by Win Blevins
Sam breathed again.
Flat Dog reached to his hat. Sam saw his friend’s face do funny things. Casually, he took the hat off, rubbed his hair back, and looked full face at the Mexicans.
Collarbone’s face changed to a truly memorable look of recognition.
Then he looked at Sumner, who was holding the scattergun. The black man gazed at Collarbone without expression.
The sides of Collarbone’s grin turned down. His mount edged backward. He squeezed words out. “We’ll be on our way then.”
As he rode around the wagon, Sumner turned to watch him, the gun following his body. The other three riders trailed after Collarbone with mystified faces.
When they were out of sight, Sam growled at Flat Dog, “What the hell did you do that for?”
“That son of a bitch stole Julia. He stole Esperanza. He put me in jail. I want to kill him.”
“That’s good,” said Hannibal, “because now he intends to kill you.”
Grumble added softly, “And the rest of us.”
Hannibal said, “What he intends will be different from what he gets.”
SAM AND HANNIBAL chose the battleground that suited them, a grove of trees along the river. It looked like a normal campsite, had a place where they could rope-corral the horses on grass, and offered a jumble of boulders for cover.
Coy trotted around the campground sniffing, like an inspector.
Sam, Hannibal, and Sumner made what appeared to be a normal camp, put up tents, gathered wood for a fire.
Flat Dog walked down to the river and sat alone. No one criticized him, but there was a lot of edgy body language as they prepared.
Grumble laid out a tarpaulin and had a picnic, pretending nothing was happening. It made Sam’s nerves worse. The cherub should know a shooting war wasn’t amusing.
Coy cadged scraps of dried meat from Grumble. Grumble kept looking up into the cottonwood branches and smiling.
“How many men do you think Montalban will bring?” asked Sam.
“All he can get,” said Hannibal. “But not many of his Indians ride or shoot.”
Sumner squatted and talked to Grumble. They both looked up into the trees, pointed, and whispered.
Sam got the scattergun and handed it to his black friend. “You any good with this?”
“I’m a con artist, not a gunman.”
Sam was sure he was a good con man too, since he’d accepted Grumble’s tutelage.
“Look, it fires a lot of pellets, and they spread out as they go.” Sam held his hands a foot or two apart. “You don’t aim it, you point it.” He showed Sumner how the trigger, flint, and pan worked.
“That’s all good,” said Sumner, “but Grumble and me, we got an idea. A little surprise for the bad boys.”
Grumble and Sumner sketched out their plan for Sam and Hannibal. Heads nodded, and smiles flashed. Sam and Sumner climbed the trees and began the rigging. Sumner moved through the trees like an athlete. Sam, bulkier and more muscled, was sure a branch was going to break under him. But they got it done.
Sam took off his robe—he wanted to fight in a man’s clothes. Then he walked down to the river to join Flat Dog. The Crow had his sacred pipe out of its hide bag and was lighting it. Sam took thought. He started to get his own pipe out, but then he sat and shared Flat Dog’s. They offered the pipe to the four directions, they smoked, and rubbed the smoke on themselves. Sam contemplated his Crow name, Joins with Buffalo. He thought of how buffalo never run away, but stay and fight to the last of their strength—that’s what it meant to be a buffalo bull. This was what the medicine man in Meadowlark’s village, Bell Rock, told Sam. He asked the powers for the strength to live up to his name, and he prayed that no one in his party would be hurt tonight.
When they were finished and the pipe bowl and stem were separated, so that the pipe was no longer a living being, Sam said, “Do you miss it? Crow country?”
Flat Dog gave a dry laugh. “We’ve been in a lot of places where a Crow’s dog wouldn’t even drink the water.”
Sam’s mind roamed back there—the land of the Wind River, the Big Horn Mountains, the Yellowstone River, the hot springs, the forests. “I miss it too,” he said. “It’s home.”
Flat Dog gave him a look. “It will be Esperanza’s home.”
“It’s where we belong.”
“We’re going,” said Flat Dog.
“Very roundabout,” said Sam.
He walked back into camp and surveyed the rigging. He thought the trick would work.
How will the don come? he asked himself.
Sam himself would scout and move stealthily.
But he was no fiery don.
THEY WERE SET. The campfire was down to coals. Around the fire lay five blanketed figures. If a curious person had taken time to look at the hats, he would have seen those of the Englishman and his manservant beside two blankets together and three Californio hats and saddles beside other blankets. Had this observer been curious enough to touch the blankets, he would have felt the stones underneath.
Don Joaquin Montalban y Alvarado, however, was not a man to come creeping up on his enemy. Riders, horses, and men of foot stormed the campground as a fire rages before the wind.
They came so suddenly, so swiftly that Grumble was nearly late with his knife. The don’s horses roared into the campground, the men yelling out war cries and firing at the sleeping figures.
Coy barked furiously, but Sam held him back.
Grumble sliced hard at the rope.
The keg of gunpowder dropped straight down from where it hung below a limb and directly onto the fire.
The explosion hit like lightning. Tree limbs sailed through the air like torches. Sparks flew into the sky like fiery birds.
Eight enemies on foot brandishing axes and knives crashed at random into trees, boulders, and the earth.
The five mounted enemies were mostly beyond the campground when the keg blew, turning their horses to charge back among their blanketed foes.
The horses were blown backward, sometimes landing on the riders. As the attackers scrambled to their feet, Sam, Flat Dog, and Hannibal fired from behind boulders.
Well instructed, Sumner held the scattergun at the ready. Grumble held fire with his palm-sized gambler’s pistol.
The firelight made sighting difficult, and only two out of three shots struck. Then the three mountain men charged the enemies still standing, or staggering, or trying to get to their feet. Two fired their pistols, and Sam swung his butcher knife.
Enemies died.
Coy hurled himself at enemies, snarling and biting.
Sam, Hannibal, and Flat Dog hacked wildly at the remnants of the enemy force with tomahawks and knives. They didn’t know whom they cut, but they struck hard.
Eventually, the tornado blew itself out. All stood still, their eyes mad. Embers around the campground smoldered. Small clumps of grass smoked, crisped, and went out. Sam could smell the river air again.
Sam counted. Hannibal and Flat Dog stood near him. Coy rubbed against his leg. Grumble and Sumner came out from behind boulders. Grumble was holding his face. “He couldn’t resist looking,” Sumner said, “and he’s a little burned.”
Flat Dog knelt over a prostrate figure. Coy approached the figure’s head, sniffing.
“Check to make sure they’re dead,” said Hannibal.
Sam had to swallow hard. They came here to kill us.
They were dead. Some of them were mangled, some dismembered.
Sam wanted to vomit.
Flat Dog walked to him holding a bloody scalp.
Sam raised an eyebrow at him.
“Montalban’s,” said Flat Dog.
Coy whined.
Montalban’s. Sam didn’t want to touch the thing. He hoped he could get rid of the memories.
DAYLIGHT CONFIRMED ELEVEN bodies. Grumble and Hannibal thought they’d seen thirteen attackers, which meant two escaped.
“I doubt that they’ll be back,” said Gr
umble, smiling. “Ouch!” His face shone from the grease he’d rubbed on his facial burns.
Five riders, two dead horses, two horses they were able to round up.
Four saddles. One was a gorgeous work of tooled leather and silver studs, probably Montalban’s. On or near the bodies of the four riders they found four rifles and three pistols. From the riders and men on foot they took an assortment of knives and daggers. Each mountain man claimed a pistol. The rest of the booty they carried off in the wagon.
They got going as soon as they could. Even before the bodies ripened, death stood rank in their eyes and nostrils.
Seven
“I DON’T LIKE it,” said Hannibal.
“I hate it,” said Flat Dog, but he didn’t mean the situation. He meant his fury about his wife.
Rancho Malibu stretched before them, wide plains on the inland side of ragged coastal mountains. Now, in October, golden grasses colored the flats along the creek and the steep slopes. Scrubby trees spotted the hills. The ranch house and buildings stretched along the creek. Planted fields, an orchard, a vineyard, and grazing lands spread away from the steep slopes of mountains.
Sam couldn’t help thinking of what lay behind him, the vast Pacific Ocean. There he and Meadowlark camped on Topanga Beach, and their new friend Robber showed them the wonders of the tide pools. Meadowlark had been thrilled by the anemones and the sea horses.
A few days later Flat Dog and Julia eloped to that beach, borrowed the tipi, and spent several days exploring each other. Until Julia’s father barged in and snatched away his daughter. He also gave Flat Dog a thrashing with a knout, a Russian lash with bits of metal embedded in the rawhide. Flat Dog’s back would be bumpy as a plowed field for the rest of his life.
“Watching isn’t getting us anywhere,” said Sam. He could feel the rage coming from his brother-in-law.
“Let’s do something,” said Flat Dog.
Sam tried not to think what it must be like for Flat Dog to know his wife was in one of those two houses, full of their child, but he couldn’t see her, talk to her, touch her.
The three of them had watched the rancho from this ridge for two full days. Having found out how practical a field glass was, Sam traded a captured pistol for one in Santa Barbara. Passing through eight missions on the way south, they’d been welcomed everywhere and protected along El Camino Real by Padre Enrique’s letter. Funny world, to Sam, where influence counted for more than skill or good sense.
Two days of watching told them that Mexican hands worked around the rancho’s outbuildings and in the vineyards and orchard. Occasionally, herders could be seen in the distance. Don Cesar, the patròn, rode the property each afternoon with his son-in-law Alfredo, and they were out on horseback now. They stopped at the vineyard to talk with an old man, then dismounted to inspect something. Then they rode on.
“Sumner would love this,” said Sam.
“A life where you do nothing but watch your ‘inferiors’ labor for you,” said Hannibal.
Now father and son rode to the corral, dismounted, and let a stable hand take the horses. Each man then strode to his own house. The don’s adobe, by the Pittsburgh and St. Louis standards Sam knew, was not particularly grand. He remembered its comfort, and its one strange room, which housed Don Cesar’s collection of weapons, and the don’s pride in his instruments of torture and destruction.
Two days and no sign at all of Julia.
Reina, her sister, took her two children outside every day for a couple of hours. She and Alfredo shared the modest adobe next to Don Cesar’s.
“Do they ever go anywhere?” asked Sam.
“Julia won’t be traveling now,” said Flat Dog. “She’s almost eight months.”
“Californio women, meaning rich Californio women,” said Hannibal, “aren’t like Crow women. Toward the end they don’t travel. They lie in.”
“I just want to go kill the son of a bitch,” said Flat Dog.
Sam saw that in his friend’s face.
“Not a good idea to kill your wife’s father,” said Hannibal, “no matter how much she hates him.”
Flat Dog made a rude sound.
“We don’t want to hurt him,” said Sam. “Just to get her. And Esperanza.”
Flat Dog was silent.
“Let’s go talk to Grumble,” said Sam.
They’d let Grumble and Sumner ride into Mission San Fernando alone. The mission was only ten miles north of the rancho. No point in adding Grumble to the watch party. “Just one more face someone from the rancho might recognize,” Sam had said.
“Going in, that’s risky,” said Hannibal.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Sam.
“You? That’s plain dangerous,” said Hannibal.
THE THREE BUMPED along in the open carriage.
“My dear,” said Grumble, “you’ve never looked lovelier.”
“Nuns don’t have to be pretty,” said Sumner. He adjusted the wimple around his head. “I hate this brown. It’s the color of shit. And they’s nuns ’cause they ain’t pretty.”
“Some men might want to try a nun,” said Hannibal.
“Pervert,” said Sumner.
Grumble had told him to steal a monk’s robe from the laundry. In the dark Sumner had filched a nun’s outfit. Which Grumble suddenly decided was even better.
“Let’s get our minds on business,” Grumble said. He was brown-robed as a priest, and all smiles at the disguise.
Hannibal drove the carriage. He’d never been to the rancho, so couldn’t be recognized. He looked over one shoulder. Rubio and his son were in the vineyard and riding away from the house. He’d timed it right.
They’d gotten good information at the mission. Grumble and Sumner discovered that once a week a priest traveled to Rancho Malibu to accept confessions and administer the Eucharist, and a nun from the convent went along to tutor the boys in reading. Thus the plan.
Sam and Flat Dog were hiding along the road north to the mission, probably half mad with fear and doubt.
Hannibal reined in the carriage directly in front of Don Cesar’s adobe. Right in the lion’s den, he thought. His chest tightened. A stable hand appeared to help with the horses. A cigarillo jutted up into the air from his lips, unlit.
As Cigarillo carried the harness, Hannibal led the animals. He was outfitted as a poor Indian, so that no one would expect him to speak good Spanish and he would have no business near the main house. He looked back at his friends, making their way to the front door. Under his loose shirt Hannibal was armed with knife and pistol. But I’ll be at the corral, and damned little help from there.
“I don’t like this,” said Sumner in a falsetto voice.
“You’ll be amazed at how easily people accept a costume,” Grumble said. “You can be a policeman, a sailor, anything you like. That’s the charm of it.”
Grumble rapped on the door and they were admitted. The maid seemed to accept the friar and nun as a matter of course. Since he and Sumner had met the don last winter, Grumble’s face and hands were walnut-stained a deep brown, and from his trunk of tricks he’d put on a silver beard.
“I don’t like this,” Sumner repeated.
“Your falsetto is really very good.”
To Grumble’s relief it was Doña Reina who came to greet them. Two boys ran down the corridor behind her, playing at war.
As I am playing at war, thought the cherub.
“Permit me to introduce myself,” he said in his uncertain Spanish. “I am Father Lorenzo come to pay my respects to the family. This is Sister Annunzio.”
“Come in,” said Reina. Her face showed signs of wear and worry, and no interest in her visitors.
As they followed Reina down the corridor and into a parlor, Grumble felt a familiar rise in his energy. I like a frisson of danger.
Sumner lifted his wimpled head to him, as though to say, This is more than any damned frisson.
When they sat, Reina said, “My father and husband are out in the fields,
but I’ll let my sister know you’re here.” Her voice was lifeless.
When they were alone, Grumble said softly, “I relish deceiving people.”
Sumner said, “I can tell you’re nervous. You babble.”
Grumble chuckled. “And you?”
“The life of a thief is more honest.”
Julia walked in, one child in her arms and another big in her belly. My God, thought Grumble, she really is near her term.
Julia was a beautiful woman, with comely features, tawny hair, and golden skin, and she was quick-minded. Her eyes were bright and alert and—and perhaps suspicious.
“My child,” Grumble began immediately, “I am Father Lorenzo. I am new to the mission, and come to pay my respects to the family.”
At the sound of Grumble’s voice her face grew wild. She knows, Grumble thought. He pursed his lips. She spent plenty of time with us. Julia’s eyes flashed from one face to other, and her face mottled with color. He rushed forward with words. “This is Sister Annunzio.”
“Buenas tardes, Señora,” said Sumner.
Julia opened her mouth but nothing came out. Disbelief? Joy? Alarm? Grumble wished he knew.
Reina came in bearing two glasses. “You’ll want some wine,” she said.
Grumble and Sumner accepted the wine and sipped. Reina disappeared.
“Are you well, my child?” said Grumble. “Physically?”
Julia clearly couldn’t speak.
“I’d be glad to accept your confession, if you like.”
She nodded.
Reina came in and handed Julia a glass. Julia downed the wine in a single gulp. She looked around wildly and handed the baby to Reina.
The four sat and stared at each other nervously.
“I’m pleased to meet the two of you,” said Grumble, “and look forward to meeting Don Cesar and Don Alfredo.”
“Why have you come?” asked Julia. Tension thrummed in her voice. After a moment she added, “Father.”
Grumble pretended. “I was born in Padua. I’ve been serving at Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo, near Monterey, and am newly assigned to Mission San Fernando Rey de España.”
