Death Rattle
Authors: Terry C. Johnston
RIDE THE MOON DOWN
“Bass is a near-mythic Davy Crockett-like character, but author Johnston imbues him with Everyman emotions.… Readers of past Bass adventures will not be disappointed.”
—Booklist
DANCE ON THE WIND
“A good book … not only gives readers a wonderful story, but also provides vivid slices of history that surround the colorful characters.”
—Dee Brown, author of
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
“Packed with people, action, and emotion … makes you wish it would never end.”
—Clive Cussler
BUFFALO PALACE
“Rich in historical lore and dramatic description, this is a first-rate addition to a solid series, a rousing tale of one man’s search for independence in the unspoiled beauty of the old West.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Terry C. Johnston has redefined the concept of the Western hero.… The author’s attention to detail and authenticity, coupled with his ability to spin a darned good yarn, makes it easy to see why Johnston is today’s best-selling frontier novelist. He’s one of a handful that truly knows the territory.”
—Chicago Tribune
CRACK IN THE SKY
“No one does it better than Terry Johnston. He has emerged as one of the great frontier historical novelists of our generation.”
—Tulsa World
“Mastery of the mountain man culture in all its ramifications, a sure grasp of the historical context, and the imagination of a first-rate novelist combine to make
Crack in the Sky
a compelling, fast-paced story family anchored in sound history.”
—Robert M. Utley, former chief historian for the National Park Service and author of
A Life Wild and Perilous: Mountain Men and the Paths to the Pacific
CARRY THE WIND, BORDERLORDS,
and
ONE-EYED DREAM
“Johnston’s books are action-packed … a remarkably fine blend of arduous historical research and proficient use of language … lively, lusty, fascinating.”
—Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph
“Rich and fascinating … There is a genuine flavor of the period and of the men who made it what it was.”
—The Washington Post Book World
Cry of the Hawk
Winter Rain
Dream Catcher
Carry the Wind
Borderlords
One-Eyed Dream
Dance on the Wind
Buffalo Palace
Crack in the Sky
Ride the Moon Down
Death Rattle
Wind Walker
S
ONS OF THE
P
LAINS
N
OVELS
Long Winter Gone
Seize the Sky
Whisper of the Wolf
T
HE
P
LAINSMEN
N
OVELS
Sioux Dawn
Red Cloud’s Revenge
The Stalkers
Black Sun
Devil’s Backbone
Shadow Riders
Dying Thunder
Blood Song
Reap the Whirlwind
Trumpet on the Land
A Cold Day in Hell
Wolf Mountain Moon
Ashes of Heaven
Cries from the Earth
Lay the Mountains Low
DEATH RATTLE
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover published December 1999
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1999 by Terry C. Johnston.
Map by Jeffrey L. Ward.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-15684.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76057-9
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.
v3.1
For all the trails
he has guided me down,
I dedicate this story
to my old Bantam friend,
Charlie Newland—
you’ve always been there
to lead the way!
Let us live o’er those deeds again
Of trap-line, camp and desperate fray;
Where roved the long-haired mountainmen
Who broke the trails and led the way.
—
EDWIN L. SABIN
,
“Old” Jim
Bridger on the Moccasin Trail
Damn, if this dead mule didn’t smell like a month-old grizzly-gutted badger!
Titus Bass swiped the back of his black, powder-grimed hand under his nose and snorted with that first faint hint of a stench strong enough to make his eyes water. Without lingering, he spilled enough grains of the fine four-F priming powder into the pan, then carefully raised his head over the dead mule’s still-warm rib cage.
The sonsabitches were gathering off to the left, over there by big Shad Sweete’s side of the ring. Really more of a crude oval the two dozen of them had quickly formed around this collection of ancient tree stumps when they started dropping every last one of their saddle stock and pack animals with a lead ball in the brain.
“Dun’ shoot till you’re sure!” Henry Fraeb was bellowing again.
He’d repeated it over and over so many times it was beginning to nettle the gray-haired Bass. “We ain’t none of us lop-eared pilgrims, Frapp!” he growled back at the trapping brigade leader.
The man they called Ol’ Frapp twisted round on that
one leg he was kneeling on, spitting a ball out of his gopher-stuffed cheek into his sweaty palm. “Gottammit! Don’t you tink I know ebbery wund of you niggurs?”
“We’ll make ’em come, Frapp!” Elias Kersey shouted from the east side of their horse-and-mule breastworks, shoving a sprig of long, dusty-blond hair out of his eyes.
“Don’t you worry none ’bout us!” another man growled down Bass’s right.
“Here they come again!” arose the alarm.
Titus twisted, rolling on his hip so he could peer behind him at the far side of the narrow oval, where some of the defenders hunkered behind a stump here or there. Then his eyes slowly climbed over the heads of those other beaver trappers as they all sat entranced, every eye fixed on the half-a-thousand. Sure was a pretty sight the way those horsemen had been forming themselves up over yonder after every charge, gathering upon that wide breast of bottom ground where the warriors knew they were just out of range of the white man’s long-barreled flinters.
About as savvy as Blackfoot, Bass ruminated as he watched the naked riders start to spill out in two directions, like a mountain torrent tumbling past a huge boulder plopped squarely in the middle of a creek. Foaming and roiling, building up force as it was hurtled into that narrow space between the boulder and the grassy banks itself, huge drops and narrow sheets of mist rising from the torrent into shafts of shimmering sunlight—
“Shoot when you’re sure!” Jake Corn reminded them, the expression on his dark face gone cloudy.
“One nigger at a time!” Reuben Purcell cried out as the hoofbeats threatened to drown out every other sound in this river valley. “One red nigger at a time, my Mamma Purcell allays said!”
Sure as spit, these Indians had grown smart about the white man’s guns, maybe hankering to have a white-man gun for their own.
From the hairstyle, the way they made themselves up, Bass figured them to be Sioux. He knowed Sioux. A bunch of them had jumped him and Sweete, Waits-by-the-Water,
and the young’uns too, couple summers back when they were returning down the Vermillion, making for Fort Davy Crockett on the Green. In that scrap Titus had been close enough to see the smeared, dust-furred colors of their paint, close enough to smell the old grease on their braids and forehead roaches. Not till then—no, he’d never seen a Sioux before.