Death Rattle (66 page)

While the Mexicans’ preparations for the approaching
Nativity was nothing new to Waits-by-the-Water, all of the decorations and traditional practices were strange and curious to Magpie, Flea, and Jackrabbit too. In those last few days before the Catholic population celebrated the birth of their Savior, the priests conducted a procession every morning, then again every afternoon. Children sang as they paraded through town, marching for the square and the cathedral, carrying boughs of piñón or cedar, some hoisting platforms where carved and painted effigies of the holy family sat in plain view of the throngs who crowded the
placita.
It reminded Scratch’s children of the Crows’ annual tobacco celebration, or the revelry at the return of a victorious war party.

How Titus loved to stand on the porch of Paddock’s store and witness the grand parade twice a day with his youngsters. Too, how he took so much fun and satisfaction in secretly buying the three of them and Waits little presents, sneaking into the shop’s back room to wrap up those gifts with colored paper Looks Far provided, tying them up with twine. But after all the building anticipation, the special day came and went so quickly—a day when the shops remained closed and the Paddocks slipped from the house early to attend an early mass.

“It’s helped me some,” Josiah admitted later that morning when his family returned to have breakfast and open their presents. “Not that I understand much of what the priests say in the masses—hell, I’ve learned Flathead and Mexican too, but the tongue them priests use I can’t savvy at all.”

“It helped being a Catholic like all of them, eh?” Bass asked. “Mathew Kinkead told me you’d taken the vows.”

“There’s some Americans in the village—a few anyway—say they don’t plan on sticking around down here for long anyway,” Paddock explained. “Just make some money and be gone back to the States. As for the rest of us, we’ve made a home here and plan on raising our families in Taos. I hope the Mexicans and them Pueblos look at us different now that we made ourselves a part of this place.”

“Besides, with having a Injun wife and half-breed young’uns,” Bass agreed, “you ought’n fit right in.”

Paddock grinned as Looks Far brought them steaming cups of Mexican cocoa. “My family’s home is here now. Mexico wasn’t bad to me for them years after you left. But now that this here is American territory—it suits me just fine. There was a few tense times when General Kearny pulled out for California, but things simmered down all right. We’ll just give it time and life’ll go right back to the way things were before the army marched in and throwed the Mexican government out.”

Six days later Looks Far Woman came home early in the afternoon, with Joshua and Naomi in tow, the three of them carrying long garlands they had constructed of gay paper flowers tied to thick strands of brown baling twine. In the main parlor of their small home, Looks Far and Waits-by-the-Water helped the youngsters hang the garlands while baking fragrant treats for the celebration planned for that night and into the following day.

“Just what are you having your friends come over to hurraw about?” Titus asked Looks Far.

She stood clutching one of the garlands for Joshua, who was up on a chair, hanging the strand in long loops over nails he had just hammered into the adobe bricks near the low roofbeams. Looks Far stared at him as if Bass had lost his mind. “Josiah wants everything to be right for you, Titus.”

“For me? Why all this fuss for me?”

Now she squinted her eyes at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Why—Josiah, he invited many of our American friends to come here—to help celebrate your birthday with us!”

“M-my birthday? I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed.

Looks Far glanced at Waits, finding the Crow woman smiling with great approval. Then she said to the old trapper, “You forgot your own birthday?”

“Can’t ’member the last time I took special notice of that day, no,” he answered.

From his perch on the chair, Joshua asked, “How old you gonna be, sir?”

“Well, now,” he delayed thoughtfully, staring at the floor, a bit baffled as to just where to start. Then he looked at Looks Far to inquire, “What year this gonna be—when it turns a new one at midnight?”

“Why … it will be 1847, Titus.”

“So lemme see,” he sighed, sinking onto the floor and holding his palms up, so he could begin counting.

Scratch had gone through folding down all his fingers twice when Looks Far came over to kneel before him.

“You want us to count the years for you?”

He beamed up at her, extremely grateful. “I’d be real ’bliged.”

“Joshua, come over here and help Mr. Bass figure out how old he’ll be tonight.”

Clambering down from the chair, the youth grabbed a thick hunk of chalk and a small slate board from a wide, wood shelf, then settled on the floor right in front of Titus and crossed his legs, mirroring the trapper. “All right. It’s gonna be 1847 at midnight tonight,” Joshua began, writing down those numbers on the slate. Then he looked up at the old man. “When were you born, Mr. Bass?”

“I told you afore, Joshua—I want you to call me Titus.”

“Yes, sir, Titus.”

Scratch cleared his throat. “I was born on the first day of 1794.”

Joshua noticeably rocked back in astonishment. “That’s a long time ago, Mr., er … Titus.”

“1794
was
a long, long time ago—no argeement on that.”

Then he cocked his head to the side to watch how Joshua scratched out that year right below the first four numbers. After a line was drawn beneath them both, the youngster went to ciphering, arriving at one new number at a time—but, to Scratch’s surprise, Joshua held up his slate when he had only two numbers written below the line.

“You’ll turn fifty-three tonight.”

He swallowed at the mere weight of that figure. Then
looked up at those gathered near, everyone staring directly at him as if waiting for him to react to the news. “Hell. I can’t ever ’member knowing a soul near as old as that. ’Cept for my grandpap, I durn well may be older’n anyone I ever knowed!”

Just past sundown they began to show up at the door—single men, and those with families too. They slipped off their heavy woolen coats, mufflers, and scarves, disposing of them and their winter caps in the corner of a small bedroom at the back of the house. Soon there were enough people crowded in the front parlor that some of the guests began to trickle over into other rooms of the Paddock residence.

“Hola,
Sheriff!” Josiah called out to the man just coming in the door with his wife, a small boy, and a chilling gust of cold. Paddock grabbed Titus and Waits by their elbows as he had done several times before, escorting the two of them to greet every new guest.

Looks Far embraced the man, then helped him off with his coat before shuffling away for the kitchen once more, chatting with the sheriff’s wife as the two of them threaded their way through the gathering with the young child in tow.

“Josiah!” the new arrival cheered, holding out his hand. “Thanks for inviting me.”

“Sheriff, I’d like you to meet my old, and dear friend—Titus Bass,” Paddock started the introductions.

“I’m Stephen Lee,” the sheriff declared. “And Josiah here’s told me a lot about your days together. Heard tell of you my own self more’n a time or two.”

That name sounded familiar, then he found the peg to hang it on as they shook hands. “Wasn’t you hooked up with Jim Beckwith for a time?”

“Threw in together to do some trading up at the Pueblo a few years back,” Lee explained. “Things didn’t turn out the way I figured they would so I sold out to Beckwith and come back down here.”

“So you was out here some time before giving the Pueblo a try?”

“I trapped more’n my share,” Lee admitted. “Ran
with outfits working out of Taos afore I moved up to the Arkansas with Beckwith. After I sold out to Beckwith it seemed the natural thing to do was get on back down here to San Fernando. You see, close to twenty years ago when I first come to the village, I’d spotted a purty gal I just couldn’t take my eyes off. Ever since we was married, I been putting down some roots.”

Titus squeezed Waits against him and said, “Women have the knack of doing that to a man if you’re not careful!”

“You come in for the winter?” Lee asked as Josiah stepped back up with a clay cup for the sheriff.

“From the looks of it, we’re here till the weather fairs off enough, maybe come March,” Scratch explained. “Then we’re on the tramp for home.”

“Where’s home?”

“My wife’s Crow,” he said. “It’s her home.”

“From the sound you just gave it, Crow country may not be your home.”

Titus thought a moment before he replied, “Just about anywhere there ain’t a village or settlement or town is my home, Sheriff.”

“Please call me Stephen.”

“All right,” he agreed. “Ain’t you used to folks calling you sheriff by now?”

“Haven’t been county sheriff but a few months really,” Lee confessed. “Kearny came through late last summer—and turned everything on its head around here. Jesus, can you believe this is American territory now, Josiah? No American fur hunter is gonna have to swear allegiance to Mexico, not ever again.”

“Damn good thing too, Sheriff Lee!” Tom Tobin cried as he stepped up to the group, hoisting his clay cup over his head.

“A toast to America’s newest territory!” John Albert cheered as he joined them.

All round the room, guests stopped in the middle of their conversations to hold up their cups and glasses, some calling out “here, here,” while others huzzahed lustily and the cups clinked, good wishes being shared.

“There’s my daughter an’ her husband,” Lee said as a young couple came out of the kitchen. “I’ll speak at you boys a li’l later.”

Paddock bent to whisper at Bass’s ear. “Stephen’s daughter there—Maria—she’s named after her mother: Maria Luz Tafoya, a prominent Taos family. Li’l Maria got married herself couple of years ago.”

For a moment Scratch studied the pretty girl across the room as her father approached and they hugged. Bass said, “Two years ago? Jehoshaphat! She don’t look much older’n Magpie is right now, Josiah!”

“She was old enough by Mexican custom,” Paddock disclosed. “She’s sixteen now.”

“You’re telling me her father an’ mother give her away when she was
fourteen?”
he asked incredulously.

With a nod, Josiah said, “The Mexicans marry ’em off awful young down here. But she married a good American boy. Came out here from Missouri with his folks not long before they married. Name’s Joseph Pley.”

“I can see I better keep an eye on my daughter till it comes time to get outta here an’ back to Crow country!” Scratch commented as Paddock drained his cup.

“Simeon!” Josiah shouted across the room, holding up the empty clay cup. “You’d better open up that next case of your lightning before all these tongues dry out and won’t wag anymore!”

“Turley’s here?” Tom Tobin asked.

“Hell, yes! I asked all the foreigners our Mexican friends hate so badly to come tonight!” Paddock replied.

Albert pointed out two men at the middle of the room. “An’ we all ain’t ’Mericans here—there’s two Frenchies the Mex boys seem to hate just as much as they hate us.”

“Antoine LeBlanc works for Turley,” Paddock explained. “And the other’s Jean-Baptiste Charlefoux. He’s the one there with his Mexican wife and their daughter. She’s a pretty girl, just turned seven.”

A loud pounding thundered on the plank door. Josiah tore it open and immediately backed inside as a pair of men stepped into the house. Suspended between them was a huge brass kettle. Both called out to the crowd,
asking the guests to step aside and clear a path as they slowly made their way to the kitchen.

“What you have there, Asa?” asked Charles Town when he came up to raise the kettle’s brass lid.

“What the hell you think it is?” the older man growled.

Bending at the waist, Town sniffed beneath the lid, drinking in the fragrance. “Your famous New Mexican eggnog!”

Another cheer went up in the room.

“You didn’t shut down your cantina for the rest of the night, did you, Asa?” Tom Tobin inquired.

“Got some help minding the bar for me till I get back,” replied the tavern keeper as they pushed on for the kitchen with their eggnog. “Already got sign of being a busy hurraw.”

“That’s Asa Estes,” Josiah explained as he slipped up to Bass’s elbow once more. “Owns a watering hole not far from here. A good man—Missouri bred. Been out here for several years now, and does he make a nog that’ll pin your ears back to your ass if’n you aren’t careful!”

“Just look at you, Josiah Paddock,” Bass said proudly, beaming once more at his old friend.

The younger man grinned. “What you mean by that, ol’ man?”

“Why, here you got Simeon Turley who makes some damned fine lightning, I must say. And you got this fella Asa Estes comes by your shindig with his famous eggnog,” Scratch explained. “It’s plain to see that you’re a man who has some fine friends. Friends who sure as hell hold you in high regard, son.”

Laying his long, muscular arm over the shorter man’s shoulder, Josiah spoke close to Bass’s ear. “If there’s one man—one
friend
—who taught me the real value of friendship, who taught me that my family and my friends were my true wealth in life … then you are that man, Titus Bass.”

He looked up at Paddock, his own eyes clouding with
sentiment. “Damn, if you don’t know how to make a man proud.”

“Cornelio, c’mon over here and meet a friend of mine from way, way up north,” Josiah called out.

A thin-boned, dark-skinned Mexican stepped over, and Scratch recognized him for the man who had helped Asa Estes carry the kettle into the house.

“This here’s a good friend of mine, Cornelio Vigil,” Josiah announced. “And this is Titus Bass.”

Scratch held out his hand and said, “Good to meet any friend of Josiah’s, Señor Vigil.”

“Please to call me Cornelio,” the man replied. “We are friends now too.”

They shook as Paddock went on to explain, “Cornelio was appointed as our district attorney by General Kearny.”

“Sounds like you got handed a tough job,” Bass commented. “Bet it keeps you busy nowadays, bringing justice down on all them folks gonna cause trouble for the new American officials?”