Death Rattle

“Army of G-God?” he repeated, baffled completely.

“We’re the Saints,” someone declared. “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.”

“S-saints?” he repeated in a whisper, his head almost dizzy with confusion.

Weakened, thirsty, hungrier than he had been in many a winter … Bass almost doubted he was still standing.

Saints?

Oh, sweet Jehoshaphat! Was this how it was to die?

Maybeso he was really lying half dead and delirious, out of his mind, somewhere on that journey north! Maybe this was part of the horrible dream that came with dying.

Saints, they came and helped a man get done with the living.

Maybe he was so close to death that he just dreamed this cluttered collection of tents and log huts, these dogs barking and this group of Americans. Maybe all his weary, hungry brain could do was to paint this strange, foreign picture while he was passing through the frightening veil into death.

Saints?

“That’s right. Saints,” another voice affirmed. “Some folks call us Mormons—”

“This poor man doesn’t need a theological lesson now, Hyram,” a new and unfamiliar voice boomed from the dark.

The crowd parted for the huge bulk of him as he stepped into the breech.

“Said he was looking for the Pueblo,” one of those closest explained. “Says he’s got friends over there.”

“You’ve got friends here too,” the big man assured. “And we’ll see you get yourself over to the Pueblo.” He turned his bulk toward the others in that dark starshine and bellowed, “Oran, go fetch your springless wagon and hitch up a team. I want you to carry this stranger to his people at the Pueblo.”

Dumbfounded, Bass stood there staring, still not sure this was real, that he was on the Arkansas, that the Pueblo was even close at hand.

Then the wide, pan-faced man with the shovel jaw turned back to Titus and studied him up and down intently before he said, “It’s now up to the might of our hands that we’ll see this man helped upon his way … for it was by the grace of God alone that this stranger has stumbled out of the wilderness and into our hands … alive.”

^* The short-lived Greenhorn settlement, on Greenhorn Creek in present-day Colorado.

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 colchones, 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.