He had it buried until it would sink no farther.
The soldier tried jerking away, tried flinging Bass to the side, but the American clung there like a bloated tick to the hump of the herd bull.
Stumbling to the side a step, the Mexican nonetheless swung his knife downward at McAfferty. Missed. Then yanked his huge knife back into the air to try it again.
Bass’s arm pistoned only enough to free his knife from the enemy’s chest before he jabbed its razor point between another pair of ribs, feeling the warmth ooze over the back of his hand as he twisted the skinning blade this time, working it side to side through the muscle, slashing it on into the man’s bellows.
Again from the corner of his eye Scratch watched that huge right arm swing up and down toward McAfferty—realizing too late that the lieutenant’s target was not the white-head. The Mexican was arching his knife back at the naked tormentor plastered on his back. Too late—
“Arrrghghgh!”
The pain grew hot as the huge flat blade plunged into the meat of his right thigh, close to the hip.
So much pain that Bass almost went faint, sensing his damp, sweaty grip loosening around the Mexican’s neck. Feeling his hand releasing the warm, slick handle of his skinning knife.
“Asa!” Titus cried out desperately as he watched the muscular Mexican yank the knife out of his leg and cock it into the air for a second plunge.
At his call McAfferty whirled in a crouch no more than three feet from the sergeant and immediately raked his left arm to the side before him. The dull oil-blued metal of the tomahawk blade slashed through the Mexican’s flesh, which gaped like a bloody mouth opening with bright-red berry juice the way Mexican women stain their own lips with the seductive red of the alegría, that honed blade cleaving the entire width of the man’s belly in that one smooth motion as the Mexican’s arm drove downward, completing his reflex.
Ramirez’s knife planted itself into Bass’s leg a second time before the big, hard-knuckled right hand tensed into a bird’s claw, releasing the weapon’s handle. He left it quivering in the meat of the American’s thigh.
“‘The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength!’”
Feeling his supper smack itself against his tonsils with the icy pain, Bass slid backward, no longer able to hang on to the lieutenant’s neck. Scratch’s moist, sticky right hand opened and closed, empty now as he struck the cold earthen floor. His knife still hung in the Mexican’s chest as McAfferty whirled away, growling, cursing, spewing biblical invocations at his enemies who crowded against the doorway, working against themselves to get at the white-headed American.
“‘Whoso sheddeth a man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made He man!’”
Asa lunged toward the shadows in the door as Bass sensed Ramirez begin to totter to the side, both his arms clutching his belly, where blood splattered his forearms, the first squirt of purplish-white gut puerting from the wound that had nearly cleaved the huge man in half.
Mumbling moistly around the blood that burbled from his lips, the Mexican lurched to the side, suddenly stiffening as he collapsed to his knees, his eyes opening wide, his chin sagging. Ramirez pitched forward onto his face across Conchita’s legs.
She began moaning in that slow, dull-witted, dazed, and wounded way of an animal … realizing a dead man pinned her legs to the floor, his warm blood gushing over her bare flesh, pooling on the ground around them, soaking into the pounded clay. But her guttural moans became unearthly shrieks of horror the moment she attempted to free her legs from their prison beneath Ramirez’s bloody, eviscerated body.
“Mr. Bass!” McAfferty cried as he backed another step into the room, one moccasin landing in the black puddle as the sergeant’s blood pooled near the center of the tiny crib. “’Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids!’ Cover your nakedness before the eyes of this whore and come help me!”
How it hurt with a cold fire now to slowly drag that hot metal from his flesh, the whole of his leg from toe to hip throbbing with pain … just as two Mexicans leaped through the narrow doorway and McAfferty stepped back, a foot slipping in the dark puddle of the dead lieutenant’s blood.
In a smooth sweep Bass brought Ramirez’s knife up as he rocked onto his one good leg, jabbing forward the moment one of the soldiers cocked his arm over his head, knife in hand. Scratch caught the Mexican squarely in the left side of his chest, low. Dragging the big double-edged stiletto to the side, he felt the blade separate the muscle between two ribs, slash on through the tough muscle of the lung as the soldier recoiled in a jerk, attempting to pull away so violently, he struck the mud wall behind him. Dead, as he struck the floor already littered with another man’s blood.
Hearing the crack of metal against bone, Scratch whirled—finding McAfferty yanking the tomahawk out of the side of another soldier’s skull, letting the gurgling Mexican sink slowly to his knees before Asa flung the dead man back against the crude table where the pig-lard lamp spilled to the floor, snuffing itself out with a stifling stench of rancid bacon.
In the light of that one small candle, McAfferty spun for the last of the shadows in the door, flinging the knife an instant before pulling his pistol. He fired at the shadows, the sudden light blinding them all in the closeness of that tiny room.
“It’s time to find your pistol, Mr. Bass!”
His hands gumming with drying blood, his knees cold on the earthen floor, then suddenly warm as he crabbed through the Mexicans’ blood, Scratch searched the darkness for where his pistol had fallen in those frantic, fevered moments as the whore grappled with his belt, coat, and clothing. Beneath the flap to his capote he felt the short, hard barrel. Flinging back the thick blanket wool, Bass seized it with his left hand, dropping the knife from his right to fill it with the pistol butt as he palmed back the hammer with his left hand.
Brought it up just as another shadow burst from the darkness of the hallway. Firing at the black hole the figure made in the dim, flutting candlelight. How his eyes stung with that bright-yellow jet of flame spewing from the muzzle as the shadow hurtled back against the door, its wooden planks slamming against the mud wall with a hollow sound.
“Gather your damned clothes!”
Scratch couldn’t agree more. He scooped up his leggings and moccasins, stuffing everything inside his war shirt before he jabbed his arms inside his coat sleeves as McAfferty swept out of the darkness and whacked his pistol against the side of a soldier’s head the instant the Mexican leaped into the room.
Scratch clambered to his bare feet, trying to balance on that one good leg, flinging the wide black belt around his waist and buckling it as he stabbed the knife into its scabbard, shouting, “Let’s get!”
At the doorway a step ahead of Bass, Asa stopped, peered quickly at the three bodies of unconscious men who lay sprawled across the hall, then looked toward the dull, dancing light of the parlor, where women still shrieked and more than four vaqueros stood shoulder to shoulder, squinting into the darkness of the hallway. Their own knives at ready, each one waited half-dressed, their bare-breasted whores clinging frightened to their backs, peering between the shoulders of the men as they clamored and swore and screamed. Behind them flitted a huge, blurry form half-illuminated and backlit with more than two dozen candles.
As he followed McAfferty from the doorway, Scratch stopped a moment and gazed down that narrow hallway so low a man almost had to duck, peering at those vaqueros, at that gaggle of prostitutes, at that fat and frantic madam who had looked upon them both with such disdain—eager to take their American beaver money, eager perhaps to help the lieutenant and his soldiers take their American lives once she had her fat fingers secured around their beaver pesos.
How he wished he could plunge his knife into her heart.
But Asa grabbed a fistful of Bass’s capote and yanked him farther into the darkness, on down the narrow hallway and out
a door so low, they both had to duck as they plunged into the shocking cold of that moonless night. Dogs barked nearby on the far side of this mud-walled den of whores. Voices streaked out of the starshine beyond in the streets with a growing echo. Coming closer. Angry voices accompanied by the clatter of hard-leather boot heels and the jangle of arms.
“Forget the horses!” he snarled at McAfferty.
“On foot?” Asa demanded in a harsh whisper. “All the way to Workman’s?”
“You figger us to make it out of town in our own saddles? When those horses are out in front on that street?”
For a moment in the dim, silvery light, McAfferty stared this way and that—his mind working feverishly. Then shook his head. “We’ll have to steal a couple of horses on our way out.”
“We better,” Bass swore as they started away, pressing themselves into the shadows along the adobe wall. “We gotta make it to Workman’s place afore the soldiers do … or our hash is fried.”
The bear of a shadow loomed out of the night as if it were a tattered shred of the black sky itself.
Bringing up his knife, Bass braced himself on his good leg, prepared to cut his way through more enemies—
“Bass!”
Confused, Scratch turned to glance at McAfferty a flicker of a moment, whispering, “Who is it knows my name?”
“Kinkead!”
“Damn,” he sighed in relief as the shadow inched closer, taking shape as the big American stepped into the starshine. “Matthew.”
“It really is you, Asa McAfferty,” the shadowy shape said as it came to a halt right before them.
“Pray—what finds you here, Mr. Kinkead?”
“You don’t have the time to listen to my story,” Kinkead explained, seizing them both by the shoulder and shoving them back toward the shadows at the side of that narrow street, the very same shadows where he had just emerged.
Scratch looked in one direction, then another. “Where?”
“Out of town, now!” Matthew ordered. “On four legs!”
“I’ll kill for that horse of yours!” Bass husked. “I won’t make it on my two—”
“He’s game,” McAfferty explained. “Took it in the leg.”
Kinkead turned on Bass. “You walk on your own?”
“How far?” Titus asked, his face pinched in pain.
“The corner,” Matthew said, pointing. “Here,” and he swung an arm around Scratch’s shoulder, nearly hoisting him off the ground as he set off in a trot, Bass’s feet all but dangling on the crusty snow.
Leading them around a corner at the end of the long row of low-roofed adobe houses, Kinkead lunged for the reins of one of the three horses he had tied to a tall wooden post buried in the ground. “Take your pick of them two—but leg up quick, fellas.”
Bass watched Matthew swing up into the saddle and settle before he lumbered against the post and untied the first animal. Quickly lashing his clothing behind the Spanish saddle, he stuffed his left foot into the stirrup and dragged the wounded leg over the cantle before adjusting the tails of his capote.
Wagging his big head, Kinkead chuckled. “You’re bare-assed naked under that capote, ain’cha?”
Scratch came alongside as they wheeled about and put heels to their horses. “Never rode with a naked man afore?”
Down the street, voices grew louder.
“Don’t make no never-mind to me.” And Kinkead grinned. “Long as you got your business done afore them soldados showed up. Vamoose!”
All three put their animals into a rolling gallop, threading themselves through the dark tapestry of that sleepy village. Behind them the shouts of soldiers quickly faded as they raced on, submerged in a maze of shadows where disembodied dogs barked and every few houses a candle fluttered into life behind a frost-coated, rawhide-covered window where frightened faces briefly appeared.
On the far side of Bass, McAfferty asked, “We going to your place?”
“Hell, no!” Matthew grumbled. “Gonna keep you two troublemakers far away as I can from Rosa and me!”
“Maybeso you ought’n turn back now,” Scratch said as they shot past the last houses and reined toward the low ridge where the night lay its deepest.
“Hep!” was Matthew’s reply as he kicked his horse into a harder gallop. “Me leave you niggers on your own now? Just when you’ve gone and stirred up more fun than this sleepy village seen in years?”
Kinkead ended up leading them along the patchy shadows of the broken butte until the village disappeared from sight behind them. Only then did he rein his horse up a narrow switchback trail the Mexican shepherds used to guide their flocks of sheep to the top of the mesa. On that flat above the distant village, Matthew headed cross-country, making a beeline for Workman’s canyon beneath the cold, starry sky. Already the North Star was slipping into the west.
“Who’s there?” the sleepy voice called from the stone house when Kinkead sang out their arrival.
“It’s Kinkead, Willy! Got a couple troublemakers with me.”
Workman noisily dragged back the door on its earthen perch and stood there before them of a sudden like a thin strip of coal cotton in the night, his rifle laid across his elbow. “What’d they do?”
“Said they killed a couple of soldiers.”
Bass looked up from his right leg. “More’n two—”
“Shit!” the whiskey maker grumbled.
“We only come to get our plunder,” McAfferty explained as he leaped down, handing Kinkead his reins, and started to turn away. “We’ll be gone afore any more of them greasers catch up to us.”
Workman stepped into the starshine, stopping Asa in his tracks. “Where you gonna go that the soldados won’t chase you?”
“The mountains,” Bass declared, dragging his bad leg off the saddle and landing with a grunt.
“It’s the middle of winter!” Workman snorted.
“Maybeso we’ll ride to Santy Fee,” Asa said, starting to push past the whiskey maker.
Kinkead himself reached out and grabbed McAfferty’s arm, stopping him. “And wait for the soldiers to figger out you gone south?”
“There’s a place where they can lay in,” Workman declared quietly. “Fella by the name of Vaca.”
“Ol’ Vaca?” Kinkead repeated. Then he turned on Bass. “Has him a rancho at the mouth of the Peñablanca. South of Santy Fee, not far down the Rio Grande, fellas.”
Workman nodded. “Heard from the tongue of Ewing Young hisself that Vaca been hiding furs for gringos at his place last few winters.”
Scratch stepped up close to the whiskey maker. “The name’s Vaca?”
With a nod Workman said, “Luis Maria Cabeza de Vaca. But among us Americans he’s knowed as Ol’ Vaca.”
“Head for his place,” Kinkead demanded firmly. “And stay there till you figger out how to keep your necks outta the hangman’s noose.”
“Them soldiers had it coming!” Bass snarled, the cold sinking to the bone in that wounded leg. “Ramirez busted in on me, looking for trouble—”
“Likely so,” Matthew interrupted. “Ever since we stole their thunder with the governor’s wife—but Mex is Mex and gringo is gringo down here, Scratch … and now them soldados got ’em a license not just to arrest you for your beaver—but they got a reason to kill you where you stand.”
Bass looked over at McAfferty. Asa nodded.
So Scratch said, “Let’s get what little the two of us own packed up and on the animals.”
“What all plews you wanna leave with me,” Workman offered, “I’ll keep ’em till I can sell ’em off and hold the money for you.”
“You get the money to us at Vaca’s?” McAfferty inquired.
“Just tell me so, and I’ll bring it to you there.”
“Maybeso to keep the soldiers off your trail, Willy,” Bass said, “send Johnny Rowland down with the money what we get for our plews.”
Wagging his head, Kinkead replied, “Johnny’s gone, Scratch. How long for, I ain’t
got no idea.”
Scratch asked, “Rowland—gone? Where?”
“Threw in with Antoine Robidoux’s bunch, last fall. Not long after he talked a squaw from out to the pueblo into riding with him.”
“So Johnny’s got him ’Nother woman now?”
Matthew nodded. “Seems a likely enough gal. Someone help ease him over his Maria.”
“Good for him,” Workman agreed.
“Where they going?” McAfferty inquired.
“Winty country,” Matthew explained as the four of them started for the cavern. “Fixing to get some trapping in afore winter comes.”
“That country gets its share of snow early enough,” Asa declared. “Maybeso it ain’t so smart of Robidoux to winter ’em up there.”
“A might safer’n greaser country is for the two of you,” Workman scoffed.
“All right—we’ll send you word how to get the money to us, Willy,” Bass said as he limped behind them, all four men hurrying down the narrow path that led to the cavern where they had stowed their goods.
By the time Titus had dressed, and he and McAfferty had their packs separated and had hauled what they could take out of the torch-lit cavern, Workman and Kinkead had the horses and Hannah ready to go. Between the four of them it took but a matter of minutes to get what few possibles and supplies they were taking with them lashed onto the pack frames. Then Bass turned to the whiskey maker.
“Willy—you do what you can with them plews of ours, but don’t sell ’em cheap.”
“I’ll get best dollar I can.”
They shook, and Titus gripped both of his hands around Workman’s, saying, “I know you will.”
As McAfferty stepped up and took the trader’s hand, Scratch turned to Kinkead. “Don’t know the next time I’ll see you, Matthew.”
He smiled broadly, those big teeth of his glittering in the night like a string of mother-of-pearl buttons. “Just you count on seeing me again, Scratch. Don’t worry about the when. Could be next month. Could be next year. Hell, I might not lay eyes on you for winters yet to come.”
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