Death Rattle (27 page)

“How many you make out?” Kersey interrupted his reverie.

Again he squinted through the eyepiece and attempted to count what men he could see. “I figger there’s at least one on the gate I can’t see a’t’all, maybe two what closed it.”

“What of the others?” Purcell demanded.

Bass counted a moment. “I see three others. That could mean there’s at least three I don’t see.”

Corn was visibly tallying his fingers, staring at both hands. “All right. We can take care of them.”

Adair asked, “You see them women? Any sign of his sisters?”

For some time he studied every visible corner of the compound, gazing into every narrow window or doorway for some hint of movement that might betray a woman. But, he didn’t sight a hint of Frederico’s sisters.

“You are certain your sisters are at the soldier post?” Titus asked in his faltering Spanish.

“Si,”
the guide responded. “They were taken from the mission—”

“But,” Scratch interrupted, “how long ago?” He knew Frederico had been gone from California for some time, escaped to the Mojave villages.

“Not for long—”

“This past winter?” he inquired. “Tell me how long it has been since you saw your sisters carried off to the soldier post?”

The youth’s face sagged along with his shoulders. “Almost all the seasons. Come autumn, I ran away to the desert.”

Bass sighed. “Just shy of a year,” he said in English.

Corn was the first to capture the meaning of that. “Been a whole year since he knowed his sisters was down there?”

“Almost.” Titus reluctantly nodded. “Maybeso this ain’t but a fool’s errand we’re on, fellas.”

“Por
favor”
Frederico pleaded with his dark eyes as well as his tongue. “Help me save my sisters.”

For himself, Bass nodded, but turned to the others to declare, “I can’t make you others ride down there with the Injun to find two women who likely ain’t still alive no more.”

Adair’s eyes squinted as he turned his head to stare down into the valley at the post. “I figger them soldiers used up both of them squaws pretty hard, then killed ’em when they wasn’t no use no more.”

“What’re you asking, Scratch?” Kersey prodded.

“Me and the Injun, we’ll slip down there—”

“Just the two of you?” Purcell inquired.

“I figger to show him his sisters ain’t … around no more,” Titus explained. “Then we can come on your back trail and catch up to the herd together.”

“There’s too many of them lop-eared greasers for one man to handle down there,” Corn declared, tugging down on a low-crowned hat that had been at one time of a cream color. “I’m going with you.”

Kersey nodded, rubbing a hand across his dusty leggings cut from a red wool blanket. “Count me in too, Scratch. You’ll need some men at your back, even with them fat Mex soldiers.”

“Awright,” Adair relented. “Me and Roscoe gonna throw in too.”

“We all go down there an’ kill ourselves,” Purcell groaned, wagging his head.

“Maybe not,” Kersey suggested in a whisper, rubbing the end of his sharp, aquiline nose, a most prominent feature on his face: tracked with tiny blood vessels as if someone had crisscrossed it with an inked nib filled with indigo. “Scratch, I got a notion for you an’ the Injun here.”

“Dust it off and spill your idee.”

“We have the Injun go round to that post—on foot it’s gotta be. Act like he’s just a dumb, lost Injun, needing to find his way back to his mission.”

Bass smiled, a light coming across his whole brown face. “I’ll wager them soldiers gonna let the Injun in—”

“And he can have a look at things on the inside,” Corn interrupted to finish the plan.

“So he’s got inside to see if his sisters are still around,” Titus said, nodding with approval.

He rolled onto his hip and quickly stammered through his skimpy Spanish vocabulary, wishing the California Indians understood sign language as well as those tribes of the high plains savvied it.

Sliding backward on their bellies until they were no longer in danger of breaking the skyline, Scratch and
Frederico started down to the animals. There he stopped, grabbed the youth by the shoulders, and studied the youth up and down.

He retightened the black bandanna around the bloody arm, then—without a word of warning—Titus bent to scoop up a handful of dirt. Spitting into his palm, Scratch mixed the mud with a couple of fingers. When he went to smear the mud on Frederico’s face, the Indian flinched, pulling aside.

“No,” Bass said in a soothing manner. “We make you look dirty. You have been lost. You were hungry for days. You must fool the soldiers to free your sisters.”

A light went on behind Frederico’s eyes, and he nodded his permission. Titus smeared a little of the mud on his face, some across his chest, and the rest on his knees. Then he took another handful of dust and powdered it on the mud before stepping back to look at his handiwork.

Suddenly he pulled his knife and snatched up the long flap of the Indian’s breechclout, nearly ripping off a long corner of the cloth, leaving the fragment hanging.

“See? You do not wear the Mexican pantaloons the other Indian slaves wear at the mission,” Titus explained as he stepped back and gave Frederico another appraisal. “You are a wild Indian. The soldiers must believe you are a wild Indian to let you inside that fort.”

“Si, this will work,” Frederico said quietly as he held out his right arm to Bass. They clasped wrists.

“We’ll be watching from up there,” Titus declared. “Get away as quick as you can.”

The Indian nodded and turned away, trotting around the bottom of the wide knoll.

“Frederico!” Bass called. “Don’t cause any trouble by yourself. And don’t let your sisters know you have come to rescue them.”

With a fading grin, the youth took off on foot.

Titus and the others scrambled back up to the top of the rise and bellied down among the brush. He took out his spyglass and waited for Frederico to appear on the plain below them, zigzagging through the undergrowth, making for the stockade at a lope.

After long minutes of peering through the lens, watching almost breathless until the gates finally opened, Scratch announced in a whisper, “He’s in.”

Frederico disappeared, and the gate was closed once more.

“We wait?” Purcell asked impatiently.

“We wait,” Elias Kersey told him.

But even Titus itched to know what was going on by the time Jake Corn revealed in a rasp, “Gate’s opening!”

“Is he coming?” Purcell inquired, squinting in the harsh sunlight. “The Injun coming?”

The gate swung clear, and two horsemen left the compound.

“Nawww,” Adair responded, disappointment heavy in his voice. “It’s just a couple of soldiers—”

“Be-gawd!” Corn said little too loudly. “Them soldiers’re draggin’ the Injun off somewhere!”

Behind those two Mexicans a third horse emerged from the gate. Frederico sat astride its bare back, his arms held out straight, lashed to a narrow tent pole laid across the top of his shoulders, wrists tied to either end. His brown ankles were lashed to another tent pole that hung underneath the belly of the horse. Trussed up like a hog for the slaughter.

“T-they gonna kill the Injun?” Kersey asked.

“Could’ve done that in their fort,” Bass said, wagging his head in angry consternation. “He must’ve done something wrong—said something wrong, for them soldiers to be cartin’ him off.”

“Where they taking him?” Corn inquired. “Back to the mission where they near killed ’im last time?”

Titus nodded as another pair of soldiers brought up the rear of the short procession behind their prisoner. “I think they’re taking the Injun to them holy padres as a gift. A wild Injun for them padres to make a slave.”

Kersey wondered, “They can’t have no way of knowing he’s their whores’ brother?”

“Hope not,” Scratch said with a long sigh, “C’mon, fellas. We gotta bust that Injun free.”

“Shit,” Purcell grumped as he crawled off his knees. “I just knowed you was gonna say that.”

They had no choice but to make a race out of it.

Mission San Bernardino wasn’t all that far away, through a short string of tree-lined hills. No time to gallop ahead and set up an ambush.

When the soldiers came in sight ahead of them, the adobe walls and flying buttresses of the mission off in the distance beyond the Mexicans, Scratch kicked his heels into the horse and roared, “It’s a stand-up ride-through, boys!”

As he shot away, the five others yipped or grunted as they jabbed their horses into a hard gallop. Now and then across those last moments as they raced up on the Mexicans, the soldiers disappeared around a bend in the wagon road, or were momentarily hidden by a stand of leafy trees. They were taking a leisurely pace with their prisoner and their march.

With less than sixty yards separating the trappers from the enemy, one of the soldiers suddenly turned and peered over his shoulder. He nearly spilled off his horse when he twitched in surprise and fear, whirling back around in the saddle so quickly that one of his boots slipped out of its stirrup. He called out—the man next to him jerked around to look back down the trail.

Then they both started yelling to the pair in front. Frederico did his best to turn at the waist, unable to accomplish much with his legs tied under the horse’s belly. When the two guards in the lead slowed up, the Indian’s horse nearly collided with them. With a struggle Frederico managed to keep himself upright as the animal lurched to the side of the road. All four of the soldiers reined their horses around, putting themselves between their prisoner and the Americans.

Bass figgered the soldiers had to be surprised to see the Americans show up. They must have believed all the trappers were wrangling the stolen herd right about then, on their way up to the mountain pass. Besides, the guards
could have no idea why the
Norteamericanos
were bearing down on them, yip-yipping like coyotes on the prowl. But when the Mexicans brought up their firearms, Titus decided it didn’t matter if they knew he had come to rescue the Indian or not. The six of them had the upper hand, and it was time to throw down their call.

“Empty their saddles, boys!” he bellowed as he brought up the long flintlock.

Tugging on the back trigger to set the front, Titus attempted to match the bob and surge of the horse beneath him. Finding a target—

But the Mexicans fired first. A ball whirred past Scratch’s shoulder like an angry hornet. One of the horses behind him cried out. Then came the loud clatter as the animal went down. In a fury again at the scorching, weepy flesh wound on his side, Scratch squeezed down on the front trigger, felt the rifle’s sharp-edged butt plate slam back against his chest.

Passing through the billow of gray gunsmoke at a gallop, he watched the lead ball knock the soldier heels over head, spilling the man backward out of the saddle onto the hot, dusty road. Weapons were popping around him. Gunsmoke and dust turned yellow, hazing the slanted afternoon light.

Another soldier clutched a red blossom on his chest, slowly keeling to the side of the road into some brush. A third cried out and sagged forward across his horse’s withers, arms akimbo.

That was enough for the last Mexican. He yanked the reins aside and brutally jabbed his big rowels into the animal’s ribs. Turning tail and running.

“Who’s got a loaded gun?” Kersey shouted.

“I’ll take ’im!” Adair vowed and hammered his moccasins into the horse’s flanks, bursting away from the others.

As the fourth guard dashed past Frederico’s mount, the Indian’s horse shied backward, twisting in fear, its eyes as big as bean platters.

Swaying clumsily, unable to maintain his balance any longer, Frederico spilled to the side, the end of the long,
smooth tent pole striking the ground, his legs yanked upward, twisted by the other pillory lashing them together. The prisoner’s horse needed no more reason to bolt than that. As the frightened animal brought its hind hooves up to attempt to gallop away, the legs and hooves clattered against Frederico and the pole where his bare arms were slashed. He was about to be dragged down the rutted mission road—

Bass closed the distance in two heartbeats. Gathering his reins into his left hand with his rifle, he attempted to lean out of the saddle and seize the halter knotted around the horse’s head. But the terrified animal wouldn’t allow Titus close enough to grab the halter as Frederico grunted with every bump, cried out in agony, the horse skidding to a sudden halt, prancing round and round in a tight circle to stay away from the trapper.

In angry frustration, Scratch jerked up straight in the saddle, pulled out his pistol, and fired a ball into the animal’s head.

As the air gushed from its lungs, the horse wheezed in death, settling immediately onto its forelegs, the rear half of its body slowly twisting to the side as the dying animal came to rest in the short grass at the side of the road—pinning Frederico’s leg and hip beneath its ribs.

The Indian was shrieking in pain, terror too, as Scratch pitched himself out of the saddle. The instant his feet hit the ground he was stuffing the pistol into his belt and throwing a shoulder into his own horse. As it sidestepped out of his way, Titus dropped his empty rifle to the road and bolted over the dead animal, pulling a knife from its scabbard at the back of his belt.

Slashing at the ropes binding Frederico’s ankles, he first freed the leg that lay twisted atop the dead horse’s ribs. Once he slid back over the animal, Bass sawed through the ropes binding one wrist, then the other as the Indian slowly quieted. The moment his arms were freed from the pillory staff, Frederico attempted to sit up, only to cry in pain.

“This here’s gonna hurt,” Titus growled at him in English as he stopped at the Indian’s back, stuffed his hands
under Frederico’s armpits. Then he clamped his eyes closed—and pulled. Leaning back with all his might, he tried to shut the Indian’s screams out of his ears as he dragged the youth from beneath the dead horse.

The air went out of Frederico in a whimper. Opening his eyes, Scratch found he had freed the leg. Letting go of the Indian, he crouched beside the leg and gently palpated along the bones.