“He says you are a fool. What do you take him for? Someone who would submit himself to your good aim? Because of this it will go all the harder for you.”
Skye laughed, not knowing from what strange corner of his soul the laughter came from. “Tell Santamaría he is nothing, a fraud and a fake, a fool, and no match for any serious pirate and bandit.”
Hesitantly the girl translated, this time into a dead silence. The quietness stretched to forbidding length, and Skye wondered whether the execution squad would dispatch him with a single crash of the pistols.
Instead, the bandit made one small left-handed gesture. His cohorts untied the two horses and mules from their pickets, rummaged through Skye’s goods, and told Skye to remove his frock coat.
He did, and they poked through it, as well, and then rudely poked around Victoria’s skirts until they were satisfied that no further booty was to be gotten from Skye and Victoria.
Then they gestured Skye and Victoria to a large shag-barked tree and had them stand before it. Skye’s heart sank. They formed a ragged line and lifted their huge pistols until seven muzzles pointed at the Skyes.
Skye’s pulse soared. The end, then. He saw the dog, the hair of its neck poking up, crouched and waiting to spring at Santamaría.
Victoria turned flinty and silent.
Santamaría stood to one side, sword in hand, arm raised.
He brought the sword down.
A ragged eruption of explosions deafened Skye.
He felt bark slap him, and shattered lead sting him in a dozen places about the neck and shoulders, and the bandits’ laughter lacerate his soul. Victoria sagged to the ground and for a terrible moment Skye thought they had murdered her as a joke. The bandits hooted, gathered the Skyes’ horses and mules and outfit, mounted, and rode away like a posse of carrion birds.
Victoria wept. Skye comforted her in his arms, but she could not be comforted. Then the dog squirmed close, and began licking them both, the steady scrape of its tongue its way of comforting them. It took an hour for Skye’s pulse to settle.
thirty–six
The sun still shone. Skye stared at the heavens, amazed. He led Victoria to the spring and washed her face and his, sluicing drops of blood away from tiny wounds where shattered lead had seared them. They sat in the grass, dumfounded, not wanting anything but to sit stupidly and behold the sunny world.
He saw hurt in Victoria’s face and something else: banditry was something new to her, something she scorned. In time, after the mild breezes had restored order to his soul, he began taking stock. Now they had only the clothes on their backs. He stood, recovered his grimy frock coat and dusted it off. She rose also and began shaking dirt off her skirts. He recovered his beaver top hat and discovered a bullet hole in it. He pushed a finger through both holes and wiggled it at her. She smiled at last.
He donned his frock coat and top hat, looking once again the dashing gentleman, and noted that she looked the fashionable lady. They were city-dwellers out on a stroll with their dog. He smiled and she caught his humor and smiled back. It was the best thing to do at a moment when they had nothing. No food, no shelter, no protection, no coin, and no tongue in common with those who lived in this vast province.
“I don’t know where we’re going or what we’ll find, but we may as well head north again,” he said.
“I don’t know this land,” she said, and he understood her meaning. An Indian woman could find foods in the wild if she knew them: roots, berries, nuts, bulbs, stalks. But everything in this Mexican province was new to her, and she would be almost as helpless as he.
They lacked so much as a piece of string. So they were a pair of swells, promenading through the wilds, and somehow that caught their fancy and they started hiking the elusive trail. They would live or die, be rescued or find succor on their own, as Fate would dictate. What else was there but to laugh?
They trudged along the dirt trail, pausing at each of the numerous springs to refresh themselves. The dog was often out of sight, but always scouting. Gentlemen’s and ladies’ shoes weren’t designed for hiking, and their feet felt pinched and blistered. But there was no help for that except to pause frequently. Skye knew that they would soon be lame, and that the lameness could kill them along with all the rest.
So he squeezed her hand and they limped along the trail and hoped for miracles. Maybe the dog would bring them food.
Twilight found them at a comfortable spring, surrounded by choking brush in arid hills, and Skye decided that they had gone far enough and their feet needed respite. He was starved, and knew Victoria was, too.
They pulled off their shoes and bathed their tormented feet in the cool water. The dog had vanished, perhaps hunting.
That’s when they heard the snort of horses, and moments later a dozen fierce-looking Mexicans rode in, surrounded them, and stared. Skye rose calmly, hoping that these rough customers might be their succor.
“Manos arriba!” bellowed a skinny one with huge mustachios, a cocked eye, and a puckered scar that ran across his jaw to his left ear. He wore a peaked leather sombrero that barely contained an explosion of curly black hair.
Skye didn’t quite grasp the Spanish. “Manos arriba,” he replied cheerfully. “Nice evening.”
“Manos arriba! Arriba!” the skinny man on a ribby bay horse bellowed.
Skye saw the dragoon pistola in his hand, and started laughing. He turned to Victoria. “The man means to rob us.”
She started laughing, too.
“Manos arriba!”
This time a shot stopped their laughter cold. One of the horsebacked riders raised his hands, as a demonstration.
Skye and Victoria lifted their arms.
The leader unloosed a furious barrage of Spanish invective that Skye couldn’t comprehend, but he got the drift: Where are your horses, where are your goods, where are the others? You couldn’t be here alone.
Skye thought a moment. “Jesus Santamaría,” he said.
“Santamaría! Santamaría!”
The leader turned sullen. “Santamaría,” he snarled.
Two of the bandits dismounted and frisked Skye and Victoria, doing it insolently and rudely.
“Sonofabitch,” Victoria said to one.
He laughed.
“Nada,” said the other. “Nada.”
“Santamaría,” said the chief. There followed a furious debate among them, with the name of the other outlaw prominent in it. But Skye could not fathom what they were talking about.
“Comida,” Skye said. “Succor, help, food, horses. Get us help.” He pressed a hand to his stomach, pointed at his blistered feet, pointed at their horses.
The sinister bandit king paused, stared, and laughed, baring yellow teeth with black gaps between them.
“Succor,” he said, and the rest chuckled.
He pointed to himself. “Raul Sacramento del Diablo,” he bellowed. “Bandito primo,” he announced.
Skye didn’t believe him. This cur didn’t compare with Santamaría.
“Santamaría, primo,” he said. “Numero uno.”
Sacramento howled, gesticulated, bawled, and snarled.
Skye pointed north. “Take us to Yerba Buena,” he said.
“Yerba Buena!”
“Si.”
The bandit snarled something and at length.
“Comida,” said Skye, glad he remembered that word.
“Comida! Comida!”
They laughed.
“I will tell everyone that Sacramento del Diablo is the greatest of all Mexican bandits,” Skye said.
The bandit squinted malevolently.
The gang stayed, built a fire, and roasted a flyspecked haunch of beef they had loaded on a burro, while Skye and Victoria sat quietly. It took an hour to cook, while Skye sat there, salivating, hungering, itching to put meat between his teeth.
At last they ate, and served Skye and Victoria first, and then the dog, after sawing off tender beef with grimy knives. Skye fingered the
hot beef gingerly, and tried to let it cool, but his ravenous appetite overcame his prudence and he wolfed the food. Victoria was downing hers just as enthusiastically.
The food was fine, but the company wasn’t. Something bad was in the air, some sort of anticipation that radiated from the swarthy faces of his captors. They eyed him and Victoria with faint amusement and no more compassion than they would feel for a mosquito. A rank odor of dried sweat fouled the air around the cookfire. No breeze blew, not even an eddy of air to cleanse the hollow of the foulness of this bandit outfit. Skye thought he smelled vomit, blood, sweat, and something rank, like a festering wound or two among these watchful birds of prey. Whatever the case, Skye sensed the evening’s entertainment was not over and that the next minutes could be dangerous and even fatal.
Victoria sensed it, too, and kept glancing at Skye, sending her silent message of fear and worry.
Then the vulture leading this vicious pack, who styled himself Sacramento del Diablo, Sacrament of the Devil, wiped his lips with the grease-stained sleeve of his leather shirt, and rose. His eyes were on Victoria as he approached, and Skye knew suddenly what was about to happen.
The dog growled low in its throat. Victoria froze. She had no weapon, not even the small and secret hideout knife she normally carried, because the last gang of bandits had stripped it away. She was as helpless as a baby chick.
Skye stood. There were a few things he would die for; a few things in his soul that he regarded as more important than life. His freedom, for one. Avoiding torture, for another. And the sanctity of his woman.
The gaunt, hollow-chested bandit clasped Victoria’s arm and lifted her up, his face swimming in anticipation.
Skye slammed into him, sending him reeling backward. They landed on the grass together, Skye on top, and Skye began hammering the chieftain brutally, heedless of the shouts around him, the sudden rush of men determined to pull him off their leader. Berserk rage loosed in him and he fought with the powers of a madman, his great fists smashing everywhere, his thrashing legs booting at any target, his elbows hammering into the chieftain. He felt blows rain on his head and back, turned and booted a man in the groin. He saw the flash of metal and felt a searing pain across a forearm. The snarling dog leapt at the attacker and pulled him down, biting him on the arms and legs and lips.
But now he was beyond subduing, and thrashed about so violently that the bandits could not pin him. Skye traveled to some distant shore where the howls of men and the thud of his fists grew remote, where the taste of his own blood didn’t matter.
Vaguely, he heard the savagery of the dog and the shrieks of clawed and bitten men. But he was losing ground. And then, finally, they pulled him off the chief and pinned him down, eight of them against his writhing strength and the snapping, slavering dog, which was sinking canines into flesh until they were all soaked in blood, and howling great oaths at him.
Skye drifted into a haze, but he could see the bandit chief rise slowly, clasping his crotch where Skye had smashed him, and stand, bent over, his face in agony.
Skye peered about, through puffed eyes, and discovered Victoria standing apart, a flintlock rifle at her shoulder, cocked and ready. Other firearms lay at her feet. The bore of her rifle aimed squarely at the bandit chief, and the man was taking her seriously. Diablo straightened up and let go of his crotch.
Then he muttered a command.
The bandits pinning Skye let him go. He sat up slowly, and then stood, fighting back the dizziness. Victoria’s rifle never wavered. Some of the bandits could not stand, and lay in the grass oozing blood from dog bites. The ones that could stand made no effort to rush her.
But strangely, the chief smiled, dripping blood from a corner of his puffy mouth. He bowed, laughed, and issued a stream of orders to his men. The four standing bandits brought two saddled horses to Skye.
“Vaya, Yanqui diablo,” the bandit said. “Adios, muchacho.”
Skye plucked up one of the pistols and poked it into his waist, another loaded rifle, and helped Victoria mount one horse. Then he managed to pull his tortured body up and into the saddle of the other.
They watched silently. They had defeated him, pinned him down, and yet they had lost, and every one of them was bleeding from dog bites and suffering from the mayhem.
The only happy man among them was the chief, Raul Sacramento del Diablo, whose face was wreathed in joy. Skye did not entirely grasp what had happened, or why the bandit king set them free instead of killing him. Least of all did he understand why the man was smiling with some sort of ethereal joy—unless the bandit simply cherished a good brawl, win or lose.
And Skye and Victoria and No Name fled into the night.
thirty–seven
Guided by a gibbous moon throwing lantern-light over the dim trail, they rode north a mile or so. Then Skye stopped. The dog was limping. Skye dismounted and gathered No Name into his arms. He lifted the weary creature into Victoria’s lap. “Hand him to me when I get into the saddle,” he said.
“I’ll carry him, Skye. Damn good dog.”
“Yes.”
“He’s like ten warriors.”
“He’s got war honors, Victoria. Counted coup many times.”
“Spirit-dog,” she said. “You must never name him.”
“You all right?”
“I am all right. You?”
“I don’t know.”
He surveyed himself. His frock coat was filthy and busted apart at the shoulders. His britches were torn. His body had survived without serious damage except for the knife slash across his forearm. When they reached the next spring he would wash it.
“You are a great warrior, Skye.”
“They wrestled me down.”
“Dammit, Skye, eight men. It took all of them to do it. And you humbled the chief. That dog’s a great warrior, too. Every one covered with his own blood.”
She stroked the head of the recumbent dog, which lay across her skirts. Something about that stirred him.
“You’re a great warrior woman, Victoria. Everything changed when the chief saw the bore of your rifle. You were ready to kill him and he knew it.”
“You were ready to die to save me.” She was peering at him so intently that he felt embarrassed. “I am loved,” she said. “You give away your life for me.”
“We all risked our lives, including that mutt, for each other. That dog was dodging kicks and dodging a few big knives, too. But he never stopped biting.”
This moment was an affirmation, and Skye treasured it.
He found a pair of leather rings, designed to carry a rifle, and slid the weapon into them, freeing an arm at last.
“We got a rifle and pistol out of it, but no powder or balls. Two shots. It’ll help.”
They started their horses north, and rode another mile until they found a spring. There they watered and washed, and then withdrew into brush to await the dawn. Skye rolled under some manzanita and slept, letting the silence and coolness and darkness of the California night heal body and soul. The dog lay quietly beside him. They were warriors together, bonded by blood.
As he lay hurting through the fretful night, he realized that something had changed. This ordeal was another passage in his life. He had fled from Monterey feeling utter loss, loss of his birth family, loss of a nation, loss of everything familiar. And now, after this ordeal of banditry, and their survival against all odds, he was discovering that he had a new family. He studied Victoria who lay inert a few feet away. Always before, in the recesses of his heart, he had wondered about the future: could he, an Englishman, find bliss with this Crow woman? Would he ever grow restless for another, one of his own kind? Some sweet English-speaking lady, in lilac cologne, who might share everything that had been his inheritance from the Island Kingdom? Would he grow bored with Victoria, who knew nothing of that life? And until now he never had an answer.
But now an answer was forming. Yes, he told his doubtful soul, yes, I can live with her always. I can cease
being the Englishman. We can become a new nation, she and I, not English, not Crow, not Yank, but children of the American mountains. And now the dog had joined the family. Strange beast, often out of sight, obscure, unmastered, and alone. But now the yellow dog lay beside him, bonded by war and blood.
Skye stared at the dog, loving him more than ever, feeling at one with the creature. He reached across the weeds to clasp the dog’s injured foreleg, and felt its heat rise in his hand. He stroked the foreleg gently. The dog stirred and licked Skye’s hand, and sighed.
And Skye knew that he had passed from one realm into another, and that these beloved allies, his Indian woman and his dog, were partnered with him along the long, lonesome road ahead. For the first time in years, he didn’t miss his native land.
The next day they starved. Skye rode dizzily, wondering whether he could hang onto his horse long enough to reach a village. Victoria was stoic, and rode in resolute silence, while the dog seemed oblivious of the famine that was tormenting the human beings. Occasionally Victoria dismounted and collected some object or other from the ground. Skye discovered that these were arrowheads, and one old and rusted spearhead, abandoned or lost by the Spanish.
“Go hunt,” she said that afternoon. “I can cut meat with these things.”
He examined the charge in the flintlock rifle. Some of the powder had slipped out of the pan, but it probably would fire. He would have only one shot, so it had to count. He had the pistol in his belt, but he would need that for other purposes.
He heeled the bandit horse ahead. It responded swiftly. He had never hunted in an arid, hilly, monotonous land like this, and scarcely knew what sort of game to look for, but he set out, riding ahead, figuring that all game had to water somewhere. The dog did not go with him, which darkened his spirits. But the dog was still limping.
He spotted a spring far up a slope a mile to the left of the trail, a smear of greenery that indicated water, rode cautiously in that direction, and then dismounted. He tied the horse and crept forward until he had a good field of fire overlooking a tiny rivulet that burst from dark rock. Then he settled the rifle barrel over a downed juniper trunk and waited.
Going Home Page 20