Crack in the Sky

8

“Ain’t a man worth his salt gonna stand for Injuns stealing women and young’uns,” Bass told them as they nudged their horses into motion, slowly parting the crowd of wailing women. “I ’member my grandpap telling me about the Shawnee and others what come down on the canebrake settlers way back, not just to kill and burn them folks out, but to steal the womenfolk and the young’uns too.”

“This is different,” Hatcher groaned as he studied the scene, side to side. “There’d be too damned many of them Comanch’ for us to take on from the looks of things here.”

Solomon hollered, “But them red-bellies gotta pay!”

“Too damned many of ’em!” Jack repeated, working to convince them. “There’s just a handful of us.”

“We ain’t gonna give it a try?” Bass shouted.

“And get ourselves kill’t in the bargain?” Caleb protested.

Titus sighed, his eyes imploring Hatcher. “Awright, Jack. We find John Rowland first—then go out there on their trail and see if we figger out how many we’re up against by the looks of the tracks.”

For a long moment their leader considered that. “So be it. I don’t cotton to no Injun carrying off no woman or child neither, boys. We’ll go find Johnny … then we’ll see what the trail’s got to tell us about what we’d be up against.”

There erupted a spontaneous, raw cheer among these men yanked from their blankets, heads throbbing with a long-overdue hangover, men grouchy, out of sorts, and damned well ready to do battle.

“Get you yer horse, Matthew!” Hatcher shouted, turning to fling his words behind him as the Americans moved their animals slowly into the noisy crowd filling the village square. “We gotta find Johnny!”

“I’ll catch up to you!” Kinkead said, clutching his Rosa tight. “G’won past Rowland’s hut, off yonder—I figger we’ll cut the trail out by his place.”

On all sides of them the devastation increased as they pushed for a narrow street on the far side of the village square. There at the corner squatted an old woman, a filthy shawl hanging half on her head, each of her hands resting on the body of a dead man crumpled at her knees. Beneath her fingers lay a bloodied face dotted with a gray stubble, the old man’s skull cracked open. At her feet sprawled the body of a younger man, perhaps a son. At least four arrows were stuck deep in his bare brown back. A dog slinked close, cautiously, its feral nose twitching at the smell of blood and gore seeping from the bodies.

Bass gave heels to his horse, reining straight for the cur. The dog’s neck ruff bristled as Scratch leaned over, swinging his rifle butt for the canine, smacking it in the ribs. Rolling over and over with a pitiful yelp, the dog picked itself up from the icy ruts and scurried away down the street, tail tucked between its legs.

Here and there in the village around them some of the squat adobe houses smoldered, wisps of ghostly smoke seeping from the rawhide-covered windows, curling up in twisted columns from the portals where the doors hung akimbo on broken hinges. Overturned carretas. A dead goat or dog, a pig or some chickens—the refuse of animal carcasses strewn about to mark the Comanches’ path through town.

Villagers suddenly converged on the path the Americans were taking, appearing from behind them in the narrow street, flowing in from both left and right to form a noisy mob. Weepy-eyed women and angry men shuffled into that open ground where a handful of squat sapling-and-mud wattle huts stood leaning against the cold dawn sky. There on the snowy, trampled ground three women were hunched over their prey, pummeling the enemy again and again with short pieces of firewood, one wailing hag swinging a long wrought-iron fireplace poker. More of the mob surged forward, eager to join in—shrieking, swinging, and kicking.

“Get back!” Hatcher bellowed above them as he steered his horse into their midst. “Goddamn ye—get back!”

The crowd may not have understood his words, but there was no mistaking the gringo’s meaning. Slowly the villagers stepped back, and back some more, until the trappers recognized the bloodied, battered body of an Indian.

He didn’t look to be too tall a man, dressed only in a shirt and breechclout above his moccasins. A blanket had been torn from his waist. Bare-legged, his hair disheveled, the Indian had a face almost unrecognizable as such.

Someone had even begun to decapitate the body. A woman nearby shook with rage, a huge knife trembling in her bloody hand.

“He dead?” Solomon asked as he halted his horse with the others.

“Damn well better be,” Caleb growled. “Let ’em work the son of a bitch over, Jack. That dead Comanch’ is the only thing they can take it out on now.”

“First whack, it’s my turn,” Hatcher said as he kicked his right leg up and to the left, sliding off the bare back of his horse.

The crowd inched back even farther, muttering in unrequited fury as he strode up without hesitation, yanking his skinning knife from the sheath hung at his hip. Without a word he knelt, whizzed the sharp blade around the head, then wiped the knife off on the Indian’s shirt before he stuffed it away. Placing a foot on the warrior’s face, Hatcher leaned back against the Comanche’s thick hair until the scalp peeled away, complete with the tops of the ears.

This moist, limp trophy he held up for all to see at the end of his outstretched arm. Slowly he turned, the blood dripping in the dirty snow. Suddenly Hatcher opened his mouth and let out a long primal scream. Nothing close to being a word, only a frightening sound—some guttural, wild, and feral noise the people in that crowd understood.

“Wagh!”

With that ear-shattering cry of the grizzly boar preparing for battle against one of its own, Jack pushed on through the crowd, walking up to a wooden door, where he looped the long black hair over the top hinge, took a quick step back, then spit on the scalp.

As others, mostly old men and young boys at first, shoved out of the throng to imitate the trapper by spitting on the scalp themselves, Hatcher turned and pushed his way back through the crowd. At that moment some of the infuriated Mexican women threw themselves back onto the body, resuming their brutal, passionate dismembering of the dead enemy.

Jack grabbed a handful of his horse’s mane and flung himself onto its back. Taking up the reins, he brought the animal around and began to part the growing crowd that clamored for vengeance upon the raiders. One by one the Americans slipped their horses through that narrow gap in the mob. Alarmed by sudden and wild shrieks from the Taosenos, Bass turned to look over his shoulder—seeing the Indian’s head appear above the throng. In the next moment it was hoisted far above the Mexicans at the end of a long, sturdy pike, the people swirling about on their heels like a throbbing mass below this gory, eyeless trophy they began to carry back toward the square.

As the mob washed away, a group of young boys led by a pair of old women stayed behind to tie lariats to the wrists and ankles of the headless body. As the last rope was knotted, the youngsters took off on foot, wildly screaming together as the beaten, bloodied, pummeled body bounced, tumbled, and flopped crazily behind the racing boys. Hobbling along behind the torso came the teetering old women, both of them striking what was left of the enemy again and again with firewood switches.

While the clamor of the mob faded toward the square, from a side street came the sudden clatter of boot heels echoing off the cold whitewashed walls of the village. Suddenly more than fifty Mexican soldiers burst around a corner. The trappers brought up their long weapons. For a terrifying instant, both groups stared at one another provocatively—ready for the other side to open fire. Every bit as disheveled as the Americans, the soldiers looked as if they too had just been pulled from their beds. Very few of them wore a complete uniform—and those who had managed to pull on their coats hadn’t taken the time to button them in the morning’s cold. Red-eyed, pasty-faced: these were men rousted from their barracks with the toe of a boot or the point of a bayonet.

“Señores!” the thin-faced officer at the head of the formation finally yelled as he took two steps toward the trappers, slapping a sword against his tall boot. “Americanos!”

With his eyes locked on the officer, Hatcher quietly spoke from the side of his mouth, “Willy—ye know their talk better’n I do. Tell ’em to get out of our way so we can find our friend.”

After a quick dialogue, Workman said, “This one—he’s the ensign.”

“What’s that?” Hatcher demanded.

“The big soldier chief here ’bouts,” the whiskey maker replied. “Name’s Don Francisco Guerrero. These here are his soldiers ’cause he’s Senior Justice and War Captain of San Geronimo de los Taos.”

A smirk crossed Jack’s bony face. “This bastard’s got too damned many names for me, boys! Willy, tell him to get his ass out of our way.”

Wagging his head emphatically, Workman protested, “But they ain’t fixing to stop us—”

“Damn right these greasers won’t stop us!” Isaac bellowed as he came up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Hatcher.

Workman continued, “But this here Guerrero says they found the Injuns’ trail.”

“Where?”

“Heading north out of town,” Workman said to Hatcher, pointing.

“With them red niggers gone, we go find Johnny—”

“They want us to help ’em go after the Comanche.”

Hatcher turned to look at Workman now. “Why they want our help trailing after a bunch of Injuns?”

“Guerrero here, he says the Comanche took some women and children with ’em.”

“We know that!” Jack snapped.

“One of them women is the wife of the gov’nor,” Workman explained quietly. “And … they run off with his li’l girl too.”

“Why us?” Hatcher demanded, eyeing the soldiers suspiciously.

Licking his lips, Workman sighed, “They figure the only chance they got of trailing the Comanche is using us gringos as trackers.”

“Why use us gringos?”

Workman grinned. “These Mex think we’re damned close to being ’bout as bad as Injuns anyway, Jack.”

“So we work for the Mexican army as trackers?” Jack squeaked in protest. “’Cause we’re the only ones can foller Injuns?”

“To hell with ’em!” Caleb snarled. “They can track the Comanche on their own!”

“There’s J-johnny!”

At Isaac’s wild cry, Scratch jerked around.

His forehead smeared with blood, Rowland suddenly emerged from a thick veil of smoke that clung close to the snowy ground like the bushy tail of a black cat switching back and forth as it waited patiently for a mouse to come within pouncing distance. Soot smeared his face in broad, grotesque patches.

“T-they got m-my … Maria,” John sobbed, his eyes pooling, tears spilling down his cheeks, tracking the black soot as he stood before the smoking ruin of the hovel that was his Taos home.

Hatcher held down his hand, grasping Rowland’s in sympathy. “We been told they got away with some women, and young’uns too.”

John nodded, choking on his sobs. “When I come out of the house, I see’d they had the gov’nor’s wife and his little g-girl with ’em,” Rowland explained. He turned away suddenly, looking to the north, swiping a hand first beneath his nose, then dragging it beneath both eyes, smearing soot. “The red-bellies knocked me in the head and left me for dead, I s’pose. Afore they took ’em all that means—”

“We’re going after your Maria now, Johnny,” Rufus said as Rowland looked away, a man clearly uncomfortable with his grief.

“We’ll bring her back to ye.”

Rowland whirled back around on them, his wild eyes darting between his friends and the soldiers, his lips moving wordlessly for a moment before his voice crackled in its growing rage the moment he lunged forward and seized hold of Hatcher’s reins. “I’m going after her with you!”

“Ye’re … hurt right now,” Jack explained, rubbing his fingers across his own forehead there below the front of his badger-fur cap. “Better ye stay behind.”

As if he had been unaware of the wound, John touched his bloody brow where the gaping skin had been split with a club of some sort. Rowland said, “Ain’t nothing can keep me from killing my share of those red sonsabitches.”

“It’s gonna be a long ride—”

“You ain’t leaving me!” he shrieked, balling up a fist and daring to shake it right under Hatcher’s chin. “I can find my own way just as good as I can ride with the rest of you.”

Hatcher dropped his reins and with that empty hand gripped Rowland’s defiant fist. “Ye ain’t goin’ on yer own, Johnny. Ye’re gonna ride with yer friends. We aim to all go after yer Maria with ye—together.”

Bass watched those simple words shake that wounded, grieving man right down to the soles of his moccasins. He stood there trembling, tears gushing from his eyes as he tried to control the sobbing, tried his best not to show his grief in front of these hardened, bloodied veterans of mountain winters and Indian warfare.

“It’s awright, Johnny,” Solomon reminded him quietly as the wild shrieks of the mob faded behind them. “A man what lost his wife got him a right to get broke up just like you.”

Jack reminded, “Ain’t a one of us wouldn’t cry too.”

“Been you got rubbed out, Johnny,” Isaac admitted, “I’d be broke up like that my own self.”

Rowland suddenly dragged in a deep breath, slowly pulling his fist from Hatcher’s grip as he gathered himself together with a trembling shudder of emotion. Biting his lower lip a moment, the trapper blinked his eyes clear, swallowed hard, and said, “Lemme find a horse—just gimme chance to find me a horse … they got mine … run off with mine—”

“Get you a horse,” Jack agreed. “We’ll fetch us up some saddles and food out’n the houses here first whack—something for the trail. We’ll set off after ye’ve got a horse.”

“How ’bout the soldiers here?” Workman asked. “What we tell them?”

“Tell ’em … tell ’em go get their horses pronto, Willy. Tell Guerrero we’re gonna lead ’em to them Comanche.”

“Sun’s coming up,” Graham pointed out as Workman turned aside to speak to the Mexican officer.

The trappers turned to gaze east just as that loud cathedral bell pealed its last and the brassy horn’s final note drifted into the cold dawn. The top edge of the bright orb was just emerging over the Sangre de Cristos, every bit as red as blood. The blood of Christ, Scratch was reminded as some of them gasped at this vivid portent written there between the mountaintops and the early-winter skies—the underbellies of the cold, bluish clouds suddenly aflame with savage streaks of crimson.

“That’s a sign, by God,” Isaac whispered while the soldiers turned on their heels and double-timed it back down the rutted street toward their stables.

“Damn right,” Elbridge grumbled in agreement. “Gonna be a bloody day for them Comanche.”

Bass figured it would be a long and bloody day for them all.

That first night the Comanche didn’t stop.

Neither did the Americans and the Mexican soldiers strung out behind them on the backtrail.

Scratch thought Hatcher’s bunch was about as prepared for this endurance ride as they could have been even if they had been given an hour to make ready. The only thing that might have been better was to have themselves some more guns. The villagers dug up enough blankets and saddles for the Americans, a few gourd canteens, and some poor cloth bags filled with meager offerings of food. It touched Bass’s heart to see how these simple people, who had so little, expressed their gratitude for what risk the trappers were about to take.

As it was, the Americans made good time that day, stopping for a few minutes every couple of hours as the afternoon aged and the winter light waned and night was sucked down out of the eternal sky all around them.

Then they were alone with the land, and the black gut of night, alone with one another once more. Somewhere behind them in the dark the Mexican officer and his men were struggling to force their tired horses into the cold night. They were making a lot of noise, every clatter and voice sounding all the louder here in the dark. At first their clumsy bumbling had angered Titus, but over the long, cold hours in the saddle, he gradually figured that they just might have a chance to turn that bumbling into an advantage, one that might somehow pay off in a big way.

If the Comanche believed they were being followed by soldiers who had no real chance to catch up to them, and even if the Mexicans did catch up, there would be no way in hell Guerrero’s men could beat the warriors…. Then the trappers might just have a shot at rigging a surprise for the raiders.

There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot said among Hatcher’s men as they loped their horses north toward the foot of the hills that winter dawn, then found the wide trail of Indian ponies driving along stolen horses, cattle, and a noisy, bleating herd of sheep sweeping around to the south against the upland. The Comanche were doubling back toward the high country, turning east into the difficult terrain of the Sangre de Cristos, striking the narrow valley of Fernandez Creek itself.

Near midmorning Hatcher had called a short halt, turned around, and faced the rest of them, discovering Kinkead catching up to them on their backtrail, the Mexicans strung out down the slope behind him.

“Yonder comes Matthew,” Jack quietly told the rest as they came out of their saddles. “We’ll let the ponies blow till he gets up—then we’ll go on.”

Scratch asked, “You figger them greasers gonna stay up with us, we keep humping like this, Jack?”

“They’ll stay up.”

Then Workman added, “Any soldiers what bring in the governor’s wife and daughter—they’ll be heroes, don’t you know. That Guerrero’s gonna damn well make sure his men stay up the best they can, even if he’s gotta stick ’em with that fancy sword of his.”

For a moment they all fell quiet as the horses snorted and blew, some tearing noisily at the dry grass. A few of the men watched Kinkead approaching, others stared higher into the foothills rumpled against the high mountains.

“Those red sonsabitches going up there, ain’t they, Jack?” Caleb said it more than he asked it, for it was as plain as pewter where the Comanche were heading.

“It’s for damned sure they ain’t tried one lick to blind their trail,” Bass declared.

Elbridge agreed, “Not with all them cows and sheep they been driving with ’em.”

“Red bastards,” Hatcher growled almost under his breath. “They don’t figger no one to try following ’em.”

“Leastways no white man,” Rowland said as he eyed the ragtag formation of more than fifty soldiers struggling up the slope behind them.

Hatcher nodded in agreement as Kinkead came up, hauling back on his reins and letting out a long sigh himself. His eyes landed on Rowland, and he urged his horse over, holding out his hand.

“Johnny.”

“Matthew.”

Kinkead dragged a hand under his nose. “Damn, but it’s good to see your face.”

“The others,” Rowland started, his voice already cracking with emotion once more, “they tol’t me you figgered me for d-dead.”

Kinkead touched his own brow below the blanket cap he had pulled down over his bushy hair. “Half-dead anyway, from the looks of you. We ought’n sew that up—”

“M-maybe later,” Rowland argued. “After … after …”

Kinkead’s eyes moistened. “I’m glad … glad you’re with us to go get your Maria.”

Hatcher watched Rowland turn away, blinking his eyes. Clearing his throat, Jack used his rifle to point up the creek into the timber and rugged slopes that stood over them. “Looks like they’re run off for the highlands, Matthew.”

Kinkead squinted, peering into the hazy distance that softened the clarity of those high peaks. “A good escape.”

“Them dram-med Injuns knowed just how to make a good getaway, wasn’t they?” Isaac said.

“Damn right,” Caleb agreed, glancing back at the distant soldiers. “They knew no greaser was gonna foller ’em up there.”

“Not when most of them greasers sore afraid of a ambush,” Solomon declared.

“But we ain’t greasers,” Bass argued.

“And we ain’t afraid of them Comanche neither,” Caleb stated.

Jack nodded. “Them sumbitches ain’t counting on no one coming after ’em once they make it into the tough going, do they, boys?”

They all grumbled in solidarity.

Hatcher continued. “Way I see it, only men who can stand any chance at all going after ’em is a bunch of plew niggers like us what can ride the ass end out of Comanche pony in mountain country any day of the week. Any season of the year.”

The way he said it made Bass shudder. They hadn’t brought along bedrolls, only what poor blankets the villagers had pulled from their mud hovels, donating what little they possessed to the gringos…. Then he consoled himself: wasn’t a one of Hatcher’s men didn’t really figure on this chase lasting all that long to begin with. And right then he had the feeling they really wouldn’t be sleeping much at all until it was over, one way or the other.

For a fleeting moment Scratch felt the whimper well up inside him, feeling sorry for himself over the sleep he had lost last night by staying up to drink so damned much of Workman’s brew—that and the sleep he was bound to lose until this chase was settled, one way or the other.

But, then, a man could always catch up on his sleep, he figured, still as young as he was, what with closing in on his thirty-fifth winter. Besides, if he was given a choice, going without any shut-eye for a few days was far preferable to sleeping out eternity like the dead. Like the men he himself had rubbed out were sleeping right then. Men who did their best to put him under.

These ten were alone with their thoughts while that day grew old and the light began to muddy, then to fade beneath the bony fingers of lengthening shadows. The Mexicans were struggling along behind them, still out of sight behind the last ridge or back beyond that last bend in the canyon. And the Comanche were still somewhere ahead of them, above—where they could likely look down and see the Americans dogging their backtrail. Titus figured the chances were better than good they were watched from time to time throughout that cold day as the clouds hovered among the peaks overhead. Black-cherry eyes peering back now and again to survey the distant, snaking movement of ten horsemen leading those half a hundred soldiers.

No telling what might happen to those white women and children once the Comanche believed their pursuers had halted for the night, no longer pushing the chase … when those raiders were free to halt, light their fires, and take a good, close look at the women they’d thrown up on horses and whipped out of the village. Women like Rowland’s wife.

It made Scratch shudder.

“We ain’t stopping here for long, ye understand,” Hatcher declared brusquely at twilight when the sun had receded from the flat land far below them, gone beyond the western hills on the far side of the Taos valley.

“Ain’t we gonna rest none?” Graham asked wearily, his face liver-colored with fatigue like the rest of them. Then Rufus noticed at the way the sudden pinch of pain crossed Rowland’s face and said, “Hell, forget it, Jack…. I s’pose we ought’n keep on long as we can see far ’nough in front of us for the horses.”

“Just what I was figuring myself, Rufus,” Jack replied. “It’s for damn sure them Injuns gonna be stopping somewhere up ahead once it gets dark enough—but they’ll keep on climbing long as they can.”

“I’ll wager them bastards get a mite spooked in these here mountains at night,” Caleb observed.

Isaac said, “For sartin the Comanch’ ain’t used to no mountains, that’s for sure.”

“They’re flatlanders, by whip,” Solomon agreed.

“Maybeso we can turn that back on ’em,” Bass declared.

“What ye mean?” Jack asked, his eyes narrowing in interest.

“Like you boys said: they ain’t on their own ground,” Scratch explained. “Even if they ain’t spooked by the mountains or the night, leastwise we know they ain’t on their home ground where they’re used to fighting.”

“Bass is right,” Workman said enthusiastically. “This is home ground for you fellers. That’s gotta count for something.”

Hatcher nodded, thoughts clearly spinning round in his head, and he growled, “We’ll make it count for something, boys. Willy, turn back down-trail and go talk to that Guerrero soldier. Get him to hurry up his men now that it’s getting dark.”

“I’ll bet they’re the sort to stop for the night,” Simms grumbled.

“They cain’t this night,” Hatcher argued. “Tell ’em in Mexican that we gotta use these hours of darkness to close the gap on the Comanche the most we can.”

“Right.” And Workman began to turn his horse around.

Jack continued, “Ye stay with ’em, Willy—till I send one of the boys back for you.”

The whiskey maker sawed back on his reins. “Stay with them soldiers?”

“Yep,” Jack advised. “Till tomorrow sometime.”

Concern knitted Workman’s brow. “Why tomorrow I gotta wait to join back up with you?”

“We eat up enough of the ground atween us and the Comanch’ tonight,” Hatcher explained, “we’ll have us a chance to lay a trap for them sumbitches afore tomorrow night.”

The whiskey maker nodded. “You want me to tell Guerrero you’re gonna lay a trap for the Comanche?”

“Ye tell ’em we got a chance at getting the women back, only if them soldiers ain’t afraid to keep on comin’.”

“All right, Jack. I’ll wait back with ’em. Wait till you send one of the boys to come fetch me up.”

“When I do,” Hatcher said quietly, “it’ll be time to bring them soldiers up on the run. Time for us to open up the dance on them Comanche.”

Workman didn’t utter another word, only nodding at two of the men as he reined his horse about and set it off down their backtrail into the mountain twilight. In moments he was gone from view, engulfed by the growing gloom, along with the fading muffle of his horse’s hooves, that last vestige of him swallowed by the trees and the boulders, become a part of the night coming down around them.

“Caleb, I want you and Bass to hang back ahind the rest of us.” Hatcher waited till the two of them nodded. “Keep yer eyes on the downslope so them red sumbitches don’t double back and pull a grizz on us. Let’s move out.”

They followed him into the dark, across the open ground and past the stands of tall evergreen and spruce, where the shadows seemed to loom all the larger for the coming of night as the stars winked into view overhead. Right then it didn’t feel all that much colder than it had been during the day, Bass thought. Odds were good it would be before morning, before sunrise, before the earth ever started to warm once more.

Jack stopped them not long after moonrise some four hours later. He slid from his Spanish saddle, only motioning with an arm that he wanted the other eight to do the same. Gripping their reins, the bone-weary men stepped in close.

“Solomon, you and Isaac good at a sneak,” he began in a low voice. “What with the moon coming up and it being dark for some time now, I figger them Comanch’ gonna be ready to hold up for what’s left of the night so they can get ’em some sleep. You two keep going ’head of us—find out where and when they stop for camp and some sleep.”

Bass looked over at Rowland. He knew that the man damned well knew better. If the raiders stopped for the rest of the night, sleep might not be all they stopped for. That brand of cruel worry had already been at work at the man all day—carving deep lines in Rowland’s grayish face.

If the warriors had no more than three or four hours head start on them at the most, then what hours remained between now and daybreak could hold the key to freeing the women. Staying on the trail of those ponies and cattle and sheep here in the cold and the dark might well be their only chance of catching up to the raiders before they got over the mountains and down onto the plains. Down onto the flat where they would again be on their home ground, where they and their ponies would again have the advantage of numbers and knowing the terrain.

But up here, across the next few hours, the Americans would have the advantage to use, or lose. Either they would succeed because of how they used the time and the terrain, or they would lose because they had recklessly squandered both.

“Johnny,” Hatcher said as Solomon Fish and Isaac Simms disappeared on up the hoof-chewed trail left by the raiders. “Want ye stay near me.”

“Sure, Jack.”

“See to yer cinches, boys,” the leader reminded the rest. “We’ll give them two fellers a li’l bit more rope till we foller along.”

In something less than an hour, with the moon climbing above the plains to the east, Hatcher suddenly threw up his hand and whispered harshly for a halt. Out of the dark limned two horsemen riding low along the withers until they made out their companions.

Solomon Fish straightened. “Figgered it had to be you.”

“Ye run onto ’em?”

Simms nodded as the rest of the bunch came to a halt on Hatcher’s tail root. “Looks to be ’bout half of ’em sleeping. Other half up watching.”

“They got a fire?”

Shaking his head, Fish said, “No. Not a damned one. They ain’t taking no chances, Jack.”

“Damn,” Hatcher grumbled, scratching at his chin in reflection. “I don’t think we’re gonna jump ’em this way, fellas.”

Between that gap of the missing four front teeth, Rufus asked, “If’n it ain’t in the dark—how the hell you ’spect us to s’prise them red niggers?”

“Lookit the moon,” Jack ordered them.

Caleb asked, “What you saying?”

“This is a cagey bunch of niggers, they are,” Hatcher told them. “Don’t ye figger they’re the sort to be up and on down the trail soon as it gets light enough to see?”

“Damn right,” Rowland protested, spewing his words. “That’s why we ought’n go on in there now!”

Hatcher put his hand out dramatically, grabbing the front of Rowland’s blanket coat. “We do that, Johnny—not knowing where them women are, where yer Maria is in that bunch, they’ll kill all them prisoners in the dark afore we can get in there to know who to shoot, who to save.”

“She’s … Maria … damn—”

“I know,” Hatcher said, turning to look at the others again. “So how much time ye boys figger we got till it gets light enough for them Comanch’ to go riding off?”

“Not much,” Rufus said.

“Tell me how long.”

Bass had been studying at the position of the moon hung there a little south of west in the sky, slowly laying one hand lengthwise right above the horizon, then laying the other horizontally atop it, then the other hand on top of that one until he had a count of distance from the horizon.

In that heavy silence Titus said, “We got less’n four hours left.”

“Then we gotta get our trap set in three hours,” Hatcher said. “I don’t wanna take the chance we’ll get caught moving, so we’ll figger they’ll be up and on the trail afore first light.”

“Three hours,” Rowland repeated. “Then what?”

“Then we’ll kill the sumbitches.”

“How we gonna do that?” Solomon asked.

“Let’s get moving,” Jack suggested. “We’ll sort the rest out once I find us a good place to spring the trap.”

Bass didn’t know what Hatcher had in mind; then, again, he figured he did know. Simple enough what they had to do: they were going to be waiting somewhere ahead for the Comanche.

“But before we set off again,” Jack said, “Scratch—I want ye to ride back to tell Workman what we’re planning.”

“Us to get ahead of ’em?”

“Have Willy tell the soldiers to keep on coming, no stops now. That goddamned noisy bunch gotta be coming close enough for to scare the Comanch’ into moving outta their camp.”

“And us,” Scratch replied, “we’ll be waiting on down the trail for them Injuns to come running right smack into us—right?”

“Right on one count: we want them soldiers to flush them Injuns into us.”

But Bass was confused. “What d’ya say I’m wrong on?”

“You and Workman can’t come catching up to us.”

“Why not?”

“Someone’s gotta keep them soldiers up and humping, high behind … or this plan ain’t gonna work,” Hatcher advised.

“So you want me to stay behind with Workman and the soldiers?”

“You two just make sure them greasers are close enough ahind the Comanch’ that ye can jump on in the fight when me and the rest of the boys here start up the band.”

“When’s that gonna be?” Rowland asked impatiently.

Hatcher turned to him. “I hope we can wait till sometime after we got enough light to see Injun from greaser … from American.”

“God pray that we have enough light,” Kinkead mumbled.

“That’s the plan?” Bass asked, not sure if he had it all square in his mind.

“Ye just have them soldiers ready to run up on the back-ass of them Injuns soon as ye hear us lay down the first shots into their faces,” Hatcher explained.

“Merciful heavens! We’ll have ’em in cross fire,” Caleb declared.

“That’s a touchy place to put us,” Rufus argued. “Out front like that.”

Jack fumed a moment, then growled, “Any of ye got a better idea what to do here and now?”

As he glared at them one by one, most of the rest turned their faces away.

Finally Hatcher said, “Awright. Since’t none of ye got a idea what’s better’n mine, we’ll go with my plan. Scratch, ye take off now.”

Holding out his hand, he shook with Jack, Kinkead, and three more before he said, “See you boys afore sunrise. Keep your goddamned eyes peeled and don’t shoot anything that looks like me, you hear?”

Some of them grinned nervously as Scratch mounted up and reined the horse around, adjusting his position in the Spanish saddle. Its seat was a bit too small, even for his bony butt, but with its stirrups the saddle was better for making a long ride than having nothing at all.

“See you, boys,” he said once more.

“We’ll find us a hollow piece of ground,” Hatcher explained as Bass was bringing his horse around. “Where we can hold out if we have to hunker down and make a stand.”

“A hollow?” Bass asked, reining up a moment.

“Low place, not no high ground. We’ll wait up the hill from that hollow and open fire when the Comanch’ are under our guns.”

Scratch grinned. “You boys just remember my purty face and don’t shoot at it when the time comes.”

He pulled hard on the reins, tapped heels into the horse’s ribs, and quickly pulled away from them, engulfed by the brooding dark of the night forest.

“This ain’t nothing new,” William Workman quietly explained in something just above a whisper as they rode along ahead of the Mexican officer and his mounted soldiers.

Scratch asked, “The Comanche been raiding the greasers for a few years now, eh?”

“Not no few years. They been raiding that poor town even before there was a town.”

The whiskey maker went on to explain how the Comanche, even the Navajo far to the west, both had raided the ancient pueblos for food, plunder, and prisoners far back into the telling of any of the ancient stories.

“It’s something that’s always been. Always will be, I s’pose,” Workman declared. “The Injuns come in and steal and kill. So the Mexicans work up enough nerve to go find a camp of Injuns and kill them. So the Injuns come in and steal again. Which means the Mexicans gonna work up a bunch to go kill Injuns again.”

“So it never stops?”

“Ain’t never stopped,” Workman replied dolefully. “And right now—it don’t appear it’s gonna stop anytime soon.”

“Leastways not near soon enough to leave off this here fight,” Bass grumbled.

“Like Jack wanted, we’ll just have these damned soldiers ready when the rest of Hatcher’s boys open up on them Comanche.”

The two of them talked quietly from time to time as they rode along, able to hear the murmur of the soldiers whispering behind them each time the cold wind died in the trees. Bass began to grow edgy when he found the moon near to setting at their backs.

Minutes later he thought he smelled something different in the air as the chill breeze drifted toward them. Then he was sure as they came into a small clearing.

“Hold ’em up here, Willy,” he commanded as he kicked down from the saddle.

Holding on to the reins, Bass led his horse toward the far line of trees. He let his nose lead him until he was sure, bending down finally when he could smell that unmistakable spoor—horse dung. Using one bare finger, he probed its surface. Just starting to dry, and cold as could be. With the way the temperature had dropped through the night, it wouldn’t take long at all for a steaming pile of dung to cool off completely.

Then his nose caught wind of something else. A little different sort of smell. He followed his nose here, then there, the way old Tink would have stayed locked on the scent of a coon back in Boone County. Going to his hands and knees to get closer to the ground as he inched his way-back among the trees, Scratch found it. Another pile of dung. But this was left by a human.

Damn, he thought. Now I’m sniffing the snow for Comanche shit.

But just as he turned away, his nose caught the scent of something new, yet something recognizable. He had smelled this before. And instantly he knew. Nothing else quite like that sweetish tang on the air, an odor going old and rancid.

Crouching low once more, Bass moved another two steps, sniffed, then a second two steps. Again he sniffed, moved to his right, and the smell hit him all the stronger. In five steps he was standing over it in the dark.

Whatever it was had attracted him, he was no longer so sure he was right as he knelt over the clump now, the odor growing stronger than ever. Giving it a good sniff, Bass assured himself he was right about the smell, but remained uncertain what the clump was. He poked a finger at it, then a second time to confirm it.

Cloth—a pile of some greasy cloth. Soaked in blood. It was plain from the looks of the area right around the clump of bloody rags that someone had lain here. With the flat of his bare palm he found the snowy ground as cold as the air.

He heard the saddle horse snort quietly behind him, a sound that yanked him back to the urgency of the moment.

Rising, Scratch hurried back to Workman and the soldiers.

“What’d you find?”

“They been here,” Bass disclosed. “I s’pect this is where they waited out the night. Moved on not too long ago.”

Both of them glanced at the eastern horizon far away, far out on the eastern plains beyond the top of the ridge they were nearing.

Workman said, “We ain’t got long. If them Comanche pulled out, they’ll be bumping into Hatcher and the boys real soon.”

“Get them soldiers moving with us,” Scratch suggested as he rose to the saddle.

Once the rest were moving up in tight order behind the two Americans, Bass leaned close and whispered, “I found where one of ’em was bleeding real bad.”

“They leave a body behind?”

Shaking his head, he spoke low. “No. Just some bloody rags.”

“You look close at them rags?”

“No. Why?” For a minute Workman didn’t answer. “I was just wondering if they … they was someone’s … clothes, is all. Some woman’s dress … maybeso a child’s, a li’l—”

“I don’t even wanna think about it,” Scratch snapped, cutting him off.

They rode on in silence.

Intently listening, they were both anxious to give that long-delayed signal to the soldiers, the strings inside each man strung so tight, they were stretched to the point of popping. Both of them listened to the darkness ahead as it slowly converted itself into that inky gray of dawn-coming.

As the light grew, so did the muttering of the nervous soldiers riding on their tails. Bass realized their fear must be mounting with each passing moment as they pressed on toward the break of that day—these Mexicans who had grown up learning to fear a raid by the Comanche as early in life as they had learned their own language. Hadn’t it been that way for his Grandpap? Titus pondered.

For those innocent folks settling at the ragged edge of a dangerous frontier, whether in the valley of the Ohio River or in that Taos valley he and the others had left down below, a person simply came to accept the raw odds of life versus death. Some men just naturally figured they would be brave enough to stare their enemy in the eye if that time ever arose … while others prayed they would never have to find out.

He couldn’t blame these soldiers for doubting what they had gotten themselves into; the more ground they put between them and their homes, the farther they climbed into the mountains, the colder and darker became the smother of night. Just as he couldn’t really blame folks back in America for figuring they could push against the frontier without having to pay the price in blood and lives. It had always been that way, Bass figured. Back to the time of his grandpap. Down through the days of his own father.

Here in his thirty-fifth winter, Titus realized he could no longer blame his father for trying to give his son what he figured his son would want from life. Even though it turned out that Thaddeus’s life of peace and quiet and security was about as far away as anything could be from what Titus wanted for himself.

If that man hadn’t been the sort to go forth, to push against the starry veil of the frontier, to dare dance on the winds of fate … then at least Thaddeus must be the sort of man who could summon up the courage to defend his family, those dear to him. To defend his own kind against those who came to steal from him. Like these Comanche.

He hoped these soldiers would be brave enough for what stared them in the eye this cold morning.

With that first distant shot echoing through the timber ahead, down in his marrow Bass wondered if any of them—American or Mexican—had any idea what they had bitten off.