Knives and hatchets slashed into Weismann’s body, rendering him into unrecognizable hunks of bloody flesh and meat.
Grant and Eruditus turned away from the sight, walking back toward their horses. “Pardon the cliché,” the older man said. “But all’s well that ends well.”
“It isn’t over yet,” Grant said.
“What do you mean?” Eruditus asked.
“If we stop here and simply file a report, the investigation could take years to complete,” Grant said. “It might even be forgotten.”
“You’re right, of course,” Eruditus said. “That means a probability of the guilty getting away free.”
“I know a way to speed the process,” Grant said.
Twenty-One
The sergeant of the guard was a corpulent fellow named Calderon who was just approaching his middle years. His job, unlike in most military units, was not a temporary position based on a roster that rotated the chore among other sergeants. Calderon had volunteered to take the responsibility on a permanent basis, even though it meant working seven days a week at something that was repetitious routine.
The fat sergeant’s reason for seeking the post was not out of an unusual dedication to the security of his commanding officer General Antonio De La Noblesa. Rather, he sought the safety and security of remaining in the fortified hacienda where it was always safe and secure, with plenty of good food and drink, and his plump wife available. That was much better than going out on patrols and raids where a bullet or arrow was always waiting for the unwary and unlucky.
Being a permanent sergeant of the guard meant he could spend all his days within the walls and never, never have to face Apaches, bandidos, or other enemies such as American dragoons who were decidedly dangerous and aggressive.
That was what had happened to Captain Perez and the three frightened, miserable soldiers who had returned to the hacienda the day before. They had gone out a hundred-and-fifty strong to accompany Don Roberto Weismann the scalphunter chief on an Indian-hunting mission in Arizona. But, in less than a week, the detachment had been practically wiped out. Although Calderon didn’t know the full story, he had heard that a combined group of American soldiers and Chirinato Apaches had fallen on Perez’s camp in a most unexpected and fierce manner, killing nearly everyone. Those that escaped had barely made it to the safety of the Mexican side of the border before those pursuing them finally broke off the chase.
It was well-known that Perez had pleaded for his life, telling how hundreds of soldiers and Indians had appeared from nowhere and slaughtered his brave soldiers. He was so convincing that De La Nobleza did not have him shot.
No one knew the fate of the scalphunters, but it didn’t look good for them. Not one, including Roberto Weismann or the Gringo called Donaldson, had wandered up to seek admittance to General De La Nobleza’s sanctuary.
The sergeant pulled his watch from the waistband that stretched across his enormous belly. It was three o’clock in the morning, the proper time to check the posts to make sure none of the guards had decided to catnap during their tours of duty. Calderon would start with the front gate as was his custom. Finishing the last of his burrito and washing it down with a gulp of coffee, Calderon stood up and put his plumed cap on his head. Then he walked from the guard house in his ponderous way, to inspect the sentry. Although it was very dark, he knew every inch of the hacienda’s yard.
He reached the heavy door and pulled out the large key necessary to unlock it.
“Chavez!” he called out.
No answer came from the sentry box.
Calderon cursed under his breath. “Contestame, Soldado Chavez! Answer me!”
If that hijo de la chingada was sleeping, he’d see to it that the lazy bastard was given a most severe punishment. A couple of dozen lashes across his bare back with a buggy whip would put the errant trooper back on the straight and narrow damned quick.
The sergeant stepped through the door and could see the sentry slumped on the seat inside the box. He angrily waddled up and slammed a fat hand against the wooden sides as hard as he could.
“Despiertate!” Calderon said angrily. “Wake up!”
The shadow came around the small structure, moving in silent swiftness. Calderon had only time to note it was the face of an American before Grant Drummond shoved his knife into the fat body. The blade slipped in just under the ribs. Then the captain ripped upward into the lungs, his hand clasped tight over the dying man’s mouth. Calderon struggled a bit, not realizing that someone else had come up behind and was holding him. He defecated and urinated in his pants as his sphincter muscle relaxed in death.
Sergeant William Clooney had slipped behind the Mexican and now gently lowered him to the ground. “He smells like that scalphunter in the woods,” he said under his breath. “Whew!”
“Take his cap, Eruditus,” Grant instructed. “Clooney, you get the other fellow’s. In the gloom you can pass as Mexicans.”
The pair rolled up their wide-brimmed hats and shoved them inside their jackets, donning the Mexican headgear.
Eruditus Fletcher moved up to the door and peered into the interior of the hacienda. He signaled all was clear, then stepped inside with Grant and Clooney following.
They quietly eased the heavy portal shut, then moved in the deeper shadows along the walls.
“Do you remember the way?” Grant whispered to Eruditus.
“Yes,” he answered. “I’ve been here twice, remember?”
The trio of intruders moved down the bulwark to a spot opposite the large well that was located in the middle of a courtyard. After making sure no one stirred, they quickly and silently crossed the open space and entered the house passing the same table where, a few weeks ago, Grant and Eruditus had enjoyed refreshments.
Going through a door, they continued down a hallway. A tiled floor caused them to step lightly to keep the sound of footsteps down. Eruditus, in the lead, came to a spot where the hall turned sharply to the left. He suddenly signaled a halt, gesturing Grant to join him.
The sound of someone approaching could easily be heard. Grant drew his knife and chanced a look around the corner. He could see a light bouncing off the walls as it drew closer. Then the form of a candle-carrying soldier, walking his beat came into view.
Grant whispered to his companions, “Interior sentry.” Then leaned back and waited.
The guard moved slowly, obviously bored and sleepy. The sound of his walking showed he was wearing sandals as was the custom of the Mexican army in informal situations. When he passed in front of Grant, the captain grabbed him and pulled hard.
“Que es esto?” the man grumbled, not comprehending exactly who had grasped him. “Sargento Calderon?”
Grant’s knife struck again in the same fashion. Eruditus grabbed the candle from the dying man’s hand to keep it from falling to the floor while Clooney made sure the sentry did not make any noise falling.
“Another cap,” Grant said. “It should do me just fine.” They moved on with Eruditus again going first. They made one more turn and went to a door at the end of a long corridor.
“Here is where His Excellency sleeps,” Eruditus said. “Then let us visit him post haste,” Grant said.
The door was eased open and the three Americans stepped through to the interior. They found a small sitting room. After crossing it, they went through a curtained entry to find themselves in a bedroom. A small candle burned on a nearby table. They could see General De La Nobleza peacefully sleeping in its light.
Eruditus smiled. “He’s afraid of the dark.”
“Hell soon have more than that to fear,” Grant said. He took a careful look. “Thank God he doesn’t have a woman with him. We’d have to take her with us.” He went to the bed and gently shook the sleeping officer.
De La Nobleza stirred. “Eh? Que paso?”
Eruditus leaned forward. “Levantase, Excelencia.”
“Eres tu, Luis?” De La Nobleza asked thinking it was his servant. He rose
up on his elbows and immediately came awake as he saw Grant and Eruditus.
“Tell him what to do, Eruditus,” Grant said.
Eruditus spoke rapidly in Spanish, instructing De La Nobleza to get up and dress as quickly as possible. The general uttered a few words, then shut up as he was pulled from bed and a knife pressed to his throat.
“What’s his problem?” Grant asked grinning.
“He says we’ll not get away with this,” Eruditus said. “Tell him, he dies either way,” Grant said. “At the first instant we lose our advantage, all three of us will shoot him before we do anything else.”
Eruditus passed the information on, then looked back at Grant. “He believes you.”
A few nudges and punches hurried the general along as he dressed. Then, with the three Americans, he walked out of the room. Eruditus led the way with Grant and Clooney on either side of their prisoner.
De La Nobleza gasped when they reached the dead sentry in the hallway. If he had any doubts about the seriousness of the Americans’ intentions, they were swept away.
The four men continued down the hall and stepped out into the dark courtyard. No attempt was made to be quiet, since Grant wanted them to appear normal and perfectly proper in the gloom.
“Alto!” a voice commanded. “Quien es?”
Eruditus spun around and looked straight into the general’s eyes. Grant had never seen such a fierce expression on the older man’s face. Eruditus spoke under his breath in terse tones.
De La Nobleza took a deep breath and said, “Soy yo el general con mi escolta.”
“Pase usted, mi general!” the sentry said. They could hear him click his heels and knew he had assumed a sharp position of present arms to properly salute his commanding officer.
The group continued on past the well. Once more they utilized the darkness next to the walls to keep under cover. They moved more rapidly than they had previously. Everyone stayed in step so that if any sound came from them it would appear to be from a squad of soldiers marching to some nocturnal duty to which they had been called.
Suddenly a flash of lantern light hit them square as a door was thrown open. Grant grabbed Eruditus and pulled him back out of the light while pushing De La Nobleza forward.
A garrison prisoner under sentence for some minor offense, was sweeping out the guardhouse. He peered into the pale, yellow light. When he recognized the general, he snapped to attention holding the broom beside him like a musket. Then, as an afterthought, he presented arms with it.
“Tell the general to return the salute and step back into the shadows,” Grant said to Eruditus. He couldn’t help but grin at the sight.
De La Nobleza did as he was told, then was pulled back into the darkness near the wall. Grant pushed him along, murmuring warnings in English knowing that if the general didn’t understand the words, he certainly could comprehend the threat behind them.
They reached the front gate, and went through without hesitating. Once more De La Nobleza gasped. This time at the sight of the bloated cadavers of Sergeant Calderon and the sentry. A dragoon stepped from the sentry box.
“Corp’ral Rush and the others is waiting over that way with the other’n,” Donegan said.
Now the group hurried. De La Nobleza was roughly pushed and pulled along as they trotted across the sand to where a grove of barrel cactus stood. When they reached it, there were several men and horses waiting. For the third time that night, De La Noblesa had to gasp in shocked and fearful surprise.
Captain Ricardo Perez, his hands tied behind his back, sat in the saddle of one of the animals.
De La Nobleza was grabbed and similarly trussed up before being lifted aboard another mount. Then, at Grant Drummond’s whispered command, the group rode from the grove and turned north toward Arizona.
After an hour of riding, De La Nobleza finally found the courage to speak up. “What are you going to do with us?” he asked through Eruditus.
“I would like to blow your goddamned heads off,” Grant replied. “Or, better yet, I would love to turn you over to the tender mercies of the Chirinato Apaches.”
De La Nobleza spoke rapidly and fearfully, which Eruditus translated as, “We are all officers and gentlemen. Such conduct would not be appropriate for our social or military class.”
“You are both butchering sons of a bitches as far as I’m concerned,” Grant said.
Perez, understanding English, immediately objected. “I protest! I have killed no Indian women and children! Nor have I been paid any bounty money on them.”
“But you did come into the United States of America, leading an invasion,” Grant said.
“I was obeying orders!” Perez said.
“I don’t know about that,” Grant said. “But you both are going to be turned over to the American authorities. I have sent a message to my headquarters in Santa Fe. By the time we return to our camp, the departmental commander and provost marshal should be there with an escort of dragoons to take you to trial.”
De La Nobleza said nothing, fully realizing that he faced severe punishment for conducting an unauthorized war and even murder. His own government would not be happy with him. The Mexican law called Proyecto de Guerra that paid for Apache scalps would have no application in Arizona Territory.
The sun rose, casting a glow over the desert as the group continued on into Arizona. Grant looked over at Eruditus and said, “You can say it now.”
“What is that, my young friend?” Eruditus asked.
“All’s well that ends well,” Grant said.
“I can think of something more appropriate,” Eruditus said looking at their forlorn prisoners. “It was said by William Watson the English priest executed for his part in a plot against King James I.”
“And what did the condemned man say?” Grant asked. “Fiat justitia et ruan coeli,” Eruditus said. “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”
Grant smiled. “Amen!”
Epilogue
A hawk, using the instinctive skills bred for eons into its species, soared on the thermals lifted off the floor of the Vano Basin. The bird of prey’s keen vision scoured the terrain a thousand feet below in an eager search for food. A slight wiggle in the sand far below caught the sky hunter’s alert eye. Folding in his wings and nosing over, the hawk began a rapid, steep dive toward the target.
Sitting on the edge of a cliff, almost at the same altitude as the bird, Eruditus Fletcher and his old boyhood chum Aguila watched it go for its prey.
“That hawk is a friend of mine,’’ Eruditus said. “I have watched him hunt before.” He reached for the jug of tiswin corn beer that sat between them. Three more cooled in the waters of the creek flowing past their resting spot.
“You are more alert to such things than most white men,” Aguila said in an approving tone. He took a drink and belched with pleasure.
The pair, contentedly drunk, could look down at the newly established garrison of Fort Vano that had been set up where the original dragoon detachment had bivouacked at the Pool-Beneath-the-Cliff.
“Have you finished your work with the soldiers?” Aguila asked his friend.
“Yes,” Eruditus answered. “Since Grant was made to return to Washington, I no longer have any desire to act as their interpreter and scout.”
“You miss your young companion, hey, Erudito?” Aguila asked. “His leaving made you feel sad.”
“I am also disgusted with the way things went after the big council meeting between the Americans and the Mexicans,” Eruditus said.
Aguila shook his head. “It is hard to figure the White-Eyes and Mexicans sometimes. They take something simple and turn it into a confusion that would outdo trying to track a coyote on the desert. It would seem quite sensible to kill De La Nobleza and his man Perez.”
“The so-called civilized tribes could learn much from the Chirinatos,” Eruditus said. “Give me some more of that tiswin, my friend.”
“Yes, amigo,” Aguila responded. “You need
it.”
After bringing General De La Nobleza and Captain Perez back into Arizona, Captain Grant Drummond had sent word to headquarters in Santa Fe about what had gone on. He expected the departmental commanding general to come out and convene a court-martial that would lead to the execution of the general and a long prison sentence for the captain. Instead, a bevy of diplomatic and political hacks came out with the American commander and a great hullabaloo started as soon as a delegation from Mexico arrived.
The big conference had taken place on the boundary between Arizona Territory and the Mexican state of Sonora. Dozens of politicians and diplomats from both countries had shown up presumably to straighten out the slightly tangled affair of the intrusion by scalphunters and soldiers from south of the border into American sovereignty.
By the time those international worthies had finished, the situation was a complicated, confused, and completely enigmatic affair that defied logic.
The Mexican government strongly protested the fact that Grant had led some men down into their country to kidnap De La Nobleza and Perez. The representatives from south of the border didn’t give a damn whether illegal scalphunting had taken place in Arizona or not. After all, the two hadn’t been acting on orders from Mexico City. Therefore, the Mexicans argued, it was up to them to punish De La Nobleza and Perez not the Americans. Therefore, they wanted their two army officers returned pronto.
The Americans countered with their own charges of sovereign infringement, demanding apologies for the attack on an American army post which resulted in the deaths of several dragoons. There was also the matter of the murder and mutilation of Chirinato Apaches who dwelt within the border of the United States of America.
After a full week of testimony, declarations, disclosures, allegations combined with a myriad of affirmations and denials an agreement was finally hammered out:
Neither side would have to apologize to the other.
General De La Nobleza would be immediately struck from the roles of the Mexican army. Captain Perez was to be pardoned since he only obeyed the orders of his commanding officer. However, he would be reduced to lieutenant and transferred to the Yucatan Peninsula as assistant commander of a military jail.
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