by Lyle Brandt
If Javier was careless in performance of his duties, it might even get him killed.
* * *
* * *
Kuruk of the Mescaleros flexed his muscles as he sat astride his unshod blood bay pony, challenging his recent minor wounds to cause him pain. They did not disappoint him, but the sting and ache were manageable, nothing that would alter the expression on his stoic face.
Kuruk mourned in his silent way for Goyathlay, the yawner, and for slippery Bimisi, who had fallen and lay buried now where no one from their tribe would ever find their bones. Though neither man had passed through wedding ceremonies, both left young women behind to mourn their loss—Lilue, “hawk singing,” for Goyathlay; Onawa, “wide awake,” who must now wait in vain for affable Bimisi to return. Kuruk had shed no tears for either warrior, but he felt an empty place beneath his ribs and longed for vengeance if the spirits granted him that opportunity.
The captive mexicano, riding slouched between himself and Nantan Lupan, would be first to pay that price in blood if Kuruk had his way. Should he betray the team and fail in guiding them to reach their destination, it would be Kuruk’s pleasure to leave him in the desert as coyote food, but not before the prisoner had suffered to his limit of endurance.
For now, Kuruk could do no more than wait. He had agreed with his selected tribesmen, those who still survived, to serve as Clint Parnell required and earn their stipulated pay. The next time they faced battle, though—and he could feel it drawing nearer, almost smelled it on a faint breeze blowing from the west, Kuruk would sate his hunger for revenge.
And if he ever saw his village once again, he just might call on nubile Lilue, console her in her grief.
Or maybe Onawa.
He glanced beyond the prisoner toward Nantan Lupan, riding his cremello pony. While his father was their village chief, Gray Wolf was younger by two summers than Kuruk and thus had not been chosen as their party’s leader when selecting volunteers to cross the Rio Grande. So far, he had done well in combat and would doubtless make a fair successor to his father when that time came, but this trip was meant to be his trial by fire.
The last survivor of the five Apaches who’d begun that journey, Itza-chu, lagged back behind his tribesmen, ready just in case the mexicano tried to run amok and somehow save himself. That was impossible, Kuruk knew, but a man in desperation sometimes lost his mind and threw his life away.
Watching their prisoner, smelling the sour reek of alcohol that emanated from his pores, Kuruk found himself wishing that the man would make a move, but he quickly suppressed that feeling. If the captive did not keep his word and lead them to the stolen herd of horses, then the ragtag posse would be forced to start again and seek some other means of finding them.
Meanwhile, their enemies were doubtless scouring the arid countryside, perhaps had found their trail already and would be advancing to attack them.
Kuruk had no doubts about his fate if they were overtaken and surrounded by the federales. Soldiers would not even try to capture living Mescaleros, vying for the honor of a scalp lifted that would put pesos in the slayer’s purse. Their gringo leader and the mexicano twins might be arrested, if they were disarmed, disabled, but considering the women’s beauty, Kuruk thought it might be better for them if they sacrificed themselves.
Although Kuruk had never lived in Mexico and rarely traveled there, he knew that so-called soldiers working for Porfirio Díaz were known for wanton cruelty toward rural villagers and to their females in particular. How would they treat a pair of mexicanas from el norte caught trespassing in Chihuahua with a makeshift posse of bandidos and Apaches? If they managed to survive the first encounter, Kuruk reckoned they would likely wind up in some low-rent brothel where Díaz’s flunkies pocketed the cash and women suffered through their last years in a kind of wasting death.
The warrior shot another cold glance toward the prisoner who rode beside him.
That one, he could rest assured, was definitely living through the final hours of his miserable life. Kuruk himself would gladly see to that.
* * *
* * *
The sun’s position overhead told Clint Parnell that it was noon or thereabouts. He checked that guess against his pocket watch and saw that he was right. The time read seven past twelve on the cusp of afternoon.
He tugged back gently on his gelding’s reins, turning the dapple gray enough to let the three riders behind him close the gap. Looking past Nantan Lupan toward Jesús Zarita, he demanded, “How much farther?”
Glancing up from where his wrists were tied around his saddle horn, the captive shrugged. Said, “Eight or nine more miles. I can’t be sure. I think no one has ever measured it.”
“We’re talking now about the canyon with the horses,” Parnell sought to clarify. “Not Villa’s camp?”
“Es correcto,” said Zarita. “But there will be guards on watch, you realize? The animals are not left unattended.”
“Do you know how many guards?” Clint asked.
“It varies. More at night than in the daytime. Three or four when there is light, and double that after sundown.”
Clint did the calculations in his head. Traveling at their present pace, eight miles should take them roughly two hours; tack on another thirty, maybe forty minutes for a nine-mile ride at walking speed. That meant, if Jesús was not lying through his teeth, arrival near the box canyon sometime between the hours of three and four o’clock. The sky would still be clear and bright by then, but Parnell reckoned darkness would serve better for the job he had in mind.
Sundown meant twice as many guards—again if he could trust Zarita—call it six or eight villistas standing watch. That gave Clint’s team the very slimmest of advantages, and he preferred striking under the cover of nightfall if possible.
A raid in darkness meant that most of Villa’s pistoleros would be sitting down to supper in their main camp, wherever that was, relaxed and maybe with their mounts unsaddled for the evening. If shooting was required to deal with any guards watching the stolen herd, an armed response from Villa’s camp should be disorganized, his men at least briefly disoriented in the dark. Before first reinforcements reached the canyon, Parnell hoped to have a firm defensive ring established and repel them.
Failing that, he might have to stampede the herd directly through the bandoleros who had stolen them, and if he lost some in the process, it was preferable to surrendering the lot of them. Whatever happened after that was anybody’s guess.
“You understand what’s waiting for you if you’ve lied to us? If you have any tricks in mind?”
Zarita bobbed his head, avoided meeting Parnell’s gaze. “Sí, entiendo,” he replied.
“I hope so,” Clint advised. “Because you’re out of second chances here.”
With that, Clint rode back to the straggling column’s point position, eyes scanning the landscape for potential danger. He already had a plan in mind to camp somewhere close by the canyon where Aguirre’s stolen horses were confined, assuming they could find it acting on directions from their prisoner.
If they did not . . .
In that case, Clint would rid them of Jesús Zarita and attempt to spot the herd by other means. It required slipping someone into the outlaws’ base camp after dark, one of his three vaqueros who could pass a casual inspection—that is if they could locate the camp itself.
And after that?
Parnell would simply have to keep his fingers crossed, or maybe take a fling at trying unaccustomed prayer.
With that in mind, he pictured Sonya and Dolores volunteering for the mission, hoping they could get past Pancho Villa’s guards and mingle with the normal camp followers who attached themselves to such outfits. Both male and female, those nomadic souls traditionally serviced needs of armies on the move, providing goods and services not normally available, including meals and liquor, laundry, nursing, sutlery, and
sexual favors. If they tried that, and never mind how they pleaded with him, Clint was dead set on refusing them.
His boss’s daughters had already taken risks enough, and still more lay ahead for them, without jumping from a skillet, landing smack-dab in the middle of a raging fire.
Whatever sins he carried on his back already, Parnell knew he could not live with that.
* * *
* * *
Jesús Zarita risked a glance skyward, no sudden moves to spook his Mescalero guards and cause them to lash out at him with knives or hatchets. He had never been much good at telling time from the position of the sun, but he was certain that they must have traveled roughly half the distance from the point where he was captured to the spot where Villa’s stolen herd was kept secure from prying eyes.
Betraying Villa did not haunt Zarita, since he reckoned that he had no choice. He feared discovery and punishment, but his preeminent concern was living long enough to make his getaway, first escaping from the posse that had killed Enrique Rocha, then putting sufficient distance between Villa and himself to guarantee that he was never found and brought to book.
Whatever else came out of this bizarre experience, Zarita hoped to make it through alive and in one piece.
That would require a weapon, and Zarita did not like his odds for laying hands on one with nine armed enemies surrounding him, each one clearly prepared to kill him if he made a move. In normal circumstances, Jesús might have thought the twin sisters least dangerous among his captors, but he had noted the way they glared at him, as if they had a score to settle that required spilling Zarita’s blood. He guessed that they were from the rancho Villa’s men had raided in New Mexico, but it was no good telling them that he had missed that action, left behind with others in Chihuahua after Villa chose his best men for the job.
At first, Jesús had viewed that as one time when being a slovenly borracho worked to his advantage, but it obviously did him no good now. Either his captors pegged him as a liar when he truthfully denied participation in the raid, or else they did not care. Whoever rode with Pancho Villa was their enemy, and there was no forgiveness in their stony hearts.
Zarita knew he must escape.
But how?
His best hope would be when most of them left him unattended, slinking off to liberate the horses Villa had obtained on his foray into el norte. Or if they returned, confirming that his information was correct, the gringo might release him.
No.
On second thought that seemed improbable. His captors would not trust him on the loose, afraid that he would rush to Villa’s camp and warn his jefe of the raid impending or in progress. The alternative, leaving Zarita bound for Pancho to discover him when it was done, held no appeal, since it would surely mean his death at Villa’s hands.
It was escape or nothing, then.
That was a daunting prospect with his hands bound, possibly his feet as well once he’d dismounted, and no cutting tool to free his hands. A rough stone might suffice, but that depended on where he was left, and scraping at the rawhide strips until they separated might take hours. If discovered in the process by whichever of his captors stayed behind to guard him, he would certainly be slain—and if his killer proved to be one of the Mescaleros, he would probably be tortured in the process.
Something else, then.
Like the cutthroat razor hidden in his boot.
It was a last resort in case of trouble, backing up his rifle, six-gun, and the folding knife that had been taken from his pocket. Zarita had never actually used it, but he kept the blade well stropped, folded inside its handle, shoved inside the stocking on his right foot with a hole worn in its tip from his big toenail. It remained snugly in place after he had been searched twice, safely out of sight.
The problem, once again: Zarita could not reach it while his hands were bound behind his back.
He would think of something when the time came, and would do his utmost to succeed.
It was too bad, Jesús thought, that his best never seemed to account for much. But he was motivated now, by fear and mounting anger toward the strangers who had killed Enrique Rocha and forced Jesús to confront his darkest fear of painful death.
On rare occasions when he had considered it before, Zarita thought that he would likely die from guzzling down too much tequila in too short a time, or maybe end his life with cataclysmic pain while rutting in a harlot’s crib. Perhaps a horse would throw him, snap his neck, or he might take a bullet in a federale ambush. If worse came to worst, he might even be hanged or face a military firing squad.
But to be bound and butchered by a Mescalero or one of the gringo’s riders? That was unacceptable.
Slowly, his mind began to work out means for getting to the razor in his boot when it was time. Within another mile, Zarita had begun to think that he might just surprise them all.
* * *
* * *
Dolores Aguirre sipped water out of her canteen. It was tepid and had an earthy flavor to it, but fulfilled its necessary function, moistening her tongue and throat. Above her a relentless sun beat down on the Chihuahua flats, while up ahead, a range of rugged hills shimmered behind the insubstantial veil of a mirage.
She hoped that they would find the canyon that contained her father’s horses soon. Clint planned to camp before sundown, when he judged they were near enough, sending the Mescalero called Itza-chu off ahead to scout the land and find out whether their prisoner had spoken truthfully or lied in a misguided effort to protect himself from harm.
If so, he had misjudged his situation fatally.
As if reading her sister’s mind—a trait common with twins—Sonya asked, “Do you think we’ll find them where he said?”
Dolores shrugged. Replied, “I hope so. We’ve been at this long enough.”
“It is not over yet, hermana.”
“No.”
Sonya’s reminder was unnecessary. Even if Great Hawk found the horses and reported back on their location, bloody work still lay ahead. There would be guards watching the herd, and they must be disposed of, which undoubtedly meant killing them. Add more lives to the butcher’s bill of their excursion into Mexico, and if the sounds of battle reached as far as Pancho Villa’s base camp, then . . .
More fighting, with their party or whatever still remained of it facing a force much larger than their own. Dolores pictured a last stand, like that of Texicans penned up inside the Alamo nearly three quarters of a century ago, one hundred eighty-nine of them facing two thousand soldiers under General Antonio López de Santa Anna, riding to suppress rebellion in what then was known as Texas Mexicano. Santa Anna’s men had slaughtered every rebel in the mission-fortress outside San Antonio, then faced defeat at San Jacinto one month later.
But while Santa Anna had rebounded from that beating to become dictator of all Mexico, then to win election as el presidente of the Mexican Republic, there would likely be no happy ending for the members of Dolores’s party.
She wondered now whether she would ever see her home or father’s face again. If not, at least she would be spared the vision of him grieving over her, over her twin, presiding over services beside two empty graves.
There would be nothing left for transport to New Mexico if they were slaughtered in Chihuahua, no appeal through diplomatic channels to Porfirio Díaz or to the U.S. Department of State. With his last two children gone, what would remain for Papa Alejandro on the hacienda he had built through labor spanning years, destroyed within the space of one short week?
Nothing.
Still, she could not turn back now. Her twin would be the first one to condemn her for a show of weakness, and Dolores dared not face her father at their hacienda, trying to explain why she’d left Sonya in Chihuahua with Clint and the others, running from a fight that could have saved their family.
As for the odds of that succeeding, she refuse
d to think about it on the eve of a battle that might leave them all dead, their bones bleaching underneath the desert sun. She might find it impossible to hold positive thoughts, but on the other hand, preoccupation with defeat made her feel guilty, as if she had cursed their effort with a bruja’s evil charm.
Dolores would remain and see what happened next because she had no other choice. She’d made a promise to her father, to Eduardo’s memory, and to her comrades who had sacrificed their lives in Mexico so far.
She simply had no other choice.
* * *
* * *
Southeast of Ascensión
“¡Más federales, jefe!” said Alfonso Soberon, reining his rose-gray gelding to a halt and pointing northward, toward low-lying hills where horsemen clad in khaki had appeared.
Zapata saw the troops, some fifty of them, still the best part of a mile away, and snarled a bitter curse. Turning his sorrel back, he barked an order at the men strung out behind him.
“¡Retiren!”
They began retreating as commanded, asked no questions, doubling back in the direction of a straggling line of Rocky Mountain white pine that the farthest back in line had barely cleared so far. They did not panic, but all sensed their leader’s urgency and the impending threat of contact with Díaz’s troops.
Once relatively safe inside the cover of the trees, it came down to a waiting game. Zapata and his teniente had to watch the federales, see if they were riding due south and, more vitally, if they had glimpsed the party of guerrillas up ahead of them. They had Zapata’s team outnumbered by a dozen, give or take, and while Emiliano would have played those odds in other circumstances, a pitched battle at that moment would have spelled disaster for his mission to Ascensión.