Quaternity

by Kenneth Mark Hoover

  Lovich stood beside Marwood. He forked his hat back with a thumb. “They do love their jokes,” he said.

  Spaw rode his horse between the open doors of the mission church and down the nave. His big dun stepped between the naked bodies and a boiling swarm of black flies. Buttresses of sunlight fell from shattered lathes in the ceiling, illuminating the bloated corpses. Their collective blood had solidified into a black ceramic glaze half an inch thick. It cracked like sheet ice under his horse’s iron shoes. There were more bodies in the chancel, where men had made a final stand. Fifteen more bodies from the colonia lined a dry acequia outside the church.

  The Hydra regrouped outside and compared what it had seen and found.

  “I guess they’re around here somewhere,” Rota said. He was using the extra time to whetstone the point of his harpoon. “All that’s left is we go find them before they find us.”

  They rode on. They were half a mile from Ruidosa and could see the azoteas and stone walls of the city, when, five hundred yards off, three squads of Buffalo Soldiers crested a hog’s back, and with shortened reins, thundered down after them.

  Even the Tonkawa scouts were taken by surprise. Botis and his men spun their horses and flew away north, into the open desert and sparse fields of sacahuista. Spaw and Jubal Stone turned in their saddles and fired with bouncing hands at the approaching horde.

  “You’re wasting your shots,” Marwood warned them. He leaned close to the neck of his mare so his body would not impede like a sail. He held the little quarter-horse mare on short rein. She was running flat out and keeping good pace. So far.

  “Come on,” he whispered in her ear. “Go for your life.”

  Botis plunged them into a dry streambed filled with dense undergrowth. They followed a declivity, which opened on an alluvial plain of sand and gravel. They galloped across that, and back up the steep bank on the other side. Bill Rota, Jubal Stone, and Sam Decker rode a hundred yards perpendicular to the major line of fire. They took up station behind a rock outcropping and a stand of scraggly cholla.

  The rest of the company jumped from their horses, hobbled them, and formed a straggled line along the crest of Pinto Canyon. Their collective volley of rifle fire smashed into the cavalry horses a hundred yards away. The soldiers milled briefly in the crossfire and fell back behind a ridge to regroup.

  It wasn’t much for prayer, but it was breathing space, and they were welcome for it. Marwood jumped into his saddle along with the other men and they were off racing again. His mare was lathered, and she was starting to flag.

  They fought a delaying action along the dry streambed. Jubal Stone took a ball deep in his left shoulder. The remuda was scattered to hell and gone, and Bill Rota was missing entire.

  When the cavalry tried a Cannae, Botis gambled with all their lives and, rolling the dice, turned his company back into the southernmost squad, guns drawn, blazing. He and his remaining men shot their way past the thinned-out ranks. The unexpected action was not, however, without casualty. Sam Decker took a ball in his leg. His femoral artery was nicked. Blood sloshed from the top of his left boot. His hand fell away from the reins and his head spun.

  He was standing beside his horse on open ground, gripping the pommel and trying to regain his wits, when a Buffalo Soldier ran him down.

  The soldier, a black sergeant of thirty-three winters, sat his big bay horse half a furlong away. He uncovered a buffalo jaw with a steel wedge fixed where the teeth had been. The dull steel curve was honed to a razor’s edge.

  The sergeant hefted his makeshift weapon. He leaned forward and spurred his horse in a wild gallop. He was running flat out, leaning off to one side. The sergeant looped his arm in a vicious, underhanded whip and hacked Decker’s head half off his shoulders with one swipe. Sam thrashed in the dust, back arched in agony, and died.

  The fighting along the perimeter of the battlefield stopped a moment. All were watching the scene play out.

  The black cavalryman wheeled his horse around, his back straight, his head up, and dismounted. He used the tip of his biblical weapon to cut Decker’s ears away and pocketed them.

  Then he got back on his horse and rode off to rejoin his compatriots.

  They could see the pinprick lights of the cavalry fires in the gloaming dark.

  “How far do you make them to be, William?” Botis asked.

  Rota had scrounged his way back when night fell. He had ridden after the scattered remuda during a lull in the fighting and drove them back. Now, at least, Botis had a force well mounted, but running low on ammunition. They counted fifty rounds between them. They had powder enough, but they couldn’t risk a fire and run lead.

  Rota squinched his eyes and judged the distance. They were up in a malpaís while the cavalry were camped on the lower flat. “I’d say right at twenty miles, Captain.”

  “I think we gained half a day on them when we doubled back,” Marwood said, “and they got themselves turned around.”

  “We could head south across the border,” Lovich suggested.

  “They are looking for us in Mexico, too,” Botis reminded him.

  Doc Quillen wiped the blade of his surgical instruments with raw mescal. “I’m going to have to dig in your shoulder some,” he told Stone.

  Jubal Stone sat with his sweating back against a rock. His feet were splayed, his face a pale blur in the half-dark. “Do your worst, you evil bastard,” he said.

  Quillen gave Stone a piece of leather to bite on. He inspected the depth of the gunshot wound with a hook probe. The shoulder was one large bruise from neck to short ribs. Quillen pushed the probe deeper into the wound. Stone’s lips pulled away from his teeth. His gums were white.

  Tunk Quillen withdrew the bloody probe. He rocked back on his thin haunches. “I can cut her out before you get the blood p’isen,” he said. “But it’s liable to sting a mite. That ball is settin’ up agin’ your scapular bone.”

  Stone muttered something unintelligible. Quillen threw the probe into his black bag and rummaged with a blind hand for a scalpel. He made an incision and went to work. Stone sat in silence. His eyes bulged. The cords in his neck and arms strained like cables.

  Five minutes later Quillen withdrew his brass calipers from the man’s shoulder. A lead slug was captured between the points.

  “You can tie it on your watch chain if’n you like,” Quillen said.

  “I’ll tell your mother what you can do with it,” Stone replied. But he was near wiped out, and not up to a prolonged verbal exchange with the resurrectionist.

  Quillen cleaned the wound with mescal and flipped open a pocketknife. He cut bandage strips from a sugar sack, wound them around Stone’s shoulder and tied the ends off neat. He gave the man a canteen of water.

  “We ain’t got much of that left,” he said. “Sups it slow, so’s you don’ founder.”

  There wasn’t anything much to eat, either. Their mochilas and food sacks were empty. They chewed handfuls of coffee beans. The night dragged. Acheron rolled in the dirt. His long tongue lolled out of his mouth.

  “Wonder what that black bastard is dreaming about,” the Cajun said.

  The night advanced into grey dawn light. Colours washed out in their clothes and faces and the land around them. The men looked like shades vomited up from Dante’s vision of hell.

  Botis met them in the dawn holding a clay ewer with both hands.

  The men looked at one another. Then, as if by unspoken agreement, they averted their gazes. They shuffled into a straggled line like reluctant participants in an unholy communion.

  The Cajun thrust his hand in the ewer and drew out a white stone. He put it in the pocket of his breeches and stood waiting beside the horses, sharpening his Green River knife.

  Rota also drew white. He picked up his filthy two-point blanket and his gun and saddled his horse.

  Tunk Quillen dunked
his hand through the opening and returned with a white stone in his wrinkled palm. He looked at it briefly, pitched it into a patch of scrub. He turned away, curious to see if his patient had survived the night.

  Lovich was next in line. He grinned a knowing grin at them all. “You sons of bitches act like you’re tupping your first whore,” he said. He drew white and laughed at them for being fools and went to untie his horse.

  Jubal Stone drew next. He allowed the white stone to tumble from his fingers. Quillen helped him to his feet and onto a waiting horse.

  Ed Gratton stared at the white stone in his meaty hand. His salt and pepper beard was covered with dust. He suddenly started, like a clockwork automaton whose springs were engaged, and left to retrieve his possibles. Charley Broadwell dipped his hand in the ewer and walked away, his knuckles gripping white.

  It was down to Marwood and Spaw. They looked at each other. Marwood stepped forward. The summer eyes of Botis were unreadable. Marwood’s fingers closed on something with rough edges and he took out the black stone.

  None of the other men looked his way. They were busy untangling reins, or bridling their horses.

  Botis reached into the ewer, removed the final stone. This he pressed into Spaw’s unwilling hand. Botis pitched the jug aside and it broke on an outcropping of rock. He went after his horse.

  Marwood sat on a boulder cleaning the heels of his boots with a stick. One by one, the men filed their horses past him and disappeared down an incline of loose shale. No one looked back. Even Spaw refused to meet his eyes, though the latter man was shaken.

  Leather creaked when Botis stepped into his McClellan saddle. He reined the big roan around. Marwood felt the eyes of man and horse on his back, but he did not turn to acknowledge them.

  Botis rowelled his horse forward and followed his retreating men into the deep ravine.

  Marwood saddled his horse and packed his equipage. Before leaving the campsite he checked his gun. He had four loads left in his pistol. He holstered it and picked up his Sharps rifle. He worked the breechblock mechanism and cleaned every surface with his shirttail. He opened the box of rifle shells. There were six .52-calibre 50-grain cartridges left.

  Six.

  They had left him half a canteen of water. Marwood slung it over his saddle horn.

  He pulled his mare in the opposite direction the others had taken. He kept behind a high ridge, using the brush and scrag to screen his movements. It took him an hour to work his way a furlong down the mountain. When he emerged from the foliage he spied the glint of fires on the dark lowland. He circled around them, working downwind in case they had Indian spies like the Tonkawas who could smell a white man. He found a good position behind a rocky knoll topped with low bushes to break up his silhouette.

  He would have preferred setting up a point or two east of the cavalry with the sun full behind him. But Botis was trying to manoeuvre his command that way and escape. It was up to Marwood to give the company cover, even at the cost of his own life.

  There was one sign in his favour: dark clouds were blowing in from the northwest. Long tendrils of rain spilled from their black bottoms like gall ink. The clouds and their shadows along the intervening ground would make firing tricky, especially at this distance.

  He loaded the rifle and edged the barrel through the juniper leaves. The cavalry was 500 yards away. Marwood saw tiny figures moving about the morning fires. His heart hammered and his hands began to sweat.

  He pulled the rifle back, gave himself five minutes with the rifle butt resting on the hard ground and one arm over his knee. He thought of nothing at first. Then he thought of his past, which he could not remember, and that too was nothing. He wondered what kind of future he had, and where he might ever find a home. Then he remembered what the old Mexican bruja told him about his soul, and that, finally, was something, and he went into position.

  The boom of the big gun rolled.

  The first shot kicked up a fountain of dirt past the pickets. A second and a half later every soldier in camp started to their feet as the sound caught up to them. Marwood loaded another cartridge, picked a new target, and touched off the Sharps.

  The leg of one of the Buffalo Soldiers collapsed while lounging on a settle. He went down, sprawled in agony. By now soldiers were either leaping for their rifles or throwing themselves flat. One man—sergeant or officer, Marwood could not tell—was on one knee barking orders. Then some unnatural sense warned him he was open-sighted and vulnerable, and he pitched himself behind an ammunition box. Marwood swung the barrel and instead killed a private crawling between the legs of the nervous cavalry horses.

  Three shots left. Marwood pulled out and walked with long purposeful strides toward his horse. He swung up and rowelled her forward. The mare burst from the juniper and ran flat out across the open ground. Guns opened up behind him. Soldiers shouted. Something buzzed past his ear—the peculiar whine of a hot ball spinning through the air. Marwood worked his horse behind a ridge chine and let her chuff and blow.

  He climbed away through more rock, and when he emerged in the clear he spied a mounted squad riding hard in his direction. They were using the lay of the land to close quarter on him. If he didn’t do something he would be trapped. Marwood sawed back on the reins of his horse and yanked the Sharps from his scabbard, dismounted, and ran up a steep slab of rock. He lay flat on his stomach and wormed his way to the oblong tip of the rock finger. He brought the Sharps around his body, ready to pour lead into the approaching horses, but what he saw surprised him. The cavalry had turned around and was pulling out. A blue sheet of cold rain was approaching from their northern quarter, and they were riding into it to cloak their movement.

  A good 400 yards, firing downhill and into a brisk wind. Marwood added up all the factors and forces that would act upon the 475-grain projectile. He touched the trigger. One of the lead horses plunged headlong into the ground, throwing its rider. The rain swept in and enveloped the squad and they disappeared.

  Marwood quit the stone point and rode his mare parallel to the last compass heading taken by the retreating soldiers. He knew they were trying to circle around him, using the rainstorm as cover. He would keep moving with them, and in that way hope to lead them farther west, away from Botis and the men.

  The squall hit with fierce power. The thirsty ground could not drink the water quick enough. Marwood entered down into a once-dry streambed and followed it up current to cover his tracks. Within the space of two minutes, however, the water roiled to his horse’s knees, and he had to spur her out of there.

  He was in a bad spot, much to his own making. He was too low in the canyon bottom. The cavalry was moving away and remained safely camouflaged. Marwood dismounted and led his mare up a washed-out slope. Water streamed from his hat brim and small rocks tumbled past his feet. Walking in a crouch to keep his balance Marwood reached the top of the bank and paused to catch his breath.

  Clouds were breaking up overhead, but the racing shadows threw him a moment. He did not recognize the immediate country. He turned to look behind him. Nothing.

  He climbed his tired body into the saddle. At least from here he was elevated and could check his backbearing for enemy movement. If he kept—

  Without warning the soft ground gave way and his mare lost her footing. His saddle slipped and his horse rolled out from under him. Marwood threw his right leg over the pommel, using the extra momentum to quit the saddle as both horse and ammunition tumbled into space.

  Marwood slammed to the ground. His breath was knocked from his lungs, but other than a wrenched shoulder, and skinned pride, he was alive.

  His mare rolled helpless end over end down the slick mudslide. She plummeted a hundred feet and crashed backward into the violent torrent of floodwater.

  He watched her dark head come up once in the boiling cataract. Then she, along with his smashed equipage, was gone.

 
CHAPTER 13

  Marwood was drinking with cupped hands from a gurgling runnel of rainwater when he heard a single cough upstream. When he turned his head he saw a young Texas Ranger standing ten rods off, watering a bay horse. The Ranger filled a leather canteen. The bay lifted its head, water dripping from its long muzzle. It lowered its head to drink again.

  Marwood backed into the brush and stole away. He would have shot the Ranger but he didn’t know how many others were standing within earshot. When he heard raised shouts down water he stopped and crouched, his heart beating. Someone had found his dead horse.

  It was time to get out of here.

  The cloud-wracked sky allowed him no sun bearing, but he thought the main river lay to his left. That’s the way this bed ran, anyway. Marwood turtled off, using whatever he could find for cover. His shoulder gave him discomfort and he kept working his arm so it wouldn’t stiffen up on him.

  He took stock of his bleak situation. He had nothing but his clothes, a gun, and a knife tucked in his boot. Everything else had been carried away by floodwaters.

  To worsen matters, Marwood didn’t know if he was headed north, or south, or skewed for hell. He should have reached the Rio Grande by now. He searched the heavy sky; it was impossible to compass the sun behind the lidded clouds. He kept walking.

  He didn’t see anyone else for the remainder of the day. He thought he heard gunshots but it might have been falling rock. With the crumpled hills and ravines in this part of Texas an echo could trick you clean. A man could run circles around himself trying to pin it all down.

  He never reached the main river, which worried him not a little. Wind-flagged chaparral and wide, empty country stretched on all sides. He was lost in unknown territory.

  He came to a deep canyon and stared into the abyss. He crouched behind a candelilla bush and quartered the land with his flint-grey eyes for half an hour. A lone turkey buzzard glided by. Its naked head was stark in the clear desert air.