Death Rattle by Terry C. Johnston Page A

I wouldn’t dare try what we’re about to do any other time of the year but here at the end of spring. Turning back by midsummer. Any later’n that—why, our bones might just rot out there in them wastes with the bones of all them Mexican horses we couldn’t get back to the mountains without water.”
    With a grin, Bass snorted, “So you claim we ain’t on a fool’s errand?”
    “Could be, ol’ friend,” Bill replied, smiling.
    “That’s good,” Titus said as he slapped a hand on the older trapper’s shoulder. “I was beginning to wonder if you wasn’t making it sound like this was seriousbusiness. Sure as hell glad to hear we’re out on some great lark you dreamed up, Bill! Beaver’s gone to hell and the mountain trade is disappeared like winter breath smoke—why, no better reason we ought’n just have ourselves some fun!”
    “Especially if it’s the last thing any of us do in this here life,” Williams said, his grin slowly fading. “Awright, you
ciboleros!”
he shouted at the others, calling them buffalo hunters. “Let’s get back in the saddle—by my reckoning, we’ll be pounding on Robidoux’s back door by sundown!”
    The sun had turned every butte and mesa a startling red, so bloodily surreal it seemed as if the entire earth around them were the same burnished copper as were those trinkets and religious objects hammered out by a Mexican craftsman. Then down in that wide bottom he recognized from three years past, Scratch spotted the stockade and the small herds of horses grazing here and there on the low hillsides farther downriver.
    They could hear distant voices hallooing and begin to make out telltale shadows of men emerging at the top of the near wall, a few coming out of the stockade on foot to have themselves a look. Across the river from the post stood a scattering of lodges, low and squat. Ute, he suspected.
    “That you, Bill?” a voice cried as they approached.
    “Peg-Leg?”
    One of the figures hobbled away from the rest of those on foot and waved his hat. “You brung a good bunch with you?”
    Williams reined to a halt beside Smith, held down his hand, and they clasped wrists. “Not near enough to bring out all them horses I planned on, Peg-Leg.” He straightened in the saddle and sighed. “I’m hoping you done us some good here.”
    “Got a few hands, Bill,” Smith admitted. “But I didn’t come up with near as many as we’d hoped would come west with us to the Mexican diggings.”
    “Let’s go have us some victuals,” Bass said as he brought his roan to a halt on the other side of Smith.
    “Lordee tells. That really Scratch?” Peg-Leg asked as he pivoted on the wooden limb.
    “How-do, Thomas,” Titus cheered as more of their bunch came to a halt around them.
    For a moment Smith glared hard-eyed at Bass, then suddenly grinned as he held up his hand to the horseman. “Been a long time, Scratch. I see no gol-durned Black-foot’s knocked you in the head and stole what you got left for a mangy skelp.”
    “You was hoping my hair would get raised after we stole them horses back from you?”
    Smith laughed easy and genuine. “I ain’t never carried me no hard feelings for nothing, Scratch. Less of all, for you and them others coming here to take back them Snake horses.”
    “It’s all water gone downhill long ago,” Titus mused.
    “Damn sure is,” Smith agreed. “Why—when me an’ Bill left here after that ruckus we had with you an’ Walker, we ended up stealin’ a lot more horses from the Mexicans that year!”
    “More horses’n we could’ve stole round here!” Bill roared.
    Williams and Smith had their chuckle before Peg-Leg turned and hobbled off with a wave, starting the procession toward the stockade as shadows quickly deepened. More hallooing greeted the new arrivals as they neared the walls, men streaming out that lone open gate as lanterns began to glow behind the tiny, rawhide-covered windows pocking the walls of those few miserable