by Ralph Cotton
“Was I what?” Sam said.
Burke just looked at him.
“Was you trying to set her loose?” Burke asked.
“What do you think?” Sam said.
“I don’t know,” Burke said. “That’s why I’m asking.”
“I wasn’t,” Sam said. “So forget about it.” He turned and looked off toward the soldiers. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Burke shrugged, his beans and bread in his cuffed hand. “I was just thinking about it, is all.”
“You want something to think about?” Sam said. “Think about us walking all the way to Fort Courage.”
“I already am,” Burke said grimly.
• • •
The mounted Mexican army patrol led the two lines of prisoners down from the hillside ruins onto the desert floor. They traveled forward through rock, gravel, low cactus and sand, in the direction of Fuerte Valor. Fortunately Sam’s and all of the other prisoners’ hands were left tied in front of them. Unfortunately the two rope lines of prisoners were traveling afoot among horseback riders whose object appeared to be keeping them too hungry, thirsty and weak to think about making a getaway.
It was noon before the soldiers directed the exhausted gunmen and Apache off the desert floor and back onto the hillside. They headed into the rock and cactus shade of the water hole where the Montana Kid had shot the wounded gizzly bear. Buzzards stood feasting on the bear’s large carcass on a bed of gravel and small stone. Newcoming scavengers circled overhead, and stood randomly on rock and cactus watching, as if awaiting their turn at the feast.
Upon arriving at the edge of the water, rifle guards held the prisoners back until the soldiers drank their fill. They continued holding them back while the soldiers let their horses and the team of mules slake their thirst.
While Sam was standing in line waiting, a soldier led Sam’s dun and his white barb past him. The dun was bareback; the barb had been stripped of its pack frame and supplies. The dun pulled against its reins and tried to nose over to Sam, but a soldier jerked the horse away and slapped the dun with a leather quirt hanging from his wrist. The dun resisted, half reared against the sting of the quirt. Sam jumped sidelong toward the soldier, but Burke and Stanley Black grabbed him and held him back.
Sergeant Bolado stepped in and gave the young soldier a sound slap across his shoulder.
“What good is a soldier who cannot control and water horses?” he said harshly. He grabbed the dun and the barb’s reins, settled them expertly and handed the reins back to the humiliated young man.
“Now go,” he said with a dismissing gesture. As the soldier led the horse on to the water, Bolado turned to Sam.
“Those two are your horses, sí?” he said.
“Yes, they are,” Sam replied, swaying a little from thirst and the relentless heat.
“Where were you going that caused you to need a packhorse and so many supplies?” he asked. “Most of you gringo pistoleros travel with only your guns—your guns and your whiskey.” He gave a faint smug grin.
Sam stared without reply.
The sergeant leaned in close as if speaking in secret. “Perhaps you were going somewhere important, eh? Somewhere that would require such provisions?”
“It was for all of us, Sergeant,” Sam said.
Bolado looked back and forth as if making sure they weren’t being watched or heard.
“I don’t think so, pistolero,” he said secretively, even as Burke and Black looked on, trying to listen. “I think you were going somewhere by yourself until you joined with these others.” He studied Sam’s eyes intently, searching for answers there. After a moment he gestured toward Corporal Valiente, who stood a few feet back behind him. “He thinks so too,” he said.
“Like he said, Sergeant,” Burke cut in, “it was supplies enough for all of us. Leave him alone. You want to pick at somebody, pick at me.” He gave a defiant grin. “You hit like a woman, Sergeant. I sort of like it.”
The sergeant started to turn on Burke, but then he saw that was exactly what Burke was trying for. He raised a finger and shook it at Burke.
“Don’t worry, embecile,” he said to Burke. “I will hit you some more, only later.” He turned back to Sam, but as he started to speak, he caught sight of the captain riding forward. Tugging his tunic down into place, he said to Sam, “I will talk to you later. We have much to talk about.” He stepped a few feet away from Sam to meet the captain.
“Why are we not watered yet and ready to go, Sergeant Bolado?” the captain asked, swinging his horse around quarterwise to the sergeant and the corporal.
“It is the heat, Capitán,” Bolado said, he and Corporal Valiente almost snapping to attention. “The men and the animals are moving slower becau—”
“Do not explain to me the heat!” Captain Flores shouted, cutting him off. “Get these prisoners watered and ready to travel.”
“Yes, Capitán, right away,” said Bolado. He and Valiente snapped a salute to the captain, turned briskly and walked toward the soldiers and horses at the water hole. “Why are these horses and prisoners not watered and ready to go?” he called out, almost mimicking the captain’s words.
As the soldiers hurriedly led the animals away from the water’s edge, guards led Sam and the others forward. Both gunmen and Apache dropped onto their chests in the water and drank their fill, their tied hands folded out in front of them as if paying homage to some greater being farther up the rocky hillside.
When the prisoners were watered, they stood back from the hole in line, dripping wet. Sam’s blood-crusted chest had washed clean, and a thin trickle of fresh blood had begun to run down his belly and beneath his shredded shirt. As the soldiers gathered the spare horses and the team of mules, Corporal Valiente weaved his nervous horse around on a thin path leading through a strip of larger stone standing between the men and the bear’s carcass.
Sam watched him ride in close to the dead bear for a look, then back his horse when the buzzards screamed and batted their greasy wings at him. Cursing the big birds, he turned his horse and had started back along the path when a monstrous bear stood up atop a rock in front of him.
“Good Lord God Almighty!” said Burke. “It’s the bear’s big brother!”
The large brute stood high on its hind legs and bawled out loudly.
Valiente’s horse whinnied and reared so high it almost fell backward. The corporal, his arm healing in a sling, tried to get the horse in check and grab his rifle from its boot. But before he could do anything, the big bear rumbled forward from the rock and knocked both horse and rider to the ground with a long powerful swing of its wide paw. Valiente hit the ground as the horse crawled and whinnied and scrambled up, finally racing away limping, its saddle hanging under its belly.
“Shoot it! Shoot it!” the corporal shouted, almost hysterically, his hand fumbling at his empty holster, his pistol having been knocked away by his fall. He stumbled to his feet.
The soldiers swung their rifles up to their shoulders, but before they could fire, the bear knocked the corporal down, grabbed him under his shoulder with its powerful jaws and stood erect, the corporal dangling and screaming in the air.
“No, don’t shoot!” Captain Flores shouted, seeing that any shot made would more likely kill the corporal.
“He’s got him,” Burke said, the gunmen and the Apache gazing on with interest.
The bear stood shaking the corporal back and forth in its jaws like a bundle of rags. The soldiers hurriedly ran along the path through the rocks to get position. Seeing them coming, the bear clamped a big arm around the helpless soldier and squeezed him tight against its chest. The corporal screamed, the bear’s teeth gripping him and stabbing deep into the flesh up under his arm. Valiente’s arm swung limply, broken and bleeding.
Before the soldiers got through the rocks, the bear dro
pped onto three legs and loped away across a large stone, climbing upward onto the hillside. The prisoners stood watching as if spellbound as the bear and the screaming, sobbing corporal disappeared from sight.
“That’s one bear ain’t foraging for berries tonight,” Burke said quietly to Sam, keeping three guards standing nearby from hearing him.
“Sergeant, keep your men after it!” the captain called out, staring along with everyone else, watching Bolado and a half dozen men scrambling upward over the rocks in pursuit of the bear. A barrage of rifle fire resounded from the first few men who had gotten up the hillside ahead of the others. Sam watched gray gun smoke rise and drift from among the rocks. They heard the corporal’s screams grow louder in spite of being farther away.
“Might as well get comfortable,” Burke said. “This could take a while.” He plopped onto the dirt, pulling the rope taut between Sam and Black. They sat down with him, still staring up the hillside. Across from them, the Apache did the same.
“There they go firing guns out here,” Black commented. “Wonder who that’ll bring calling on us.”
Burke looked around at him and his drooping hat brim and shook his head.
“It’s anybody’s guess,” Burke said. He looked at Black sourly. “Please get rid of that hat, Stanley,” he said. “I swear to God it’s killing me looking at it.”
“Tough knuckles, Clyde,” said Black. “It keeps my head from burning up.”
Watching the hillside, speculating on the gunfire, Sam said, “If there’re Apache out there, they’ll be coming for their own.”
“Yep,” said Burke. “I figure in a few minutes when the bear gets shed of these soldiers, we’ll be hearing some bones popping and cracking up there.” He shook his head. “It ain’t going to be no pretty sight, a bear eating a Mexican.”
“I bet it’s not,” Sam said, running his fingers back through his wet dripping hair.
Chapter 9
Shortly after the soldiers went in pursuit of the big yellow-brown Mexican grizzly, a series of terrible gut-wrenching screams resounded down from the upper hillside, followed by a deathlike silence.
“Bon appétit, as the French say,” Burke chuckled under his breath. “He’s got himself a big mouthful of heart and liver right now, sucking and munching.” He let out a deep breath and continued. “They say a Mexican griz will go in through the softest spot, root around and eat the innards first off,” he said quietly, lest the already rattled guards hear him. The young soldiers stared transfixed upward in the direction of the dying corporal’s screams.
“Most any grizzly does that,” Black cut in. “Not just these Mexican browns.”
“I’m just saying.” Burke shrugged. He looked away as he spoke, owing to the displeasure he found in Black’s sagging hat brim.
Sam sat quietly gazing up the hillside. And for the next hour, the two rows of prisoners sat in the dirt facing each other from ten feet apart. Four riflemen guarded the grim dirty lot of them. Two more riflemen stood in front of a pitched tent where the captain rested behind the tent’s flapping thin gauzelike sides, out of the scorching sun.
Three more soldiers guarded the horses and the mule-killer cart while most of their comrades scoured the rocky upper hillsides chasing the big yellowish brown Mexican grizzly.
Suddenly, after an hour of quiet, the stillness of the afternoon was shattered by a large volley of rifle fire far up the hillside.
“If that didn’t kill the big brute, they best all run for their lives,” Burke commented.
Both soldiers and prisoners fell silent again, the soldiers appearing gripped by apprehension.
After another ten minutes of silence, the hillside shuddered and rumbled as a powerful quake rippled through the earth deep beneath its rocky surface. As the earth rumbled and churned, the guards staggered in place and managed to keep their footing, their rifles ever ready. The Apache were the first to turn their eyes upward in time to see a heavy rock slide tumble down less than a quarter of a mile away on the trail behind them.
As the three American gunmen stopped swaying in the dirt, Stanley Black turned to Sam and Burke.
“The day’s been anything but uneventful, you have to admit,” he said under his breath. He gestured toward the large dust looming above the settling rock slide, and added, “There goes any thought of turning back.”
Surprisingly, one of the young guards standing over the three looked down at Black.
“The Mexican army does not go back, only forward,” he said in broken English.
“Ha. Now you’re habloing Eng-lace, all of a sudden,” said Burke, recognizing the soldier who had served them beans at breakfast.
Sam leaned and whispered in Burke’s ear, “Stop it, Clyde. Keep him talking.” Burke sat back and let Black and Sam handle the conversation. Black picked right up on the change in the guard’s attitude.
“How long before you figure we move out of here?” he asked, keeping his English slow and clearly spoken.
“I don’t know,” the young soldier said, shaking his head as he searched back and forth, making sure he wasn’t heard by the other guards. “The captain only gives his orders to the sergeant at the last minute. The sergeant tells us when he thinks we need to know.”
“What’s your name?” Black asked in a whisper.
“I am Private Roberto Deluna,” the soldier whispered, standing straight and rigid above them for the sake of appearance. “But do not think that because I am talking I will reveal anything I should not, because I will not.”
“I’m hurt that you’d think it,” Burke put in.
“I know how men like you are. I have a brother who was a pistolero and a bandito.”
Burke shook his head.
“Jeez,” he said. “Pistolero, yeah maybe . . . but a bandito? That’s getting a little rough, don’t you think?”
“Yes, it is a harsh thing that I say about you,” he said with a slight shrug, not seeing that Burke was playing him along. “But it is true,” he added. “True about you and also about my poor brother, Roberto, may God show him mercy.” He crossed himself quickly.
Burke looked confused.
“I thought your name was Roberto?” he said.
“It is,” said the private.
Burke looked even more confused.
Sam leaned in.
“Don’t try to figure it out. Keep him talking,” he said. “We need someone who’ll tell us what’s going on.”
“When my brother, Roberto, was hanged for rustling goats and shooting a wealthy patron,” Roberto said, “I took his name as a form of pittance to redeem my family name for the bad he did. I must go for years in shame with his name on my shoulders.”
Burke sat staring curiously.
Sam leaned in again.
“See what I mean?” he whispered to Burke.
“This sure as hell ain’t Missouri,” Burke said.
“I should not even be telling anyone, especially prisoners,” said Private Roberto. “Only, in your case, I know it is all right that I do so.”
“Oh? And why’s it all right telling us?” Burke asked.
“Because when I tell you, I know that I am talking to dead men, and it will never be revealed what I say,” he replied casually.
“Why, you little—” Burke started to stand, but Sam jerked on the rope between the two of them and pulled him back down.
“Any idea what we’ll have for supper?” Sam asked in an effort to keep a conversation going.
“No idea,” said the young soldier. He stood silently for a moment, then said, “Beans, I think. Beans and salt pork.”
“Frijoles y puerco salado?” Burke said in poor Spanish, keeping the sour look from taking over his face.
“Yes, Frijoles y puerco salado,” the young soldier repeated. “Beans and pork.”
“Good,” Sam
said as if delighted. “That’s what we were all three hoping for.”
“Yum-yum,” Burke said. “I say a man can’t live on a handful of cold beans and salt pork, he don’t much deserve to live at all.”
The conversation stopped as a volley of rifle fire resounded from up the hillside, followed by a long pain-filled bawl of the bear that ended abruptly.
“Maybe beans and bear,” the young soldier said, with the trace of a grin.
“Eating a bear that just et a Mexican does not pilot my appetite in the proper direction—” Burke said, interrupted once again, this time by Sam’s elbow in his side.
“We can hardly wait,” Sam said, taking over from Burke. “Any chance of us getting some tin plates under it?” he asked.
The soldier stood in silence for a moment, then said quietly to Sam, “I will see what I can do.”
“Gracias, Private Roberto,” Sam said, sitting back in the dirt, feeling they had made some headway with the young private.
• • •
It was later in the afternoon when the signs of trail dust came down the hillside. Foot soldiers and soldiers on horseback followed. The soldiers on foot who had scrambled and bounded up over rock and boulder going after the bear now trudged down into the camp, worn out and filthy. Behind them on the trail, Sergeant Bolado supervised from his saddle, leading two other horsemen into camp dragging the dead bear. Across Bolado’s horse behind his saddle lay a short rolled-up bloody canvas. At the water hole, Bolado stopped. Two soldiers trotted over and hefted the canvas down and lowered it respectfully to the ground.
“There’s the good corporal now,” Burke said quietly, the three of them staring at the half-eaten body wrapped in bloody canvas.
“Uh-huh,” Black agreed, his mouth slightly agape, his neck craned for a better look out over the sagging edge of his sliced hat brim. Across from them, the Apache also stood up and stared. Both groups watched as soldiers back from the hunt fell facedown into the water and swished their heads to and fro as they drank. While they slaked their thirst, they slung their wet hair and milled about. A soldier walked up to them with a three-foot-long wooden crate that he set on the ground and opened.
