Death Rattle (43 page)

“Why they want Taos when they had ’em their own brand-new republic?” Scratch asked.

Mathew turned sideways and took the jug offered him before saying, “Talk was, them Texians got the high head ever since they throwed the Mexican Army out of their new country, so they got to figgering
all
the land this side of the Rio Grande belonged to them.”

Scratch stared at the leaping flames a moment as he grappled in his mind for the location of the Rio Grande del Norte, then realized it flowed west of Taos on its way south.

Jim Beckwith jumped in now, saying, “All the news
we heard had it them Texians was setting a army loose to throw all the Mexicans out of Mexico.”

Mathew added, “They was coming to take over the northern part of Mexico for themselves, make it part of their republic.”

“But Taos—that’s way up in the north of Mexico,” Titus offered, his eyes flicking back and forth between Beckwith and Kinkead with growing concern. “What them Texians want with Taos?”

Jim replied, “Take more land from the Mexicans they throwed out, I s’pose.”

Nodding, Mathew confirmed, “Ever since that autumn of eighteen and forty, ever’ last greaser in northern Mexico had a differ’nt eye when they looked at gringos like me.”

“You mean how they treated Americans?” Scratch inquired.

Kinkead said, “Don’t you ’member how years ago I become a Mexican my own self so I could marry my Rosa in her church?”

Bass’s eyes narrowed. “But Josiah didn’t need to—he had him a Flathead woman.”

“Josiah Paddock?” Beckwith perked up with sudden interest.

Scratch turned to gaze at the mulatto. “You know Josiah?”

“Me and Stephen Lee—my partner—we bought some of our goods off Paddock,” Jim admitted. “He’s a fair-handed man.”

Scratch took pride in that, saying, “Josiah an’ me—we rode together for a time.”

Then Mathew continued, “Even though Paddock had a Injun wife, he still become a Mexican citizen so to make things run smoother on his trading business.”

“Much as I’d never do such a thing my own self,” Titus began, “if a fella lives in Mexico and works with Mexicans, I savvy it makes good sense for Josiah to raise his hand and swear he’s gonna be a Mexican too.”

“Hold on there, fellas,” Jake Corn sputtered through a gulp of whiskey, shaking his head in argument as he
glared at Mathew. “Wasn’t Kinkead here just saying it didn’t make no difference if any American swore to be a Mexican citizen, because every American was still gonna be treated bad the same way by them bean-bellies?”

Mathew nodded emphatically, his eyes gazing into the fire. “Didn’t make no differ’nce to the greasers even if we swore to be a Mexican like they wanted us to do. The way the Mexicans was starting to look at us Americans—we knowed they figgered us
all
as spies for them Texians.”

“S-spies?” Silas Adair snorted.

“That news of an army coming to the Rio Grande sure did stir up them Mexicans,” Kinkead explained. “You know it ain’t been that long since them Texians whipped the great Mexican Army—so now when them
Taosenos
hear this story ’bout these Texians marchin’ west to take us over too … why, ever’ last Mexican who ever was my friend turned his face from me.”

“You tellin’ me greasers black their faces against you?” Scratch bristled.

“Meaning to hurt me?” Kinkead asked. “Lookit me, coon! I’m twice’t as big as most any bean-belly in all of Mexico!” Then that merry grin drained from his face, “But …”

“But what?” Titus demanded, sensing his own uneasiness stirring.

Mathew sighed, “I do know myself of a fella here or there what had the piss beat out of ’em purty bad.”

“Beat on by greasers?” Corn demanded gruffly.

“Yep,” Kinkead admitted reluctantly. “An’ most of them what’s had some trouble like that has already cleared out of the valley.”

Titus leaned sideways to lay a hand on Kinkead’s shoulder. “You was right to mosey north to the Arkansas. Figgered to find your family a more sleepy stretch of country?”

“Look around, fellas. Beaver’s dead,” Kinkead complained. “The big companies got their hands around the buffler trade; gonna strangle it to death too. And now the Mexicans don’t want Americans comin’ anywhere near
their country no more. All you gotta do is look around and you’ll see this here’s the land where a man can make a brand-new start.”

Scratch took a long drink. But the whiskey didn’t help: he kept growing more fretful. “Afore you pulled up your picket pins and left San Fernando, Mathew—you know of any greasers ever make things hard on Josiah?”

“Nawww, he’s a big-boned lad, Scratch. Just like me,” Kinkead reminded. “Don’t you worry none ’bout Josiah Paddock. You best remember I know the nigger what taught that big lad how to hang on to his hair in these here Shining Mountains. Any man what learns from Titus Bass sure as hell gonna keep a keen eye on his back trail. Ain’t no pepper-belly I know of gonna have the
huevos
to go scratching round, makin’ trouble for Josiah Paddock!”

Bass handed the jug on to Joseph Manz, then turned back to Kinkead. “You ask the lad if’n he wanted to move north to the Arkansas with you?”

“I did,” Kinkead confessed. “But he told me he was staying ’cause he’d come to know them Mexicans and didn’t figger ’em to raise no truck with him. ‘Sides, Josiah said he had a big stake already made down to Taos, didn’t wanna lose if he closed up and walked away from his shop. Said he didn’t fear they’d do him no harm—no matter how mean they made it for some others we knowed of.”

Bass rocked back and asked, “Them Texians ever show?”

“Not that none of us ever heard. Maybeso it was just cheap talk,” Mathew declared, wagging his head with regret. “Damn shame of it, here at our Pueblo we’re sitting right where Armijo’s
soldados
or them Texians either one could jump us real easy.”

“If’n you hear either one’s comin’—where’s a man like you to go?” Scratch inquired.

Kinkead gazed at him squarely. “Nowhere, Titus. Nowhere. Some men you can push out of one place after ’nother. As for me, I decided folks pushed me off from one place already. I ain’t gonna let any nigger push me
outta my home again. I figger the Arkansas’s my home now, where I plan on livin’ out the last of my years.”

“Just like Josiah’s figgering on lastin’ out his years in Taos.” Bass worked at calming his fear. “After all this time, I’ll wager the lad talks purty good Mexican.”

Kinkead roared, “Good as any natural-born pepper-belly!”

When out of the darkness a loud voice suddenly bawled, “To hell with ever’ last pepper-belly, I say!”

The men at the fire whirled to find Bill Williams striding up, accompanied by two more of the raiders.

“That whiskey in them jugs?” Williams asked as he stepped right into the corona of warm firelight. “Three of us just been over to see how the herd’s grazing—”

His words dropped off in midsentence as Jim Beckwith stood and turned to face his old nemesis.

“How you been, Bill?” the mulatto stated with a flat, dispassionate voice.

The old trapper’s face went hard as slate, glaring at Beckwith. “I’ll be jiggered, boys. Seein’ how this Neegra shows his face to me here sure sours my milk, it does. Never thort he’d have the nerve to stay in the same territory I’m in—”

“Goddamn your eyes!” Jim snarled, muscles tensing along his jaw. “You’re the child just dropping right outta the hills. This here’s my home!”

“Y-your home, Beckwith?” Williams scoffed. “I say a low-down sack of Digger droppings like you don’t deserve no home! Maybeso you best crawl back under some shit-covered rock you come from!”

Of a sudden, Bass reached up and grabbed Beckwith’s wrist, stopping the mulatto in his tracks. But he asked his question of Williams, “Bad blood still atween you two, Solitaire?”

Bill’s eyes flicked to Titus, then back to the mulatto’s face. “Been some, it has. This here mongrel dog of a Neegra allays sided with Peg-Leg on ever’thing that first ride to California.” He grinned cruelly, saying, “Wish’t Beckwith been along so’s I could leave him dry up in the goddamned desert with Peg-Leg.”

“That what you done to Smith?” the mulatto demanded, his fists clenching and unclenching. “Leave him in the goddamned desert?”

“We give him plenty of horses to eat,” Bass said, releasing Beckwith and standing at the black man’s elbow. He took a step backward to place himself almost halfway between the mulatto and the old trapper.

Beckwith’s black eyes bore into Scratch. “You was part of this, Titus Bass?”

Before Scratch could answer, Williams grumbled to the others, “What with you boys ’llowing this here p’isen-brained Neegra to make his
home
here with you, our outfit gonna be pulling out come first light.” He sniffed the air. “Can’t stand this smell of half-dead yellow-bellied dog—”

“You sure mighty big on calling a man bad things when you got all your friends at your side!” Beckwith snarled, his fists flexing as he glanced a hateful glare at Bass.

“Better’n talkin’ bad behind a man’s back—just what a snake-belly black-ass like you does!” Williams snapped, his right forearm sliding up across his belly, the hard-knuckled, slender fingers coming to rest around that elk-antler knife handle. “Never you had any backbone to say a mean thing to a man’s face!”

“You ain’t bound to change, are you, Bill?” Beckwith shot back. “Still the same ol’ soft-brained idjit you allays was. Still runnin’ off at the tongue like a ol’ woman—”

“An’ you’re never gonna be a white man, are you, Neegra?” Williams interrupted, his bony shoulders drawing up threateningly. “No matter how hard Jimmy Beckwith tries to be white—”

The instant Beckwith lunged for him, Williams started to yank his belt knife free of the sheath, but Kinkead snagged that arm just above the elbow.

“No stickers, you sonsabitches!” Bass hollered as he jerked backward on Beckwith’s arm, stumbling at the edge of the flames.

The mulatto twisted, wrenching his arm free as the rest of the men at the fire bolted to their feet. Williams
whirled around on one foot, surprising Kinkead when he jammed a hickory-hard knee into Mathew’s groin and pushed himself free of the big man’s hold on him.

“Watchit!” someone cried as Williams lurched between two of the raiders who were attempting to block his way.

Scratch suddenly hopped in front of Beckwith, screaming at Williams, “I’ll kill you my own self, you go an’ pull your sticker, Solitaire!”

“Best get out of my way, Bass!” Williams shrieked as he lumbered around the side of the fire, traders and raiders dodging out of the fray. “Gonna gut ’im with my bare hands!”

Just as Titus raised his arms out before him and started toward Williams, Beckwith shoved Bass from behind, hurling Scratch aside as the mulatto leaped around him. Landing on his knees, Bass jerked around to find Beckwith yanking his pistol from his belt.

“Goddamn you, Beckwith!” he shouted. “Don’t shoot!”

Williams was already under a full head of steam, his neck tucked into his shoulders as he closed on the mulatto.

But instead of pointing his pistol at Williams, Beckwith suddenly whirled the weapon around in his hand, gripping it by the barrel, swinging it backward at the end of his arm before he slashed downward the instant before the old trapper collided with the mulatto. The resounding crack reminded Titus of the dull thud a maul made as it drove an iron wedge into an old hickory stump.

Williams went down like every bone had been ripped from his body.

His heart pounding in his ears, anger at both men rising near the boiling point, Titus got to his hands and knees, crawling back to kneel over Williams.

“He breathing?” Rube Purcell asked as he came up, bent at the waist.

“Yeah, he’s alive,” Bass grumbled as he stood, not taking his hard glare off the mulatto.

Before any one of them, much less Beckwith himself,
saw it coming—Titus lashed out with the back of his hand, the oak-hard knuckles slashing across the mulatto’s, mouth.

“You stupid bastard!” Scratch growled menacingly. “You pulled your goddamn pistol, ready to kill a man!”

“By dogs, he was gonna kill me if I didn’t lay him out first!” Beckwith protested, then licked at a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe he should have kill’t you outright,” Titus said, a rumble of warning in the back of his throat.

Jim’s eyes grew wide with confusion. “You takin’ his side, Scratch?”

“I was willing to give yours a listen—till you knocked him in the head,” Bass said, tearing his eyes away from Beckwith so he could glance down at Williams. “Maybeso, you’d better go back to your Pueblo now while you got the chance.”

“Trouble is,” Beckwith admitted, “this ain’t finished ’tween him and me—”

“You gone mad with whiskey?” Titus demanded.

That appeared to bring Beckwith up short. “No. No, I ain’t so drunk I don’t know ’sactly what I’m doing when a—”

“Take him away, Mathew,” Bass commanded, wagging his head. “Get Beckwith outta here—
now.”

“I could’ve killed him. You know I could’ve,” Beckwith pleaded. “But I didn’t. Son of a bitch had it comin’.”

Kinkead wrapped one of his big arms around the mulatto’s shoulders. “C’mon, Jim. Let’s g’won back to the Pueblo.”

Bass turned away from Beckwith, shaking his head in disappointment.

Kinkead started away, then stopped, still gripping onto Beckwith as he asked his question, “What you gonna do when Bill comes to, Scratch?”

“I ain’t got a notion what to do.”

“He’s gonna be madder’n a spit-on hen,” Mathew intoned. “And he’ll be hankering to come looking for Jim here. Finish things one way or another. Gonna be messy—”

“I’ll do what I can to keep Bill outta your Pueblo tonight, Mathew,” Titus vowed. “Then we’ll get our horses started away from here at first light.”

Titus Bass dug at an itch at the nape of his neck and came away with a louse. Goddamn that Pueblo, he cursed, crushing the louse between a thumb and fingernail. Then looked again at Ceran St. Vrain. “How many horses did you callate for a blanket?”

“Six,” answered the trader.

He laid a hand on the white blanket festooned with narrow red stripes running the entire length of the thick wool fabric, which St. Vrain had unfurled down the long wooden trade counter here at Bents’ Fort on the Arkansas. “Sure it weren’t
five,
Savery?”