Ole Devil at San Jacinto (Old Devil Hardin Western Book 4) (21 page)

‘
Man whose night has been
disturbed is less wary than one who slept well and woke
refreshed
,’ Tommy finished, unabashed by the interruption. ‘Unworthy
bodyguard of dishonorable warlord may be more wary tomorrow, but
illustrious gentleman should be able to carry out his duty in spite
of that.’

‘
So
now
you know,’ Ole Devil
said dryly. ‘Which of those heathenish devices did you use on the
second sentry, Tommy?’

‘
A
wata-kusi,’
the little Oriental
replied, after checking the contents of his quiver. ‘There wasn’t
time to pick and choose, I just took the first that came to
hand.’

‘
I’m pleased you
did
,’
Ole Devil declared. ‘After seeing what one’s capable of doing,
his
amigos
won’t be any too eager to face up to more like it. Let’s
get some sleep. We’ve another hard day tomorrow.’

‘
Is there any danger of patrols being
sent out to look for you?’ Dimmock asked.

‘
It’s not
likely
,’ Ole Devil guessed. ‘Like I said, Santa Anna doesn’t know
who tried to kill him and I think he’d rather believe it’s somebody
in his command than that we “foreign land thieves” would dare to
try. And, even if he does send out search parties, the way some of
his men were shooting, they’ll not be too eager to be wandering
around in the darkness.’

‘
I thought they were
shooting at you
,’ Dimmock said, having heard rifle fire from
beyond the trees before his companions returned.

‘
They
may have thought they were,’ Ole Devil grinned. ‘But we weren’t
where the shooting was being done. No, I don’t think we’ll have any
trouble tonight.’

‘
In that case,’ the
lieutenant drawled, straightening up with an attitude of just too
casual an ease.
‘I’ll put the “reward posters” and the
“Government’s letter” in my saddlebags ready for tomorrow and grab
me some sleep.’

Watching Dimmock walk away and having caught
the undertone of tension in his voice, Ole Devil put it down to a
slight apprehension over the task which he was to carry out on the
following day. However, the captain was convinced that, when the
time came, he could be counted upon to behave in a satisfactory
manner. When he had accomplished the assignment, he would never
again need to worry about anybody casting aspersions on his
courage.

Equally observant and even more perceptive
than his employer, Tommy drew a different conclusion from Dimmock’s
attitude.

~*~

At about the time that the two
Texians and the little Oriental were settling down for the night, a
council of war was commencing in Santa Anna’s striped marquee.
However, there was no longer any trace of the evening’s earlier
festivities. Although the table was now set on its legs, the lace
cloth and its other fittings had been removed. Along with the gash
left in the rear wall by the first
wata-kusi
arrow, only the holes in the roof and the
top of the table served as reminders of what had
happened.

Not that any such aids to memory were
necessary!

Looking at
el Presidente’s
scowling face, none
of the assembled officers believed he had forgotten, nor that he
would be inclined to forgive after he had been brought so close to
death.

‘
I’m
sorry, Your
Excellency,’ Colonel Juan Almonte said, opening the proceedings
reluctantly as every eye turned in his direction. He was standing
rigidly at attention and had the appearance of a man who expected a
storm to break over his head at any moment. ‘But we haven’t been
able to find a trace of whoever tried to kill you.’

‘
What was all that shooting we heard
not long ago?’ General Filisola inquired, before his florid faced
and fuming superior could speak.

‘
It started when some
damned fool in one of the bivouacs opened fire on us by
accident
,’ Almonte answered and, hearing a muffled snigger, he
darted a baleful glare to where Ramon Caro was sitting at the
elegant little portable
escritoire
which always accompanied
el Presidente
on his travels. There was little love
lost between them and, under the circumstances, the secretary’s
sneer was annoying in the extreme. ‘At least, it had better have
been by accident, or—’

‘
His Excellency was nearly
killed just now,’
Caro pointed out, delighted over his hated rival’s
discomfiture and determined to wring every possible benefit from
it. ‘And
that
wasn’t by accident.’

‘
I’m aware what happened
without having any inky-fingered letter scribbler tell
me!
’
Almonte spat back. ‘Two of my men were killed—’

‘
And what kind of watch do
these men of
yours
keep?’ the secretary demanded, almost in a screech. He was
furious at the way in which he had been described, but he lacked
the courage to demand satisfaction for the insult. ‘The one who was
knifed—’

‘
Has been doing a lot of
little jobs for
you
just recently,’
Almonte interrupted, seeing a way to turn the
tables on his antagonist. ‘Perhaps he’d have been more
alert—’

‘
That’s enough!’ Santa
Anna barked. Normally, he encouraged the hostility which existed
among the members of his staff and turned it to his advantage. With
the possibility of there being a plot to assassinate him organized
by somebody under his command, he wanted nothing to distract them
from the main issue. ‘This is no time for petty bickering among
ourselves.
’

‘
Did the wounded sentry recover and
talk, Your Excellency?’ Filisola asked, as the rivals relapsed into
sulky silence.

‘
He
did,
’
Santa Anna admitted, studying each of the faces around him
carefully to see if any showed concern. There was none that he
could discern, so he continued. ‘But all he could say was something
about an Indian having killed him.’

‘
An Indian?’ Almonte repeated, for
there were a number of soldiers in the column who qualified for
such a description, and it had been near the camp of one such group
where the firing had started.

‘
Considering that a bow
and arrows were used
,’ Caro sneered, ‘that isn’t very
surprising.’

‘
You
wouldn’t know about such things,’ Almonte countered
viciously. ‘But some of us who do have never seen Indian arrows
looking like those which were used.’

‘
Yes,
but
—’
the secretary began, angered by the rumble of concurrence from the
other members of the staff.

‘
Could
it have been one of those damned Hopis who came back with the story
about their regiment being wiped out by a
gringo
with a face like
el Diablo
who could call up a fire-spitting
river monster?’
^xlvi
Filisola suggested. ‘One of them
might have blamed you for their bad medicine, Your
Excellency.’

‘
I’ve never seen or heard
of the Hopis using arrows like that,’ objected the
overweight and
over-dressed Colonel Ricardo Dromundo, speaking for the first time.
The comment was mainly because of a natural instinct to contradict
any suggestions made by other members of the staff rather than
through any knowledge of such things. He looked at his
brother-in-law and went on helpfully, ‘I could have their chief
sent for—’

‘
I’ve already done it,’
Santa Anna answered ungraciously, once again sweeping the faces of
the men with a scrutiny filled with suspicion. ‘Of one thing I can
assure you
senores.
I mean to get to the bottom of this business. And when I
find out who’s behind the attempt to kill me, I’ll make them wish
they had never been born.’

There was no sign of tension or
apprehension about Lieutenant Paul Dimmock as he knelt, hidden, at
the right side fringe of an extensive clump of tall, thickly
growing bushes. Close by, also in concealment, Tommy Okasi had just
mounted the big brown gelding and held the reins of Dimmock’s
equally large and powerful bay. However, Ole Devil Hardin was
missing. So were the reserve mounts which had been provided by the
dead
vaqueros.
The absence of the latter suggested why the leader of the
mission was not with his companions.

Barely a quarter of a mile away
from the two young men’s hiding place,
Presidente
Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was
approaching along the trail. Paul Dimmock and Tommy Okasi were
waiting to perform the duty for which they had travelled many miles
and endured considerable hardships, not to mention the various
difficulties and dangers they had encountered.

As Ole Devil had predicted on
his return from the visit to
el President’s
encampment, the party had spent an
undisturbed night. Still making use of the acquired horses, as
their personal mounts would need to be kept as fresh as possible,
they were on the move again soon after dawn. They had kept a watch
to their rear, but had not expected to see anything of the Mexican
column before they arrived at their destination.

Conducting a closer examination
of the steep incline over which he had expressed an interest the
previous evening, Ole Devil had announced that it met with his full
approval. There were a few clumps of bushes in the vicinity and one
of them might have been planted deliberately to meet their
requirements. It was close enough to the trail for the plan to
work, and sufficiently far from the steep slope for the horses to
have time to gather momentum before they made
their ascent. Furthermore the
ground on either side of the rising trail could only be traversed
at speed by determined, well mounted and excellent
horsemen.

Tommy and Dimmock possessed all three of the
requisite qualities.

After making sure that neither the
lieutenant nor the little Oriental and their horses could be seen
by anybody travelling eastwards along the trail, even when the
latter were mounted, Ole Devil had left them to keep their vigil.
Before leading away the spare animals, he had shaken hands and
wished his companions every success. Now he was out of sight beyond
the rim, ready to help cover their flight with his Browning Slide
Repeating rifle if necessary and hoping that the need to do so
would not arise.

The plan would work far better
if it was believed only one Texian and an ‘Indian’, or rather that
particular
‘Indian’ was involved. For that reason, Tommy and Dimmock
had discarded the
sombreros
and
serapes.

Studying the situation when their objective
came into view, the lieutenant was impressed at the further
confirmation of how capably his superior could assess the way in
which another person would probably react to a set of
circumstances. Ole Devil had claimed that Santa Anna might consider
it inadvisable to make any major or too obvious alterations to the
formation and behavior of the advance party.

The summation proved to be correct.

Apart from having the bodyguard
of Popocatapetl Dragoons gathered more closely around him, which
was not noticeable to the men in the column to his rear,
el Presidente
had made no
significant change to the order of march which had been adopted on
the preceding day.

As Ole Devil had deduced from the facts that
were available, much as Santa Anna might have wished to obtain the
added protection they would offer, there were no scouts ahead or on
the flanks of his retinue. He had not made use of them since taking
up the pursuit of the Republic of Texas’s Army after the fall of
the Alamo Mission. It had been his contention, made to boost the
flagging morale of his long suffering soldiers, that such
precautions were unnecessary as the ‘foreign land thieves’ were too
terrified of his invincible warriors to do other than run away.

Such behavior was typical
of
el
Presideute’s
carefully calculated disregard for his personal safety. He
was now being compelled to pay the price for the advantages it had
accrued in the past.

In spite of the attempt upon his life, being
experienced in such matters, Santa Anna was aware of the dangers
which might ensue if he should change his arrangements. Not only
would the suggestion that he was worried over his safety have an
adverse effect upon the enlisted men, but it would strengthen the
position of whoever was behind the abortive assassination. He held
his position of complete authority because he had created a belief
in his own courage. To exhibit what could be exploited, or even
merely regarded, as weakness and caution could be fatal.