Death Rattle by Terry C. Johnston

bright light hurt his head more than it should until he found his wide-brimmed hat and pulled it down low over his eyes. But it was the side of his face that hurt more than anything.
    Perhaps he’d fallen and didn’t remember. Maybe one of the other trappers had flailed his fists around when he got into the cups—with one of the blows slamming against his cheek.
    “Bill,” he whispered. Even the sound of it hurt between his temples. So when Williams did not respond to some gentle nudging, Titus decided not to awaken the trapper.
    Gingerly laying his fingers against the side of his own face, Titus found his cheek swollen. Nothing more than that gentle touch made him wince: in an instant his jaw was in utter torment, so extreme a poker-hot pain exploded in his head, taking his breath away.
    Slowly the heat subsided in his jaw and he could open his eyes again. Careful to hold his head just so, Titusdragged back the blanket and robe from his legs. He had to pee in the worst way.
    Standing in the brush a few yards away from their shelter, Bass wondered how much he owed Prewett Sinclair for all they drank the night before.
    “You wasn’t the hard punisher, Scratch,” the fort proprietor explained later that day when Bass plodded back through the post’s gate and found Sinclair at work unfolding, then refolding, a few bolts of calicos and other coarse cloth on a narrow counter set up in the trade room.
    Billy Craig sat in the corner on his pallet, scratching his belly with one hand, his wild hair with the other. “Ol’ Solitaire was the punisher.”
    “He get me back to camp?” Titus asked, eyeing one of the small kegs on the counter.
    “Looked to be that way.” Levin Mitchell stirred in his bedroll. “Bill was shining on till it come time he figgered he should get you back to your bedroll.”
    “But that’s when Solitaire went soft at the knees and spilled right down on his face,” Craig snorted with a giggle. “He was out and there was no raising the dead!”
    “I need me a cup of that barleycorn, Sinclair,” Bass mumbled huskily, doing his best to talk without moving his jaw.
    “Couldn’t understand you too good. Something wrong with your mouth, Scratch?” asked the trader as he noisily slid a tin cup down the counter to the small keg where he began to pour out the cheap whiskey.
    “Ain’t anywhere I don’t hurt,” he confessed, rubbing a gritty eye. “My head thunders like a herd of loose ponies with ever’ little noise. But I just crawled out with my jaw on fire this morning.”
    Sinclair pushed the cup at him across the narrow counter. “Lemme look.”
    In a moment the trader nodded to the others. “He’s swolled up.” Then he tapped the trapper’s cheek as gently as he could. Again Bass winced and jerked his head away. “It’s hot, Scratch.”
    “Bet it’s a tooth,” Mitchell advised. “Had me a bad one last year.”
    “Tooth?” Titus echoed.
    “C’mere,” Sinclair said and gestured him over. When Bass wasn’t quick about leaning over the counter, the trader promised, “Listen, I won’t touch you again. Just wanna look. C’mere now and open your mouth. Have me a look inside.”
    Titus looked down his nose as Prewett Sinclair leaned close, holding a candle between their faces as he peered into the trapper’s open mouth.
    “Wider,” the trader demanded.
    “Aggggg,” Bass growled, his mouth opening as wide as he dared, the hot pain flaring as he did.
    Sinclair leaned back and rubbed his nose. “Smells to me like you got a rotten tooth in there, Bass.”
    “Sm-smells?”
    “Like meat going bad,” Craig added, with a nod of his head.
    “M-meat goin’—”
    “You look all swolled up in there, what I can see,” Sinclair continued. “There”—and he pushed the cup a little closer to the trapper—“you g’won ahead and drink your whiskey.”
    “Sinclair’s rotgut hooch gonna take the edge off your hurt,” Mitchell explained.
    With an unsure, reluctant nod, Titus