by Anita Mills
From above the driver howled, “I’m hit!”, but mercifully he managed to keep his seat. McAlester yelled up through his open window, “Pull up!”
“No!” she screamed at him. “Are you insane? They’ll kill us!”
But the coach slowed. Despite his battered face, Garcia managed a triumphant grin that faded as the ranger caught him by the neck, thrusting him into the shattered window, where he rested the barrel of the shotgun across the back of the man’s neck. A Comanchero rose in his stirrups to shoot, then saw Garcia.
“You want him? Come and get him!” McAlester called out.
As the man hesitated, McAlester fired. Blood trickled from a wide hole in the man’s chest. For an awful moment he looked bewildered, then he toppled forward. From the back it looked as though his whole left shoulder had exploded.
Someone shot from the other side, narrowly missing her. Without thinking, she fired again. Almost before she heard the report, her attacker’s head snapped back, and then his body slumped over his saddlehorn.
More shots peppered the walls of the coach, splintering the wood. Garcia jerked like a fish on a line, and blood spattered Amanda’s dress. McAlester grabbed the back of the Mexican’s hair, lifting his head into the window, letting his rescuers see that they’d killed him. When he let go, the body fell on Ramon, who screamed as though he’d been the one hit.
As quickly as the attack began, it was over. Having failed to rescue Garcia, the Comancheros still living fled, spurring their horses viciously in their haste to be gone. As the ranger withdrew from the window, Ramon crawled from beneath the dead man and pulled himself up onto his seat. Embarrassed now, he couldn’t meet Amanda’s eyes.
She continued to grip the gun tightly until the stagecoach rolled to a complete stop. McAlester reached out to pry open her nearly nerveless fingers, then repossessed the weapon. Returning it to his holster, he leaned back.
“Thanks.”
That was all he said. It was as though she’d passed him the potatoes at dinner.
She stared at her hands for a moment, then looked across at him. “I … I’ve never killed anyone before, Mr. McAlester,” she choked out.
“It’s war, ma’am,” he said sympathetically. “That’s the way you’ve got to look at it. If they’d have managed to stop this coach, we’d all be dead right now.”
“Yes. I guess we owe you our lives, don’t we?” she managed.
“You did a damned good job of helping yourself.” He regarded her soberly for a moment. “Surely they didn’t teach you that back East?”
“No. But I was afraid they were going to shoot us,” she murmured, looking down at Garcia’s blood on her dress. She shuddered visibly. “I’ve always believed that every death in this world diminishes us,” she said, her voice low. Her gaze strayed to the dead man lying between them. “Poor Mr. Garcia.”
“Don’t waste any sympathy on him,” he said curtly. “Last year he ambushed two state policemen over by El Paso.”
“Still—”
“He cut Billy Jackson’s throat and left Romero Rios to bleed to death out in the desert. Rios had to crawl onto the Overland Road where the stage picked him up. Took him months to recover from it. Damned near kept him from becoming a ranger.”
“Well, I couldn’t know that, of course.”
“You don’t know much about Comancheros either, do you?”
“They are usually half-breeds who trade with the Indians, I believe,” she answered, lifting her chin.
“They are the lowest form of life, Miss Ross—lower than a rattlesnake. They sell death.”
“Like your Indians?” she retorted. Almost as soon as the words left her lips, she wished them back. But she was too late. His blue eyes had already turned to ice. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said that to you.”
“My Indians, as you call them, are fighting to survive,” he said tightly.
“And to do it, they torture and kill innocent people—people who have done nothing to them,” she reminded him. “Why don’t they fight the cavalry instead of settlers and ranchers? It’s going to come to that, anyway, isn’t it? How do they think they can commit horrible atrocities without punishment?”
Not wanting to answer, he stared out his broken window for a moment.
“You cannot deny what they’ve done, Mr. McAlester.”
“No.” The memory of Sees the Sun lying in a pool of her own blood came unbidden to his mind. “There’s been a lot of killing on both sides.” With that he opened his door and jumped down. Shading his eyes, he looked up at the driver. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“Clipped m’wing, that’s all,” the fellow answered. “Ain’t no use going back for Joe—they drilled ’im in the head.”
“Can you make it to Fort Stockton?”
“If they ain’t coming back.”
McAlester turned and reached for the body, jerking it out of the coach by the feet. “Garcia’s dead, and they know it.”
“You gonna ride shotgun for me?” the driver asked hopefully. “I sure could use you.”
“No. I’m not letting them get away.”
Bending down, the ranger began going through the dead man’s pockets, taking out everything of value. Then he pulled off the man’s shirt, boots, and pants. Walking around to the back of the coach, he disappeared from Amanda’s sight.
Ramon collected himself, and when he turned back to her, he was apologetic. “I should not have brought you on the stage, Maria. I should have asked my father to send an armed escort for us. It is not safe for you here.”
She bit back a retort, then said, “I suppose we were fortunate to have had Mr. McAlester, weren’t we?”
“I hold him responsible for this, Maria. He should not have brought Juan Garcia with us. He invited the attack.”
As irritated as she’d been earlier by the ranger’s manner, she nonetheless felt obligated to defend him now. “Without Mr. McAlester, I expect we should all be dead.”
“I would have defended you with my life, Maria,” he declared.
“From the floor?” she demanded sarcastically.
He flushed. “I lost my balance, and then Garcia fell on me. I could not get up,” he said stiffly.
She forbore pointing out that he’d telescoped the events to suit himself. Instead, she looked out the window at the dead Comanchero, stripped of everything but his long, dirty underwear.
The ranger came back into view, leading the paint pony and the mule. Both were lathered from the run behind the stage. Dropping the reins, he bent over Juan Garcia again, then straightened. Walking to the broken window, he drew out a folded paper and a pencil, and, holding the paper against the side of the coach, he wrote quickly. When done, he read it, then handed it up to her, forcing her to look into his face. This time, while his expression was sober, the coldness was gone from his blue eyes.
“I’d be obliged if when you reach Fort Stockton you’ll see this gets to Captain Hap Walker. He ought to be there before me.” With that he started toward the pony.
“Wait.” As he turned back briefly, she passed her tongue over dry lips. “The danger is not entirely past, is it?”
He considered her for a moment, then removed one of the Colts from its holster. Counting out a handful of bullets, he walked back and handed them through the broken window.
“Here. That little thing your friend’s got won’t hit much.” He smiled faintly. “Just have Hap keep the gun for me at Stockton, will you? Tell him it’s brand new, and it cost me a month’s salary.”
Ramon reached for it. “You may give the revolver to me, Maria.”
McAlester shook his head. “You keep it,” he advised her. “At least you’ve got enough grit to use it.”
This time he went to his mule and removed a black, silver-trimmed felt hat from where it was tied to the butt of a rifle. Putting it on his head, he looked back at her, touched the brim lightly, then mounted the odd little paint pony. L
eading the mule, he struck out across the baked Texas desert, riding as slowly as he’d come into the Overland station.
The stagecoach began to move. “Wait!” she called out again. “You cannot leave Mr. Garcia unburied!”
It was the stage driver who shouted an answer. “Buzzards’ll get him soon enough—this way they ain’t got to wait for nothing to dig ’im up!”
As they picked up speed, Amanda counted the bullets into her drawstring purse, then placed it and the gun on the seat beside her. Curious, she opened the note McAlester had entrusted to her and began to read it.
Arrested Juan Garcia June 19. Ambushed by Little Pedro, Javier, and their band June 24. Am going after them. See you at Stockton within week or I’ll write again. P.S. Prisoner killed during attempted escape, but I have proof of capture. Please apply for reward for me.
The thought crossed her mind that he wrote nearly as tersely as he spoke.
“Maria, are you all right? You do not listen to me.”
“Huh?” Aware now that Ramon watched her intently, she collected herself and straightened in her seat. “Yes, of course—as well as I can be under the circumstances, anyway.”
His hands covered hers. “When we are at Ybarra-Ross, I will keep you safe.”
She pulled free. “Mama died there.”
“My uncle was a fool, Maria. Ramon Sandoval does not make such mistakes, I promise you. No, once we reach the ranchero, we will not travel again without my men to guard us.”
“My men,” she reminded him evenly. “And I am not Maria.”
From a distance there came the report of gunfire. Without thinking, she closed her eyes and said a quick prayer for the ranger’s safety. Whether she liked him or not, she didn’t want him to die, she told herself.
Carrying his shotgun in one hand, Clay McAlester crawled on his stomach, silently cursing the rising moon that vied with the setting sun to light the sparse scrub on the rocky hillside. He stopped to listen, hearing the murmured Spanish on the other side of the hill, and he felt a grim satisfaction. Now he could wait until they were settled in to surprise them.
The gang that had tried to spring free had split to throw him off their trail, but it hadn’t worked. Once he’d discovered the missing nail in a horseshoe, and the odd gait of an animal going lame, he’d tracked two of them for a day and a half—until he’d gotten close enough to identify Little Pedro and Julio Javier through his spyglass. Now he was in luck, and he was going to bag both in a matter of minutes. Then he’d go after the others, even if it meant going into the Comancheria.
They were looking for Quanah Parker and his Quahadi Comanches—Garcia had told him that during interrogation. It seemed like every Comanchero coming in from New Mexico was looking for Quanah these days. And with good reason—Ishatai, the band’s medicine man, had called the Cheyennes and the Kiowa to join the Comanches in a Sun Dance, promising to make medicine powerful enough to drive the whites from the plains, to stop the slaughter of the buffalo.
Army scouts had carried the tale back—and by fall Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and his Negro cavalry would be ready to punish every Comanche who failed to move onto the reservation north of the Canadian River. Whether Quanah knew it or not, his band faced that grimmest of choices—civilization or destruction. Clay had no illusions about which path the half-breed war chief would take. With rifles provided by men like Garcia, Javier, and the rest of the Comancheros, Quanah would go down fighting.
Clay crawled closer, gaining the top of the hill just as they were making camp. While Little Pedro tended the mesquite fire, Julio Javier unsaddled the half-lame mare. The other horse, still saddled, threw back its head and caught Clay’s scent. It whinnied, making the jumpy Javier reach for his gun. Little Pedro ridiculed him, saying that “el Diablo McAlester” was probably already in Fort Stockton, claiming his reward for Garcia’s capture, while the foolish Javier saw him in every bush.
In turn, Javier roundly cursed Clay’s name, wishing the Comanches would rid Texas of him. Instead, he complained indignantly, they let the hated tejano cross the Comancheria unmolested. Surely they could not still consider such a traitor one of them, not after McAlester had become a ranger.
In the distance a coyote howled, and the hairs on Clay’s neck prickled. He knew that sound well. With the enthusiasm of youth, he’d practiced it, perfecting it before Many Feathers had taken him down his first war trail. He listened, hearing the eerie, lonesome sound again, and his heart raced, blood pounding through his veins. He waited, and when another howl cut through the air, he used it to cover the noise of loading both barrels of his shotgun. At the third call, he locked the lever and cocked one hammer.
He crouched, ready to move in an instant, watching Little Pedro pour whiskey from a bottle into a cup and offer it to the jumpy Javier. As the larger Comanchero reached to take it, McAlester stood and threw down on them.
“Put up your hands!” he shouted.
Javier dropped the cup and went for the pistol in his belt, while Little Pedro made a run for his horse. Without hesitation, Clay pulled the trigger. The first shotgun blast shattered the air, blowing Javier backward, where he fell into the campfire. Turning, the ranger cocked the other hammer and pulled the trigger, firing the other barrel, striking the second Comanchero as he swung into his saddle. Little Pedro’s horse reared, dislodging the Mexican as it fled in terror.
Javier was dead—there was no doubt about that. But Little Pedro was still kicking and writhing in the dirt, screaming that he’d been hit, that he was dying. Before he approached either of them, Clay cupped his mouth and gave his own coyote call, followed by two hoots of a desert owl. From a distance there came an answer, then only silence. At least now they knew he was there.
Clay walked to the fire and pulled Julio Javier out of it, turning him over with his foot. The man’s shirt was singed, but the blood spilling from the chest wound had soaked it too much to burn. If he’d been ten feet closer, the blast would have cut him in half. Turning his attention to the other Comanchero, he could see where he’d caught Little Pedro’s lungs from the back. Pink froth foamed from his mouth, and there was a distinctive death rattle coming from his chest.
Clay rested the shotgun beneath Little Pedro’s chin. The man’s eyes cast about wildly, as though he looked for help, as though he didn’t know that in a few moments he wouldn’t need any. But his words gave the lie to that. “A padre,” he gasped.
“Where are the others?”
“A padre, por favor—”
Clay jammed the shotgun harder, pushing the Mexican’s head back. “The others—where are they?” he asked harshly. “If you don’t answer, I’ll send you the rest of the way to hell.”
Little Pedro coughed, spitting more blood. “A padre,” he repeated desperately.
“Who was with you? If you want any prayers, you’ll tell me now.”
The Mexican closed his eyes and tried to swallow the foam. “Mendoza … Velez …”
“Hernan Mendoza?”
“Sí.”
There was no use asking about the others. By the looks of it, Little Pedro was checking out. Clay laid down the shotgun and knelt beside him. He wasn’t a Catholic, so he knew he couldn’t say the right words, but he felt he’d made some kind of bargain with the Mexican.
“Saint Mary, pray for God’s mercy on Pedro. He was a sinner, but so are we all.” He looked up at the darkening sky. “Lord, this man is in your hands now—do with him what you will.” With that, he stood up and brushed the dust from his worn buckskin leggings.
It probably wasn’t going to make any difference. He doubted that Little Pedro was going to make it through any pearly gates. If there was in truth a heaven and hell, the Mexican was probably on his way down rather than up. He leaned over, listening to the man’s chest. The rale he’d heard was gone, and so was Pedro.
I’ve always believed that every death in this world diminishes it. Amanda Ross’s words echoed in his mi
nd, seeming to condemn him as he looked down at the dead man. She might believe it, but he didn’t. She just didn’t know any men like Garcia, Javier, and Little Pedro. No, the world was a better place without them.
Straightening up, Clay whistled, and within seconds his paint pony came over the hill, his mule following by a lead tied to the pony’s saddle horn. Both animals passed the dead men and came to a stop beside him.
Briefly, he considered loading the two bodies onto the mule, then decided against it. Given the heat, by the time he reached Fort Stockton, the flies and the stench would be overwhelming. Besides, if it didn’t take too long, he’d like to find Hernan Mendoza. Having made up his mind, he rummaged through Javier’s and Pedro’s pockets for some identification he could use to prove he’d gotten the two Comancheros. When he found what he wanted, he dragged both bodies about fifteen feet away from the campsite.
That done, he removed his saddle bags, loosened the cinch, then pulled his saddle and blanket off the paint. Slinging the bags over his shoulder, he dragged the rest closer to the campfire, where he folded the blanket for a bed, then placed the saddle at the end.
Picking up the shotgun again, he listened for another coyote howl, but all was quiet. He flipped the locking lever, broke open the barrels, and shook out the spent shells into his hand. Tossing them away, he reloaded, then locked the barrels in place again. While he expected no trouble, he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes in a place where the nearest help was a hundred miles away.
Tired from nearly twenty hours in the saddle, he dropped down to sit on the blanket. Reaching into his frock coat pocket, he drew out a worn, leather-covered book, a stubby pencil, and his knife. Leaning against the saddle, he sharpened the pencil point, then he began writing his report to Hap Walker.
Night of June 25, 1873. Found Little Pedro and Julio Javier. Both resisted arrest. Bringing in personal effects without bodies. Please apply for one hundred dollar bounty on Javier. See if anything posted on other one. Am going to look for Hernan Mendoza now. If I find him, I’ll bring him in, one way or the other.
