“Only three,” Scratch answered.
Stopping in his tracks, Williams harrumped and turned back for the bar, saying, “I ain’t worried till they send a whole shitteree of Mex soldiers for us.”
Instead of coming right inside after tying their horses off to a single ring out front, the trio walked past the doorway for the corner of the cantina. A little slowed and deliberate in his movements due to the heady whiskey, Titus struggled to his feet against the manta draped on the wall and stepped outside, finding the three soldiers moving among some of the horses and mules. From what he could tell, they were inspecting the rear flanks for brands.
He snorted with the humor in that. Indian ponies simply didn’t have a brand.
“Help you with something, fellas?”
All three turned at his call, two of them flicking their eyes to the third as they came over to stop before the trapper. When that man in the middle spoke, his Spanish spilled out far too fast for Bass to grasp more than a handful—hardly enough to go on.
“Ho-hold on,” Titus suggested. “No comprendo.”
“Norteamericanos?”
“Si,” Scratch answered.
“Ahhh,” the middle one with the goatee replied. “Extranjeros.” Then he started speaking rapidly again, gesturing back at the horses.
“Yes, they are mine,” Bass started to explain. “Something wrong?”
The soldier shrugged one shoulder and motioned to the others as all three stepped around Bass for the darkened doorway.
Inside, the bartender noisily greeted the soldiers, waving them over to the bar where two of the whores each had a pair of trappers at their sides. The trio fixed their malevolent gaze on the Americans until the owner clattered some cups in front of them and began pouring them drinks.
The three toasted, then turned to gaze over the cantina patrons as if comfortable with the foreigners. But the moment a woman pushed past the curtain from the back rooms holding the arm of Roscoe Coltrane, one of the soldiers cried out her name. After flicking him a glance, she steered the trapper in the opposite direction, toward the last of the empty chairs.
“Shit,” Bass muttered. Sure as rain, trouble was coming.
The soldier slammed his clay cup down on the bar, then tugged at the bottom of his short-waisted leather jacket, its stiffened epaulets extending off the man’s shoulders. He had all the appearances of being a man on a mission.
As the soldier stomped across the earthen floor, he loudly berated the whore, finally seizing her upper arm in his big, brown hand, yanking her up and whirling her around just as she settled on Coltrane’s lap.
“Leave ’er be,” Silas Adair growled at the soldier, appearing at the table so quickly he knocked a chair aside.
By that moment the soldier with the goatee was shouting at his companion, gesturing him back to the bar. The angry soldier stood frozen a moment longer, glaring down at Coltrane’s hand on his knife, at Adair’s fist locked around the butt of his pistol still stuffed in the front of his belt, then smiled wanly as he tapped the hilt of the saber short-chained over his left hip. The soldier released his grip on the whore and turned on his heel, slowly.
Scratch finally took a breath and bent over, picking his empty cup off the blanket where he had been sitting, starting for the bar as the whore cursed the soldier and spat at his heels.
In a blur the Mexican turned and slapped her across the jaw, making her reel to the side, pitching into Coltrane’s arms. Lunging forward, the soldier grabbed the screaming woman’s arm and yanked her away from Roscoe as Coltrane snagged her other wrist. By now the other whores set up a caterwauling and shrieking so loud it would have raised the dead back in Santa Fe.
Reaching across his waist, the soldier pulled free his short saber with a loud, metallic scrape. The moment Roscoe stopped yanking on the woman and let her go, the Mexican spat into the whore’s face. Coltrane’s face flushed with anger as he rocked onto the balls of his feet, ready to pounce … but in a flash of candlelight, the soldier held that glittering saber out before him.
Adair grumbled, “You want I should shoot ’im, Roscoe?”
“No!” Smith answered for him. “That’s more trouble’n we bargained for right now.”
“Maybe ’nother time,” Williams suggested. “Don’t make nothing of this, Coltrane. She’s just a soldier’s whore an’ this pelado greaser’s jealous ’cause she humped with a gringo.”
That brought a wry smile to Roscoe’s face as the tension started to drain out of his shoulders. He rocked back onto his heels. As his smile broadened, Coltrane extended the index finger on his right hand and held it under his left ear. Then with a loud, guttural sound, he slowly dragged the finger around the front of his neck, across his windpipe, until he reached the right earlobe.
That done, Roscoe turned his skinny back on the soldier and settled in a chair at Adair’s table. Which seemed to prompt the woman to begin thrashing and kicking, attempting to free herself from the soldier’s grip. Infuriated at her attempts, he hurled her against the bar, watching the whore crumple to the floor. Coltrane flew out of his chair and shrank into a crouch at the instant the soldier brought up his saber and started inching forward—barely wiggling the tip of the weapon in that narrowing distance between himself and the American.
He jabbed. Roscoe backed a step. Another feint, and Roscoe retreated another step, staring down at that short saber. Inch by inch by inch—
Until he had Coltrane backed against the wall.
Bass motioned Kersey, Purcell, and Corn up behind the other two soldiers as he cocked back his arm. Hurling the arm forward, he threw his clay cup against the back of the swordsman’s head. It shattered as the soldier stumbled, got watery in the knees. Coltrane swung his arm in an arc, knocking the saber from the Mexican’s grip.
In that moment the other two soldiers started away from the bar, Kersey and Corn lunged forward with their pistols and cracked the Mexicans on the back of their skulls.
“That ain’t messy at all, now is it, Peg-Leg?” Corn asked.
“Just as long as we don’t kill any stupid hard-dicked Mexican soldado,” Williams groused. “That’d be damp powder an’ no way to dry it.”
“That’s right—we showed these greasers not to trouble us no more,” Peg-Leg added. “G’won now, boys—throw all three of ’em outside so we can go on an’ have ourselves li’l more fun.”
11
But trouble came calling them by name.
While a half dozen of the trappers were dragging the trio of unconscious soldiers out the door into the summer sun, the cantina owner was hopping animatedly among the Americans: cursing, shrieking, tugging at the celebrants to stop them in their tracks. Trying to convince the gringos they were about to make a terrible mistake.
While some of the whores whimpered, most inched away from their American customers to huddle together in a corner of the cantina. It was clear they were frightened of what had just happened. And even more apprehensive of what might well now take place.
There was no talking any of those women into the cribs behind the bar now. The last trio of trappers flung back the blanket curtain and burst into the room, their fornication rudely interrupted. Those three appeared all the more pitiable as they implored their women at the same time they were scrambling back into their clothing.
When the cantina’s barmen indicated in no uncertain terms that they wouldn’t serve another drink to these unwanted guests, four of the trappers either leaped over the bar or swept around the end of it to snatch up glass and clay bottles for themselves. The moment the bartenders attempted to intervene and save the liquor, both were soundly pummeled by the four drunk Americans.
Seeing that these unwanted customers were beating his hired men, the cantina owner dashed back to the bar, where he tried his best to drag the trappers off the bartenders, shrieking at the Americans.
“What’s he shouting, Peg-Leg?” Williams demanded.
“Says the soldiers’re coming back.”
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“Let ’em,” Thompson snorted. “We’ll thump their heads again!”
“No.” And Smith shook his head. “He ain’t talking about them three niggers we throwed out in the street. This’un’s saying that bunch went to fetch up more soldiers. He wants us long gone by the time they get back here with more hands.”
“We ain’t leaving here without something for the trail, are we, boys?” Thompson roared at his compatriots as they crowded against the bar.
“What you got in mind, Phil?” Frank Curnutt asked when he let one of the hired men drop from his grip so he could lumber back up to the bar.
“I don’t figger we should leave a drop of whiskey in this damn rathole,” Thompson bellowed.
Felix Warren squeaked in disbelief, “Y-you ain’t gonna break ever’ bottle, are you, Phil?”
“Stupid idjut! We’re gonna take their likker with us!”
It reminded Bass of a swarm of single-minded wasps, how the white men turned and swept through the place. They ended up finding several big baskets in the cribs behind the bar, along with a pair of the dingy tick mattresses. These they set down on the bar itself and proceeded to load up what glass bottles and clay jugs were left on the shelves. Between the bottles and jugs they stuffed handsful of old, musty straw they yanked from the dirty mattresses hastily split open with their knives.
Bass was the first to spot the furtive shadow peek in at the doorway, gesturing to the Americans. He hurried to the guide, who began talking in his native language, eyes like milk saucers.
“Slow, slow down, Frederico,” he begged, grabbing the Indian by the shoulders. “Habla español, dammit!”
Taking a gulp, Frederico started very, very slow, sorting through the vocabulary in the foreign language. Every now and then Titus grasped a word.
“Where did you go when the soldiers rode up?” Scratch asked.
“Hide,” he said, and pointed around the corner of the cantina.
They both looked up suddenly, gazing down the long lane at the distant thunder of approaching hoofbeats.
Frederico cried, “We hide now! Vamos! Vamos!”
Far down the wide, rutted lane Titus could see how the villagers were backing against the adobe walls of their huts and shops, dragging children into the folds of their skirts or hoisting them onto those simple carretas they rushed to wheel out of the way. Stubborn mules brayed and confused sheep bleated as herders whipped the animals out of the avenue and up alleyways as the pack of oncoming horses drew nearer and nearer.
Then Bass saw them, realizing he didn’t have much time.
“Bill! Peg-Leg!” He hurtled his call in the doorway. “We’re in the soup now! A whole heap o’ soldados coming!”
By the moment he reached his own animals and began untying them, the rest of the Americans were bursting out the door, a half dozen of them lugging the heavy woven baskets by their handles, the necks of bottles and sprigs of musty grass bristling from the top of each basket.
“Tie that on the back of my horse,” Adair demanded as he and Reuben Purcell lunged up with a basket of their own. Together they hoisted it atop the packs on the horse as Bass stepped up to quickly diamond-hitch it down atop the rest of the load and tied it off.
“You wastin’ time to steal this here whiskey might well make it the last drink you’ll ever have!” he growled at them.
Adair’s eyes flashed at Scratch, then flicked down the narrow avenue, squinting in the sun. “We get our asses out of this fight, I’ll damn well buy you a drink, Titus Bass.”
Over the noisy chuffing of their horses, the clatter of bits, and squeak of leather, the trappers could suddenly hear the panic-ridden screams of those villagers leaping out of the way as the soldiers pressed on, shouting as they first came in sight of the Norteamericanos. For now, all sound was focused, funneled, trapped entirely between the adobe walls on either side of that narrow, dusty street.
Snagging hold of the big round saddlehorn the size of a Mexican orange, Titus swung into his saddle without using the big cottonwood stirrup. He took up the lead rope to his packhorse and pranced it to the cantina door as Williams burst into the light. “You the last one, Bill?”
“Wasn’t no one else in the back,” Williams declared as he skidded to a halt with that sight down the lane. “Shit!” he grumbled as he got his first look at the soldiers.
“We gotta slow ’em down with lead!” Peg-Leg hollered from atop his horse.
“Aim low,” Bass advised.
“Low?” Smith roared.
“We kill a bunch of these soldados,” he huffed, adrenaline firing his veins, “ain’t a one of us ever gonna get out of Californy alive—they’ll bring in soldiers from all around to track us down to the last man!”
Williams demanded, “You really think we can get outta this scrap ’thout killin’ a passel of them soldiers?”
“Scratch’s right!” Smith shouted as his partner clambered into his saddle and pulled up his long rifle. “Drop their horses first. Bass, you and Coltrane, Curnutt and Kersey—you niggers’re our best shots! Get up there and blow some holes in that first rank!”
With a lot of jostling those four trappers arrayed themselves across the wide, rutted street. In seconds they found their horses too fractious to work from the saddle, so all dropped to the ground and threw their rifles to their shoulders.
“When I give the word!” Smith bellowed behind them as he leaned over to sweep up some loose reins.
“I want four more of you boys to bring your guns up here—have ’em for these shooters,” Williams ordered behind Peg-Leg. Then he stared down the street at the on-rushing enemy, shaking his head while he asked, “How the hell many of them bastards is there?”
“More’n we care to get tied down scrapping with, Bill!” Smith roared as he peered up the street. “Now, boys! Fire! Fire!”
Those four long rifles belched gray smoke, their staccato echoes reverberating off the adobe walls of the homes and shops lining the dusty street. Huge lead balls, each one more than a half inch in diameter, slammed into the chests or necks or heads of those onrushing horses at the front of the charge.
Pitching forward or rearing backward in a skid, whinnying in pain and shrieking in terror, the small Spanish barb horses collided at the front of the formation, hurling their riders this way and that. One cavalryman landed under the hooves of the oncoming horses. Another smacked against a wall with his horse as it crumpled in front of three other mounts close on its tail. And the third was flung into the side of a wooden display of fruit, while the fourth slammed into a wagon stacked with crates stuffed with live chickens. Bloodcurdling squawks and white feathers both exploded into the late-afternoon sky.
Williams ordered, “Get up here with them loaded guns!”
Warren, Corn, Adair, and Samuel Gibbon all passed off their rifles to one of the quartet of marksmen, taking the empty weapons before they dropped back four or five paces to reload.
Throwing back the frizzen, Scratch assured himself the pan on the strange gun was primed. Dragging the big hammer back to full cock he snapped the frizzen into place over the pan and brought the butt to his shoulder. Different feel, this cheekpiece, different too how the front blade nestled down in the base of this rear sight—wondering how the rifle was sighted, just how far away the ball would strike center. Were these iron sights set for eighty yards? Maybe a hundred?
The next rank of soldiers had regrouped and forced their way through the clutter of downed horses and spilled riders. Close enough now that Titus figured it didn’t much matter by the time he set the rear set trigger and lightly nestled his finger against the front trigger. He’d hold midway between the bottom jaw and that cleft between the horse’s legs.
It went off with a surprise.
“Get back here to your horses!” Smith hollered as the roar of those four guns was still rattling down the adobe channel of that village street.
Horses were rearing, falling, spinning, cavalry soldiers pitching off under hoof
.
“Load ’em on the run, boys!” Williams commanded. “Let’s get gone while we can!”
Titus took one last look over his shoulder, back down the lane as he brought the packhorse around behind him and leaped into the saddle. A few of the big Mexican animals were thrashing, bleeding in the dirt. Others already lay still, humped against one another where they had fallen. Two of the motionless animals had pinned their riders beneath them, still in the saddle. Soldiers swore, screamed, shrieked for their comrades to help free them from under their dead or dying animals. Echoes bouncing and rebouncing from the mud walls of that bloody street in Pueblo de los Angeles.
Behind the fallen carcasses and soldiers a few men bellowed orders … but most of the trapped soldiers were cursing, some vaulting out of their saddles with their rifles, attempting to shove through the clutter of men and wounded horses so they could get a shot off at the fleeing gringos. At the same time the rest at the extreme rear of the formation were clumsily getting their mounts wheeled around and started down a side street or alleyway.
“There’ll be some comin’!” Bass warned as he and the mutelike Roscoe Coltrane brought up the rear. “A few of ’em still on our back trail!”
At the eastern outskirts of the village the trappers began to gradually fan out as their straining horses rolled into a gallop and were given their heads. Titus wondered how long the animals could take a bruising chase, considering what the horses had been through in crossing that desert. These bigger horses still might not stand a chance against the smaller Mexican animals because the Spanish barbs weren’t handicapped, save for the weight of the soldiers.
Jehoshaphat! How his head thumped painfully, screaming with every hoofbeat as his horse licked it down the hardpan road between the coastal pueblo and Mission San Gabriel. He had come to hate hangovers, especially the sort of hangover that buried its vicious talons into his head even before he’d had the chance to enjoy his whiskey at all.
California hooch. The prickly squeezin’s were nowhere near as smooth as Willy Workman’s Taos lightning had been. No, this California popskull tasted like the greasers’d strained it through some poor field peon’s longhandles!
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