by Lyn Cote
As they rode, the two had become more feverish. He and Scully had been unable to find the men any safe shelter near Goliad, and they couldn’t leave them defenseless anywhere with Mexican troops roaming around. Quinn had hoped they would find a family to leave the wounded with on the way, but all the houses they came to were deserted.
The morning after the massacre those survivors of Goliad who could walk, headed north to find and join Sam Houston, while Quinn led Scully farther northwest toward Buena Vista. There, they planned to leave the two wounded men to be nursed before moving on toward Sam Houston’s army. Quinn would also leave word with his wife’s relations there that he and Scully had gotten that far safely.
Now, Quinn scanned the short muddy street of San Felipe. The emptiness gave him an eerie feeling, as if he were visiting a place of burial. Scully slowed his horse and turned to Quinn. “How far to your in-law’s place?”
“Not far,” Quinn said, nudging his horse with his heels.
Scully did the same, and they trotted down the road. “Buena Vista is a pretty fancy name for a farm.”
Quinn snorted. “My father-in-law thinks he’s pretty fancy.”
Though the grassy prairie still drenched from the March rain rolled before them, the breeze was warm. Spring was budding the trees and greening the coarse grasses. In the distance, Quinn saw the familiar two-story frame house. He turned his horse to travel the grass border of the muddy dirt lane that led to it. Flanking the big house to the rear were a line of rough jacales where the slaves lived.
Quinn had traveled here about once a year since marrying Dorritt in 1821. He had never been welcome. But he continued to visit because Dorritt wanted to see her mother and baby brother Scott, who was a bit older than Carson.
There was no smoke from the chimney of the main house, which was ominous. But why should his in-laws be here? Everyone in Texas was fleeing east toward the Gulf shore or the Sabine River, which separated Texas from Louisiana.
They stopped before the wide double doors. Quinn called out, “Hello the house!”
No reply.
Quinn held his fidgeting horse.
“Is this your place?” the wounded man behind him asked.
“My wife’s family,” Quinn replied shortly.
“Mr. Quinn! Mr. Quinn!” A tall black man, approaching from behind the house, hailed them with an upraised hand.
With care for the man behind him, Quinn slid from his saddle. He helped the wounded man down, supporting him as he staggered on the ground. Quinn greeted the young black man. “Amos!”
The two shook hands as Scully helped his wounded companion down.
“Everybody’s gone, Mr. Quinn.” Amos held his hat in his hands. “I didn’t expect to see you. Anybody, really. Everybody’s run off. Afraid of that Santa Anna.”
“Amos, this is my top hand, Scully,” Quinn said, introducing them with a nod. “Can you let us into the house? These men need nursing.”
“The house ain’t locked, Mr. Quinn. Me and my wife were left to take care of the place, keep trespassers off. But you are family. Come on.” Slapping his shapeless leather hat on, Amos slid under the wounded man’s arm and helped Quinn half drag, half carry him up the steps and into the house. Scully followed with his wounded companion. A young pretty black woman had come running with a wooden chest.
Soon they all were on the second floor in the guest bedroom. Both men were laid upon the large four-poster bed with mosquito netting tied back. Amos introduced his wife, Nancy, who tended the wounds quickly and efficiently. Finally, she dosed the wounded men with strong home-brewed corn liquor and they fell into a deep sleep.
In the detached kitchen at the back of the house, Quinn was quick to agree when Nancy offered to fix them a meal. The three men sat around the table.
“Amos, how did Kilbride come to let you remain here?” Quinn asked. This question that had been niggling at him.
“He didn’t want to,” Amos replied with a grin. “But they took off so fast. His lady said that somebody had to stay behind and keep looters from the house. And she wanted someone to bury all the valuables too. So she told me, ‘Amos, you and Nancy stay behind and do that. And when we come back, I’ll give you your freedom for being loyal and staying in time of danger.’”
“Really?” Quinn couldn’t mask his surprise.
“Yes, sir, that’s just what she said,” Nancy chimed in.
Amos picked up the story. “And she told us if the Mexicans burn the house, to wait and when they were gone to dig up the valuables and bring them to your rancho. And they’d send for them.”
Dorritt’s mother was not one to lose her head in a crisis. Quinn nodded. “Scully and I are headed to join up with Sam Houston. Dorritt asked me to stop here and leave word for her that we made it this far. What day is it, Scully?”
“I think it’s March twenty-fourth.”
Suddenly homesick, Quinn looked over Amos’s head. Thinking of Dorritt being so far from him lowered his spirits. Hiding this, he continued, “Then if you end up at my rancho, you can tell her you saw us safe and well on March twenty-fourth.”
“I will surely do that, Mr. Quinn,” Amos said, nodding. “But I hope it don’t come to that. I helped build this house, one of the grandest in Texas, and I don’t want to see it burn.”
Scully gave him a grim look. “Santa Anna is capable of anything. Just make sure you and your wife don’t get in his way.”
Quinn and Scully made short work of the meal of biscuits, beans, and sausage gravy, then rose to leave. “You’ll nurse the men, then?” Quinn asked.
“Yes, sir,” Nancy replied with a curtsy.
“And if the Mexicans come, we’ll carry them into the woods and hide them,” Amos promised.
“Good man,” Quinn said, clapping a hand on Amos’s shoulder. “We’ll be off, then.”
Quinn promised himself to make sure Kilbride kept his vow to Amos and Nancy. As he and Scully rode northeast to find Sam Houston and his army, he was feeling all of his forty-some years. Wars were for young men. But he couldn’t forget the bloody slaughter he’d witnessed in Goliad. Santa Anna would regret it. To his very soul.
Just as the sun was setting, Dorritt and Carson trotted up the dirt lane to the Kilbride house. Carson didn’t think they’d find word of his father and Scully here. It looked deserted. But then Amos and Nancy came running toward them. “Miss Dorritt! Miss Dorritt!” they both called.
Carson stayed in the saddle as his mother slid from hers. He didn’t like how worn her expression was. Everyone they’d met had mentioned this.
She embraced Nancy. “I’m so glad to see someone here. Have you seen my husband?”
“You just missed him,” Amos said, smiling and taking Dorritt’s hand. “He and that Scully stopped here mid-afternoon. Nancy cooked them a meal.”
His mother gasped and looked up at Carson.
“They brought us two wounded men to tend,” Nancy said. “They said the Mexicans slaughtered all the Texas soldiers at Goliad.” She looked and sounded horrified. “Can you believe such wickedness?”
“Yes, I can,” Carson answered, his stomach clenched. “Which way did they ride, Amos? I’m going after them.”
Dorritt tried to object, but Carson ignored her. “The moon will be nearly full and the sky’s clear, no rain clouds. I’m going after them, Ma. They’re not trying to cover their tracks, so I can follow them pretty easy. We have to have their help to get Alandra back.” He turned to the girl. “Little one, you have to stay here with my ma and these good people. Do what you’re told and I’ll be back with my pa.”
The little girl clung to him for a moment, then slid silently from the saddle. Carson turned his horse and galloped off in the direction of the road northeast.
His mother called after him, “Godspeed!” And Carson heard the urgency and longing in her voice. The need to see his father expanded inside him, too. Godspeed was what he needed. Now.
Alandra was punished for trying to run away.
She ached from being beaten, and had been given no food. The bandits had been riding hard due east all day, and she hadn’t been allowed down from the saddle. She could not recall ever feeling this miserable and desolate. Scully, her mind chanted, where are you? I need you.
“We are almost there, mi prima,” her cousin said with a harsh laugh that sent him into a gale of coughing. The old man could barely stay in the saddle.
Alandra didn’t feel sorry for him, but she was concerned about his becoming too ill to travel. He was evil, but it seemed to her that the others were worse. It was becoming oddly clear that her relative safety depended on Mendoza. She must keep him alive until Scully came for her.
Dorritt had taught her the sound of the distinctive rattle in a cough that signaled that a person had pneumonia. And riding for days in pouring rain and sleeping on the damp ground could give anyone pneumonia, even someone young and in good health. And Mendoza was neither.
She had to clench her jaw against the hysteria, to keep herself from screaming. She’d just been told they were almost “there.” But where? And what if her cousin died? What would happen to her then?
They rode over the flat grassy plain toward the Gulf of Mexico. Near a creek was a thick grove of poplars. “This is it,” Mendoza rasped, then coughed for nearly a minute.
The band dismounted and dragged her into the trees. There was an abandoned jacale that they had evidently known about. They threw her inside, and she rolled on the packed earth floor, trying not to cry out in pain.
Her upper arms throbbed where the sentry had squeezed her until she’d collapsed. And she knew her lip was bleeding, blood trickling down her chin and into her mouth. Tears seeped from her eyes. She couldn’t help it. Scully, come and get me. Please. Soon. Lord, help him find me.
Over the next hours into night and then into morning, Mendoza’s health declined. When the increasingly restless bandidos came inside, as they did now and then, she tried to act as if Mendoza was napping, not lapsing into unconsciousness. She stayed close to him in the small jacale, swabbing away sweat on his face with an old rag she’d found in his pocket.
Outside, the bandits played cards, some game of chance, and argued about what was dealt to them. She hadn’t had anything to eat for nearly a day, and the thirst finally moved her to the door. She called out, “I’m thirsty.”
One of them shouted a vulgar insult in response and they all laughed. She turned away. She wouldn’t beg. Then the door opened and one of the bandits shoved a canteen toward her. She hated to think of putting her lips onto anything this man’s lips had touched, so she poured a bit of water into her hand before drinking from her cupped palm. She turned, then, to give some to her cousin, who lay, gasping for breath on the floor. But before she could move in his direction, the man was suddenly beside her. He raised his pistol and shot Mendoza.
She screamed and dropped the canteen. The gunshot echoed through her and shock made her stagger.
The bandido grabbed her sore arm. “The old man was dying. And we don’t have any more time to waste here. We can do better without him. And we have a ship to catch.” He dragged her from the jacale and shouted to the rest, “I took care of the old man. Let’s get out of here!”
Scully shook Quinn awake, and nearby Carson woke up on his own. “Let’s get going. It will be light soon.” They’d only stopped to rest for a few hours. Ever since Carson had found them, they’d ridden fast, south for Matagorda on the coast. Now the three of them swallowed water from their canteens and then mounted. They had been riding hard and would until they found Alandra. In a few more hours they’d reach Matagorda.
Scully had memorized the ransom note:
Bring 500 US dollars. Meet me at El Golfo Cantina in Matagorda before the end of March.
Scully had thought he’d left Alandra safe in her home with Dorritt, Carson, and all her people to protect her. When he thought of her being carried off by bandits, her light olive skin pawed by rough hands, waves of cold sick terror slicked through him. Followed by a seething rage. He felt capable of murder.
Later that morning, they saw the town of Matagorda ahead. The masts of ships on the eastern horizon and the smell of salt air made them pick up the pace.
Carson turned to his father. “What’s the plan, Pa?”
Scully slowed his horse. Quinn gazed ahead. “I’ve only been to Matagorda a few times, and that was years ago. But it’s one of the biggest towns in Texas now. It’s a busy harbor, from what I hear. I would think that it will not be deserted, since a lot of people will flee here to board ships to New Orleans. I’ve been trying to come up with a plan, but all I want to do is barrel into the El Golfo Cantina, grab Mendoza by the collar and start pounding in his face.” He demonstrated by pounding one fist into the other.
Scully’s own anger still surged like a wild mustang when first roped. “We don’t have five hundred U.S. dollars with us,” he said, voicing the problem that had been vexing him over the miles.
Quinn nodded. “We don’t have the money, and that might not be Mendoza’s only reason for this. He was crazy hateful toward Don Carlos—Alandra’s brother. That could still be mixed into this mess too.”
Scully willed his heart to beat at the normal pace. “You said this Mendoza is a real snake, so we can’t trust him anyway. Is Alandra even in Matagorda?”
“What are you getting at?” Quinn watched him, looking like he was sizing him up.
The thought that this might all be a hoax froze Scully in the saddle. He forced himself to go on. “Mendoza asked for money. If he had just wanted to kill Alandra, what would have stopped him from doing that on her way home from San Antonio instead of kidnapping her? Nothing. There’s more to this than just another kidnapping. There’s a reason—another reason—he specified Matagorda.”
Quinn and Carson watched him as if waiting for him to give the orders.
Scully wasn’t used to holding forth to his boss, he was used to taking orders. But this was different. Alandra was his legal wife, his responsibility. “You also said he wasn’t very smart, so we’ll go in and see what he has planned. And then we’ll outsmart him.” He looked at Quinn. “Mendoza knows you, but I doubt he would recognize either Carson or me. We can use that to our advantage.”
“What do you mean?” Quinn asked.
“Let’s roll into town separately and look things over. It’s best that they think you have come alone. Then they won’t be watching me and Carson. We’ll just be a couple of Anglo strangers in town. And before any of us go into the cantina, I want to look around. It could be a trap. We’ll ride in and you two get set near the cantina while I look everything over. When I’m ready, I’ll ride down the main street in front of the cantina, whistling. That will be your signal to go into the cantina separately, as if you don’t know each other.”
Quinn and Carson nodded in agreement. Though he wasn’t used to giving orders, it seemed that Quinn thought his plan was a good one.
The three of them separated then, and each headed from a different direction into Matagorda. Scully dawdled over the sandy, shell-encrusted main street of the busy harbor town. He pretended not to notice Quinn coming from the opposite direction and riding past. A few storefronts down from the cantina, Scully tied his horse at the rail then leaned against it, gazing up and down the street as if in awe of the bustling crowds.
After Carson rode past without looking at him, Scully mounted again, wandered to the wharf, then dismounted and walked his horse along the quay. It had been a long time since he had been near the Gulf or large sailing ships. At around Carson’s age he’d left his second family and traveled down the Mississippi on the deck of a steamboat to New Orleans.
One point kept niggling at him. Why Matagorda? Why not Laredo, on the Rio Grande? Or Chihuahua? Either one would have taken them deeper into the heart of Mexico. Surely that would be the better route, since so few people lived west of San Antonio. It would have been easier to keep anyone from seeing them while they waited for the ransom to b
e paid. So why had Mendoza chosen this busy seaport?
Because seaports have ships that sail far away.
Scully’s heart stopped and then roared back, pounding in his chest and nearly deafening in his ears. Where would they send Alandra, a beautiful young woman, by ship? And to what advantage? How would that serve bandits?
Scully didn’t want to wrap his mind around all the possible horrible answers to these questions. The world was a wicked, dangerous place for young unprotected innocents. He concealed his rage, which billowed with heat. Mounting again, he rode back to the main street. It was hard, but he made himself just amble along, whistling as if he didn’t have a care in the wicked world, gawking like the stranger to Matagorda that he was.
After seeing Quinn enter the cantina, he waited a good ten minutes, then wandered inside too. He paused in the doorway, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the shadowy interior. He saw Quinn sitting in a chair, leaning it against the rear wall, and Carson leaning against the wall near the front door.
This was the kind of establishment that sold only tequila, whiskey, and ale. And he needed a very clear head to plan how to find out if Alandra were here in town, and worse, if she was aboard one of the two ships in the harbor today. So he went to the bar and ordered ale.
The barkeep drew him a glass from a keg and took two pesos from him. While Scully held his glass, a couple of nasty looking hombres pushed up from their chairs and sauntered toward Quinn.
“Amigo, you look familiar,” one of them said. “Aren’t you a long way from home? I think I’ve seen you in San Antonio.”
Scully leaned his elbow on the bar and watched Quinn lower his chair to the floor.
“I’m from west of here, sí,” Quinn replied.
“We might have a friend in common,” the hombre continued. “Do you know Mendoza?”
“I did a long time ago,” Quinn replied in an even tone, “but we weren’t friends.”
