The colonel put his saddlebag forward and took out a thousand in gold, counting the coin out slowly, moving the pieces methodically across the table. The Germans followed the coin with fixed eyes. The company aimed to purchase ammo and a field piece if the Germans had a caisson or wagon that could haul it to sell. The Germans ja, ja’d and stared at the coins, nodding to each other. The colonel added that he didn’t think they’d need it, but a few rounds would scare the hell out of any renegade, to which the Germans laughed and Klaus said, “Ja, ja, we forge it loud for purpose.” Klaus and the colonel shook hands.
After the meeting, Klaus took Raif aside and they walked the camp, Klaus pointing out all they’d built and their greater plans for the future. When they were clear of the company, Klaus took Raif by the upper arms and looked him in the eye. “Raif, things are different here now. It’s not the same as in the days of Lobo when there was no order of things. It’s no more this tribe and that, there is one now—a great chief of many tribes from the south we deal with now. It is not good for your party to be here. He has warned us not to harbor strangers. It’s no longer small bands, it is all the same. A small company can’t travel through here anymore. It’s not the same, Raif, I warn you. You are not enough, they are legion, and the chief is crafty.”
“What chief, Klaus?”
“Raif, my freund, this is our home now—it’s not like it used to be, it’s not wild anymore—things are happening here, good things; look around, we can build, the renegades trade now, they can be bargained with; it is different. The trade is good from Tin City to the mission. Much is happening here now, the Mexicans fear the chief and stay away; the Tin City fears the priest—we can do business, we can build.”
“You and that padre got it all figured, Klaus.”
“Raif, you know the padre knows many things, he knows what’s in our hearts before we do. Take your friends back to North County, go now north—I tell you it will be the end of you if you venture south, go back. We owe you this, my friend, but we cannot help you in this quest, go home, Raif, take your brothers and go home.”
The colonel paid in gold coin, and the Germans were showing the North County men the best way to fire the field piece. Toward the end of day, the Germans gathered in a large open barn that had a paddock and stables attached. They set up a number of crude iron steins they had forged and one portly red-faced one began to play the accordion, his meaty hands pumping out the awful sounds.
Gabriel stood with his back to the gathering, his hands splayed out on a long board set like a bridge upon hay bales forming the bar of the makeshift tavern. The Germans dug in the soft earth at the back of the barn and dragged a keg out of the ground. They popped a great stopper from it and put in a tap and placed it on its side and began filling their great steel carafes with a mead they had fermented from wild berries and honey. The laughing and wails rose in the barn as the tart liquor flowed. The portly one yelled out that in a month’s time they would have real beer from the hops growing in the fields and a great wail of anticipation rose from the Germans.
Raif walked from group to group talking and joking with a carafe in his hand.
The colonel stood next to Gabriel, next came Abner and Jed; all pretended to drink the thick, viscous liquid in their steins. Joe came over with Wesley and all stood with their backs to the Germans pretending to talk. Seth and Toby were left outside with plates of dinner near where the horses were tied; they were given instructions that once the shooting started they were to break for the main trail and set up in defilade with the long rifles and keep the guard posted on the ridge from firing down upon them. All the North County horsemen faced the rear wall of the bar now, standing like many a man in a saloon with their backs to the Germans, who quaffed the mead in great gulps and sang throaty old tunes from a world lost eons ago. Raif brought out in them much laughter and he appeared without effort to be enjoying their company. He sauntered to the bar and stood between the colonel and Gabriel and raised his iron cup as if to drink.
“I reckon there as ’bout unsuspect’n as it’s gonna get,” Raif said.
“Good, ’cause I had me jest ’bout enough of that goddamn polka,” Gabriel said.
In one turn the eight gunmen wheeled and opened fire on the Germans. In those first few seconds the Germans seemed to be open to their fate, as if they’d expected every day they had rooted themselves in the wastelands that eventually this is how the end would come; that it had to end like this in this world. They had believed it would come from the south and not from the north, by the arrow and not the bullet. The steins dinged and flew from hands, spewing the froth, and the North County killers dispatched life each in his way.
Gabriel drew both pistols and walked toward his targets firing with both hands, wild-eyed, as if killing fed the fire that burned in him, its heat and smoke emitting from his barrels and the sockets of his eyes.
Wesley took a proper shootist’s stance, firing his pistol with his arm stretched and propped by the other hand with a precise, slight bend to the elbow. He discharged the weapon with almost no perceptible movement except an easy breath, the fluid mechanics of selecting a target and squeezing gently. He aimed at the bobbing, fleeing heads as if the center mass shot to the torso was beneath his abilities. He fired slowly as if the whole event’s meaning in the world was a design to test his marksmanship; he stood oblivious to the chaos of the charnel house and never missed; each rhythmic shot expanding a head and releasing its life in fine mist on the hard, rough-hewn wood of the tables.
The colonel kept his eyes moving and was the only one to issue orders, telling Abner and Jed to concentrate on the barn door as a few Germans tried to break out into the light.
Abner fired his shotgun in a double blast, spraying the lead beads into the legs and splaying out four men.
Jed and Joe walked among the fallen as they desperately crawled toward the thin slant of light, thinking if they could reach the sunlight they would live, but the two took aim and sent the final dispatches into their skulls. It was over in minutes, the Germans lying about in the puppet poses of the dead.
Raif moved about the carnage to the back of the barn and saw three Germans on top of hay bales trying to squeeze out a small window. He shot the top man in the ass, and he fell over backward onto the two still atop the hay bales, and they spilled about the hay-strewn floor. He shot two, and the third, named Günter, looked up at him and said, “Raif, warum?”
Raif looked down and said, “Hey, Doc.” Günter was a surgeon in the old country and had healed Raif after the killing of Lobo. It was Günter who’d seared his flesh and sewed up his wounds, saving his life.
“Warum, Raif?”
“It’s North County business. You done sold a cannon to that White Lion, and he done killed a family with it—no hard feelings, Doc, but you all knew this day was com’n whether it be this day or t’other,’ Raif said, and paused for a moment before he shot Günter through his hands; the round’s trajectory splayed the tips of his fingers, which caused the round to tumble and enter Doc’s forehead sideways.
Outside Seth took aim at the watch and saw the man Raif had called Dieter run with his rifle toward the sound of the firing. Seth took a bead on him and dropped him like a deer with a shot to the chest. He rested the rifle in the crook of his arm and looked at Toby, but he did not know what to say.
The German women scrambled about in the melee, dragging their children into the huts.
The North County gunmen emerged into the compound shooting at any man that still moved, walking past a wailing woman on her knees removing a bloody child from the sling she wore about her chest. They rounded up the horses from the paddock, near fifty of them, and took three caissons and limbered the three field pieces to the caissons. Jed and Abner went from hut to hut and set them ablaze.
The women fled up the valley, scrambling into the thick brush, hoping the predators were sated and had lost their desire to hunt.
The company rode out, dragging the cannons, the Germans laid ab
out in varied effigies of death. The company journeyed to the last canyon, where the White Lion was descending.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:
THE VALLEY OF DEATH
* * *
The company stopped at the south end of the fourth valley’s ridgeline to lay out its war plan to destroy the army of the White Lion.
The colonel explained to Seth and Toby that the valleys of the south ran like a right hand flattened on a map; the Stone Tribe held the valley of the thumb they had traversed leading in from the east. The remaining fingers ran directly south, and each was wooded and flowed with a river disappearing under the dry plain to emerge and feed a great lake that lay miles to the south where the southern tribes warred. The high ridges that separated the valleys were thick with trees but rose to rocky crests that were naked of life except for that which slithered or crawled.
It was through one of these valleys that the White Lion would descend and the herds of cattle meant it had to be the fourth valley, because it was wide with water and open grasses the herd could feed upon after the high desert crossing. They needed to set the trap before the White Lion’s lead scouts reached down into the valley.
The company moved out again ten miles and turned north up the great wooded fourth valley. The White Lion would pass through here to the great lake of the south where a thousand of his people waited for his victor’s march amidst the villages that teemed along the shores of the great lake.
The colonel could sense the army of the White Lion starting its descent at the northernmost point of the valley. He could feel it in his bones and he drove the company to finish the position.
At the crest of the valley, May was astride the White Lion’s mare. She was tied naked, her hands bound at the wrist about his stomach. Clara was stripped and tied to the warrior, Bird, a lean and aged warrior who had followed the White Lion since they had run as children along the banks of the Criss in the White Pine forests of the north. The Lion’s warriors had been on the move for twenty hours a day since the northern raid began, moving whenever there was any glow in the sky no matter how leaden or how sparse its light. The renegades were exhausted, and their minds rambled with the expectation of the trilling praise they would receive from the women of the lake.
The young warriors were many, and this had been their first taste of war; as conquering heroes bringing a hundred horses and nearly so many cattle they could expect to be given a bride chosen by the Lion. In their wake, lay not only the shattered land of the white ranchers but twenty dead cavalrymen who had ridden hard to inspect the curious dust cloud on the horizon only to find fifty warrior rising up out of the shimmering plain to slaughter the troop to a man. The Lion had lost five in the siege and fifteen in the fight upon the plain with the cavalry. He was leading only twenty-nine warriors in the final push to the lake and was heading straight into the North County position.
The colonel’s plan required the White Lion’s stolen cattle and horses to stampede with the first shots of cannon, so the company moved up the valley until it found natural rock outcroppings that lay in the center of the pass. The bulls and stallions would break to either side or try to turn in the valley, creating chaos in the ranks of the renegades. The rocks would protect the company from the charging bulls and horses and keep the Lion from knowing their numbers. The warriors would charge bent on punishing those who would dare to attack the tribe so close to the lake country.
Toby and Seth were ordered to the south to conceal the horses in the thick brush of the riverbank and to watch the creek for a scout; their task was to protect the mounts and not engage in the fight. They bristled at the assignment but held their tongues; they rode off as the rest of the company took positions in the rock outcroppings. The colonel placed the three field pieces aiming straight up the pass and filled them with small rocks and nails taken from the Germans’ larder. The company concealed them in brush and sage. The strategy was to let the herd and riders close and fire the cannon, throwing every renegade mount into frenzy and wound as many horses and warriors as possible in the first volley. It would sow the chaos they needed to defeat the superior numbers. The North County gunmen would stay disciplined during the fury and shred the renegades as they charged.
The company waited.
To the south, the boy, Miguel, was running upon the ancient sea bed. The priest had told him to pass the Germans and take the old path through the third valley and to make his way north until he reached the pass in the ridgeline that separated the third and fourth valleys, the break where you could climb across the precipice and down into the big valley. The three were to cross the break and head north up the fourth valley until they found the lead scouts of the White Lion’s army and warn them of the North County gunmen waiting in ambush. But the white boy had discovered him and tied him to the tree. He feared that the boy would look for him now and would kill him because of his shame in front of the old warriors of his band. He had seen the others in the sacristy talking with Farinata, and he knew they had the hardness to kill him with no pangs of weakness. He heard the firing from the German camp and saw the smoke billowing from the second valley. The screams of their women bid him to move faster and to change his plan. The white tribe would see him if he tried to run north so he scampered south across the end of the German fields and onto the plain of the desert toward the far hill that marked the entrance to the lake country.
The priest had told them of the ancient temple that guarded the lake country and how they would be sacrificed upon its altar if they ventured to the south. The boy was sure that such a temple would have a sentinel and he hastened south to warn the Lion’s warriors, that is, if he could tell them his purpose before they cut out his tongue. He rested briefly from the sun under creosote but only for a moment, and he moved on again trekking toward the southern hills. He stopped again when he found a cactus and sucked on its leaves, but it gave up its moisture grudgingly. He ran again, and the shimmering heat of the plain reduced his steps to a shuffle. He saw the contours of the southern hills growing bolder and it bade him to move faster. The priest had warned them not to venture to the stone temple, but he feared the priest more than the tribesmen and now more than ever because he had failed him.
The boy feared the way the priest looked into his heart with the eye without sight and the way the priest knew his unsaid thoughts. The priest would perform the rite on the stone altar beneath the sacristy of the new church if he did not find another way to warn the Lion. His fear grew, and he moved faster, his heart beating in his chest as he knew he must find a way to save the White Lion to save himself. He headed for the stone temple across the limestone of the ancient sea floor.
The Lion’s lookout, Bird, was the first scout to crest the northern boundary of the valley. He rode a mile ahead of the Lion’s war party looking for anything that might surprise the herd. He descended slowly, running amidst the thickets along the edge of the river and out again to the middle of the valley, never revealing too much of his silhouette, using the shade of the trees to mask his advance and forgoing the easy ride of the meadows. He was to the heart of the valley when Toby saw his shadowed form move about the river’s edge among the thorn bushes. He crawled from his hide and traversed to the company’s position in the outcropping. He told the colonel there’s a scout approaching, looks like two riders on a single horse, but he’s definitely scouting ahead and you can see some dust rising in the skies to the north; the war party is on the move and close to the valley.
“All right, head back. Raif, we got to take his eyes out,” the colonel said.
“I hear you, Colonel, I’ll git him,” Raif responded.
Raif moved out of the rock cropping on foot and slid into the vegetation that gnarled the riverbank and moved slowly upriver. He reached a spot in a forked pine and slid into its shadows to create his hide, and lay there waiting, hardly breathing, the long blade in his hand, its dark leather sheath concealing it so no errant flash of sunlight would warn the warrior. He waited, his stillness
such that a small furry river animal passed a few feet from his face oblivious to the strange animal lying still by the river.
Through the bushes he saw the renegade’s dark hair in beads, the tails of his locks running down over his painted chest, the once vivid reds and yellows subdued by a film of sandy dirt he’d collected from the tribe’s voyage across the desert plain to the north. The hair lay matted to his chest, mixed with the dust and sweat. He held a rifle in his right hand, the barrel laid across the strip of leather holding his riding blanket in place. He stopped at the river and looked about before untying a leather strap from his waist and dismounting. As the warrior dropped to the ground, Raif saw it was Clara sitting on the back of the scout’s painted pinto. She was naked and painted in spots with symbols and a red ocher smeared across her chest. She was tied, and a red bandana was drawn tightly around her mouth, a white cloth wrapped over her eyes to blind her.
It was quiet except for the burbling of the stream. Bird looked about him, turning his entire body around, and then turned and lifted Clara out of the saddle with two hands about her waist and lay her down by the hooves of his horse. The renegade knelt above her and then went still. He listened for full minutes, eyeing the valley floor without a movement. He undid the top of his chaps and placed Clara bent over face down onto the grass and sandy soil near the river and mounted her from behind, pushing her face into the soft earth of the riverbank.
Raif waited until Bird was humping to creep from his hide. He moved up the riverbank. The scout’s horse was eating grass, facing north. The wind was from the north so Raif moved straight toward the renegade believing the mount wouldn’t spook. He crept to within a foot of the brave, listening to his groaning and Clara’s muffled whimpers. He raised the long cavalry blade and drove its tip into the side of Bird’s neck splitting the larynx and thrusting it deep and angled until the hilt was the only thing visible sticking out from behind the renegade’s right ear. He slumped over dead.
Angels of North County Page 24
