Death Rattle

34

Looking back on his life, many were the times when Scratch knew there was no other reason for him shinnying out of danger by the skin of his teeth but for the mighty hand of something larger than himself. With his delivery from the winter wilderness, he couldn’t help but think that he was being told something.

Now the hard part would be trying to find out just what he was being told.

At that dark, early-morning hour, men from that overland-bound camp of Mormons carried Titus Bass back to the Pueblo. With more dogs barking alarm, they banged on the open gate, throwing their voices into the empty placita, finally arousing the first of the post’s inhabitants to appear at a darkened doorway.

“But they’ve got the army down there!” exclaimed Robert Fisher the moment the wagon driver announced he’d brought in a survivor who had stumbled in with news from Taos that the Mexicans and Indians were butchering all the Americans they could get their hands on.

“Has this man been drinking?” Fisher asked, refusing to believe what few details the Mormons had already learned from the lips of the old mountain man.

Then the trader hobbled from the placita, a capote wrapped over his faded longhandles, hurrying to the wagon where he finally laid eyes on the messenger. And stared a moment.

“You ’member me, don’t you, Fisher?”

Suddenly, the trader’s face brightened with recognition. His face went gray with worry, knowing this was no drunken prank. “Met you years ago. You’re Mathew’s old friend.”

“I … I come to tell of some tumble news—”

“Kinkead!” Fisher interrupted as he wheeled about and screamed through the open gate. “Kinkead! Manz! Get up, everyone! Get up!”

One last time the trader glanced at the old trapper as Scratch started scooting off the end of the springless wagon; then Fisher bolted away, shouting, “There ain’t an American left alive in Taos!”

Within seconds the other traders, their wives and children, hangers-on and passers-through, were staggering into the darkened courtyard. Bleary-eyed and mumbling as they shared the shocking news brought by the men from Mormon Town, the crowd inched close as Mathew Kinkead lunged up to confirm what his trading partner had already learned from the man who had just appeared out of the winter wilderness.

“Josiah? His family?”

“They was safe in the hills when I left ’em few days back.”

“What you figger we oughtta do, Scratch?”

Titus wagged his head, looking around at those worried faces in the dark, suddenly aware of just how fruitless his journey here might have been—

“Grab that Mexican!” a voice suddenly cried out.

There was a brief, fierce scuffle as traders and trappers and freeloaders scampered after a pair of Mexicans who were attempting to slink out the gate unnoticed. Both were immediately pitched to the ground and pummeled until Francisco Conn and Joseph Manz put a stop to the beating. Fisher and another man dragged a third Mexican out from behind a stack of firewood. All three stood shoulder to shoulder in their homespun jerga, pleading in Spanish to the Mexican wives of the Pueblo traders, cowering as the Americans argued in loud, strident voices over just what to do with their prisoners.

“Lock ’em in the fur hold,” Kinkead ordered. “But first off see there ain’t nothing in there for ’em to get their hands on. Them greasers can rot in there till we know what’s become of Taos.”

Men scattered this way and that, lamps were lit, and Americans returned with rope to tie up their prisoners, ankles and wrists, before they hobbled away with their handlers to the tiniest hovel in the Pueblo.

It wasn’t long before Titus himself was under a roof, using a brass ladle to slurp water from an olla, a tall clay water jug, and watching as strips of last night’s meat was laid on a plate before him. Meanwhile others rolled up their colchónes, those thin mattresses stuffed with hay, stacking them against the wall. Split wood was laid on the coals in the small trading room’s open-faced oven, quickly driving the chill from the place while more and more men—traders, trappers, and Mormons too—crowded in hip to hip to hear the details of the bloody rebellion.

Mathew asked, “Beckwith’s old partner?”

Scratch swallowed that bite of dried meat. “Sheriff Lee?”

Kinkead nodded. “He had a Mexican wife. A daughter, and a young son.”

“We brung his wife out. The boy too,” Scratch explained. Then he wagged his head. “Don’t know about the daughter.”

“She was married to an American,” Mathew groaned.

“Lee didn’t say nothin’ ’bout her. Only asked us to get his wife and boy out.”

George Simpson surmised, “Maybe they weren’t in town when the trouble brewed.”

“Lee join up with you and Paddock later on?” Kinkead asked.

“ ’Less he got away north after I started for the Arkansas,” Titus declared, “I don’t figger he slipped outta Taos with his hair.”

“Lee,” one of the nameless men whispered the sheriff’s name in the silence of that room filled only with the quiet sounds of breathing and the crackling fire.

“They’ve gotta pay,” another man growled.

A new voice vowed defiantly, “We’ll make ’em pay.”

“There ain’t ’nough of you to whip them niggers,” Scratch grumbled, hauling them all up short.

“We gotta do something,” Mathew said.

“What ’bout Turley?” Fisher asked.

Bass dug at his cheek whiskers with a dirty fingernail still crusted with a dark crescent of the doe’s blood. “Last I saw of the Arroyo Hondo, the greasers and them Pueblo niggers was shootin’ up his place. ’Less any of Turley’s men got out right when they was jumped, I don’t figger they stood a chance again’ so many.”

Joseph Manz moaned, “Turley too!”

One of the faces stabbed forward into the firelight as the stranger said, “Leastways, the governor hisself was down to Santa Fe. When he hears what they done to his half-breed young’uns, he’ll be riding right out front of them dragoons!”

“That’s right!” a new voice cheered. “Governor Bent will see ever’ last one of them niggers hang for what they done!”

“Charles Bent was in Taos,” Bass told them.

The crowded room fell to an awestruck hush.

“Ch-charlie Bent too?”

“Don’t know for certain,” Titus declared. “But that was the plan Sheriff Lee heard tell of. The greasers was waitin’ till the governor was back in Taos afore they let the wolf out to howl.”

The quiet was oppressive again, for the longest time. So quiet, Bass could hear one of the Mexicans calling out from the tiny fur room on the far side of the quadrangle, begging for his life, whimpering and sobbing, while one of the other prisoners cursed his cowardice.

“Someone’s gotta ride down the river and tell William ’bout his brother,” Kinkead said softly.

Pounding his fist on the table, surprising them all, Manz said, “Maybe there’s enough fellas down there!”

“Damn right! They can meet us on the trail,” Kinkead replied.

“None of you realize what you’re goin’ up against,” Titus declared. “There ain’t ’nough of you here, not near ’nough down there at the Picketwire. Shit!” he exploded with exasperation, slinging his arm to the side, sweeping the half-empty pewter plate from the table where it clattered into a corner by the adobe fireplace. Hushing them all.

Bass let his head collapse into his hands, miserable. “I never should’ve left ’em. Why in hell did I ever think comin’ up here was gonna do any good?”

Kinkead had his arm across his old friend’s shoulder. “I’m going, Scratch. My wife’s got family down there. I owe it to her to find out what’s happened.”

“You’ll get yourself kill’t,” Scratch said as he raised his head and looked around the room. “All of you. Go ride in there and that mob of angry niggers cut you into pieces with their farm tools.”

Kinkead angrily seized the front of Bass’s buckskin shirt in one fist. “What the hell you come to tell us this news of killing in Taos if we wasn’t supposed to do nothing ’bout it?”

Bass locked his gnarled hand around Mathew’s wrist and gently tugged it from his shirt. “Only thing you can do, is be down there—waitin’—when them soldiers come marching up from Santy Fee.”

Kinkead spread his big bear paw of a hand on Titus’s cheek, apologizing with his eyes for exploding. Scratch smiled, saying quietly, “ ’S’all right, Mathew. I know just how you feel when you ain’t sure how the hell to do right by your family. When you don’t know which way to turn.”

In the end, they decided to hurry down for the valley of the San Fernandez … where they’d wait in the hills for more of their number to ride down from Bents Fort. All of these frontiersmen and traders vowed to keep watch south of the village for the expected approach of the army.

With a young courier bundled against the frightening temperatures and carrying a satchel of dried meat to sustain him on his way, word was dispatched to William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain downriver at their adobe fortress. Then efforts turned to preparing for their own march south into the land of the rebellion.

“The Mormons ain’t coming,” Fisher explained to those in the placita when he returned two hours later as the horses were being saddled. “Their leaders say they hardly have ’nough men left after the rest marched off to fight with Kearny in California.”

“We’ll do what we can with what we got,” Kinkead vowed grimly.

At sunup they moved out for the valley of San Fernandez de Taos.

And by the late afternoon of the third day, halting only to rest the horses for a few of those darkest hours each night, that pitifully small posse from the Pueblo was within striking distance of the Mexican settlements, when Bass spotted two riders coming down the slope of the foothills. When one of the horsemen tore off his hat and began to wave it at the end of his arm, Scratch was no longer unsure.

“That Paddock?” asked Kinkead.

“An’ I bet that’s Joshua with ’im. The boy’s growed into a fine lad.”

Mathew reached over and clamped his mitten on Titus’s forearm. “That means your family’s safe, Scratch. They’re all safe.”

Bass turned to gaze at Kinkead. Knowing how Mathew had suffered through the loss of a wife. His own eyes began to brim so much he had to blink hot tears away to see clearly as those two distant horsemen kicked their animals into a lope, hooves spewing up high, cascading rooster tails of snow as they hurried down the slope toward the motley party of rescuers.

“I ain’t never coming back to Mexico, Mathew,” Scratch vowed, gazing beyond those two distant riders, searching the foothills where his family was hiding. “I ain’t never setting a foot down here again.”

Both of those mongrel Indian dogs yipped and howled at his return, jumping and leaping around the feet of his horse until Scratch finally vaulted out of the saddle and caught all three of his children in his arms at once.

Oh, how good they felt against him, especially the way little Flea placed his tiny hands on his father’s cheeks and said in uncertain English, “I know you come back, Popo. I know you come.”

That’s when Scratch’s eye climbed over the small child’s head, finding his wife patiently waiting, wrapped in her blanket, tears streaming down her soot-smudged cheeks. He stood among his children, then lunged toward her, enfolding his wife in his arms. Both of them breathless at this reunion.

“I always knew I’d make it back to you,” he declared in a whisper.

Her cheek against his neck, Waits-by-the-Water said, “I always knew you would make it back to me. But … the days and nights—they don’t grow any easier without you here.”

Around them now the trappers, frontiersmen, and traders from the Pueblo were dismounting noisily. That big bear, Mathew Kinkead, wrapped up the Paddock children two at a time in his fierce embrace before he came over to kneel in front of the three youngsters he did not know.

He said, “You must belong to Titus Bass.”

“Ti-Tuzz, yes,” Magpie repeated in her father’s unfamiliar tongue.

As Scratch and Waits stepped up, Mathew ripped off his mitten and took the girl’s small hand in his big paw, caressing it. “What is your name?”

She started to speak it in Crow, then stopped and said it in English.

“Magpie,” Kinkead repeated. “That’s a pretty name for such a pretty young lady. Do you know you were born in my house?”^*

“You are Mateo?” she asked haltingly, her eyes flicking to her parents.

“Yes. I am Mateo Kinkead.”

“I am Magpie,” she said again in English, with more certainty now. “Born in Mateo’s lodge, in Ta-house.”

Kinkead stood, resting a hand on Flea’s shoulder. His eyes touched Bass’s. A lone tear slipped from one eye. “I remember that night … a long time ago, Magpie. In a time and a Taos long, long ago.”

Behind the hills far across the valley the sun was easing its way down on the hills with winter’s aching quickness.

Titus turned and stepped over to Paddock, putting his arm around his old friend’s shoulder. “You have ’nough meat here to feed all these new mouths tonight?”

“I think so,” Josiah answered. “Joshua’s become a pretty good shot over the last few days.”

“Just like his pa,” Titus said. “You give a lad a chance, and he’ll show you the man he’s made of, Josiah.”

That night at their fire Scratch told again of his journey north on horseback and on foot until he stumbled onto Mormon Town in the dark and was delivered to the Pueblo. And once the youngest of the children were tucked away in their blankets and robes and fast asleep, the men gathered at a nearby fire, where they began to talk in low tones of just what the next days and weeks might bring.

“We waited this long,” Josiah cheered those men who had marched down from the Arkansas. “We can wait till more help gets here from Bents Fort, and those soldiers come up from Santa Fe afore we make any moves to take on them butchers.”

“Then we’re gonna give back hurt for hurt,” Mathew vowed.

Paddock turned to Titus, reaching out to slap a hand on the old trapper’s knee. “There may not be much left of our house when we get back to it—but you’re welcome under our roof till spring gets here.”

“Spring’s a long, long ways off, Josiah,” Scratch said, patting the back of Paddock’s hand before he stood. “I’m laying my head down for to sleep now. Come morning, I’ll be off hunting meat for the camp.”

That next, short winter’s day went all the more quickly with the men coming and going—a few daring to ride off to the south with Kinkead, while most spread out into the hills in search of game. Each time a hunter dropped a deer, he returned to camp, warming himself by the fire before he ventured out again to continue his hunt.

Having his family around him once more, lying beside his wife in the stillness of the night, Scratch knew … even before Paddock, Kinkead, and the others began making their plans for retaking Taos once the army arrived. Scratch knew.

“They should’a been up here by now,” one of the men grumbled.

“Maybe them soldiers already have,” Kinkead ventured. “And they found out there’s more’n they can fight by themselves.”

Bass nodded. “You ’member what we saw at Turley’s, Josiah?”

“I do.”

Scratch looked at a few of those around the fire. “That mob of angry niggers outnumbered this bunch by more’n ten to one—”

“With our guns, each of us is worth more’n ten of them greasers any day!” one of the Pueblo men interrupted sharply.

Leaning toward the man, Titus said, “But Paddock will tell you same as me: That big mob we see’d at Turley’s was only part of ’em. Josiah, tell these fellas how many of them Injuns live in the Pueblo.”

“Likely there’s more than a thousand,” Paddock confirmed dolefully. “But there’s no real telling. No one in Taos ever counted. Could be a lot more.”

“An’ ever’ one’s got his blood up because they’ve had it easy so far, tearin’ Americans apart, piece by piece,” Titus warned as he noticed Waits-by-the-Water sliding down inside their robes at a fire nearby. “You ain’t takin’ Taos back easy. Not even if Savary brings down a hull shitteree of riflemen from his fort to join up with all of them dragoons coming up from Santa Fe.”

“We can do it, Scratch,” Josiah prodded.

Titus stood, hankering for bed and a stretch of uninterrupted sleep … ready for it all to be behind him. “Maybe you can, Josiah. But—this ain’t my fight. It’s yours.”

The stunned silence followed him as he inched toward the next fire where his wife and children lay curled up in their bedding. By the time he pulled the blankets up to his neck, and Waits nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder—he knew the murmured whispers involved him.

“He’ll feel differ’nt come morning,” one of the voices said.

Another confided, “Come tomorrow, he’ll be better.”

Titus Bass slipped out of the robes well before first light. He’d always had trouble sleeping the night before a long journey was to begin.

He was cinching the pack saddle on the last Cheyenne horse, tightening it down on the saddle pad, when he felt the hand laid upon his shoulder. Scratch turned, peering up into the ruddy face.

“I got the feeling this will likely be the last time I ever see you, Titus Bass,” the younger man said with difficulty.

Scratch finished looping the cinch strap, then turned to Paddock. “Man was never meant to know what’s in store for ’im, Josiah.”

“But you and I both know,” Paddock declared. “After you went off to your robes last night, Mathew told me just what you’d said to him when you spotted me and Joshua riding down off the hills. Said you wasn’t ever coming back here again.”

He sighed. “I’d be lying to you if I said I was.”

“You’re leaving without joining in the fight to get Taos back?”

“Like I tol’t you last night—it ain’t my fight, Josiah. For all the good days and happy nights I spent in Taos … there’s ’nough dark memories that the bad comes out weighin’ all the more’n good when you hang ’em in the balance. I think it’s time I paid attention.”

“Paid attention,” Paddock sighed. “Like I did when I figured the time had come for me to quit the mountains.”

“You get to hear Lady Fate cacklin’ at your back only so long afore she slips up behin’t you and sinks a knife atween your shoulder blades.”

“Taos is all I’ve got now, Scratch—”

“You don’t owe no man no apology for wanting to go back into that village and clean up the mess been made of the life you made for yourself, Josiah,” he declared. “Least of all me. I’ll be the last man to say how ’nother man should live, where he should draw the line an’ make his stand.”

“What you think of me has always mattered, ol’ man.”

Scratch smiled, feeling how that tugged at his heart. “How you thought of me allays meant the world to me too.”

“There ain’t a chance in hell of talkin’ you outta leaving this morning, is there?”

He stared up at Paddock’s face, really noticing for the first time how deeply the wrinkles and lines had carved his old friend’s face with character. “No, Josiah.”

“Then,” Josiah said quietly, glancing at the ground while he dragged the back of his hand under his nose, “I suppose you best tell me what I can do to help you get ready for the trail.”

Bass laid his hand on Paddock’s shoulder. “Afore we load up these here packhorses, what say the two of us mosey back to the fire an’ have us a last cup of coffee together, Josiah.”

As much as the two old friends kept themselves busy with tying up bundles of baggage and seeing that youngsters ate their breakfast and that bedding was brushed free of snow, then lashed onto one of the three remaining Cheyenne packhorses, there was a weighty tension that grew all the more palpable as the minutes galloped past, one by one, drawing them both closer and closer to the moment of that final farewell.

Finally … with the sun’s hidden radiance beginning to turn the snowy valley to a pale, blood-kissed pink, the men and women and children circled around those riders who stood beside their eight Cheyenne horses.

“You two’ll take good care of one another,” Scratch said as he finished hugging Mathew Kinkead.

The hulking giant of a man had tears in his eyes. “We done it afore, Scratch. Josiah and me can do it again.”

“Take care of that new family of your’n, Mathew,” Titus asked. “They deserve to have you make it back home.”

Kinkead swiped some fingers beneath both eyes as he took a step backward. “I know my own self just how it feels to lose someone so special—like my Rosa. I ain’t ever gonna make my family go through nothing like that on account of me.”

“Maybe you’ll sashay up north someday?”

Mathew shrugged. “You never know which way the winds’ll blow a man, Titus Bass. When I first come west, never figgered I’d ever quit the mountains. Never figgered I’d raise buffler calves either. Hell, never thought I’d be a trader on the Arkansas … so who knows now where I might end up.”

“Till then, Mathew Kinkead,” Titus snorted away some tears, “you watch your back trail.”

The big man started to speak again, but couldn’t—so he quickly turned on his heel, spearing his way through the group of frontiersmen who stood as witness to this painful parting.

“There’ll always be a place at my table, a dry spot under my roof, for your family, Scratch,” Josiah said as he stepped up to Bass’s saddle horse.

Titus glanced a moment at how Looks Far and Waits hugged and sobbed, reluctant to let go now that they had again been through so much together. Then he explained, “If there’s anything I can count on, it’s you, Josiah Paddock. Still, if you’re ever to lay eyes on me again, it won’t be in no settlement or village or town—be it Mexican or American.” He began to choke with emotion, “Goddamn the settlements: they’ll likely be the death of me.”

Paddock tried futilely to laugh a little as he said, “I remember how the last time you left Taos, you told me, ‘Damn the settlements while there’s still buffler in the mountains.’ ”

“I’d sooner die, Josiah—than have anything to do with where folks gather up elbow to elbow, side by side by side. There’ll be no Saint Louis, no Oregon, no Pueblo, an’ no Taos for this here child. Not for what days I still got left me. Where folks plop down right next to one another … there’s bound to be trouble raise its head, just sure as that sun’s coming to light this day.”

Paddock confessed, “Last night I laid there thinking—how in so many ways, I wished it were years ago now, Scratch. An’ we was back in the mountains. Living and laughing—”

“Much as I wish it could be so, Josiah.… that was a time just ain’t ever gonna be again. There’s forts on the Arkansas an’ the South Platte. I’ve see’d where emigrants been cutting wagon ruts all the way from Westport landing clear out to Oregon country. An’ I’m afraid when they got that territory all crowded up out there, them settlers gonna come washing back here to fill in what country they passed through on their way to Oregon.”

“With all that’s changing around you,” Paddock admitted, “Titus Bass isn’t a man much ready to change.”

Scratch shook his head. “A man either figures he can live all crowded up with folks—with trouble a constant shadow lurking just outside his door … or he sets his sights on taking those he loves off away from the shove and clutter of so many others.”

“Listen, Scratch,” Josiah said with a sudden breathlessness, “I haven’t talked about this with Looks Far, but maybe you should take her and our children north with you.” He blurted it out in a gush. “They’ll be safer with you than they’ll be in these hills while we got some bloody work left to do before Taos is safe for women and children again—”

“No, Josiah,” he interrupted, clamping both hands on the taller man’s shoulder. “What’s your family gonna do ’thout you—their husband and father?”

Bass watched the worry darken Paddock’s eyes, recognized the pain there, and sensed the stab of guilt anew for that time years ago when he had abandoned his own loved ones to steal some California horses.

“You’re all the family they have, Josiah. There is no other kin for any of ’em to turn to down here. If they come with me, and you never find us in Crow country, they’ll never know for the rest of their days what really become of you. I learned firsthand that’s no way to leave things be with the ones you love.”

“Every now and then”—and Paddock wagged his head—“it gets real hard for me to know what to do.”

“Right or wrong, Josiah—live or die, you keep your family by your side. Now that you’re gonna make Taos safe for families again, you keep Looks Far and all your young’uns close … that way they can hug you if you drive back all them Mex and Pueblo murderers. Or, they can hold you in their arms if you’re terrible wounded. They can even bury you proper if your time’s been called. But one way or the other, Josiah—your family deserves to know.”

“You’d never be happy anywhere but that north country,” Paddock said after he embraced Bass again. “Back in your mountains.”

“That’s why I’m takin’ my family home.”

“Sometime last night,” Josiah said, “I thought on just what you should name the land where it is you belong.”

“What you figger I should call it?”

Paddock blinked, and said, “The used-to-be-country.”

Scratch repeated the words in a soft whisper. “Used-to-be-country.”

Then he sighed and signaled his children to mount up. Titus cupped his two hands together and hoisted young Jackrabbit onto the buffalo-hide pad draped over the wide back of a gentle horse.

“Flea,” Bass instructed in Crow, turning to his older boy, “you take your little brother and start these three packhorses down to the valley. Rest of us should catch up to you by the time you turn north. Follow the tracks. They’re plain enough. You’ll do just fine with your horse medicine.”

The ten-year-old beamed with pride, sitting up all the straighter on his claybank gelding as he slapped the rump of his little brother’s horse and jerked on the lead rope strung back to the pack animals. Flea called over his shoulder, “See you down the trail, Popo.”

Magpie and Waits-by-the-Water sat atop their ponies as the clatter of hooves faded and things grew very still, all but for the crackle of the morning fires, and that cold winter breeze sighing through the sage and cedar.

Dragging his sleeve beneath his runny nose, Scratch climbed slowly into the saddle. Sensing how his bones were getting old. This cold hurt more and more every winter. And damn, if he couldn’t point out to you every last one of the bullet, knife, and arrow wounds he had suffered since setting his heart on a home in those high and terrible places among the Rocky Mountains. This journey north in the middle of winter had all the makings of a tough one for the old man and his family.

But at least he had his nose pointed for home.

“My used-to-be-country,” he quietly repeated what Josiah had called those northern mountains while he put the Cheyenne horse into motion down the slope. “Sounds to me like it’s just the sort of place for a used-to-be-man.”

^* One-Eyed Dream