Death Rattle (13 page)

Without another word the four fanned out, waddling away in a crouch from one clump of brush to the next, slowly working their way into killing range on the cows and yearlings. If nothing else was handy, a bull would do. But the cows made far better eating, especially when they would be drying wide strips of their tender meat for the trail ahead.

Crouching right beside a clump of cedar, Scratch withdrew the wiping stick from the thimbles pinned at the bottom of his fullstock, .54-caliber flintlock that he had carried west that spring of 1825. For a moment as he settled on his rump, Bass let his eyes run over the scratches, nicks, and gouges, every one of those wounds to the reddish-hued curly-maple stock a story of survival against all that these mountains had thrown against him, survival against all that the warrior tribes had failed attempting to rub him out. “Make ’Em Come,” he had named this beloved rifle many winters ago. Through all the terrors and the joys of his seasons in the Rockies, this weapon had remained at his side like a steadfast friend, whether Bass was making meat or saving his hair.

Like him, the fullstock rifle carried its own scars—a silent testament to the many seasons the two of them had endured when lesser men had given up, or gone under. Come a day he figured he would run onto a good gunsmith at one of the trading posts and have the weapon rebored, the worn rifling freshened after so many years of hard use. Just running his hand down the forestock as he brought it to his shoulder now, allowing his fingers to brush over the buttstock as he nestled his cheek into place … it was as if he were caressing the hard-written story of his life, even to touching the scars and wrinkles that had turned his own leathery, lined face into a veritable war map of his years spent crossing and recrossing the high lonesome.

That long and angular man, Reuben Purcell, was the first to get off a shot, not far away to Bass’s left. One of the big females shuddered, took no more than a half dozen faltering steps, then eased onto her knees and keeled over.

Titus took a few breaths to survey the nearby cows, quickly deciding on one as the buffalo grew nervous. Another rifle thundered, and he didn’t even glance over to see which man it was or what animal he had hit. Some of the cows were starting to inch toward the first buffalo Purcell had dropped. A few others were moseying over to sniff at the second cow dropped.

Bracing one end of the ramrod on the ground as the wind picked up, Bass made a fist at the top of the wiping stick, laying the bottom of the forestock atop the fist as he eased back the hammer to full cock. Nesting the frizzen down upon the pan where the priming powder lay waiting next to the touchhole, he pressed against the back trigger, thereby setting the front hair trigger to trip the sear and spring in the lock with his slightest touch. With his cheek pressed against the stock, he laid the front blade down between the curved antlers of the buckhorn rear sight, with a tilt just so that put the blade into the tiny notch at the bottom of the buckhorn.

Only then did he let out half a breath as his finger slipped over the front trigger, barely inching the rifle to
the side so the front blade held on that wide girth just behind the beast’s front flank. The rest of the breath seeped out as he held, waiting for his squeeze on the trigger to—

The rifle bellowed, a whisper of smoke spewing from pan and a spray erupting from the muzzle. The breeze had picked up enough that the gunsmoke disappeared quickly enough for Titus to watch the low-velocity round ball strike the cow’s hide where a puff of dust exploded. She sidestepped once, then again, and with the third time shook her great head, slinging blood from her nostrils and lolling her red tongue from her open mouth where more blood dripped into the dirt and grass.

Across the bowl, a streak of lightning tore the darkening sky asunder as he started to reload. Beyond the hunters, the buffalo grew all the more restless with a sudden, sharp crack of thunder. Although they milled around, no longer content to graze, the buffalo hadn’t stampeded away. Within seconds the sky started to pelt him with tiny drops of rain. He quickly dropped a second cow. No doubt about it now: They’d be skinning and butchering at the height of the coming storm.

He hunched over his rifle, carefully sprinkling more priming powder into the pan, then dropped the frizzen protectively before standing to start back for the animals. In the cold, blowing rain the four managed to butcher out the boss, tongue, humpribs, and rear flanks from every one of their kills, besides some length of intestine they planned to prepare that night around the fire. In the distance, both north and south they overheard faint gunfire as others made meat and the thunderstorm passed on by. Each stiff gust of breeze made the blood-smeared men shudder in their rain-soaked clothing, then the sun sank low enough that it popped from the bottom of the clouds, painting the plateau country with vivid shades of yellow, red, and a dark, bruised purple.

With their pack animals unable to carry any more of a burden, the four bloodied trappers mounted up, ready to turn their noses back for camp when Jake Corn pointed.

“Lookee yonder, boys.”

Bass’s eyes narrowed at the high ground in the mid-distance. “Sure ’nough don’t look to be any of our fellas, does it?”

“I make out more’n thirty of ’em,” Elias Kersey announced.

“They ain’t the friendly sort, we’ll have to leave off the horses and meat to make a run for it,” Rube Purcell said gravely. “That be the preacher’s truth.”

“Don’t go fretting yourself just yet,” Scratch chided, recalling how that previous summer the four of them had watched as half-a-thousand enemy horsemen rode down on Fraeb’s two dozen.

“Bass is right,” the squarish Kersey agreed. “They ain’t movin’ much. Just watching.”

“Who you reckon they are?” Purcell asked, standing beside his saddle horse. Everything about the man was long, rail-thin, or ran at right angles.

“They meant us trouble,” Titus confided, “that bunch’d already be tearing down here for our hair.”

Kersey declared, “That’s ’sactly why I figger ’em for Yutas.”

“Sure they ain’t some of them Sioux or Cheyennes run onto us last summer?” worried Corn.

Scratch shook his head, “We’re too damn far west, south too, of the raiding ground for those niggers. Could be Bannock, but—I think Elias got it right. We’ll know more when we get up close.”

“Get up close?” Purcell repeated, his eyes suddenly growing large in that overly long face, with a jaw that reminded Bass of the bottom of a coal-oil lantern.

“We got meat to haul back to camp,” Bass explained.

Purcell climbed into the saddle saying, “W-what if there’s trouble from ’em?”

“Then … there’ll be trouble,” Scratch asserted flatly.

“Let’s cover some ground, fellers,” Kersey ordered.

The four hadn’t yet reached the base of the hill they would skirt to reach camp, leading their slow-paced pack animals, when the Indians disappeared from the ridgetop on their right.

“That ain’t a good sign,” Jake Corn groaned.

“No two ways about it,” Bass echoed. “Man needs to worry when he can’t no longer see them brownskins.”

By the time the four brought their plodding pack-horses around the base of the hill and camp was in sight, they spotted the warriors a ways ahead, making straight for the columns of smoke, coming on at an angle that cut across the dusty plain. Strange thing was, the horsemen were spread out in a broad line instead of riding single file the way Indians normally traveled. That was a bit worrisome. Right about then he wished he was back in that camp already—at least he’d have the extra rifles and pistols he packed along everywhere.

In the distance he watched a tall, skinny figure emerge from the brush. Beside him hobbled the other, one-legged, booshway of this horse raid. They stopped and each held up an arm in greeting as the horsemen halted some fifty feet from the two white men. Those warriors on either end of the broad front turned to watch the approach of several hunting groups returning from different compass directions.

As Bill Williams and Peg-Leg carried on a conversation by sign with the Indians, Bass led the other three and their animals around one end of the warrior line. A few of these strangers turned on the damp, bare backs of their ponies to glower at the four of them and their supply of butchered meat.

Coming to a halt behind their two leaders, Bass leaned down and asked of Williams, “You make ’em for Yutas?”

“They is. But faraway southern cousins to the ones we know up north,” Bill declared as Smith continued slowly motioning with his hands. “Hunters from a bunch we run onto three years back on our trip out to California. They remember the one they call the Tree-Leg.”

“Tree-Leg, they call him,” Kersey repeated. “Mebbeso it’s good news to have them figger our booshway for a friend.”

Williams wagged his head. “Ain’t necessarily so. They’re mad as spit-on hens that they was out hunting
and our bunch’s gone and run off some of their buffler—killed some buff they say is rightfully theirs.”

“To hell with ’em,” Bass growled with indignation. “Wasn’t a feather or a braid nowhere near where we four dropped our buffler!”

“Tell ’em we left the hides,” Purcell announced. “Ain’t any use to us, so they can have ’em.”

“Rest of the meat too,” Corn offered.

Smith turned to talk to Williams as more of the trappers drew close, making some of the warriors who carried only bows anxious at their approach. “Their feelings been stomped on, Bill. This head nigger won’t take any hides, or what’s left of meat—”

“We’ll make the son of a bitch a few presents,” Williams explained, “then maybe him and his bucks’ll move on.” He turned back to the warriors, and his bony hands began to gesture.

Scratch watched Bill tell the Ute horsemen that he would not speak to any man who would come riding up to his camp shouting that the white men were thieves for killing a few buffalo. But, he continued with his hands, Williams told the Ute leader that he would make presents to a friend who visited the white man’s camp to smoke in peace.

“And drink some coffee,” Smith reminded.

Williams whirled on him. “Don’t you ’member the way these niggers drink coffee! We damn well don’t have near enough to be brewin’ up a batch for ever’ bunch of scalawags we bump into down the road!”

But in the end, coffee would be a suitable peacemaker. While some of the trappers set coffeepots on to boil at three of the fires, the Ute horsemen dismounted and hobbled their ponies nearby before entering the camp and settling on their haunches around the flames as twilight continued to swallow the land.

“What say, Elias—you make us some o’ your dumplings outta the gut we brung back?” Rube Purcell suggested after they had a fire crackling and were starting to slice their fresh meat into thin strips for quick drying.

“Dumplings?” Bass echoed. “You mean boudins?”

“Naw. Rube’s had my dumplin’s before,” Kersey offered, pushing some of his long, blond hair out of his eyes. “I do have me a li’l flour.”

“Real dumplin’s?” Titus marveled, his mouth watering. He winked at Purcell and said, “Figgered you was just pulling on my leg.”

While the water in the coffeepots started to roll, Jake Corn and Rube Purcell diced the liver into small pieces, along with short sections of the greasy intestine, as well as some of the lean backstrap, combining it all with a bit of the fleecy fat trimmed right off the boss, or humpribs, of the buffalo. At the same time Elias Kersey was mixing up his flour and water, along with a dash or two of their precious salt, forming a dough he rolled into palm-sized balls.

On the other side of the fire Scratch had been busy scraping all the rich, thick marrow from heavy bones he cracked open with a small camp axe. Each greasy clump of yellow marrow Titus scraped out with the tip of his knife quickly melted once he dropped it into the cast-iron skillet at Kersey’s knee. The well-seasoned skillet began to spit and spew at the edge of the flames the moment Kersey plopped more than a dozen of his dumplings into the hot grease. The fragrance of their frying was almost more than Titus could bear, making his mouth water as it hadn’t in a long, long time.

As a veteran of their first raid into California, Philip Thompson hung near the fires where Smith and Williams had seated their brown-skinned guests. While two of the Ute leaders parleyed with the white men, the rest of the warriors spoke quietly among themselves. From time to time some of them even peered curiously over their shoulders at the fire where Kersey and his bunch were tending to their supper.

“You don’t figger ’em for pulling some shenanigans, do you?” Jake Corn asked as he tied up the ends of those last sections of gut they had filled with diced meat and fleece before they would be stuffed under the coals of their fire.

Bass shrugged. “Never know, but this here bunch
don’t number much more’n us. If they figgered to get the jump on us, they’d made a rush on our camp a while back.” Then he pointed to the dumplings, “Ain’t they ready yet, Elias?”

“Yeee-awww! If that man ain’t hungry for my vittles!” Kersey howled. “I’ll be skinned if they ain’t. C’mon and help yourselves, fellas.”

The rail-thin Reuben Purcell was the first to begin stabbing at those dumplings, pulling them from their frying pan, spearing them into his tin cup, then settling onto his haunches across the fire as two other trappers moseyed up to the fire, plainly sniffing the air.

The shorter one’s eyes twinkled as he peered at the skillet where Kersey set the last of the dumplings to fry in the popping grease. But he nonetheless remained silent as his wide-shouldered, bandy-legged partner spoke up.

“Merciful a’mighty—that smells good! Wha’chu made, fellas?”

“Dumplin’s,” Jake Corn said, grease dripping off his lips, spilling into his chin whiskers.

“I’m Silas. Silas Adair,” the talkative one explained, then licked his lips as his eyes never left Kersey’s frying dumplings. “If that smell don’t get a man’s hungers up.”

“Tell you what, boys—have you something to add to the pot,” Bass offered, “you’re more’n welcome to sit and share what we got cooked for ourselves.”

With his tree-stump-thick arm,. Adair nudged the stocky trapper on the shoulder. “Roscoe, go fetch us some gut and a few ribs too.”