Ole Devil at San Jacinto (Old Devil Hardin Western Book 4) (20 page)

Since the march to crush the
rebellion of the ‘foreign land thieves’ had been halted in January
for two weeks, due to
el Presidente—
who reserved the right to make all decisions,
major or minor
^xliii
—being bedridden with dysentery, he
had come to appreciate the importance, where his own welfare was
concerned at any rate, of skilled medical attendance. So he had
appointed Doctor Nabarro Reyes, who had finally cured his illness,
as his personal physician.

‘
I’m
all right,’ Santa
Anna said gruffly, standing up. ‘What happened?’

‘
Somebody shot this at you,’ Reyes
explained, having looked around to find some further excuse for
remaining in the marquee. Scuttling across to the rear wall, he
pulled Tommy Okasi’s missile from it. Paying no attention to the
way in which the point had slit a far wider gash than might have
been expected from the size of the hole in the top of the table, he
returned to his employer. ‘It’s an arrow!’

‘
I can see that, damn
you!’
el Presidente
spat out, his temper far from improved as he
surveyed the damage done to the embellishments which had been on
the table. Reaching to take the proffered weapon, he glanced at it,
started to look away, then stared with greater intensity.
‘
Madre de
Dios
!’

There was, Santa Anna
considered, good cause for the startled exclamation and the even
more profane comments with which he was about to follow it up.
While he could not claim to have any extensive knowledge of
archery, he was able to appreciate the implication of what he was
seeing and he did not care for it. Clearly whoever had tried
to
kill him
was a person of diabolical ingenuity.

‘
Doctor!’ yelled the voice
of Ramon
Caro,
el Presidente’s
ferret-faced and much disliked little private
secretary, before the profanity could commence, ‘One of the
sentries has an arrow through him.’

‘
Get out here quick, man!’
came the harder tones of the
dandified commanding officer of the
Popocatapetl Dragoons’
bodyguard, Colonel Juan Almonte.
^xliv
‘He’s still alive and needs
you.’

‘
Come on!’ Santa Anna
ordered, relying too much upon
the loyalty of his bodyguard to let it
appear that he had delayed the doctor from attending to one of
their number who was wounded. Striding towards the entrance, still
carrying the arrow, he went on thunderously, ‘Hurry up, blast you.
I want his life saved.’

Which was true enough, although
not altogether from purely humanitarian motives.
El Presidente
was
very
interested in
finding out the identity of his would-be assassin and the injured
sentry might be able to provide the requisite
information.

Even in the faint glow of light from the
marquee which extended as far as the stricken sentry, Reyes needed
only a single glance to tell him that he would be exceedingly
fortunate if he could do as his superior ordered. Despite his
medical capability being somewhat limited, considering the high
position he was holding, the doctor had been involved in Indian
attacks on two occasions. So he knew enough about dealing with
wounds inflicted by arrows and he doubted whether there was any
hope for the soldier.

The arrival of the Dragoons’ guard commander
carrying a lantern produced extra illumination by which Reyes was
able to confirm his summation. Studying the head of the shaft which
had impaled the sentry, the doctor’s far from active mind noticed
that it was not a kind he had previously seen. For all that, he was
sufficiently intelligent to deduce its diabolical purpose. He could
now also understand why Santa Anna had displayed such agitation and
consternation on being handed the identical arrow he had taken from
the wall of the marquee.

Although Reyes would never learn
the true facts
, he was examining an exceptionally lethal variety of a
Japanese
kyudoka’s
arsenal.
^xlv
The
wata-kusi
point fully justified its name, ‘tear
flesh’, being equipped with barbs of a remarkably effective kind.
They were movable, laying close to the shaft during the discharge
and flight. This allowed them to produce a wide gape, but cut down
wind resistance to a minimum. Once inside the victim’s body, they
opened when there was any attempt made to draw out the arrow. It
was impossible to remove them in such a manner without increasing
the severity of the injury.

‘
Get on with it, damn you!’ Santa Anna
growled, conscions of the growing circle of onlookers and wanting
to impress at least some of them by his concern for the stricken
sentry. ‘Do something to help the poor man.’

‘
I
—I’ll have to cut the head off and pull the shaft out the
way it went in, Your Excellency,’ the doctor announced, with the
anxious deference of one who was anticipating his failure to carry
out the wishes of a ruthless dictator. ‘But I’m afraid doing it
won’t save him. In fact, I doubt whether he’ll even recover
consciousness for long enough to receive the last rites no matter
what I do.’

‘
All right,
doctor
,’ Santa Anna answered in a milder tone, although he had
plans other than those of allowing a priest to attend the sentry if
the soldier should regain consciousness. He gestured with the arrow
he was holding. ‘Do what you can.’

‘
Name of the Holy Mother!’
General Vincente Filisola croaked in his native Italian tongue,
staring from the missile in the sentry’s body to the one in his
superior’s hand. Then he continued in Spanish, as befitted his
office as
el Presidente’s
stodgy and generally unimaginative
second-in-command. ‘If that had hit you after going through the
table—’

‘
Yes!’
Santa Anna put in testily, having no desire to be reminded of
unpleasant consequences which he had already envisaged.

Flying from a greater distance
than the arrow which had impaled the sentry, and with the table
acting as a further impediment, the viciously barbed head of the
missile would almost certainly have remained inside
el
Presidente’s
body instead of emerging on the other side. In which case,
if—taking the size of the hole it had made in the table as a
guide—Reyes had tried to draw it out, the two inches long,
needle-sharp prongs would have extended and reduced any slender
chance Santa Anna might have had of surviving the wound.

Not only Filisola had noticed
the nature of the arrowheads. Those of the crowd who could not see
were informed of the terrible devices by their more favorably
positioned
companions. There was some pushing and jostling as the
less
fortunate onlookers attempted to obtain a better
view.

‘
D
on’t just stand there gaping and chattering, damn you!’
Santa Anna bellowed, glaring around him furiously and
waving his
arrow-filled fist towards the wounded Dragoon. ‘Go and catch the
man who did this.’

Goaded into activity by his
superior’s wrathful demeanor and words, Almonte spat orders at the
members of the bodyguard who had gathered. Told to start searching
beyond the two wagons from between which the arrows must have been
discharged, the guard commander reluctantly led several
unenthusiastic men away. Having seen and deduced the purpose of
the
wata-kusi
points, without being aware of such a device’s name, none
of them relished the prospect of hunting in the darkness for a
person carrying a weapon with so diabolical a potential.

Equally eager to avoid
incurring
el
Presidente’s
opprobrium, the crowd scattered with rapidity. Ostensibly
having the intention of informing the rest of the encampment of
what had happened, but really wishing to put themselves in a safer
locale for the time being, the dinner guests hurried away. Even
Ramon Caro, who usually stayed close to his employer on the pretext
that his services as secretary would be available if required, left
with the rest. Taking the hint from their betters’ behavior, the
various minor members of Santa Anna’s retinue who had gathered
returned to their interrupted occupations.

Within a minute of
el Presidente
having made his
displeasure and wish for action known, he had achieved his desire.
Apart from himself, the only one who remained from the dinner party
was Doctor Reyes kneeling by the critically wounded soldier and
doing what little was possible to succor him.

‘
He
is
coming round, Your
Excellency,’ the physician announced with relief, although aware
that the recovery was not the result of his own doing. ‘Perhaps
he’ll soon be able to answer your questions.’

Doctor Nabarro Reyes might not
have been the world’s most competent medical practitioner but he
possessed a reasonable amount of discernment. So he was aware of
why his patron was concerned over the possibility of the sentry’s
life being
—if
not saved—prolonged.

~*~

‘
From
the sound of
things,’ Lieutenant Paul Dimmock remarked, looking at his
commanding officer and no longer able to restrain his impatience to
learn if the mission had been successful. ‘You-all stirred up a
regular hornet’s nest back there.’

‘
You might say that,’ Ole
Devil Hardin replied, sitting on his opened out bedroll with the
Browning Slide Repeating rifle by his side.
‘El
Presidente’s
alive and well, but not in the best of spirits or temper
unless I miss my guess.’

In spite of having crossed the
creek in safety, the captain and Tommy Okasi had not been allowed
to finish their journey without interruption. Nor had they expected
to be able to do so. While they had been able to approach the
encampment without arousing curiosity, they had realized
that
—under
the prevailing conditions—the motives of anybody seen going in the
opposite direction would be suspect. Before they had covered a
hundred yards, they had been compelled to seek the shelter offered
by a small clump of bushes. Their purpose in hiding was two-fold.
Firstly they had wanted to avoid inviting the attentions of the
sentries and the foragers who were returning to investigate the
disturbance. Secondly and of equal importance, they had also hoped
to learn the results achieved by their risky expedition.

When the two intruders had
satisfied themselves on the latter point, and when several minutes
had gone by without any more Mexicans leaving the woodland, they
had resumed their withdrawal. The passage through the trees had
been without incident and, approaching the rendezvous, Ole Devil
had warned Dimmock of their pending arrival by whistling a few bars
of the popular ballad,
‘Will You Come To The Bower I Have Shaded For
You?’

As an added example of the young
captain’s forethought, the countersign had been for the lieutenant
to respond with the thrilling, if bloodcurdling, strains of
the
‘Deguello’.
This was the traditional Spanish
‘March of No Quarter’,
warning of
throat-cutting or other forms of merciless death and it was said to
have been played continuously all through the final assault upon
the Alamo Mission to inform the defenders of their forthcoming
fate. So it was one tune no Mexican would expect a Texian to
use.

Checking to make sure they were not being
followed, Ole Devil and Tommy had accompanied Dimmock to the bottom
of the fold. However, for all their awareness of the lieutenant’s
interest in their activities, they had made preparations for
spending the night in what comfort was possible before offering to
satisfy his curiosity.

‘
How will that affect us
tomorrow
?’ Dimmock asked, deciding that his superior’s estimation
of Santa Anna’s state of mind was accurate. ‘He’s going to be
madder than a bobcat dropped on the lid of a red hot stove and just
as likely to come up spitting and clawing.’

‘
But he won’t be sure who
he should start doing the spitting and clawing
at
,’
Ole Devil guessed. ‘We didn’t leave any of the “reward posters”, or
our “letter from the Government”. So he’ll not know whether it’s
us, or some of his own men, who are after his hide.’

‘
He’ll make sure that his
bodyguard are a lot more watchful tomorrow,
though
,’ Dimmock pointed out.

‘
Nobody in the camp will
be getting much sleep tonight
,’ Tommy commented, being occupied with
removing the string from his bow after spreading his bedroll and
laying the depleted quiver of arrows on it. ‘And, according to an
ancient and wise Nipponese saying—’

‘
Which
he’
s
just now making up,’ the lieutenant sighed, although he was too
wise to discount any summations made by the little Oriental, even
when they were delivered in such a guise.