Death Rattle

10

When did the mountains roll over on themselves? Who was the first to pit white man against white man?

Oh, sure—there’d always been John Bull’s boys working for Hudson’s Bay Company, poking around over in Snake River country where they didn’t belong. And there’d been those years while Rocky Mountain Fur Company did everything it could to hold the high country against Astor’s mighty American Fur Company brigades probing the mountains from forts along the Missouri River. But … how did it ever come to pass that when the beaver business went to hell it became every man for himself?

Or, had things always been that way and Titus Bass was just one stupid nigger who failed to read the sign?

Maybe while he hadn’t been looking, that unspoken code between men had broken down. Time was, a man came into the mountain West, he accepted the certainty of a few immutable laws. You took care of those who stood at your back. You didn’t steal what furs another man busted his hump to earn. And you stood by those Indians who had taken you in … God knows there were already enough red niggers out here willing to part a child from his hair at the blink of an eye.

It all had to do with knowing who your friends were, and who weren’t. So, when did Scratch’s whole world heave over on itself? When did these mountains start filling up with men who couldn’t give a good goddamn for the way things used to be?

That next morning after the ruckus with Curnutt and Warren, Smith took Thompson with him and rode south through the hills to have a good look at what herds might await them on the ranchos in that direction. And Williams took Bass to scout the look of things on west of the Mission San Gabriel along the foot of those loftier mountains timbered with yellow pine and fragrant cedar.

Not very far beyond the soldiers’ post, Titus had his first gander at the strangest cattle he had ever laid eyes on.

“Longhorns,” Bill explained. “Leastways, that’s what such critters ought’n be called.”

Like nothing else, these Mexican cattle were. Unlike the full-bodied, short-horned breeds raised by those farmers back in the States, these were rangy and far leaner animals, head-heavy with a pair of saberlike horns that curved and swirled gracefully out from their bony skulls.

“You s’pose these here longhorns are a Mex breed?”

Williams shrugged. “Maybeso the Spanyards brung ’em over to Mexico like they is.”

“Longhorns,” Bass repeated, almost under his breath, trying hard to imagine more than a handful of the creatures crowded together, stuffed down in the belly of those huge, tall-masted oceangoing ships he had seen so long, long ago in New Orleans. “I’ll be go to hell.”

Could be they were the perfect breed for such arid country as this, a land where it didn’t rain all that much, despite the proximity of damp ocean winds. Farmers back east in the States did well with cattle that required a lot of the lush grasses that grew in a country where a lot of rain fell. But out west … well, now—maybe those Spanish did have something right when they brought those longhorns to Mexico a few centuries ago.

Near midafternoon Williams and Bass spotted a confused cluster of buildings in the distance and pulled up on the side of a hill that overlooked the extensive settlement.

“You make that for a rancho?” Bill asked.

“Naw, I don’t,” he squinted in the light. “Too many folks.”

There were. Many of them coming or going, some moving in or out of the settlement on horseback, in wagons or carriages. Besides, there simply wasn’t any sign of those sorts of structures a man assumed he’d find on a Mexican ranch. No corrals or barns or outlying huts where the servants lived, no rows of those low-roofed barracks where the vaqueros slept when not in the saddle.

“Lookee there, Scratch,” Williams said. “See them sails in the harbor there? By blazes, that’s a town!”

When Bass turned his head he found Bill grinning at him. “What you up to, Solitaire?”

“I figger the boys are due a grand spree afore we go round up the biggest cavvyard ever took from California and get high behind for the mountains again,” Williams declared with a matter-of-factness. “A li’l likker, and some wimmens too.”

Titus sighed, recalling the heady numbness of Workman’s corn whiskey down Taos way. “Maybe some pop-skull and a spree could take the edge off things for all of us afore we gotta leave Californy in a hurry.”

“Let’s circle to the south for to get back to camp,” Williams advised, eager to be on the way again. “See what horses there are for the taking.”

It was well past dark and the moon had risen when they found their way back to the others. Already Smith and Thompson had come in to report there had to be more than two thousand head of Mexican horses. The Americans and Frenchmen were growing anxious to get on with their raids.

From their springtime camps in the central Rockies, these men had ridden something on the order of a thousand miles or more to reach Mexican California, the land of the horse. They had suffered hardship the likes of which few men would ever choose to endure. Besides being forced to drink their own urine and blood to cross the southern desert that early summer, these twenty-four had subsisted on skinny, played-out horseflesh and bitter-tasting cactus pulp. Not hard to understand that these trappers had grown restless, anxious to be gathering up horses and turning them east for the Bent brothers’ post on the Arkansas … eager to be doing just about anything instead of cooling their heels in these California hills.

“Peg-Leg, I figger it’s ’bout time for me to dust off the bad news and tell the boys what I got in mind,” Williams announced around a chunk of Mexican beef Silas Adair had managed to cut out of a nearby herd early that afternoon.

Smith nearly choked on his coffee as he sputtered at Bill’s surprise. “I found a lot of horses for the takin’, Solitaire. There ain’t no bad news in that!”

“Couple thousand ain’t near enough,” Williams grumbled dramatically, then quickly winked at Bass as the other men around them began to groan and grumble in disappointment. “I figger it still ain’t the right time to steal horses.”

Smith bolted to his feet, some coffee sloshing out of his tin. “Your brains run out your ears back there in all that desert, Bill? I tol’t you: We found us plenty horses south of here.”

“Ain’t yet the time, boys,” Williams repeated. “Not yet, sorry.”

“Dammit to hell!” Philip Thompson flung his whetstone down at his feet. “So when does the high-an’-mighty Bill Williams figger on it bein’ time to gather up the horses we come across the desert to steal?”

Williams slowly dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and chin, then licked the shiny grease from his hand and fingers. “We’ll go steal horses soon enough, boys. But not till me and Scratch lead you all down to a li’l California town to have ourselves a spree.”

“A sp-spree?” Peg-Leg sputtered.

“You mean likker?” Reuben Purcell asked.

“Mexican likker,” Titus confirmed with a smack of his lips.

With a bob of his head, Williams said, “Likely that means some lightnin’ for those of you wanna smash your faces on the floor just once afore we head back home. And for the rest, some sweet California wine or pass brandy—”

“Women too?” Jake Corn interrupted. “They got women down there?”

Titus gaped at Corn a moment, then said, “How the hell you figger California gone and filled up with Mexicans, if’n there wasn’t no women to pleasure all them damned pelados)” They whooped, and hollered, and hurrooed. Several of them took to swinging around in pairs, arm-in-arm or grandly doe-see-doeing there in the fire’s light.

Smith leaped around the fire and pounded Williams on the back. “We go find this village of yours in the morning, Bill?”

“Damn, if we won’t!”

Peg-Leg flicked his eyes up at Bass. They twinkled with devilment. “So tell me, Scratch—what’s the name of this here village you boys found?”

The Californios called it Pueblo de los Angeles.

A sprawling, no-account coastal village by some standards. Hardly worth remembering, and of little redeeming value … but for the fact that it lay a long stone’s throw off the bay where the high-masted seafaring ships anchored to supply the ranchos and that mission of San Gabriel.

None of that international trade mattered to those twenty-four thirsty interlopers invading a foreign land. Soon enough would come the work. Soon enough would come the trials and the gunfire, then enduring another desert crossing they had to survive. So for now, these Norteamericanos would drink their fill and rub up against every willing woman they might find in the watering holes and stinking cantinas dotting the Pueblo de los Angeles.

That many horsemen, every one crudely dressed in buckskin, calico, and wool, were certain to attract notice. By their unkempt beards, trail-leathered skin, each rider bristling with weaponry, there could be no mistaking the two dozen for strangers come calling on this coastal village. Just as apparent too was that these twenty-four were not seamen who had just jumped off a Boston merchant ship anchored in the nearby harbor. No, these men and their distinctively jug-headed Indian ponies and mules had come a long, long way to reach this little village nestled between the hills and that green ocean.

Streetside conversations stopped as the Mexicans turned to study the strangers. Shopkeepers and customers crowded in doorways or peered from windows as the horsemen moved slowly down the rutted lanes littered with refuse, dung, and the occasional body of a dead cat or dog. As the horsemen passed one knot of the curious after another, Bass caught snatches of words the villagers mumbled among themselves.

Extranjeros. Long road.

Come for the furs.

No, perhaps … come for horses.

“As likely a place as any,” Williams announced as he reined aside at the front of a long, low-roofed adobe hutch, its front walls marred by none of the small windows pocking other buildings, windows filled with panes of selenite or slates of mica.

No window here. Nothing but the low-beamed, narrow doorway that stood open in the morning sun. Beneath the tiled roof protruded vigas, those pared and peeled logs that poked out beyond the walls, from which hung long ristras of peppers and cloves of garlic. Embedded in the side wall were but a half dozen hitching rings, and room for no more than a few of their horses at what was left of a broken-down hitching rail out front.

“Tie ’em off two-by-two,” Peg-Leg ordered.

That would at least keep their animals from wandering, hitching them nose-to-nose on the open ground at the side of the cantina. And with as many of them as there were, none of the trappers figured any Mexican would dare attempt slipping away with their loose stock.

“Welcome, Yankees!”

At the corner of the building in a patch of shadow stood a tall Mexican, his sunken cheeks deeply pitted with the ravages of some long-ago disease. He was grinning widely, half bowing graciously as he eagerly wiped his hands on the long tail of his coarse, linen shirt he had not cared to tuck inside the waist of his stained leather breeches. Sweeping a long hank of black hair out of his eyes, this older man swept an arm toward the door in a graceful arc.

“Yankees, come!” he repeated.

“Gracias,” Williams replied as he stepped past the Mexican, the first to enter the cantina’s shadowy, cool interior.

As they threaded past the bartender, Elias Kersey whispered to Bass, “He think we’re sailin’ Yankees off one of them ships, eh?”

Before Titus could say a thing, the Mexican suddenly leaped in front of Kersey, smiling warmly and nodding as he gestured toward the open door. “Yankees, si! Come, come—Yankees welcome!”

They flooded in behind Bill Williams, most pausing to soak in, and grow accustomed to, the change from bright light to dimmest shadow. As his eyes adjusted, Titus quickly glanced over the interior, measuring the patrons huddled around their rough-hewn tables. It was plain there weren’t enough chairs or tables to seat all two dozen newcomers. But the cantina owner had already recognized this shortcoming and was clapping his hands together, sending two of his men to bring out several thick blankets they unfurled onto the hard, clay floor.

“Sientense ustedes, por favor!” all three of the cantinamen repeated, indicating the blankets they spread at the foot of two walls of the long, low room.

While some of the trappers settled in the last of the chairs at the few open tables, most collapsed onto the floor, filling the offered blankets, where they leaned back against the wall, eyeing the jugs and jars on the double shelf resting behind the long, open-faced bar. Every wall had been painted with jaspe, that whitewash the Mexicans concocted from a selenite compound they burned in their hornos, or beehive ovens, then mixed with water. The thick paste was then spread by hand on the walls and finished off by brushing the jaspe with a patch of sheepskin. To keep the brittle whitewash from rubbing off on customers, the Mexicans had draped mantas, or printed muslins, about halfway up the walls. The crude but unpretentious decor so reminded Titus of his visits to Gertrude Barcelos’s brothel in long-ago and faraway Taos.

With the strained, too-quiet atmosphere that morning as the Americans settled, Bass was drawn to the owner’s nervous stutter as the older man leaned on the table where Smith and Williams sat with Thompson and their Indian guide.

“What’s he telling you?” Bill demanded of his partner.

Peg-Leg explained, “He says the Injun gotta go—says he don’t serve Injuns here.”

Thompson immediately hissed, “This damned Mex don’t have no right to tell us he won’t serve our friend, Peg-Leg. You let this son of a bitch know we could tear his place to the ground with our hands—”

“Such hooligan actions wouldn’t be a good idea, fellas.”

Turning as one, all two dozen watched a large, roundish man with fleshy jowls bristling with thick, graying sideburns get to his feet back in the shadows, then stride in their direction as the cantina owner nodded to the man and pivoted and shuffled back to the bar.

Thompson shot to his feet, growling, “Who the hell are you to be telling—”

“Cap’n Janus C. Smathers,” the stranger announced as he came to a stop at Smith’s table. His thumbs were hung in the armpits of his ample vest sewn from a dark blue wool, at least twenty tiny brass buttons straining in their holes strung down the flap.

“You’re ’Merican?” Peg-Leg asked in disbelief.

With a nod, Smathers swept his arm toward two tables of men tucked back in a shadowy corner. “All of us. American, like you. Adventurers, to be sure.”

Williams held out his hand and introduced himself. “Bill Williams, M.T.”

Smathers cocked his head, asking, “What’s an M.T.?”

“Master trapper,” Bill answered proudly.

“You’re fur hunters, I take it,” Smathers replied. “Here to search the coastline for otter?”

“Maybeso,” Williams answered.

“Listen, fellas,” Smathers began. “The governor down at San Diego frowns on Americans coming into California to harvest California furs then haul them right back out of here to parts unknown.”

“You an’ the governor don’t need to fret none. We won’t be going down near this here San Diego,” Thompson snipped.

“Best advice I could give you is don’t say a thing about coming to California for furs,” Smathers advised, turning away from the antagonism of Thompson. “And be wary of causing any trouble that would bring attention to yourselves.” He glanced quickly at Frederico. “In that respect, it will be best if you take the Indian outside. These Californios don’t like any wild Indians from across the mountains taking liberties that the Indians around here don’t have out of hand.”

“Oh, he ain’t a wild Injun from across the mountains,” Smith snorted. “Frederico here’s a mission Injun.”

Smathers’s eyes grew big, and he flicked a look at the Mexicans nearby as they were placing clay cups on several small wooden platters atop the bar. “Good God—he’s a mission slave?”

“Runaway—”

“Don’t say another word about him!” Smathers warned with a snap. “If you want to keep him and you value his life, take him out of here and hide him where you can. An Indian spotted here in the village is something that will soon draw the wrong kind of attention.”

Smith asked, “They ain’t ’llowed to come to town? Can’t have a drink?”

“Right on both counts,” Smathers explained. “They’re slaves. I’ve been coming to California for eleven years already, make a trip around the cape every year. In all that time, I’ve still to make peace with most of how these people live here. But me and my seafarers are visitors, so we haven’t any say.”

“Thanks, Cap’n,” Williams said as he stood and stepped around the table to prop his hand on the Indian’s shoulder. “Tell ’im why he’s gotta leave, Peg-Leg. Tell ’im he has to stay outside to watch the horses. We’ll bring him some likker later on.”

Once Smith finished his explanation, Frederico glanced up at Williams, then the ship’s captain, and eventually stood. He started for the door beside Williams without a word of protest.

“These Californios ain’t like us,” Smathers declared as the old trapper led the young Indian outside. “There’s one church here—they’re all Papists you know. And that one church rules those who run the government with an iron fist. It’s a closed society, gentlemen—and a culture where Americans are welcome only if they toe the line and don’t commit any act against their religion or their laws.”

“A lot like Taos and Santy Fee,” Bass said as he stopped near the table.

Smathers regarded Titus a moment, then said, “I don’t doubt that, mister. Never been either place myself, but I have no reason not to believe one part of Mexico would be any different from another part.”

Bill was coming back inside as the two Mexicans brought over the first of the small trays holding those short, clay cups to distribute them among the tables and those men squatting on the floor. Behind the pair came the owner, pouring a liberal amount of a pale liquid into those cups eagerly held up by twenty-four thirsty trappers.

“Should you require anything, need my assistance with the local authorities,” the captain explained, “my ship is anchored in the bay. The Windward, out of Portland. That’s nor’east up on the coast of Maine. You fellas just ask anyone down near the wharf for the Windward, and you’ll find someone to row you out to fetch me.”

Holding out his hand, Williams said, “Thank you, Cap’n.”

“You’ve chosen a good day to celebrate,” Smathers declared. “A Saint’s Day this be.”

“Which of their damned saints are they celebrating?” Smith demanded, licking drops of whiskey off his lips.

Smathers tugged down on the tails of his vest. “San Juan’s Day. The twenty-fourth of June.”

“Any day’s as good as this’un for whiskey and womens!” Williams cheered.

“Captain Janus C. Smathers,” the man repeated his name to the group. “Remember it if you need my help. While I’m anchored in the harbor of this foreign land, I remain at my countrymen’s service.”

“What’s the C stand for,” Bass inquired.

Smathers turned to Titus, saying, “Cautious. The C stands for cautious, fellas. Remember my advice: keep your heads down and don’t stir up any waves. A good day, and pleasant journey, to you, fellow pilgrims.”

“Fill your chair, Scratch,” Smith offered as he scooted the simple chair back from the table.

Titus glanced at it, then at Thompson’s hardened glare, and finally to Smith. “Thanks anyway, Peg-Leg. I’ll drink over by the wall with them boys.”

In a flash, Frank Curnutt roughly shoved his way past Titus and plopped down in the chair the moment Scratch turned away from the table.

That first wash of the harsh corn liquor over his tongue made Bass’s eyes water. It had been a long, long time since he had tasted such raw, head-thumping spirits. Likely not since those final days in Taos. None of those finer brandies the company traders secreted in their riverside fur posts, or the smoother grain alcohol the traders hauled out to rendezvous every summer could compare with the teeth-jarring power of this Mexican hooch.

“Whooo!” he rasped, blinking his eyes. “Wonder if they strained this here likker through a ol’ Comanche’s breechclout.”

“Don’t smell like it!” Reuben Purcell argued with a grin, holding his clay cup under his nose.

“But it damn well tastes awful suspicious,” Elias Kersey said, wrinkling up his face.

“I’ve had me plenty of worse,” Bass announced. “This here ain’t bad for what it is—Mexican whiskey.”

By the time an hour had galloped past, the talk had grown loud and merry. Smathers and his men had abandoned the cantina just before the owner and his help brought out platters of tortillas and steamy bowls of beans. The hungry Americans greedily scooped up the beans using the soft tortillas as spoons or ladles, and devoured everything set before them.

“Lookee here now,” Jake Corn said, jabbing an elbow into Titus’s ribs as Scratch was loading a little tobacco into his clay pipe.

Bass turned as most of the trappers noticed the nine women stepping out of the bright sun, entering the open doorway. The cantina owner hurried over, speaking quickly to one of the women, who wore large brass wires suspended from her ears. He pointed out the table where Smith and Williams sat. Half of the women dressed in the loose-fitting, off-the-shoulder camisetas and the short, full skirts called enaguas followed their fleshy leader, who had generously smeared crimson alegria juice on her pasty, powdered cheeks. She had clearly seen her better days, yet walked over to the Americans with an unmistakable air of supreme confidence.

In hushed tones she and Smith chattered for a moment until Peg-Leg stood.

He announced, “These here gal’s come to have some fun with us!”

“Bang-tails?”

Smith turned toward the questioner. “You damn bet they’re whores, you stupid nigger.”

“If that don’t take the circle!” Purcell leaped to his feet, lunging for the closest as the women fanned out across the room. “I ain’t humped since we left off them Mojave gals.”

Corn stood, nudging Bass with the toe of his moccasin. “Ain’t you coming to poke you one of these, Bass?”

“Had me Mex gals before,” he answered. “Besides, I got me a woman of my own.”

“But she ain’t here,” Purcell argued, dragging the woman onto his lap. “An’ it’s been a long time since you rid atween your woman’s legs, ain’t it?”

“Don’t reckon I need to go,” Titus explained with a shrug. “You boys go on and have your fun with them whores. I’ll be sitting right here when you get your humping done. ‘Pears I’ll be the one leading you fellas on back to camp so you can sleep off your sore heads.”

“Don’t want no honey on your stinger, eh?” Kersey spouted. “Then I’ll poke one of ’em center just for you, Titus Bass!”

“Thankee kindly, Elias,” Scratch replied. “Can’t claim I didn’t have my own share of Mex whores back in my rowdy days.”

Corn prodded, “Any man can still get rowdy, Scratch.”

“Nowadays I got a lot more rings ’round my trunk,” he declared with a grin. “But you fellas go grab hold of those gals and don’t let ’em buck you off, boys!”

“Don’t gotta ask me more’n once!” Adair roared as he started for one of the women who had moved over to join other Americans at the bar.

It made for a good business proposition, Titus figured. The women could drink for free of the cantina’s liquor because they were assuring that the Americans were consuming all the more, spending most of their hard American money. At the far end of the long bar a greasy blanket hung across a low doorway. One by one, three of the women headed past that blanket with three of the trappers, arm-in-arm and laughing at some joke no one understood.

Another three of the women perched on one lap after another, generously rubbing their hands, bellies, and rumps against prospective customers while two of the whores leaped onto the edge of the bar where they hiked up their skirts so they could wrap their legs around the ribs of a pair of trappers as they all drank and flirted despite their foreign languages, laughing crazily and getting all the drunker as they waited their turn at the tiny cribs in the back of the cantina.

Three-by-three the Americans lurched past the greasy blanket, back to finish what they had started out front, turning over their women to other trappers who drank and ate as they waited their few minutes in the cribs. By the time the last men were emerging from the rooms behind the bar, some of the first were boasting that they were ready for another go-round with the whores, which meant Smith was having to ante up more of his dwindling supply of gold coin.

From where he sat leaning against a side wall, Bass could peer out the open doorway when a trio of horsemen reined up in front of the cantina. He hadn’t seen uniforms like theirs since Jack Hatcher’s bunch had chased into the winter mountains hoping to wrestle back some hostages from marauding Comanche.

“You expectin’ company, Bill?” he called out to Williams.

He started walking toward Titus and the door. “Who?”

“Soldiers.”

“How many?”

“Only three,” Scratch answered.

Stopping in his tracks, Williams harrumped and turned back for the bar, saying, “I ain’t worried till they send a whole shitteree of Mex soldiers for us.”

Instead of coming right inside after tying their horses off to a single ring out front, the trio walked past the doorway for the corner of the cantina. A little slowed and deliberate in his movements due to the heady whiskey, Titus struggled to his feet against the manta draped on the wall and stepped outside, finding the three soldiers moving among some of the horses and mules. From what he could tell, they were inspecting the rear flanks for brands.

He snorted with the humor in that. Indian ponies simply didn’t have a brand.

“Help you with something, fellas?”

All three turned at his call, two of them flicking their eyes to the third as they came over to stop before the trapper. When that man in the middle spoke, his Spanish spilled out far too fast for Bass to grasp more than a handful—hardly enough to go on.

“Ho-hold on,” Titus suggested. “No comprendo.”

“Norteamericanos?”

“Si,” Scratch answered.

“Ahhh,” the middle one with the goatee replied. “Extranjeros.” Then he started speaking rapidly again, gesturing back at the horses.

“Yes, they are mine,” Bass started to explain. “Something wrong?”

The soldier shrugged one shoulder and motioned to the others as all three stepped around Bass for the darkened doorway.

Inside, the bartender noisily greeted the soldiers, waving them over to the bar where two of the whores each had a pair of trappers at their sides. The trio fixed their malevolent gaze on the Americans until the owner clattered some cups in front of them and began pouring them drinks.

The three toasted, then turned to gaze over the cantina patrons as if comfortable with the foreigners. But the moment a woman pushed past the curtain from the back rooms holding the arm of Roscoe Coltrane, one of the soldiers cried out her name. After flicking him a glance, she steered the trapper in the opposite direction, toward the last of the empty chairs.

“Shit,” Bass muttered. Sure as rain, trouble was coming.

The soldier slammed his clay cup down on the bar, then tugged at the bottom of his short-waisted leather jacket, its stiffened epaulets extending off the man’s shoulders. He had all the appearances of being a man on a mission.

As the soldier stomped across the earthen floor, he loudly berated the whore, finally seizing her upper arm in his big, brown hand, yanking her up and whirling her around just as she settled on Coltrane’s lap.

“Leave ’er be,” Silas Adair growled at the soldier, appearing at the table so quickly he knocked a chair aside.

By that moment the soldier with the goatee was shouting at his companion, gesturing him back to the bar. The angry soldier stood frozen a moment longer, glaring down at Coltrane’s hand on his knife, at Adair’s fist locked around the butt of his pistol still stuffed in the front of his belt, then smiled wanly as he tapped the hilt of the saber short-chained over his left hip. The soldier released his grip on the whore and turned on his heel, slowly.

Scratch finally took a breath and bent over, picking his empty cup off the blanket where he had been sitting, starting for the bar as the whore cursed the soldier and spat at his heels.

In a blur the Mexican turned and slapped her across the jaw, making her reel to the side, pitching into Coltrane’s arms. Lunging forward, the soldier grabbed the screaming woman’s arm and yanked her away from Roscoe as Coltrane snagged her other wrist. By now the other whores set up a caterwauling and shrieking so loud it would have raised the dead back in Santa Fe.

Reaching across his waist, the soldier pulled free his short saber with a loud, metallic scrape. The moment Roscoe stopped yanking on the woman and let her go, the Mexican spat into the whore’s face. Coltrane’s face flushed with anger as he rocked onto the balls of his feet, ready to pounce … but in a flash of candlelight, the soldier held that glittering saber out before him.

Adair grumbled, “You want I should shoot ’im, Roscoe?”

“No!” Smith answered for him. “That’s more trouble’n we bargained for right now.”

“Maybe ’nother time,” Williams suggested. “Don’t make nothing of this, Coltrane. She’s just a soldier’s whore an’ this pelado greaser’s jealous ’cause she humped with a gringo.”

That brought a wry smile to Roscoe’s face as the tension started to drain out of his shoulders. He rocked back onto his heels. As his smile broadened, Coltrane extended the index finger on his right hand and held it under his left ear. Then with a loud, guttural sound, he slowly dragged the finger around the front of his neck, across his windpipe, until he reached the right earlobe.

That done, Roscoe turned his skinny back on the soldier and settled in a chair at Adair’s table. Which seemed to prompt the woman to begin thrashing and kicking, attempting to free herself from the soldier’s grip. Infuriated at her attempts, he hurled her against the bar, watching the whore crumple to the floor. Coltrane flew out of his chair and shrank into a crouch at the instant the soldier brought up his saber and started inching forward—barely wiggling the tip of the weapon in that narrowing distance between himself and the American.

He jabbed. Roscoe backed a step. Another feint, and Roscoe retreated another step, staring down at that short saber. Inch by inch by inch—

Until he had Coltrane backed against the wall.

Bass motioned Kersey, Purcell, and Corn up behind the other two soldiers as he cocked back his arm. Hurling the arm forward, he threw his clay cup against the back of the swordsman’s head. It shattered as the soldier stumbled, got watery in the knees. Coltrane swung his arm in an arc, knocking the saber from the Mexican’s grip.

In that moment the other two soldiers started away from the bar, Kersey and Corn lunged forward with their pistols and cracked the Mexicans on the back of their skulls.

“That ain’t messy at all, now is it, Peg-Leg?” Corn asked.

“Just as long as we don’t kill any stupid hard-dicked Mexican soldado,” Williams groused. “That’d be damp powder an’ no way to dry it.”

“That’s right—we showed these greasers not to trouble us no more,” Peg-Leg added. “G’won now, boys—throw all three of ’em outside so we can go on an’ have ourselves li’l more fun.”