Death Rattle (31 page)

“Help him!” Williams was roaring as Bass stumbled uncertainly around the base of the rocks.

Coltrane was at Titus’s side in the next heartbeat. Short and stocky, but built like a whiskey barrel—Roscoe slipped under Adair’s other arm and dragged Silas crosswise onto his own shoulders. With his two thick arms looped under Adair’s armpit and one of his legs, Coltrane sidestepped into a narrow crevice between the jumble of boulders as lead smacked the rocks around them.

One of the Mexican’s bullets grazed the boulder just above the spot where Scratch knelt to retrieve his rifle. With a shrill scream of its own, a tiny fragment of granite was shaved off near his ear. The long cut it opened along his left cheek burned with a tongue of icy fire.

Looking up, he found Tom Smith holding his hand down for him. Grasping Peg-Leg’s wrist, Scratch dragged himself through the crevice behind Coltrane and Adair.

“You’re the last,” Smith growled.

“The bastards’re chivvying the herd!” someone roared above them.

“Kill as many of ’em as you can!” Bill Williams ordered. “We’ll drive ’em back, then go round up them horses again!”

But there were too many Mexicans.

That was plain enough for Titus to see. They were all over the rocks, bristling at the edge of the cliff to their left, more shoving their way through the frightened horses. Vaqueros and soldiers both. Yelling at one
another now that they knew they had the horse thieves surrounded and whipped. Yelling at the Americans to surrender or be killed.

“S-surrender?” Williams screeched as Smith translated.

Two more balls of lead smacked the rocks behind them.

“Don’t fret none, Bill,” Peg-Leg said. “Ain’t none of us goin’ to no California hoosegow for a hanging now.”

“They’d sooner kill us all as put us behind their bars,” Scratch explained. “If we surrender, we’ll be helpless. That’s when them bean-bellies gonna cut us down.”

“That’s right,” Kersey snorted. “They won’t waste no trouble hog-tying us back to California.”

“Maybeso we’re gonna go down here and now,” Scratch told them all as he rammed a ball home against the breech of his rifle. “But leastways, fellas … we can show these
pelados
how to die like men.”

He wondered if the Mexicans hung horse thieves. Maybe they wouldn’t waste time with a rope—just stand them up in front of a firing squad, their backs against the fort wall, blindfolded or not, and let these bad-shooters bang away at them.

Right then Bass didn’t know which way he preferred to die. Hanging seemed like such a terrifying, prolonged way to go, especially if his neck did not break at the bottom of the drop: suspended, swinging there until he choked to death, legs kicking while he soiled himself.

Any time these greasers hit something with their muskets, it was more idiot’s luck than it was skill. Chances were a firing squad would botch the job but good, wounding him badly rather than killing him outright with a clean bullet through the heart. Then he’d be no better off than swinging from a noose, forced to endure the agony of his wounds until he bled enough to pass out, no longer in misery.

“How many goddamned greasers they bring after us?” Thomas Smith shrieked as he whirled with those two big horse pistols in hand: .62-caliber smoothbores they were.

Their attackers weren’t all soldiers. Not all wore those short blue jackets draped with braid and the flat-brimmed hats. The rest must damn well be vaqueros come after the thieves—maybe to even a personal score for all the killing done yesterday morning in the valley.

“We need powder!” one of the trappers yelled.

“What’s in my horn s’all I got,” another explained.

Kersey’s voice bellowed, “How you fixed for balls? Anything less’n fifty-four’ll work. Who can spare me some balls?”

“Here, Elias,” Scratch called out, digging into his pouch as he crabbed over. “I got a handful for you.”

Appreciation lay deep in Kersey’s eyes as he scooped out more than a dozen from Titus’s palm. “Ain’t this a yank on the devil’s short-hairs, Scratch?”

“Never thort I’d die in California,” Jake Corn grumbled. “Allays thort it’d be Blackfoot.”

“Maybeso a griz,” Titus said as he wheeled back around at the growing noise from their attackers. “I figgered to go out wrasslin’ with a griz … but not till I’d bounced me some grandpups on my knee.”

Reuben Purcell groaned, “We cain’t shoot ’em all! Too dang many!”

“Don’t none of you give up!” Bass snapped at Purcell the moment after he fired and was throwing his rifle butt to the ground to begin reloading.

“Just shoot ever’ living one you can,” Corn declared.

“Jake’s right,” Bass said, glancing a moment at the fear tightening Purcell’s face. He felt bad for Rube, sorry that he’d snapped at the man, maybe even made Purcell feel cowardly—when he was for sure Reuben wasn’t a coward. He’d held his own without complaint back when Ol’ Frapp went under. “Knock ’em down one at a time. They ain’t gonna rush us ’cause they know that’s certain death, boys. We can hold ’em off—”

“Robiseau’s down!” came the cry.

Williams growled, “Blazes! That makes four more out of the fight!”

Titus spit one of the round lead balls into the palm of his hand, rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, then
pressed it into the muzzle. Dragging the wiping stick from its thimbles at the bottom of the forestock, he rammed the ball down against the powder charge without a patch. No time to mess with such things. He’d use a greased patch on that gummy, unburnt powder fouling the barrel after another shot or two. But for now—they had to hold the Mexicans back, keep them at bay … maybe they’d even give up and pull off their attack.

The sun was coming. It had grown light enough that Titus had no trouble making out the dip and sway of the mountainside as it fell away to the desert far below. Why’d he ever crossed that godforsaken piece of sandy ground? He had no business in such inhospitable country. Not that he hadn’t crossed some water scrapes in his time, like that trail running from Santa Fe and Taos clear back to the settlements of Missouri. But, this was something different. They’d come here to ride off with every last Mexican horse they could lay their hands on.

The sun was coming. Might well be his last.

Just that Titus could smell death hovering nearby. Hell knew he had experienced enough of it: killed plenty men himself, or been there as men died … so he could for certain smell death’s fetid stench strong in his nostrils right now.

Bass made the next shot, dropped one of the vaqueros, all of whom were more daring than most of the overcautious soldiers.

He set about reloading—and wondered how many of the others would die before the Mexicans finally got him. There wasn’t going to be any firing squad for them. No hangman’s noose thrown over the branch of a tree. Bass snorted at that image—there wasn’t a tree tall enough in these parts to hang a man from the back of a horse! These soldiers were going to rub them all out and not take a one of them back to California.

As he grabbed for his priming horn, Titus looked about for Frederico or his sister.

Maybe the two of them had been killed early on in the fight and he couldn’t spot their bodies. Better chance that they’d run off at the first sound of trouble and were
hiding back in the rocks somewhere. Titus couldn’t figure out how, but by doing something bold and amazing those Indians must have slipped on through the noose of Mexicans that was tightening around the trappers. Likely the soldiers allowed them through because they had come here for the horse thieves.

Cradling the forestock in his left palm, Bass quickly looked for the closest target.

Not that he begrudged Frederico and Celita at all. God knew they’d suffered plenty at the hands of their enslavers. He didn’t begrudge them getting away, escaping and fleeing and making what life they could beyond the reach of those Franciscan friars and cruel soldiers. He imagined them crossing the desert on foot, making for the land of the Ammuchabas.

“How many of us left?” Smith demanded.

Williams shouted, “I ain’t keeping count no more, you idjit son of a bitch!”

The moment he had pulled the trigger, Bass looked around right and left, saw for the first time those men who were wounded—some lying in the grassy dirt, others sitting as they slowly bled all over themselves, a man here and a man there—scattered throughout their rocky fortress. So few of them left standing now with the Mexicans popping up—a dozen at a time—all the soldiers shooting by volley, then sinking back down to reload their old muskets.

“But for the grace of God,” Coltrane muttered.

The sudden sound of it stopped Bass cold. “R-roscoe? That you talked?”

Coltrane turned, half grinned sheepishly. He only nodded.

“Told you he talked, didn’t I?” Adair said from his travois.

Silas sat with his back propped against a boulder, those two horse pistols filling his hands, his horn and pouch tucked in his lap. Ready for the moment the Mexicans charged.

“It’s been good knowing you boys,” Titus said before
he gave it a second thought. “All of you. ‘Specially you, Roscoe. Even though we ain’t ever talked.”

“Good knowing you too, Titus Bass.”

He could instantly tell by the looks on the faces of those other men around them that they felt the same way. Good comrades these. They would stand at his back when the last moment arrived, when he would be thrust on to whatever lay on the other side. Much as he had worried himself about hoo-doos and malevolent spirits crossing through from their world to this through a crack in the sky … he was surprised to find he felt strangely at peace right then. Assuring to be in the company of good men who weren’t about to give up even with death’s odor strong on the wind.

The soft light in every set of those bloodshot eyes that met his told Titus Bass these men sensed the same indescribable bond they had forged through adversity, want, and sheer fortitude. Around him now were men who had suffered together, nearly died together, but had seen each other through. There was no greater camaraderie men could share than this: to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and stare death back in the eye.

Ebenezer Zane. Isaac Washburn. Jack Hatcher. Asa McAfferty. Bird In Ground. Rotten Belly. His father-in-law, Whistler. Jarrell Thornbrugh. And finally Strikes In Camp, his wife’s brother. Those good men who had passed on before him, their very souls now the stars twinkling upon the dark firmament of the night sky.

Even those who he prayed still lived, men like Josiah Paddock and Shadrach Sweete. Big Throat Gabe Bridger, little Kit Carson, and Broken Hand Fitzpatrick.

The sort of man who did not strut and crow like some puffed-up prairie cock. Instead, the sort of friends who quietly stood their ground and weren’t noisy braggarts who would crumple and fall when the last raise was made and that last hand of the game was called.

Kersey brushed some of his long, dusty-blond hair out of his eyes and held out his grimy hand. “You got a few more for a friend, Titus Bass?”

The instant Scratch looked down to pull up the flap
and stuff his hand into his pouch, he heard the shrill whine as lead ricocheted off the boulder behind them—heard the air burst from Elias’s lungs as he spilled there at Scratch’s feet.

“My back! My back!” Kersey screamed, digging at the wound immediately blackening his greasy calico shirt with a slick that reminded Titus of the blackstrap molasses his mam would pour over johnnycakes back when he was a boy in Rabbit Hash, Boone County, Kentucky. There on the southern bank of the Ohio.

Although wounded in the arm, Jake Corn quickly crabbed across the trampled grass, hovered over Kersey, and pressed his hand upon the deep furrow.

“Lay still, Elias,” Bass cooed as he knelt, glancing into Corn’s eyes.

“Don’t move,” Corn reminded, then looked again into Bass’s eyes, his face gone a pasty white with uncertainty for his best friend.

Titus could tell how the deep furrow must hurt, watching Kersey grind his teeth in pain. “Better you don’t move till …”—and he scrambled to find what more to say—“till we drive these greasers off.”

“You ain’t … gonna drive ’em … off,” Kersey gasped against the agony of that ugly wound that continued to seep around Corn’s best efforts. “They aim to rub us … all out—”

Of a sudden lead zinged and splatted all round them, making the Americans duck as one. Then a few, like Bass, dared peer up to discover the Mexicans had gained a superior position on the edge of an outcrop above them. In those seconds as he watched, more and more uniforms joined the first, one after another plopping onto their bellies, aiming their muskets down at the boulders where the horse thieves had taken refuge. Right where the Americans found themselves trapped like fish in a rain barrel.

“Bring the wounded over here!” Williams ordered.

“You heard him!” Bass cried; starting to crab toward Adair on his knees. “Drag the wounded over to Bill afore they’re shot up some more!”