Death Rattle

“The dead ones was hung up on posts to rot, have the birds peck at their eyes—to be a lesson for the rest of ’em,” Hezekiah explained.

Ultimately, a very cruel priest and an ambitious army officer formed a powerful alliance, and the beatings at the mission increased. Still, when he could in the weeks that followed, Christmas did what he could to help the Indian slaves escape … until one night he was rousted from his bed and dragged from the cramped room where he slept with more than two dozen Indian men, carried off to confront the padre and the colonel. There in the friar’s office a pair of soldiers emerged from the shadows, a severely beaten Indian slung unconscious between them.

“The Injun was one you helped run off?”

Christmas nodded. “Valgame purisima Maria—dear Virgin Mary … I didn’t blame the fella for telling ’em who it was helped him and others get away.”

Now the priests and the Mexican soldiers knew who was to blame for inciting their peace-loving slaves into revolt. Come morning, he would be tied to a post in front of the mission’s Indian population and beaten, not only until he bled—but, explained the friar, until he died. A lesson to cower all the Indians at Mission San Gabriel.

“How’d you come to get away, Hezekiah?”

The freedman told how he had immediately flung his handlers from him, seizing a knife from a soldier’s belt, then grabbing the closest man—the friar himself. With his sacred hostage, Christmas backed from the mission, making for the soldiers’ horses they had tied outside the walls. It was there a scuffle took place, with the Mexican colonel giving his soldiers orders to shoot at Hezekiah despite his clutching the priest against him.

“Dios mio! More’n one bullet hit that mean ol’ padre,” Christmas admitted. “Many’s the time I thort about it since, but I figger that soldier chief meant to kill the padre. Malditos sean! Curse them.”

Hezekiah wheeled and leaped atop one of the horses, dragging away a second one to ride when the first grew too tired to push on into the mountains.

Three days later, he encountered a handful of runaways he helped to survive on nuts and rabbit meat until they could begin hunting larger game. And ever since Hezekiah had been in the mountains—getting word to the California missions that if the slaves would only try to escape, most could make it to freedom. Up here, far from the soldiers, he and the others had provided a refuge for runaway slaves, living out what he felt were the finest years of his life with his Indian wife and their children.

“Time to time, we watched white men come out of the east, climb out of the desert and cross over to the California missions—y caballos quieren, por es vienen tan legitos—for the horses they wanted they come all this way,” Hezekiah explained. “Later on it was when one of the runaways told us these was Americans, come to steal Mexican horses and mules, take them Mexican animals—quizas muchas—many horses, back toward the States.”

But Hezekiah Christmas never had any desire to make himself known to the Americans. No urge to return east himself. As he explained it to Titus, he did not see himself as an American. Back there in the States, he would either be a slave in the South, or nothing more than a poor, second-class citizen in the North.

“An’ back there to the west,” Hezekiah said as he pointed over their shoulders at Mexican California, “I’d be no better off than the rest of these here poor mansos the Mexicans made their slaves.”

“You been up here a long, long time,” Bass said, “and never wanted to go back east?”

With a shrug, Christmas said, “I can’t ’spect you to unnerstand.”

“You’re wrong, Hezekiah. I figger I know just how you feel.”

“Y-you do unnerstand why I won’t ever go back?” the Negro asked.

“Maybe I know ’cause I got me the same feelings as you at times.” And Titus nodded. “Better you stay a man in between, here in this no-man’s-land between California and them proper white folks in the states of America. Right here you’re as free a man as any fella ever there was. Able to look any man in the eye.”

“Qui milagro es este! What a miracle this is!” and Hezekiah grinned. “You unnerstand—just like you unnerstood when you busted me out’n that cage on the Mississap.”

“Si, my friend. Man finds himself a place his heart’s at peace, like you done,” Bass finally admitted softly, “that man best be about putting down some roots.”

“We watched your bunch ride through the pass for to steal the horses,” Hezekiah declared late the next night when Williams and Smith finally stopped the herd to give them and the men a few hours of rest. “An’ we watched you coming back again with all them horses. Figgered we might as well pick off a few of those Mexican horses from you ourselves.”

“You and your red niggers was gonna steal some of our horses?” demanded Henry Daws.

The white men gathered at the two fires fell quiet while the Negro slowly turned toward Philip Thompson’s group.

“Ain’t that just like a Neegra!” Thompson himself cawed, made bold in the company of so many friends. “Go an’ steal what another man’s got by his own sweat!”

The others cackled with Thompson.

“You had plenty ’nough,” Christmas said, easing round to the fire once more.

“Don’t turn your back on me, you wuthless black son of a bitch!” Thompson growled. “I’ll teach you to —”

“Stay where you are,” Bass warned as he lunged to his feet, swallowed hard, and inched his hand toward the butt of that pistol stuffed in his belt.

“What? The ol’ man’s gonna stick up for this black-assed bastard!” Thompson roared, half bent with laughter.

“No, he ain’t,” Christmas claimed, his back still turned on Thompson. “No man’s gotta stick up for me.”

That dashed cold water on Thompson’s raw laughter. “What’d you say to me, you black bastard?”

Now Hezekiah turned to peer over his shoulder. “Afore I come to California—I run onto lots of stupid white men like you. Whorin’ and drinkin’ up an’ down the Mississap.”

Bass watched how the firelight played off the growing red of Thompson’s face.

“Black nigger or red nigger,” Thompson growled, his hand tightening around the handle of his knife. “Neither one wuth the trouble it takes to kill ’em.”

Titus turned toward the man, his pistol in plain view now, warning, “You aim to get to Hezekiah, gonna have to come through me first.”

Easing his knife out of its rawhide scabbard, Thompson said to the men on either side of him, “If Bass yanks on that belt gun, you fellas shoot ’im dead.”

John Bowers and Samuel Gibbon both grinned, leveling their rifles at Scratch. Bowers said, “Be glad to ’blige him, Phil. Be glad to.”

With that crooked smile widening, Thompson took another step toward Hezekiah—

“You gonna get yourself killed,” Bill Williams warned him as he stood suddenly at the edge of the fire.

Tom Smith put his hand on Williams’s arm. “You damn well better stay out of it, Bill. Phil’s been wanting to cut his way into Bass for some time now.”

“Ever since Bass stole back them horses from us at Robidoux’s fort,” Thompson confessed.

Williams protested, “I recollect there was a hull bunch of others took ’em back from us ’sides Bass—”

“But none of them bastards ever been standing so close to me as Titus Bass is right now.”

Scratch asked, “That’s et on you ever since, ain’t it? What me and Meek and Joe Walker all done to you,”

“Too damn long.” Thompson’s crooked smile grew cruel. “So I’ll cut this black bastard’s throat … then I’ll open you up like a gutted hog.”

“The man’s good with a knife,” Williams warned out of the corner of his mouth. “Damn, damn good, Scratch.”

For a moment, Bass glanced at the eyes of the others as they pointed their rifles his way. Then he stared at Thompson while he told Williams, “I ain’t never been partial to knives myself, Bill. But I allays hold my own in a fight. The rest of you,”—and he waved both arms to the other white men who were still gathered close—“just back off now. Give us some room for this li’l fandango Thompson wants to dance with me.”