Death Rattle (32 page)

The trappers no sooner had started pulling their
bloody companions toward a shadowy hollow in the rocks when they whirled around together—all of them instantly aware of the clatter of metal scabbards on the rocks, the scrape of boot soles clambering up the boulders, the grunts and cursing of the Mexicans who suddenly appeared behind them. The soldiers had broken through the gap in the boulders and were preparing to finish the slaughter.

“Gimme a gun, goddammit!” Kersey rasped, seizing Corn’s wrist in desperation. “I’m gonna kill one more of them sonsabitches before I go down!”

Corn tenderly wrapped Elias’s fingers around a pistol he pulled from his belt. Jake twisted about on his knee, crouching at Kersey’s shoulder with Bass, every able-bodied man leveling his weapons at the soldiers.

There were too many of the Mexicans. This would be their last hurraw. No time to reload after the next shot—

“Fire!”

Someone hollered that order. Maybe Smith, perhaps Williams. It didn’t matter. The trappers’ guns exploded into those first soldiers to penetrate the rocky fortress. Shrieking in surprise and pain, the soldiers and vaqueros fell back, the front rank dead or seriously wounded. Behind them others were yelling, pressing forward—their leaders furiously waving sabers as they resumed their all-out assault.

Even more of the dusty blue jackets appeared on the rocks as the gunsmoke cleared. Already so close the Americans had no time to reload. If the soldiers did not reload and shoot their smoothbore muskets, if they kept on coming with their long, glittering bayonets, they would close on the raiders, so close each man could look into his enemy’s eye … to see there the fear or dread, even hatred, as the Mexicans lunged near enough to jab and slash with their bayonets—

Where there had been only cheers of impending victory and lusty battle oaths among the soldiers an instant before, suddenly there were cries of surprise and shrieks of panic. At the very moment the Mexicans were about to plunge in among the trappers and those empty guns, the
soldiers and vaqueros wheeled about—trapped between the Americans and a new adversary.

Behind and above, on all sides of the trappers, the dull, gray boulders sprouted naked brown bodies. Warriors wearing nothing more than short breechclouts and moccasins, firing one short hunting arrow after another from their small, powerful bows.

Frozen in that moment of utter disbelief, Bass blinked—unable to fathom the sudden appearance of these short Indians. Like the Ammuchabas, very much like Frederico himself. None of them tall, in any way like the statuesque Crow, Shoshone, even Blackfoot. Much smaller in stature as they bounded across the rocks, surrounding and overwhelming the startled and quickly demoralized soldiers.

The Mexicans still able to stand found themselves surrounded and began to slowly back from the field. From one moment to the next, a brown warrior fell to a soldier bullet—but even more brownskins stepped into the gap, pressing their vicious attack. Screaming, u-looing, and … from somewhere nearby came the constant, heartbeat thunder of a huge drum, a sound swelling all the larger as it reverberated within this rocky defile. Almost deafening as it pounded in the ear with the shouts, screams, warnings, and death rattles of Mexican and Indian alike; those shrill whistles of frightened horses; the scrape of soldier gun and scabbard dragged over the rocks as terrified men made a frantic escape; a steady
thung-thung-thung
of those short horn bows.

Without mercy, the naked attackers fell upon those too slow, those who fell behind the rest in this mad flight. Every wounded soldier or vaquero was descended upon, his head yanked up—throat slit brutally before a last gasp could be taken, dark blood seeping into the green of the short grass, splattering the yellow of the trampled dust. But these warriors did not stop to take the black hair of their victims. Instead the Indians leaped to their feet once more, shouting anew, their hands and arms and stubby knives drenched with the crimson that glistened in the first rays of the coming day.

On both sides of the Americans, even through the startled trappers themselves, the Indians sprinted after the terror-filled Mexicans. Passing right on by the horse thieves without so much as a blink of acknowledgment. Without the slightest attempt to harm the stunned Americans in any way.

Almost as suddenly as the warriors had appeared, they were driving the soldiers before them—dropping every laggard, quickly finishing off the wounded, then pressing their advantage of swift and total surprise. Then they were shadows, for the sun had risen far enough to paint these death moments with the first filaments of light, creating the first, flitting specters of smudge and stain at the same instant.

A single voice gradually arose above the others—this one booming, low and reverberant as the black belly of thunder itself. Very much unlike the higher, shrill cries of the warriors whipping their way after the retreating soldiers. A voice that echoed and rattled from the boulders.

Bass turned immediately as the shadow crossed Corn and Kersey, squinting up at the low cliff above and behind them. Peering over his shoulder, he could see only the glare of sudden rays of the rising sun backlighting the shadowy figure. A form so dark he appeared to be a piece of the night itself, no more than a fragment of the night now gone with the coming of this day.

Behind this figure the sun of that new dawn made the man’s form all the blacker, all the more shadow than he was of substance. Titus tried to shield his eyes, squinting up as the leader shouted orders to his warriors.

Tall. Was it only that Scratch crouched down here and the strange figure stood up there that gave this man the appearance of such great height?

As the leader bounded off the cliff and started hand over hand down the rocks, dropping out of those first rays of the sun, many of the trappers stood and turned in disbelief. This Indian was nothing like his warriors. The hundreds who had swarmed after the Mexicans all had
their black, coarse hair cropped at the shoulder, bangs cut straight across the forehead, just above the eyebrows.

But their leader was bald—his black head as naked as Titus had ever seen a man’s skull.

Still, he dressed no different than his warriors. Around his waist hung the same skimpy skin breechclout the others wore, and on his feet the same crude moccasins tied at the ankle.

While the warriors were dark brown in color, their leader’s skin was instead a deep, rich black that glistened with sweat. He approached the white men with all but the color and sheen of a glistening vein of coal tucked into the side of those hills bordering the upper Tongue and Powder river basins. And when he dropped to the ground within the boulders themselves, turning now to face the Americans, Titus realized there was even more to the difference between this leader and his fighting men.

Besides the fact that he stood a full head taller than even the tallest warrior, the only hair remaining on the leader’s head were those bushy eyebrows—each one like a furry gray caterpillar above eyes narrowed, half lidded in the brand-new light. Singing out in his people’s tongue, this war chief joyously welcomed back the first of the returning warriors, flush with victory.

All around the Americans now more than fifty of the short, brown fighting men pressed close, at least a hundred more shoving up behind them—every last one smiling at the whites they had just dragged back from the precipice of death—grinning as if nothing could be more fun than killing Mexicans. Soldiers or vaqueros—it did not seem to matter. These short-haired, laughing Indians were splattered with the blood of their enemies—for that nothing could bring them any more joy.

Scratch looked around as some of the trappers began muttering among themselves. He turned with the others who watched the tall, black-skinned leader slowly step through the ranks of the white men, carefully peering at each hairy, pale face, studying it intently, before moving on to stop and study the next.

Something about the leader’s broad nose, those expressive, almond-shaped eyes …

To everyone’s surprise this leader put his hands on his hips and shouted to his warriors—immediately silencing them. As the last of their number obeyed, Bass realized he could almost hear the thud of his own heart, the faint cry of a nearby bird, and the scrape of the tall man’s moccasins on the gravel under his feet.

Then the leader spoke, clearing his voice before he said, “Ti … tuss? Ti … tuss Bass here?”

Unsure he had actually heard what he thought the tall one just said, not completely certain with the strange accented inflection to the words that had emerged from the chief’s lips, Bass glanced about, seeing how some of the trappers stood staring slack-jawed at the chief, the rest of the white men turning to peer at Titus in disbelief.

“He say B-bass?” Williams repeated, astonishment carved on his lined and wrinkled face.

“Tituss,” the leader repeated as he turned to stare at Williams inquisitively, breaking the word into a pair of distinct syllables once again, a long and pronounced s on the end. “You Tituss Bass … yes?”

“H-him,” Tom Smith said, pointing.

The leader turned slightly, took three steps toward Scratch, halting within an arm’s length of Bass where he cocked his head, studying the white man’s face, his eyes squinting as if mentally reckoning on something of great breadth and weight.

Bill Williams slid up to stand close, not quite between them. He asked the tall leader, “You k-know him?”

“Tituss?”

Stunned into speechlessness for so long, Scratch could finally admit, “Yes.”

“Tituss Bass!” the tall one repeated, the name sounding more clear with repetition. “Excuse, please. No English for long, long time. You—Tituss Bass? Tituss from Ohio River?”

Scratch’s brow furrowed, his head swam in confusion. “I … I come from the Ohio—yeah. Long, long ago.”

For a long moment the leader closed his eyes, raising
his face to the sky as his lips moved silently. Then he lowered his chin and stared into Bass’s eyes once more. “Long ago. Been a long time I don’t speak the white words, long time now. You—me … at the Owens … Owensboro—farewell a long, long ago.”

Swallowing hard, struggling to make sense, examining those eyes that did not belong to this time and place, knowing those black eyes belonged instead to somewhere in the past—

Holding out his big, rawboned hand, the tall man said, “Thirty-two years now we come here. In your world, it is thirty-two years.”

Bass stared down at the offered hand in utter disbelief. Where was he thirty-two years ago? So he asked, “On the Ohio?”

Again the tall leader struggled for the words, then he said, “It so long ago—I remember the place and the time … better than I remember English. But English coming back now. Forgive, but I trouble with the words to say.”

“You’re too damn dark for any of these here Injuns,” Tom Smith demanded as he hobbled up. “Just who the hell are you?”

“He know me,” the warrior leader said, looking again at Titus.

“I-I know you?”

“You knowed me long ago, Titus Bass,” the tall man explained. “I am the man you set free from a slaver’s cage. The man you set free at Owensboro on Ohio River.”

Scratch’s eyes widened.

A huge, warm smile cracked that black face as he continued, “I am the man Annie Christmas called Hezekiah.”

It was the Negro he had busted from the barred cage on the back of that wagon outside a Natchez tippling house as the Kentucky-bound boatmen were doing their best to slip through that riverbank settlement without being recognized.
Back then sixteen-year-old Titus Bass had looked into that cage behind the Kings Tavern, recognizing the tall, bald-headed Negro who had tended bar in Annie Christmas’s gunboat brothel tied against the river-bank as Ebenezer Zane’s men were floating down the Mississippi for the ocean port of New Orleans.
^*

Because Hezekiah had failed to stop the brawl that had killed one of her prized whores and a couple of her bodyguards, Annie promptly sold off her bartender to a wealthy landowner who would squeeze his money’s worth out of the big, muscular slave. But before they pushed north from Natchez, the slavers had to stop for that autumn night, have themselves some supper and a few drinks, then perhaps a fleshy whore to wrap her legs around them until dawn when they would venture out to the wagon yard to discover one of their slaves busted free.

Much to the misgivings of the other boatmen, Titus Bass brought Hezekiah Christmas with him on that long walk back along the Natchez Trace, eventually reaching the country of the Muscle Shoals as they pushed north for French Lick, the end of that wilderness road. It was just past a travelers’ stand and a rainy river crossing that the slavers caught up with the boatmen. In a quick and bloody scrap, young Titus Bass hung his life out for the Negro.

Scratch explained the story in detail, down to their parting at Owensboro on the Ohio, weeks later.

“Y-you give this here Neegra a paper what said he was a freedman?” Philip Thompson asked in scorn and disbelief.

“He was a man, and I freed him,” Bass replied. “I figgered he ought’n go west where a man might stand on his own legs ’stead of being accounted for by the color of his skin.”

“You sure as hell are one chuckle-headed fool!” Thompson roared. “Lookit him! Cain’t you figger how
much this Neegra would bring one of us on the slave block?”

Hezekiah glared down at the white trapper. “You wanna take me back to your slave market, white man?” He held up his hands, wrists pressed together. “Go right ahead on—put me in your irons.”

For a moment Thompson’s eyes flicked about anxiously, then he smiled. “Maybeso we can take you on back with us to Missouri with these here horses. Sell your black ass to some slaver. It’s for damn certain I’ll get more for you’n I’d get for a dozen Mexican horses!”

A handful of Thompson’s compatriots guffawed at that.

“If’n you try taking Hezekiah,” Bass warned, “you’re more soft-brained than I ever give you credit for.”

Thompson’s jaw jutted and his brow knitted in fury as he demanded, “What the hell you mean I’m soft-brained?”