Death Rattle

12

It was down to the nut-cuttin’ now.

Bill Williams and Thomas Smith signaled Philip Thompson on by with the stolen horses, wave after wave of the animals streaming north into the valley where stood the San Gabriel Mission. The two booshways reined over to the side of the hill and halted, waiting for Bass and his bunch to cut their way out of the side of the herd. The seven of them came to a halt near Bill and Peg-Leg.

“Sure you don’t want me to come ’long with you?” Williams asked, his eyes focused on the bloody tear in Titus’s shirt.

“Don’t worry—just a scratch, s’all.” Bass looked over his men, then shook his head. “The Injun got hit, but it ain’t bad. ‘Sides, you’re gonna need ever’ man you got, Solitaire. The seven of us can see to what we gotta do for Frederico’s sisters and catch on up to you.”

“How long you figger that’ll take?” Smith inquired.

“If’n we can steal a couple soldier horses for them women afore we ride outta there, we’ll cover some ground,” he suggested. “But, if them soldados take all their horses when they ride out to follow you boys … then a couple of us gonna be riding double. An’ that’ll slow us down some.”

Williams’s eyes narrowed once more on Scratch’s bloodied shirt. “You need anything more?”

“Can’t think of what it’d be,” Titus replied with a sigh, turning away to watch the last of the horses lope past. He whistled low and said, “Them Bent brothers gonna shit in their britches to see so many horses.”

Smith grinned hugely. “What them two don’t take, I’ll drive right on back to Missouri to sell my own self!”

Bass held out his hand to him. “See you soon, Peg-Leg.”

“Don’t go make a bull’s-eye out of yourself, Titus Bass.”

Williams held out his hand now and they shook.

Scratch reminded, “We ain’t caught up with you in three days—”

“ ’Bout the time we should reach the desert on the other side,” Bill interrupted.

“Then you oughtta just reckon on us not catching up to you boys at all,” Scratch admitted, then suddenly cracked a lopsided grin.

“You’ll come out fine on the other side,” Williams offered, wearing his own hopeful smile.

“If’n I don’t, Bill,” Titus sighed as the grin disappeared, “do for me like you promised you would. Trade off my share of the horses and buy a passel of plunder with ’em. Take all that foofaraw on up there to Absaroka an’ find my woman. Give ’er what I got comin’ from my share of them horses.”

“Least I can do for you, friend,” Bill admitted. “You’re the man seeing we keep our promise to the Injun got us ’cross the desert.”

Titus reared back, stretching the muscles in his old back already tired from the morning’s ride. “Take good care of our packhorses, won’cha fellas?” He tugged down the front of his brim there in the hot afternoon sun and reined hard to the left. “Let’s ride, fellas!”

With Frederico wearing a bandanna around the wounded arm at his side, Titus led the other five directly across the valley stripped bare of all horseflesh. The sprawling mission itself was less than a mile away, and the soldier fortress not all that far beyond it. They planned to slip up behind a knoll that lay to the east of the post and tie off their horses. Bellying up to the top, they’d lie patiently in the brush and watch the small fort below, hoping that the Mexicans would do what the trappers expected.

Together with Williams and Smith, Scratch had cobbled out this plan that sent most of the raiders with the two booshways, driving the stolen horses right on past the mission walls, near enough to the soldier post that the gringo thieves would make themselves a taunting challenge. And when the soldados rose to the bait—every last one of them saddling up and riding out to sweep down on the Americans and make a sure, quick fight of it—then Bass’s small outfit could slip right into the soldier post and hurry the two women right back out again.

Not that the fortress would be totally abandoned. They figured they could expect to encounter a modest resistance from no more than a handful of soldiers left to watch over the place—maybe a blacksmith, some stable hands, and a cook or two as well, perhaps even a guard at the gate—but not enough of a force that would prevent the Norteamericanos from riding away with Frederico’s sisters.

“This here brush is good,” Scratch told them as they came to a halt at the bottom of the low knoll. “Leave the horses here. You follow me and the Injun to the top. Get on your bellies afore you break the skyline.”

He gestured Frederico to join him on the climb, but just shy of the crest he reached out and tapped on the Indian’s bare arm. Pointing at the ground, Bass went to his belly. When their guide dropped to his stomach too, the seven crawled in and out of the brush to the grassy top. As they came up on both sides behind him, Bass could hear the others scritching over the gravel and dirt, rustling the stunted cedar and brush.

Titus rolled onto his left hip, pulled up the flap to his shooting pouch, and dug at the bottom for the spyglass. Flat on his belly again, Bass extended the three sections, then swiveled the tiny brass protective plate back from the glass in the eyepiece.

Training the spyglass on the post below them, Bass slowly retracted one of the leather-covered sections to bring the scene into focus. And felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. The post was a beehive of activity. Cavalry horses were everywhere. A few of them were already saddled and stood outside the stockade wall with their riders. Other soldiers were engaged inside the compound, throwing saddles onto their mounts. And still more Mexicans were leading their horses out of the narrow barns and into the central square. Titus could almost imagine the racket made as horses snorted, stomped, and whinnied. As the men shouted orders, hammered across the hard ground in their boots, their stubby muskets and short sabers clinking … this half-baked army could never creep up on an enemy by surprise.

But, the Mexican Army never would have to do that out here in California, he decided. Or in northern Mexico either. They were merely an army of occupation, able to subjugate a weak and peaceable Indian population. Nothing like the warrior bands of the mountains and plains: intractable, bellicose, and intensely jealous of their territory. No, Titus figured, these Mexican soldiers had all grown soft and lazy because they had never been summoned into battle with a real enemy. Not the way soldiers near Taos and Santa Fe constantly had to deal with both Apache and Comanche.

This bunch charged with guarding the San Gabriel Mission and the nearby valleys were such predictable fools. They formed up outside their adobe walls and rode off as the gates were dragged shut. More than fifty soldiers loped past the base of the knoll where the seven lay in hiding, headed right to left as they pushed on down the road that would carry them east for the foothills and up toward the pass in pursuit of the chaguanosos. Titus realized some of those soldiers knew the route well enough—from time to time they had pursued fleeing slaves, tracked runaway Indians into the low mountains—attempting to capture their prey before they reached the desert moat on the far side of California.

As he lay there watching them go, Titus was struck with the remembrance of slaves running off from their masters in the southern region of the States. For the first time in many, many years recalling Hezekiah: the bareheaded former field hand who had worked for a Mississippi gunboat brothel madam named Annie Christmas, the slave owner he had wronged in a brawl against Ebenezer Zane’s riverboatmen. Annie Christmas, an angry, spiteful shrew of a woman who promptly sold Hezekiah to the highest bidder, shipping him off north to the Muscle Shoals.

With that small band of Kentucky flatboatmen looking on outside of Kings Tavern, a Natchez tippling house, sixteen-year-old Titus Bass had freed Hezekiah from his cage, releasing the slave from what cruel fate might await him at the hand of his new taskmaster. At Owensboro on the Ohio River, the Negro prepared to push on west—giving Titus his farewell and announcing that he was taking his former boss-lady’s surname as he embarked on his new life as a freedman.

Hezekiah Christmas.

Scratch pulled the spyglass from his eye and turned slightly to peer at the guide. He’d never thought to ask what the youngster’s Indian name was. Frederico was merely the name the Catholic fathers had branded on the Indian—just as the friars gave all their slaves Spanish names, since they were baptizing these former heathens into the holy Spanish church, thereby saving their immortal souls from a life everlasting in the lake of endless fire—

“How many you make out?” Kersey interrupted his reverie.

Again he squinted through the eyepiece and attempted to count what men he could see. “I figger there’s at least one on the gate I can’t see a’t’all, maybe two what closed it.”

“What of the others?” Purcell demanded.

Bass counted a moment. “I see three others. That could mean there’s at least three I don’t see.”

Corn was visibly tallying his fingers, staring at both hands. “All right. We can take care of them.”

Adair asked, “You see them women? Any sign of his sisters?”

For some time he studied every visible corner of the compound, gazing into every narrow window or doorway for some hint of movement that might betray a woman. But, he didn’t sight a hint of Frederico’s sisters.

“You are certain your sisters are at the soldier post?” Titus asked in his faltering Spanish.

“Si,” the guide responded. “They were taken from the mission—”

“But,” Scratch interrupted, “how long ago?” He knew Frederico had been gone from California for some time, escaped to the Mojave villages.

“Not for long—”

“This past winter?” he inquired. “Tell me how long it has been since you saw your sisters carried off to the soldier post?”

The youth’s face sagged along with his shoulders. “Almost all the seasons. Come autumn, I ran away to the desert.”

Bass sighed. “Just shy of a year,” he said in English.

Corn was the first to capture the meaning of that. “Been a whole year since he knowed his sisters was down there?”

“Almost.” Titus reluctantly nodded. “Maybeso this ain’t but a fool’s errand we’re on, fellas.”

“Por favor” Frederico pleaded with his dark eyes as well as his tongue. “Help me save my sisters.”

For himself, Bass nodded, but turned to the others to declare, “I can’t make you others ride down there with the Injun to find two women who likely ain’t still alive no more.”

Adair’s eyes squinted as he turned his head to stare down into the valley at the post. “I figger them soldiers used up both of them squaws pretty hard, then killed ’em when they wasn’t no use no more.”

“What’re you asking, Scratch?” Kersey prodded.

“Me and the Injun, we’ll slip down there—”

“Just the two of you?” Purcell inquired.

“I figger to show him his sisters ain’t … around no more,” Titus explained. “Then we can come on your back trail and catch up to the herd together.”

“There’s too many of them lop-eared greasers for one man to handle down there,” Corn declared, tugging down on a low-crowned hat that had been at one time of a cream color. “I’m going with you.”

Kersey nodded, rubbing a hand across his dusty leggings cut from a red wool blanket. “Count me in too, Scratch. You’ll need some men at your back, even with them fat Mex soldiers.”

“Awright,” Adair relented. “Me and Roscoe gonna throw in too.”

“We all go down there an’ kill ourselves,” Purcell groaned, wagging his head.

“Maybe not,” Kersey suggested in a whisper, rubbing the end of his sharp, aquiline nose, a most prominent feature on his face: tracked with tiny blood vessels as if someone had crisscrossed it with an inked nib filled with indigo. “Scratch, I got a notion for you an’ the Injun here.”

“Dust it off and spill your idee.”

“We have the Injun go round to that post—on foot it’s gotta be. Act like he’s just a dumb, lost Injun, needing to find his way back to his mission.”

Bass smiled, a light coming across his whole brown face. “I’ll wager them soldiers gonna let the Injun in—”

“And he can have a look at things on the inside,” Corn interrupted to finish the plan.

“So he’s got inside to see if his sisters are still around,” Titus said, nodding with approval.

He rolled onto his hip and quickly stammered through his skimpy Spanish vocabulary, wishing the California Indians understood sign language as well as those tribes of the high plains savvied it.

Sliding backward on their bellies until they were no longer in danger of breaking the skyline, Scratch and Frederico started down to the animals. There he stopped, grabbed the youth by the shoulders, and studied the youth up and down.

He retightened the black bandanna around the bloody arm, then—without a word of warning—Titus bent to scoop up a handful of dirt. Spitting into his palm, Scratch mixed the mud with a couple of fingers. When he went to smear the mud on Frederico’s face, the Indian flinched, pulling aside.

“No,” Bass said in a soothing manner. “We make you look dirty. You have been lost. You were hungry for days. You must fool the soldiers to free your sisters.”

A light went on behind Frederico’s eyes, and he nodded his permission. Titus smeared a little of the mud on his face, some across his chest, and the rest on his knees. Then he took another handful of dust and powdered it on the mud before stepping back to look at his handiwork.

Suddenly he pulled his knife and snatched up the long flap of the Indian’s breechclout, nearly ripping off a long corner of the cloth, leaving the fragment hanging.

“See? You do not wear the Mexican pantaloons the other Indian slaves wear at the mission,” Titus explained as he stepped back and gave Frederico another appraisal. “You are a wild Indian. The soldiers must believe you are a wild Indian to let you inside that fort.”

“Si, this will work,” Frederico said quietly as he held out his right arm to Bass. They clasped wrists.

“We’ll be watching from up there,” Titus declared. “Get away as quick as you can.”

The Indian nodded and turned away, trotting around the bottom of the wide knoll.

“Frederico!” Bass called. “Don’t cause any trouble by yourself. And don’t let your sisters know you have come to rescue them.”

With a fading grin, the youth took off on foot.

Titus and the others scrambled back up to the top of the rise and bellied down among the brush. He took out his spyglass and waited for Frederico to appear on the plain below them, zigzagging through the undergrowth, making for the stockade at a lope.

After long minutes of peering through the lens, watching almost breathless until the gates finally opened, Scratch announced in a whisper, “He’s in.”

Frederico disappeared, and the gate was closed once more.

“We wait?” Purcell asked impatiently.

“We wait,” Elias Kersey told him.

But even Titus itched to know what was going on by the time Jake Corn revealed in a rasp, “Gate’s opening!”

“Is he coming?” Purcell inquired, squinting in the harsh sunlight. “The Injun coming?”

The gate swung clear, and two horsemen left the compound.

“Nawww,” Adair responded, disappointment heavy in his voice. “It’s just a couple of soldiers—”

“Be-gawd!” Corn said little too loudly. “Them soldiers’re draggin’ the Injun off somewhere!”

Behind those two Mexicans a third horse emerged from the gate. Frederico sat astride its bare back, his arms held out straight, lashed to a narrow tent pole laid across the top of his shoulders, wrists tied to either end. His brown ankles were lashed to another tent pole that hung underneath the belly of the horse. Trussed up like a hog for the slaughter.

“T-they gonna kill the Injun?” Kersey asked.

“Could’ve done that in their fort,” Bass said, wagging his head in angry consternation. “He must’ve done something wrong—said something wrong, for them soldiers to be cartin’ him off.”

“Where they taking him?” Corn inquired. “Back to the mission where they near killed ’im last time?”

Titus nodded as another pair of soldiers brought up the rear of the short procession behind their prisoner. “I think they’re taking the Injun to them holy padres as a gift. A wild Injun for them padres to make a slave.”

Kersey wondered, “They can’t have no way of knowing he’s their whores’ brother?”

“Hope not,” Scratch said with a long sigh, “C’mon, fellas. We gotta bust that Injun free.”

“Shit,” Purcell grumped as he crawled off his knees. “I just knowed you was gonna say that.”

They had no choice but to make a race out of it.

Mission San Bernardino wasn’t all that far away, through a short string of tree-lined hills. No time to gallop ahead and set up an ambush.

When the soldiers came in sight ahead of them, the adobe walls and flying buttresses of the mission off in the distance beyond the Mexicans, Scratch kicked his heels into the horse and roared, “It’s a stand-up ride-through, boys!”

As he shot away, the five others yipped or grunted as they jabbed their horses into a hard gallop. Now and then across those last moments as they raced up on the Mexicans, the soldiers disappeared around a bend in the wagon road, or were momentarily hidden by a stand of leafy trees. They were taking a leisurely pace with their prisoner and their march.

With less than sixty yards separating the trappers from the enemy, one of the soldiers suddenly turned and peered over his shoulder. He nearly spilled off his horse when he twitched in surprise and fear, whirling back around in the saddle so quickly that one of his boots slipped out of its stirrup. He called out—the man next to him jerked around to look back down the trail.

Then they both started yelling to the pair in front. Frederico did his best to turn at the waist, unable to accomplish much with his legs tied under the horse’s belly. When the two guards in the lead slowed up, the Indian’s horse nearly collided with them. With a struggle Frederico managed to keep himself upright as the animal lurched to the side of the road. All four of the soldiers reined their horses around, putting themselves between their prisoner and the Americans.

Bass figgered the soldiers had to be surprised to see the Americans show up. They must have believed all the trappers were wrangling the stolen herd right about then, on their way up to the mountain pass. Besides, the guards could have no idea why the Norteamericanos were bearing down on them, yip-yipping like coyotes on the prowl. But when the Mexicans brought up their firearms, Titus decided it didn’t matter if they knew he had come to rescue the Indian or not. The six of them had the upper hand, and it was time to throw down their call.

“Empty their saddles, boys!” he bellowed as he brought up the long flintlock.

Tugging on the back trigger to set the front, Titus attempted to match the bob and surge of the horse beneath him. Finding a target—

But the Mexicans fired first. A ball whirred past Scratch’s shoulder like an angry hornet. One of the horses behind him cried out. Then came the loud clatter as the animal went down. In a fury again at the scorching, weepy flesh wound on his side, Scratch squeezed down on the front trigger, felt the rifle’s sharp-edged butt plate slam back against his chest.

Passing through the billow of gray gunsmoke at a gallop, he watched the lead ball knock the soldier heels over head, spilling the man backward out of the saddle onto the hot, dusty road. Weapons were popping around him. Gunsmoke and dust turned yellow, hazing the slanted afternoon light.

Another soldier clutched a red blossom on his chest, slowly keeling to the side of the road into some brush. A third cried out and sagged forward across his horse’s withers, arms akimbo.

That was enough for the last Mexican. He yanked the reins aside and brutally jabbed his big rowels into the animal’s ribs. Turning tail and running.

“Who’s got a loaded gun?” Kersey shouted.

“I’ll take ’im!” Adair vowed and hammered his moccasins into the horse’s flanks, bursting away from the others.

As the fourth guard dashed past Frederico’s mount, the Indian’s horse shied backward, twisting in fear, its eyes as big as bean platters.

Swaying clumsily, unable to maintain his balance any longer, Frederico spilled to the side, the end of the long, smooth tent pole striking the ground, his legs yanked upward, twisted by the other pillory lashing them together. The prisoner’s horse needed no more reason to bolt than that. As the frightened animal brought its hind hooves up to attempt to gallop away, the legs and hooves clattered against Frederico and the pole where his bare arms were slashed. He was about to be dragged down the rutted mission road—

Bass closed the distance in two heartbeats. Gathering his reins into his left hand with his rifle, he attempted to lean out of the saddle and seize the halter knotted around the horse’s head. But the terrified animal wouldn’t allow Titus close enough to grab the halter as Frederico grunted with every bump, cried out in agony, the horse skidding to a sudden halt, prancing round and round in a tight circle to stay away from the trapper.

In angry frustration, Scratch jerked up straight in the saddle, pulled out his pistol, and fired a ball into the animal’s head.

As the air gushed from its lungs, the horse wheezed in death, settling immediately onto its forelegs, the rear half of its body slowly twisting to the side as the dying animal came to rest in the short grass at the side of the road—pinning Frederico’s leg and hip beneath its ribs.

The Indian was shrieking in pain, terror too, as Scratch pitched himself out of the saddle. The instant his feet hit the ground he was stuffing the pistol into his belt and throwing a shoulder into his own horse. As it sidestepped out of his way, Titus dropped his empty rifle to the road and bolted over the dead animal, pulling a knife from its scabbard at the back of his belt.

Slashing at the ropes binding Frederico’s ankles, he first freed the leg that lay twisted atop the dead horse’s ribs. Once he slid back over the animal, Bass sawed through the ropes binding one wrist, then the other as the Indian slowly quieted. The moment his arms were freed from the pillory staff, Frederico attempted to sit up, only to cry in pain.

“This here’s gonna hurt,” Titus growled at him in English as he stopped at the Indian’s back, stuffed his hands under Frederico’s armpits. Then he clamped his eyes closed—and pulled. Leaning back with all his might, he tried to shut the Indian’s screams out of his ears as he dragged the youth from beneath the dead horse.

The air went out of Frederico in a whimper. Opening his eyes, Scratch found he had freed the leg. Letting go of the Indian, he crouched beside the leg and gently palpated along the bones.

“Don’t feel nothing broke,” he said to the guide, then looked up at Kersey, who sat atop his horse just behind Frederico.

Elias asked, “That Injun ride?”

Bass asked Frederico, then looked up at Elias. “Yeah. Says he can ride.”

“We better get back to that fort if’n we’re gonna free them women,” Corn said.

Adair came to a halt by Elias. “The longer we take, the behinder we’re gonna be from the rest of the fellas and that herd.”

Titus helped Frederico stand, then said, “Rube—get one of the soldier horses for the Injun.”

“Let’s get going,” Corn prodded.

“Wait,” Scratch suddenly declared.

“Wait?” Purcell whined as he yanked a soldier horse over.

“Get the clothes off these here soldiers,” Titus ordered.

Adair repeated, “Their clothes?”

Scratch started to explain, “Four of us gonna be soldiers when we go riding in there proud as prairie cocks—”

“What about the other two of us?” Corn asked. “How we gonna get all of us in there?”

“A couple of gringos got caught by the soldados—that’s how we’re all gonna get in there.”

Elias Kersey’s face lit up like a full winter moon illuminating a fresh snow in the northern Rockies. “Four soldiers guardin’ their two prisoners! Yee-awww! If that won’t be a yank on the devil’s short-hairs!”

Scratch was the first to spot the lone sentry posted atop the adobe wall as the seven horsemen approached the soldier post.

“They’re watching us now,” he warned the others in a low voice.

“Hope them Mex buy this,” Kersey growled.

Dressed in the stolen uniforms, Elias and Coltrane were riding just in front of Frederico, who was flanked by Jake Corn and Reuben Purcell, both of whom still wore their buckskin leggings and poor cloth shirts. All three had short sections of rope looped, but unknotted, around their wrists, making it appear they were bound prisoners. Behind these three rode the last pair of impostors: Titus Bass and Silas Adair.

Back at the scene of the fight, the trappers discovered that neither the round-bellied Corn or the gangly-limbed Purcell could fit into any of the bloodied uniforms. As it was, the four who did strip out of their buckskins to pull on pantaloons and soldier jackets found the Mexicans’ clothing a trifle snug. But, Scratch reminded them, they would be undertaking their ruse for no more than a short ride: only until the gate was open and they were inside the compound.

It wasn’t until they were within the shadow of the front wall when Corn suddenly asked, “What if they got ’em a password?”

Shit—why hadn’t he thought of that? Why hadn’t Jake asked about it before. Bass was angry with himself.

But that lone sentry stationed atop the wall’s interior banquette did not call out. All he did was slowly walk along the top of the wall, staying right above the horsemen, moving toward the gate, holding that musket and bayonet across his chest. When he stopped directly over the gate, he called out to those inside.

“What’d he say?” Adair demanded in a harsh whisper.

“Told ’em open up,” Bass growled, the hair at the back of his neck prickling with warning.

Wood scraped against wood as the huge bolt was withdrawn, then massive iron hinges creaked as one side of the gate in the wall swung open.

“This is it, boys,” Titus whispered to them.

Kersey and Coltrane started their horses forward together, but that sentry on the ground shouldered back the gate only far enough to admit one horse at a time. Titus felt himself sweating. This precaution wasn’t a good sign of an open-armed welcome. Next through was Frederico, followed by the two white prisoners.

A voice called out in Spanish. Another voice hollered in reply. He damn well knew it wasn’t any of the trappers. Hurry, hurry, his mind raced—wanting to get inside to hear what was being asked of the first impostors.

Scratch was the last to slip through the narrow opening, finding the others strung out in the compound. He turned quickly in the saddle—a guard behind him at the gate. The only other guard in sight on the low, narrow banquette above them. As the gate swung closed with a thunk and the guard leaned his rifle against the wall so he could manhandle the log bolt into place, Scratch told himself his wariness was getting far too old. It had played him for a fool this time. From the looks of things, this was going to be prime pickin’s.

At the exact moment the guard at the gate picked up his rifle again, the sentry atop the banquette leveled his weapon on the horsemen and cried out in a shrill voice.

Eight soldiers suddenly appeared in doorways on three sides of them. In that blink of an eye, ten old Spanish muskets were pointed at them.

“What’d he say! What’d he say!” Purcell demanded with a shriek.

“They want us to drop our guns,” Bass translated.

“We’re rawhide if we do,” Corn grumbled from the corner of his mouth.

“These greasers damn sure gonna hang us later,” Scratch said boldly. “Or we can die here and now like men.”

Kersey said, “You heard ’im, fellas—”

One of the soldiers interrupted with a shrill shout: demanding the Americans drop their weapons.

“On three, fellas,” Bass ordered in a calm voice that would give no warning to the soldiers, “we’ll make our play. One. Two … three!”

Up came all their weapons as the trappers ducked aside. The Mexicans had an advantage in the brief standoff: their muskets were already aimed at the Americans. Like parched corn rattling in a frying pan, the guns popped on all four sides of them—the trappers’ weapons booming as Bass watched smoke and flame and shredded patches jet from the muzzles of the enemies’ smoothbores. The horses cried out, lead landing among them—wheeling, rearing, shoving against another.

One of the men in front of Titus grunted; the breath was driven from the lungs of another. They still had an advantage, he told himself as he slapped the rifle into his left hand and the horse started backing up, bumping into another. He and his friends were loaded for bear. While the soldiers only carried those muskets, the trappers all had more than one weapon.

Pistols came out of belts and sashes, held at the end of their arms as those soldiers still alive disappeared back into darkened doorways. All of them yelling at one another. The sentry on the banquette and the guard at the gate did not fare so well.

“We’ll have to hunt ’em down one at a time!” Corn cried out.

Whirling in the saddle, Scratch aimed his pistol at the sentry and fired. As the ball struck him, the soldier was slammed back against the adobe wall, then bounced forward, pitching off the low banquette to strike the ground flat, unmoving.

Purcell was hit, clutching his side as he slumped against the withers of his horse. Adair was sprawled on the ground, the fingers of both hands interlaced over a nasty wound in his thigh.

“Don’t give ’em time to reload!” Titus warned, sprinting for one of the doors.

Instinct told him and the others that they needn’t race for those doorways where a soldier lay blocking the entrance, or sat crumpled against the doorjamb. The empty doorways meant the trappers would have to go in after the others.

In the lamp-lit, shadowy interiors, a fleeting drama was played out as metal and wood collided, men grunted in exertion, groaned in pain, boots and moccasins scuffing the hard-packed clay floors.

Mule-eyed, the soldier caught reloading in the corner of the room looked up as Bass rushed him, raising up his musket to parry the long skinning knife Scratch waved in front of him. The musket knocked the knife hand aside and the ball of a fist slammed low into the trapper’s gut.

More than mere pain, the fist drove the air out of his lungs. Gasping, Scratch stumbled back two steps, blinking against the flash of shooting stars. He saw the soldier turn and pitch the musket aside, scrambling for the wall where a long scabbard hung from a peg. The saber grated free of its sheath at the moment Bass lunged forward, arm high overhead, bringing the skinning knife down in a blur.

The blade caught the Mexican in the top of the shoulder. He buried it to the hilt as the soldier struggled to get the other arm raised, to bring the saber into action. Just when the saber reached chest level, Titus seized the man’s wrist in his left hand.

Using the buried knife for leverage, Scratch drove his left knee into the enemy’s groin. As the Mexican stumbled back a step, whimpering in pain, Scratch shoved the enemy’s arm up, up with that saber until it lay across the soldier’s neck.

Then brutally ripped it sideways.

Hot blood splattered over them both as the air in the man’s lungs wheezed from the gaping, bubbling wound.

Letting go of the soldier, he watched the Mexican fall, the eyes growing glassy and lifeless. Bass placed his foot on the man’s shoulder and pulled his knife free. Wiped it on the soldier’s jacket, turned, and crouched at the doorway, peering into the afternoon sunlight.

With the next heartbeat he was astonished to see a shabby, disheveled woman appear at a nearby doorway.

“Celita!” cried Frederico.

The woman took one step, then a second into the courtyard, wearing a loose-fitting, smudged, sooty dress that many times had been ripped and torn.

With that second step she suddenly stopped and peered over her shoulder furtively. Out of the shadowy rectangle behind her emerged Celita’s sister.

“Mayanez!” the Indian sobbed and started toward the two women. Then immediately halted in his tracks.

Right behind the small female stood a large, bare-chested man, his muscular arm locked around Mayanez’s throat. In that hand pressed against her ear he clutched a knife, while at the end of the other outstretched arm, he held a pistol pointed at the back of Celita’s head.

Frederico growled something in Spanish as he rocked onto the balls of his feet, both hands flexing into fists and claws, fists and claws.

“What’d he say?” Kersey demanded.

“The Injun says that’s the blacksmith,” Bass translated.

Corn demanded,“How’s he know that?”

“When Frederico come here a while back,” Scratch declared, “that bastard was dragging one of the sisters off by herself for a little fun.”