Williams said, “Likely that means some lightnin’ for those of you wanna smash your faces on the floor just once afore we head back home. And for the rest, some sweet California wine or pass brandy—”

“Women too?” Jake Corn interrupted. “They got women down there?”

Titus gaped at Corn a moment, then said, “How the hell you figger California gone and filled up with Mexicans, if’n there wasn’t no women to pleasure all them damned
pelados)”
They whooped, and hollered, and hurrooed. Several of them took to swinging around in pairs, arm-in-arm or grandly doe-see-doeing there in the fire’s light.

Smith leaped around the fire and pounded Williams on the back. “We go find this village of yours in the morning, Bill?”

“Damn, if we won’t!”

Peg-Leg flicked his eyes up at Bass. They twinkled with devilment. “So tell me, Scratch—what’s the name of this here village you boys found?”

The
Californios
called it Pueblo de los Angeles.

A sprawling, no-account coastal village by some standards. Hardly worth remembering, and of little redeeming value … but for the fact that it lay a long stone’s throw off the bay where the high-masted seafaring ships anchored to supply the ranchos and that mission of San Gabriel.

None of that international trade mattered to those twenty-four thirsty interlopers invading a foreign land. Soon enough would come the work. Soon enough would come the trials and the gunfire, then enduring another desert crossing they had to survive. So for now, these
Norteamericanos
would drink their fill and rub up
against every willing woman they might find in the watering holes and stinking cantinas dotting the Pueblo de los Angeles.

That many horsemen, every one crudely dressed in buckskin, calico, and wool, were certain to attract notice. By their unkempt beards, trail-leathered skin, each rider bristling with weaponry, there could be no mistaking the two dozen for strangers come calling on this coastal village. Just as apparent too was that these twenty-four were not seamen who had just jumped off a Boston merchant ship anchored in the nearby harbor. No, these men and their distinctively jug-headed Indian ponies and mules had come a long, long way to reach this little village nestled between the hills and that green ocean.

Streetside conversations stopped as the Mexicans turned to study the strangers. Shopkeepers and customers crowded in doorways or peered from windows as the horsemen moved slowly down the rutted lanes littered with refuse, dung, and the occasional body of a dead cat or dog. As the horsemen passed one knot of the curious after another, Bass caught snatches of words the villagers mumbled among themselves.

Extranjeros.
Long road.

Come for the furs.

No, perhaps … come for horses.

“As likely a place as any,” Williams announced as he reined aside at the front of a long, low-roofed adobe hutch, its front walls marred by none of the small windows pocking other buildings, windows filled with panes of selenite or slates of mica.

No window here. Nothing but the low-beamed, narrow doorway that stood open in the morning sun. Beneath the tiled roof protruded
vigas,
those pared and peeled logs that poked out beyond the walls, from which hung long
ristras
of peppers and cloves of garlic. Embedded in the side wall were but a half dozen hitching rings, and room for no more than a few of their horses at what was left of a broken-down hitching rail out front.

“Tie ’em off two-by-two,” Peg-Leg ordered.

That would at least keep their animals from wandering, hitching them nose-to-nose on the open ground at the side of the cantina. And with as many of them as there were, none of the trappers figured any Mexican would dare attempt slipping away with their loose stock.

“Welcome, Yankees!”

At the corner of the building in a patch of shadow stood a tall Mexican, his sunken cheeks deeply pitted with the ravages of some long-ago disease. He was grinning widely, half bowing graciously as he eagerly wiped his hands on the long tail of his coarse, linen shirt he had not cared to tuck inside the waist of his stained leather breeches. Sweeping a long hank of black hair out of his eyes, this older man swept an arm toward the door in a graceful arc.

“Yankees, come!” he repeated.

“Gracias,”
Williams replied as he stepped past the Mexican, the first to enter the cantina’s shadowy, cool interior.

As they threaded past the bartender, Elias Kersey whispered to Bass, “He think we’re sailin’ Yankees off one of them ships, eh?”

Before Titus could say a thing, the Mexican suddenly leaped in front of Kersey, smiling warmly and nodding as he gestured toward the open door. “Yankees,
si!
Come, come—Yankees welcome!”

They flooded in behind Bill Williams, most pausing to soak in, and grow accustomed to, the change from bright light to dimmest shadow. As his eyes adjusted, Titus quickly glanced over the interior, measuring the patrons huddled around their rough-hewn tables. It was plain there weren’t enough chairs or tables to seat all two dozen newcomers. But the cantina owner had already recognized this shortcoming and was clapping his hands together, sending two of his men to bring out several thick blankets they unfurled onto the hard, clay floor.

“Sientense ustedes, por favor!”
all three of the cantinamen repeated, indicating the blankets they spread at the foot of two walls of the long, low room.

While some of the trappers settled in the last of the
chairs at the few open tables, most collapsed onto the floor, filling the offered blankets, where they leaned back against the wall, eyeing the jugs and jars on the double shelf resting behind the long, open-faced bar. Every wall had been painted with
jaspe,
that whitewash the Mexicans concocted from a selenite compound they burned in their
hornos,
or beehive ovens, then mixed with water. The thick paste was then spread by hand on the walls and finished off by brushing the
jaspe
with a patch of sheepskin. To keep the brittle whitewash from rubbing off on customers, the Mexicans had draped
mantas,
or printed muslins, about halfway up the walls. The crude but unpretentious decor so reminded Titus of his visits to Gertrude Barcelos’s brothel in long-ago and faraway Taos.

With the strained, too-quiet atmosphere that morning as the Americans settled, Bass was drawn to the owner’s nervous stutter as the older man leaned on the table where Smith and Williams sat with Thompson and their Indian guide.

“What’s he telling you?” Bill demanded of his partner.

Peg-Leg explained, “He says the Injun gotta go—says he don’t serve Injuns here.”

Thompson immediately hissed, “This damned Mex don’t have no right to tell us he won’t serve our friend, Peg-Leg. You let this son of a bitch know we could tear his place to the ground with our hands—”

“Such hooligan actions wouldn’t be a good idea, fellas.”

Turning as one, all two dozen watched a large, roundish man with fleshy jowls bristling with thick, graying sideburns get to his feet back in the shadows, then stride in their direction as the cantina owner nodded to the man and pivoted and shuffled back to the bar.

Thompson shot to his feet, growling, “Who the hell are you to be telling—”

“Cap’n Janus C. Smathers,” the stranger announced as he came to a stop at Smith’s table. His thumbs were hung in the armpits of his ample vest sewn from a dark blue wool, at least twenty tiny brass buttons straining in their holes strung down the flap.

“You’re ’Merican?” Peg-Leg asked in disbelief.

With a nod, Smathers swept his arm toward two tables of men tucked back in a shadowy corner. “All of us. American, like you. Adventurers, to be sure.”

Williams held out his hand and introduced himself. “Bill Williams, M.T.”

Smathers cocked his head, asking, “What’s an M.T.?”

“Master trapper,” Bill answered proudly.

“You’re fur hunters, I take it,” Smathers replied. “Here to search the coastline for otter?”

“Maybeso,” Williams answered.

“Listen, fellas,” Smathers began. “The governor down at San Diego frowns on Americans coming into California to harvest California furs then haul them right back out of here to parts unknown.”

“You an’ the governor don’t need to fret none. We won’t be going down near this here San Diego,” Thompson snipped.

“Best advice I could give you is don’t say a thing about coming to California for furs,” Smathers advised, turning away from the antagonism of Thompson. “And be wary of causing any trouble that would bring attention to yourselves.” He glanced quickly at Frederico. “In that respect, it will be best if you take the Indian outside. These
Californios
don’t like any wild Indians from across the mountains taking liberties that the Indians around here don’t have out of hand.”

“Oh, he ain’t a wild Injun from across the mountains,” Smith snorted. “Frederico here’s a mission Injun.”

Smathers’s eyes grew big, and he flicked a look at the Mexicans nearby as they were placing clay cups on several small wooden platters atop the bar. “Good God—he’s a mission slave?”

“Runaway—”

“Don’t say another word about him!” Smathers warned with a snap. “If you want to keep him and you value his life, take him out of here and hide him where you can. An Indian spotted here in the village is something that will soon draw the wrong kind of attention.”

Smith asked, “They ain’t ’llowed to come to town? Can’t have a drink?”

“Right on both counts,” Smathers explained. “They’re slaves. I’ve been coming to California for eleven years already, make a trip around the cape every year. In all that time, I’ve still to make peace with most of how these people live here. But me and my seafarers are visitors, so we haven’t any say.”

“Thanks, Cap’n,” Williams said as he stood and stepped around the table to prop his hand on the Indian’s shoulder. “Tell ’im why he’s gotta leave, Peg-Leg. Tell ’im he has to stay outside to watch the horses. We’ll bring him some likker later on.”

Once Smith finished his explanation, Frederico glanced up at Williams, then the ship’s captain, and eventually stood. He started for the door beside Williams without a word of protest.

“These
Californios
ain’t like us,” Smathers declared as the old trapper led the young Indian outside. “There’s one church here—they’re all Papists you know. And that one church rules those who run the government with an iron fist. It’s a closed society, gentlemen—and a culture where Americans are welcome only if they toe the line and don’t commit any act against their religion or their laws.”

“A lot like Taos and Santy Fee,” Bass said as he stopped near the table.

Smathers regarded Titus a moment, then said, “I don’t doubt that, mister. Never been either place myself, but I have no reason not to believe one part of Mexico would be any different from another part.”

Bill was coming back inside as the two Mexicans brought over the first of the small trays holding those short, clay cups to distribute them among the tables and those men squatting on the floor. Behind the pair came the owner, pouring a liberal amount of a pale liquid into those cups eagerly held up by twenty-four thirsty trappers.

“Should you require anything, need my assistance with the local authorities,” the captain explained, “my
ship is anchored in the bay. The
Windward,
out of Portland. That’s nor’east up on the coast of Maine. You fellas just ask anyone down near the wharf for the
Windward,
and you’ll find someone to row you out to fetch me.”