Death Rattle (40 page)

Early that next afternoon, all fifteen were strung out on both sides of the herd behind Williams, who rode at
the head of the ragged column, leading the last of their broodmares.

“Closer I get to whiskey,” Jake Corn announced as he eased up beside Titus, “the thirstier I get—”

The two of them jerked at the low rumble of gunfire reverberating from the mesa ahead.

“That was just over the ridge,” Bass declared.

Another gunshot echoed.

Far ahead of them Bill Williams was standing in the stirrups, waving his hat, beckoning the men forward.

Titus kicked his horse into a lope with the others as they streamed off the two sides of their herd.

“Bowers, you and Gibbon stay right here at the front of these here horses,” Williams ordered in a staccato. “Keep ’em moving—but slow.”

“What ’bout you?” Samuel Gibbon asked as three more gunshots rattled in quick succession.

Williams’s lips stretched into a thin line of determination. “Rest of us gonna see what all the shooting’s for.”

“Awright, Bill,” John Bowers agreed.

“C’mon, fellas,” Williams ordered as he reined around in a tight circle. “Keep your flints sharp and your heads down when we bust outta the trees!”

By the time they had raced no more than another mile up the Blue River toward the Uncompahgre, Bass noticed the thin column of greasy black smoke curling above the leafy treetops. By then, the sporadic gunfire had all but died off.

“That ain’t a good sign!” Titus called out to the others, pointing.

Williams and Adair nodded. While they watched, a second, and finally a third thin column of smoke appeared to streak the sky.

Just as the trappers reached the line of trees bordering a small meadow on the south bank of the river, Bill threw up his arm. The rest of them slowed and spread out to either side of their leader, reining to a halt right when three men on foot suddenly burst into view, sprinting on a collision course for the timber where Williams’s horsemen
suddenly appeared out of the shadows. The trio of frightened men spotted the trappers just about the time the trappers raised their rifles in warning.

“Hold on there!” Titus roared, his horse prancing backward a few steps anxiously.

Bewildered and terrified, the three skidded to a halt, immediately dropping their weapons and throwing up their hands.

Williams reined his horse close to the three and gave every one of them a good eyeing. “Who the hell are you?”

“Two of ’em’s Mex.” Bass translated what he could of the excited response. All three kept checking over their shoulders as they stood among the trappers, peering back across the meadow. “This other’s a Frenchie half-breed.”

A few warriors suddenly showed themselves on horseback, breaking out of the trees near the post’s stockade. Spotting the trappers back against the trees, the bare-chested horsemen halted, reining around in circles as they yelped a warning to more of their number. In a moment, more than thirty painted, feathered horsemen belched from the stockade. They poured into the meadow, weaving in and out and around the three separate grass fires raging in the meadow.

All of them beat their chest provocatively and shouted out their boastful challenges to the white men.

“You cipher things the way I do, Titus Bass?” Williams asked.

“Maybeso,” Scratch replied gravely. “Looks like them bastards want us to come out and fight.”

“These here Robidoux’s men?” Williams demanded, indicating the frightened refugees as those distant warriors raced their ponies back and forth across the meadow, working up a second wind in their animals.

Bass nodded, keeping his eye on the Indians growing bolder by the moment. “Figger they skeedaddled afore they lost their hair.”

Bill grumbled, “Ask ’em what’s the chalk at their post.”

From what little Titus was able to recall of the Spanish tongue, he could ask only limited questions, comprehending only portions of the frantic, impassioned jabber they flung at him.

“From what I get, them Injuns is—”

Williams interrupted, “Hold it—did I hear that’un say them are Yutas?”

“Yutas,” Bass confided as one of the Mexicans bobbed his head up and down with agreement. But Titus was baffled by this strange turn of events. “Never knowed ’em to take on white men afore.”

“Maybe one of these’r parley-voo half-breeds can tell us something,” Bill continued, turning to look over his trappers. “Marechal! Listen to this here Frenchie—see what he claims brung all this—”

The raiders instantly wheeled around to stare at the fort the moment they heard high-pitched screams.

At the narrow opening of the double-hung gate appeared more than a handful of women—most of them squaws by their dress, while two were clearly Mexican. A half dozen warriors flushed them screaming and whimpering from the stockade.

“There’s your answer, Bill,” Titus grumbled. “They come for to get their women back.”

Williams wagged his head. “You figger this here raid gotta do with their women?”

“They ain’t set fire to the post,” Scratch observed.

Jake Corn growled, “Not yet anyways.”

“Ain’t butchered these here fellas neither,” Bass protested, feeling even stronger stirrings of confusion at the Ute attack. “For some reason they let the greasers an’ parley-voos run ’stead of shooting ’em.”

“There goes your hurraw at Robidoux’s, boys!” Williams roared with a cackling laugh. “Them Yutas is taking back their wimmens!”

“An’ them two Mex’ gals besides?” whined Dick Owens.

“Plain as paint,” Bass replied.

“But them Mex’ gals ain’t theirs to take!” Pete Harris protested.

“Yutas and Mexicans been stealin’ women and young’uns back and forth from each other,” Titus declared. “Near as long as there’s been Mexicans and Yutas in these mountains, I’d lay.”

“I say we kill them bucks!” Pete Harris suddenly spoke up. “Get them women back for the fort an’ ourselves.”

When a few of the other trappers hollered in agreement, Williams and Bass turned to peer at Thompson’s old friend together. Titus said, “Your stinger sure must need some dipping in a woman’s honeypot in a bad way, Harris!”

“I ain’t gonna let no yellow-bellied Yuta scare me off!” Harris boasted.

When Williams shot Titus a sly grin, Bass shrugged and turned to the others, asking, “How’s that shine with the rest of you? We gonna lay into them Yuta and run ’em off?”

“Like Harris said,” Jack Robinson argued, “them redbellies is taking the women.
Our
women.”

“You’re all hobble-headed!” Bass snapped. “Them bucks got ever’ right to come here an’ take back their own women if’n they want.”

His neck feathers ruffling, Dick Owens demanded, “You ain’t gonna do nothing ’bout it, Bass?”

“Them squaws?” Titus wagged of his head. “My truck with them warriors got more to do with running off white men from their trading post.”

“Even if they’re no-account greaser and parley-voo?” Pete Harris asked with a big grin plastered on his face.

Titus grinned too. “That’s right—even if them Injuns run off Mex and parley-voo too … I say we owe them Injuns a li’l lesson in goodly manners.”

“An’ maybeso we’ll get them two greaser gals back for ourselves in the bargain!” Dick Owens cheered lustily.

“We got horses we don’t want run off by a pack of these here niggers,” Williams reminded harshly. “We come too damn far with ’em awready.”

“Bill’s right,” Scratch agreed. “Let’s see what we can
do to run these brownskins off across the river. Maybeso they won’t get wind of our herd back yonder.”

“Shit,” Jack Robinson grumped. “How the hell we gonna hide more’n a thousand goddamned horses?”

Bass turned on the man and looked him squarely in the eye, saying, “I was figuring you was gonna come up with a idee, Jack. Only way you get to roll in the grass with one of the Mexican gals is to take her away from the warriors.”

Robinson looked sheepish a moment. “Didn’t figger on having to do that.”

“Just see you get them two senoreetas back for the traders,” Williams ordered. “Far as I can tell, them Yutas ain’t kill’t or shot up none of Robidoux’s parley-voos. So I don’t want you hurtin’ none of them Yutas.”

“Who’s coming with me?” Pete Harris asked, his voice rising an octave as his eyes raked over the rest. “You got some hair in you yet, Bass?”

He shook his head. “Nawww. I don’t need to hump no Mexican gals no more. So it’s up to the rest of you boys to go run off them Injuns and bring them whores back.”

“I’m coming!” Dick Owens volunteered.

Around Harris another three fell in with flushed enthusiasm. Harris bellowed like a spiked bull struck with spring fever and led them out of the trees for the fort. As the hell-bent-for-rawhide trappers burst from the timber, the Ute warriors suddenly reined up, appearing to take stock of their situation.

“They’re a bit light on the odds, Bill,” Titus suggested. “We oughtta show them brownskins the rest of us.”

Williams asked, “Hang back near the trees to show ’em there’s more of us?”

“That’s what I was thinking, Bill.”

“C’mon, boys,” Williams directed the others as he kneed his pony forward. “Let’s spread out and make ’em think there’s a hull shitteree of us back here gonna rub ’em out.”

The moment the rest of the horsemen came out of the
shadowy timber alongside him and Bill, Bass set up a caterwauling akin to some disembodied spirit streaking back through that crack in the sky to haunt this world. In another two heartbeats the other trappers joined in—coyote yip-yipping, some of them trilling their tongues while others u-looed. A few let fly with a chest-popping screech.

Out in front, Pete Harris and his quartet of trappers took up the call and began to scream for all they were worth as they raced headlong across the narrow meadow for the Ute horsemen.

The sight of those nine trappers emerging from the timber, along with Harris’s four chargers, immediately put the warriors into flight. At the fort gates the half dozen Ute then on foot scrambled over one another to reach their ponies and get mounted. Ahead of the trappers, all of the Indians spun out of the meadow, heading for the bank and the river ford.

Into the shallow water the first of them leaped their horses, landing in a spray of water and nearly losing their balance. None of the warriors dared to look back over their shoulders until they had reached the north side of the river.

With the way this meadow ground sloped away toward the crossing, Scratch and those who had hung back with him couldn’t really see much of that crossing until the horsemen reached the other side, racing away. But they plainly did hear when Harris and the rest roared with laughter.

Trotting on foot into the ranks of Bill Williams’s horsemen, the post employees glanced up at the trappers as if to ask why the Americans were sitting there on their horses when there was a fort to be rescued.

“Awright, you pork eaters,” Scratch roared at them with a wave of his long rifle. “C’mon, let’s go see what plunder them Injuns run off with.”

As late summer crept its way into early autumn, the weather began to cool at the lower elevations—even
more so in the high country where the horse thieves drove their herd from sunrise to slap-dark, clambering over one low range after another—plodding slowly up the western slopes until they reached a low saddle, then struggling to keep the eager horses together as they raced down the eastern side of the passes.

This was, after all, country that both Ol’ Bill and Scratch knew like the backsights of their guns.

At the tiny trading post, Antoine Robidoux’s grateful employees hadn’t hesitated in hauling out the clay jugs of
aquardiente,
that powerful, head-thumping concoction brewed down in the Mexican provinces. After all, they had been rescued by a band of dust-caked, desert-scarred beaver trappers. Gone this long drought after the whiskey in Pueblo de los Angeles, all those parched and dusty miles—their gullets were due a hardy scrubbing.

Not only the whiskey, but they were due those two Santa Fe whores they had just rescued from the Ute warriors. In a pair of nearby rooms, the women spent that long, bawdy night on their backs, entertaining an unending string of American suitors. Paying for their pleasure to the tune of a horse for every carnal crack they had at the two whores seemed reasonable enough to the Americans. Why, each man jack of them was rich, rich in horses! What were two, three, even four horses these hungry men would leave behind by the time Bill Williams barked out his marching orders the next morning?

Bass’s head hurt worse than ever that sunrise when he squinted into the graying dawn, then stared down at the mud-caked moccasin jabbing him in the ribs. He lay atop a thick mattress, its odor musty from old grass gone to molder, the faint stench of old puke, and more than one dousing in urine. Sometime last night he had managed to drag a blanket over him for warmth.

He found himself lying on the floor of the tiny stable where the post patrons tied up their most valuable animals, not at all sure how he had come to sleep with these horses.

“You ever close your eyes last night, Bill?” he asked, then hacked up the night-gather thick at the back of his
throat. Hangovers caused him a little more pain with every year.

“Not once,” Williams boasted proudly. “Laid down a time or two—but it weren’t to sleep!” He snorted with boyish laughter, then asked, “Why’n’t you come get yourself a poke with one of them gals?”

“I’m a married man, Bill,” he answered, sitting up and grinding the heels of his hands into both eyes.

“Taking hisself a Injun woman never kept no man from greasing his own wiping stick, Scratch.”.

Bleary-eyed, he gazed up at Williams. “I don’t need to poke no woman bad as that.”

“Your woman, she back with her own people?”

“Yep.”

Williams watched Scratch stand and dust off the hay from his clothing. “Who’s to say she ain’t back there right now curled up with one of them Absorkee bucks?”

For an instant he flared with anger, then realized by the look on Bill’s face that, in his own way, Williams was just having his fun. “I didn’t know you better, maybeso I ought’n bust you atween the eyes for making a crack like that, Solitaire.”