by Jory Sherman
“He sleeps in another room.”
“Where are my clothes?”
He sat up, shaking out the streamers of cobwebs that still cloaked his brain. He felt as if there were heavy weights in his forehead, just above his eyes.
“I will get them for you,” she said, sliding from the bed, a nymphlike creature out of a fairy tale, her naked body all curved and sinuous, limned with light until she vanished in shadow.
He heard the rustle of cloth and she reemerged, handing him his clothing. He sat there on the edge of the bed and dressed—pulled on his boots, strapped on his gun belt. He kept looking out the window, but he could not tell how close they were to the dawn.
“How long did I sleep?” he asked her when he was fully dressed.
She had slipped into a dress and put on sandals. She stood small and wanton in front of him, looking up at him.
“Maybe four hours. Are you rested, Zak?”
“I don’t know. I’m still half asleep.”
She laughed and he wanted her again, but pushed past her, toward the outline of a closed door.
“I’ve got to rouse Vickers,” he said. “Point me the way.”
“I will take you to him, Zak, and I will get coffee for you, heat some food for both of you.”
“We’ve already lost valuable time,” he said. “We’ve got to try and find Loomis before he rides into a death trap.”
“Shh,” she said. “There is time for all you want to do, Zak. You do not hurry. You go slow and you live long.”
He followed her through the door to a little room, where Vickers was sawing wood, his snoring a raspy sound in the hollow of the adobe quarters. Zak pinched Jeff’s nose and shook him awake. Vickers thrashed like a blind man as he rose to a sitting position.
“Where in hell am I?” he said.
Zak and Carlita both laughed.
“You might be in some part of hell if you don’t get your ass out of that bed, Jeff.”
“I must have passed out. God, I slept like a log. I thought…”
Zak stepped away from the bed.
“You were shanghaied, Jeff. Just like me.”
“God, we should have…”
“Let’s not fret over that now.” Zak turned to Carlita. “That coffee hot?”
“Yes, come into the kitchen. There is a table and chairs there.”
“I ought to punch your father,” Zak said.
She slipped through the doorway and left a trail of delicate perfume in her wake.
Paquito was already up and dressed, seated at the table. A pair of oil lamps lit the kitchen. Clarita poured coffee.
“I grained and watered your horses while you slept,” Paquito said. “They are saddled and ready for you. There is food in your saddlebags, some meat and tortillas and beans that Clarita fried. Your canteens are filled.”
“Paquito,” Zak said, “you are every bit the bastard my father said you were.”
“Did Russell say that about me?”
“He said you were stubborn and ornery.”
“Ah, then we did know each other, Russell and I.”
“I ought to lay you out for putting those drops in our coffee.”
“I did not put them there. Clarita did.”
“What was it she put in?” Jeff asked.
“I believe it is called chloral hydrate. Some people call it—what is the word, Clarita?”
“A Mickey Finn,” she said.
Paquito laughed.
“Yes, a Mickey Finn. I think he was some kind of Irish brute.”
“My head feels fuzzy inside,” Jeff said.
“That will wear off in time,” Paquito said. “The coffee will wash away the spider webs.”
“I ought to pour mine all over your head, Paquito,” Zak said. “You cost me valuable time.”
“Listen to me, Zak,” Paquito leaned close. Steam from the coffee spiraled up from his cup in a lazy pigtail. “Clarita told me she heard Leo tell Pete Carmody to have some men wait for you in ambush in case you got away from Jorge and Ralph. If you had ridden away last night, you both would be dead now.”
Zak turned to Clarita.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yes. That is why I had to get away, to warn you, to keep you from getting shot. In the daylight, you can see. They will not ambush you.”
“Tell me, Clarita,” Zak said, “just what were you doing in that cantina anyway? Do you work there? Do you—”
She laughed and pressed a finger against his lips to silence him.
“I work for my father. When you first saw me, I was there to deliver papers, legal documents, for Leo to sign. They said he would be back in the evening, so I stayed there, hoping you would come back, too.”
“I thought maybe you and Leo—”
“No, you must not think such thoughts. Besides, if Leo tried to kiss me, Minnie would cut my throat.”
“She has done that, you know,” Paquito said.
“What? Cut Clarita’s throat?”
“No, she cut the throat of a woman who wanted to bed Leo.”
“And she got away with it?”
Paquito shrugged.
“The witnesses all claimed she acted in self-defense.”
“You heard the case?”
“It never went to trial. But it would have been the same. No evidence to convict her of a crime.”
“She did it again, too,” Clarita said. “Not to a woman, but to a man.”
“What?” Jeff said.
“A man who worked for Leo got mad and came gunning for him,” Paquito said. “Minnie flew at him like a puma and clawed his face. Then she took the knife she keeps under her skirt and stabbed him in the stomach. Then as he was on his knees, she slashed open his throat.”
“I suppose that was self-defense, too,” Zak said.
Paquito smiled. “What do you think?”
“I think the law in Santa Fe is seriously wounded, if not entirely dead.”
Clarita served little bundles of carne asada, frijoles refritos, and chopped onions to Jeff and Zak. They ate hurriedly and drank another cup of coffee each. They grabbed their rifles and walked out into the morning.
The dawn was just breaking when they rode away from Paquito’s house. Zak looked back and waved to Clarita. He felt a pang of regret, a small sadness that he was leaving.
“At least we’ll have the sun at our backs all morning,” Jeff said as they cleared the town, crossed the Taos road, and headed for the Rio Grande.
“And in our eyes all afternoon,” Zak said.
He knew they had a ride ahead of them, and little chance of stopping Loomis from riding into the Jemez and facing armed men, white and Indian, bent on destroying him and his troops. And the worst part was that Loomis and his troops would probably never see the enemy. They would be hidden behind rocks, up on the rimrock, sitting in brush, or hiding almost anywhere in that rugged country.
“Do we have a chance of catching up to the colonel before he walks into a trap?” Jeff asked after they had forded the Rio Grande.”
“I doubt it, Jeff. Not unless every trooper’s horse gets a rock stuck in its shoe.”
“What are we going to do, then? Do you have a plan?”
“I don’t know, Jeff. A plan is something you make when you know what lies ahead.”
“And you don’t know what lies ahead, do you, Zak?”
“Yes, I know. But I sure as hell don’t want to talk about it.”
The two men rode into the Jemez late in the afternoon, following the tracks of both Leo and his men and Loomis and his troops. They rode into the desolation and immense silence of that country, like wanderers in an unknown country, the sheer bluffs of iron-red monuments rising above them like the walls of a fortress, the silence so deep their own thoughts boomed in their minds as loud as thunder.
Chapter 23
Amid the maze of tracks Zak saw the wheel ruts. He tried to decipher the strength of the two opposing forces, but could only come up with a rough
estimate.
“I reckon Loomis fielded a company,” Zak said. “Maybe eighty men or so.”
“More like a hundred, Zak.”
“And two mountain howitzers.”
“Yes. Brass twelve-pounders. Might make a difference.”
“And Biederman, I figure, took eighteen or twenty men with him.”
“At least a dozen, looks like,” Vickers said.
“Maybe enough, depending on how large Narbona’s force is.”
“How many Navajos did you count in that valley camp, Zak?”
“At least fifty fighting men.”
“If that’s the only camp, Loomis might have a chance.”
Zak wasn’t that optimistic, but he didn’t say anything to Jeff. The Navajos had the advantage of terrain and they probably had at least two camps, perhaps more. They knew the country; Colonel Loomis did not. And Loomis would have a difficult time wrestling those two howitzers up to high ground, where they would be most effective. The mules would struggle to pull over two hundred pounds of metal up that same rugged mountain where he and Jeff had spotted the Navajo camp.
There were cart tracks, too, weaving through the tracks of the cannon.
“At least Loomis had sense enough not to bring four-wheeled wagons,” Zak said.
“He’s carrying powder and ball, probably cartridges, too. He’d want to split the supplies up, not put all his eggs in one basket.”
“If he makes a stand, he’ll have all his eggs in one basket,” Zak said, worrying his lower lip with his teeth. He saw a golden eagle float by, riding the thermal currents, sailing across a land basking in heat, looking for that one little tail twitch, ear flick, or glint of eyes to find its prey. Loomis was doing much the same thing on the ground. The eagle could see for miles. Loomis would be lucky to see more than a couple of hundred yards ahead. And what he’d see would be conical hills, each one a potential hiding place for men with rifles.
They kept the horses at a good pace. The gelding Jeff rode was a sturdy horse with good legs and bottom, a strong chest. Nox stepped out like a champion with his ground-eating gait. Sweat sleeked his black hide until his coat shone like polished ebony. His tail swished at flies and his neck trembled under his dark mane as the insects sank their needle-like probes into his flesh, gorging on salt and blood.
“Zak,” Jeff said late that afternoon, as he daubed his forehead with his handkerchief to soak up the excessive sweat, “don’t you think we ought to rest these horses for a while?”
“We’ll be at a higher altitude come nightfall,” Zak said.
“Maybe on two dead horses.”
“It will be cool then. They’ll probably whicker for a blanket before midnight.”
“You ever command any troops?”
“No, never did.”
“I can see why. What did you do for General Crook, anyway? Conduct forced marches?”
“I was a scout.”
“A scout? You mean you didn’t ride with the cavalry?”
“Nope. Never did. Cavalry had to catch up with me.”
“And did they?”
“Not unless I wanted them to,” Zak said.
They rode into the Jemez just at dusk, when the western sky was on fire, the clouds burning to a crisp above the snowcapped peaks. As the night came on, the flies stopped nagging the horses and biting the men’s necks, and a cool breeze blew, drying up their sweaty faces and ruffling the moisture out of their billowing shirts.
“Now can we stop and rest, Zak?”
“We know where Biederman and Loomis are going,” Zak said. “No need to scour the ground for their tracks.”
“In a few minutes, it’ll be black as pitch. We won’t be able to see a damned thing.”
“Won’t have to see anything. I can smell them already.”
“You can?”
“The air is full of messages, Jeff. You just have to sort them out.”
“I don’t smell anything but my own sweat and my horse’s.”
“There’s other sweat.”
Zak heard Jeff sniffing the air and suppressed a smile. He could follow the tracks in the dark. There was the smell of horse dung, for one thing, and for another, there was the earthy scent of men and horses blowing toward them. To his keen sense of smell it was like riding toward a stockyard in Kansas City or Denver—almost overpowering.
The small, conical hills began to appear, like mushrooms pushing up through dank soil in some dark cave, and still, Zak rode on, Jeff following him, as lost to his surroundings as a blind man. Zak glanced at Nox’s ears every so often. They were like an insect’s antennas, twisting one way, then another, searching for every alien sound, and his rubbery nostrils flexed like an elephant’s trunk, scouring the air for vagrant scents. Zak noticed a change in Nox’s gait: His hindquarters were drifting slightly to the right so that he was almost sidling along every so often, as if to be able to turn on a dime and gallop away from danger, or go on the attack if some large animal, like a puma, came at him from that direction. These were subtle movements, but Zak knew from experience not only how to read them but also how to interpret them. He was one with his horse, and the stock of his rifle was within easy reach, as was the butt of his pistol. He held the reins—actually a single rein, one loop, in his left hand—so that he could drop it and not have to reach down to retrieve two ends when he needed to control Nox.
The silence of the night and the rugged country was broken when they heard the roar of a cannon less than a half mile ahead. There was a mushrooming flash of light and the crackle of rifle fire, followed by another roar of thunder as a second cannon loosed its lethal leaden ball in a river of fire and brimstone.
“Those are the howitzers!” Jeff exclaimed. “Loomis is engaging the enemy.”
“Calm down, Captain,” Zak said. “The neighbors are quarreling.”
“What?”
“Worse thing you can do is walk into a domestic quarrel, man and wife fighting, or two neighbors going at it tooth and nail.”
“What in hell are you talking about? That’s cannon fire and Sharps rifles. Loomis is in a fight.”
“And if you ride into it, you’re liable to get a lead ball square in your brisket. Let’s just go real slow and see how long this lasts.” Zak reined Nox to a halt.
Jeff rode up alongside him, pulling his rifle from its scabbard.
Zak reached over and grabbed Jeff’s wrist. “Put that back and sit tight,” he said.
Reluctantly, Jeff let the rifle slide back into its sheath. “What if the Navajos come at us, or Biederman’s bunch?”
“They can see about as well as you in this darkness, Jeff.”
“Shit. We’re missing out on the fight.”
“And you’re out of uniform, Captain Vickers. Just be patient. Listen.”
They heard more rifle fire and saw small flashes of orange light. Zak looked up at the hills and saw some sparks, like the winking glow of cigarettes that lasted only a fraction of a second.
Horses whinnied and they could hear the muffled shouts of men, frantic hoofbeats, and the creak of wagons.
Zak pictured it in his mind.
Loomis had been ambushed, probably while he was making camp, and now his men were scrambling for cover, firing blindly into the hills. He did not think it was a full-fledged attack, but only harassing fire from an enemy who knew the country and wanted to put some fear into the hearts of the soldiers.
The firing died down. There was a single rifle shot. Then another. Then silence.
“Does Loomis use a password?” Zak asked.
“I don’t know. Probably. Why?”
“Because we’re going to ride up into his camp and I don’t want to get shot out of the saddle.”
“Good point, Zak.”
“Just follow me.”
Zak took a white handkerchief out of his back pocket, slipped his rifle from its boot, and tied the kerchief just behind the front blade sight.
He held the rifle upright, the butt resti
ng on his calf, and rode forward, keeping Nox at a walk so that his hoofbeats didn’t sound threatening.
A few moments later a man’s voice challenged Zak and Jeff.
“Who goes there?” A tremor in the voice.
Zak waggled the rifle. The handkerchief flew back and forth like a wounded gull flapping its wings.
“Cody and Captain Vickers,” Zak said.
“Advance and be recognized.” This was another voice, one more firm and self-assured.
Zak prodded Nox with his spurs and the horse ambled forward. Jeff rode next to him, one hand on the stock of his rifle.
“Halt.”
Zak and Jeff halted.
“Who are you?” The second voice.
“Zak Cody and Captain Jeff Vickers.”
There were whispers between at least two men as Jeff and Zak waited.
“All right. Advance real slow. That a white flag?”
“It’s a handkerchief,” Zak said. “We don’t want to be shot by a nervous sentry.”
“That you, Captain Vickers?” another voice called out.
“Yes. That you, Nelson?”
“Yes, sir. I guess it’s okay to ride up. Nobody’s going to shoot you.”
“As you were, Nelson. There’s two of us. We’re riding up.”
Three men walked toward them, two with rifles to their shoulders, a third with his rifle held hip high.
“Take me to Colonel Loomis,” Zak said.
“Take us both to the colonel,” Jeff said.
“Yes, sir, Captain. Follow me.” It was Lieutenant Ronald Nelson, and he issued instructions to the other two men and walked toward a mass of men and horses, holding ground under the sheer wall of a massive bluff that jutted up into the stars like some ancient battlement.
Men were lying on the ground in a semicircle, defending the position. They were flanked by the two howitzers. The ammunition carts stood at equidistance from one another, guarded by standing men with rifles at the ready.
“Colonel Loomis, it’s Lieutenant Nelson, sir, with two riders, Captain Vickers and somebody named Cody.”
Loomis walked up out of the shadows, a saber flashing in his hand.
“Dismount, men,” he said, “or risk being shot down by snipers.”
