Death Rattle Read Online Free

up in a swirl of dust and hit the ground running, reins in their hands.
    That’s when Titus could make out the yips and yells, the taunts and the cries—all those hundreds of voices rising above the dull booming thunder of thousands of hooves.
    A tall redheaded youngster next to him came out of the saddle and was nearly jerked off his feet when his frightened mount reared. From the look on the man’s pasty face Bass could tell this might well be the most brownskins the youngster had ever seen.
    “Snub ’im up quick and shoot him!” Bass grumbled as he lunged over to help the redhead.
    “Pistol?”
    “Goddamned right.” Then Titus turned his back and double-looped his own mule’s lead rope around his left hand as he dragged the .54-caliber flinter from his belt with his right.
    “Drob de goddamned hurses. Ebbery one!” Fraeb repeatedly roared as the first few animals started falling.
    From the corner of his eye, Bass watched the redhead obey. As the mount’s legs went out from under it, the horse nearly toppled the trapper. But redhead scrambledbackward in time, spilling in a heap atop Titus’s thrashing horse.
    “You got a pack animal?” Bass demanded.
    The redhead lunged onto his feet, craning his neck this way, and that, then shrugged. “Not no more.”
    “Get down and make ready to use that rifle of your’n,” Titus ordered, then turned to bid farewell to the mule just a breath or two before the screeching horsemen dared to break across the flat into range of their powerful, far-reaching weapons.
    He laid a hand on the mare’s neck as she breathed her last, stroking the hide until she no longer quivered. Gazing out over the slopes where the warriors gathered just beneath the ranks of their women, children, and old men … when he saw her.
    Clearly a woman. Dressed in the short fringed skirt that exposed her bare copper legs draped on either side of her brown-spotted pony. A short, sleeveless, fringed top hung from her shoulders where her unbound hair tossed on every hot gust of wind. Make no mistake: that was a woman. While the warriors were stripped to their breech-clouts and moccasins, wearing medicine ornaments and power-inducing headdresses, the one intently watching the action from the hillside was clearly a woman—and probably a powerful one to boot.
    Around her stood more than a double handful of attendants, young women and boys, all on foot. Together they joined in her high-pitched chants. She must be imploring the warriors to fight even harder, dare even more with each renewed assault.
    “You see dat she-bitch?” the gruff voice asked in a masked whisper.
    Bass turned to see Fraeb settling in beside him, joining him between the horse’s fore and hind legs.
    “Who she be, Frapp?”
    The old German stared at the hillside, reflecting for a moment before answering. “She der princess.”
    “Princess?”
    “Ya. Der princess dey fight for.”
    Titus couldn’t quite believe how preposterous itsounded. “A woman’s giving the orders to all them bucks?”
    Elias Kersey nodded. “That bitch makes medicine for them bucks to rub us out.”
    Now Titus had to grudgingly agree, as an idea dawned on him. “Yeah, medicine. I’ll bet if one of us knocked that damn princess down—them brownskins see their own medicine shrivel up like salt on your ol’ pecker, Frapp.”
    “She come close your side, Titass—you knock her down, ya?” Fraeb asked as he rocked back onto his hands and knees to crawl off.
    Licking his dirty thumb and brushing it over the front blade at the end of his rifle barrel, Bass vowed, “See if I can do just that.”
    Back over at the far end of the oval after the horsemen made their twelfth deafening rush on the corral, Henry Fraeb once more was squealing out orders, ordering more of the men to hold off firing—thereby making sure they would have at least half the guns loaded at all times. No more than a dozen were to fire at once, he noisily reminded them again and again