Shortly before midnight he reached Catacamas. It was a long, narrow town that sprawled up the hill-slopes on either side of the high canyon. Commanding the district was a high-stacked copper smelter, blooming orange smoke into the night sky far up on the mountainside. At the town livery stable he swapped his exhausted mount for a fresh horse and rode on down the long canyon, without having seen a single soldier: he had avoided the garrison purposefully. Colonel Sanderos must not learn that he had passed this way. Going down the road he had a chance to study the massed shadow of the forest that grew thick and deep on either side of the road; beyond the mile-wide swath of timber lifted steep limestone walls. Colonel Sanderos had planned well. Santana could not but come up through this canyon; there was no other way to reach Catacamas, unless Santana circled completely around the end of the mountain range. That would require an additional day’s march, and would leave Santana’s rear unguarded. Medina’s jaw crept forward to lie in a long, level shelf. He broke out of the wide mouth of the canyon, boulder-strewn: here would lie in wait the division that would form the bottom of Sanderos’ bottle. Ten thousand men could hide unseen in those rocks. His face took a pale grim cast and he plunged on through the night. Next to his chest he carried the lives of sixteen thousand men. He could not say why he had written out the message; he had long ago learned to trust his instinct.
The glow of a thousand fires filled the sky ahead of him. There was no longer any need for concealment; Carlos Santana knew by now that he was under constant surveillance. The campaign was no longer a matter of striking, running, hiding; troops were now massed on the plain for desperate and final battle.
At four o’clock, just before first light, Medina topped a hummock and saw the vast camp laid out before him, two miles away under the stars. He started down the hill and a voice, nervous and high-pitched, arrested him:
“¡Alto! ¿Quien es? ¡Alto - Alto!”
Medina fought the horse down and sat, his uniform silhouetted against the sky behind him. He reached into his tunic for the letter he had written, and said: “Yo soy—”
The sentry’s bullet cut off his voice and sent him thrashing from the saddle. He hit the earth and lay crumpled. The sentry ran up to him, slamming the breechblock of his rifle home, looming up in the night; the muzzle faced Medina like a tunnel. Weak dizziness flowed into him. He raised the document in his hand and saw the ragged bullet hole cut through it; he waved it at the sentry and whispered, “On your life, soldado, take this to Carlos Santana. You must not fail.”
The sentry stammered and kept his rifle pointed at Medina. Medina fell back loosely. He breathed two hoarse words: “Viva Santana.” The paper fluttered from his slack hand.
Seventeen
Form or five miles from Catacamas, on the flank of a grassy hill, there was a little nameless village surmounted by a church with double domes. Beside the church grew a little dusty garden where Elena walked slowly, careful not to tread on a precious green plant. The early morning sun cast a long shadow of her figure, on her firm shoulders and the scarf over her head. Out in the road stood two horses. Jeremy Six was standing by, holding the horses, talking quietly with Holly Moore. They were some distance away and Elena could not hear what they said. All three of them were waiting.
Carlos Santana stepped out of the church, putting on his hat. His eyes found Elena and he came to her; he put his big hands on her shoulders and she felt the strength of his glance. Fear was a knot of pain inside her but what Elena said to him was, “Fight well, mi Corazon.” She folded herself against his chest within the circle of his arms. He spoke softly:
“Will you always stand by me, querida?”
“Always.”
“I need that,” he said, and turned her out of his arms. They walked slowly to the horses and the padre came out onto the church steps, his brown Franciscan robe flapping gently in the stir of wind. “God be with you,” the padre said to Carlos Santana.
Santana took his reins from Six and mounted. “Guard them well, padre.”
Elena stood by his knee and watched Six climb asaddle and say something quiet to Holly. Holly grinned up at Six and gently slapped the back of his hand. Elena stepped back and shaded her eyes and said, “Go with God, my darling.”
Santana dipped his head to her in a tender and gallant gesture. Elena turned back to the church steps and stood between Holly and the padre, and watched the two horsemen drum away in a thin haze of dust. The padre said, “You will feel more comfortable in the rectory. It is cooler there.”
Down the road half a mile Santana said to Six, “Sometimes it is the worst for those we leave behind.” He withdrew a crumpled, bloodstained paper from his pocket, smoothed it out, and read Rodrigo Medina’s brief message for perhaps the tenth time since it had reached him at dawn. “These cruel ironies are what turn the taste of everything sour on the tongue,” he said. “Rodrigo stood among the finest of men.”
He passed the document to Six, who glanced at it for the second time. They rode past a chicken coop attached to a tumbledown shack. In front of it a sagging bovine woman stared at them through black strands of disheveled hair, holding a tattered five-year-old girl by the hand. A rooster strutted across the dusty yard and someone snored within the shack. Farther away a dog was barking monotonously. The woman’s unblinking stare was unfriendly and that made Santana smile ruefully; when they had ridden beyond earshot he said to Six, “It is for her that I send men to die in battle.”
They crossed a barren mile and crested a hill, and saw Santana’s thousands sprawled across the road before them in line of march, so many tiny figures going toward Catacamas. Boots and huaraches and moccasins and horse-hooves raised a choking pall of dry dust that bannered behind the army for a full mile. Horsemen shouted hoarsely at men afoot. In the advance company rumbled the Gatling carriage. Wagons trailed along in the vanguard – buckboards and Studebakers, freight wagons and heavy-wheeled oxcarts. There was no precision in the marching and no uniformity of equipment.
Santana said, “It all belongs to me, doesn’t it? I suppose I ought to feel pride.”
“But you don’t?”
“Until this morning I had not made confession in a church for more months than I can remember. All that time I have been hiding in the hills, far from the house of God. I wish this thing were over and the dead buried.”
Six folded Medina’s letter and handed it back. “What are you going to do about that?”
There was no immediate reply. Six said, “You can’t ram right into Catacamas. He’ll box you in and cut you to pieces.”
Santana smiled shrewdly. “You do not speak with an idle air, amigo. If you have an idea in your head I will welcome it.”
Six began to speak. They rode alongside the plodding army where dust got onto their skin, inside the fiber of their clothes; it caked against their eyelids and gritted on their teeth. When they reached the head of the long column Santana raised his canteen and proffered it. Six took a sip, handed it back, and watched the big rebel leader palm off the neck of the canteen and drink lustily. Santana capped the canteen and hung it on his saddle, and said, “You are as clever as Vargas himself. You’re one gran caballero, amigo.”
It was then five-forty in the morning. At half past three that afternoon, with thunderheads threatening rain - the shadow-streaks of falling rain were already visible beyond the mountains - Colonel Sanderos stood frowning on the roof of the town hall in Catacamas. From here he could see the whole town and most of the wide canyon below. Nothing had come up through that long green gap except a few farm carts, half a dozen odd produce wagons, and not more than fifteen farmers, who had drifted into town one or two at a time at intervals during the day. All of them had been stopped and questioned; all of them had said they had seen Santana’s army beyond the canyon; none of them could tell what he was doing. Colonel Sanderos’ own scouts kept him informed: Santana’s rebel army sat just beyond the mouth of the canyon. It appeared to be waiting for something. The rain, perhaps, or dark
ness. Colonel Sanderos cracked his knuckles and went through the trapdoor and down the stairs into the square central courtyard of the town hall. His staff officers were gathered here, standing around in little knots of conversation and trying to appear less nervous than they were.
In the street outside a horse rattled to a stop and a young soldier came inside to report that the Governor’s coach had been sighted a few miles up the Guadalquivir road, coming this way with an escort of troops. Sanderos cursed under his breath and went back up to the roof for another puzzled look down the silent canyon. The sky was leaden. The Governor’s coach rolled in its heavy stately fashion down the main street of town and drew to a halt before the town hall. Colonel Sanderos went down to meet it and tried not to show his displeasure when he gave the Governor his reluctant welcome. The Governor swept inside and waddled into the alcalde’s office, which Colonel Sanderos had commandeered for himself since it was the largest office in the building. The Governor assumed a proprietary air, wedged himself down into the alcalde’s big chair, and glowered up at Sanderos. “I expected that you would have crushed them by now.”
“They have not moved, Excellency. Perhaps they wait for night.”
“The trap will work as well in the dark as in the light.”
“Of course,” Sanderos said.
“I have come here because all our force is committed here. I stand or fall by what happens here in the next few hours, Colonel.”
“There is no question of falling, Excellency.”
“No, no, of course not.”
“It might be dangerous here for you.”
“I rely on you for corporal protection, Colonel.”
“I will post a guard platoon,” Sanderos said, and bowed himself out of the room. Left alone, the fat Governor began to drum on the desk with his fingernails.
In the upper end of town, the end that faced Guadalquivir, a high-sided wagon rumbled unhurriedly into town, drawn by four scrawny mules. Its driver, a squat man with a seamed brown face, rode a saddle on the off-wheel mule. The loyalist guard detail halted the wagon and a soldier got up on the rim of the back wheel to peer down into the load. All he saw was the top of a load of hay. He climbed down and the corporal-in-charge waved the wagon on. The driver nodded subserviently and cracked his lash over the mules. The corporal of the guard went back and sat down and picked up his beer bottle. Inspections at this end of town were casual; no one expected the rebels to come this way: all one had to do was climb up the copper smelter, and one could see the whole of Santana’s army camped beyond the mouth of the canyon. The corporal drank his beer and with a bored glance watched the big wagon lumber down-street.
Ybarra, the driver, turned the mules into a side street and drove the wagon slowly down a half-deserted thoroughfare that ran parallel to the main street. He whistled unconcernedly. As he approached the lower end of town he had opportunity to take a look at the barricades and troops massed across the head of the canyon, just at the lower end of town. The barricade ran across the narrow throat of the canyon, piled high with sandbags, rocks, lumber. At its center was a narrow open passage which could quickly be sealed by ramming into it a fully-loaded wagon that stood ready for just that purpose. On the town-side the barricade was so crowded with soldiers that it hardly seemed they would each have room to fire over the top without elbowing each other down. The better part of a brigade of men seemed to be clustered there. A few men sat on top of the barricade looking down the canyon. They were smoking and talking, hoisting their canteens, laughing and cursing.
Every detail of what he saw was recorded indelibly in Ybarra’s memory; but to all outward appearances he only gave the barricade an ordinary curious and cursory glance before he cracked his whip and, still casually whistling, turned the mules into the open gate of a corral. A powerfully muscled Negro came from within the adjacent warehouse to hold the gate open while Ybarra tooled the wagon into the corral.
Jericho Stride let down the bar across the gate and glanced casually both ways along the street, and turned to give Ybarra a hand unhitching the mules. The wagon now stood with its tailgate almost butt-against the wide doors of the warehouse. Two muscular men, both wearing thick dark moustaches, came out of the warehouse and helped roll the wagon half-inside the building. Then the two men with moustaches went out and sat down inside the corral with their backs to the warehouse wall. To all intents they seemed to be enjoying a siesta; but under the lowered hatbrims their eyes gleamed alertly, and each of them carried a rifle and a brace of loaded revolvers underneath the concealment of his enfolding sarape, as well as a number of packed charges of giant powder, fused and capped.
Inside the warehouse the light was poor. Jericho Stride glanced around and said, “All right, everybody out.”
An eruption heaved upward against the hay inside the wagon. Two men pushed up, stood straight, and batted straw from their shirts and faces: Jeremy Six and Steve Lament. Ybarra let down the wagon tailgate; and in the dimness of the big room, the four men grinned tautly at each other. Six said, “All set, Jericho?”
“Everybody’s posted. I thought for a minute the soldier-boys were about to find the rifles we’d hid under our load of chili peppers, but we got through.” He looked at the big wagon and shook his head. “My God, you mean to say those spavined mules hauled this outfit all the way around the mountain in this short a time?”
“We had ten teams of horses hitched to it until about three miles back,” Six said. “Give us a hand here.”
Ybarra and Jericho Stride climbed up onto the wagon and immediately the four men set to work with pitchforks, tossing the loose hay out of the wagon. When they were finished, the wagonbed lay scattered darkly with the dismantled parts of the Gatling gun, its carriage and ammunition.
“Now,” said Jericho Stride, “that’s a sweet sight.”
Ybarra flexed his thick-rippling muscles and bent with Six to lift the gun down. When all the parts were on the floor, Ybarra said, “If we roll the gun out the front door, we will have a field of fire across almost the whole barricade. This warehouse was well chosen.”
Steve Lament said, “What time is it?”
Jericho Stride drew a chained watch from his pocket, clicked the cover open, and said, “Three forty.”
“Twenty minutes,” said Six. “We’re cutting it pretty fine. Let’s get to work.”
For a while it was not clear whether they would make it in time. With quick deftness, Six and Lament set about putting together the gun-carriage, pinning the wheels onto the axles, mounting the gun; while Jericho Stride stood guard at the door with a rifle, and Ybarra moved the heavy ammunition tins one by one to the door, where they would be within easy reach of the gunner once they rolled the weapon outside.
During those final minutes ticking toward four o’clock, the rain moved steadily closer to Catacamas. At the far end of the canyon, unseen by the loyalist troops, scores of men were filtering through the rocks, carrying hastily-manufactured charges of blasting powder. Across the town from where Six and his crew worked at the gun, a pair of men climbed into a loft, each carrying three repeating rifles and several bandoliers of ammunition. From the two loft windows they could command the left end of the barricade – the end that would be hidden by buildings from the Gatling gun.
Struggling under a heavy load of equipment, a thin young man climbed into the bell tower of the town hall. No one would have believed he had been able to pass the three-score officers who milled the rooms and corridors of the town hall, which had been commandeered by the army as nerve center for the defense of Catacamas. Yet the young man had not been discovered. Now, entering the bell tower, he carefully closed the door behind him and wedged a heavy timber against it. He moved to the opening that faced the canyon, keeping close to the pillar to avoid being seen from outside. Methodically he laid out his equipment below the sill of the oval opening: A bucket half-full of water, several rags, a rifle ramrod, bandoliers and boxes of ammunition, each cartridge meticulously hand-loaded
for a precise charge of powder; a metal rod, perhaps twenty inches long, with a sharp point at one end and a U-shaped notch at the other; five sticks of blasting powder, capped and fused; and a long-barreled Sharps rifle, caliber .38-56, with its caliper sights adjustable for ranges up to eleven hundred yards. This thin young man was the best marksman of the sixteen thousand in Santana’s army.
He took out the pocket watch that had been issued him for today s mission, set it on the floor with its lid open, and opened all his ammunition boxes. He took a small oil can from his pocket, uncapped it and set it beside the watch; taking out a small cloth patch from another pocket, he dipped it in the oil, put it on the end of his ramrod, and pushed it through the bore of the Sharps from muzzle to breech. Then he picked up the forked metal rod. He sat down on the floor so that he could see out over the parapet formed by the sill of the bell-opening. The bell itself hung silent overhead. From here he could see far over the heads of the soldiers lining the barricade: he could see, with his keen young eyes, the shapes of individual trees a thousand yards away in the forests that lined each side of the empty road leading down to the foot of the canyon. Here and there among those trees he made out the shape of a soldier.
His thin steady hand set the point of the forked metal rod firmly into the adobe floor. He rested the upper end against the sill while he took a piece of charcoal and blackened the muzzle of the rifle to prevent it from reflecting light. A cartridge slid smoothly into the oiled breech of the long-barreled weapon. He closed the finger lever, set the hammer on full cock, flipped up the tang sight, and rested the forepiece of the rifle in the U-shaped notch of the upright rod. Nestling the buttstock into his thin shoulder, he sat calmly, waiting. A glance at the watch told him it was four minutes until four.
Three minutes until four was the reading of Jericho Stride s watch when he snapped it shut and called impatiently to the others: ‘‘Hurry up, damn it.”
Marshal Jeremy Six #8 Page 13