Warriors of the Night (23 page)

“I am not my father,” she said.

“No,” Miguel concurred.

“But now I am El Tigre. And I will not run away from your brother’s killers. Hector’s spirit cries out and I answer, ‘Vengeance.’ How do you answer, Miguel, or do you even hear his voice?”

She turned from him and continued on into the cool interior of the thick-walled adobe house. The sitting room was empty except for Matt Abbot, who slept in a cushioned, leather-backed chair. In the dining room, last night’s chili had been left in the middle of the table, a cast-iron centerpiece of congealed sauce and fatty chunks of meat alongside a platter of cold tortillas.

Peter was nowhere to be seen. She left the former general to his rest and studied the hallway and the door to her room at the end of the abbreviated corridor. Thinking to catch up on her own sleep, she headed toward her bedroom, then stopped by the door to the spare bedroom and placed her hand on the oaken panel. The door swung open. And against every propriety, she stepped into the room.

Ben McQueen woke a few minutes after noon. It took him a moment to get his bearings. He’d dreamt of ravens and jaguars and red knives. The room itself had little in the way of amenities, but the solid oak four-poster bed had a mattress of straw ticking overlaid with a soft woolen cover, and Ben had slept well. The moment his eyes opened, his senses keyed and he reached for the revolver he kept beside him under the covers. He bolted upright and drew a bead on Anabel, seated in an armchair at the foot of the bed. Ben recognized the young woman in her short-waisted brown jacket, tight-fitting chocolate-colored breeches, and black boots. Her long black hair was tied back from her face with a leather string.

“I reckon this is the second time I ought to be thanking you,” Ben said. “This makes twice you’ve had me unconscious and haven’t put a bullet in me.”

“In San Antonio, Miguel wanted very much to slit your throat, even though Jorge had knocked you out and you were no threat.” Anabel rose and walked to the door, then back to the bed. Her revolver was plainly visible, holstered at her side. “You see, Ben, we share the same problem.” She drew her gun and aimed it at the man stretched out on the bed. “I cannot decide whether to kill you… or kiss you.”

Ben lowered his gun and leaned back against the headboard. He’d slept in his clothes, a buckskin shirt and nankeen trousers. His calf-high boots were streaked and scarred from riding through the thorny brush country of Texas and Mexico.

“There’s folks outside these walls that just might make the decision for us,” he said.

Anabel’s eyes lowered. She saw her features in the black ring and turned the stone aside so as not to meet its accusing stare, then said, “Perhaps we ought not to wait, then.” When she looked up, her warm eyes held promises and her moist, parted lips were an open invitation that Ben was only too willing to accept. He leaned forward and reached out. His pulse quickened and his cheeks turned hot, as if in fever. Closer now, and he could feel the same heat radiating from the señorita. Then Peter Abbot burst into the room and the moment shattered like dropped crystal.

“I hope I’m interrupting something,” he said, grinning broadly. He pointedly ignored the disapproving stares and open hostility emanating from the man and woman on the bed. “I know who these savages are,” he blurted out, waving his bandaged arm excitedly in Ben’s direction. “And I know how we can beat them.” He turned and started back down the hall. Ben and Anabel looked at one another and reached the same conclusion. Ben climbed out of bed and buckled on his gun belt. Then he and the señorita followed Abbot down the hall and into the dining room.

Peter was seated at the table, his hands clasped beneath his chin. He welcomed them in a low voice, a mischievous smile on his face. Matt Abbot wandered into the dining room and took a seat alongside his son. The former general yawned and looked from Ben to Anabel to his son and, sensing he had intruded on a meeting of some importance, started to leave. Peter reached over and placed a hand on his father’s arm.

“Stick around, General,” Ben spoke up. “I want you to see me pound your son’s head into the table if he doesn’t wipe that grin off his face.”

Peter looked indignant. He removed his spectacles and rubbed the same spot on the bridge of his nose. He put the spectacles back on and cleared his throat. Ben recognized his friend’s flair for the dramatic and indulged him.

“Aztecs,” Peter triumphantly replied. “They’re Aztecs, or at least some kind of precedent race. I’ve read about them. I’ve been to Mexico City and seen the temples.” Peter glanced over at Anabel. “You’ve seen them too.”

She nodded. “But their culture was destroyed by the conquistadors long ago.”

“Not all. Look outside your walls. Don’t ask me how or why or what pit they’ve crawled out of,” Peter said. “But I tell you, we are surrounded by those same blood worshipers who used to rip the hearts from their sacrificial victims to satiate their dark god.”

Ben shrugged. “I’ve read of Cortez and Montezuma, but how does that help us now?”

Peter’s eyes widened with excitement. “I’ve been studying them from the roof. The man atop the rock slide must be the shaman, the very personification of a deity. If anything were to happen to him—”

Ben understood what his friend was getting at. The Spaniards had killed the high priests and so demoralized the Aztecs that Cortez and a handful of men had conquered an empire. The shaman was the key.

“You see my point?” Peter asked.

“Yes,” Ben replied. “Tonight, one way or another, a god must die.”

Fire Giver felt a sense of triumph at dusk as he stood upon the table rock that had become the ceremonial dais from which he intended to oversee the destruction of his enemies. His personal guard had ringed his position with gathered underbrush. At the given time the brush would be set ablaze. The circle of fire would light up the rock slide and outline the shaman. Fire Giver wanted his enemies to see their destroyer.

As the sky turned velvet black and shadows crept the length of the canyon, the drums and flutes fell silent and Young Serpent approached the shaman, as he had been ordered. It was always with a feeling of trepidation that one approached the manifested god of darkness, and the warrior wondered if he would be taken to task for his openly expressed desire to return home.

Young Serpent climbed to within about six feet of the dais and announced himself. “You sent for me?” Fire Giver’s eyes seemed to glow within his jaguar mask. He nodded and, drawing the sacrificial knife from his belt, knelt and scratched a circle almost four feet in diameter in the stone. Then he straightened and stood in the circle.

“This night the blood-eating god shall glut himself on the hearts of our enemies,” said Fire Giver. “Let my words pass from ear to ear. Before the night passes, I shall make our path clear.”

“May it lead home,” Young Serpent replied in all earnestness.

“I am the power; my strength shall be in the arms of my people. Tell them,” the shaman chanted.

“It will be as you have said.” Young Serpent breathed a sigh of relief. He turned and from this vantage point took a moment to study the walled hacienda the Warriors of the Night would soon assault. What were the strangers within the walls thinking? Did they feel safe? Did they know how close they were to death? Their weapons were noisy and wreaked terrible havoc. Many of Young Serpent’s clansmen might well perish during the attack. Tezcatlipoca was a demanding god. Still, it was worth whatever price to rid his people of the spotted sickness that had claimed so many lives in their village to the south. He stared at the walls of the hacienda, his mind full of questions whose answers were only hours away.

Ben adjusted the focus on the spyglass by lengthening and then shortening its length. Young Serpent’s image shimmered into focus. Daylight was fading fast. Ben shifted his stance and the shaman filled the eyepiece.

“Now there’s a fierce-looking son of a bitch,” Ben muttered. He swept the slopes with the spyglass, but the other warriors had vanished, as if the earth had swallowed them up. It was unnerving to think that so many of the bloodthirsty bastards were probably watching him right this instant, and that he could not see them.

Anabel made her way along the south wall and joined Ben at the corner where he had been standing his watch for the past couple of hours. He smiled at her approach. She was as great a puzzle to him as when first they had met. Had it been but a little more than two weeks ago? He had taken time to shave and wash the dust from his face, and brush his thick red hair back from his face. He tilted his sombrero high on his forehead and tucked the spyglass in his belt.

At first glance she looked like a vaquero in her short-waisted jacket, cotton shirt, and breeches. A black sash circled her waist. A holstered Patterson Colt rode high on her hip. She leaned her elbows on the wall and folded her hands while she toyed with her father’s ring, its obsidian stone like the heart of night.

In the courtyard below, the men worked together, enduring an uneasy truce for the common good. Clay Poole, Chico Raza, and Jorge Tenorio rolled the straw-littered wagon out from the north wall as Miguel and Snake Eye led Gandy’s Appaloosa and a chestnut gelding over to the singletree and harnessed the animals to the wagon.

Gandy made a quick inspection of the axles, all of which had needed repacking. It had taken most of the afternoon, but now the wagon seemed sound enough. He glanced up at Ben, shrugged, then nodded, a noncommital acceptance of the freight wagon’s condition. In the summer kitchen, Peter Abbot, with his bandaged shoulder, and Matt had escaped the more strenuous labors. Father and son had taken it upon themselves to clean and oil the weapons. Several Colts lay before them on the tabletop, broken down into barrel, cylinder, and grip.

“Are you having doubts?” Anabel said.

“No,” Ben answered.

“It is a good plan,” she said by way of encouragement, just in case he needed it. A couple of hours ago she had stood aside and allowed Ben to issue orders to her own men, as well as to the Rangers under his command. Her vaqueros had grudgingly accepted his leadership. They did not pretend loyalty, as such a pretense could have fooled no one. There were two factions within these adobe walls that were sworn enemies. No—three by her count: Spotted Calf would no doubt turn against them all once they were clear of the canyon.

Ben had put together a simple plan, but one that for all its simplicity might just work. They had six horses and ten riders. Four men—Ben, Spotted Calf, Jorge, and Clay Poole—would lead the way on horseback, followed by the remaining six in the wagon, which would be pulled by a two-horse team. The concentrated gunfire from the wagon ought to mow down any attackers who got in their way. With the warriors afoot, they could easily be outdistanced. Getting clear of the canyon was the hard part. While the wagon made its dash to safety, the men on horseback would try for the shaman. Snake Eye had bristled at being assigned to the wagon, but Ben had stood his ground. If anyone could see Matt Abbot safely out of these mountains, Ben had insisted, Snake Eye Gandy was the man.

Stars began twinkling into existence as the sky grew dark. Ben surveyed his surroundings. A man could do worse than make his home here—or his grave. He looked at Anabel, who seemed amused by his appearance.

“You look like a
bandito
, not a soldier,” she said. “Maybe you should ride for me, eh?”

Ben shook his head. “My place is north, across the Rio Grande. It could be your place too.”

“Never!” she replied. He had touched on a nerve, and it showed.

“Your father is dead, Anabel,” Ben said.

“His struggle lives. I am Cordero. As long as I wear the ring of my father, there shall be no peace.”

“If we live through the night, I’ll be bringing Matt Abbot home,” Ben said. “But what shall I do with you?”

“Maybe I surprise you, Señor McQueen,” the woman countered in a velvety-smooth tone of voice. “But for now, let us be friends,
sí?”

Ben agreed, though the irony wasn’t lost on him. Friends, yes, but they might have been more, much more, save for time and the Rio Grande.

A
ND SO IT BEGAN
at a quarter past midnight.

First came the fire as the dry brush surrounding the table rock was set ablaze. In the center of the lurid light, Fire Giver stood with his great axe raised above his head.

After this, the Warriors of the Night rose from the ground like spirits of the dead rising on Judgment Day, only these came not to dance with angels, but as harvesters of death, red rescuers whose eyes burned with battle lust. They were berserkers come to appease the blood-eating god, their only thought to kill and kill again until the walls of the hacienda ran crimson with blood.

Up went ladders of mesquite limbs tied together with vines. They attacked from north and east and south. Wood clattered against the adobe walls, but the warriors themselves made no sound, shouted no war cries. That was the eeriest part of all, a host of slayers moving in silent unison, storming the walls, racing forward toward the gate. One of their own who had scaled the wall was to unbolt the heavy oaken door and swing it open.

But the warriors hadn’t expected the gate to open so soon. And they were wholly unprepared for the deafening volley from the revolvers of the men on horseback who charged into their midst, blasting away to left and right, trampling helmeted braves under the flashing hooves of their horses. Behind the horsemen came a freight wagon barreling through the entrance. Snake Eye Gandy cracked his whip and howled at the team of horses as he urged them to greater speed. Patterson Colts spat flame and leaden death as the wagon lurched from side to side. Iron-rimmed wheels skidded in the dirt. Hurled spears cracked and clattered off the sides of the wagon and shattered against the spokes.

Ben McQueen rode low in the saddle and blasted away at the throng of attackers. It was plain to see they’d been caught off guard. Guns blazed as Ben, Clay Poole, Jorge Tenorio, and Spotted Calf charged the ranks of armed slayers. Spears hurled out of the night as Ben fired at shapes and shadows that moved toward him.