Death Rattle (23 page)

Holding out his hand, Williams said, “Thank you, Cap’n.”

“You’ve chosen a good day to celebrate,” Smathers declared. “A Saint’s Day this be.”

“Which of their damned saints are they celebrating?” Smith demanded, licking drops of whiskey off his lips.

Smathers tugged down on the tails of his vest. “San Juan’s Day. The twenty-fourth of June.”

“Any day’s as good as this’un for whiskey and womens!” Williams cheered.

“Captain Janus C. Smathers,” the man repeated his name to the group. “Remember it if you need my help. While I’m anchored in the harbor of this foreign land, I remain at my countrymen’s service.”

“What’s the C stand for,” Bass inquired.

Smathers turned to Titus, saying, “Cautious. The C stands for cautious, fellas. Remember my advice: keep your heads down and don’t stir up any waves. A good day, and pleasant journey, to you, fellow pilgrims.”

“Fill your chair, Scratch,” Smith offered as he scooted the simple chair back from the table.

Titus glanced at it, then at Thompson’s hardened glare, and finally to Smith. “Thanks anyway, Peg-Leg. I’ll drink over by the wall with them boys.”

In a flash, Frank Curnutt roughly shoved his way past Titus and plopped down in the chair the moment Scratch turned away from the table.

That first wash of the harsh corn liquor over his tongue made Bass’s eyes water. It had been a long, long time since he had tasted such raw, head-thumping spirits. Likely not since those final days in Taos. None of those finer brandies the company traders secreted in their riverside fur posts, or the smoother grain alcohol the traders hauled out to rendezvous every summer could compare with the teeth-jarring power of this Mexican hooch.

“Whooo!” he rasped, blinking his eyes. “Wonder if
they strained this here likker through a ol’ Comanche’s breechclout.”

“Don’t smell like it!” Reuben Purcell argued with a grin, holding his clay cup under his nose.

“But it damn well tastes awful suspicious,” Elias Kersey said, wrinkling up his face.

“I’ve had me plenty of worse,” Bass announced. “This here ain’t bad for what it is—Mexican whiskey.”

By the time an hour had galloped past, the talk had grown loud and merry. Smathers and his men had abandoned the cantina just before the owner and his help brought out platters of tortillas and steamy bowls of beans. The hungry Americans greedily scooped up the beans using the soft tortillas as spoons or ladles, and devoured everything set before them.

“Lookee here now,” Jake Corn said, jabbing an elbow into Titus’s ribs as Scratch was loading a little tobacco into his clay pipe.

Bass turned as most of the trappers noticed the nine women stepping out of the bright sun, entering the open doorway. The cantina owner hurried over, speaking quickly to one of the women, who wore large brass wires suspended from her ears. He pointed out the table where Smith and Williams sat. Half of the women dressed in the loose-fitting, off-the-shoulder
camisetas
and the short, full skirts called
enaguas
followed their fleshy leader, who had generously smeared crimson
alegria
juice on her pasty, powdered cheeks. She had clearly seen her better days, yet walked over to the Americans with an unmistakable air of supreme confidence.

In hushed tones she and Smith chattered for a moment until Peg-Leg stood.

He announced, “These here gal’s come to have some fun with us!”

“Bang-tails?”

Smith turned toward the questioner. “You damn bet they’re whores, you stupid nigger.”

“If that don’t take the circle!” Purcell leaped to his feet, lunging for the closest as the women fanned out
across the room. “I ain’t humped since we left off them Mojave gals.”

Corn stood, nudging Bass with the toe of his moccasin. “Ain’t you coming to poke you one of these, Bass?”

“Had me Mex gals before,” he answered. “Besides, I got me a woman of my own.”

“But she ain’t here,” Purcell argued, dragging the woman onto his lap. “An’ it’s been a long time since you rid atween your woman’s legs, ain’t it?”

“Don’t reckon I need to go,” Titus explained with a shrug. “You boys go on and have your fun with them whores. I’ll be sitting right here when you get your humping done. ‘Pears I’ll be the one leading you fellas on back to camp so you can sleep off your sore heads.”

“Don’t want no honey on your stinger, eh?” Kersey spouted. “Then I’ll poke one of ’em center just for you, Titus Bass!”

“Thankee kindly, Elias,” Scratch replied. “Can’t claim I didn’t have my own share of Mex whores back in my rowdy days.”

Corn prodded, “Any man can still get rowdy, Scratch.”

“Nowadays I got a lot more rings ’round my trunk,” he declared with a grin. “But you fellas go grab hold of those gals and don’t let ’em buck you off, boys!”

“Don’t gotta ask me more’n once!” Adair roared as he started for one of the women who had moved over to join other Americans at the bar.

It made for a good business proposition, Titus figured. The women could drink for free of the cantina’s liquor because they were assuring that the Americans were consuming all the more, spending most of their hard American money. At the far end of the long bar a greasy blanket hung across a low doorway. One by one, three of the women headed past that blanket with three of the trappers, arm-in-arm and laughing at some joke no one understood.

Another three of the women perched on one lap after another, generously rubbing their hands, bellies, and rumps against prospective customers while two of the
whores leaped onto the edge of the bar where they hiked up their skirts so they could wrap their legs around the ribs of a pair of trappers as they all drank and flirted despite their foreign languages, laughing crazily and getting all the drunker as they waited their turn at the tiny cribs in the back of the cantina.

Three-by-three the Americans lurched past the greasy blanket, back to finish what they had started out front, turning over their women to other trappers who drank and ate as they waited their few minutes in the cribs. By the time the last men were emerging from the rooms behind the bar, some of the first were boasting that they were ready for another go-round with the whores, which meant Smith was having to ante up more of his dwindling supply of gold coin.

From where he sat leaning against a side wall, Bass could peer out the open doorway when a trio of horsemen reined up in front of the cantina. He hadn’t seen uniforms like theirs since Jack Hatcher’s bunch had chased into the winter mountains hoping to wrestle back some hostages from marauding Comanche.

“You expectin’ company, Bill?” he called out to Williams.

He started walking toward Titus and the door. “Who?”

“Soldiers.”

“How many?”

“Only three,” Scratch answered.

Stopping in his tracks, Williams harrumped and turned back for the bar, saying, “I ain’t worried till they send a whole shitteree of Mex soldiers for us.”

Instead of coming right inside after tying their horses off to a single ring out front, the trio walked past the doorway for the corner of the cantina. A little slowed and deliberate in his movements due to the heady whiskey, Titus struggled to his feet against the
manta
draped on the wall and stepped outside, finding the three soldiers moving among some of the horses and mules. From what he could tell, they were inspecting the rear flanks for brands.

He snorted with the humor in that. Indian ponies simply didn’t have a brand.

“Help you with something, fellas?”

All three turned at his call, two of them flicking their eyes to the third as they came over to stop before the trapper. When that man in the middle spoke, his Spanish spilled out far too fast for Bass to grasp more than a handful—hardly enough to go on.

“Ho-hold on,” Titus suggested. “No
comprendo.”

“Norteamericanos?”

“Si,”
Scratch answered.

“Ahhh,” the middle one with the goatee replied.
“Extranjeros.”
Then he started speaking rapidly again, gesturing back at the horses.

“Yes, they are mine,” Bass started to explain. “Something wrong?”

The soldier shrugged one shoulder and motioned to the others as all three stepped around Bass for the darkened doorway.

Inside, the bartender noisily greeted the soldiers, waving them over to the bar where two of the whores each had a pair of trappers at their sides. The trio fixed their malevolent gaze on the Americans until the owner clattered some cups in front of them and began pouring them drinks.

The three toasted, then turned to gaze over the cantina patrons as if comfortable with the foreigners. But the moment a woman pushed past the curtain from the back rooms holding the arm of Roscoe Coltrane, one of the soldiers cried out her name. After flicking him a glance, she steered the trapper in the opposite direction, toward the last of the empty chairs.

“Shit,” Bass muttered. Sure as rain, trouble was coming.

The soldier slammed his clay cup down on the bar, then tugged at the bottom of his short-waisted leather jacket, its stiffened epaulets extending off the man’s shoulders. He had all the appearances of being a man on a mission.

As the soldier stomped across the earthen floor, he
loudly berated the whore, finally seizing her upper arm in his big, brown hand, yanking her up and whirling her around just as she settled on Coltrane’s lap.

“Leave ’er be,” Silas Adair growled at the soldier, appearing at the table so quickly he knocked a chair aside.

By that moment the soldier with the goatee was shouting at his companion, gesturing him back to the bar. The angry soldier stood frozen a moment longer, glaring down at Coltrane’s hand on his knife, at Adair’s fist locked around the butt of his pistol still stuffed in the front of his belt, then smiled wanly as he tapped the hilt of the saber short-chained over his left hip. The soldier released his grip on the whore and turned on his heel, slowly.

Scratch finally took a breath and bent over, picking his empty cup off the blanket where he had been sitting, starting for the bar as the whore cursed the soldier and spat at his heels.

In a blur the Mexican turned and slapped her across the jaw, making her reel to the side, pitching into Coltrane’s arms. Lunging forward, the soldier grabbed the screaming woman’s arm and yanked her away from Roscoe as Coltrane snagged her other wrist. By now the other whores set up a caterwauling and shrieking so loud it would have raised the dead back in Santa Fe.

Reaching across his waist, the soldier pulled free his short saber with a loud, metallic scrape. The moment Roscoe stopped yanking on the woman and let her go, the Mexican spat into the whore’s face. Coltrane’s face flushed with anger as he rocked onto the balls of his feet, ready to pounce … but in a flash of candlelight, the soldier held that glittering saber out before him.

Adair grumbled, “You want I should shoot ’im, Roscoe?”

“No!” Smith answered for him. “That’s more trouble’n we bargained for right now.”

“Maybe ’nother time,” Williams suggested. “Don’t make nothing of this, Coltrane. She’s just a soldier’s whore an’ this
pelado
greaser’s jealous ’cause she humped with a gringo.”

That brought a wry smile to Roscoe’s face as the tension started to drain out of his shoulders. He rocked back onto his heels. As his smile broadened, Coltrane extended the index finger on his right hand and held it under his left ear. Then with a loud, guttural sound, he slowly dragged the finger around the front of his neck, across his windpipe, until he reached the right earlobe.

That done, Roscoe turned his skinny back on the soldier and settled in a chair at Adair’s table. Which seemed to prompt the woman to begin thrashing and kicking, attempting to free herself from the soldier’s grip. Infuriated at her attempts, he hurled her against the bar, watching the whore crumple to the floor. Coltrane flew out of his chair and shrank into a crouch at the instant the soldier brought up his saber and started inching forward—barely wiggling the tip of the weapon in that narrowing distance between himself and the American.

He jabbed. Roscoe backed a step. Another feint, and Roscoe retreated another step, staring down at that short saber. Inch by inch by inch—

Until he had Coltrane backed against the wall.

Bass motioned Kersey, Purcell, and Corn up behind the other two soldiers as he cocked back his arm. Hurling the arm forward, he threw his clay cup against the back of the swordsman’s head. It shattered as the soldier stumbled, got watery in the knees. Coltrane swung his arm in an arc, knocking the saber from the Mexican’s grip.

In that moment the other two soldiers started away from the bar, Kersey and Corn lunged forward with their pistols and cracked the Mexicans on the back of their skulls.

“That ain’t messy at all, now is it, Peg-Leg?” Corn asked.

“Just as long as we don’t kill any stupid hard-dicked Mexican
soldado,”
Williams groused. “That’d be damp powder an’ no way to dry it.”

“That’s right—we showed these greasers not to trouble us no more,” Peg-Leg added. “G’won now, boys—throw all three of ’em outside so we can go on an’ have ourselves li’l more fun.”