by Tony Masero
Brewster puffed contentedly and allowed the mules to trail along free of his control, the reins still tied to the brake handle.
“It were an experiment, you see,” he began, blowing a cloud of smoke from between his lips. “Captain Stockton came up with it. Two mighty guns, great big beasts. One they called ‘Peacemaker’ the other the ‘Oregon’. Mighty cannon indeed, twelve inch caliber barrels firing a two hundred and twenty eight pound ball.”
“Is that very big?” asked Ellen, having not much sense of such things.
“Indeed it is,” puffed Brewster. Despite himself he was becoming proud of the massive guns, as if he himself had played some part in their construction.
“So what occurred that dreadful day?”
“And what a day it was. We were all lined up on deck dressed in our best. The entire crew, pretty as a picture we looked. Well, first off there was much flag waving and trumpet blowing, a fair old show, as you can imagine. The President came with many fine political folk, there were high-ranking military officers and gentlemen with their ladies. So, when all the speechifying was over and all were attentive they fired off the ‘Peacemaker’ at the allotted hour and all went very well that time. A mighty bang she made, oh such a noise. The ball flew out in a great arc,” he described it in the air with his pipe stem. “For two mile she went, then dropped into the sea and once landed skipped another long mile on the surface of the water.”
“How awe inspiring,” gasped Ellen.
Brewster shuffled his buttocks a little closer to Ellen as if finding a more comfortable position. He felt the soft press of her leg against him through her dress and he almost growled in pleasure at the touch. Ellen tried to move away but she was held trapped by the metal arm of the seat beside her.
“They gave another shot of equal proportions,” Brewster went on. “Then the party left off and went below for some refreshment. Captain Stockton was mighty pleased as everybody lauded him and gave praise for his development of the guns. But after all the jollies, when all were done with the meal someone suggested another firing and Stockton agreed.”
Ellen leant forward, at once trying to avoid Brewster’s stealthy advances and also pay close attention to his tale.
“What then,” she asked. “Was that when it happened?”
“Oh, indeed it was. Some of the party was on deck and some still below when they fired her. Well, bless me, if the whole thing didn’t blow up, that mighty gun exploded and was ripped asunder with metal parts flying everywhere. Such an explosion it was. It were truly terrible, as all the observers were torn apart just as the gun was. Limbs flew all over, both male and female parts were scattered without favoritism. Even the President’s blacky slave had his head stove in and lay mixed amongst the wealthy and his betters. Such a thing, I tell you Miss Darby I have never seen the like.”
“Oh my!” breathed Ellen, her hand across her mouth. “Those poor people.”
“Yes, there was much wailing and weeping amongst those still below, for they were safe and all their friends and companions who had ventured up on deck were dead. Then it was a gruesome task we were set on after that, I had my lads finding body parts for days afterwards, everywhere amongst the deck furniture. Arms, legs and bloody bits of flesh lodged in all sorts of...”
“Ugh!” grunted Ellen going pale.
“Are you all right, dearie?” asked Brewster, putting an arm around her shoulders. “There, there,” he said unctuously as he patted her arm. “Don’t take on so, Caleb Brewster’ll care for you.” The last he breathed into her ear and Ellen smelt the heavy tobacco breath and the unpleasant stench of his armpit. She pulled herself away.
“I must go now, Mama will wonder where I am,” she managed as she slid out from his grasp and began to climb over the edge of the slow moving wagon.
“But the tale’s not told yet,” pleaded Brewster. “Come back, I beg of you. There’s more to tell.”
“That’s alright,” Ellen said hurriedly as she leapt from the wagon and hit the ground on both feet. “I’ll hear the rest another day.”
“Don’t you know that’s what we carry here?” he said in a desperate attempt to keep her interested.
Ellen paused, she did not know. Her parents had been very tight lipped about their cargo and Ellen had supposed it was some heavy furniture and the like for their new home in Sacramento.
“What is it?” she asked, cautiously sidling alongside the turning wagon wheel.
“‘Tis a third mighty cannon. The ‘Oregon’ still sits unused aboard the Princetown but we have here another model much improved from the first. The men call this one ‘Standalone’. She looks the same as the others but is manufactured differently, still cast in iron but with reinforcing rings so as to withstand the mighty blasting of the firing.”
“Here, in the wagons?” Ellen asked in surprise.
“All in pieces, my dear. All in pieces but here just the same. What do you think is in that long flat bed pulled by a team of twelve oxen? There they carry the big barrel itself. That is why we are seconded to carry her, for it is us who are commanded to erect her once we reach our destination. Captain Stockton, you see, was brought to bankruptcy by his manufacture of the Peacemaker and now he hopes to make up his loss with the sale of this beauty to the Mex dictator.”
“But....” she faltered, dropping her voice and looking around at the accompanying lancers in case they might overhear. “Surely, President Santa Anna is not our ally.”
“No, dear,” Brewster chuckled. “But gold is gold, and Santa Anna’s gold is as good as anybody’s.”
“Is this not treasonable though, to give aid to one’s likely enemy, don’t you think?”
“Best ask your pa on that score, Miss Darby. He’s the one in charge here and sent out by the Captain to make sure the cannon arrives safe.”
Ellen frowned and stopped, allowing the wagon to pass on by as she stood and numbly considered what she had been told.
“Any time you feel the need of a little conversation, Miss Darby. You come by and pay me a visit, you hear?” Leering down at her from the wagon seat, Brewster waved his pipe in farewell. “Old Caleb is always glad to oblige. Always.”
Ellen was confused and as she ambled back towards her parent’s wagon she looked at the long covered carriage and its mysterious load with a new eye. The three naval ratings on the driving seat gave her a cheerful wave and a smile as they passed by. Could it really hold the barrel of a giant gun? The wagon was certainly long and the tracks it left deep enough for a heavy piece of equipment. She determined to ask her father when they next stopped for the night.
Her brother Thomas and little Beulah leapt down from the wagon tail as she approached and ran towards her.
“Where you been, Ellen?” asked Beulah, she was just seven years old and a little heart breaker already with a coil of pig-tails tied up with ribbons on top of her head.
“Just taking a walk,” explained Ellen.
“Can we come?” asked Beulah.
“Well, I’m back here again now but we can walk along a ways if you like.”
“Alright,” said Beulah, taking Ellen’s hand.
“I’m coming too,” said Thomas, taking her other hand. He was somewhat favored as the only boy and as a result had developed a rather self-conscious attitude for a nine year old. Fastidious in his dress and not one given to rough and tumble it was his parents concern that he was around the girls too much and they had hoped the trip across wild country would awaken some boyish spirit in him.
“Ellen!” called her father from the wagon. “Don’t wander off now, Captain Alcazar warns we are in dangerous country here, so stay close by.”
“Alright, father,” Ellen called back.
“And make sure your sister keeps her bonnet on or she’ll suffer under this sun.”
At mention of Captain Alcazar’s name Ellen felt a flush creep up her neck. The commanding officer of the lancers, Captain Alcazar was a handsome man and he had impressed Ellen wit
h his fine manners and courtly attention, so different from the Americans and their rough Frontier ways.
Always energetic, the tall and slender Francisco Hernando Alcazar was a whip of a man, an excellent horseman with clean-cut features and broad black sideburns that curled about his lower jaw in a fashionable style. His dark eyes seemed to penetrate Ellen to the core when they spoke and she was smitten with a secret girlish passion. A proud man with a bearing to match, Alcazar carried about him a certain Spanish haughtiness, although with Ellen he was always the perfect gentleman.
He rode up to her now dressed in his broad round brimmed black hat with its white ribbon band, the silver buttons on the red stripe of his grey pants flashing as he drew to a halt. His saber glinted and clanked against the musket looped to a strap across his body and as he raised his hand, the pennant on his long lance caught the movement and fluttered with a blur of red, white and green, the colors of Mexico. With a finger to his hat, Alcazar saluted Ellen.
“Buenos dias, senorita,” he said. “You will stay close, please.” It was an order as much as a request.
“Yes, my father has told us, Captain,” she lowered her eyes self consciously, aware that he was studying her from beneath the shadow cast by his hat brim.
“It is serious,” Alcazar went on. “There was smoke in the sky behind us yesterday. Maybe it is nothing but it could be something, so we must be careful.”
“I understand,” said Ellen.
Little Beulah was squinting up at the Captain, one hand shading her eyes. “What was the smoke from?” she asked.
“Oh, it is nothing, chiquita,” Alcazar said quickly, not wishing to disturb the child. “Probably some ranchers branding their cows.”
“Then why must we be careful?” persisted the child.
“Well, we must always be careful, little Beulah. The desert can be dangerous, you must keep your eyes open.” Alcazar dropped his official tone when he spoke to the child and his voice softened and the deep mellowness of it raised an even deeper flush on Ellen’s cheek.
“Why are you going all red, Ellen?” asked Beulah, looking at her sister.
“Oh,” gasped Ellen in embarrassment. “It must be the heat.”
“It doesn’t usually worry you,” added Thomas, with a mischievous smile.
“I think you like Captain Alcazar,” piped Beulah loudly. “You always go red when he’s around.”
“You hush up!” snapped Ellen.
“She likes you a lot, Captain Alcazar,” the child called up boldly to the officer.
Alcazar grinned, showing a row of even white teeth in his tanned face and he gallantly swept off his hat and held it to the white sash across the breast of his blue tunic. He leant across the saddle and bent down close to the little girl.
“Then I am truly honored, for there is no greater wish than for such a beautiful woman as your lovely sister to cast a kindly eye in the direction of this worthless soldier.”
“Oh, Captain Alcazar,” giggled Beulah, disarmed by his attention.
Replacing his hat, he wheeled his pony and looked at Ellen, his old official pose back in place.
“Remember what I have said,” he told her sternly, then with a dig of his rowel spurs he galloped off in the direction of his troop.
Chapter Six
Mapache drank water from the water jar through his drinking tube as his lips must not touch the liquid, an act forbidden by the shaman for a prospective warrior. He carried the tube and a slender body scratcher, both decorated with symbolic lightning rod designs and on his head he wore the feathered novice cap, although it did not yet give him the full spiritual power of a warrior.
His journey on this war raid was full of ritual, even his language was different. He ate cold food to bring good luck to the raids and could only scratch himself with the lightning patterned stick.
The fourteen-year-old rode at the rear of the party and as befitted his role, he was destined to fetch wood and water, cook and keep the night guard. All of these preparatory tasks, a test of his ability to follow instruction without argument. Mapache took the direction seriously, there was nothing he sought more than to follow his brother on future raids, to make his clan proud and fulfill his role as an Apache warrior.
He wished he had been able to go with the others on their intended raid instead of following in the dust of the horse herd and trailing cattle. He gritted his teeth and bore it, thinking of the future when he could wear the war cap and ride with them as an equal.
Ahead of him at the front of the party rode Cuchillo, the other of the two Chiricahua in the band He was not happy to have been left in this subservient position even if he was nominal head of the herders. Cuchillo had earned his name ‘Knife’ from the fifteen-inch blade he carried in a leather scabbard hitched across his waist at the back. It had once been the broken sword of a long dead Spanish Conquistador and still bore a decorated guard and wire bound handle. Cuchillo had found the rusty and broken remnant in a cavern and believed it a gift from the gods intended for him alone. Rasped clean in sand and the Toledo steel sharpened to a razor edge he revered the weapon and would let no other handle it.
Between the Chiricahua and Mapache rode the other three warriors on each side of the herded livestock. They all travelled easily, full of contentment at their prizes and looking forward to the praise their success would bring when they reached their homes. They had grown somewhat complacent in their victory and their eyes were not as sharp as they should have been as they ambled alongside the passive herd at an easy pace.
The captive children trailed with them, bound together at the waist by rope and led by one of the Apache. The two little girls had wailed and cried desperately at the beginning of their capture but the hardened warriors had ignored their fear and desperation and soon the two had faded into a miserable silence. Now they stumbled along tiredly, sniffling occasionally but immured to their fate.
Mapache would have seen them mounted and able to move more swiftly but Cuchillo would have none of it and so Mapache, as the young and hopeful apprentice, kept his complaints silent and did not argue. It meant they travelled at a snail’s pace, at no more than the children could handle. This did not displease Cuchillo, there was no need to hurry, his intention being that they should not get too far ahead of the raiding party or drive the animals too relentlessly.
Their dust had been plain to see by the following mountain men, the herd of horse and cattle stirring up a cloud that was visible a mile away above the undulating dunes.
It was Allumette’s task to care for the horses as Gringo and Judas left and followed the Indians on foot. Racing ahead amongst the dunes to run parallel to the slow moving band and spy on them safely from an unseen position. The two raised little dust as they ran, their moccasins flying softly over the ground.
A rocky outcrop presented itself a half a mile out from the travellers and it was from there that the two looked down and counted the enemy and their disposition.
“Five,” counted Gringo. “One youngster at the rear.”
“And the children,” noted Judas.
“I see them,” agreed Gringo. “They must be our first consideration.”
“We cannot take them in the open,” grumbled Judas. “Too risky.”
Gringo nodded. “We wait until they settle for the night.”
“Then,” said Judas grimly. “Then we’ll settle their hash.”
Gringo shot a quick glance across at his companion and could see the hard grimness that filled his eyes.
“The children first,” he impressed on Judas, who nodded dumbly in response.
“The one with the red band on his face,” Gringo pointed. “He is the one we must watch. Chiricahua. They are most dangerous.”
“It will be my pleasure,” snarled Judas.
They followed at a distance until evening approached and the Indians found a low walled boxed draw where they could round up the beasts safely for the night and then they settled down to camp. Gringo and Judas
patiently watched all their preparations from hiding.
“We’d best bring up the horses,” said Gringo in a whisper. “We may need a fast getaway.”
Judas nodded agreement, his eyes fixed on the Indians who were settling down on a small level patch at the mouth of the draw, their campsite surrounded by a wall of low cliffs no more than fifteen feet high.
“I’ll go fetch Allumette and the ponies. Can you stay and keep an eye on them?” Gringo asked.
Judas nodded again. He seemed to be locked into some sort of mesmerized place where his unmoving gaze was fixed intently on the Apaches and Gringo wondered what was going on in the dour man’s mind.
“You’ll be alright?” he pressed, slightly worried by Judas’ behavior.
Judas turned to look at him. “Don’t worry. It’ll be fine. Go get the horses.”
Gringo slid down the dune backwards and made his way silently into the falling darkness.
Judas waited until he was gone and then moved. Snakelike, he crept nearer to the Indian’s position. Even though a large man he was skilled in the art of camouflage and blended with the rocks, flowing across the ground like a shadow.
Hate burned in his chest. A deep seated vengeful hatred that he had carried like a stone in his chest for years, the loss of his wife and child leaving an imprint in his brain that had not diminished with the passage of time. He had fed the pain of that loss, nurtured it and allowed the bitterness to take root and govern all his actions. There was little else left for him now, other than his desire to cut down every red man he came across.
He was glad Gringo had left, he was better on his own. Nobody else understood his motivations and it had created in him a cold aloofness that marginalized him from his fellows and could only be satiated by blood and the taking of scalps. Each hank of hair becoming a cemetery marker that could be laid at the grave of his lost family.