Death Rattle

30

Neither one of the two men proved good at concealing the worry hewed on their faces as Scratch stepped through the door of Josiah’s shop.

“Troubles?” Titus asked the moment he joined Paddock and Stephen Louis Lee.

Josiah began, “Naw, nothing really—”

“Listen, son,” Bass interrupted impatiently. “You and me didn’t spend all those seasons together for me not to read what’s on your face, so g’won and spill it.”

“Really, Mr. Bass—it’s nothing to concern yourself with,” Lee apologized.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Sheriff—but if it’s something sticks in Josiah Paddock’s craw … it damn well is my business. Two of us go back a long way—”

“All right, Scratch,” Paddock whispered. “Let’s go find us a spot in the back to talk. I don’t want to do nothing to upset Looks Far. So don’t either of you go looking like you just ate some bad apples.”

“Hell, Josiah—you’re the one got the hangdog face,” Bass whispered as they started toward the curtain behind one end of the long plank counter.

Paddock made sure they were out of earshot from the partition before he grimaced at the sheriff and asked in a whisper, “The Pueblos are making tough noises?”

Lee nodded his head. “I heard something the Injuns didn’t think I was s’pose to hear early this morning. Last few days they’ve had some bad sorts out there, fellas rousing ’em up.”

“But that ain’t nothing new,” Josiah replied.

“For the first time they’ve put a day on it,” Lee admitted. “A night when they’re gonna raise hell.”

For the first time Titus spoke up, “What you mean—raise hell, Sheriff?”

Lee looked at him. “Talk is—those plans Bent broke up last month is on again.”

Scratch shook his head. “I thought you fellas told me the leaders of their little rebellion awready skeedaddled off to Mexico.”

“They did,” Paddock answered, glum.

Bass looked at him. “Then they sneaked back to the Pueblo?”

“No,” Lee said. “Word I got is some new leaders gonna lead the attack.”

“Attack?” Bass echoed. “Attack what? March down to Santa Fee and have ’em a fight with those dragoons?”

“These are bad Mexicans and even badder Pueblos,” Josiah admitted sourly. “But they’re savvy enough not to do something stupid, Scratch. This bunch ain’t about to march down to Santa Fe and tangle with Colonel Price’s soldiers.”

For a long, still moment, Titus looked at Paddock, then Lee, then back to Paddock again. “So, if these niggers gonna attack … what they fixin’ to attack?”

“Taos,” Lee confessed.

Bass snorted, “But there ain’t no army here for ’em to fight. What the hell these niggers thinking of …” And his heart skipped a beat as it struck him cold in the pit of his belly. “Oh, shit.”

Josiah could tell that it had suddenly registered on the old trapper’s face. “This bunch of butchers aren’t the sort to wanna have nothing like a fair, stand-up fight of it.”

Lee agreed, “These Mex and Pueblos are nothing more’n dirty fighters. Downright backstabbers. I figure they’re planning to make it a massacre.”

“When the bastards come after Americans,” Titus declared, “we’ll be ready for ’em.”

“With your own eyes, Scratch,” Josiah argued, “you’ve seen there ain’t but a few of us Americans in Taos.”

“Those niggers gonna butcher anyone who ain’t Mexican or Injun,” Lee snarled. “What I hear says they even got their blood up to kill half-breeds: Mex or Injun, don’t make ’em any difference.”

Titus looked long and steady at Paddock. Then he said, “Bein’ half-breed don’t count for nothing with ’em, eh?”

Paddock wagged his head. “We seen this coming for some time now, ol’ friend. So trust me when we’re telling you, these murderers gonna butcher my half-breed children right after they slit my throat.”

Scratch could feel the bitter gall rising at the back of his throat, turning his heart sour and mean. “Any nigger makes war on women and children—they’re no better’n animals.” He turned to Lee and asked, “So, Sheriff, you here to spread the word to Americans?”

“Came here to talk with Josiah. I want his help figuring out how not to alert the bastards that we know what’s coming, or when,” Lee responded.

“When?” Paddock asked.

“Tonight,” the sheriff disclosed with foreboding. “Tomorrow morning by the latest. They was just waiting for Bent to get in from Santa Fe.”

Josiah asked in a whisper, “Charles back? In all this snow?”

“Got home near noon,” Lee explained. “Took ’im four days up from Santa Fe, deep as it is out there.”

“You tell the governor, Stephen?” Josiah demanded.

“Tried to. You know how Charles is. He says he’s married to a good Mexican family. Says his children are part Mexican. And when he’s done saying all that— Charles tells me he’s always been good to folks in these parts—”

“In other words, the governor doesn’t believe there’s any real danger to him or his family,” Paddock interrupted him.

With a doleful wag of his head, Lee said, “He didn’t figure there was anything to worry about since he scared off the other ringleaders last month. Says all that’s going on now is a lot of loud and angry talk.”

“So what you figger us to do?” Titus asked, his wary senses tingling.

“I think it best we get on through this day till sundown when we close up shop, real normal,” Josiah explained. “We try to light out before, any time in the day, we’re bound to attract attention.”

“They’ll know where you’re going,” Lee added. “So they’ll come track you down.”

“I’ll give ’em a chance to track me down, I will for certain,” Bass growled.

“Don’t you see?” Paddock asked, seizing Bass’s forearm in his hand. “There’s hundreds of ’em all together. It won’t be nothing like a fair fight, Scratch. Like nothing you and me ever fought our way out of.”

“By the stars, there’s more’n a thousand souls living in that Injun Pueblo a couple miles from here,” Lee stated. “A thousand of the niggers!”

Titus swallowed. “So sneaking off is our only hope?”

Paddock looked at Lee. “You think folks oughtta head north?”

The sheriff nodded. “Maybe hole up at Turley’s till someone can get word down to Santa Fe and Price can march his dragoons up here.”

“Even then, them soldiers still gonna be outnumbered ten to one,” Josiah groaned.

“Maybe the most we can hope is they’ll scare the shit outta the bastards,” the sheriff said.

Paddock quickly stepped to the low, narrow, back door that opened onto an alleyway. He cracked it slightly, peered out for a moment, then shut it again quietly. “Don’t have long till sundown, fellas. I think we better start working on getting things ready to head out come dark. Where do you want us to meet up with you, Stephen?”

Lee wagged his head stoically. “I ain’t going with you, Josiah.”

“I know Maria ain’t in no danger,” Paddock begged, “but what about li’l John?”

Titus agreed, “He’s a half-breed.”

“So he’s marked for death,” Josiah argued. “If your wife doesn’t wanna come, then at least get the boy to safety.”

“He won’t go without his mama. So I’ll bring the two of ’em over to your place just after dark,” Lee promised as he stepped to the back door.

“And you?” Josiah prodded. “What you aim to do, one man against a bloodthirsty mob?”

“I’m gonna make sure every American, parley-voo, and foreign-born gets word that they better make tracks outta town tonight … or they won’t see another sunrise,” the sheriff declared solemnly.

“Spread the word. You’ll still have time to come leave with us,” Paddock begged.

Lee stared at the ground a long moment, then his eyes leveled on Josiah’s when he said, “I figure if there’s gonna be trouble in my town, I oughtta be here to do all I can to put out the fire.”

“But it doesn’t make sense for you to stick your neck out if you don’t have to—”

Stephen Louis Lee interrupted his friend with a gesture of futility while he said, “That’s what a sheriff does, Josiah. He’s s’posed to protect others.”

Their courtship had been nothing less than a whirlwind romance. She, a beautiful young widow related to several prominent, well-established families in the Taos valley. And he the eldest of two American brothers who had carved out a financial empire for themselves here in the Southwest.

Maria Ignacia Jamarilla Bent smiled as their three children embraced their father and kissed his cheek before they retired that evening of January 19, 1847. Her life with Charles—her sweet Carlos—was idyllic. The only thing that could possibly have been better was if he hadn’t been appointed governor of New Mexico by the American general who had marched through Taos and Santa Fe last August on his way to conquer California for the Americans. Over the last few months, her husband’s work kept him in Santa Fe for extended periods. So these visits to Taos were a rare treat—even more unusual that her husband had surprised her by returning home that afternoon, a Tuesday.

“I finished what had to be done,” Charles had explained when he came bolting through the door at the noon hour, “and I set the rest of it aside, Ignacia.”

It’s what he called her—not by her first name but by the one he believed was most different, a name all the more beautiful for it.

“Four days to get here,” he had gasped at the door, forty-seven years old, so still somewhat breathless as he dragged his long wool coat off his arms and shook the ice frozen to it. “Four days instead of two—the snow was so deep, so deep.”

Ignacia stared at him in sympathy, seeing how he was soaked through, clear to the waist. His hair had gone completely gray in the last two years, along with those deep, dark, liver-colored bags under his eyes, both conspired to make him look so much older, all the more weary and trodden. They had embraced in the entryway, she so short of breath at his sudden, surprise arrival, while the children and their two house servants fluttered around them, everyone chattering and cooing at once. Even Ignacia’s young sister, Josefa—who was Kit Carson’s intended—and Ignacia’s teenaged daughter, Rumalda—who had given her promise to Tom Boggs, another American—both swept into the room to welcome home the patriarch.

“How long can you stay?” Ignacia asked in her English that grew better every day.

“Till Sunday after mass,” he vowed, then kissed her on the cheek and sank to one knee so he could hug the clamoring children.

She had him until after the Lord’s supper on Sunday, Ignacia had thought as she watched the joy register on everyone’s faces that her Carlos was home. How she loved him for relenting on his own personal views and accompanied her to mass whenever he was in Taos—even though Charles loathed the powerful Martinez family. Especially its patriarch: Padre Antonio Martinez.

This most influential religious, political, and social leader in the valley hated both Charles and his brother, William, as well as their partner, Ceran St. Vrain. For years now Padre Martinez had utilized every ounce of the power and pull at his command to thwart the Bents’ increasing foothold in New Mexico. The padre had been at the very heart of a climate that fostered discrimination against, if not outright hatred for, the American traders and businessmen in northern New Mexico. Through exorbitant taxes and tariffs, as well as protesting every purchase of huge tracts of public land north of the valley, Martinez and his cronies had made enemies of these three most powerful foreigners.

But now a new era had just dawned on New Mexico. No longer in charge were those venal Mexican officials so susceptible to bribery and graft. No more would the church officials wield such control over the government. Now all political affairs were in the hands of the American army and its appointees. From here on out Padre Martinez would have to content himself with attempting to manipulate things from offstage.

So while the ousting of the Mexican government from New Mexico had been cause for great celebration in the Bent household, Ignacia fully understood that the takeover only served to antagonize Martinez’s anti-American faction with even more hatred and loathing.

She and her Carlos had enjoyed more than eleven years together already, steadfastly weathering the troubles they encountered with her being a daughter of Mexico, and he a son of an upstart, expansionist America. But now the vexing, difficult times were all behind them. The future looked more promising and rosy than it had in a long time.

While her husband’s brother had married into the Cheyenne tribe to cement an alliance with his wife’s people, Charles had married her to forge an uneasy alliance with the people of northern New Mexico. So it was not altogether unexpected that she learned of the angry grumbling of some Taosenos against her husband told to Ignacia by her servants on those days they shopped in the local market. Still, she continued to believe that—given enough time—her people would come to see that all things were for the better now that the Americans were in charge of New Mexico. Especially now that her husband could prove to all those doubters just how incorruptible, fair, and benevolent a leader he could be … despite all the unmitigated hatred still festering just beneath the calm surface of everyday life here in Taos.

Late that evening she was once again ready to believe him when he attempted to convince her that she had nothing to fear, despite the nerve-racking noise outside on the streets as small, noisy, arrogant mobs roamed the darkened village. Terrified to the soles of her feet when they heard the first gunshots, Ignacia flew to his side, huddled against him there beside the fire.

She sat quivering in his arms as he told her, “They’re just blowing off some steam. I didn’t want to tell you …”

“Tell me what?” she demanded, frightened and angry both.

“Coming up the road from Santa Fe this afternoon, we’d reached the edge of town,” he related, “when we found ourselves suddenly surrounded by a pack of those Indians from the Pueblo.”

Ignacia immediately put both hands over her ears, as if to block out the sounds of terror outside their courtyard, even to shut out his own description of a narrow scrape with danger.

Gently Charles pulled her hands from her ears as he continued. “They demanded I have Sheriff Lee release their friends who had been jailed for petty offenses—like theft. Though they shouted and threatened, I managed to convince them that the law must take its course, that this matter would be handled through the courts as things were handled with American justice.”

“And they let you go?”

He nodded. “While we kept talking to the Indian leaders, I started my group away from them very slowly, making our way through the crowd. Perhaps they did not know what to do except growl at us, making threats and bloody vows as we finally reached town.”

More gunfire echoed outside now. She whimpered, “Oh, Carlos—”

“You must not fear. There really is no cause to worry,” he consoled. “They could have taken me this afternoon if they had wanted me. The noises you hear out there are all bluster and bombast—nothing more than a defeated people blowing off steam at their conquerors—”

A knock came at the front window. She nearly jumped out of her skin.

Charles told her to stay put as he got up to investigate. But she disobeyed and followed him to the door where Charles cracked it open, whispering to the visitor hanging back in the shadows, who dared not show himself.

“You must take your family and flee at once, Governor!”

“Flee?” Charles challenged. “A governor does not flee! Matters aren’t so serious for me to be seen escaping into the night.”

“Sí! Vaya pronto! Things are getting more ugly every moment,” the disembodied voice warned. “For the sake of your family, for the sake of Mexicans like me who believe in you—go now before it is too late! En el nombre de Dios!”

Then she heard the fading rustle of footsteps as someone scurried across the gravel and hurled themselves over the side wall so they would not be seen dropping into the narrow street at the front of the house.

When he had bolted the door, she pressed herself against him, wanting to cry, to beg and plead with him to take the family and go for his sake.

“Ya viene!” she sobbed. “Now it’s coming!’

But he stroked her hair and convinced her of what she was truly desperate to believe: that there was no real threat of danger. These were her people, this was her town—and he had married her. Their children were Mexican. Nothing would happen to them. Ignacia wiped the tears from her cheeks, saying she would look in on the three children, then say good night to her sister and niece.

“I don’t want to stay up late tonight,” Charles said to her as she came back into the parlor minutes later.

Ignacia stopped behind his chair, wrapping her arms across his chest, and laid her cheek on the top of his head. “I imagine you are weary from the ordeal of your four-day journey.”

He kissed the palms of both of her hands, then said, “It’s not for want of sleep that I want to drag you off to bed, Ignacia.”

She stared down at his upturned face, into his tired eyes. Charles pulled her mouth down against his. She trembled when his fingers lightly brushed her breasts as he slowly inched both hands upward to grip her shoulders.

“Bring a candle,” he said huskily as he got to his feet there by the hearth.

With a furtive glance she could see how readily he had been aroused. It pleased her no end to realize that after all these years and their three children, she still had this immediate effect on him. What power she alone held over the governor of New Mexico.

How she enjoyed giving herself over to him when he closed the door to their bedchamber behind them and she set the candle on the stand beside their tall, Mexican-style canopy bed. It took but a moment for her to realize how hungry he made her for him as he worked at those tiny buttons and ties binding her inside multiple layers of winter clothing. Why, he had her skin so heated with delicious anticipation that the muslin sheets chilled Ignacia … at least until her Carlos made her forget all about the cold bedding he dragged over the two of them the moment he slid on top of her naked, trembling body. Hard and insistent and every bit as hungry as she had prayed he would be.

She awoke slowly, groggily, sometime long after they had both fallen asleep; he tucked against her back like a nesting of spoons. The noises outside the house were liquid—thick like syrup—not quite distinct: loud voices, shrill and angry, unearthly screams and bloody oaths, along with the clatter of wood and the jangle of iron hardware—

That first thunderous slap of something solid against the bolted front door brought her fully awake. Charles was already rolling away from her, leaping off the bed, lunging around in the dim candlelight flutting against the wall from that single wick now awash in its own small puddle of opaque liquid.

“Get your gown, Ignacia!” he ordered, his tone so harsh it frightened her.

“G-gown?”

“Go to the children,” he demanded as he found his britches on the floor near her side of the bed. “Gather them and take them to the pantry door.”

She hated to leave the bed now that it was warmed to their bodies—

“Ignacia! Move, now!”

Swinging her legs off the bed, she bent forward and scooped up her dressing gown, dragging it off the cold, clay floor that was covered here and there by small rugs of Navajo or Pueblo wool.

“W-where are you going?” she asked as he pulled his shirt over his head and dragged the braces over his shoulders.

That terrifying clamor grew more insistent at the front door: eerie, screeching voices and that thumping that seemed to fill the whole house.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her upright beside the bed. “I fear something evil is afoot, Ignacia.”

Then he embraced her roughly, passionately crushing her mouth with his, and finally stared into her eyes to say, “Now do as I told you—get the children and the others to the back door, and when I have gone to the front of the house—flee out to the alley as fast as you can get everyone to safety.”

“S-safety?”

His jaw went rigid, muscles flexing. “Get our family to the church,” he said with a flat and hollow voice. “Take sanctuary there.”

“No! No!” she screamed, throwing her head from side to side. “I’m not leaving here without you!”

He shook her, then promptly seized the two loose ends of the cloth belt that hung from the waist of her dressing gown. He tied it in a knot, then gave it an extra jerk to hold it securely over her naked flesh.

“If you have ever wanted to show me how much you love me,” Charles began, “if you have ever wanted to show how much you love our children … do this for me now, Ignacia. Do this without question.”

“Father, what is going on?”

It was Alfred’s voice on the other side of their bedchamber door.

“Get your sisters and meet your mother in the pantry, Alfred!”

“Father?” the boy pleaded. “What do they want?”

Charles was at the door, yanking it open to suddenly stare down at his ten-year-old son. “They want me, Alfred. Now help your mother get your sisters to the pantry as I’ve ordered!”

“Charles!”

It was Rumalda, still an adolescent. At her shoulder stood Josefa. Ignacia prayed that moment Carson and Boggs could be there to protect them at this moment of danger.

“Ladies, please,” Charles begged, “help me with Ignacia and the children. Get yourselves to the church, to safety—”

“No, no, no,” Ignacia mumbled when Charles pulled her against him, pressed her cheek against his neck, her nose buried in that filthy shirt that smelled of horses and sweat, of trail grime, fire and tobacco smoke. Most of all, it smelled of him, just the way he had smelled last night when he had smothered her with his body—seizing her with all of his being.

“I love you, Ignacia.” Charles choked out the words. “I always will.”

Then he was cruelly turning her around, shoving her into Alfred’s arms. Josefa and Rumalda came forward in their bare feet to each take one of Ignacia’s arms. Beyond them, she saw Estefina and Teresina standing with the two female servants, one old and one almost as young as her children. They all had their sleeping caps on and dressing gowns hastily pulled over their shoulders.

“Go together—now, hurry!” Charles ordered in a loud voice as a splintering racket suddenly reverberated from the front parlor.

They had broken through the door! Voices shrieked just down the hallway.

“Do not make a sound!” he screamed above the tumult as the crowd surged into the parlor. “In God’s name, run for your lives!”

That last glance she took over her husband’s shoulder was to see the shadows bobbing on the parlor wall just a matter of yards down the narrow hallway. So many shadows that she could not begin to count the intruders who had violated their home.

Then she gazed at her Carlos’s face even while Alfred dragged her into the darkness, toward the rear of the house, all of them scurrying like frightened animals for that door that held the only chance of escape.

Upon reaching the far end of the hall, she struggled to have a last look upon her Carlos, ducking her head this way and that over young Alfred’s head. She watched her husband step into the firelit shadows of the parlor, shouting boldly at the intruders—throwing up his hands and screaming back at those who had invaded the sanctity of their home, those who had sullied this beautiful sanctuary she shared with her husband and their children.

At the very same moment Alfred pulled her around the darkened corner toward the rear pantry, Ignacia watched more than a dozen pairs of hands and arms and a multitude of angry faces take form out of the dim, flickering firelight, all those fingers like buzzard claws as they seized her Carlos and dragged him into the shadows with them.

She started to scream—

But her sister’s hand immediately clamped over Ignacia’s mouth.

“Mother!” Alfred whispered harshly to her. “Hush! Not a word! Remember what father told us!”

Yes—she thought—I will remember what your father told me.

I love you, Ignacia. I always will.

If any of the Pueblo Indians hated their American conquerors, it was Tomas.

This violent, foul-humored miscreant had eagerly joined the plot when the three Mexican ringleaders—Archuleta, Duran, and Ortiz—had vowed they would throw off the American yoke, or die trying. But when that trio’s plans were discovered and the Mexicans fled for Chihuahua, Tomas alone did all he could to keep alive the embers of revolt.

Then Big Nigger showed up at the Pueblo, come home to see his wife. The huge, brooding Indian immediately stepped forward to join Tomas’s call for death to all foreigners. Tomas thought that was ironic, seeing how Big Nigger was a foreigner himself. Yes, an Indian—but not born of this land. Many years ago he had come to northern New Mexico with an American trapping party.

But none of that mattered now that he and Big Nigger, along with at least two dozen more Pueblos, had confronted their most despised enemy that afternoon on the outskirts of town. After the American governor had slipped through their mob, Tomas and Big Nigger rallied hundreds to follow them into Taos, intending to free their compatriots who were rotting in the Americans’ jail.

The Americano called Lee—he was the man who had imprisoned Tomas’s friends from the Pueblo.

Well after dark when the mob noisily burst into the jail brandishing guns, butcher knives, and torches, they caught the surprised sheriff scrambling off his cot in his longhandles. Several of the Indians grabbed the sheriff and dragged him to Tomas’s feet.

“Set our friends free!” Tomas demanded.

“No,” Lee said in English.

Even Tomas could understand that, what little of the enemy’s language he understood. He slapped Lee across the mouth, which spurred a loud chorus from the crowd pressing in around them, eager to watch how Tomas would open the cell doors. Tomas glanced at Big Nigger for approval. The Delaware nodded slightly.

“Open the cages, gringo!” Tomas growled before he slammed a bony fist into the middle of Lee’s face.

Blood spurted from the sheriff’s nose, oozing freely over his mouth and bare chin. It took a moment for Lee’s eyes to focus again.

The American licked the warm blood from his lower lip, then centered his gaze on Tomas. “No.”

Tomas slammed his’fist into the sheriff’s face again, then again, and another time too. With each blow he watched how Lee’s head snapped back, then lolled forward until he could open his eyes—likely fighting unconsciousness every time.

“Stop! Stop this, I say!”

Tomas wheeled at the sound of the voice crying out in Spanish—wondering why one of the Mexican conspirators was demanding a halt to this torture. The crowd surrounding Tomas was grumbling with ugly intent as they rolled this way and that.

“You lawless scum!” the voice ridiculed the mob.

More shrieks from Tomas’s rebels as the thin Mexican shoved his way toward the steps of the jail where Tomas gripped the front of Lee’s bloody longhandles in his fists.

“By all that’s holy!” Cornelio Vigil growled as he came to a halt four feet away. “Not one of you are worthy to stand before a man of God!”

“So, it is you, Vigil! Friend to the American tormentors!” Tomas shrieked when he recognized the Mexican official.

“Malditos usted! I’ll kill you with my bare hands,” the prefect vowed. “Free that man and go back to your Pueblo. Break this up now and I’ll deal with you tomorrow—”

Suddenly two of the Indians leaped forward, seizing Vigil’s arms.

“Let me go, you snakes! Let me go!” the prefect ordered his manhandlers. “You should tremble to even lay a hand on me!”

With a strident laugh, Tomas screamed, “We aren’t your inferiors now, Prefect!”

Two more large Indians squatted at the Mexican’s knees and hoisted the struggling Vigil completely into the air. The prefect scuffled, flailing his arms and bellowing what he planned to do about this unthinkable act of rebellion by his inferiors. He reminded them he was their better, from a noble class—a group of people who sought to help the Americans because it was good for business.

But this was the moment it fell to both the poor of the Pueblo and Taos itself to reclaim New Mexico for its native peoples.

“Scoundrels and scum!” Vigil screamed at them as four of the mob dragged him off the steps at the front of the jail and into the center of the street. “Disperse now or your lives will be forfeit!”

Tomas released the groggy sheriff for the moment. He could come back for Lee in a few minutes. For now he followed the four through the surging crowd. “What do you think of your poor peons now, Vigil?”

“En el nombre de Dios, you’ll hang for this!” the prefect shouted.

“No—you’ll hang!”

“If you’d fight me fairly like a man,” Vigil was shrieking, spittle crusted at the corners of his mouth, “I’d show your kind for the cowards you are—rebel scum!”

“Kill him!” Tomas suddenly yelled.

In less than a heartbeat the four keepers dropped the prefect onto the icy street before the throng collapsed over Vigil. Tomas heard the Mexican screaming in agony, watched the dozen or more arms rise and fall, the machetes and scythes, hoes and butcher knives rising after each descent, more and more blood glistening on and dripping from their blades.

Suddenly a disembodied arm was brandished overhead. Then a lower leg, with pieces of Vigil’s boot still dangling from a nearly severed foot. Tomas was just about to shove his way into the mob when a dark, round object was hurtled into the sky by one of the murderers. It sailed down into the crowd, but was caught and immediately tossed into the air again. Up and down the spinning object ascended into the flickering torchlight as Tomas slowly recognized it for what it was.

Vigil’s patrician head—a look of horror frozen forever on his features.

After more than a dozen short flights into the air, Tomas retrieved the head from the trampled, snowy, bloody ground and ordered the others back. From the hands of one of those nearby he wrenched a long, iron-headed pike he now shoved into the base of the severed neck. Tomas hoisted his grotesque battle trophy aloft.

Those wide, anguish-filled eyes, and that gaping mouth twisted in anger … Vigil would trouble them no longer. Never again would the Mexican look down his long, patrician nose at them. At long last the prefect had gotten what he deserved for bedding down so comfortably with the conquerors. Now his mob would do to the other foreigners what they had done to Cornelio Vigil.

Next to die—would be Sheriff Lee.

But as Tomas wheeled about, brandishing his first victim’s head above the mob on that long pike, the rebel leader realized the porch was bare. All of Lee’s guards had poured into the street as soon as the fun began with Vigil.

“Lee!” Tomas roared the American’s name in English.

All around him the crowd fell to a murmur.

“Lee!” he shrieked again, fury growing.

Those in the mob were turning this way, then that—frantically searching for the sheriff, who should have been their next victim.

“Find the American!” Tomas bellowed with the screech of a wounded animal. “Lee—we are coming for you!”