Meanwhile, Jack organized affairs at the mission. The twenty or so bandits who had perished in the assault on their stronghold were buried, as were two of the attackers and the Ute Indian who had participated in the initial raid to free the villagers. Those bandits who had surrendered were sent off to Santa Fe under a strong armed escort to be turned over to the United States Army to stand trial for their misdeeds. Roped neck to neck, the dejected line of captives stumbled past a jeering jubilant line of cheering villagers, while either side of the involuntary marchers there rode a number of hard-eyed watchful victors determined that the bandits would eventually reach their destination and receive justice.
Jack chose ten of the more responsible-appearing villagers and organized them into a town guard, arming them with some of the weapons surrendered by the bandits. Assisted by Felipe, he gave them some basic instruction in the use of the guns at their disposal and ensured that each man could load his weapon and hit a mark at a reasonable distance.
While these affairs were being organized, he and the remainder of the expedition worried and fretted over Abbie’s condition. She lay motionless for several days, her forehead bathed in sweat and continually wiped with cool damp cloths. The women had removed all of her dirt- and sweat-stained clothing and tenderly washed her down before dressing her in a long soft cotton robe that could easily be removed for her daily wash.
Jacob insisted it was important that Abbie receive some daily nourishment in the form of a thin gruel and later mixed with some finely chopped cooked meat. That and a spoonful of red wine formed her daily intake for more than a week, and still she lay motionless.
Gradually, as her temperature dropped back to normal, the persistent sweating diminished and she seemed to be in a more restful sleep. Finally, a full two weeks after the shoot-out in the refectory, Abbie opened her eyes and slowly looked about her wonderingly. Her buckskin clothing and her underthings, cleaned and neatly folded, were piled on a chair beside her bed, and her gun-belt and holstered pistol hung on the same chair. Abbie struggled to sit up but for some strange reason found that she did not have the strength to do so.
In a quavering voice that did not seem to belong to her, Abbie called out. ‘Is anybody there?’
There was an immediate response and Dora and Juanita rushed into the room, overjoyed that their patient had recovered consciousness but insistent that she lay quietly with the pillows merely tucked up a little so she could see more than just the ceiling.
There followed a short period of convalescence as Abbie took more solid food and attempted to regain her strength. Being a young healthy woman, it was not long before she was sitting on the side of her bed semi-dressed and listening to Jack’s report of events and steps taken while she had remained comatose.
Within two weeks, Abbie was up and about, walking to strengthen her leg muscles, eating to gain back some of the weight lost due to her sickness and secretly strapping on her gun-belt and dry-shooting her pinfire pistol.
Two days later, Abbie led the small party of riders that headed out of the abandoned mission of La Cruz in pursuit of Benito Gomez and any of his surviving followers. Jack Harding and Dora, and indeed many others, maintained that she should not be riding yet and that she had done more than her fair share but Abbie was adamant that she was going to resume the hunt.
Jack, in particular, wanted to accompany her but she insisted that he lead the column back and handle affairs at the ranch. For her party, Abbie chose Felipe for his knowledge of Spanish, the remaining two Indian braves of the three who had accompanied her into the village and Minny the Ute girl. From the many volunteers clamouring to go, Abbie selected four single men, all of whom worked for her at either the ranch or the mine and all were proficient with both pistols and rifles.
Well armed, well provisioned, well mounted and with a string of spare horses, they set out at dawn with the cheers and well wishes of the remainder of the column echoing in their ears.
As they rode between the sand dunes, traces of the fleeing bandits became evident, even though a month had elapsed. In their anxiety to avoid capture, the bandits had shed anything that hindered their escape and the pursuers began to note articles of clothing, broken sandals, headgear and even abandoned weapons littering the trail. Then they came upon played out horses that tried to attach themselves to Abbie’s party and carcasses of animals, in many cases picked clean by the ever-present vultures. There were also human remains of bandits who, being wounded in the assault, had been left to die of thirst and exposure by their more fortunate companions. The trail divided, with the main body of fugitives heading due south while there were faint indications that a small party had headed eastwards toward the edge of the Staked Plain.
Since it was early evening, Abbie’s party made camp and she sent one of the Utes ahead to see if there was any sign of the fleeing bandits on the southern trail. Little Wolf returned shortly before midnight and, waking Abbie, he rendered his report in broken but intelligible English.
‘Bandits all caput, Boss Lady. Comanche,’ and he drew his hand across his throat and acted out the process of removing a scalp. ‘All are dead but I saw no El Caudillo among them.’
Both Abbie and Felipe had described the appearance of the bandit leader, so they were certain that Little Wolf’s report was accurate. Abbie thought over the implications of the Ute report.
‘This suggests that the bandits split up and Gomez and others left the main body and are heading east.
‘We’ll follow that trail in the morning. Now, apart from the people designated for guard duty, let’s get a decent sleep.’ And so saying, Abbie turned over in her blankets and tried to set a good example.
Unfortunately, her attempts at sleep did not meet with much success. Her left leg still bothered her and there was a dull persistent throbbing that she tried to ignore. So Abbie lay there wondering if perhaps she had made a mistake for insisting that she would lead the pursuers. Was it merely her pride and the sense that if she had turned over command to another she was somehow losing the magic touch that had made her so successful in the past? These thoughts and many others kept her brain active, and it was almost with relief that Minny came over and shook her saying; ‘Coffee Abbie. All mens are get up.’
Abbie sat up in her blankets and discovered to her embarrassment that she was the last person to stir. At first she was unreasonably angered that she had been allowed to sleep on but then her common sense took over as she realized that every one of the patrol was merely being considerate of her weakened condition. With an unspoken nod of thanks, a mug of scalding hot coffee and a biscuit, she was ready to face the trail once more.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They headed east with their assorted headgear pulled down low over their eyes, each squinting to avoid the fierce glare of the angry sun rising before them. They rode silently, each occupied with his own thoughts, bandannas pulled up over their mouths and nose in a vain attempt to avoid the choking dust caused by the passage of their horse hoofs through the powdery surface.
Abbie spotted a shape lying some short distance from the left-hand edge of the faint trail. She called a halt and two of the hands dismounted and checked the body. The sand had drifted against him and since he was lying on his face with arms outstretched as though appealing against his awful lonely fate, his features were still recognizable, though the buzzards had removed most of the flesh from the back and both legs.
It was with mixed feelings that Abbie identified the body as being one of her escort when she was taken to meet with El Caudillo; the same one she had wounded with a snap-shot when the ex-leader and his confederates hurriedly exited the refractory. Undoubtedly being wounded, and therefore a burden, his callous companions had left him, probably taking his horse when they did so. Abbie was mortified that she had been the instrument that had led to this poor wretch’s lonely death but then she recalled how he had laughed as he insisted that poor Juanita stand still and stop shaking the wine jar perched on her head, and a half-r
emembered passage from a long forgotten sermon by the regimental chaplain came to mind: ‘As ye sow, so shall ye reap.’ With that thought, she dismissed her momentary remorse and set her mind to the task ahead.
As the posse travelled eastward, the terrain began to change with the desert giving way to rolling grasslands, sparse at first but becoming more plentiful as the miles passed. Hank, one of the ranch hands, observed that they appeared to be entering cattle country and thought that very soon they would probably be encountering signs of habitation.
Hank was not mistaken. Far off on the eastern horizon, nestled in a hollow between gently rising hills, was a group of buildings that, as they drew nearer, could be seen as a sod-roofed ranch house, a small barn with a corral, another shack and the ubiquitous outhouse.
There was an ominous silence about the whole place. No dogs heralded their approach. There was no smoke curling up from the iron chimneypiece projecting above the weed-covered sod roof and the sound of their hoofs brought nobody out to the porch of either the main building, the barn or the other shack.
‘Hullo the house!’ Abbie called. ‘Anyone here?’
There was no reply to her query. She and her companions remained mounted as they looked around, their hands hovering over gun butts, concerned that they might be the target of a trap. When several minutes had elapsed, Abbie ordered all to dismount and search the area for any sign of the owners.
She and Felipe approached the door of the ranch house and were immediately aware of the persistent buzzing of hundreds of flies going about their work. Pushing wide the half-opened door, they both stepped inside and were brought up short by the scene of horror confronting them.
A grey-haired man sat slumped in a chair with dried blood on his shirt front originating from the two bullet holes in the area of his heart. Close by on the floor lay the body of a younger man, fair-haired by the looks of him, although much of his head was missing due to a shot evidently fired at extremely close range by a large-gauge shotgun. From the condition of the corpses the murders had taken place not more than two or three days prior to the posse’s arrival.
As Abbie, kerchief held to her nostrils in a vain attempt to avoid the foul odour, looked around the room for evidence of the victims’ identity, Felipe moved into the small room adjacent to the living room. He hurriedly returned, ashen-faced.
Abbie stepped towards him and he raised an arm across the threshold. ‘Señorita Abbie, you do not want to go in there!’
Abbie protested. ‘Come, Felipe! Could anything be really worse than the sight of those poor men cruelly done to death in their own home?’
She gently pushed the Mexican boy to one side and entered the bedroom, only to be stopped short in utter revulsion. A young woman lay in the double-size bed. Her wrists were tied to the headboard and a rag was stuffed in her mouth. She was bare below the waist, and from the position of her legs it was obvious that she had been raped, no doubt repeatedly. And then the poor creature had had her throat cut from ear to ear.
‘Oh, dear God! Who could have done such a wicked thing?’ Abbie stood there trembling with rage and with tears starting in her eyes as she stood frozen with the thought of the agony that this young girl must have experienced.
The horror was not yet ended. In a home-made cot on the far side of the bed lay the body of a small infant, not a mark upon the little body but his end was obvious. Abandoned in the house of death, it had no doubt succumbed due to lack of nourishment after the murder of its mother.
Abbie stumbled from the room and into the open, taking great gulps of fresh air in an attempt to rid her lungs of the noxious odours in that ranch house. She cleared her lungs but it would be a long time before she would ever erase the scenes of the atrocities that she had witnessed.
As Abbie stood there, chest heaving, there was a shout from a couple of the men who had been searching the barn and they emerged holding a small, struggling, obviously terrified, figure of a boy, who cried and pleaded with his captors in voluble Spanish.
Abbie turned to Felipe. ‘You had better handle this, Felipe. See if you can calm that little fellow down and just maybe we can find out what happened here.’
Felipe nodded and hurried over calling, ‘Hola, mí caballero. What do they call you?’
The struggles ceased and a very dirty, tear-stained face looked up at Felipe and, apparently liking what he saw, volunteered the information he was called Pepito. Felipe reached into his pack and produced a tortilla, which he handed to the boy. Pepito tore at the food ravenously and Felipe, Abbie and the rest of the posse waited patiently until he had finished eating and drinking from a proffered canteen.
‘Well, Felipe, what’s his story?’
Felipe spoke to Pepito in Spanish and the boy went into a detailed description of his experiences, too fast for Abbie and the other Anglos to grasp more than a word here and there. Finally, the lad finished speaking and looked up at the surrounding adults apprehensively.
Felipe gave Abbie a concise version of Pepito’s account. The owner of the ranch was a Mr Wolfgang Reitz and he and Maria, his wife, had taken Pepito in when they found him wandering along the trail the previous year. So he had lived with the Dutch couple for several months, doing little jobs and in general making himself useful. The household had been increased, first of all when Mr Van Ryan, Maria’s father, joined them, and then when Maria had given birth to a baby. All had been well and there was no discord at the ranch until the two Mexicanos had arrived. They had told Mr Reitz that they were looking for work and were down on their luck. Mr Reitz didn’t really need more hands but, being a soft-hearted man, had agreed to let them stay for a while and they could work for their food and a few dollars. That had been about three or four weeks ago.
Pepito did not like the two strange Mexicans. First of all they came from the north, where there was just desert. Secondly, they treated him like dirt and would cuff him or kick him if the Reitzs were not around. And finally he was suspicious of the fact that they had been wearing guns when he first saw them on the northern trail but when they arrived at the ranch they were unarmed.
Finally, the awful day had arrived. Pepito was out beyond the corrals when he heard Mrs Reitz scream and moments later there were several shots, followed by still more screaming. When he had heard the first scream, Pepito wanted to help the señora but he was afraid and instead crept into a secret hiding place out on the rocky hillside where he thought the bad men would not find him. And there he had remained, distinctly hearing the screams and pleas from Señora Reitz, and then there was silence.
Pepito considered leaving his refuge but was cautious, which was just as well as later he heard one of the men calling his name and he was sure that they were trying to coax him to reveal himself. So he stayed hidden.
Much later there had been one more shot and finally he had emerged and crept into the barn, where he had remained hungry and thirsty until discovered by the posse.
Abbie ordered that the four bodies in the ranch house be wrapped in blankets and selected a small knoll for their final resting place. One of the men who was handy with a whittling knife volunteered to carve headboards for the graves using the information furnished by Pepito and verified by the data shown on the flyleaf of a large family Bible found thrown on the floor of the bedroom.
The murdered family were laid to rest in a simple frontier ceremony attended by all, whites, American and otherwise, Utes, and Mexicans. And over the graves Abbie swore an oath that she would not stop until the perpetrators received justice. Her words were echoed by the remainder of the posse and each person was practically positive that the atrocity had been carried out by Benito Gomez, the late El Caudillo.
Their assumptions were reinforced as they were gathering their stock in readiness to hit the trail. Behind the water-trough on the far side of the largest corral was found the body of a man who had been shot in the back He lay face downwards with his arms reached out ahead of him. Nobody had moved the body when Abbie came on the sce
ne and she immediately noticed one curious feature. A large arrow was scratched in the sandy soil pointing in the direction that the corpse was laying, and by the arrowhead was also scratched a large cross. When the body was turned over Abbie recognized the features as those of Lopez, one of the men who had escorted her from her cell to meet El Caudillo.
Obviously the latter did not want anyone to associate him with the defeated bandit leader and had therefore callously shot his one remaining follower to eliminate the remaining evidence associating him with La Cruz. But what had Lopez been attempting to tell anyone who stumbled upon his body? One after another, various members of the posse hazarded their guesses as to the meaning of the symbols.
Most agreed that Lopez was attempting to give the direction taken by his killer, but why the cross?
It was Abbie herself who solved the conundrum. She recalled that at the burial Felipe and the other Mexicans had made the Sign of the Cross at the end of the short prayer, Sign of the Cross, a visual statement of belief in the Holy Trinity. Trinity! What was the Spanish term for the Trinity? La Trinidad!
‘Felipe, is there a town or village south of us called La Trinidad?
‘Sí, Señorita Abbie, I have heard of such a place but have never been there.’
Abbie made a swift decision. ‘Everybody saddle up and prepare to move out. We’re heading south to this Trinidad. Fred and George! Put Lopez’ body in the ranch house and burn the place, I doubt whether anyone would want to live there. And then catch us up on the trail!’
Pinfire Lady Strikes Back Page 5
