Warriors of the Night (13 page)

Toby whistled softly through his teeth. He was impressed by the transformation. This towering, red-haired hulk of a man seemed even more imposing than before. He looked as leather-tough as any Ranger Captain A.T. Pepper could put in the field.

“Well, I guess I’m ready,” Ben said. “Now who am I supposed to meet?”

Sam Houston stood and looked Ben square in the eyes. The former president of the Texas Republic was accustomed to towering over most men, so the experience was a novelty. Ben noted that Houston immediately invited the lieutenant to take a seat while the hero of San Jacinto remained standing.

“So you’re the young man Matt here speaks so highly of. McQueen, eh? I’ve heard that name.” Houston wore a black frock coat, a frilly French shirt and brocaded vest, and tight gray woolen breeches tucked into knee-high black boots. In his early fifties, his silvery hair was the only part of his appearance showing age. His complexion was ruddy, his strong hands steady, his back straight as an arrow. Ben sensed that here was a man convinced of his own importance. But it was hard to fault one whose exploits and leadership had played such a major role in the birth of the Republic.

“I met your father. We fought together at Horse Shoe Bend. He didn’t know me. We barely had time to make much of an acquaintance, as fast as Old Hickory was hounding the Creeks. But I heard the stories, how Kit McQueen single-handedly killed him a Red Stick chief. I, too, made something of a name for myself during that campaign.” Houston grinned and glanced around the dining room. Seated at the table were Captain Pepper, Matt Abbot, and Ben McQueen. Another place had been set. Ben guessed it might be for Peter. He wondered if the general’s son had managed to keep out of trouble. Surely with Clay Poole patrolling Main Plaza, Peter had weathered the evening.

Matt Abbot frowned with displeasure at Ben’s choice of uniform. He leaned over and admonished the lieutenant.

“I daresay, Ben. The arrival of the former president calls for something a little more formal.”

“Come, come, Matthew,” Houston said, intervening on Ben’s behalf. “From what Snake Eye told us of their earlier altercation, we’re lucky the lieutenant has any clothes on at all.” Houston chuckled. “Hell, Ben McQueen here looks to be in dress uniform, compared with my adjutants at San Jacinto.”

Abbot shrugged and relinquished his point. The former general was in his own way as proud a man as Houston, but he was willing to humor the saviour of the Texas Republic. Houston could sway much of the public’s sentiment and turn the populace in favor of annexation. Abbot knew that men with such high regard for themselves were often susceptible to flattery. “As you say.”

“It’s an honor to meet you, sir,” Ben said. “Your victory at San Jacinto is legendary.”

“And damn near accidental,” Houston added. “My men didn’t give me much choice. I simply held them back until Pepper here and Gandy and the others were mad enough to whip the devil himself once they cut loose.” Houston emptied his glass of wine and helped himself to another.

“I believe you are too modest, Mister President,” Ben said. Houston’s exploits in the field of war, his Indian battles, the women he’d courted and duels he’d fought had become a part of folklore.

“Anson Jones is president now,” Houston corrected. “I’m just an ordinary Texican.”

“Begging your pardon, Sam,” Captain Pepper spoke up, amused by the man’s false humility. He wiped the back of his hand across his bushy mustache. “But I don’t think you got an ordinary bone in your body.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Abbot said. “I daresay, if the presidency of the Texas Republic is behind you, perhaps first senator from the sovereign state of Texas lies ahead.” Abbot waited, holding his breath. Sam Houston was uncharacteristically silent.

“I suppose we’ll have to wait and see,” he finally replied. Then he raised a glass of wine in salute. Ben, Matt, and Captain Pepper stood and raised their own glasses.

“Gentlemen. I give you the Republic of Texas, today. As for tomorrow…” Houston paused, enjoying the drama of the moment. “Tomorrow shall creep in its petty pace. And I shall give a speech at the fiesta. Perhaps all things will become clear.” He gulped the contents of his glass. Stacia appeared in the doorway, an empty kettle in her hands. Steam curled from the pour spout. “I have had a long and tedious ride over from Austin. So if you’ll excuse me, my good friends, the spirit is strong but my ass is tender, and I’d like to soak it in a hot bath.” Houston bowed to the men at the table. Then he followed the woman out of the dining room and down the hall to his bedchamber and the copper tub she had filled with steaming water.

After he had left, Matt Abbot turned to Captain Pepper and sighed. “A most remarkable individual,” Abbot said. “If he refuses a career in Congress, there’s always the theatre.”

“Looks like Captain Pepper’s gone and signed us up another Ranger,” Virge Washburn called out as Ben emerged from the governor’s palace and stood in the shade of the long, wide thatch roof that ran the length of the building. Virge Washburn was leaning against a support post, whittling. Clay Poole sat in a straight-backed chair tilted back against the palace wall near an unshuttered window that looked in on the captain’s office. He was sipping at a tin cup of coffee. Some of the brown droplets had collected in his beard. He held a flour tortilla he’d folded around strips of
cabrito.
The goat meat was lightly seasoned, not too spicy, for Poole had a tender stomach.

Snake Eye Gandy was perched on top of a pork barrel, cleaning the mud from his Patterson Colts. He had turned a wooden crate on end and was using the flat side for a table, on which were arranged the pieces of disassembled guns. He looked up, good-natured devilment gleaming in his eye.

“By heaven, he’s fresh as bluebonnets in the spring,” Gandy said.

“I hope he can sit a horse,” Poole added, and took a bite out of his afternoon meal.

“He gentled Red Lady. She came over to him sure as if that roan had fed at his hand since birth,” Virge said. “While she’s give you nothin’ but sore ribs and lumps on that hard head of yours.”

Gandy and Virge both laughed at Poole’s expense. The grizzled Ranger grumbled an unintelligible insult and concentrated on his meal. Meat juices dribbled onto the front of his buckskin shirt, but he seemed not to mind. A number of other stains had collected there over the past week. Once every month without fail, Clay Poole would amble over to the nearest creek, water hole, or spring-fed pond and submerge himself, clothes and all.

From the smell of him, it was plain to his associates that Clay Poole was about due for a dunking.

“You meet General Sam?” Gandy asked. “He’s the best there is.”

“How come you didn’t join us?” Ben asked.

“Too damn many officers and the like,” Gandy said. “And my guns needed cleaning after the fracas this morning. After the Comanche sign I seen, we’d do well to keep our guns loaded and primed.”

“War parties?” Ben asked.

“Whole villages. On the move, but coming too far east. They ought to be following the mountains in from the Big Bend. I can’t figure but it’s like they were scared out.”

“The warriors of the night,” Ben softly intoned. “The blood-eating god.” He glanced up. The Rangers were staring at him. Clay Poole was slack-jawed, his coffee cup clutched in his powerful grasp. A bulge in his cheek showed he had forgotten to chew. Virge audibly gulped.

“Damn,” he muttered.

“You been jawing with that damn Comanche again,” Gandy scoffed. “Brass Buttons, you been loading your pipe with loco weed.”

Ben look sharply at the Ranger. Had the man been spying on him the other night at the ruins? Then he blushed, realizing Gandy had merely used an expression. His reaction intrigued Gandy, whose one good eye rarely missed a suspicious action.

“I’ve talked to him. And what he speaks is the truth,” Ben said.

“Brass Buttons, you’re a good man in a fight, but you’ve a lot to learn. Comanches ain’t got no use for the truth. The only bucks you can turn your back on is dead ones. It’s that way with most Injuns.”

Ben glanced at Virge. Evidently Snake Eye knew nothing of McQueen’s Choctaw heritage.

“Then it would seem, Mr. Gandy, we both have a lot to learn.” Now it was Gandy’s turn to look perplexed, which suited Ben just fine. Clay Poole finished the last of his lunch, licked his fingers, and studied his empty hand, regretting he hadn’t brought more food.

“Fill your belly any more and you won’t be able to sit a saddle,” Virge said.

Poole looked wounded. He swallowed and belched. “Nursemaiding Peter Abbot is hungry work. I spent the whole night following him and that pretty little whore Cecilia around Main Plaza with nary a coin in my pocket to rustle me up some grub.”

“Just as well. You might have wound up drunk in an alley instead of seeing Abbot safely to the German’s hotel,” Virge replied. He glanced at Snake Eye and winked. “I heard tell that Clay fluffed their pillows and tucked Abbot and his
puta
into bed.”

“Liar. Black liar,” Clay replied. His bushy brows furrowed and his eyes narrowed, crinkling his features. The meddlesome Virge knew how far he could push Poole without his grim-faced friend coming after him with a tomahawk.

“If you men will excuse me, I’ll leave before the blood flows,” Ben said.

“Ain’t gonna be a fight,” Poole said. “Virge, chicken-shit that he is, always runs off before I can lay a hand on him. But one of these days he’s liable to trip…” Clay Poole twisted his fists, one atop the other, as if wringing a chicken neck. He smiled in satisfaction and folded his hands across his belly.

Virge resumed whittling. The Comanche war chief was really taking shape in his hands. As for Poole’s threat, he’d heard a hundred of them. Despite what an outsider might take for mutual animosity, the two men were
compadres
. They had saved each other’s hide more than once. And would do so again without question.

Ben could sense this loyalty in every one of these rough-and-tumble soldiers of Texas. No wonder such men had prevailed during the revolution and driven the Mexican armies back across the Rio Grande. But the watchword of Texas liberty was vigilance and would remain so until the Republic agreed to annexation. With the armed might of the United States backing Texas, the threat of Mexican aggression might well be extinguished, leaving the state to develop and prosper. Ben could envision a rosy future for these Texicans. He wondered what the cost in lives would be to attain it.

“You look troubled, Brass Buttons,” Snake Eye Gandy remarked, tapping the gun barrel into place on one of his Colts. He checked the action and the loads. “Things’ll work out. They always do. Maybe you ought to pay a call on Señorita Obregon before I ask to escort her to the fiesta myself.” He nudged Virge.

“I intend to,” Ben said, refusing to be drawn into any further exchange. Gandy’s humor was at best raw, and should Anabel become the object of an unflattering remark, he might have to take the Ranger to task, which would be an unpleasant and painful experience at best.

He left the porch and headed across Military Plaza, threading his way through stalls and vendors, makeshift stages, two-wheeled carts, and a colorful populace, young and old—men, women, and children who had come to barter and exchange gossip and to learn who had been born, died, or married in a dozen settlements north and south. For all intents and purposes, the fiesta had begun a day early.

Ben was midway across the plaza when the courtyard gate opened and three
campesinos
dressed in homespun, coarsely woven shirts, baggy trousers, and faded serapes stepped out into the plaza. The poor were always coming to visit Father Esteban, so none of the passersby paid the three men any mind.

However, yesterday’s incident in the alley had left more of a mark on Ben than just the burn on the back of his neck from his assailant’s quirt. His suspicions regarding Carmelita came flooding back. He tilted the brim of his hat to hide his features as the three peons hurried away from the priest’s house, rounded the corner, and made their way down an alley between two imposing adobe houses whose inhabitants no doubt played an important role in San Antonio’s social hierarchy.

For a moment, Ben hesitated and stood in the gray gloom of an overcast afternoon, undecided whether or not to follow the three men who had just left or to continue on to the padre’s. The chance of seeing Anabel was the more appealing choice. But caution and curiosity got the better of him. He changed course and hurried to keep the
campesinos
in view as they made their way down the alley.

The lieutenant fought his way through the crowd, past Germans and Mexicans, Anglos, mestizos, mixed breeds of all kinds. There were more merchants than customers, and more than once several townspeople with something to sell blocked Ben’s path. He brushed aside a woman selling tortillas, an old man with a herd of milk goats, and a young woman who showed him some ankle and smiled provocatively as he sped past. Ben reached the mouth of the alley in time to see the three peons mount sleek, well cared for horses and walk their mounts over to the Calle Dolorosa.

Ben glanced about him and spied a brown gelding tethered behind a raised platform, from which, the lieutenant figured, Sam Houston no doubt intended to deliver his speech. The platform was still under construction. Workers hastily hammered away, nailing support beams and stringing the front of the platform with banners. The carpenters had tethered their mounts to a barber’s pole in front of a shop near the alley. None of the workers paid the lieutenant any mind as he ambled over to the horses. Ben wasn’t particular. He chose the first one he came to, a pecan-brown gelding with a black-freckled rump and white stockings. He untied the reins from the barber’s pole and noticed a round-cheeked girl watching him. She had dark eyes, brown skin, and a smile that would one day break many a young man’s heart. She wore a dusty yellow dress and mud-spattered, buckled slippers, and had skinned knees.

“My name is Emilia, what’s yours?” she asked.

“Ben,” the lieutenant replied, putting a finger to his lips.

“I’m ten years old,” she said.