Crack in the Sky

10

Jehoshaphat, if that liquor didn’t taste good!

Despite the remembrance of how this evil brew had lopped off the top of his head the last time he had settled down to put on nothing more than a nice, rosy glow. It had been that first night at Workman’s, when he’d ended up waking the next morning feeling as if his head were clamped in the jaws of a huge trap, his mouth tasting as if Ramirez’s soldados had marched across his tongue in muddy boots.

“Best you go at it slow this time, Scratch,” Kinkead warned. He stood before Titus like a jolly monolith, his arm wrapped securely around Rosa’s shoulder.

“This here stuff is pure-dee magic, Matthew!” Bass replied, licking his lips as he refilled his clay cup with the ladle. “I’ll be go to hell if it don’t beat that Monangahela rum I was broke in on back to the Ohio country.”

“Bet this here wheat brew of Workman’s does pack a bigger wallop too!” Hatcher declared as he stepped up to get himself a refill at the table placed a’straddle the corner of the long sala, the parlor where valley folks had begun to arrive and all was gaiety beneath the huge fluttering candles and smaller mirrored lanterns.

Besides that fermented grain beverage manufactured by William Workman at his new distillery west of the village, Governor Mirabal and his wife, Manuela, were serving what was variously known among the American trappers as “Pass brandy” or “Pass wine”—given that name from the fact that this grape product was routinely brought up from Chihuahua through the “pass” in the mountains, those fine spirits transported as far north as Santa Fe and Taos in oaken kegs and earthen jars.

“Scratch—just you be careful that Taos lightning don’t whack you in the back of the head when you ain’t looking!” Caleb cried as he held out his cup for another ladle of the heady concoction.

“Aguardiente I hear it’s called,” Bass declared with an expert roll of his r.

“Ah-wharr-dee-en-tee! Listen to this here nigger spit that out so smooth!” Hatcher snorted. “Picking up on the Mex talk, he is.”

“Only a little,” Scratch admitted.

“Maybeso just enough to get yourself hunkered atween the legs of some purty senorita,” said Solomon Fish as his eyes studied those comely maids moving about the room.

Quickly gazing over the small knots of dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked young women, Scratch wagged his head and replied, “Maybeso this child’s gonna learn enough of their Mex talk to dig hisself down into one helluva lot of trouble!”

Slipping his knife from its scabbard hung at the back of his belt, Titus plunged the narrow tip of it into the open clay crock sitting on the table among stacks of clay cups, huge basket-wrapped jugs, and crystal bowls. Spearing some clumps of coarse brown sugar on the flat of his blade, Scratch dumped the grains into his cup, stirring a bit before he licked both sides of the knife and returned it to the scabbard—then took himself a long drink he let lay on his tongue, savoring the hearty burn.

Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! If that Mex way to drink this here liquor didn’t make his sweet tooth shine!

Back at Workman’s place that first night in the valley more than two weeks before, Rufus Graham had introduced him to the way many Taosenos sweetened and softened the locals’ favorite potion. As strong black Mississippi River coffee became a dessert with heapings of cane sugar, this Mexican aguardiente went down all the smoother after a man sweetened it with a coarse brown sugar transported all the way north from Mexico’s southernmost provinces.

As new as these villages in northern Mexico might be to gringo traders from the States, the Taos valley had been settled well before the arrival of the first English to the eastern shores of North America. From the time the Spanish first ventured north to the Rio Grande country, the simple people of this valley had celebrated the annual tradition of the Taos Fair in late July or early August. Drawn by the prospect of riches, traders of many colors flocked to this high land locked beneath the dark snowcapped peaks of the Sangre de Cristos.

To Taos came merchants from the Spanish provinces far to the south, their poor carretas piled high with the treasures of Chihuahua and beyond. Other traders laid out wares brought on tall-masted schooners to the coastal cities of Mexico all the way from Spain: cutlery of the finest Toledo steel, butter-soft leather goods, perhaps bright tin objects to dazzle the eye, or those large silver coins so valued as ornaments by visiting Indians who be-jeweled themselves in grand fashion. From all those remote provinces of New Spain came hundreds of traders who sought the riches to be bartered at these fairs. While some might bring Spanish barb horses to trade, others brought the handiwork of faraway native craftsmen—everything from earthenware and furniture to saddles, harness, and tack. Upon their trade blankets many displayed the shiniest of finger rings, bracelets, and objects to enhance the slender throat of any woman.

And when those traders came to this land of the Pueblo dweller every summer, so came the more nomadic tribes from the surrounding region: Arapaho, Kiowa and Navajo, Pawnee and Ute, even the more warlike Apache and Comanche bands. Perhaps it was the presence of the other tribes, perhaps even the desire not to be counted out in this annual fair, that kept a secure lid on the powder keg—suspicion and hostilities suspended for a few days of merriment and bartering. Instead of raising scalps and seizing captives, the warriors had to content themselves with growling and trading, blustering and bartering. By a long-standing tradition, each of them held to a temporary truce despite the bloodiest of intertribal wars, despite their uninterrupted depredations on these same Mexican villages.

But for that brief time at the height of summer, the tribes brought their hides: huge, glossy buffalo robes; the silklike chamois of antelope and mountain goat; the luxurious pelts of wolf, badger, and fox. And they brought slaves. Human misery, so it seemed, had become a staple of this annual trade with the Indian bands at the Taos Fair. With their prisoners stolen in raids made on rival tribes, the visitors traded their captives for trinkets, blankets, kettles, beads, and weapons … and always the Indians traded for their share of the Mexican’s alcohol.

For more than two hundred years they had come here like bees to the hive—both the suspicious Mexican from Chihuahua and the wary warrior from the Llano Estacado—forging an uneasy truce while they took what they needed most from the other.

Everyone knew the warrior bands would return to the killing soon enough. Would return to Taos for the sheep and horses, for the women and children soon enough.

Although Don Fernando de Taos was the village’s proper name, some of the Mexicans themselves had come to call this sprinkling of whitewashed adobe huts and walled compounds by the name Don Fernandez de Taos. Still others corrupted it further to San Fernandez or San Fernando de Taos. No matter what expensive two-dollar name the Mexicans chose to hang on it … to the mountain trappers who learned of its existence—the breed who flocked here come the brutal winters raging farther north in the Rocky Mountains—this place was known simply as Touse.

Here the residents were far more willing to trade with the Norte Americanos who brought their wares from back east in Missouri all the way down the Santa Fe Trail than they were to trade with the trappers for their pelts. After all, the trade goods came from elsewhere—items that could not be had anywhere in Mexico. But those beaver hides … now, those might well have been pulled right out of Mexican waters! So though most Taosenos enthusiastically tolerated the American traders who came with their wares, traded them off for specie and mules, then turned around for the States without lingering, these trappers were something quite different altogether. They arrived late in the autumn and stayed on until winter itself was retreating from the high country.

Which meant that most of this reckless breed of unwashed, crude characters were underfoot and causing trouble for the natives of this sleepy village until the prospect of trapping prime beaver plews eventually lured the foreign interlopers from the valley once more.

It was a clash of two distinct cultures—in so many-ways no different a story from when the trapper confronted the Indian’s way of life. Yet here in northern Mexico there was one essential ingredient added to the volatile mix that wasn’t thrown in when the beaver men met Stone Age Indian in those early days of the mountain west: liquor. To the Americans their beloved Taos lightning greased the wheels of international commerce, while the Mexicans found any trapper in his cups more likely than not a quarrelsome and overbearing creature all too often quick to pick a fight. In short, it didn’t take too much of the potent aguardiente stirred in with all those months of pent-up deprivation before many minor conflicts were aggravated into potentially deadly clashes.

In the two weeks following their rescue of the captives, Hatcher’s Americans made Workman’s caverns their base camp. From time to time they would mosey into town with a handful of the pesos they had bartered off the whiskey maker for a few of their plews. With that hard money warming their pouches, the trappers looked over the rich variety of goods offered by the cart vendors and blanket traders who cluttered the open-air verandas surrounding the village square every day from dawn until just after dusk. More than any American-made goods, the gringos coveted such items as thick Navajo blankets almost impervious to water to fine hand-painted scarves; from sturdy saddles and tack to crops harvested just that very autumn; from select cuts of beef, pork, and lamb to the slimy organ meats hung from open-air racks; from coarse Mexican tobacco to the natives’ fine linen shirts, pantaloons, and stockings.

Why, Titus hadn’t been around such a place with so many pungent odors and curious sights since he’d floated to New Orleans eighteen long years gone now.

The narrow, sometimes off-kilter and mazelike, streets laid out in their tiny grid were more often than not teeming with roaming dogs, burros shuffling past beneath their loads of firewood, bleating sheep and goats being driven to a new patch of grass, and the ever-present gaggles of chickens and roosters wandering aimlessly about, feeding where they could on that refuse pitched from every door into the rutted, stinking byways. Occasionally a yoke of oxen or a brace of Missouri mules were herded past by American traders, more often by some young boys or very old men, all of the pelados dressed alike in their loose peasant clothing, a blanket serape for their only warmth.

While most of the squat adobe buildings strung out from the town square would never impress a traveler from the old French dominion of St. Louis, the municipal building and the towering cathedral nonetheless stood as two of the most recognized landmarks in the tiny town. Hand in hand, these institutions of church and state alone ruled the daily lives of this valley’s simple people as each was born, baptized, raised, married, sired their young, then died and were laid to mortal rest within the church cemetery. More and more it struck Bass that these were a people accustomed to accepting, a people who had learned not to ask for much from each day. To lead their simple lives, that might well be enough to ask of the divine.

Behind each low-roofed hut sat the domed beehive of a baking oven, where each day the peasant women made their loaves of bread, where on cold winter nights the family dogs slept among the warm embers. While the poorer mud-and-wattle homes were no more than a single small room with blankets hung to section off a tiny sleeping area, most of the adobe dwellings in this village were a bit more spacious, some even built large enough to encompass a small central patio where narrow plank doors led the inhabitants to each of the few rooms. In a corner of every room sat a squat mud fireplace filling the house with the pungent fragrance of burning cedar or piñon.

From the poorest pelado to the richest landowner, no Taoseno laid down plank flooring in his home. Instead, hard-packed earth sufficed, over which the woman of the house would throw a series of coarse, woven mats, since the thick Navajo wool rugs served only as blankets at night, rolled up each morning and used in the place of chairs during the day.

In these mud houses each small window was paned with a sheet of translucent mica and frequently barred with wrought-iron or carved wooden bars. On the sills of many windows this winter sat empty flower boxes that come spring would display a bevy of colorful red geraniums—clearly the favorite flower of the Taosenos.

Kinkead had explained that the villages in this valley were not always painted in such drab, dreary colors of winter. With the arrival of spring the tiny towns would burst with vibrant colors just about the time the trappers were seeing to their final preparations in departing for the mountains. Looking about now, Titus found that hard to believe, what with the pale and pasty colors this season brought to Taos: the grayish white of dirty snow smearing sun-washed adobe, the monotonous pastels of ocher and sienna earth, along with the ever-present black buckskin pantaloons and jackets favored by the caballeros in from the ranchos for a spree, or those black rebozo shawls most women pulled over their heads for warmth whenever they ventured from their homes.

Isaac walked up to the table, pouring himself some more aguardiente. He asked, “Scratch, you wanna come see the cock fight Mirabal’s getting started back out to the stables?”

“I’ve see’d cock fights afore,” Bass replied, sipping his drink as he continued to peer around the room over the rim of his cup.

“Ain’t you a gambling man?” Simms inquired.

“Scratch got better things to take a look-see at than no stupid cock fight!” Hatcher advised, wagging his eyebrows knowingly at Simms, nodding his head toward a small group of comely young women who were coyly studying the Americans from behind their lace fans.

“Hell,” Isaac admitted as soon as he sorted out his priorities, “I s’pose a man can allays find hisself a cock fight in Touse … but there ain’t allays senoritas to gander at!”

“Scratch, don’t want you to feel bad now if most of these here gals don’t give you the time of day,” Kinkead declared. “Their papas and mamas don’t want their daughters having nothing to do with no gringos.”

“I knowed their kind back in St. Lou,” Titus replied. “Snooty stuff-shirts—look down their noses on the rest of us.”

“Here it’s the ones with all the money, mostly, what look down on us,” Matthew replied. “My Rosa’s folks—now they’re better off than most, but they’re the sort who understood she fell in love with me, so it weren’t gonna make no never-mind to Rosa that I was a gringo.”

“Bet it helped a hull bunch you getting yourself baptized in their church,” Bass commented.

Kinkead nodded that massive head of his, smiling. “You wanna marry a Mexican gal, you wanna live your life down here in Mexico—why, a man best figger on doing things the Taos way.”

“You’re happy, ain’cha, Matthew?” Titus asked.

“Damn right I am,” he answered, then went solemn as he whispered, “I thank God in heaven Rosa wasn’t took by them Comanche like Rowland’s woman.”

At that very moment Scratch was reminded that John Rowland had elected not to join them for the evening’s fandango.

Caleb Wood finally cleared his throat and turned to Matthew, asking, “How’s he doing these days?”

“Has him better times, and he has him some low times … when he’s down in his mind over losing her,” Kinkead replied. “Ever since we got back, Rosa and me had him stay over to our li’l house so he won’t have to lay up in no place gonna remind him of his Maria.”

“Damn fine of you, Matthew,” Scratch said. “Keep a friend under your wing till his heart heals up.”

Kinkead responded, “No more’n what ary man does for them he cares for.”

“When you figger a man gets over grievin’ for a woman?” Rufus asked quietly after a few moments of quiet and contemplation.

It was a question that struck the others dumb, many of them staring at the floor, or into their cups, reluctant to let their eyes meet another’s.

Finally Hatcher whispered, his voice clogged with sentiment, “I figger the only way a man gets better is with time. After all what his friends can do … and a lot of time.”

Bass had come to this celebration bent on having himself a good time: to drink until he was numb and to pound his moccasins on the floor until he could no longer stand. To hop and whirl and bounce wildly to the music the others explained was a major part of these gatherings.

But now the Comanche raid and the kidnapping and that final, bloody, all-too-quick fight of it came flooding back over him. Maybe it was Rowland’s own damned fault, he brooded as he turned from the others and moseyed toward the other side of the room, where a knot of young doe-eyed women had been watching him over their lace fans. No two ways of Sunday about that: it was a man’s own damned fault when he let a woman get down under his skin and something terrible …

Long as he didn’t let that happen to him, Scratch figured he’d never have to go through all what he knew John Rowland was suffering.

From time to time he stole a glance at one or the other of those five women who whispered to one another behind their fans, nodding their heads slightly as they spoke, the mantillas on top of their heads swaying gently, the long lace scarves brushing bare brown shoulders. He finally had to admit he wasn’t all that good at sneaking a look without being caught.

Reluctantly, Titus moved away a few feet, sipping from his cup and trying desperately not to turn around and gaze at the senoritas again. Better to study what was hung on every wall completely encircling the long sala: joining the many portraits of the governor’s family ancestors were those customary portraits of famous religious figures and dramatic biblical scenes. From a large central chandelier and just overhead on all the walls blazed a dizzying assortment of colorful candles, their light fluttering gently as the guests moved about the room, stirring currents of air that caused the soft light to dance.

Titus turned back, recrossing the room to his friends, doing his best to keep his eyes from climbing to the wall right over the table bearing the liquid refreshments. It was enough to give serious pause to any drinking man bent on having himself a real spree—for right there above the clay jugs and crystal bowls hung the biggest wooden crucifix Scratch had ever seen outside of a church. On it hung the naked Christ, His side and forehead vivid with the red paint of His final tortures, His head hung in the final release of death.

Indeed, the sacred holiday celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus was fast approaching, little more than a week away now. Festive decorations were already hung at the front of most shops and carts in the village square where traders sold their wares and vendors offered a warm tortilla made from blue Indian corn filled with a ladle of frijoles spiced with green chiles. More than anything else here in Mexico, it had been the food that Bass took an instant liking to—far different from anything he had ever known back east, even since reaching the Rocky Mountain west. Never was it dull to the palate. Scratch had yet to find anything handed him on a plate that he didn’t care for, all of it either spicy or sweet. Truth be, as the minutes rolled past and the room grew all the more crowded, Titus wondered if he might be wearing down a groove in the earthen floor between the table bearing the Taos lightning and another table weighed down with trays of sugar-coated treats.

“Here comes the music, boys!” Caleb suddenly yelled.

Hatcher slapped Scratch on the back of the shoulders as Bass whirled in surprise. Jack hollered, “Time coming to let the wolf howl!”

“You dance, Titus?” Elbridge Gray spoke up for the first time since they had arrived.

Jack snorted, wagging his head. “Hell, don’t ye remember this here nigger didn’t wanna dance with us for his last birthday?”

“Ain’t never felt like dancing when I got me a hangover,” Bass grumbled. “And you boys just wouldn’t leave a man alone to sleep off his case of the shakes.”

“You fixing to tie on a case of the shakes this night?” Solomon asked.

“I’m due, don’t you think?” Scratch replied. “Hell, I ain’t had me a good drunk since … since—”

“Since a few nights back when we first rode in to Workman’s place!” Caleb roared.

Jack turned to him and said, “There be yer dancing music, Scratch!”

Down at the center of the huge sala six musicians were taking their places on a low wooden bandstand the servants had set in place on the earthen floor just for the baile. Right in the center at the back of the plank platform the first player seated himself, cradling a huge Indian drum called a tombe between his legs. On either side of him sat a pair of chairs where two others settled in with their oversize guitars known as heacas. Beside each one of them sat a man who played a violin, while in the middle stood a musician holding a mandolin across his left arm as he wiped his entire face with a bright white kerchief he stuffed back into the left wrist of his jacket.

“Maybeso there’ll be trouble tonight, boys,” Hatcher warned a few moments later as the musicians were tuning their instruments.

“I see ’em,” Solomon grumbled. “Damned pelados!”

All eight of them and Rosa turned to look across the long room at the doorway where at least a dozen men had come in, stopping to stand at the elbow of Sergeant Jorge Ramirez. Seven of them wore uniforms freshly brushed for this evening. As many as a half dozen were clearly civilians. Young men all, talking among themselves as they first spied the Americans at the end of the sala. Dark eyes glowered below dark brows as tension instantly charged the room. Between the buckskinned gringos and the Mexican dandies stood the prize: those handsome young women who first looked in one direction, then in the other, their seductive glances bestowed upon all rivals.

“Don’t they look to be fancy niggers tonight!” Bass declared. “That head soldier got him a new uniform too.”

“That’s right,” Kinkead agreed. “He ain’t a sergeant no more. I heard Mirabal made him a lieutenant. Ramirez is gonna be head dog here till they send up a new ensign from Santa Fe to take over for Guerrero.”

Scratch watched how Ramirez and the men with him began to strut, puffing out their chests like prairie cocks. In a whisper he asked, “They gonna cause trouble, Matthew?”

Kinkead shook his head. “Nawww. But those greasers gonna be right there when we start the trouble.”

“We?”

Matthew smiled. “Hatcher and the rest ain’t about to let them pelados buffalo ’em and keep them senoritas all to themselves.”

“Trouble comes, we’ll be ready,” Jack declared confidently. “Because we’ll be the ones get in the first licks.”

“Don’t go get yourself too drunk, Bass,” Graham warned. “Need to have you ready to kick and gouge, soon enough.”

“Damn,” Scratch muttered. “Here I come to this here baile to have myself a hoot and a headache come morning. Then you niggers tell me you’re gonna get me in a fight and all my fun’s over!”

“Plenty of time for fun afore the fighting starts,” Caleb explained.

Bass inquired, “Why there gotta be any fighting anyways?”

“That soldier bunch been wanting to trim our feathers ever since we caught up to them Comanch’,” Hatcher declared. “Ain’t no stopping what’s been coming ever since that morning up in the mountains.”

“’Sides, Scratch,” Elbridge said, “it ain’t a real fandango less’n there’s some head-banging on them greasers.”

“Man can’t come and have himself a drink and a dance?”

Caleb shook his head, grinning. “Not when there’s more fellers here than there is wimmens!”

“Ye figger on dancing with their women,” Hatcher explained, “ye best be ready to put yer fists to work.”

“They don’t like me dancing with their gals, eh?”

“You’ll get a whirl or two in,” Kinkead stated. “But they don’t put up with us dancing with their women for long at all.”

“I was looking forward to some likker and a dance with a soft-feeling gal or two,” Bass grumped. “Might as well be spending this night in some Injun camp since’t I can’t enjoy my likker and my dancin’ neither … ’thout some Mex soldiers wanting to put their thumbs in my eyes, or stomp on my shins!”

“Matthew, go take ye a look around the room,” Jack instructed as he put a fraternal hand on Bass’s shoulder. “See if’n ye can spot a likely gal for Titus to dance with afore the fighting starts.”

“And once the fighting starts,” Scratch kept on muttering with deep disappointment, “then all the rest of my fun’s run dry too.”

“I’ll be back straight’way,” Kinkead declared as he steered Rosa away into the bustling room.

As he sipped on his clay cup of liquor, Bass looked over the growing crowd, beginning to notice how the men and women openly flirted with one another. While the more demure and younger women stayed behind their wide fans kept fluttering before their eyes, most of the older females boldly began conversations with the men passing by them. Much the same with the rougher sex, anxious and unsure young men scrunched up against a wall, perhaps talking only with male friends as they furtively eyed the young women, mortally afraid to chance striking up a chat with one of the black-eyed beauties.

As his eyes bounced over this group and that, Scratch groaned, “What you go and do that for, Jack?”

Hatcher asked, “Do what?”

“Send Kinkead off to go find me a gal—”

“Ain’t you gonna dance tonight?”

He finally turned to look at Hatcher. “I am.”

“Eegod! Won’t it feel good to have your arms round one of ’em for that dancing?” Jack inquired.

“Damn fine,” Bass replied.

“Then it’s settled: we’ll find you a likely gal for dancing,” Jack explained. “And maybeso … a li’l courting too when the night grows old.”

“Courting? I ain’t in no mood for courting one of these here women!” Scratch bellowed a little too loudly. Then, realizing his transgression, more quietly he said to the others, “I ain’t like Matthew there. I don’t aim to get married off to no gal—Injun or Mex.”

“Dancing … even courting don’t mean you’re getting yourself married, Scratch!” Caleb guffawed.

And Isaac declared, “But some sweet courting talk just might get you bedded down with some soft-skinned gal!”

“Just like you got yourself a warm one to sleep with while you was healing up with the Snakes,” Solomon declared.

“Hush!” Jack declared, waving his arms suddenly.

At the center of the long room Governor Mirabal stepped atop the low platform in front of the musicians, bowed gracefully in his velvet uniform trimmed with silver braid, the crowded room applauding politely, then began to speak. As Kinkead hurried back to the group, Hatcher asked him to translate.

“He’s saying he’s proud to have everyone as a guest in his home,” Matthew explained as the governor turned, holding out his arm. “Says that this is a special night for celebration … his wife and oldest daughter are back under their roof … not again to have to worry about Comanches.”

“T-that’s them?” Rufus Graham asked as the woman and her daughter glided up to the low platform in their wide-hooped dresses, both of vivid color, the long lace of their mantillas spilling from the tall bone combs fastened at their crowns, hair ironed into tight ringlets around both faces.

“Damn if them women don’t shine!” Hatcher exclaimed.

Caleb declared, “I can’t believe it’s the same two we brung back from the mountains!”

“Can’t be,” Scratch agreed. “They don’t look a thing like the two what Matthew here said was relations of that governor.”

“It’s them,” Kinkead testified. “You niggers don’t recollect them two been yanked out’n their homes afore sunup by the Comanche … and now you see ’em in all their finest glory.”

“Damn if them women don’t shine!” Hatcher marveled again.

“You said that awready once’t!” Wood cried. Then, as he peered over at Hatcher, he added, “Lookee there, boys! Mad Jack’s got him pup-dog eyes for them gals.”

“Shut that bunghole of your’n!” Hatcher snapped, then turned to Kinkead. “What else is he saying now, Matthew?”

Just then the governor motioned off to the far side of the room, waving up the sergeant of that detail of soldiers who had followed the trappers along the Comanche trail.

“Telling everyone how much a hero they were to ride after the Injuns what took the cattle and sheep, what took the women and children of our valley,” Kinkead translated.

The new lieutenant stood on the floor just in front of the governor as the official continued speaking.

“He wants the rest of the soldiers to come up so everyone can know who were heroes after their captain was killed in the fight with the Injuns.”

The seven uniformed soldiers came out of the crowd, joined by at least a dozen more men dressed in their finest civilian clothing, resplendent in braid, silver conchos, and ornamental buttons from ankle clear up to collarbone.

“That ain’t all of ’em is it?” Isaac asked in a whisper.

“I figger some of ’em still covering guard watch, maybe,” Jack replied. “They ain’t all here.”

“Hol’t on!” Kinkead blurted, waving both his arms in a downward motion to quiet the others.

Hatcher asked, “What’s he saying?”

“I’d tell you if I could hear!” Then Matthew moved forward a step, cocking his ear as the governor’s eyes scanned the crowd. “Jack—he’s saying he wants you and me to come up there with them soldiers.”

“Me?”

Kinkead nodded, starting off with Rosa beneath one arm, his huge hand snatching hold of Hatcher’s sleeve and tugging him along. “Governor wants all of us.”

“Why, goddammit?”

Matthew grinned. “He says we’re the heroes what brung his family back to him. We’re the heroes he says kept the soldiers from getting all killed by the Injuns.”

“C’mon!” Hatcher growled with a sharp gesture of his head. “If’n I’m going up there, rest of you are too!”

“Likely he’s got that right,” Solomon said.

“Got what right?” Bass asked.

Fish replied, “When he says them soldiers get killed if’n we hadn’t come along.”

The group shyly followed Matthew and Rosa to the front of the low platform, where Rosa slipped out from beneath her husband’s arm and joined the front row of spectators who were applauding with their approval. Most everyone in the room smiled enthusiastically as the eight Americans strung themselves out at one side of the platform … everyone but the soldiers and those in attendance who hated every gringo, no matter what they had done to rescue the governor’s family.

As Bass shoved in between the shoulders of Isaac Simms and Rufus Graham, his palms began to sweat something fierce, especially when he looked up from the toes of his muddy moccasins to find the soldiers glowering at him and the others beneath their dark eyebrows. Quickly he turned away, glancing over the rest of the room, finding hate flickering in the eyes of so many males, adoration glittering in the eyes of so many of the females. Old and young. Especially the young who held hands and fans at their breasts, that rounded, dusky flesh half-exposed in their bloodred, black, sunset-blue, or buttermilk-yellow gowns that barely clung to their bodies.

At that moment he couldn’t remember ever seeing a woman out in public in so provocative a manner, her clothing exposing so much of her neck, her shoulders and arms, even unto the top half of her breasts. Swallowing hard, Titus wondered how the dresses stayed up. But then he figured those firm, soft-skinned mounds were what held everything in place. So much of those breasts exposed that it wouldn’t take much at all for a man to just reach his hand right in there and—

“Titus Bass! Step up there, nigger!”

“Uhh?”

“Matthew just called your name,” Rufus said in a harsh whisper. “He’s calling out our names for this here party to clap for us.”

Glancing quickly to his left, he found Isaac Simms and the others beyond him grinning sheepishly, motioning him up with them. He immediately took a step to join the others as he heard Matthew call out Graham’s name. Rufus was there at his right shoulder a heartbeat later, so that all eight of the Americans stood before the group as the governor, his wife, and daughter stepped off the platform and right up to Rufus Graham. There the governor held out his hand, shaking it before he moved on to Bass.

As Titus released Mirabal’s grip, he had but a moment before the governor’s wife stepped up to him, her hand suspended between them.

“What’m I to do?” he whispered to Isaac, frantic.

“Bow your damned head, nigger!” Simms said in a husky whisper.

Nervously shoving his hairy chin against his chest, Scratch watched Manuela Mirabal give a short curtsy before releasing his hand and stepping on to do the same with Isaac. But the moment the woman moved on and relief began to wash over him, he discovered the pretty, cherry-eyed daughter stopping right in front of him, toe to toe, staring up at him as soft-eyed and wet-lipped as a young fawn.

“Bow again, goddammit!” Rufus reminded him with a growl.

As Manuela Mirabal moved by Isaac, he nudged Bass with an elbow. “This’un’s sweet on you, Titus, ol’ boy! Better give her hand a kiss too.”

On the other side Graham chuckled softly. “Just like them proper Frenchmen do in St. Louie!”

“Kiss her h-hand?”

“Do it!” Isaac ordered.

As instructed, Titus bowed his head and brought the small, smooth hand to his lips obediently, brushing it with his parched lips, embarrassed that his entire mouth and throat had just gone dry. Raising his head, he found Jacova’s eyes brazenly locked on his. Instead of immediately removing her hand from his once he had completed his bow, the girl held on to his hand as he straightened. Her mother reached out and gently nudged her young daughter, as if to remind Jacova she was to continue down the receiving line. Just as she was about to step aside, the young woman squeezed Bass’s hand, lingering for a heartbeat longer.

While she turned to present her hand to Isaac, Bass felt both ears growing hot beneath his long curls.

Barely able to breathe, Scratch found he couldn’t take his eyes off her—helpless as he studied the way Jacova held out her delicate fingers to Simms, how she curtsied politely, the way she spoke to Isaac as she furtively glanced at Titus. He suddenly realized just how quickly she pushed her limp hand into Isaac’s, allowed Simms to bow, then immediately yanked her hand away while she had let it linger in Bass’s grip.

Was he crazy? Or had she really sought to hang on to Bass until the very last moment they might have to share, the last moment they would have to touch, to gaze into one another’s eyes?

As he watched Jacova float back across the front of the room to rejoin her parents, Titus suddenly became aware of the hateful glare in the eyes of all those young soldiers arrayed just behind the governor, his wife, and daughter as the Mirabais stopped before Matthew. Mirabal motioned for Rosa to join her husband. While she shyly stepped to Kinkead’s side at the center of the sala, Bass noticed the governor’s daughter looking at him from beneath her long eyelashes.

“Maybeso that young’un’s got the idee to make herself your wife,” Rufus whispered, leaning into Bass’s shoulder.

With a reflex jerk Titus jabbed back with his elbow, planting it deep into Graham’s belly. Giving a noisy ooomph, Rufus stumbled back a step, snorting with laughter.

“What’s he saying now, Matthew?” Gray asked.

Kinkead translated in a whisper, “Says they’re gonna bring in the lamb and the calf now. I don’t figger there’s gonna be a empty belly in the whole house!”

At the far end of the room the crowd parted as four men stepped through the cordon, on their shoulders a large pewter platter atop which lay the roasted carcass of an entire lamb. Right behind them came four others, these carrying a roasted calf. Whistles of approval and cheers arose as the fragrance of the steaming meats washed over the room.

With his mouth already watering, Scratch had his knife halfway out of its scabbard before Kinkead locked his hand around Bass’s wrist.

“You’ll get your turn, pilgrim,” Matthew warned. “Let the women get their meat first.”

Suddenly shamed and remembering the long-ago social manners his mother had worked so hard to teach him, Bass dropped the knife back into its sheath. “I’m sorry, Matthew.”

With a wink the big man replied, “Don’t you need feel sorry, Titus. Folks like us, we ain’t got much call to show our proper manners what with the life we have in the mountains.”

When, if ever, had he gone and bowed to a gal … much less kissed a woman’s hand? But in the last few minutes, here in a foreign land, he had just done both! Right in front of a whole room filled with gawking folks watching him as his face grew hot and his eyes smarted with embarrassment.

This was all something so different, so completely new to him. Oh, to be sure, many of the women he’d known could be brazen in their own way, usually when he found himself alone with them. Amy Whistler, even Abigail, the Ohio River whore. And Marissa wasn’t shy at all about letting him know exactly what she had on her mind when she came sneaking out to where he had his blankets laid in her father’s barn.

Now, those Injun gals, Fawn and Pretty Water, they had never appeared to worry about the niceties of preliminaries nor concerned themselves with social appearances. Behind the dropped door of their lodges, neither had a problem showing Titus just what they wanted from him of a sexual nature. There was no clutter of polite manners to get in the way of man and woman taking what they needed most from one another.

So it struck him as all the more flattering that this young woman had made her thoughts abundantly clear through nothing more than that steamy look in her eyes and the way she gripped his hand until her mother demanded she move on down the line.

Through the early part of the evening Bass had danced one lively jota after another with a succession of young women brought up and introduced to him by Matthew and Rosa. There had been a Carmelita, a Maria, and a Linda, those three somehow rememberable among all the faceless others who came to sway at the end of his arms in that Mexican dance so reminding him of a country reel, each of those perfumed females smiling politely through their song, then turning away before he could escort them back to their side of the room.

“Don’t you know Jacova’s mama is gonna keep a close eye on that girl now, Scratch,” Kinkead warned hours later after the lamb and calf were no more than greasy platters heaped with bones, long after the musicians were beginning to tire and the room had grown unbearably warm from all the heated bodies pulsing to those most ancient rhythms of the courtship ritual.

Bass turned to Matthew. “Whose mama?”

“Jacova’s mama,” Kinkead chided. “The governor’s wife. It’s his daughter you gone and got all moon-eyed over.”

“I ain’t moon-eyed,” he snapped.

“Well, she sure as hell is,” Matthew snorted with a wink. “Best you just forget that girl afore she spells trouble for you.”

“I ain’t about to do a thing to make for trouble—”

“G’won and set your eye on one of them others,” Kinkead suggested. “Like Hatcher there.”

“Jack ain’t about to sit out a dance!” Caleb gushed as he came up, a clay cup in one hand, a rib he was tearing meat from in the other.

“See how I got him a good woman to take a whirl with and he’s a happy man, Titus,” Matthew boasted. “Now, whyn’t you do the same and forget that Jacova Mirabal.”

“I ain’t thinking ’bout Jacova!”

Kinkead jabbed an elbow in Caleb’s side. “Looks to me you gone all soft-brained over her.”

“Then bring me ’Nother girl to dance with or leave me be!” Bass grumbled, his forehead hot as all-night coals—already sensing the long evening’s potent liquor. “To hell with what’s right and what’s wrong with these here Mex folks. Can’t think of nothing better to do than drink till my own feet don’t hold me up no more.”

“You’re damned near that now!” Rufus said as he came back to the group at the end of a song.

“That Hatcher,” Bass said, watching Jack standing near the center of the floor, holding both hands with a comely maid until the next song started. Just beyond them stood at least a dozen young Mexican men glaring at the lone American.

“Tell me, Matthew—she a gal gonna get Jack in trouble?”

“Nawww, she’s the sort gonna get us all in trouble,” Kinkead replied. “That’s Consuela Guerrero.”

Bass licked his lips, thinking how lucky Hatcher was to be getting all that attention from such an alluring woman arrayed in black lace stretched tight against her dark-brown skin. “She’s a purty one.”

Matthew clucked, “Her husband was the officer what got hisself killed by the Comanche when we brung back the women.”

“That’s her?”

Kinkead nodded. “The widow Guerrero her own self.”

“What’s she doing here after her husband got hisself kill’t?” Caleb asked.

“Why, lookit there—the widder is wearin’ black!” Elbridge said, patting the beginnings of a potbelly slipping over his belt.

“Wonder if she’s gonna be wearing black all night?” Bass snorted with a grin. “Or if she’s gonna shuck herself outta them widder’s weeds for Mad Jack Hatcher!”

In a flurry the following moment, Kinkead pushed away from the rest of them, leaving his Rosa behind as he warned, “Jack ain’t never gonna know now!”

Their eyes followed Matthew into the crowd, finding the dancers at the center of the floor suddenly shoving backward, getting themselves as far as possible from the spot where Hatcher stood imprisoned by two large Mexican soldiers as Lieutenant Jorge Ramirez yanked the widow away from the American, whirling her back by her arm. She screamed, swinging out with her flat hand. But the lieutenant caught it, held it prisoner while he shouted at her and the room grew hushed, the music ending in discordant notes.

“What’s he saying to her, Kinkead!” Hatcher bellowed, twisting this way and that, trying to free himself from the two men who had him stymied.

“Telling her she ain’t got no business dancing with you—not when her husband is in his grave because of us gringos.”

Every set of American eyes snapped to Ramirez as the trappers came to a stop arrayed on either side of Matthew Kinkead.

His eyes narrowing into a feral wildness, Jack echoed, “He said her husband’s dead ’cause … ’cause of us?”

“Shit!” Caleb growled. “The rest of them li’l wooden soldiers be nothing more’n buzzard bait right now if’n it weren’t for the likes of us!”

Jack tried again to twist away from his handlers. “Tell these sumbitches let me go!”

Matthew spat some of the foreign tongue at the soldiers being joined by young men in civilian clothing. In their sashes were jammed pistols, and from their wide belts hung stiletto knives and short swords.

The lieutenant howled with a derisive laugh, then snarled something in reply.

“Caleb—get these greasers off’n me!”

Speaking low, Caleb said, “Elbridge, you and Scratch come with me to get Hatcher free.”

“That’ll start the dance!” Gray said.

“Fight now, or fight later,” Caleb snapped. “We damn well ain’t gonna show the white feather to these here greasers tonight!”

With those words still in the air, the trio descended upon the two soldiers so suddenly, the Mexicans let go of their prisoner on reflex to reach for their weapons. Hatcher whirled on one of them like a wild blur, his bony fist cracking into the soldier’s jaw like a twenty-pound sledge colliding with solid hickory. Bass was right behind Hatcher as Elbridge and Caleb leaped into the second soldier.

In the next heartbeat Matthew and the others surged past Titus in a blur, lunging toward bystanders on all sides the moment the Mexican males jumped out of the crowd to resist the gringo attack. Women screeched. Furniture was overturned and crumbled. Clay and glass shattered against walls and the hard earth floor. Men grunted as bodies slammed together.

Isaac was suddenly there beside Bass, grabbing Scratch’s hand—shoving into it a thick piece of a broken chair that felt as big as a horse’s leg. An instant later the stocky Simms turned aside, slapping another chair leg into Rufus’s hand. That done, Isaac began swinging two chair legs over his own head as he hurtled toward the worst of the fighting.

First one, and a second, then more heads cracked loudly in that noisy room as the three of them cleared a swath right into the soldiers and their civilian friends. Joining Hatcher and the rest, they kept swinging their crude weapons as they retreated to the center of the room, eyes quickly darting this way and that. The trappers crowded back together, each of them facing out like herd bulls protectively surrounding the cows and calves against a pack of wolves snarling, yapping, dodging in to slash at a hamstring.

“No guns!” the governor bellowed in English from the platform.

His futile warning was hardly heard above the frightening clamor as the soldiers warily inched toward the ring of eight Americans, their pistols and knives, swords and shards of broken glass, held before them as they closed the noose.

“No guns, señores!” Mirabal warned again, louder still, as the Mexicans came within striking distance.

“Get ready for the nut-cutting, boys!” Hatcher bawled, his arm slowly waving his own knife back and forth as he went into a crouch, preparing for the coming clash. He took a quick feint toward the closest adversary—getting the soldier to leap back—then Jack rocked onto the balls of his feet, body swaying side to side as he laughed.

Bass knew Hatcher was laughing at death.

Hell, he could smell that stinking odor of death all around them in this room.

Suddenly certain he was about to die.

Instead of making a life for himself within the bosom of the high and lonely places, he was going to shed his life’s blood here on this clay floor in a foreign land, cut to ribbons by greasers, perhaps with a Mexican bullet in his heart.

Where was his mother’s god now?

Why would any god leave him to die after he’d somehow survived those long years rotting in St. Louis, lasted long enough to make it to the Rocky Mountains on his own hook? Why would a god that ruled from the heavens above abandon him now after the Arapaho had tried twice to kill him? Blackfeet done their best too….

So he was to die among these Christian people whose eyes were filled with such hate.