Death Rattle (46 page)

If there was a heaven, and if there was a God … then Titus Bass knew the Lord had ol’ Zeke at his knee right about then. Up where Zeke was sure to spend all eternity, that faithful dog had to know how Titus Bass’s heart still pined for a scarred ol’ riverfront mongrel.

Maybeso, one of these two, even both, could one day make as good a dog as Zeke. Him and Zeke—they’d been a pair. Both of them weathered and scarred more than their share. But he’d never heard complaint one out of the dog over their few seasons together. Hell, Zeke had even come along to help him mourn when it came time to grieve alone for Rotten Belly.

He looked over at those two pups, rocking gently side to side as the mare carried them north into the unknown with their new master. Neither one of them made a peep, appearing content as could be in their baskets padded with parts of an old blanket Titus had cut up for them to share. Its thick wool had his smell buried deep within its fibers.

By the time he managed to track down Yellow Belly’s village, Scratch was certain the two of them would be imprinted with his smell, the various tones of his voice, the stern reproach when he corrected their behavior, or that gentle feel of his hands as he ruffled their soft fur.
They would no longer be pups just weaned from their mamma. They’d be his dogs.

The day’s new sun felt warm on the side of his face. He and the fellas had themselves quite a hurroo last night—all of it wetted down with lots of Mexican whiskey. For some time now Elias Kersey, Jake Corn, and the others had determined they would push on for the Missouri settlements with their share of the horses, no more than another day or two—once they could cure their hangovers. But Scratch wasn’t about to wait another day. No matter that his head throbbed more than it had in years, he was starting north.

Like Bass and Williams, about half of the raiders had decided to turn their share of the California horses into mountain currency, getting from St. Vrain and Murray what they could per head, then taking out that credit in trade goods. Oh, there’d been a little good-natured grumbling to be sure, but Solitaire and the rest understood as well as any that the complaining wouldn’t do a lick of good.

Out here in this land, on the rolling flats or up into the broken and forbidding high country, freedom meant nothing less than horses to a man. No two ways about it.

But to Titus Bass, his share of those thousands of stolen horses he’d risked his neck to drive out of California were no better than a shackle and thousandweight iron chain hammer welded around his neck. All those animals could make him a veritable rich man for the first time in his life … but he wasn’t about to push on across the plains to reach the Missouri settlements where he could turn them into a small fortune. With no regret at all, he would once again abandon the notion of growing rich and living out his days in comfort.

Beyond what he could give his family and friends in the way of material goods, this temporal matter of
things
had never been very important to him. Better that a man have family in his arms and friends at his side than live in the finest St. Louis mansion crowded with all the servants, liquor, and rich appointments his money could buy.

Scratch breathed deep of the air still chilly here at sunrise … and realized again that he already was one of the richest men in the whole of all this country west of the wide Missouri.

It wasn’t long before he was thinking back to their last big hurraw last night—when Williams staggered over, his stooped shoulders wagging side to side as he lurched to a drunken halt by Titus there beside their roaring fire.

“I should’a let ’em kill you, Titus Bass,” he grumbled, his face set hard as mountain talus.

“Who?”

“Thompson. Them yellow-livered sonsabitches with ’im. They wanted to gut you so bad … I should’a let ’em, goddamn ye!”

Surprised, and made wary with all the alcohol washing around in his belly, Titus backed a step away from the man and did his best to set himself for what might come: a fist, or even the flash of a knife in the fire’s light.

His curiosity pricked, Scratch asked, “Why you figger them low-down bastards should’a kill’t me, Bill?”

The old trapper was a while in answering, taking his stern, half-lidded eyes off Bass to drain his pint cup before glaring again into Scratch’s face as he licked at the droplets suspended like glittering diamonds from the ends of his shaggy mustache.

“If’n I’d let Thompson an’ his bunch do with you how they wanted … then you’d ain’t been around a few nights back when I was fixin’ to guttin’ that goddamned Beckwith.”

Bass shook his head a minute, his mind confused, dulled somewhat by the potent liquor. “You want me dead ’cause I stopped you from getting yourself hurt, even kill’t by Beckwith?”

“That be the sartin truth of it,” he slurred. “Damn your eyes! I’d a-took him for sure, Scratch.”

“You was drunk then as you’re drunk now,” Titus argued. “Jim’d a hurt you bad, if’n he didn’t kill you outright. I damn sure didn’t want that to happen, Bill … for then I’d had to cut Beckwith up my own self.”

Williams attempted to straighten himself and keep from weaving unevenly, blinking his eyes at Bass. Finally he said, “Y-you’d done that for me?”

“Hell, I stood at your back all the way into California, and all the way back out again,” Scratch reminded. “And when they was fixing to slit my throat, you didn’t look away. Been easy ’nough to do it. But you stood up to ’em, an’ Peg-Leg later on too.”

“I ’member Peg-Leg.” Williams shook his head dolefully. “Dunno where he went bad.”

“I figger a man goes bad, like him and Thompson—they’re the sort allays was bad. Bad just waiting for a place to happen.”

“Damn your soul, Titus Bass.” And Williams licked his lips again. “You gone an’ ’minded me of why I favor taking to the high lonesome on my lonesome. Being with other coons just too hard sometimes. Finding them what you can count on, that’s too damn much work. Better off not havin’ to count on no one else but my own self.”

“Buy you ’nother drink, Bill?”

Williams gazed down into his cup a long moment, then his watery eyes climbed up to stare into Bass’s. “Drinking myself silly—that there’s one thing Ol’ Solitaire don’t cotton to doin’ alone.”

Other raiders were thumping on brass kettles, clanging iron skillets, or pounding on an old hollowed stump as the rest wheeled and cavorted round the fire. The noise and blur and numbness just like the old times, just like rendezvous. Gone forever now. Like cold mountain water run through a man’s fingers …

As the night aged, Williams had grown misty-eyed and asked, “We had us our hurraw, Scratch, didn’t we?”

“This here?”

“Nawww!” Bill shook his head emphatically. “Riding bold as brass into California and sneering at all them goose-necked greasers. We had us our hurraw showin’ them bean-bellies what for and slipping away with all them horse right under their idjit noses. Making it all the way back here ’cross that desert and them Rocky Mountings with what horses could still run with us. That’s the
hurraw, Titus Bass. By damn … if that wasn’t a real man’s hurraw!”

Scratch’s eyes grew misty again too. Suddenly, he was struck with the reality that he would likely never see any of these men again in his life. No telling if Elias and the others would ever come back to the mountains once they reached the settlements with those horses. They’d likely sell every one for a ransom and become rich men overnight. If not rich, at least wealthy enough to damn well do anything rather than come west again in an attempt to scratch out a meager living trapping flat-tails in half-frozen streams, looking over their shoulders for grizzly or Blackfoot either one.

And men like Bill. Likely Williams would be good at his word about running alone and not poke his head in most places where Titus Bass might chance onto him again. So Scratch looked around the fire, at those dancing shadows whirling and spinning and stomping with gusto as they kicked up dust and watered down a long-grown thirst. He was not likely to lay eyes on these fellas ever again.

If for no better reason than Titus Bass couldn’t conceive of much that would lure him out of the north country. No matter what an uncertain future might bring his way.

So he had turned to look at old Bill, reading the war map that was Williams’s face, knowing his own face read like a war map of scrapes and scraps and battles too—all those times he had managed to slip right through death’s fingers … not to mention all the suns and the winds, and every last one of the winters that had carved their way onto his face and right on into his soul.

Damn, if the two of them didn’t have their epic California adventure to tell their grandchildren! If, that is, any of them lived long enough to bounce grandpups on their knees. They’d always have what they’d shared together.

“Ain’t no one gonna ever take our hurraw from us, Bill,” he had said to the man seated at his elbow. “No matter neither one of us become the rich men we figgered
we was gonna be once we started out for California. No matter we had to fight off Mex soldiers and greasers too, slash our way through them goddamned Diggers and Yutas both just to jab most of these here horses all the way over every one of them mountain passes and down the canyons and valleys so we could reach that Picketwire Creek sitting right over yonder. No matter we hung our asses over the fire an’ roasted ’em good, Bill Williams. It still don’t make me no never mind we ain’t the rich men we thought we was gonna be.”

Bill had snorted some mirthless laughter. “Neither one of us ever likely to make ourselves rich by wading up to our balls in icy water to catch them goddamned big flattailed rats, Titus Bass.”

“Your words are true,” he ruminated. “I s’pose after enough seasons out here, them what learns they’re allays gonna be poor are the first to skeedaddle back east to what they was … while the rest just give up an’ head west for Oregon country to try farming.”

“What’s to become of the rest of us, Scratch?”

“The rest of us?” And Titus paused for some thought before continuing. “Why—niggers like you an’ me damn well made peace with being poor a long, long time ago, Bill!”

“What you figger to do with all them horses of your’n so you can stay on bein’ a poor nigger like you allays was?” Williams asked.

“Traded most of ’em off—give a few away. Keeping only what I need to get some plunder back to my family,” he admitted. “A passel of horses like them’d only slow me down getting north, going back where I belong. An’ … I don’t wanna linger too long striking out for the country I never should’ve left in the first place.”

Those rangy, strong-backed horses he traded off a few of Gray Thunder’s Cheyenne were a steady lot. Mile after mile, from murky first light until it grew too dark to see much of anything past the saddle horse’s muzzle, Titus Bass goaded every one of the creatures north.

The pups seemed to swell and grow each day, steadily filling out, their lanky legs stretching even longer—no great surprise, for they were eating a diet of the fresh game Scratch killed along the way, gnawing at the meaty bones at night while all three of them lay by the fire in those camps he selected so they would be sheltered from the harsh, howling autumn winds and any roving eyes, giving them a few hours respite from the trail.

That first night out from Bents Fort, it suddenly struck him that he was alone again in Arapaho country. Titus had banked the fire and dragged the wood close to his robes so he wouldn’t have to slip out into the cold to periodically feed the flames. As he lay there, listening to the dark womb of night surrounding them, Scratch watched first one, then the second pup, tire of chewing slivers of meat from their bones. It wasn’t long before
their eyes were closed and their tails were curled over their noses.

When he awoke later on, the wind had died some, but it had begun to softly snow, just enough to already collect a scum of flakes on the dogs’ fur. After quickly banking more wood on their fire, Bass whistled softly.

Both heads popped up. “C’mere.”

He held up the edge of the buffalo robe and patted the blanket beside him. “C’mon, you rascals—get in here.”

The black-eyed one was the first to scramble to his feet and prance around the small fire. He settled right against Bass’s hip. Then the ghost-eyed pup complied too, settling in against the man’s knees. Gently laying the robe back over all three of them, Titus fell asleep quickly—sensing the warmth of those pups seeping into his own old bones.

“I got the feeling we’re gonna be the best of friends, you boys an’ me,” he whispered just before sleep overtook him again.

That next morning, the temperature hovered well below freezing as the pups stirred and poked their noses from under the edge of the snow-crusted buffalo robe.

“G’won, now—go pee.”

They stretched and yawned as they emerged into the cold, then stepped away to water the bushes beyond the far side of the fire ring, while Titus shuddered with the stiffening breeze as he laid the last of his wood on the coals. Laying his cheek right above the icy crust of snow, he began blowing to excite the few, fading embers. Finished with his morning business, the dark-eyed one shoved his pointed snout through the two or more inches of snow, searching a moment before scooping up last night’s bone. The second pup excavated for his too.