The heat made dizzying waves across the barren landscape and he staggered a little and regained his footing. If he must die, he would go out like a man.
The crowd of sympathetic peasants was growing as word must have spread that the Americans were hanging their deserters. Padraic looked around for Conchita, hoping yet dreading to see her. He did not want his love to see him die this way.
Hail Mary, Mother of God ... he murmured the prayer automatically and he was once again a small boy at his mother’s knee as they said their beads together. Now she would never know what happened to her son who had set off for the promise of America. It was just as well. He’d rather her think he was happy and successful than know he had been hanged like a common thief.
The riches of the new country had not been good, with so many Irish flooding in and everyone hating and sneering at the immigrants. If he could have found a job, he wouldn’t have joined the army, but no one wanted to hire the Irish.
The fighting in the distance seemed to be slowing, though he choked on the acrid smell of cannon smoke and watched the castle burning in the distance. The Mexican flag flew bravely on the parapet, but he could see the bright blue of the American uniforms like tiny ants as the invaders attacked the castle. It wouldn’t be long now. The ropes bit into his wrists and he would give his soul for a sip of cold water, but he knew better than to ask. He closed his eyes and thought about the clear streams and the green pastures of County Kerry. He was a little boy again in ragged clothes, chasing the sheep toward the pens with no cares in the world save hoping for a brisk cup of tea and a big kettle of steaming potatoes as he ran toward the tumbledown stone cottage.
If only he could see Conchita once more. He smiled despite his misery and remembered the joy of the past three months. The pretty girl had been the one bright spot in his short, miserable life. He closed his eyes and imagined her in his arms again: her kisses, the warmth of her skin. He hoped she had not heard about the court-martial and the public hangings. He did not want her to see him die, swinging and choking at the end of a rope like a common criminal.
The rope rasped against his throat, the ox stamped its feet, and the cart creaked while Padraic struggled to maintain his balance. The colonel had stood them here all afternoon, and now he almost wished the cart would pull ahead because he was so miserable, with his throat dry as the barren sand around him and his arms aching from being tied behind while his legs threatened to buckle under him. No, he reminded himself, you are going to die like a man, and a soldier. You just happen to be on the losing side.
In the distance, he could see the blue uniforms climbing ladders up the sides of the castle as the fighting grew more intense. Screams of dying men mixed with the thunder of cannons and the victorious shrieks as the Americans charged forward, overrunning the castle now as the sun became a bloody ball of fire to the west.
The ruddy colonel grinned and nodded up at Padraic. “It won’t be long now, you Mick trash. I knew I could never turn you Irish into soldiers.”
“If ye’d treated us better, we wouldn’t have gone over to the other side, maybe,” Padraic murmured.
The colonel sneered. “And look what you get! We’re hanging more than the thirty I’ve got here. General Scott asked President Polk to make an example of the Saint Patrick’s battalion. If it’d been up to me, I’d have hung the whole lot, especially that John Riley that led you.”
“Some of them would rather have been hung than to have been lashed and branded,” Padraic snarled.
“It’s better than being dead,” the colonel said. Then he turned and yelled at the soldiers holding back the Mexican peasants. “Keep those brown bastards back. We don’t want them close enough to interfere with the hanging.”
Padraic watched the peasants. Some of them were on their knees, saying their rosaries, others looking up at them gratefully with tears making trails down their dusty brown faces.
“Paddy, dearest!” He turned his head to see Conchita attempting to fight her way past the soldiers.
“Hold that bitch back!” the colonel bellowed. “Don’t let her through the lines.”
“Get your filthy hands off her!” Padraic yelled and struggled to break free, although he knew it was useless. Conchita was so slim and small and her black hair had come loose and blew about her lovely face as she looked toward him and called his name.
There was too much roar of battle now as the Yankees overran the castle for her to hear him, but he mouthed the words, I love you. You are the best thing that has happened to me since I crossed the Rio Grande.
She nodded that she understood and her face was so sad that he looked away, knowing that to see her cry would make him cry, too, and he intended to die like a man.
A victorious roar went up from the American troops as they finally fought their way to the top of the distant tower. It would only be a few moments now.
“Take her away,” Padraic begged his guards. “I don’t want her to see this!”
The colonel only laughed. “No, we want all these Mexicans to see what happens to traitors. Why don’t you beg, Kelly? Don’t you want your little greasy sweetheart to see you beg for your life?”
In the distance, the American soldiers were taking down the ragged Mexican flag, but even as it came down, one of the young Mexican cadets grabbed it from the victors’ hands and as they tried to retrieve it, he ran to the edge of the parapet and flung himself over the edge to the blood-soaked ground so far below. The Mexican peasants sent up a cheer, which the colonel could not silence with all his shouting. The cadet had died rather than surrender his country’s flag to the enemy.
Now the American flag was going up, silhouetted against the setting sun. The peasants shouted a protest as soldiers climbed up on the oxcarts and checked the nooses.
“No! No! Do not hang them!”
Conchita screamed again and tried to break through the line of solders holding back the crowd. “Paddy! My dear one!” She couldn’t get to him, although she clawed and fought.
Padraic smiled at her and gave her an encouraging nod. If only things were different. He would have built a mud hut on this side of the Rio Grande and lived his life happily with this woman. If only he could hold her in his arms and kiss those lips once more.
Conchita looked up at him, her brave, tall man with his fair skin and wide shoulders. She made one more attempt to break through the guards, but they held her back. A roar of protests went up around her from the other peasants. He was her man and they were going to execute him and there was nothing she could do to stop it. She screamed his name and tried to tell him the secret, shouting that she carried his child, but in the noise of distant gunfire and the peasants yelling, she wasn’t sure he understood, although he smiled and nodded at her and mouthed I love you, too.
“Your child!” she shrieked again. “I carry your child!”
At that precise moment, she heard the officer bark an order and all the oxcarts creaked forward. For just a split second, the condemned men swayed, struggling to keep their balance, and then the carts pulled out from under the long line of soldiers and their feet danced on air as they swung at the end of their ropes.
Conchita watched in frozen horror and tried to get to her Paddy as he fought for air, but the soldiers held her back. Her eyes filled with tears and the sight of the men hanging grew dim as they ceased to struggle.
“This is what the U.S. Army does to traitors and deserters!” the colonel announced to the crowd with satisfaction.
Conchita burst into sobs. She was in great pain as if her heart had just been torn from her breast. She did not want to live without her love, but she must, for his child’s sake. She was not even sure he had heard her as she tried to tell him he would be a father. If it was a boy, she would raise that son and call him Rio Kelly for his father and the river that made a boundary between the two civilizations. And then she would go into a cloistered order and spend her life praying for the souls of her love and the other condemned men.
/> The soldiers were cutting the thirty bodies down now, and she broke through the line of guards and ran to her Paddy as he lay like a tattered bundle of rags on the sand. She threw herself on the body, weeping and kissing his face, but his soul had fled to his God and he could no longer feel her kisses and caresses.
Only now did she realize he had died smiling and so she knew he had heard her and knew he would have a child.
To My Readers:
As I have told you in this story, the Second Cavalry was the army’s crack unit and the equivalent of today’s Special Forces. Each soldier was handpicked and specially equipped with all the best in weapons and supplies, including new uniforms, the first to have the yellow stripes down the pants; the new five-shot Colt pistol; and fine, color-matched thoroughbred horses that did poorly on the Texas plains. The Second Cav was the darling of U.S. secretary of war Jefferson Davis (the future president of the Confederacy), and was conceived in 1855 as the answer to the dangerous Comanches wreaking havoc in the Lone Star State.
Sixteen of the officers who accepted positions in the Second Cav went on to become generals in the Civil War. Half of the Confederate generals had served with the Second Cav. Some of the famous men who served in Texas with the Second Cavalry were: Robert E. Lee, John Bell Hood, George Thomas, Fitzhugh Lee, and Albert Sidney Johnston. These officers served together in Texas and then went home to fight each other in the Civil War. An excellent research book on the subject is Jeff Davis’s Own: Cavalry, Comanches, and the Battle for the Texas Frontier by James R. Arnold, Castle Books, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey.
The Comanches were the deadly scourge of Texas as they defended territory they had held for hundreds of years, first against the Spanish, the Mexicans, and then against the white pioneers who wanted the land for ranches and farms. For more about this tribe, I suggest these excellent resource books: Comanche: The Destruction of a People by T.R. Fehrenbach, and The Comanche: Lords of the South Plains, by Ernest Wallace & E. Adamson Hoebel, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma.
The well-known Cynthia Ann Parker was carried off at the age of nine by the Comanche in the year 1836. She was recovered by the Texas Rangers and returned to her family in 1860. With her was her baby, Prairie Flower. Cynthia Ann left behind two half-Comanche sons. One of them died and the other would become the last chief of the Comanche, Quanah Parker. Cynthia did not adjust well to white society and tried to escape back to the Comanche. Her baby girl died and Cynthia Ann died soon after in 1870. Today, she is buried next to her son, the great Chief Quanah in the Fort Sill cemetery in Lawton, Oklahoma. The John Wayne movie The Searchers is based on the abduction of Cynthia Ann.
As my imaginary hero Colt predicted, when the Civil War began in 1861 and all the United States troops left Texas, the Comanches took full advantage of their absence to wreak havoc on outlying settlements and ranches. Their war against the white invaders would not cease until 1874 when Colonel Ranald MacKenzie defeated them and forced them all to move to a reservation at Fort Sill. The Indians had fought fiercely, but they were no match for the power and military might of the U.S. Army. A good reference book on this is: The Buffalo War by James L. Haley, Oklahoma University Press, Norman, Oklahoma.
Texas was a nation from 1836 until she joined the Union in 1845. Sam Houston, who had struggled to get Texas into the Union, did his best to keep her there, but hotheads prevailed and Texas seceded and joined the Confederacy in 1860. Two excellent books on Texas are: Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans by T.R. Fehrenbach, American Legacy Press, Crown Publishers, New York. Also: Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas by James L. Haley, Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, New York.
Remember that our heroine, Hannah, mentions that her father was killed in the Fannin Massacre, also known as the Goliad Massacre. A few days after the Alamo fell, Colonel Fannin and hundreds of his troops, surrounded and out of supplies, surrendered to the Mexicans on an agreement that the soldiers would be well treated as prisoners of war. Instead, General Santa Anna ordered that they all be executed and they were slaughtered on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836. Only a handful escaped to tell the story. A few of the prisoners were spared because of the pleas of a girl known as “The Angel of Goliad,” and she is herself one of Texas’s most beloved legends.
I know someone is going to write and ask why I don’t have the soldiers playing taps at the funeral services in this story. It might interest you to know the bugle call we know as “taps” didn’t exist in 1856. It won’t be written until 1862, during the Civil War.
For some of you who don’t live in the Southwest, the Osage Orange tree, also known as “horse-apple, “Bodark,” or “Bois D’Arc”—that’s the wood Colt carves into a wooden horse for little Travis—was the principal wood used by plains tribes to make bows. It bears a hard, green seed ball about the size of an orange. I own a beautiful belt buckle made from this wood.
My faithful readers know that all my stories connect in some manner, so Colt Prescott, as a small boy, was with the wagon train from which Texanna was kidnapped by War Bonnet in my very first book: Cheyenne Captive.
Also, when he and Sergeant Mulvaney are discussing hanging the Irish soldiers who had revolted during the Mexican American War, that event connects to my last book: Rio. Rio’s father was one of the men hanged.
In this series, The Texans, I’ve had a gunfighter, Diablo; a vaquero, Rio; a Cavalry officer, Colt; and next, a Texas Ranger, Travis. This next story will be about Travis Prescott, who grows up to become a Texas Ranger.
Half-Comanche Travis, a confirmed bachelor, and his old dog are only looking for a peaceful and early retirement since Travis was injured in a shootout with outlaws. Of course that’s not what he’s going to get. He’s about to meet a saloon tart named Violet, disguised as an innocent schoolgirl, and four children she’s rescued from an orphan train. The kids are on the run from the mean supervisor of the orphanage and Violet’s escaping from the deadly gambler who owns the saloon and wants her back.
Unwittingly, Travis is about to get involved with all five of the runaways, plus some very indignant upright citizens who want to help find him a respectable wife and mother for all those children. Of course, there’ll be a showdown with the tough gambler and his hired gunfighter. Maybe Travis is not going to find the peaceful bachelor life he is hankering for, but he just might find love and a ready-made family. Look for Travis: The Texans, coming probably in 2013.
You can order some of my past books at most bookstores or from kensingtonbooks.com. Also a number of them are now out in the new e-books for electronic readers. I realize some of my earliest books are difficult to find. Perhaps someday Kensington will reprint them.
I have a website: georginagentrybooks.com. Or you may write me at: Box 162, Edmond, OK 73083.
Wishing you romance and happiness,
Georgina Gentry
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2012 by Lynne Murphy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-2781-2
ISBN-10:1-4201-2167-7
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Colt Page 29
