Death Rattle (26 page)

“They’ll be comin’ up behin’t us!” Kersey warned after a glance over his shoulder.

Twisting round in the saddle where the trappers galloped at the back of the herd, Titus watched those vaqueros still atop their mounts turn away from their
wounded and dead, regrouping as they stabbed their horses with those huge, cruel rowels on their spurs and bolted into a gallop. This time it was clear they were no longer attempting to match the easy lope of the herd and the American thieves. The Mexicans intended to strike back for the hurt just inflicted upon them.

“Merciful a’mighty!” Adair cursed. “I don’t like havin’ them niggers ahint us!”

“Keep a eye on ’em, boys!” Bass said. “They come close enough again: we’ll rein about and throw down on the bastards!”

“Spread out now!” Kersey ordered. “Don’t bunch up!”

Titus could hear the vaqueros hollering among themselves now. Only voices—nothing he could discern as words. Just the noises of men working themselves into a fighting lather. A shot rang out. At this range, and one of the damn fools was trying to shoot the Americans in the back with their smoothbores, on the run too!

“Here come more of ’em!” Purcell screamed his warning into the thunder of the hooves.

Far off to their right the vaqueros who had initially attacked Thompson’s flank side of the herd were angling sharply across the valley now as the stolen horses streaked on by them.

“Be-gawd! They’re groupin’ up!” Corn shouted.

Sure enough, there were more than ten of the Mexicans now arrayed in a wide front directly behind the
stolen
horses. Step by leaping step, moment by fleeting moment, the vaqueros were angling to the left on a dead run, racing ever closer to the half dozen Americans on Bass’s corner of the herd.

For the moment, Scratch scolded himself—wondering what had ever come over him that made him decide on this journey to steal some California horses with Bill Williams. He’d never stolen a horse in his life, but here he was about to get shot in the back and left for dead by some greasers in a faraway foreign land where his wife and his young’uns could never mourn over his bones. How stupid an idjit was he?

“W-we gonna turn and fight ’em?” Adair prodded, his voice pulsing, rising and falling with the horse’s gait.

“No! We don’t stand us a chance like that!” Bass cried loudly. “Get everyone in there atween the horses!”

“What?” Corn demanded.

“Geddap in there!” Scratch ordered. “They can’t shoot us so good if’n we got all them horses around us!”

Jabbing heels into his mount’s flanks, Titus spurred the animal into a gallop, weaving it a little left, then a little right, leading the way while he plunged into the back of the herd. His pace a little faster than that of the stolen horses, he led the others deeper and deeper still, putting more and more of the animals between them and their pursuers. Glancing over his shoulder again, Scratch saw how the five others were spread out right behind him—stabbing their way into the thick of the herd.

“Keep your heads down!” he ordered, tucking himself as much as he could over the round Santa Fe pommel.

Instead of pursuing the thieves into the herd, the Mexicans warily hung back at the rear of the stolen horses. Not daring to enter the surging mass of animals on the run.

“C’mon, boys!” Bass rallied. “We best put some more room atween them and us!”

He kicked his horse in the ribs again and sprinted away, faster still. Running much slower, the stolen horses gradually streamed to the rear as the Americans put a hundred yards, then a hundred fifty, between them and the vaqueros.

“They stealing anything back?” Scratch asked the moment he turned to look over his shoulder.

“A few,” Kersey answered as they watched the Mexicans wave rope coils overhead and snap long, silken whips in the air, wrangling about three dozen of the horses away from the rest of the herd.

“No matter,” Titus grumped. “Them at the back wasn’t good runners no how.”

“You still figger to go after them two Injun gals?” Corn shouted as he edged up on Bass’s right heel.

“You gettin’ cold feet, Jake?”

“Just a bad feeling’s all,” Corn confessed.

“Why?” Titus asked. “We ain’t seen a soldier. Only a few vaqueros what tried to get their horses back.”

“What happens when they don’t send all them soldiers out to stop the others boys the way you said they would for Bill’s plan?” Corn asked.

Scratch brooded on that a moment, squinting into the sunlit distance as the horses at the front of the herd swept up more and more loose animals the farther north they raced down the valley for the San Gabriel Mission.

“Way I see it—every one of us gonna ride outta that soldier fort with Frederico’s sisters,” Scratch vowed. “Or, ain’t none of us coming back out at all.”

It was down to the nut-cuttin’ now.

Bill Williams and Thomas Smith signaled Philip Thompson on by with the stolen horses, wave after wave of the animals streaming north into the valley where stood the San Gabriel Mission. The two booshways reined over to the side of the hill and halted, waiting for Bass and his bunch to cut their way out of the side of the herd. The seven of them came to a halt near Bill and Peg-Leg.

“Sure you don’t want me to come ’long with you?” Williams asked, his eyes focused on the bloody tear in Titus’s shirt.

“Don’t worry—just a scratch, s’all.” Bass looked over his men, then shook his head. “The Injun got hit, but it ain’t bad. ‘Sides, you’re gonna need ever’ man you got, Solitaire. The seven of us can see to what we gotta do for Frederico’s sisters and catch on up to you.”

“How long you figger that’ll take?” Smith inquired.

“If’n we can steal a couple soldier horses for them women afore we ride outta there, we’ll cover some ground,” he suggested. “But, if them
soldados
take all
their horses when they ride out to follow you boys … then a couple of us gonna be riding double. An’ that’ll slow us down some.”

Williams’s eyes narrowed once more on Scratch’s bloodied shirt. “You need anything more?”

“Can’t think of what it’d be,” Titus replied with a sigh, turning away to watch the last of the horses lope past. He whistled low and said, “Them Bent brothers gonna shit in their britches to see so many horses.”

Smith grinned hugely. “What them two don’t take, I’ll drive right on back to Missouri to sell my own self!”

Bass held out his hand to him. “See you soon, Peg-Leg.”

“Don’t go make a bull’s-eye out of yourself, Titus Bass.”

Williams held out his hand now and they shook.

Scratch reminded, “We ain’t caught up with you in three days—”

“ ’Bout the time we should reach the desert on the other side,” Bill interrupted.

“Then you oughtta just reckon on us not catching up to you boys at all,” Scratch admitted, then suddenly cracked a lopsided grin.

“You’ll come out fine on the other side,” Williams offered, wearing his own hopeful smile.

“If’n I don’t, Bill,” Titus sighed as the grin disappeared, “do for me like you promised you would. Trade off my share of the horses and buy a passel of plunder with ’em. Take all that foofaraw on up there to Absaroka an’ find my woman. Give ’er what I got comin’ from my share of them horses.”

“Least I can do for you, friend,” Bill admitted. “You’re the man seeing we keep our promise to the Injun got us ’cross the desert.”

Titus reared back, stretching the muscles in his old back already tired from the morning’s ride. “Take good care of our packhorses, won’cha fellas?” He tugged down the front of his brim there in the hot afternoon sun and reined hard to the left. “Let’s ride, fellas!”

With Frederico wearing a bandanna around the
wounded arm at his side, Titus led the other five directly across the valley stripped bare of all horseflesh. The sprawling mission itself was less than a mile away, and the soldier fortress not all that far beyond it. They planned to slip up behind a knoll that lay to the east of the post and tie off their horses. Bellying up to the top, they’d lie patiently in the brush and watch the small fort below, hoping that the Mexicans would do what the trappers expected.

Together with Williams and Smith, Scratch had cobbled out this plan that sent most of the raiders with the two booshways, driving the stolen horses right on past the mission walls, near enough to the soldier post that the gringo thieves would make themselves a taunting challenge. And when the
soldados
rose to the bait—every last one of them saddling up and riding out to sweep down on the Americans and make a sure, quick fight of it—then Bass’s small outfit could slip right into the soldier post and hurry the two women right back out again.

Not that the fortress would be totally abandoned. They figured they could expect to encounter a modest resistance from no more than a handful of soldiers left to watch over the place—maybe a blacksmith, some stable hands, and a cook or two as well, perhaps even a guard at the gate—but not enough of a force that would prevent the
Norteamericanos
from riding away with Frederico’s sisters.

“This here brush is good,” Scratch told them as they came to a halt at the bottom of the low knoll. “Leave the horses here. You follow me and the Injun to the top. Get on your bellies afore you break the skyline.”

He gestured Frederico to join him on the climb, but just shy of the crest he reached out and tapped on the Indian’s bare arm. Pointing at the ground, Bass went to his belly. When their guide dropped to his stomach too, the seven crawled in and out of the brush to the grassy top. As they came up on both sides behind him, Bass could hear the others scritching over the gravel and dirt, rustling the stunted cedar and brush.

Titus rolled onto his left hip, pulled up the flap to his
shooting pouch, and dug at the bottom for the spyglass. Flat on his belly again, Bass extended the three sections, then swiveled the tiny brass protective plate back from the glass in the eyepiece.

Training the spyglass on the post below them, Bass slowly retracted one of the leather-covered sections to bring the scene into focus. And felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. The post was a beehive of activity. Cavalry horses were everywhere. A few of them were already saddled and stood outside the stockade wall with their riders. Other soldiers were engaged inside the compound, throwing saddles onto their mounts. And still more Mexicans were leading their horses out of the narrow barns and into the central square. Titus could almost imagine the racket made as horses snorted, stomped, and whinnied. As the men shouted orders, hammered across the hard ground in their boots, their stubby muskets and short sabers clinking … this half-baked army could never creep up on an enemy by surprise.

But, the Mexican Army never would have to do that out here in California, he decided. Or in northern Mexico either. They were merely an army of occupation, able to subjugate a weak and peaceable Indian population. Nothing like the warrior bands of the mountains and plains: intractable, bellicose, and intensely jealous of their territory. No, Titus figured, these Mexican soldiers had all grown soft and lazy because they had never been summoned into battle with a real enemy. Not the way soldiers near Taos and Santa Fe constantly had to deal with both Apache and Comanche.

This bunch charged with guarding the San Gabriel Mission and the nearby valleys were such predictable fools. They formed up outside their adobe walls and rode off as the gates were dragged shut. More than fifty soldiers loped past the base of the knoll where the seven lay in hiding, headed right to left as they pushed on down the road that would carry them east for the foothills and up toward the pass in pursuit of the
chaguanosos.
Titus realized some of those soldiers knew the route well enough—from time to time they had pursued fleeing
slaves, tracked runaway Indians into the low mountains—attempting to capture their prey before they reached the desert moat on the far side of California.

As he lay there watching them go, Titus was struck with the remembrance of slaves running off from their masters in the southern region of the States. For the first time in many, many years recalling Hezekiah: the bareheaded former field hand who had worked for a Mississippi gunboat brothel madam named Annie Christmas, the slave owner he had wronged in a brawl against Ebenezer Zane’s riverboatmen. Annie Christmas, an angry, spiteful shrew of a woman who promptly sold Hezekiah to the highest bidder, shipping him off north to the Muscle Shoals.

With that small band of Kentucky flatboatmen looking on outside of Kings Tavern, a Natchez tippling house, sixteen-year-old Titus Bass had freed Hezekiah from his cage, releasing the slave from what cruel fate might await him at the hand of his new taskmaster. At Owensboro on the Ohio River, the Negro prepared to push on west—giving Titus his farewell and announcing that he was taking his former boss-lady’s surname as he embarked on his new life as a freedman.

Hezekiah Christmas.

Scratch pulled the spyglass from his eye and turned slightly to peer at the guide. He’d never thought to ask what the youngster’s Indian name was. Frederico was merely the name the Catholic fathers had branded on the Indian—just as the friars gave all their slaves Spanish names, since they were baptizing these former heathens into the holy Spanish church, thereby saving their immortal souls from a life everlasting in the lake of endless fire—