by Tony Masero
Billy Joe sat on the top rail of the corral, his feet locked under a lower beam. He was hunched under a wool poncho against the chill night with a wide brimmed hat to keep the moon glare out of his eyes as he occasionally quartered the surrounding countryside. It was a tiresome and boring task with only the cows for company and as his watch neared the end he dozed a little under the cover of the poncho. He dreamed innocently of holding hands with Ellen Darby as they walked out together and she smiled that smile at him.
Below him, leaning against the corral rails rested his father’s musket. A long heavy beast that was not supposed to leave his hands as his father had instructed, but the weight of it dragged on him and he had petulantly given in and laid it aside.
He heard and saw little in his final moments.
The pull backwards was sudden and shocking, for a split second he thought the corral rail had given way under him. His hat was torn off and he had a brief glimpse of a red lined face and wide glaring eyes as a searing flash ran like liquid quicksilver under his chin. He gulped trying to take in air as a spraying mist of scarlet crossed the face of the bright moon above turning the white disk a shade of coral pink. He struggled in mystified confusion trying to understand what was happening and escape the strong hands that held him down whilst he drew a breath that would not come. Life spasmed from him as he bled out and gasped breathlessly into extinction. Billy Joe’s vision faded even as Nachez ripped the bloody poncho from over his head and placed it on his own body.
Asesino and the others disappeared into the earth, pulling gramma grass as camouflage across their bodies as they surrounded the corral and expertly vanished from sight. Nachez dragged the young boy’s body aside and took up his guard position as Lapwing crept past him and in amongst the cattle.
The Mescalero commenced to howl, a long quivering cry. He repeated the call a number of times and it so imitated the real animal that somewhere in the distance another coyote answered the cry. He moved amongst the cattle annoying them with jabs from the sharp tip of an arrowhead and the beasts began to low noisily in irritation.
Nachez, dressed in the wool poncho and Billy Joe’s hat moved around the outer ring of the corral as if trying to seek out the cause of the cattle’s distress.
Lapwing yipped and howled again and his distant animal companion answered, setting off an eerie chain of calls that echoed amongst the hills.
Nachez looked up from under the hat brim as lamps were lit in the ranch above, voices called out to him from up there and he scurried around the corral ignoring them as if he heard nothing. The cattle were bawling now and raising a dust cloud that successfully hid Lapwing as he poked the cows and they tried to escape him.
It would not be long now, thought Asesino, from his hiding place. He felt his pulse begin to race in anticipation of the fight but he stilled the excitement through effort of will. In such eagerness mistakes are made and he as leader of this war party could afford no such errors.
Horses were coming down from the hilltop homestead, he could feel the pounding of their hoof beats through the earth as the ponies neared.
Soon, he thought. Soon.
Chapter Four
They saw the smoke from ten miles away.
A heavy plume of grey undisturbed by any breeze until it climbed high in the mid-morning sky and then dissipated off to the west. All of them knew what it meant.
“Mon Dieu!” breathed Allumette.
Gringo nodded, “We’re on the right trail alright, it must be the same raiding party.”
Judas said nothing, just stared at the rising column of smoke.
“Let’s push it,” said Gringo. “See if there’s anything left.”
“There will be nothing left living that is for sure,” promised Judas.
It was an hour later when they arrived at the ranch. The three men approached in a cautious spread, their long muskets at the ready.
Upon the hilltop the smoldering ranch house, its walls blackened with soot, stood ruined and silent and spoke all too easily of the disaster that had befallen it and what lay inside.
Ben and Lucas Bendigo hung from the wrecked poles of the corral where they had been lashed, there was little left of them that was recognizable.
Gringo dismounted and cut down the bodies, almost tripping over the dust covered remains of Billy Joe hidden in the churned soil.
“I know these people,” he said. “Met them when I came through eighteen months back. They’re the Bendigo’s. Settled here some five years ago. That place up there,” he jerked his chin up at the ranch house. “Kept them pretty safe until now. Guess they got careless.”
“They have paid the price,” observed Allumette dolefully.
“Was this all of them?” asked Judas.
“No,” Gringo shook his head. “There was a wife and a little girl, a child called Mary Jane I believe.”
“Guess they’ll be up there,” Judas nodded towards the ranch house. He took out his clay pipe and began to fill it from a tobacco pouch with trembling fingers and Gringo realized he was doing it to distract himself and disguise his shaking. He guessed the big man was remembering his own family and it was either distress or anger that moved him so.
“We’ll have to go take a look and be sure,” he said.
“You two go,” said Judas quickly. “I’ll stay here and take care of these three.”
Gringo nodded agreement. They left Judas behind and with Allumette by his side Gringo rode up the sloping trail to the smoldering ruin. The heavy door through the adobe outer wall had been fired first with stacked brushwood, then the scorched remnants pushed aside. There was a look of intense hatred about the destruction wreaked inside the compound, everything breakable had been wantonly destroyed. The entire house contents littered the area. Broken picture frames and furniture. Delicately decorated plates, cups and fragile porcelain treasures transported with care across the wagon train miles from distant Europe had been tossed aside and broken indiscriminately. A great grandfather hall clock lay on its side at the foot of the steps up to the house, its polished wooden surface hacked by axes and the pendulum intestines ripped out and left hanging.
The woman had put up a fight before they killed her that much was obvious. A musket, its stock splintered and hanging apart, lay by her side. Next to her hand a powder horn and spilled musket balls. There was the ramrod for a handgun too, the pistol it belonged to was missing though.
“Ah, Bon Seigneur!” whispered Allumette. “They have scalped her.”
“Yes,” agreed Gringo, looking at the three-inch square gash torn from the woman’s tumble of fair hair. “That sure is unusual for the Apache, normally they have a loathing of contamination from the dead. It’s that damned Mexican governor setting a bounty on scalps, now the Indians are open season for every wild card with a fancy for Mexican gold. One of these Indians here must have gone crazy with killing lust, that or the drink. He’ll need purifying now, until he can do that he is unclean and will be vulnerable, which is a bonus for us.”
“I should like to clean his plate for him,” growled Allumette angrily.
“We’ll get them, don’t worry,” promised Gringo. “Let’s see if we can find the little girl.”
They searched diligently amongst the wreckage of charred timbers and broken furniture but found no evidence of the child save a small stained dress and two pretty china dolls, their hand painted faces crushed underfoot, the broken glass eyeballs rolling bizarrely. Gringo felt the dull ache in his chest as he realized she was gone.
“They have taken her with them, along with the other child.”
Allumette turned from where he was picking over the crumbling pages of what had once been a small library. “Taken her!” he exclaimed. “Why do they take these children?”
“They bring them into the tribe. It is a tough life for the little ones but if they survive, eventually they adapt and are married off.”
“Bah!” spat Allumette. “It is a disaster.”
“It is
their way,” explained Gringo patiently. “Not ours but theirs.”
“It is a wrong way though, no? To behave like maddened killers then take the small children for their own purposes. That is no ones way except the devil’s.”
“Maybe,” shrugged Gringo. “But that’s how it is. To get these children back we must become as stubborn as the Apache, so harden your heart Allumette. There will be things we must do that will not make us much better than them, I assure you.”
“This I cannot believe,” said the small Frenchman, bending and tenderly running a finger over the smashed features of one of the doll’s heads. “Our cause is the right one and our mission one of mercy. The good God will know this and protect us.”
“All right, Allumette,” Gringo answered with grim practicality. “You can trust in your God but I’ll favor my Springfield and a good supply of powder and ball.”
“Tah! Gringo, you are too mercenary. I tell you this, we are the good and have God and his angels on our side in this fight.”
Gringo smiled slightly. “Tell me that again when you are looking down the sharp end of a Jicarilla spear.”
Allumette frowned and breathed deeply, raising himself proudly to his full stature, “I shall still feel the same when I see the heads of these dogs hoisted on those very spears.”
“That’s more like it,” grinned Gringo and they set about covering Mrs. Bendigo in some remnants of curtains before taking her body below.
Judas stood waiting for them beside the neat yet shallow graves he had quickly dug.
“Only one?” he asked as Allumette took down the bundle from across his pony’s neck.
“Uhuh,” grunted Gringo. “They took the child with them.”
Judas clenched his jaw and looked away as they laid the wrapped woman in one of the pits.
“I found more tracks,” he advised. “Over there,” he said pointing. “Big party, very heavy wagons, lot of shod horse and boot marks. Appear to be Mexican by the shoe, they travel in column so may be military by the look of it.”
“A convoy?” asked Gringo, remembering the Boosway’s instructions to note everything.
Judas nodded, “Maybe. But they’re a day or so old, well before all this happened here.”
“And which way are the Indians headed?”
“They’ve split. Five are following the wagons and the rest are herding their beeves and horse east.”
Gringo pondered on it a moment. “The horse and cattle are heading home, they’ll have to travel slower. We can catch up to them easily. The others are after the wagon train, it has to be. These Apache are on the warpath they’ll want to kill as many as they can and the wagons will look like a profitable outcome for them.”
“They’re getting greedy,” observed Judas.
Gringo nodded agreement. “Overconfident. Nothing like success to go to a fellow’s head, whether he’s white or red.”
“So we follow the five with the livestock?” asked Allumette.
“They will have the small children with them,” said Gringo. “Besides it might be they’ve bitten off more than they can chew if the wagon train has a Mexican military detachment protecting it. We’ll find out later.”
Chapter Five
Caleb Brewster sat hunched on the wagon seat and rocked in time with the sway of the wheels as they rode the soft dips of the dusty trail. He managed it easily, the reins slack in his hand, as if he were back on a boat and riding the deck in a gentle swell.
Brewster finger nailed his grizzled chin, scratched his armpit and stared vacantly ahead across the backs of the mules and over at the Mexican Presidential Lancers paralleling their passage. An officer and ten others on horse and five Cazadores infantrymen marching lackadaisically in the rear, sweating under their battered stovepipe hats loaded with braid and gold bangles.
Brewster spat a stream of spittle to one side in the direction of the mounted troop. Lazy critters he thought, the train always had to wait for the foot soldiers to catch up. He pulled a sour face at the blue and grey uniforms and the slender upright figures of the lancers, he had lost kin at the Alamo and was not about to forget it. They had been merciless in victory these Mexicans, he knew that, he had read the newssheet reports. Slaughtering the brave boys who had stood up for freedom and liberty at the old mission and them burning them like cordwood without a decent burial when it was all over.
They had been heroes, those men, Brewster considered, his thoughts following the general sweep of approbation following news of the Mexican victory. The small band steadily holding their ground against innumerable odds when they could have fled. Such men too, Colonel James Bowie and the congressman David Crockett, bold volunteers all, with brave Major Travis at their head. Men to go down in history.
Probably some of these fellows here had ridden with Santa Anna that day, maybe even done for his relatives. The thought did little to endear the uniformed men to him.
If it wasn’t for the money he wouldn’t be here, he excused himself bitterly. A lot of money. Enough to give up the sea forever and settle somewhere in comfort. Just enough to forget about these greaseballs he rode with.
“Howdy, Mister Brewster.”
It was the eighteen-year-old Darby girl, walking alongside. Cocky little miss, he considered. But a looker, that was for sure.
“Good day to you, Miss Darby,” he almost grinned at her but remembered his brown teeth and having been told that women were put off by tobacco stained teeth he kept his lips together. “You stretching your legs?”
“I am that,” she said, pushing back her poke bonnet and letting it hang by the tie strings over her back. She nodded her pale head of blonde hair back towards the wagon that carried her father and mother and two siblings. “Couldn’t abide rolling around in that wagon any longer just now.”
“Getting a mite crowded back there, is it? You can sit up here alongside me if you want a change for a spell. Plenty of room.”
The mere idea caused a stir of anticipation in Brewster’s loins, he would like to have the pretty girl rubbing her thighs next to his.
“No thank you, sir,” she said, a little hastily. “I have to walk a while before my legs fall off.”
And such pretty pins they are too, thought Brewster.
“I don’t know how you stand it, Mister Brewster. You have no relief and have driven alone for many miles.”
“It’s the sea, missy,” he said, trying a spot of charm. “Having been a seaman for many a year, gives one a natural ability to take the swaying and rocking.”
“Is that so, I did not know. Where did you sail?”
Caleb tied off the reins to the brake handle and took out his pipe and commenced to fill it. “Why,” he said. “All over. As a merchantman across the Pacific and into San Francisco with sugar from the Hawaii’s then back again with hides. Lately though, since I became a Navy man it was the Potomac River we sailed.”
“Were you the captain of the sailing vessel?” she asked, her interest piqued.
“No, bless you, no. Second mate I was. Steam and sail we had, first ship with a screw propeller, never seen before. I was put aboard the USS Princetown when she were launched last year.”
The girl’s mouth formed a perfectly surprised oh shape as he knew it would. “Not the same Princetown that had the terrible disaster?”
“The same,” he said, thinking to himself what he could do with those sweet young lips.
“Why my father was there,” she gasped. “And President Tyler was almost killed, was he not?”
“A close call indeed but even so the Secretary of State and seven others met their end and it was not a pretty end, I can tell you.”
“Do tell, Mister Brewster. I know my father was aboard but he will never talk of it so I cannot know what happened in detail.”
Yes, thought Brewster, mister big shot Joseph Darby. Ship’s Master of Ordnance and picking up this miserable outing just like himself and the three other crewmembers that rode with them. A plague on him, Brews
ter cursed silently.
“Why don’t you hop up here and I’ll tell you all,” he offered aloud.
The girl was torn, he could see it in her face. Torn between her curiosity and rubbing shoulders with him. Her folks had probably told her to stay away from him as her blasted father knew of that small problem he had in Yokohama. The little girl there had only been a slant-eyed Japaner with an eye for a few Yankee dollars, he could never understand the fuss they had made over it all.
“Alright then but just for the moment.” Curiosity had got the better of her and Brewster smiled slowly with pleasure at his success.
He was an uncouth, self-seeking block of a man, dressed in a chequered wool shirt and leather braces. Canvas pants with ripped ends circled his worn boots and a battered low-crowned top hat was pulled down over thick eyebrows. They had all been ordered to travel out of uniform, in order to avoid any unwelcome interest in their load.
Brewster was leaning towards the fat side of things physically but it was hard fat and if cornered he was capable of some ferocious action in his own defense, evidenced by the heavy curved Navy cutlass he carried strapped to his side. A man did not get to be a Master’s mate without a certain element of toughness and Brewster had often used more than a hard fist to keep discipline amongst the rough deckhands under his wing.
Ellen Darby averted her head and breathed deep of the hot desert air as she climbed up alongside him. None of them were allowed precious water for washing as they crossed the desert, it was necessary to keep the teams of animals going and as a result everyone was getting a little ripe. Somehow though, Brewster managed to surpass them all. Luckily she noticed he had drawn a match and set his pipe alight, at least that would mask some of the unpleasant odor the man emitted.
