Death Rattle (73 page)

You’ve done this before, he reminded himself. Time was, Titus Bass taught you to be pretty damned good at it too.

Still, he wished the old trapper hadn’t gone. It was one thing to have Scratch there to lean on out here with the waiting and the wilderness. It was something altogether different to have no one but himself to rely upon.

“This the way you used to live, Pa?” Joshua asked one afternoon as they sat watching a band of two dozen horsemen riding north up the valley past the rocks where the two of them hid themselves.

“For a time, yes.”

“When I was young?”

He gazed at his son. “When you were a baby, Joshua.” Then Paddock stared at those disappearing horsemen again. “Till I figured out I didn’t want to tempt fate any longer. Not fair of me to put your mother and you in danger any longer.”

“So that’s why we come to Taos?”

“Like your mother’s told you children: We was already down here for a visit. So you might just say we
stayed
in Taos.”

It was some time before Joshua spoke again, his throat
raspy and raw with the cold, high, dry air. “Pa, you ever regret not going with Mr. Bass when he rode off?”

“Someone had to stay with all you children and the women—”

“No, Pa,” Joshua interrupted. “When Mr. Bass left you behind in Taos. You ever regret not going with him?”

He gazed into his boy’s eyes and knew he could not speak anything but the complete truth. “There were times I missed him, missed the wandering, missed all the not caring. At times my missing that life got so bad it was like a cold stone lay in my belly … sometimes I wanted to be with him so bad it brought tears to my eyes, Joshua.”

“But you stayed.” And Joshua laid his head against his father’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Paddock finally admitted, his throat sour with sentiment. “I stayed for your mother—so she’d never have to fear for her life again. And I stayed for you, hoping you’d have a chance to grow up to grab what you wanted from life. Stayed for the rest of your brothers and sisters too as the years went by.”

Joshua asked, “Sometimes a man makes the decisions he does for the people he loves?”

“Not just sometimes, Joshua,” he replied quietly. “All through his days.”

“I love you, Pa.”

Josiah laid the rifle down against his bent knee and wrapped a second arm around his eldest. “I love you too, son.”

That band of cutthroats they had spotted had to be heading north to hit the Ponil and Vermijo ranches that belonged to Bent, St. Vrain & Company, Paddock figured later that night when he sat crouched by their small fire. Gone to run off all the stock. Maybe even run over to attack the little settlement on Rio Colorado. Every now and then a few Americans took up winter residence there. The Mexican and Pueblo rebels ride through there, the trappers would be hash in no time.

By the seventh day, Paddock could read the worry graying the face of Waits-by-the-Water. After dark that
night Josiah squatted next to her by the fire as she cradled a sleeping Jackrabbit in her lap.

“He’ll be back,” Paddock told her quietly, hoping he wouldn’t disturb the others, who were asleep in their blankets.

“If Grandfather Above … he let Ti-tuzz,” she struggled with the English words, “yes—he come back to us.”

“We just have to wait,” Josiah tried his best to soothe.

“Yes. Ti-tuzz come back. He promise.”

Josiah wasn’t sure, but from the look in her eyes, Waits was concealing some deep pain, something more than just the worry, the longing to have him back.

After some moments, he assured her, “What that ol’ man says he’ll do, you can believe he’ll do it.”

The next two days in hiding crawled past. Then Josiah spotted more black figures snaking across the snow at the north end of the valley.

“I see them, Father,” Joshua breathed beside him. “Raiders?”

“Probably the same bunch we saw riding off up north to hit those ranchos,” he growled.

They watched as the dark forms slowly drew closer and closer. From the way the horsemen rode with no formation to their march, Josiah was even more certain these were Mexican and Pueblo raiders returning to Taos from their hit-and-run attacks. But something nagged at him because the group looked smaller, less formidable, than it had when the raiders passed by three days earlier. The closer those horsemen got to his perch, the more Josiah thought the raiders were a ragged, motley bunch.

Of a sudden, something pricked his distant memories about one of those horsemen who rode at the vanguard of the group. The way the man sat a horse, maybe the appearance of that coat he wore, and the fur cap upon his head. Altogether, they caused a tug at a distant, but indelible, memory.

“I ain’t for certain, Joshua,” he said quietly, not even daring his own heart to leap with hope, “but I think Mr. Bass has come back to us.”

Sure he promised her he’d never again go anywhere without her and the children … but this was a horse of an entirely different color—a situation reeking with far too much danger to even entertain any thoughts of taking them along with him. There was no question that he could travel faster, with far less sleep, and not have to concern himself near so much with food, if he didn’t have his family along.

Those first miles, those first hours, all through the first three days, Scratch was constantly reminding himself how good a thing it was that he had gone for help alone. Easier to cross a snowy country barren of much timber and cover when he was by himself. To take along a whole cavvyard of folks and animals could only draw the wrong sort of attention. Not only those rebel Mex and their Pueblo henchmen, but Cheyenne or Comanche hunters too. If some warriors caught him out on his own, chances were Scratch could make a good run for it, or stand off a small hunting party by his lonesome. But, with a woman and young’uns along … it just made all the calculations real messy.

In those first hours of darkness after he tore himself away from Waits-by-the-Water, Titus kept dwelling on the expression on of her face as he did his best to explain why he was leaving without her after he had given her his vow. It made him feel all the worse that she hadn’t ranted and stomped in anger. When she accepted his decision, taking his measure with those red-rimmed eyes he feared were ready to pool, it made him feel downright hollow and guilty.

“This ain’t like the horse stealing in California,” he tried his best to make her understand as twilight’s cloak sank in around them. “Back then, you didn’t know where I was going.”

“This is different?”

“Different, yes. Now you know where I’m going and why.”

“Doesn’t make being apart from you any easier.”

He had sighed, “Just remember I’m doing it for you and the children. And for those wives and mothers and children who got butchered back there in Taos.”

“We could make it with you,” she whispered so the children would not hear her plea. “Better than waiting for these enemies to find us in the foothills. Better to keep moving than to die here.”

“It is dangerous everywhere,” he had argued, pulling her against him. “But far more danger waits out there on this journey north. I simply don’t know where the enemy is, how far they’ve roamed, or if they are searching for anyone who might’ve fled the valley.”

“I will wait,” she sighed against his chest in resignation. “Again.”

Kissing the top of her head, Bass whispered, “This time, don’t mourn me before you know I’m dead.”

He nudged her chin up with a finger, gazing into her eyes. She reluctantly smiled.

“No, I won’t cut my hair, or scar my flesh, this time if you are late.”

He promised her, “This time … I won’t be late.”

No matter what became of his ride to the Pueblo on the Arkansas, or even downriver to that mud-walled
fortress at the mouth of the Picketwire, he vowed he wouldn’t make any of them wait very long there in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristos.

That first night his horse made good time beneath the guiding stars. For many of those early hours, he kept his mind busy trying to sort out how far it was to the river, to where Americans clustered at the edge of what had been Mexican territory—before the army came and claimed it for the United States, before that army left again and Mexican feelings grew raw and angry at their new overseers. Had to be more than a hundred miles, easily. Probably closer to one hundred fifty.

But, he told himself too, they had already covered a little distance out of Taos. Every little bit he put behind him was that much less he had to endure.

Because of where he found himself at dawn the first morning, Scratch led his horse into the foothills. The going was rougher, a lot slower to be sure, but up on the slopes he could keep on moving instead of hiding out the day as a man would have to down below on the valley floor. Across the hillsides there was simply more cover. And he had a better view of things for miles around too. If he kept his eyes moving, and stopped to let the horse blow every now and again, he could keep on moving and not be forced to wait out the brief hours of daylight. He had to keep going. Everyone he loved was counting on him to get through.

Hour by hour, the journey began to take its toll: his horse began to grow weary. Already the snow lay deep on the western slopes of the Sangre de Cristos, and it continued to snow from time to time throughout that second day and into that second night. Then late in the morning of the third day, not long after he had rested the horse near a narrow stream fed by a small spring, the bone-weary horse stumbled, pitching him free as it went hind flanks over withers.

Landing hard on the icy snow and skidding among the sage, he had the air knocked out of his lungs. Bass lay there in the cold several moments, waiting for the sparks of bright, hot light to clear from his eyes. Slowly he sat up
and brushed the snow from his hair, off the side of his face—so shockingly cold on his bare skin. Titus rolled off his aching hip and started crabbing toward his rifle and the fur cap—

Then froze on all fours, watching the horse scramble up from the sage and stunted piñon. Onto three legs, the fourth dangling like a marionette’s limb. Clearly broken just below the joint, flopping as the horse righted itself, then shuddered in pain.

He angrily swept up the cap and jammed it down on his head, his gut already churning as he cursed his damnable luck. Then Titus scolded himself for that stupid selfishness as he read the fear, the outright pain, evident in the horse’s eyes. Good, steady Cheyenne pony. Not some young, wild thing. Not any green Mexican horse. Instead, an animal bred for these mountains and high plains …

And it had carried him this far. As far as it was going to take him.

For what felt like a long time, he stood there with his arm wrapped under the pony’s neck, patting its strong muscles that frequently quaked with shudders of pain. He whispered to it softly, words strung together with little meaning, nothing more than their soothing sound as his eyes warily raked the valley below them. Bass found nothing moving but some antelope and a few white-tail deer.

He scanned the snowy slopes above him, and hoped the gunshot would not carry. It would be better to use his knife … but that way only seemed to prolong the agony. This animal deserved better. It had carried him north from the land of the Arkansas and the Cheyenne, crossed and recrossed the land of the Crow in the intervening years—hunting, trapping, and always migrating. This pony deserved to die quickly, deserved to be put down with mercy.

It took only a matter of minutes to untie the buffalo robe and his few fixings from behind the saddle, dropping them onto a patch of scrub piñon so they rested out of the snow. After pulling the pistol from his belt, Scratch
had to use his pan brush to clean out the dusting of icy flakes clotted around the pan and frizzen before he recharged the pan with powder. Then stepped back over to the wide-eyed pony, patted its neck one last time.

“Thank you,” he whispered as he set the broad muzzle of the .54-caliber pistol just below the ear and pulled the trigger before he gave himself any more time to think about what he was doing.

Shuddering violently, the animal weaved for a flicker of a moment, then collapsed heavily to the ground.

“Thank you,” he repeated as he turned away from the head, quickly reloaded, then stuffed the pistol in his belt.

Over his shoulder he laid the wide, rawhide strap that was lashed around both ends of the roll of buffalo robe. Then picked up the long rifle. And continued north. On foot.

Folks were counting on him to see this through.

There were many times in those first hours after leaving the Cheyenne pony’s carcass that he regretted not carving some meat from one of its lean haunches. He had survived on horsemeat before. Wasn’t near so bad, a man got hungry enough.

With every step as he waded through snow that billowed around his knees—placing each moccasin ahead of him, then sinking forward until the foot contacted the ground, dragging the trailing foot out of the deep snow, across the icy crust, to plunge it ahead—step after step, he doggedly marched north. And with every hour, every mile, every exhausting breath, he used up more and more of his slim reserves of energy.