Death Rattle

“Damn,” he said quietly as he gazed up at Adair.

“W-what?”

He grinned. “Looks like you’re gonna live, nigger.”

“I’d kick you with that bum leg if’n I could, Titus Bass,” Silas grumbled as Scratch turned away.

Jake Corn handed Titus his reins, and Bass rose to the saddle as the late-afternoon light was stretching shadows to their fullest.

“Rube!” he called. “You start out the gate, make tracks for the hills. We’ll start these animals moving behind you.”

Corn asked, “Taking ’em all?”

“What critters don’t run off from us between here and that big herd the others is driving up to the pass,” Scratch replied. “Like Bill Williams said, we aren’t gonna leave any of these here Californios a way to come ridin’ after us. Not if I can help it.”

Damn if just about sundown they didn’t run into a herd of wild horses. A large band of them, roaming the hills, free as you please.

Bass decided that if the fourteen riderless soldier horses were going to drift off and mix in with those rangy mustangs, then he’d let them wander. No sense in the trappers laboring their own saddle mounts so hard just to keep the army horses together. They already had their work carved out for them in just getting up to the pass itself. But to Scratch’s surprise, rather than enticing the soldier horses away from the raiders, the curious leader of the wild herd instead loped along beside the trappers’ procession as it wound into the foothills.

“Looks to be we’re dragging even more horses outta California,” Kersey observed with a wry smile. His mark of distinction was a once shiny, now worn, black beaver-felt top hat, its stylish ash-gray ribbon and bow greasy from much handling. Although much tattered, the top hat gave Elias a very proper air at times.

“I’ll wager this bunch don’t stick around with us for long,” Titus countered.

But for a second time that day Scratch was proved wrong. It was almost enough to make a man take stock of his hunches! Time was, he was pretty damn trail savvy about most anything he came across. Oh, there were occasions when he’d get things wrong—like with a drunk or especially when it came to women. Never could callate what either of those would do when they put their minds to something. But guessing wrong on what those horses would do was a matter quite unsettling to him.

For many years now, Titus Bass had believed he understood horses and mules better than he understood a lot of folks. But maybe he had gotten old and a little soft in the brain. Or, maybe times had changed everything around him. That might account for the strange behavior of these wild, four-legged critters. Or … maybe everything had been turned cattywhampus out here in California—nothing the way it was back in his mountain world.

At least now his nose was pointed for home. But that only made him yearn for her all the stronger.

Jake Corn rode drag, bringing up the rear of their small cavvyard. Roscoe Coltrane stayed even farther back from the rest, riding just out of sight of the others, training his constant attention down their back trail. He was to fire a warning shot if he spotted any soldados or vaqueros chasing their tail roots. The plan was to put the wounded Adair and Purcell, along with the two Indians, ahead on the trail with as many horses as would join the four to provide them some cover, while the other four turned and waited for Coltrane to come up.

Plan was, if they ended up being tailed by a small bunch of Mexicans, then the trappers could spring an ambush along the way. But if it turned out to be a large force of soldiers, like that outfit they had watched ride away from the fort earlier that day—then there would be no waiting around. They’d whip and lather their horses, climbing hard for the pass, hoping to catch up to the others driving the herd they had just yanked out from under the noses of the Californios. They could slip over the mountains and down to the desert—on their way back home without any more trouble … if the vaqueros and the soldados didn’t end up joining forces in the pursuit.

In his own way, Titus prayed he wouldn’t have to hear Roscoe Coltrane’s warning shot. Then all they’d have to worry about was the possibility that big swarm of soldiers they’d watched ride out of the fort earlier in the day was somewhere between them and Peg-Leg’s bunch.

Twilight lingered long enough for them to wrangle their horses through that last patch of low, wind-stunted scrub timber nestled across the pass. While the west slope behind them remained sunny, night was already seeping over the hillside before them. The way the shadows had disappeared and twilight hovered around them, Bass wasn’t certain when he called a halt to wait for Coltrane to catch up. At first he thought his eye might be playing tricks with him; he decided he had to trust in his ears. That dark mass far down the slopes below them had to be the noisiest gathering for several hundred square miles.

Inching his small herd forward at a walk now, he watched a pair of riders take shape at the tail end of the crawling procession, heard their voices too as those human sounds mingled with thousands of snorting weary animals having started their way down the eastern slopes.

Elias Kersey whooped and whistled, causing the pair to turn in their saddles, spotting the small band of horses approaching from behind, down out of the wide, rolling saddle. Both of them called out to the raiders ahead in the march.

In minutes Bill Williams and Tom Smith were loping back along the edges of that huge herd.

“You lose anyone?” Peg-Leg asked as he pulled up.

Kersey waited till Bass came to a halt beside him. Elias explained, “No dead. But we got shot up at the fort.”

Williams asked, “Them bastards was laying for you?”

Shrugging, Bass replied, “Maybeso. Purcell’s gonna pull through. Ball passed right through him. Adair an’ his leg ain’t doing near so good.”

“Silas gonna make it?” Smith asked.

“Next day or two gonna tell,” Kersey responded.

Titus looked at Williams. “You gonna put some more country between us and them Mexicans afore we rest, Bill? Maybe drive the herd all night?”

With a shake of his head, Williams said, “We recollect a spring down below a ways—saw it back when we was coming up. Me and Tom figgered to take the herd on down there for to camp a few hours.”

Smith agreed. “These horses likely to smell that water anyway and go on down there on their own. We’ll bed ’em down there for the night and push on when there’s enough light to see.”

Williams sighed, “They’re tired, and so are we.”

Frederico and his sister passed by the four trappers at that moment. Smith waited till they were disappearing into the gloom, then asked, “Where’s the other gal? Wasn’t we busting two women out?”

“One of them Mex’ kill’t her,” Bass said. “But them two brung her body along other’n leaving it with the Californios.”

With a low whistle of approval as the end of the small herd approached, Williams asked, “Where the hell you get all them horses, Scratch?”

“Didn’t wanna leave the soldiers nothing to ride, so we drove out with ever’thing in the stables,” Kersey explained.

“Most of ’em is wild,” Scratch declared. “I kept thinking them wild ones gonna drag off the soldier horses— but they didn’t. Stayed with us all the way up to the pass, so we brung ’em all over together.”

“Damn, Bill,” Smith exclaimed, then turned to Kersey and Bass. “You fellas got any idee how many horses we come outta California with?”

“More’n I ever see’d with a white man!” Titus roared.

“I ain’t at all for sure,” Peg-Leg said. “But we’ll get us some count come morning.”

Williams quickly added, “We was callating we got more’n four thousand awready!”

“F-four thousand!” Kersey echoed in astonishment. “Yee-awww!”

“How the hell we gonna divide up all them?” Bass inquired.

“Maybeso we don’t have to,” Bill responded. “What we sell ’em for, we’ll divide. But the herd gets sold together.”

“That’s more’n the Bents can buy,” Kersey stated.

Scratching at his chin thoughtfully, Williams said, “What they don’t buy, we’ll shoo on back to Missouri and