Death Rattle (68 page)

With a doleful wag of his head, Lee said, “He didn’t figure there was anything to worry about since he scared off the other ringleaders last month. Says all that’s going on now is a lot of loud and angry talk.”

“So what you figger us to do?” Titus asked, his wary senses tingling.

“I think it best we get on through this day till sundown when we close up shop, real normal,” Josiah explained. “We try to light out before, any time in the day, we’re bound to attract attention.”

“They’ll know where you’re going,” Lee added. “So they’ll come track you down.”

“I’ll give ’em a chance to track
me
down, I will for certain,” Bass growled.

“Don’t you see?” Paddock asked, seizing Bass’s forearm in his hand. “There’s hundreds of ’em all together. It won’t be nothing like a fair fight, Scratch. Like nothing you and me ever fought our way out of.”

“By the stars, there’s more’n a thousand souls living in that Injun Pueblo a couple miles from here,” Lee stated. “A thousand of the niggers!”

Titus swallowed. “So sneaking off is our only hope?”

Paddock looked at Lee. “You think folks oughtta head north?”

The sheriff nodded. “Maybe hole up at Turley’s till someone can get word down to Santa Fe and Price can march his dragoons up here.”

“Even then, them soldiers still gonna be outnumbered ten to one,” Josiah groaned.

“Maybe the most we can hope is they’ll scare the shit outta the bastards,” the sheriff said.

Paddock quickly stepped to the low, narrow, back door that opened onto an alleyway. He cracked it slightly, peered out for a moment, then shut it again quietly. “Don’t have long till sundown, fellas. I think we
better start working on getting things ready to head out come dark. Where do you want us to meet up with you, Stephen?”

Lee wagged his head stoically. “I ain’t going with you, Josiah.”

“I know Maria ain’t in no danger,” Paddock begged, “but what about li’l John?”

Titus agreed, “He’s a half-breed.”

“So he’s marked for death,” Josiah argued. “If your wife doesn’t wanna come, then at least get the boy to safety.”

“He won’t go without his mama. So I’ll bring the two of ’em over to your place just after dark,” Lee promised as he stepped to the back door.

“And you?” Josiah prodded. “What you aim to do, one man against a bloodthirsty mob?”

“I’m gonna make sure every American, parley-voo, and foreign-born gets word that they better make tracks outta town tonight … or they won’t see another sunrise,” the sheriff declared solemnly.

“Spread the word. You’ll still have time to come leave with us,” Paddock begged.

Lee stared at the ground a long moment, then his eyes leveled on Josiah’s when he said, “I figure if there’s gonna be trouble in my town, I oughtta be here to do all I can to put out the fire.”

“But it doesn’t make sense for you to stick your neck out if you don’t have to—”

Stephen Louis Lee interrupted his friend with a gesture of futility while he said, “That’s what a sheriff does, Josiah. He’s s’posed to protect others.”

Their courtship had been nothing less than a whirlwind romance. She, a beautiful young widow related to several prominent, well-established families in the Taos valley. And he the eldest of two American brothers who had carved out a financial empire for themselves here in the Southwest.

Maria Ignacia Jamarilla Bent smiled as their three children
embraced their father and kissed his cheek before they retired that evening of January 19, 1847. Her life with Charles—her sweet Carlos—was idyllic. The only thing that could possibly have been better was if he hadn’t been appointed governor of New Mexico by the American general who had marched through Taos and Santa Fe last August on his way to conquer California for the Americans. Over the last few months, her husband’s work kept him in Santa Fe for extended periods. So these visits to Taos were a rare treat—even more unusual that her husband had surprised her by returning home that afternoon, a Tuesday.

“I finished what had to be done,” Charles had explained when he came bolting through the door at the noon hour, “and I set the rest of it aside, Ignacia.”

It’s what he called her—not by her first name but by the one he believed was most different, a name all the more beautiful for it.

“Four days to get here,” he had gasped at the door, forty-seven years old, so still somewhat breathless as he dragged his long wool coat off his arms and shook the ice frozen to it. “Four days instead of two—the snow was so deep, so deep.”

Ignacia stared at him in sympathy, seeing how he was soaked through, clear to the waist. His hair had gone completely gray in the last two years, along with those deep, dark, liver-colored bags under his eyes, both conspired to make him look so much older, all the more weary and trodden. They had embraced in the entryway, she so short of breath at his sudden, surprise arrival, while the children and their two house servants fluttered around them, everyone chattering and cooing at once. Even Ignacia’s young sister, Josefa—who was Kit Carson’s intended—and Ignacia’s teenaged daughter, Rumalda—who had given her promise to Tom Boggs, another American—both swept into the room to welcome home the patriarch.

“How long can you stay?” Ignacia asked in her English that grew better every day.

“Till Sunday after mass,” he vowed, then kissed her on
the cheek and sank to one knee so he could hug the clamoring children.

She had him until after the Lord’s supper on Sunday, Ignacia had thought as she watched the joy register on everyone’s faces that her Carlos was home. How she loved him for relenting on his own personal views and accompanied her to mass whenever he was in Taos—even though Charles loathed the powerful Martinez family. Especially its patriarch: Padre Antonio Martinez.

This most influential religious, political, and social leader in the valley hated both Charles and his brother, William, as well as their partner, Ceran St. Vrain. For years now Padre Martinez had utilized every ounce of the power and pull at his command to thwart the Bents’ increasing foothold in New Mexico. The padre had been at the very heart of a climate that fostered discrimination against, if not outright hatred for, the American traders and businessmen in northern New Mexico. Through exorbitant taxes and tariffs, as well as protesting every purchase of huge tracts of public land north of the valley, Martinez and his cronies had made enemies of these three most powerful foreigners.

But now a new era had just dawned on New Mexico. No longer in charge were those venal Mexican officials so susceptible to bribery and graft. No more would the church officials wield such control over the government. Now all political affairs were in the hands of the American army and its appointees. From here on out Padre Martinez would have to content himself with attempting to manipulate things from offstage.

So while the ousting of the Mexican government from New Mexico had been cause for great celebration in the Bent household, Ignacia fully understood that the takeover only served to antagonize Martinez’s anti-American faction with even more hatred and loathing.

She and her Carlos had enjoyed more than eleven years together already, steadfastly weathering the troubles they encountered with her being a daughter of Mexico, and he a son of an upstart, expansionist America. But now the vexing, difficult times were all behind them. The
future looked more promising and rosy than it had in a long time.

While her husband’s brother had married into the Cheyenne tribe to cement an alliance with his wife’s people, Charles had married her to forge an uneasy alliance with the people of northern New Mexico. So it was not altogether unexpected that she learned of the angry grumbling of some
Taosenos
against her husband told to Ignacia by her servants on those days they shopped in the local market. Still, she continued to believe that—given enough time—her people would come to see that all things were for the better now that the Americans were in charge of New Mexico. Especially now that her husband could prove to all those doubters just how incorruptible, fair, and benevolent a leader he could be … despite all the unmitigated hatred still festering just beneath the calm surface of everyday life here in Taos.

Late that evening she was once again ready to believe him when he attempted to convince her that she had nothing to fear, despite the nerve-racking noise outside on the streets as small, noisy, arrogant mobs roamed the darkened village. Terrified to the soles of her feet when they heard the first gunshots, Ignacia flew to his side, huddled against him there beside the fire.

She sat quivering in his arms as he told her, “They’re just blowing off some steam. I didn’t want to tell you …”

“Tell me what?” she demanded, frightened and angry both.

“Coming up the road from Santa Fe this afternoon, we’d reached the edge of town,” he related, “when we found ourselves suddenly surrounded by a pack of those Indians from the Pueblo.”

Ignacia immediately put both hands over her ears, as if to block out the sounds of terror outside their courtyard, even to shut out his own description of a narrow scrape with danger.

Gently Charles pulled her hands from her ears as he continued. “They demanded I have Sheriff Lee release their friends who had been jailed for petty offenses—like
theft. Though they shouted and threatened, I managed to convince them that the law must take its course, that this matter would be handled through the courts as things were handled with American justice.”

“And they let you go?”

He nodded. “While we kept talking to the Indian leaders, I started my group away from them very slowly, making our way through the crowd. Perhaps they did not know what to do except growl at us, making threats and bloody vows as we finally reached town.”

More gunfire echoed outside now. She whimpered, “Oh, Carlos—”

“You must not fear. There really is no cause to worry,” he consoled. “They could have taken me this afternoon if they had wanted me. The noises you hear out there are all bluster and bombast—nothing more than a defeated people blowing off steam at their conquerors—”

A knock came at the front window. She nearly jumped out of her skin.

Charles told her to stay put as he got up to investigate. But she disobeyed and followed him to the door where Charles cracked it open, whispering to the visitor hanging back in the shadows, who dared not show himself.

“You must take your family and flee at once, Governor!”

“Flee?” Charles challenged. “A governor does not
flee!
Matters aren’t so serious for me to be seen escaping into the night.”

“Sí! Vaya pronto!
Things are getting more ugly every moment,” the disembodied voice warned. “For the sake of your family, for the sake of Mexicans like me who believe in you—go now before it is too late!
En el nombre de Dios!”

Then she heard the fading rustle of footsteps as someone scurried across the gravel and hurled themselves over the side wall so they would not be seen dropping into the narrow street at the front of the house.

When he had bolted the door, she pressed herself against him, wanting to cry, to beg and plead with him to take the family and go for his sake.

“Ya viene!”
she sobbed. “Now it’s coming!’

But he stroked her hair and convinced her of what she was truly desperate to believe: that there was no real threat of danger. These were her people, this was her town—and he had married her. Their children were Mexican. Nothing would happen to them. Ignacia wiped the tears from her cheeks, saying she would look in on the three children, then say good night to her sister and niece.

“I don’t want to stay up late tonight,” Charles said to her as she came back into the parlor minutes later.

Ignacia stopped behind his chair, wrapping her arms across his chest, and laid her cheek on the top of his head. “I imagine you are weary from the ordeal of your four-day journey.”

He kissed the palms of both of her hands, then said, “It’s not for want of sleep that I want to drag you off to bed, Ignacia.”

She stared down at his upturned face, into his tired eyes. Charles pulled her mouth down against his. She trembled when his fingers lightly brushed her breasts as he slowly inched both hands upward to grip her shoulders.

“Bring a candle,” he said huskily as he got to his feet there by the hearth.

With a furtive glance she could see how readily he had been aroused. It pleased her no end to realize that after all these years and their three children, she still had this immediate effect on him. What power she alone held over the governor of New Mexico.

How she enjoyed giving herself over to him when he closed the door to their bedchamber behind them and she set the candle on the stand beside their tall, Mexican-style canopy bed. It took but a moment for her to realize how hungry he made her for him as he worked at those tiny buttons and ties binding her inside multiple layers of winter clothing. Why, he had her skin so heated with delicious anticipation that the muslin sheets chilled Ignacia … at least until her Carlos made her forget all about the cold bedding he dragged over the two of them the moment he slid on top of her naked, trembling body.
Hard and insistent and every bit as hungry as she had prayed he would be.

She awoke slowly, groggily, sometime long after they had both fallen asleep; he tucked against her back like a nesting of spoons. The noises outside the house were liquid—thick like syrup—not quite distinct: loud voices, shrill and angry, unearthly screams and bloody oaths, along with the clatter of wood and the jangle of iron hardware—

That first thunderous slap of something solid against the bolted front door brought her fully awake. Charles was already rolling away from her, leaping off the bed, lunging around in the dim candlelight flutting against the wall from that single wick now awash in its own small puddle of opaque liquid.

“Get your gown, Ignacia!” he ordered, his tone so harsh it frightened her.

“G-gown?”

“Go to the children,” he demanded as he found his britches on the floor near her side of the bed. “Gather them and take them to the pantry door.”