Death Rattle (5 page)

This bunch would have to decide what to do about their dead when it came time to skeedaddle out of there.

“Them’s the only ones I see,” a man whispered huskily.

“Where? Where?”

There was a lot of muffled shuffling when most of the sixteen who could still move on their own crawled over to the near side of the corral. Every last one of them staring quiet as deer mice at the slope while the coming light continued to give a changing texture to the hillside where the warriors had gathered throughout the previous day. At first, Scratch was not sure what he was seeing—not until enough gray seeped sidelong through the mouth of the valley to their right, exposing more of the slope.

Nothing there but some sage and stunted cedar, along with a scattering of jack pine. No horsemen, as far as he could tell.

“I see ’em!” one of the others called out a little too loud.

“There—on top of the hill!”

“That all there is?”

Plain as the coming sun that six or seven of them, no, at least eight, had stood watch atop that crest through the short summer night.

“I don’t see no more of ’em.”

Hopeful, Titus strained his eyes to be as sure as the rest. If the breast of the hill was no longer blanketed by the horsemen, if those chanting women and old men no longer bristled against the skyline, perhaps this coming sunrise would not be their last.

“Could be they’re only guards,” Baker offered as he stopped at Bass’s hip.

Scratch nodded while many of the others murmured in wonder of just what this meant. “Maybeso they hung back to see if these white men would slip off during the night. To wait up there till first light to be sure we was still here.”

He wanted to laugh a little, perhaps cry too—quickly glancing around their prison, that corral of stinking, putrefying horses and mules.

“Their magic is broken,” Bass explained barely above a whisper.

“What was that?” one of the men asked, edging closer on a knee.

“I said their medicine’s broke.”

“Let’s get,” came the first suggestion.

“On what?” another shrieked in indignation. “We ain’t got a horse one!”

“I’ll walk, goddammit.”

“That’s for sure,” Baker growled, then turned to Bass. “But where we going?”

Scratch sighed, staring down at his mule and the saddle horse, the animals he had sacrificed to save his life. “Anywhere but here.”

“Maybe north—”

“Yeah,” Bass agreed. “Back to the Green.”

“I say we light out west for Davy Crockett.”

Titus considered that a moment, then told those men all younger than he, “You fellas take off where you want to go. I can’t stop you from heading out. Only thing I’m sure of here and now … we split up, it’s just gonna make us easy pickin’s for them brownskins.”

The one with deep-set, anxious eyes stepped up to ask,
“So what’s your all-fired mighty idea? Ain’t Davy Crockett just ’bout as close as the Green?”

“May well be,” he answered. “But that fort lays yonder where I had me my first scrap with them Sioux. So I figger this country’s thick with ’em.”

Another man stepped up close. “We can get us horses at the fort.”

“How you figure they’ll have enough horses for all of us?” Baker bellowed.

“Maybe the Snakes have some ponies for us—”

Titus wagged his head dolefully. “If the Sioux are chasing through this country,” he argued, “it’s for certain the Snake aren’t anywhere this far south.”

“That means we gotta go north for horses,” Baker explained.

“Makes the most sense to me,” Bass replied, turning to look back at the hilltop where the eight horsemen waited out the coming dawn.

“How long afore we go?” one of the younger ones asked.

“Soon as we’re ready—we’ll move out,” Titus assured them.

“What about my outfit?” grumbled one.

“I’m fixing to take my truck with me,” Bass explained. “I figger you can bury what you don’t want to carry. Or you can just leave it behind for them bastards up on that hill when they come down to dig through what’s left. Red niggers left me poor more’n I care to count … so, for me, I’m walking away with my hide, hair, an’ everything I can carry—”

“Man can’t carry much!” one of them scoffed with a gust of mirthless laughter.

Pointing at a copse of cottonwood saplings at the water’s edge, Scratch said, “I figger to make me a travois.”

“You ain’t got no horse to carry your goddamned travois!” another snorted.

“I’ll drag it my own self,” Titus growled as he turned away for the carcass of his pack mule. Over his shoulder he said, “Maybeso, the rest of you figger on doing the same.”

Behind him some of the voices continued to argue among themselves. He didn’t care. Digging one of the small axes from his packs, Titus went directly for the cottonwoods. By the time he felled the first sapling, others were joining him. Three young trees was all he needed, Bass figured. Two with large, sturdy bases—and a third he could use to lash the two together in a narrow vee. After hacking the branches off the three saplings, he dragged them back up the rise to the corral.

He had done this before, he told himself.
^*
Sure, he had been younger, stronger too. But that had been winter, by damned. And he had been forced to cross the Yellowstone—wading through the icy floes on foot. He could do this. It was a matter of have to.

Don’t give no mind to the sage and cactus, the sharp stones and numerous dead-end canyons they’d bump into between here and the valley of the Green. If only he could get there, he knew in the pit of him that he’d find some Ute or Snake, trade some horses from them, and get back to Waits-by-the-Water. He’d done this before … way back when he didn’t have near this much to lose.

Man gets older, maybeso he finds he needs certain things, certain people, a little more than he ever had before. Man gets older, he’s damn lucky he’s learned what’s most important.

Dropping the three saplings, he collapsed to the ground and dragged one foot around so he could inspect the bottom of his moccasin. Then the other. They wouldn’t last long, thin as they were rubbed.

Good thing Waits had stuffed a dozen pair in his possibles before he kissed her good-bye. Already he had used at least half of them through the rest of the spring and into the summer. Moccasins wore out. Some men made repairs if they could. Bass stuffed the old ones away in his plunder. Now he’d pull them out to wear double if he could. Maybe even cut them up into strips he could tie
around his moccasins, protecting those places that suffered the most wear.

He wondered if these other men would make it across all the sage and cactus and rocks on foot. He wondered, because he knew none of them had near as much spurring them on. Because none of them had near as much to lose.

After notching the two large saplings where the cross-piece would lay atop them, he used short lengths of the half-inch rope he unknotted and yanked off the mule’s pack. The sun was emerging over the horizon by the time he started dragging everything off the elkhorn pack saddle that he had strapped onto the backs of two mules over a lot of years. Both of them dead now. Scratch vowed he would drag it along too—if he could pull it off the carcass.

Already the air was warming. It would be another scorcher of a day. And the animals would smell even worse. Beginning to rot, their juices bubbling and boiling inside, meat turned to soup in time.

“Baker,” he called out to the redhead, “cut you some meat from your horse. Back there on the rump where the muscle’s deep.”

“Meat?”

“Rest of you do the same,” he instructed the circle. “Make sure you got some meat to carry off with you. We’re gonna need something to eat ’long the way,” he explained as he dragged his knife from its scabbard.

“Shit—I aim to shoot what I need,” one of the men protested.

Another man roared with laughter, “Eat this goddamned putrefied horse when I can bag me some fresh meat?”

With a shake of his head, Titus stood and said, “What if we don’t run onto no game slow enough for a man on foot?”

A long-faced young man wagged his head. “I can allays find something to eat what’s better’n ol’ rotten horse!”

“You fellas do what you wanna,” he replied with a
shrug, turning back to the cold haunch. “I ain’t your booshway.”

Baker watched the old trapper wag his head in disgust. “Don’t pay ’em any mind, Bass.”

Scratch stopped to look at the redhead. “I ain’t got the time to fret myself over such stupid idjits.” Then leaned atop the horse carcass. “Don’t know how Frapp ever did cotton to taking along such a bunch as this to nurse.”

“Maybe Fraeb wasn’t the smartest fella himself,” Baker said as he came up to Bass’s side.

“The German had savvy,” Titus snapped angrily. “And more grit in him than you and this hull bunch all together.”

Baker was cowed. He waited several minutes, then to the old man’s back he asked, “What about them wounded?”

“If’n they can walk, they’ll walk,” Titus explained. “If they can’t, we’ll have to drag ’em on travois.” He got up slowly, working kinks out of his back. “I’ll go see how many can get along on their own.”

“You want me to help you?”

“No—start on the animals,” Scratch declared, sensing the young man was apologizing for his ill-considered remark about the dead. “We’ll wrap up the meat best we can, bury it deep in our plunder. Be sure you cut deep to take out your steaks—down where it ain’t started to go bad and turn to soup in the sun yesterday.”

Three of the five wounded told him they’d try to walk. Another with a bad shoulder wound didn’t figure he was strong enough to pull his own plunder. And the last one was so bad off he would have to lay in a travois, a strip of folded rawhide between his teeth to clench down on every time he was moved. He wouldn’t be long; but a gut wound was a nasty, slow way for a man to go. Bass divided that handful’s meager goods among the rest.

By late morning Fraeb’s ragtag bunch was ready to pull out. He had gotten the German’s men to agree that they would all take a turn at pulling the wounded man as they plodded north. His would be the heaviest travois.

“If you was bad off like him, I know you’d want the others to drag you outta here.”

There had been no dissent.

Kneeling within the narrow end of the vee he had constructed of the saplings, Bass stood, raising his travois to start forward. He took the head of the march, turning to look over his shoulder at the skyline where the warriors had dismounted now, watching the white men. Where the creek valley took a bend, Bass looked back at the hilltop one last time. The Sioux were gone.

Now this bunch could really start to worry.

Likely, those scouts had gone off to tell the rest of the village that the white men had abandoned their fort. From here on out, when the Sioux attacked, the horsemen would have an easier time of it riding over the trappers. With every step Bass worked to convince himself that they’d corral up quickly within what baggage and packs they had strung out on the many travois, doing their best to hold the warriors off any way they could. For as long as they could.

The sun seemed to hang in the sky that long afternoon, unmoving like a stubborn mule. That comparison made him remember. Step by painful step, damn—if it didn’t make him remember. Try as he might to squeeze out the hurt that first part of the day, Bass finally gave in and let the tortured remembrance of Hannah course through him like the burning sting of a poison coursing through his veins.

Even when he called for a halt and the bunch dropped their travois, every man collapsing into the dust and the sage, huffing and pulling at their canteens of tepid, alkali-laced water. The first few times he reminded them only to wet their lips, to wash their tongues and the insides of their mouths with one swish of water rather than guzzling at their dwindling supply of moisture. Especially since they had no idea where they would end up come sundown. Near a creek or not. Soon enough he gave up trying to convince them to conserve their water.

A mountain man wasn’t supposed to worry about
water. But … a man didn’t have to if he had a horse to cover ground. However, the going was slow on foot.

No telling how far they had come by the time the sun had sunk and the long shadows were no more. That’s when they started searching in earnest for a place to wait out the night.

Scouring every crease lying between the hills, the trappers still came up dry—every creekbed nothing more than a sandy strip of dust. Then as twilight was sucking the last of the light from the sky, they spotted a dark hollow in the rolling tableland ahead. Dotting the hollow was a sprinkling of brush,-vegetation barely bigger than the sparse sagebrush that struggled to survive in this high desert. Spread out in a wide vee behind him, the trappers lunged step-by-step toward the dark, beckoning green.

Reaching the coarse grass and stunted willow, Bass dropped the travois from his weary hands turned to numb, stonelike claws. Then he went to his knees in weary exhaustion as the first of the others stumbled to a halt around him.

Crawling out of the vee, he stayed on hands and knees, searching for the source of the seep by sound, feeling along for the growing moisture beneath his fingertips. There it was, at last. No more than an oozy seep, and a little warm at that, but it was water.

Rocking forward, Bass put his face down into the shallow pan-sized spring and lapped at the wetness. It was bitter with salts, but it was water. And damn if it weren’t cool.

“Gimme your canteen,” he demanded of a half-breed Frenchman, the first to come up at his shoulder.

Once it was filled, he scrambled out of the way and let the others at the seep while he lurched over to the travois where the dying man lay groaning. His parched lips were swollen and cracked. His leathery face sunburnt and coated with a fine layer of alkali dust.

“I brung you some water.”

But the man didn’t open his eyes. Didn’t respond. Nothing more than the quiver of those lips as he mumbled unintelligible sounds. Kneeling over him, Bass
pressed the narrow end of the gourd against the swollen lips and slowly poured the springwater into the man’s slack mouth. More than half of it dribbled down his bearded cheek, and he sputtered so badly on the rest that Bass gave up.