Spanish Serenade

by Jennifer Blake

  Everyone except Doña Luisa. The noblewoman had been instructed in what she should do. It was her job to be sure their water barrel was conveniently to hand and not exposed to fire. Instead, she was standing with her hands clenched and her wide eyes fastened on the swiftly approaching enemy.

  “Luisa!” Enrique called. “Get down!”

  She turned toward him an instant, but swung back immediately toward the Indians. Her face was pale and her lips writhed in a soundless tirade of impotent rage.

  Enrique leaped to his feet and ran to catch the woman's arm. He dragged her bodily toward the barricade of dead mules, shoving her down beside him. “Get down, I said,” he told her in rough tones. “You are to reload. Remember it, and think of nothing else if you value your life.”

  Doña Luisa gave him an angry stare, but there was also a degree of comprehension in her face that had not been there before. Looking around her, she found the water barrel and rolled it closer behind the nearest pack saddle.

  The shrieks and yells of the Apaches had a thin, eerie sound in the cool morning air. It was not a large war party; still, their painted faces, streaked with white and black and ocher, we're fearsome in the pale light. Five or six of them cradled muskets across their bodies. One warrior shouldered his and fired at Refugio as he raced ahead of them. The sound of the shot boomed across the rolling ground, though the ball went wide.

  Refugio crouched lower over his mount's neck, looking back over his shoulder. The horse was running flat out, his eyes wild. Refugio looked back at the barricade, then swerved hard to his left out of the band's line of fire. A scattering of arrows whistled after him, burying themselves in the ground to one side of him. More arrows followed, whistling in every direction, an arcing fusillade that fell around the barricade in a deadly shower.

  At that moment another Apache raised his musket. He held it steady against the motion of his horse, then got off a shot. The blue-gray smoke billowed back over his shoulder. In the same instant Charro gave a shout and the guns of the men of the band roared out in unison. Refugio was struck. The straw hat he wore was whipped from his head. He weaved, trying to stay upright, then fell in boneless grace to land facedown in the grass some thirty yards away.

  Beyond Refugio two Apaches threw up their arms and catapulted backward off their horses, and a third reeled back before flinging himself forward to hug his mount's neck. The others came on, whooping and firing and brandishing lances.

  Pilar, frantically pushing a patch and ball into Charro's musket, spared the attackers no more than a glance before twisting around to look toward where Refugio lay. He was stirring, lifting his head, trying to drag himself toward the barricade. Pilar rose to her knees only to be pulled down once more by Charro. Beside her Isabel was screaming, the sound grating with grief and fear. As Charro called in impatient haste for his musket, Pilar turned back to thrust it into his hands.

  The band fired again at near point-blank range. Two more Apaches were flung backward off their mounts. The rest wheeled in ragged formation, pounding away to their right past the bulwark. They circled in a wide arc, streaming one behind the other in wild and reckless abandon.

  “Refugio,” Isabel moaned, struggling up from beside Baltasar the instant the way was clear, her eyes blinded by the tears that overflowed down her splotched face. The big man tried to hold her, but she wrenched her arm from his grasp. She put her foot on the top of a pack saddle and jumped over it, running toward where Refugio was hauling himself along. Vicente also threw down his musket and leaped up, sprinting after Isabel. Charro was reloading his own gun, his attention on the Indians galloping in a wide circle just out of range. Pilar rolled away from him and came to her feet. Lifting her skirts, she cleared the barricade to follow Vicente.

  Isabel was kneeling over Refugio, sobbing as she dabbed at the blood that gleamed wet and red in his hair. Vicente, as he reached his brother, caught one arm, trying to help him to his feet. Plunging forward the last few steps, Pilar grasped the other to draw Refugio upward with desperate strength.

  The Apaches were charging again. The ground vibrated underfoot with the pounding of their horses' hoofs. Their shrill cries pierced the air, making the hair rise on the back of Pilar's neck. They were moving so slowly, she and Vicente and Refugio. They started and stopped and blundered over the ground. Refugio's legs would not quite sustain him, so that he staggered, keeping halfway erect only by fiercely sustained will. Isabel, trying to hold his hand, kept getting in the way.

  Abruptly, Isabel released him. “His hat,” she cried, and whirled, running back the way they had come.

  Pilar swung her head to stare back over her shoulder. The Indians were bearing down on them, screaming and yelling, firing wildly with bow and musket. Their faces were strained copper masks daubed with paint. More naked than not, riding without saddles or bits, they seemed like demonic creatures part man, part horse, and wholly malevolent.

  Isabel paid the Apaches no more heed than if they had been a part of the band returning from a morning ride. There was smile on her face as she ran, and joy in her red-rimmed eyes. She reached the hat and bent to pick it up. Turning with it in her hand, she plucked at the hole in its crown where the musket ball had torn it from Refugio's head. The wind flapped her skirts around her legs and sent long tendrils of her hair, teased from the knot on her nape, flying about her face like spiderwebs loosened from their moorings. She started toward them at a slow amble.

  Baltasar was shouting Isabel's name, rising to his feet. Charro and Enrique stood up to pull Refugio over the bulwark of the mule carcasses and lower him to the ground. They threw themselves down beside him then, lifting their muskets. Vicente scuttled back to his place. Pilar went down on her belly beside Refugio, trying to look at his wound and keep her head down at the same time.

  “Never mind,” he said, his voice husky but trenchant. “Where is my musket? Help me into position.”

  He did not wait for her to comply, but twisted around, looking for a gun. It was then he saw Isabel. “Dear God,” he said in soft beseechment. “I ask you, dear God, why?”

  Baltasar was still hollering and waving. “Isabel! Look behind you for the love of God!”

  The girl heard and started, then turned her head. Her footsteps faltered before she broke into a stumbling run. Baltasar, swearing, leaped over the barricade and started toward her. Abruptly he stopped as a flying arrow came whining down, thudding into him. He bent double as it shafted into his side and through his body so the barb appeared in the back. Slowly, he dropped to his knees.

  Isabel screamed. She went on screaming as the Indians thundered down upon her. She was buffeted this way and that, spinning around. The hat was knocked from her hands and trampled, but, miraculously, she did not fall. Dazed, she staggered behind the attackers with her hair sliding from its pins, drifting in her face.

  The band opened fire; they had no choice. The powder smoke, blue and acrid, obscured the view for an instant. Then as the wind whipped it away, they saw the Indians swerving away again, while another Apache lay twitching on the ground and a second was being held on his horse by a companion.

  The Apaches wheeled, riding at breakneck speed, bending low to snatch up their dead from where they had fallen and haul them across their laps.

  Then Isabel's screams trailed to a despairing moan.

  There was a warrior riding down on her. He swooped low and caught her hair, twisting it around his hand as he heaved her upward and across his thighs. She dangled with her head down, her arms flopping as the warrior kicked his horse into headlong flight.

  Baltasar bellowed out in grief and rage. Charro swore, rising to one knee. Enrique squeezed Doña Luisa's shoulder as she sat white and appalled. Vicente looked sick, but his lips moved in silent prayers.

  Refugio reached for the musket that lay, fresh charged, in Vicente's lax grasp. He steadied it on the rump of the dead mule and sighted at the back of the retreating warrior. Carefully, he squeezed the trigger.

 
; The musket boomed. The Indian flinched at the sound, but only bent low over his captive, lying along his horse's neck as he sped away.

  Slowly Refugio lowered his head, resting it on the hot musket barrel as he closed his eyes.

  19

  THEY STOOD LISTENING to the echoes of receding hoofbeats and staring at each other. It did not seem possible that it could be over just like that. It was beyond belief that Isabel could be gone, that the Apaches had taken her with them. Everything had happened so quickly, one terrible thing piling on another, that they could not seem to accept them.

  “I should have gone back for her,” Vicente murmured almost to himself. “We should have run out to help her. We should have saved her.”

  “How?” Enrique asked, the word blunt. “Just one second's less attention, less firepower, and the savages might have overrun us. They could be happily mutilating us right now.”

  “She did it herself, poor thing,” Doña Luisa added. “Once she turned back for the hat, there was nothing anyone could have done for her.”

  “For a hat,” Pilar said softly. “She went back for a hat.”

  Baltasar groaned and bent to the ground with his hands pressed to the side of his belly where blood oozed around the protruding shaft of the arrow. There was horrified anguish in the sound that came from him.

  The reminder of his injury jarred them from their dazed introspection into frantic action, as if it would compensate for the helplessness they felt over Isabel. Pilar swung toward the big man, touching his arm to urge him to lie down on his good side. Vicente and Charro came forward to help him stretch out, while Doña Luisa made pads of the bandaging. The two men sliced the barbed head from the arrow and jerked it free. Enrique, standing ready, quickly applied the thick bandage pads to both sides. He held them while Doña Luisa, flinching yet valiant under Enrique's sardonic gaze, wrapped more bandaging tightly around them. The wound was ugly, but Baltasar was tough. Only time would tell whether the arrow had torn anything vital.

  Pilar left the others to their task while she turned to Refugio. He had not moved or spoken since he had fired the last shot. He was breathing, however, his chest rising and falling in a steady, if fast, rhythm. With a pot of water in one hand and a cloth and bandage roll in the other, she knelt beside him. Reaching out, she placed her hand on his shoulder.

  Refugio raised his head and lifted his lashes to stare at her from heavy bloodshot eyes. He sustained her clear gaze only a moment before he lowered his own. Still, he pushed himself up to lie against a saddle pack, and made no protest as she washed the blood and bits of grass from the furrow in his scalp. The ball had struck at an angle, glancing off the skull. Though the bleeding had been copious at first, it had now nearly stopped. She thought he probably had a headache and would for some time.

  There was something odd about the wound, however. She touched it gently with her fingers, drawing back the hair growing on each side to see better, as she tried to decide what it was. Refugio moved restlessly under her ministrations, drawing away from her. Pilar turned to reach for the roll of bandaging. In that moment she knew what was wrong.

  She sat back on her heels, her hands clenched tight on the bandage roll as she watched the slow seep of Refugio's dark red blood from the furrow. It was deepest toward the front, closest to his face. It could not have been made by a shot fired from behind him. Slowly, she swung her head to look at the other men, at Charro and Baltasar and Enrique, and even Vicente. It had to be one of them, for the women had touched the muskets only to load them.

  It could not have been an accident; they were all too expert, too drilled in accuracy and the importance of not wasting a shot. Which one was capable of this thing? And why? Before God, why?

  Refugio was staring at her, his gaze commanding, insistent. She met his gray eyes, and her own were stark with knowledge, intent with cogent thought. She could see the strain of the past days and of this new injury in the pared-down refinement of his features and the new lines around his eyes. A pervading ache began somewhere deep inside her, rising until she had to grind her teeth against it. How long could he go on? she wondered. How long could she, with this knowledge inside her?

  He gave an infinitesimal shake of his head, gesturing with one hand toward the gash. His voice so soft only she could, hear, he said, “Cover it. There is cleanliness and decency in that, and none in anything else.”

  She hesitated a long moment, her lips firm as she resisted the force of his implacable will. It seemed, however, that there was nothing to be done if he would not himself make an accusation. Taking up the bandaging, she made a pad and held it in place while she wound the bandaging slowly around his head. When she was done, he caught her fingers and raised them to his lips. Pilar was moved, though she knew, even as she felt the warm touch, that the gesture was one of gratitude and nothing more.

  Charro was also injured, a graze from an arrow in the fleshy part of his calf, though he tended it himself with Vicente's help. Enrique, finished with Baltasar, went to see to their horses. He reported back that they were safe there among the stunted oaks, the only wounds were the scrapes and nicks they had sustained from their own rearing and plunging at the end of their ropes. Leading out his own mare, soothing her nervousness with quiet words and soft caresses, he swung into the saddle and set out to see if he could come up with Refugio's horse, which had bolted.

  Doña Luisa called after him. “Don't go far!”

  “I won't,” he said, waving over his shoulder as if that expression of concern was an everyday occurrence.

  He was as good as his word. He returned in less than half an hour, leading Refugio's stallion by its halter. The moment he walked into the camp, it was as if a signal had been given. Baltasar, struggling up to one elbow from where he lay panting against the pain in his side, looked at them all one by one. Finally, he spoke.

  “All right,” he said. “What are we going to do?”

  No one answered. They looked at Refugio, but he was staring out over the plains.

  “We have to do something,” the big man said, a note of pleading underlying the words. “We can't just let them have Isabel.”

  Enrique turned to Charro. “What is the war party likely to do now? Do you think they may be back?”

  Charro lifted his shoulders. “It's possible. Then again, they may keep riding. There's no way to tell.”

  “What — what will they do to her?” Doña Luisa frowned to cover her apprehension as she asked the question.

  “Maybe nothing except make a slave of her, or a wife if the warrior who took her grows enamored of her.”

  Enrique took him up sharply. “But you don't think that will happen.”

  “They may also stop as soon as they think it’s safe and . . . take turns.”

  “And then?”

  “And then take her with them back to their camp if she survives, and if she doesn't make too much trouble. Otherwise, they may cut her throat. Or again, they may save her for special torture in retaliation for their defeat here.”

  Enrique swore. Vicente, sitting with his hands dangling between his bent knees, turned even more pate.

  “We're wasting time talking about it,” Baltasar growled. “Let's ride after them.”

  “It would be to risk the lives of all, including the other women.” It was Enrique who spoke the warning.

  “That doesn't matter,” Pilar said quickly.

  “But it does,” Charro answered, his voice quiet as his gaze rested on her. “It matters to us.”

  Baltasar spoke again, his voice dogged. “If we can't catch up with them before they reach their main camp or their village, it will be no use. There's no possible way we could sneak in among them, and to attack would be like stirring up an ant hill. We have to go now.”

  Enrique looked from Charro to Baltasar, then turned his seeking gaze on Refugio. The acrobat gave a backward jerk of his head with a brow raised in query. “Well, my friend? What shall it be?”

  Refugio, sitting co
ntemplating his hands, looked up. His voice quietly scathing, he said, “Why is it that I am always presented with the weighing of life and death? Is there no one else who wants to share the failures of good intentions gone awry, or who will bear the guilt of injuries unanticipated, unintended? Someone else take a portion of regret. Someone else decide.”

  “You are the leader,” Enrique answered, as if that was enough.

  “I say we go,” Baltasar said in tones gruff with concern.

  No one else spoke, nor did they meet Refugio's searching glance.

  “My gratitude then, Baltasar,” their leader said gravely. “It seems we go.”

  They rode out, following the tracks of the Apaches, less than a quarter hour later. They traveled light, after burying the pack saddles with their supplies among the scrub oaks. If they were successful, they would come back for them. If not, they would have no use for them. In either case, they did not need the extra weight now.

  Doña Luisa had her own mount, the one Isabel usually rode. There had been some discussion of leaving her and Pilar behind, but it was deemed too dangerous without a strong guard, and there was not enough of them to take such precautions and still have a chance of rescuing Isabel.

  The pace Refugio set was relentless, harder than any they had so far endured. The only reason they were able to keep to it was the certain knowledge that the Apaches were riding just as hard, if not more so. The weeks they had spent in the saddle showed their worth, for none of them were unduly strained, at least in these early hours. How Doña Luisa was standing up under it, Pilar was not sure. For herself, she was determined to bear with anything that the injured men among them were able to tolerate.

  They knew that what they were doing was foolhardy to the point of madness; there was no question of that. Regardless, they felt compelled to do something. They had all come so far together, had suffered so much, that it would have been a betrayal to go on without Isabel. No one voiced this truth, but the fact that they felt it was obvious in the lack of real opposition to the quest.