Warriors of the Night (16 page)

“She won’t harm General Abbot. Once war breaks out, she’ll probably try to ransom him,” the padre said.

“Over my dead body,” Ben said. “Where is she heading?”

“My father’s hacienda, across the border, in the mountains. Who can say? I have never been there,” the padre replied.

“And I will not tell you the way,” Carmelita interjected. She blessed herself with the sign of the cross. “This I swear.”

Ben, despite his anger and sense of betrayal, had to admit a grudging respect for the rotund old woman. They could stake her out on an anthill Comanche style, he figured, and she still wouldn’t talk.

Comanche…

He had an idea, one that might just work if it didn’t get him killed. He excused himself from the gathering, hurried from the kitchen, and ran into Snake Eye Gandy near the front door. The Ranger had spent half the night searching the
jacales
in La Villita, just in case the priest was lying and Anabel and her prisoner hadn’t left town after all. However, his search had proved fruitless.

“You learn anything?”

Gandy shook his head. “You look like a burr’s been put under your saddle.”

“I’m not waiting any longer,” Ben said.

“They’ve had several hours’ head start. And rain’s washed out the tracks. Now, unless you know something I don’t know…”

“Not me,” Ben said. He was playing a hunch, based on the hasty exchange between Anabel and the Comanche at his capture. “Spotted Calf.”

The only action at the jail consisted of a pair of mud daubers trying to figure out the best corner in which to build a nest. The insects hovered in front of the door and refused to give ground until Ben swept them aside with the back of his hand. He peered through the barred window. The sky had cleared and the sunlight warmed his shoulder and soothed his battered cheek. Spotted Calf lay on the dirt floor of the adobe jail, motionless. Indeed, he seemed dead. But then, without looking toward the door, he spoke.

“Bitter Creek has returned to watch his red brother die.”

Ben unbolted the door to the jail. Snake Eye’s shadow fell across him as Gandy grabbed McQueen’s arm. Snake Eye had been at Ben’s side, hovering like a one-eyed guardian angel, hoping to talk sense into the rawboned young man, or to back his play.

“Have you gone plumb loco?” Gandy asked.

Ben pulled free and entered the darkened interior. The Comanche on the floor sat upright, surprised by the soldier’s actions.

“I have come to watch you die or live. The choice is yours.”

Spotted Calf cast a wary glance toward the open door. He spied Gandy’s shadow on the ground, gun in hand. The Comanche returned his attention to the man towering over him. He waited, his silence an unspoken question.

“The woman is gone. Anabel Cordero and the bandits of El Tigre have stolen guns and escaped toward the mountains.” Ben knew he was grasping at straws, but one look at the Comanche’s expression told him he had struck pay dirt.

“You lie,” Spotted Calf said.

“She has stolen something that belongs to me. I will not rest until I get it back.”

Spotted Calf heard the anger in the white man’s voice. He felt the anger in the white man’s heart and realized Ben must be speaking the truth. The Comanche scowled. The woman had promised to free him if the brave kept her secret. The Comanche had fulfilled his part of the bargain. But the woman had left him to die the white man’s slow death, shut off from the mountains and the good wind.

“I think you know where she has gone,” Ben said. Spotted Calf stood, and his dark, flat-nosed features grew impassive and guarded. “Take me there,” the soldier added.

“You do not know what you ask. The dark ones have come to the mountains. We would ride to our deaths.” Spotted Calf lowered his head.

“Better to ride to your death like a warrior than wait for it here,” Ben said, and turned his back on the Comanche with obvious disregard for the brave’s former prowess. He might as well have been standing before an old woman.

“Wait,” Spotted Calf said as the soldier’s big frame filled the doorway. “I hear the wisdom in your words. I will lead you.”

Ben swung around and stared at the chief. From outside the jail, Gandy whispered, “You can’t be serious. You can’t trust him; you’re his enemy. He’d as soon slit your gullet as spit.”

“Give me your knife,” Ben said.

Gandy hesitated, then drew a broad-bladed bowie knife from the sheath beneath his left arm. Ben took the knife and with its gleaming point carved a hole in his own thumb. Blood trickled down into his fist. Spotted Calf understood, and moved forward and held out his right hand. In a matter of seconds, two wounded thumbs were pressed together, mingling the blood of red man and white.

“Now I am not his enemy, but his brother in blood,” Ben said, handing the knife back to Gandy.

“All this big medicine doesn’t mean a hill of beans, younker. We don’t need a goddamn Injun to lead us into a trap. We’ll find Cordero on our
own
.” Gandy could see that his words were falling on deaf ears. He stepped aside in disgust as Ben brought Spotted Calf into the light. The Comanche shielded his eyes and studied the rapidly clearing sky. It promised to be a warm, clear day. Spotted Calf sucked in a lungful of fresh air. The brave grinned, obviously enjoying the effect his release was having on his old adversary. Spotted Calf held up his shackled wrists for Ben to unlock the chains.

“When we’re clear of town,” Ben told him.

“Sombitch!” Snake Eye cursed. His face was mottled red, ugly mean. “I ain’t about to trust my life on the trail in the company of this red devil.” He spoke with absolute finality.

“No one’s asking you to,” Ben replied. Then, with the Comanche at his side, he started toward the barn. With luck they’d be on their way before noon. Ben glanced down at his self-inflicted wound. Ben could only hope the Comanches held such rituals in as high regard as the Choctaws he’d been raised with. A hell of a lot was riding on a bloody thumb.

T
OBY STOOD IN THE
sunlight, sweat beading his dark brow. He held a cloth sack stuffed with bread and half a smoked ham for the men to eat when they made camp come nightfall. Provisions for the journey—jerked meat, coffee, beans, tortillas, and a couple of slabs of salt pork—had already been packed. Ben had reoutfitted himself with a borrowed Patterson Colt and the muzzle-loading rifle the army issued to all its soldiers. Whoever had clubbed him had forgotten to take the bear-claw pouch. Ben looked across the rumps of the horses, hoping in vain to catch a glimpse of Snake Eye Gandy. There was nothing to see but mesquite trees, bunchgrass, and sparrows flitting among the spiny arms of an ocotillo. Ben checked the extra loads in the pouch. If he was riding to his death, as Spotted Calf said, at least he wouldn’t go unarmed. For his part, the Comanche had selected a horse for himself and had worked diligently to ready the animals for the journey. Chains rattling with every movement of his arms, the brave inspected the hooves of the horses they would ride into the mountains of Mexico.

Toby hooked his thumbs in the rope belt circling his waist. “Things is sure gonna be quiet around here with you gone, Mr. McQueen.” He wanted to go with the Rangers more than anything in the world. Still, a day of fireworks, music, and food would salve his wounded feelings. He patted the roan and then, with the exuberance of youth, trotted off toward Military Plaza, where the fiesta was fully under way.

Clay Poole and Virge Washburn looked none too happy about traveling in the company of the Comanche, but they kept their doubts to themselves.

Captain Pepper had asked for volunteers to join Ben, but, as Virge Washburn had wryly observed, he and Clay Poole were the only Rangers in town at the moment. Neither man would have hesitated had it not been for the nature of the guide. The two hard cases had spent the past ten years fighting Comanches. Now they were being told to ride with one of the very same braves they had been chasing. It just didn’t make sense. But they seemed resigned to the situation.

Standing in the stable yard, Ben and the others were surprised to see Peter Abbot emerge from the barn. He led a brown gelding saddled and ready to ride. The general’s errant son carried a revolver holstered high on his right hip and a rifle slung over his shoulder. He wore nankeen pants tucked into high-topped black boots and a coarse linen shirt, a serape, and a flat-brimmed black hat. He had draped his satchel of sketch paper and charcoal across the back of his saddle. Sunlight glinted off the lenses of his spectacles as he joined the men in front of the barn. He looked nervous and unsure of himself. Ben felt the same way but refused to show it.

Sam Houston and Captain Pepper stood aside as Peter approached. He nodded to Ben. By rights, the young man figured, he should have been enjoying the fiesta, finding a variety of libertine young señoritas to flirt with and reveling in the abundance of food and wine.

Flies circled mounds of fresh horse droppings. The shadow of a hawk drifted over the gathering of men. Peter Abbot stared defiantly at the Rangers until they looked away. Their opinion of him was obvious.

“You don’t have to come along. No one will think the worse of you,” Ben said.

“You’re going after him,” Peter said.

“He’s my responsibility,” the lieutenant replied.

“He’s my father.” Peter dabbed at his pale features. It wouldn’t be long before his forehead was sunburned and peeling. “Look. He and I have never seen eye to eye. But despite everything, I still love the man. It’s my right to go after him, Ben. And I will, even if it means trailing you from a distance.”

Ben nodded. He couldn’t argue with the sense of responsibility Peter felt. Ben himself would follow the man who had taken his medal, to the ends of the earth if need be. He’d retrieve it or die. Yes, Ben McQueen understood the demands of blood and family.

Sam Houston sauntered past the horses as Ben climbed into saddle. The creak of leather, the smell of oiled guns and horseflesh made the hero of San Jacinto wistful for earlier days.

“My place is in Austin, son, trying to make the best of this terrible situation, else I’d be going with you. I must also notify President Polk of these tragic events.”

“You’d be welcome,” Ben said.

Houston produced an Arkansas toothpick, a bone-handled knife with a twelve-inch blade of double-edged hammered steel. The knife was encased in a simple buckskin sheath. There was nothing fancy about the knife. It was a simple, ugly, efficient weapon that had seen plenty of use. And would again. The lieutenant tucked the sheath in the left side of his belt.

“I thank you, sir,” Ben said.

“Keep your powder dry, Lieutenant McQueen,” Houston said. “Good speed, all of you.” He stepped back. Spotted Calf, in his stolen brocaded vest and blue frocked coat, winced as he leaped into the saddle. His wounded shoulder didn’t seem to hamper his movements. He rode up alongside Ben and looked straight ahead, as if seeing beyond the horizon. The joy of his newly won freedom had worn off, to be replaced by a journey that would take him back to the mountains where a dark god waited.

Peter Abbot and the Rangers lost no time in mounting. Clay Poole’s hammerhead stallion bucked and fought the weight of the man on his back.

“Be still, you goddamn nag,” Poole roared, “or I’ll bust your head with my tomahawk!” His threat took effect and the stallion settled down.

Virge chuckled aloud. “You been ridin’ a stool too damn long, Clay.”

“Shut up, you…” Poole’s insult trailed off as he spied the horseman coming toward them out of the arroyo.

“Lieutenant,” Poole called out to the man in the lead.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Virge muttered.

Ben turned as Snake Eye Gandy walked his bad-tempered stallion up out of the mesquite-choked arroyo. The grizzled Ranger offered no explanation as he rode up abreast of Ben McQueen. He sat silent for a moment, then shrugged.

“Maybe I’ll tag along for a while.”

“Suit yourself,” Ben replied.

“Yeah,” Gandy said, glaring at the Comanche. The Ranger tucked his topknot beneath his sombrero and fixed Ben in a rattler stare. “You’re a crazy sombitch, McQueen.”

Ben refused to be cowed. “Go to hell.”

Snake Eye Gandy chuckled and glanced aside at the Comanche. “Sure thing. Hell it is. Reckon you know the way, Spotted Calf?”

He did.

F
IRE GIVER LOOKED OUT
across the ancient landscape and listened to the voice in the wind. He heard secrets that reassured him. There had passed as many nights as the fingers on his hands. In that time, Tezcatlipoca had fed well. Fire Giver stood and walked the edge of the ridge overlooking the box canyon his god had led him to. Down below, at the far end of the canyon, the whitewashed walls of a hacienda gleamed in the moonlight. In the center of the canyon, a settlement had sprung up where poor peasant farmers, Chisos Indians, and the families of the vaqueros had made their homes. Consisting of maybe two dozen families, the settlement had provided crops for themselves and Cordero’s men. Goats and cattle had grazed on the chino grass here and in other canyons hidden among the serrated ridges and upthrust peaks of northern Coahuila. In return, the farmers received the protection of Cordero’s vaqueros. Comanches came to this canyon to trade, not plunder. Don Luis Cordero provided a measure of safety the poor were unaccustomed to.

Three days ago, Fire Giver had put a grisly end to that illusion.

Behind where he stood on this rampart of volcanic stone and upthrust limestone debris, a fossil-encrusted boulder about twenty feet in length and ten feet wide had been sculpted by the elements into a distinctly ominous resemblance of a crouching panther, poised, waiting to spring atop the unwary traveler. The panther’s front paws, smooth-weathered stone encrusted with tiny shells, were black with dried blood and ashes. They had served as a divine altar, a sacred receptacle for the hearts of the sacrificed. The women and children and few men in the settlement never knew they were under attack until the battle was all but lost. The warriors of the night had descended in darkness and carried off the inhabitants to die beneath the sacrificial knife that Fire Giver wielded with such expertise.