Crack in the Sky

9

“Andele! Andele!”

Workman was shouting, waving for all he was worth, already a horse length behind Bass, doing his best to goad the Mexicans into hurrying their stubborn horses into motion.

It was like dragging a reluctant, harness-sore mule out of its stall to plow a field.

In a matter of moments the air on the other side of a low rise dotted with pine and spruce was cluttered with more gunshots, the yelps of warriors, and shrieks of women and children.

One of the women kept screaming so long and so loud Bass wondered if she would ever take another breath. But as long as she was hollering, he figured she was still alive.

At the top of the knoll he burst out of the timber, the clatter of the Mexican brigade coming up behind him, the noise of the fight rising from below him.

But for their straight black hair and the feathers tied in it, the warriors didn’t look any different from the trappers—except that the white men stood back at the edge of the trees and rocks, jamming more powder and ball down the long barrels of their rifles—the Comanche threw tomahawks and knives, fighting to control their frightened ponies so they could rush their enemy as they wildly swung long-handled clubs or dashed toward a target with one of their buffalo lances. Others fought dismounted in the swirl of horses and bodies, seeking a target for their small, strong bows of Osage orangewood, firing their rosewood arrows.

“Save the women! Watch for you don’t shoot the women!”

On that far side of the meadow he heard his friends yelling to one another, each of the eight fighting his own battle against more than four or five bandy-legged raiders against every white man. Already the ground was littered with more than a dozen Comanche bodies.

With a mournful anguish Rowland darted from the trees, shouting, “Maria? Maria?”

Where were the women and children?

Then Scratch saw them as the horses jostled and sidestepped. There … in the middle of some ten or so Indians the women struggled against the enemy, who clamped on to wrists, yanking them off their horses, dragging them brutally away from the fight. Children clawed and kicked at the warriors, crying out for their mothers.

He shot one last glance over his shoulder as he jabbed heels into the horse’s ribs, seeing the whiskey maker working everything he could out of his animal, the Mexican officer and about ten of them right behind him.

Down the gentle slope Bass raced, beginning to yell. All the fear, all the goddamned, paralyzing fear … just yelling always got rid of most of it as he reined right for those horsemen in the middle of the pack who had charge of the prisoners.

Somewhere among them would be Rowland’s Maria.

The hillside behind him suddenly filled with the garbled commands in a foreign tongue, the depression in front of him a torrent of war cries, gunshots, and the screams of utter terror.

“Bass!”

He was too late in turning: finding the Comanche already driving the sharp blade of a short cutlass down into the top of a woman’s skull, part of her head peeling away from the blow like a thick layer of onion. Too late to save her, he brought the rifle up anyway as the warrior whirled about in sheer ecstasy, bellowing full-mouthed, shaking that bloody blade at the end of his arm.

The ball caught him high in the chest, knocking him back the distance of two full steps, his legs churning, before his feet touched the ground again and he collapsed beneath one of the milling, stamping ponies.

Rowland was struggling to fight his way into the open, grassy depression, screaming her name as if it were a battle cry.

“Maria!”

There were at least four rushing John in that next moment, closing in on him as he fired his pistol, then jammed it into his belt to begin reloading the rifle.

Scratch knew the man wouldn’t have a chance.

Looking up the slope to where the Mexicans had fanned out behind their leader to charge into the fray, Bass sawed the reins to the right before he stuffed them into his mouth so he could pull the big pistol from the wide belt around his blanket coat. Dragging the hammer back, Scratch chose the one who would reach Rowland first.

The warrior heard him coming at the last moment, whirling suddenly, his face pinched with surprise as Scratch brought the pistol across his body, held it steady on his target that lone moment as he raced past—pulling the trigger to watch the oak-brown face explode into a bright crimson crescent in that cold mountain sunrise.

As his horse carried him on by, Titus watched Rowland turn in his direction, the trapper now seeing the twisted body of the Comanche only steps from his back. For a heartbeat John gazed up at the horseman, attempting to mouth something, only his eyes able to convey the gratitude.

With shouts and screams of their own, the Mexicans flooded into the clearing with a noisy crash of arms. Their crude smoothbores barked, great mushrooms of gray smoke coughing from the muzzles as their horses balked, many spinning to attempt fleeing the melee. For a narrow sliver of time the Indians burst in all directions at once, like a covey of quail exploding from their hiding place among the tall grass. But in the next heartbeat the Comanche must have realized they still had the advantage of numbers and whipped back to hurl themselves onto the soldiers.

Those tortured moments allowed the trappers to emerge from the trees and rocks where they had awaited the Comanche, where the Americans had slapped shut their trap, where they had fired the first shots of this battle—likely spilling as many riders as there were American guns trained on the raiders.

As he clumsily poured a palmful of powder down the muzzle of his rifle, Bass turned to watch the warriors who mingled with the women and children. The Comanche were forcing their captives slowly back toward the center of the clearing, the first of the children being wrenched from the arms of their mothers and thrown onto the back of a pony. Another warrior savagely kicked a woman, at the same time pulling from her arms a small child he handed up to another warrior already on the back of a horse.

“Maria!” Rowland screeched.

There came no answer that Bass could hear above the roar of guns, the slap of lead among the trees and rocks, the neighing of the horses and the shrieking of the prisoners.

Another woman went down, her skull crushed with a stone club as a Comanche stood over her, swinging the club’s handle back in a graceful, deadly arc, preparing to make another blow. Her brown, naked body twitched in the grass convulsively from that first wound.

“Maria!”

Out of the corner of his eye Bass saw Rowland inching toward the captives, swinging his rifle this way, then that—his eyes just as wide with fear as were every woman’s.

Spilling a few grains of priming powder into the pan, Bass dragged the frizzen down and brought the rifle up to his hip, yanking back on the trigger without consciously aiming just as the warrior began the deadly downward arc of that club.

The ball caught the Comanche in the lower belly, doubling him over in half as he was knocked off his feet, spinning to the side, tumbling over the naked captive. Rowland collapsed at the woman’s side, turned her crushed, bloody skull so he could stare into her face, then stood suddenly, his face one of horror as he peered into the blurry torrent of bodies.

“Maria!”

Bass knew the body wasn’t hers. But where was she?

His eyes raced over the naked prisoners herded within a shrinking compound of horses and warriors. Very few left: women struggling to pull their children out of the arms of a few horsemen attempting to escape, women seeking to shelter their little ones with nothing more than their bare brown bodies.

“Juan!”

As Scratch held the muzzle to his lips and blew down the barrel to clear it of embers, he heard the woman’s shrill voice above the rest of the screeching and war cries and rifle fire.

She was so close. Closer to Bass than she was to Rowland as she fell to her hands and knees, then rolled under the dancing legs of a pony to scramble back to her feet. Scratch could see she was already bloodied, could see her wrists still bound by loops of crude hemp, two sections of rope still wrapped around her ankles to show how her legs had been tied beneath the belly of a pony that carried her out of the Taos valley, her mouth and chin smeared with blood where they had struck her in anger—perhaps to silence her screams, to quiet her sobbing.

Jamming the plug between his teeth, Bass pulled it from the end of the powder horn, spilling the coarse black grains straight down the muzzle. Racing to reload.

She was struggling back into motion, stumbling toward Rowland, raising in the air those hands still tied together. Begging …

“Maria!” John bellowed, focusing his overwhelming relief on the woman.

Titus dropped the powder horn so that it hung suspended there above his shooting pouch as he tongued another ball from the inside of his cheek, pushing it forward with the tip of his tongue.

From his left Bass saw the movement of one of the horsemen as the warrior whipped his pony around, the fourteen-foot-long buffalo lance coming up halfway between earth and sky like a crude splinter against the winter blue. His black hate-filled eyes followed the escape of the woman, spotting the white man rushing toward her.

Spitting the wet lead ball from his lips with a noisy puert, Scratch yanked the ramrod free of its thimbles under the big octagonal barrel, ramming the ball home against the powder and the breech.

How Bass wished he would have enough time to finish reloading …

Then knew he wouldn’t—

Just as Rowland was reaching out for her, the warrior cocked the huge lance beneath his arm, his horse leaping into motion as the arm snapped back, then slingshotted forward.

Both Bass and Rowland watched it hit the naked woman stumbling toward her husband. Piercing her body more than six feet of its length, suddenly erupting from her chest, red and glistening as she stumbled two more steps, staring down at the lance that impaled her, imprisoned her there, on the point of death.

She seized hold of the lance with her two grimy hands becoming slicked with her own blood. Fluid gushed from her mouth, spilling off her chin and onto her small brown breasts as she collapsed forward.

“Juan!”

It was more of a gurgle than a scream of pain or anguish.

With a terrifying scream the Comanche flung the long lance forward, releasing it.

Rowland was a few feet shy of catching Maria as she collapsed onto the long point of the lance, teetering there a moment as if in the hovering flight of a nectar-robbing hummingbird, then keeled off the six feet of lance to fall to the side with more than eight feet of the shaft slapping the icy snow behind her as she thrashed on the ground, gurgling.

Lustily screaming in victory, the horseman was pulling an ax from the back of his belt as Rowland spun to his knees over his wife, shrieking in horror.

Kicking his pony and yanking savagely on the horsehair rein—struggling to get his animal slowed and turned around—the Comanche came about and started to dash toward the grieving white man at the instant Scratch jammed the rifle into his shoulder. At the very moment he realized he’d forgotten to remove the ramrod from the barrel, Bass raked back on the trigger.

Both ball and hickory wiping stick exploded from the rifle as the muzzle spat a bright torch of yellow flame. While the lead sphere smashed through the warrior’s breastbone, the long ramrod embedded itself deeply at the base of his throat. There it quivered for a moment before the warrior released his big-headed ax, seizing the wiping stick with both hands as his legs lost their grip on the pony. He slid over onto the snow.

Rowland hunched over the naked, bloody body—sobbing—as Scratch skidded to a stop beside him.

“Gimme your pistol!”

Rowland looked up dumbly, his eyes at once filled with rage, wild and feral, at the very moment they pooled with tears of unfathomable grief.

“M-maria—”

“Gimme your pistol!” Bass shouted again, then crouched and grabbed for the weapon stuffed in Rowland’s belt like a goat’s hoof.

Dropping his rifle at his feet as he started to rise, Scratch dragged back the huge hammer on the pistol and whirled at the shrill war cry ringing in his ears. Nearly upon them was a warrior whose skin was more mahogany than oak brown, racing toward the trappers on foot.

His finger twitched on the trigger … but he held—spotting a second warrior sprinting right on the heels of the first headed their way.

Scratch waited, waited—his whole body tensing as he struggled against the instinct to shoot … then fired the big horse pistol—its huge ball cutting a swath through the first Indian and smacking into the second, dropping them both within spitting distance of Rowland.

As the two Comanche tumbled out of the way onto the icy snow, behind them a mounted warrior charged up to skewer a Mexican horseman with his buffalo lance. With so much power behind the impact, the warrior was able to pick the Mexican out of his saddle, dangling the helpless soldier aloft momentarily on the end of that terrible spear, then fling the dead man off into an icy patch of pine needles before the trembling carcass could break the lance.

Realizing that now he was without a loaded firearm, Scratch dropped the pistol beside Rowland at the same time he snagged hold of John’s collar and pulled his head back so he could stare into the trapper’s eyes.

“Get your goddamned pistol loaded—or you’re gonna end up like her!”

Wagging his head slightly, Rowland let the tears pour out.

It was plain to see the man didn’t care if he ended up like his Maria then and there. Bass let go of John’s shirt, leaving the man to collapse over the bare, bloody body, his own chest racked with silent sobs.

From the back of Rowland’s belt he pulled free the throwing tomahawk and leaped to his feet, exploding into a sprint. The Comanche lancer who had speared the soldier was turning his horse, bringing that huge blood-slickened weapon around to find another target. The closest was another of the naked women stumbling away, tripping and pitching into the snow to crawl on her knees and hands across the frozen ground. Her feet must be as leaden as adobe bricks, Bass thought as he lowered his head, his eyes locked on the horseman, flying across the crusty snow.

At the instant the Comanche loped past, Scratch flung himself onto the pony’s rear flanks, his left arm locking around the warrior’s chest as he swung out sideways with the tomahawk—hurling it back in savagely as the warrior twisted and jerked, trying to free himself from the white man he suddenly found clinging to him like a buffalo tick.

The tomahawk sank into soft tissue.

Only his gut!

Bass swung out again, this time bringing it against some bone.

Ribs!

Again, and again—hacking the blade higher and higher as the man coughed and gurgled and thrashed … until the Comanche went completely limp. Scratch yanked the warrior and his lance off the horse. He hopped forward just as the pony leaped aside, snatching hold of the reins in his left hand, spinning the animal around in a tight circle.

Some of the Comanche were already spurring their horses into the trees out of the depression where Hatcher’s men had sprung their attack. Nearly half of the horsemen bolted right past the trappers. Those warriors who were left to fight were either the very brave, or the very dead.

In his own most private duel Ensign Guerrero slashed and jabbed and parried with his sword against two Comanche who swung at him with their clubs and tomahawks, all three of them still on horseback, spinning about and bumping, throwing the weight of their animal against the others, kicking out with their legs at the enemy.

Suddenly the officer froze, his face gone pasty as day-old bread dough the instant a third Indian behind the Mexican pierced him with a long lance. The Mexican gazed down at the bloody lance protruding from his chest, vainly pulling at the slick wood with his empty left hand as he began to slip to the side from the saddle, spilling to the ground. Sprawling there, kicking his legs futilely, Don Francisco Guerrero finally dropped his engraved sword so he could clutch the thick, bloody wood with both hands as his eyes glazed over, staring sightless at the lowering sky.

Bass drew back the tomahawk and hurled it at the closest of the three horsemen, watching it crack into the warrior’s back. The other two wheeled around immediately as Bass pulled his own tomahawk from his belt, ready for the charge they were sure to make.

One of them yelled at the other; then both put heels to their horses and raced toward the white man. He set himself, ready to spring to either side, ready even to pitch onto the ground when they reached him. But to his surprise neither one leaned off to swing at him with their club or tomahawk. Rather, they burst on past, kicking their ponies furiously.

Right on the heels of the rest of those already fleeing the battle with wild shouts.

“Hatcher!”

It was Kinkead’s voice he heard as he turned.

Matthew was pointing back into the timber where the Comanche had disappeared. They could still hear the hoofbeats. But instead of that hammering growing fainter, it was becoming louder.

“They’re coming back!” Hatcher exploded out of the dawn shadows, hollering and waving.

All the rest were looking back over their shoulders as the war cries and captives’ shrieks grew louder.

“Get the women!”

Bass spun to glance back toward the middle of the meadow, where he found three of the captives miraculously still on their feet—naked and shivering, trembling from fear and the cold, huddling and clutching one another.

“Where’s the children?” Bass screamed at Solomon Fish as the trapper sprinted up beside him.

The stocky man’s face went blank as he swallowed hard and replied, “Ain’t none of the li’l ones left.”

In disbelief Titus groaned, “They kill ’em all?”

Lumbering up, Graham shouted, “What ones they didn’t awready get off with!”

“Watch out!” Hatcher warned.

The three of them whirled around with Jack as a dozen horsemen exploded from the shadows at tree line, horses snorting frosty jets of steam from their nostrils, bearing their riders toward the men on foot, who set themselves for that charge. Behind the trappers arose the shrieks of the three naked captives as they saw the Comanche returning.

Behind the women the soldiers themselves screamed in terror of being overrun and immediately turned on their heels, abandoning the women just behind that last stand being formed by those nine Americans.

Scratch quickly searched for Rowland on either side of him as the horsemen urged more speed from their ponies, coming all the faster across that trampled ground. There, off to the side, he finally saw him—where Johnny was as good as dead, collapsed over the body of his dead wife.

“Stand steady and look ’em in the eye!” Hatcher bellowed.

“Take one of ’em with you when you go down, boys!” Isaac Simms shouted, that tobacco-stained, whitish beard of his quivering with rage.

Bass barely had time to take another breath before the horsemen crashed into them with a deafening tangle of shouts and cries, screams and groans. In that clamor the trappers ducked and dived out of the way, some spinning about to reach up, immediately yanking horsemen down from their ponies as the warriors twisted to this side, then that, on the backs of their horses, attempting to slash at the whites with tomahawks, jabbing with knives of Mexican steel, and swinging stone-crowned clubs or stout bows at their enemies.

Only five of the twelve made it past the desperate trappers; no more than a handful reached that undefended patch of snowy ground where the three terrified women suddenly whirled and sprinted off, with the horsemen right on their heels, scampering like rabbits surprised far from their burrow. Hatcher pulled out his huge knife and in one motion brought it back, then flung it forward with such force that its impact knocked a warrior off his pony.

As if a keg of powder exploded beneath them, the nine Americans sprinted after the Comanche, screeching like demons with the coming of that crimson dawning of the day.

A black-haired horseman reined up beside one of the fleeing women, slamming his horse into her, knocking the shrieking woman off balance. As she staggered to her feet, he leaned from his horse, reached over, and looped a dark arm around her naked body, wrenching the woman against the side of the pony.

She kicked and thrashed her bare brown feet as they left the ground, struggling with what strength she had left in her, pummeling the man with her fists as he yanked the horse around, intending to escape with his prize still dangling off the side of his pony.

As the other trappers swarmed toward the rest of the enemy, Bass shot away at an angle. Dropping his rifle behind him in that headlong dash, he pulled out his knife a breath before he leaped against the warrior, wrapping an arm around the Comanche’s dark neck.

With the woman struggling on one side, and the trapper yanking him down on the other, the horseman freed his prisoner and smashed his open right hand into the white man’s face—his fingers clawing and tearing, searching for the eye sockets. The Comanche swiftly found Scratch’s left eye with a thumb he jabbed savagely into the soft tissue.

At the same moment one of the grimy, char-smudged fingers found the corner of Bass’s mouth, where it began ripping at softer flesh.

Jerking his head to the side, Scratch almost pulled that finger free. Grunting in exertion, the warrior clawed his enemy’s face with renewed strength as Bass filled his hands with coarse black hair. Bass knotted the hair around his fingers, pulling that face closer, closer to his while he worked to free his right hand and the knife it held.

With a roar the Comanche smashed his head against the white man’s temple, stunning Titus. He began to blink his eyes clear as the warrior snapped his head forward again. But this time Bass was ready. Opening wide, he clenched his teeth around the bony, grease-painted nose like the jaws of a trap.

Screaming in pain, the Comanche rammed his thumb all the farther into the white man’s eye.

Now the agony in that one eye became so great, Scratch could no longer keep the other open. He squeezed them shut.

With his teeth locked around that big nose, Bass flung his weight this way and that, blindly yanking and tugging, trying to unhorse his enemy. Grinding his teeth ever tighter as he twisted about, he felt the grimy, war-painted skin tear loose across hard cartilage, tasted the sticky blood as it oozed from the torn flesh, warm and thick on his tongue as the hard tissue continued to crackle beneath Bass’s powerful jaws.

Twisting, jerking, yanking backward, Titus finally felt his top teeth grind down onto his bottom teeth—and snapped backward from the enemy’s face. With the warrior’s shrill scream, the smelly claw flew back from Scratch’s face: no more did those fingers spear his eye, no more did they rip at the side of his mouth.

With blood gushing from the middle of his face, the Comanche screamed in even greater pain.

With the severed nose still in his mouth, Scratch gave one final heave, leaping again as he yanked savagely on the warrior’s hair. Dragging the man’s head to the side with an audible snap, Bass felt the warrior’s muscles relax, freeing the woman and the pony at the same time.

Spilling backward, Bass fell to the ground, his fingers still tangled in the warrior’s long hair as the Comanche lumbered to his knees, grunting and huffing from that sudden hole in his face where blood streamed and air bubbled. With one hand he touched the terrible wound, looked at his fingers, then reached for his own knife.

Lunging out, Scratch slashed his-blade across the warrior’s blood-splattered buckskin shirt, bright crimson spurting from the wound opened beneath the garment. He raked the knife back again, higher still across the chest, as the warrior clumsily brought his knife out.

Then a third time, now across the side of the Comanche’s neck, severing the thick vein and artery in a brilliant spray of blood. The warrior gasped as he fell forward in the throes of a last convulsion, the knife still clutched in that hand held out before him.

As the Comanche plunged toward him, attempting to kill his killer, Scratch twisted aside. The warrior’s knife pierced the flap of Bass’s blanket coat before it plunged on into the icy ground, buried up to the guard. His eyes already dead, the Indian brushed past Titus, collapsing upon the handle of his own knife, those last terrible spurts of blood splattering across the long tail of Scratch’s coat as the body collapsed against his legs.

Shocked to find himself slammed into the snow, Bass tried to roll away, discovering that his legs and one arm were pinned beneath the dead man. He twisted and yanked desperately, trying to free himself … when a shadow flitted over him.

From the corner of his eye Bass watched arms drag the body back so he could roll away. He rose onto his hip and elbow, turning back, prepared to thank one of his friends—but his mouth froze open in surprise. Scratch found his rescuer a woman in her midforties, naked and blue-lipped, her arms, back, and face bloodied and tracked with swollen welts.

Embarrassed for her, Scratch was on his feet and yanking at the buckle to his belt before he was conscious of dropping the wide leather belt and its knife scabbard on the ground. Quickly he tugged the blanket coat from his shoulders and swept it behind the naked woman. After stuffing her arms down the sleeves, she wrapped it securely around her and looked up at him, muttering something in Spanish as her red, puffy eyes began to seep again.

It took only a moment before her voice faded to a shrill, tiny squeak of unutterable pain and the woman collapsed to her knees, pitching slowly forward until her brow pressed against the ground as she wailed inconsolably.

Not until that moment when the woman began to wail did he become conscious of the sudden quiet in the narrow depression where Hatcher’s men had sprung their trap. Nothing more on the cold wind but the soft noise of horses snuffling, the whimpers of the wounded, the soft crunch of footsteps across the icy ground.

And with the next gust of breeze, the quiet was gone. More of the Mexicans were strutting down the slope toward the battleground now, yelling and screaming of a sudden. A few of them loped through the pack on horseback, carrying their own spears. These riders roamed the ground like a pack of dogs, searching out any of the enemy still alive. Once found, a wounded Comanche was pierced with two, three, or four of the Mexicans’ spears while those on foot rejoiced and shouted, rushing in to hack at the body until it was dismembered, even before the enemy’s heart had beaten its last.

Going to his knees, Scratch scooted close to the woman, then laid an arm across her shoulders. She raised her head, looked into his face, then nestled her cheek against the hollow of his neck and began to quake. Some forty yards away Isaac Simms had wrapped a large horse blanket around a small woman, and Kinkead was talking with the third captive in her native tongue as he clutched a large Mexican blanket around her trembling shoulders.

Suddenly the small woman with Simms turned, crying out in anguished Spanish, causing the woman Bass was comforting to lift her face, holding out her arms and screeching for the small woman who was rushing her way.

Bass helped her stand, then steadied the woman as she hobbled forward on bare, frozen feet. Closer and closer sprinted the small woman, closer still until Scratch could plainly see she was not a woman at all, but a young girl barely on the threshold of her teen years.

Kinkead and some of the others stepped over dead bodies of Indians and a soldier, following the girl and the other woman toward the oldest of the three, who continued to clutch Bass.

“Mi Jacova!” she shouted at the girl.

“Mama! Mama! Mama!”

How they embraced, forgetting their wounds. They kissed and kissed again, hugging and squeezing their arms around one another as the trappers came up.

“That’s the gov’nor’s wife,” Kinkead said. “Her name’s Manuela.”

“And that’s her girl?”

“Yes, Scratch,” Matthew replied. “Her name’s Jacova. For all her papa’s treasures, she’s his prize. He’ll be some punkins to see they both come back alive.”

At that moment Bass felt a tug to turn, finding Hatcher at his elbow. He pointed.

Rowland lay across the body of his dead wife, wailing.

“Get me a blanket,” Jack told Isaac.

Simms understood and nodded, turning away toward the battlefield, where he knelt beside a dead Comanche wearing a bloodstained blanket tied around his waist. With it Isaac met Bass at Rowland’s side.

Hatcher helped Bass lift the grieving husband off the woman so Simms could spread the blanket over the naked body. Then Scratch slowly turned the woman over, dragging the blanket up to cover her face.

“Isaac, get her ready to travel,” Hatcher requested in a whisper. “Pull some rope off one of them dead horses.”

As Rowland sat sobbing between Bass and Hatcher, Simms prepared the body for their journey back to Taos. Lashing the rope around and around the blanket-wrapped shroud, Isaac tied his last knot just as one of the soldiers strode up to Kinkead. The Mexican spoke in the clipped tones of a man who clearly thought he was talking to someone occupying a lower station in life.

Caleb hobbled up, a leg bleeding, to ask, “Who the shit is this nigger?”

“Sergeant of this here outfit,” Kinkead grumbled. “Name of Ramirez. Sergeant Jorge Ramirez.”

“What’s he saying to you, Matthew?”

“Says it’s time for him to take the women and the girl back to the gov’nor in Taos.”

“Take ’em back?” Elbridge Gray echoed. “Why, them damned soldados didn’t do nothing to save ’em!”

Hatcher nodded, giving his order: “Tell him that, Matthew.”

Behind the sergeant, what others weren’t tending to their own wounded or their dead continued to mutilate and dismember the enemy dead. Matthew brought himself up to his full height, casting a shadow over Ramirez as he repeated the declaration.

Then Kinkead told the other Americans, “Says he demands the women—’specially the woman and her daughter—so he can turn ’em over to the gov’nor when they get back to Taos.”

Hatcher stood. “Didn’t ye tell him we figger these soldiers didn’t save the womenfolk, so we don’t figger they got any right takin’ the womenfolk back?”

“Just what I told him.”

“Tell the sumbitch again,” Jack growled. “Then tell him we’re taking the women back on our own. They can come along, or they can stay here and tear these here bodies apart like they was the ones what won the fight.”

When Matthew’s words struck the Mexican’s ears, more of the soldiers stopped their butchery and moved over to join the sergeant arguing with Kinkead.

“He says they have more guns than we do.”

“This bastard brung it right down to the nut-cutting, didn’t he, boys?” Jack snorted. “Awright, Matthew, tell him he sure ’nough does have him more guns right now … but we got more balls, and these yellow-backed greasers ain’t going to back down no American!”

With that answer to his bold demands, the sergeant’s eyes darkened in fury. Suddenly he shouted at the other Mexicans—silencing their angry murmurs. In the uneasy quiet Ramirez glared at Kinkead as he spoke.

“This one says he’s asking us one last time to turn over the women afore he orders the men to kill … kill us all.”

At that challenge several of the Americans pulled back the hammers on their firearms as they stepped backward around Rowland and his wife, slowly ringing the three freed captives. Those who did not have loaded weapons pulled knives or reached down and scooped a tomahawk or club from the ground. In a moment all eight had their backs together, the women and Rowland at the center of that tiny circle.

Close to shaking with rage, Hatcher growled, “Matthew, ye tell this sick-dog, sad-assed, whimpering greaser that I wanna know what right they got to take the women back for themselves … when these here yellow-livered cowards wasn’t even brave enough to jump footfirst into the fight to save these here women!”

As Kinkead translated, the eyes of nearly all the Mexicans glowed with even more hatred—but not a one of them dared initiate an assault on the trappers. Their spokesman trembled with rage as he spat out his words.

Matthew said, “He says they’re not cowards—”

“Like hell they ain’t!” Bass interrupted with a snort of derision.

Sputtering in anger one moment, Ramirez fell to wheedling the next, attempting to explain the lack of action and courage of his men during the fight.

Kinkead translated, “Says he wasn’t able to get the rest to keep fighting after Guerrero was killed. The rest were … were—but I don’t think he can find a nice word for them being scared.”

Hatcher shook his head in disgust. “Then tell that sumbitch to have his men either start this fight right now—or get back outta our way, and make it quick!”

With that said to the Mexican, he waved his men back a few yards, then turned once more to growl at Kinkead.

“Just who the hell is this greaser to take on these high airs?” Bass inquired.

Matthew explained, “Now that Guerrero’s dead—this one takes over, I s’pose.”

Watching the soldiers inch back a short distance, Hatcher repeated, “That give this Ramirez nigger the due to rub up against us the way he is?”

As the soldiers closed in around their leader once more, Matthew said, “They don’t figger these here women any safer with us than they was with the Comanche.”

Most of the Americans laughed at that declaration, a few even jabbing one another with elbows, some wagging their heads in amused disbelief.

But while the others guffawed, Caleb Wood stepped up to demand, “Merciful heavens! Why the hell aren’t these here women safe with the men who saved ’em?”

“Because he don’t figger us for Christians,” Kinkead said. “Leastwise, none of the rest of you.”

“How you so special?” Simms grumbled, pulling at a blond ringlet in his beard with a grubby finger.

“Remember how I got myself baptized in the Mexican church some time back,” Kinkead explained.

“Don’t mean to stomp on yer Rosa’s church, Matthew,” Hatcher began, “but the way we see it, ye tell this son of a lily-livered bitch that I don’t give a damn if he’s Christian or not…. Tell him his bunch wasn’t in this fight enough for me to call ’em brave men.”

When Kinkead turned back to Hatcher after delivering those inflammatory words, he said, “Seems you’re dishonoring not just him but the other soldiers who died here this morning if you don’t let ’em take the prisoners back to their families in Taos.”

“Eegod! Honor? That what this is all about?” Hatcher spat. “How the hell can this here greaser talk to me about honor when he and his men didn’t have the honor to fight like men? To fight like their dead leader fought? Maybeso to die like a man, instead of standing right here in front of real men and whining like alley cats about their goddamned honor!”

It was plain to see how those words slapped the sergeant across the face like a sudden, unexpected challenge. His eyes glared like black coals; his lips curled, stretching taut over his front teeth as he struggled for words.

“When we get back to Taos, he says he’ll let you tell the gov’nor what all we done to help his men in this fight.”

Jack whirled on Kinkead in utter disbelief. “That what he said, Matthew? That we … only helped in this fight?”

“Yep—says we just helped his men.”

Flecks of spittle crusted the corners of Hatcher’s lips as he sputtered, “Tell that sumbitch Ramirez to step out of my way or I’m going to cut him up into pieces small enough that the jays can eat what’s left of ’im!”

“Jack,” Kinkead said with a soothing tone, his words almost whispered. “Maybe you ought’n figger us a way to do this ’thout anyone else getting killed. They got us near surrounded now.”

“I’ll gut my share of ’em afore—”

“Lookee there, Jack,” Caleb interrupted Hatcher as his eyes flicked about of a sudden. “The greasers sure as Katie do got us circled.”

“Goddamned Mex,” Isaac growled. “Only time they figger to fight is when they got the enemy outnumbered.”

Scratch added, “And when they got the drop on us!”

“Listen up,” Jack told them. “What say we leave it up to the women here?”

“You mean let the women decide who they ride back to Taos with?” Elbridge asked.

“That’s right,” Jack replied. “Matthew, tell this greaser we’re going to let the women decide.”

After a minute of coaxing from Kinkead, the sergeant nodded in agreement, a smug look of victory already apparent on his face.

“He says he’ll let the women decide.”

“I’ll wager he thinks the womens will pick him,” Jack declared.

“He’s probably right,” Kinkead replied. “After all, the womens are Mexican like these here soldiers.”

“So ask ’em, Matthew,” Hatcher ordered. “Ask ’em who they’re riding back home with.”

Scratch watched Kinkead pose that question. Instead of answering immediately, the daughter clutched her mother, burying her face against Bass’s coat. And the younger woman looked at the governor’s wife a moment, then stared at the ground before she muttered something. Finally the older woman held her chin high and in a soft voice gave her answer. Her words visibly caused a dark cloud to cross the soldier’s face.

“What’d she say?” Hatcher demanded in a harsh whisper.

Kinkead cleared his throat and said, “Says she’s been listening in on ever’thing we been saying, Jack.”

“So what’s her answer?”

“She’s telling Ramirez that they all three agreed the same together,” Matthew began. “Says they are going to ride back to their homes with the men who had risked their lives to save ’em—the Americans.”

“I’ll be go to hell,” Rufus whispered in shock.

“Then maybe we better get the bodies of these here other women wrapped up and ready to ride back,” Jack said as he turned away from the sergeant.

Ramirez held out his beefy hands, saying something quietly to the women, his tone imploring, but instantly the oldest woman snapped at him angrily, one of her brown arms poking from the capote sleeve, pointing at the bodies of the other captives lying across the battlefield—both women and children. Hostages and prisoners dragged from their homes only to be brutally murdered in this attempt to save them all.

“She just told him that she had her no doubt he and his soldiers wouldn’t never come along on this ride if it wasn’t for the Americans leading the bunch,” Matthew translated as the soldiers turned away, shamed by the woman’s strong words. “Said she’s sure there wasn’t no chance for any of them to come out alive if only the soldiers come along … because the coward soldiers likely wouldn’t come to rescue them at all.”

As he and the others watched the haughty Mexicans shambling away, grumbling among themselves as they caught up their horses and shouted orders among their numbers to mount their wounded and load up their dead, Scratch asked, “That what finally made them soldiers back off from us?”

“No,” Matthew answered quietly. “It’s what she told ’em there at the last.”

“What was that?” Hatcher asked.

Kinkead said, “The woman told ’em she figgered it would be far better for any woman to live the rest of her life being a slave to the Comanche … better that than to live as the wife to a coward dog what wasn’t ready to fight and die to save his woman.”

It took the rest of that day and on through the long, cold night, when they camped on their way back over the mountains and down to the Taos valley, for Bass to begin to forget that pitiful, solitary wail that escaped from John Rowland at the moment Kinkead translated the Mexican woman’s declaration: how a courageous man would fight and die to rescue his wife.

Better to live as a slave to the savage, heathen Comanche than to live ashamed and married to a coward who wasn’t prepared to give his life to save his own woman.

That afternoon as they recrossed the divide and began their descent toward the valley, storm clouds clotted along the western horizon. Thick as a blood soup, they made for an early sunset as the procession continued east, clouds drawing closer with every hour, dragging down the temperature, giving the wind a cruel bite. Both Rufus Graham and Solomon Fish each managed to kill an elk close to twilight. Food for them all, and in as good a place as any to hunker down for the rest of that night they would have to endure.

As darkness sank around them, Hatcher had Kinkead instruct the sergeant that his men must put out a night guard not only around their camp but around the horse herd too. While the Comanche might be too wary to attack the trappers and Mexicans in the dark, they wouldn’t be at all skittish about rushing in and riding off with some or all of the enemy’s horses. There were four fires that night, three of them placed close together where the Mexican soldiers gathered to fight off the cold and gloom. And the fourth fire where the nine Americans huddled with the three Taos captives. Clear enough was it that the line had been drawn. Just as clear enough that were it not for the wife and daughter of the governor, Ramirez’s soldiers might well have tried to wipe out the upstart trappers.

For the longest time that night as the cold deepened, young Jacova Mirabal kept her eyes fixed on the American who had rescued her mother, watching Bass move from place to place as he brought in wood, or stirred up the fire, or cut and cooked slices of the meat for the women, or even helped them with the cold, damp horse blankets—all that the Americans had to offer as protection from the terrible temperatures as dawn approached.

That storm rushing out of the west was at hand. Winter’s clouds hovered just overhead as the sky paled enough to travel.

“Matthew,” Hatcher called across the fire to the big man with his back propped against a tree, dozing fitfully. “Get them greasers up and moving. We’re lighting out soon.”

A little rest and the chance to sit around a warming fire wasn’t near enough to improve the disposition of the soldiers. Sullen and bleary-eyed as they slowly dragged themselves out of their blankets on the snowy ground, the Mexicans glared at the trappers with even more hate than they had the day before. A very sinister loathing was reserved for Scratch when young Jacova chose to ride alongside him again that cold dawn as they continued their descent down the western slope of the Sangre de Cristos, smoke from the distant villages already visible on the far horizon below the approaching storm clouds.

As the sun rose against the peaks at their backs, it spread a soft light into the Taos valley below, brushing its rosy tint across the gray smudge of morning cookfires that would be warming every home, hut, and hovel. But all too soon that cheery glow was gone as the sun continued to rise behind the thickening clouds, swallowed by the oncoming storm as the riders made their way toward the valley floor.

By the time the party reached the first of the northernmost ranchos, word began, to spread of the rescuers’ return. Riding at the head of the cavalcade were Ramirez’s soldiers, each of them triumphantly waving their weapons—lances or swords or muskets—as they drove ahead of them what cattle and sheep they had managed to recapture after the ambush. Some distance behind the Mexicans trailed the Americans, the ten of them led by the trio of captives who, by choosing to ride with the trappers, made it apparent to the growing throngs who gathered to watch their procession that they would rather ride among the gringos than with their own countrymen.

Field-workers and wranglers from those first ranchos streamed onto the road, joining the procession on its way toward Taos itself, more and more people joining in to scurry along both sides of the march—shouting and cheering, waving hats and shawls and scarves over their heads, singing praises for the deliverance of the three still alive. Others wailed and sobbed, crying piteously for the captives brutally butchered by the Comanche—an eerie, discordant cacophony that loudly battered Scratch’s ears, one that suddenly swelled in volume and intensity when they drew within sight of the walls of the village itself.

Suddenly the cathedral bells began to toll wildly. On rooftops stood young boys holding aloft thick streamers of colorful cloth billowing on the cold wind. Girls of all ages pushed forward on either side of the procession to hold up offerings of bread, fruit, and even a live chicken to the victors. The soldiers eagerly snatched up all that was given: life in the army was not far from abject poverty. Bass himself took a loaf of warm bread, then passed it back to Jacova, who thanked him with that sad smile on her lovely brown face smudged with soot and grime and blood. Some of the villagers rushed up to Jacova and her mother, bowing their heads respectfully while lifting a corner of the blanket each held around them, these impoverished people kissing the dirty wool with such reverence, such gratitude that both mother and daughter had been spared.

No more than fifty yards ahead lay the town square. And at its center waited Padre Jose Martinez; beside him stood the governor, Don Frederico de Jesus Mirabal. How stoic the man is, Titus thought as he watched this official calmly gaze at his loved ones returning. Were these his own wife and daughter, Bass was certain he would be shoving his way through the gauntlet himself, unable to wait patiently on the cathedral’s low steps as the bells continued their joyous peal.

Here and there among the crowd were those already dressed in black—a rebozo that fully covered a woman’s head and shoulders for some, was no more than a poor shawl for others. These were the mourners crying and wailing as they searched among the survivors and did not find a loved one—abruptly realizing that one of the blanket shrouds covered a family member or friend. The shrill keening grew all the louder as the procession drew closer and closer still to the church, then stopped … when all fell quiet but for the muffled sobs of so many mourners, the uneasy snuffles of the weary, hungry horses.

In a loud voice that rocked from the sides of the tiny square, Governor Mirabal spoke.

“Welcome back, my family!” Kinkead translated as the governor moved off the steps and hurried to his wife’s side.

Holding up his arms, Mirabal pulled his wife down from the horse, kissing both her cheeks, her forehead, enthusiastically before he embraced her savagely and wheeled about to do the same in helping his daughter from her mount.

With his wife, Manuela, beneath one arm, Jacova under the other, the governor climbed back to stand atop the steps of the small cathedral, where he spoke to the murmuring crowd.

In a whisper Matthew repeated, “He says he wants everyone to be quiet while the padre gives a prayer.”

For long minutes the brown-robed priest droned on, his eyes closed and his face turned heavenward as he gestured first with one arm, then the other, and eventually made the sign of the cross, bowed his head, and kissed the crucifix around his neck—at which point all the crowd raised their heads.

Again the governor spoke in his loud, stentorian voice.

“He says he wants to do something important to show his gratitude to the soldiers who returned his family to him—”

But Kinkead interrupted his translation as Bass and the others watched Manuela turn to her husband, raise her face to his ear, and whisper to him as he bent toward her.

The moment she began speaking to him, the governor’s gaze shifted to stare at the party of gloating soldiers; then he straightened, and his eyes darted farther back in the square to find the small party of Americans. Mirabal bent slightly and spoke in hushed tones to his wife. Both she and Jacova whispered something to him before he pulled them against him all the more fiercely and began to speak to the throng.

Matthew said, “Now he says he wants to do something very, very special for the men who his wife and daughter say put up their lives to save his family. He wants to … to …”

“To what, Kinkead?” Hatcher demanded as Matthew fell silent.

With his chin quivering, his eyes moistening, and a big smile splitting his bearlike beard, Matthew answered, “The governor wants to give the Americanos a very special baile!”

Solomon Fish asked, “A baile?”

“A dance!” Kinkead roared, then went to laughing lustily, sweeping up his Rosa and swinging her around and around while she giggled like a young girl.

“A dance?” Rufus asked.

Matthew joyously cried, “The governor his own self is gonna thank us niggers for saving his family! By holding a dance in our honor!”