Death Rattle by Terry C. Johnston Page A

took up the cup and sipped. Slowly at first to see how the whiskey would burn his inflamed jaw. If he kept the potent liquid off to the left side of his mouth, it wasn’t near so bad. But his head hurt so damned much that he had trouble swallowing. Nevertheless, Scratch succeeded in getting some of the whiskey down, eventually warming a stomach that had wanted to revolt at the first swallow.
    “Maybeso this is gonna help some,” he told the others as two more of the trappers pushed through the door to join them in the low-roofed trader’s cabin.
    “Go on and drink up,” Craig said as he stepped to the counter to have himself a look at Bass’s jaw. “You’regonna want to drown as much of that pain as you can afore we yank that tooth outta there—”
    “Y-yank?” Scratch sputtered, some whiskey dribbling off his lower lip.
    “Gotta come out,” Mitchell agreed. “Just like I pulled my own tooth last year.”
    “P-pulled your own tooth?” Titus echoed, his eyes growing larger.
    “Drink up, Bass,” Sinclair declared. “It’s on the prairie.”
    Both of the trappers who had just arrived lunged toward the counter, as one of them hooted and slapped a flat hand onto the wood planks. “On the prerra! Hurraw! Let’s drink, Sinclair!”
    “Not for the likes of you,” Sinclair snarled as the trapper jerked back in surprise. “We’re gonna get Bass drunk here, then pull a tooth out of his head.”
    The entire room watched as Scratch slowly poured the stinging whiskey past his lips, letting it slide down his tongue, past the back of his throat and on to his warming belly. In their eyes was a look of unabashed envy. A free drunk, compliments of the Fort Davy Crockett trader.
    When he pulled the cup away from his mouth and licked some drops hanging from his shaggy mustache, Sinclair took the cup from him. When it was refilled, Bass took another long sip of the whiskey that tasted even smoother than that first cup.
    “Awright,” Titus mumbled, feeling his tongue thickening, “so if Ol’ Bill fell on his face and wasn’t moving a muscle … I figger you boys joined in to help get him and me back to our trees?”
    “None of us figgered you needed any damn help,” Mitchell explained. “Because you started dragging him out the door.”
    Craig sniggered some now. “You wasn’t pulling him out into the rain and mud by his collar like this!” And he pantomimed by seizing the back of his own shirt and raising it until his arm flapped.
    “?-how?” Bass stammered.
    Sinclair explained, “It was a pretty sight. Watchingyou weaving back and forth, leaning over to grab Bill by his ankles, dragging him around right over where Mitchell’s standing now, you good as falling yourself while you’re fighting to get Ol’ Solitaire out the door and into storm.”
    Titus wiped the back of his hand across his wet lips. Then he licked the back of his hand, tasting the faint sting of the peppers, the all-but-hidden sweet molasses. “I dragged him by his leg all the way back to our camp?”
    Mitchell shrugged. “Dunno, Scratch. We throwed the door shut after you got him dragged out the gate!”
    Already his head was growing a little fuzzy, that whole strip of skin above his eyes gone numb. Doing his best to concentrate, Scratch said, “Bill was beside me while ago when I come awake.”
    “Did you check to see he was breathing?” Craig roared, stirring up a storm of renewed laughter.
    “Maybeso Scratch drowned Ol’ Bill in a rain puddle on the way back to camp!” Mitchell hoo-hooed.
    “Yeah!” Sinclair jumped in. “Can’t you just see poor Scratch dragging Solitaire back to his robes—so drunk Bill can’t close his own mouth so he drowns?” The trader threw back his head and flopped his upper body back onto the counter, his arms flung akimbo as his mouth went slack, jaw dropped open.
    “Shit, Prewett!” Craig hollered. “With his mouth open like that, only natural that Ol’ Bill drownded out there in the