by Shirl Henke
* * * *
When Rafe awakened that morning he found Deborah sleeping soundly by his side. He propped his head up on one hand and watched her beautiful, expressive face. In sleep; it looked guileless and childlike; but he knew once she awakened, her eyes would cloud with guilt and self-accusation. She comes to me in passion she can't deny, but I'm not reaching her. She sees only a dangerous stranger and remembers only a selfish boy.
Praying that time together, spent building Renacimiento and raising Adam, might allow her to love and trust without reservation, Rafe quietly slipped from bed. He would let her sleep a bit longer. There were purple shadows beneath her eyes. Smiling, he recalled their loving of the night before. She had good reason to be tired!
When he arrived in the dining room with Adam in tow, breakfast was almost ready. Charlee McAllister had helped Sadie prepare a feast. Watching Charlee’s efficient movements, Rafe admired her grit. She had disguised herself as a boy and slipped into town through Woll's lines. Still, he had to get her out before she was discovered and jailed as a spy or some such nonsense. He cursed the danger from Flores and the ill-timing of Charlee's arrival.
As he listened to breakfast table conversation, it became apparent that Charlee worked for a very prominent Texian, a veteran of San Jacinto, who owned a large ranch nearby. If only he could get his wife and son to Bluebonnet, they would be safe from Flores until he could deal with him. He would use his pass to get the “boy” out of town and return her before anyone knew she'd slipped in. Then he'd also know where the ranch was located. He only prayed he could make arrangements with General Woll to move Deborah and Adam as soon as he returned.
Planting a kiss on Deborah's brow and giving Adam a hug, Rafe set out immediately after breakfast for the livery to saddle Bostonian and rent a nag suitable for a ”boy” he was delivering to his cousin in Gonzales.
On the long ride to Bluebonnet, Charlee finally let her suspicious reserve slip and questioned him about his past life and relationship with Deborah.
She's protective of her friend, he thought as he tried to frame a reply to her tentative query about his not looking like a Creole gentleman. Some gentleman! Scarred and callused, dressed in buckskins, living more like a wild Indian than a civilized Frenchman. He knew his family would cringe in mortification if they even recognized him in his present state.
‘‘It's been so long ago I scarcely remember that life. I was a spoiled young fool, rich, bored...” Before he knew it, Rafe found himself unburdening a great deal to Charlee McAllister's sympathetic ears. His wife, it seemed, had confided little about their failed marriage to her friend other than saying that they wanted different things. Now, ironically, he wanted from Deborah the very same things she had asked of him seven years ago—and he wanted desperately to give them to her in return—complete fidelity and commitment, total trust and love.
By the time he had delivered Charlee to her big ranch house, he had made a friend. “I've seen the loneliness in Deborah's eyes ever since I met her. I think she loves you, Rafe. Be patient with her and don't force her. She's a strong-willed woman, but she's worth waiting for.”
“After six years of searching, I figure we've got the rest of our lives,” he replied with a sad smile. “Thank you, Charlee.”
On the way back to town, Rafe pondered Charlee's words. He must curb his temper and sarcasm, stop teasing her, and try harder to see things from her viewpoint. After all, Deborah had made a new life for herself and her child without any help from him or any other man. Such an independent woman would have been alien and unappealing to Rafael Flamenco, but Rafe Fleming knew he could love no other.
* * * *
“You are certain about this?” General Woll's keen gaze made Captain Rodriguez uncomfortable.
“Most certainly, Excellency. The ‘boy’ Fleming used his safe conduct to smuggle out of San Antonio is really a girl named Charlee McAllister, rather an infamous sort. She was involved in the shooting of a comanchero named Rufus Brady and lives with a Texian rancher who was one of Sam Houston's officers in the 1836 rebellion.”
Woll looked across the office to Captain Flores, who had accompanied Rodriguez. “Well, it seems your suspicions may be justified. I want Flamenco taken into custody when he returns to San Antonio.”
“What makes you certain he'll return?” Rodriguez asked.
Flores smirked evilly. “Oh, he'll return all right. His woman and his cub are here.”
“I repeat, Captains, I want him taken alive for questioning—not shot!” Woll's voice scarcely changed pitch, but both men knew the danger in disobeying such a strongly worded order.
Enrique Flores planned to take his chances.
As Rafe neared the outskirts of San Antonio, he was deeply preoccupied with thoughts of what he would say to Deborah that night. Absently, he fished in his pocket for the safe conduct paper. Just as he began to pull it out he looked up and saw one of the guards at the roadside drawing a bead on him! The shot cracked over his head as he turned Bostonian, slid over one side of the horse, and drew his pistol, all in one continuous motion. Several shots whistled around him as he returned fire and beat a hasty retreat, zigzagging off the road into a copse of brushy shrubs and trees.
One of the soldiers crumpled and two others ducked for cover. Spurring Bostonian, Rafe cut down an arroyo and rode as fast as he dared over the rocky, uneven ground.
“You fools! Shitting ignorant whoresons!” Enrique Flores heard the report from the sergeant in charge of his hand-picked men. “After all the cautions I gave you about his cleverness—you're dealing with a man who escaped from the Comanche, for God's sake!”
Sergeant Ortiz cringed under the tirade. “I have sent out two of my best men to search for him, Captain. They will surely capture him.”
Flores snorted and swore again. “I can imagine! Capturing a man who lived with Comanche should be child's play for men too ignorant to hold their fire until he came into range!”
Flores's assessment was right. Rafe had no trouble shaking the two men on his trail. He doubled back and scouted the Mexican emplacements around the city. He might with luck get past them, but he was certain now that once inside he would face yet another ambush at the boardinghouse. If only I knew someone in town I could trust. But he didn't. I'll just wait ‘til nightfall and slip in. Something will turn up to help me.
The something turned out to be none other than the very same nervous harbinger of disaster he'd met on the San Antonio road three days earlier. Knowing Whalen Simpson had courted Deborah did not endear him to Rafe. The very idea that the man might have become Deborah's husband or Adam's father appalled him, especially when he found Simpson sleeping beside a glowing campfire.
Even the click of his gun being cocked over Simpson's head didn't rouse him. Rafe had to resort to shaking the fool.
“Who—what in hell—you again!” The stable keeper sat up and shook his bearlike head. “I ain't had no sleep in days. Guess I took a chance fallin' off like thet.” He looked sheepishly at Rafe's contemptuous expression.
“You're lucky I wasn't one of Woll's reconnaissance patrols,” Rafe said levelly as he kicked dirt over the glowing coals. “What are you doing out here all alone?”
“I ain't alone. At least, when I meet up with 'Ole Paint’ Caldwell I won't be.”
Even in the wilds of north Texas, Rafe had heard of Matt Caldwell, a seasoned Indian fighter and veteran of the Revolution. “Caldwell figuring on rallying men to retake the city?”
“Got him near six hundred already, including a batch o' rangers under a young feller named Hays.”
“Jack Hays?” At Simpson's affirmative nod, Rafe said, “I met him once a couple of years back. Good man to have on your side.”
Simpson's eyes squinted speculatively. “You figger ta join up with us?”
“Seems General Woll's left me no choice,” Rafe replied grimly.
Chapter Twenty Five
The smell of smoke was faint but Rafe's finely honed senses
picked it up before he saw the sentry who challenged them in the still dawn air. The man was one of Jack Hays's rangers, a tough, wiry sort who nodded to Simpson, eyed Rafe up and down in one fast assessment, and then motioned them toward the camp. Men were rising from their bedrolls as the first faint streaks of pink light etched themselves across the stark landscape. Rafe estimated Caldwell had about one hundred fifty men. Long odds considering Woll had fourteen hundred.
Rafe's black eyes scanned the helter-skelter groups of men spread across the banks of the creek. He muttered to Simpson, “I'd be interested in seeing what Jack Hays has in mind. For sure not charging Woll's emplacements with a few hundred men. You say he's been stationed in the city this past year?”
“Yeah. Him 'n his men been scoutin' Woll's army even before they got near the city. His men are over there, near them willow thickets.” He waved in the general direction of a large group of men, already up and eating their meager rations.
Dismounting, Rafe wended his way toward Hays' rangers. About midway there, he spied John Coffee Hays near one campfire, conferring with three other heavily armed men. Slightly built and quiet, Hays was underestimated by many people when they first met him; but Rafe had seen him back down a whole mob of drunken, dangerous Texians in Owl Creek a couple of years earlier. For cold nerve and common sense, Rafe had never met a better man.
Hearing Rafe's approach, Hays turned from his conversation and his expressive features split in a broad grin. “Rafe Fleming! You're a long way from Renacimiento.”
As Rafe reached for his hand, he replied, “That I am, but who knows where our fortunes lead us? I'm here to join your fight. My wife and son are in San Antonio, Jack.”
The younger man's expression registered amazement. “So you found her in San Antonio?” A look of incredulity spread across his face. “A blond woman, tall—Mrs. Kensington from the boardinghouse?”
Rafe smiled crookedly. “Yeah. She took on a whole new identity.”
“I should have figured it out—her silver blond hair and Yankee accent—even her son's coloring. I never saw the boy, but several people told me he was dark.”
“There's no way you could have known. She didn't want to be found, Jack.” Rafe lapsed into silence.
Taking the cue, Hays quickly changed the subject. “You have plans to join our fight?”
Rafe nodded, then said, “I had a safe conduct from Woll. Seems someone rescinded it while I was out of town for a day. Ever hear of a comanchero named Enrique Flores? He's a captain with the invading army now.”
“He have something personal against you?”
Rafe grinned darkly. “Let's just say I have something personal against him. How many men do you think Caldwell will muster, and how soon can we retake the city?”
Hays shrugged. “Ever since we got word of Woll's invasion on the tenth, I've been tracking the wily devil. He left the road and cut his own trail through impossible terrain. We never even found a trace of him until he'd taken the city on the eleventh. He's no one to underestimate. I imagine we can muster six to seven hundred men in a few more days.”
“And in the meanwhile, Flores and his irregulars walk the streets of San Antonio,” Rafe said grimly.
“We can move pretty quick to distract them, I think, even though we don't have enough men to risk an all-out fight. Trick is to fool that Frenchman into thinking we have more men massed than we do. Not an easy thing to do—Woll's the best field tactician around since President Houston was a general.”
Rafe was impressed at the comparison, one that would not be made lightly by any Texian. “You have any ideas on how we can fool a fellow as sharp as Woll?”
“Let me introduce you to some of my men and talk about our ideas over some hot coffee,” Hays replied with a smile.
“Jist like yew said, Capt'n. They's all comin' out fer us,” Jinx Ferguson said, lobbing a big wad of tobacco to the ground. The men under Hays's command were situated on a ridge around four hundred yards east of the Alamo. He had dispatched about twenty men with the fastest horses to ride around the city perimeter, rousing the sleepy soldiers with curses and insults, daring them to come out and fight.
Rafe had been one of the riders, drawing a good deal of fire as he hurled a series of particularly choice invectives at the Mexicans in their native language. As he trotted Bostonian up the ridge toward Hays, he grinned. “I think they're taking the bait.”
“Yeah. If only they don't take it too good—and send more men than we can handle,” Hays replied levelly. “We need to lure them out a few hundred at a time and pick them off from ambush.”
“Speak of the devil, I think the first wave's coming,” Rafe said as he watched the activity from the Alamo.
Hays swore as he assessed the number of cavalry heading their way. “Let's rile them up and see how fast their horses are,” he called down the line. Less than fifty seasoned fighting men under Hays formed up a loose line. Their leader spurred his big bay and headed down the hill pell-mell with his men close behind him, yelling bloodcurdling threats and insults at the column of cavalry, which immediately took up pursuit. Wheeling around in a broad arc, the rangers then headed north toward Salado Creek, where Caldwell's much larger force lay in wait.
Rafe flattened himself along Bostonían's neck and spurred the big sorrel forward as musket balls whistled and dropped all around him. Miraculously, none of the rangers was hit. It was almost five miles to their rendezvous point and Rafe hoped the Mexicans' aim would not improve with practice.
Just as the Texians' exhausted horses neared the brushy ravine where the militia lay in wait, Hays signaled the men to turn toward the creek. Their horses plunged into the icy water. The Mexican army was getting dangerously close and the Texian militia was nowhere in sight.
At once Rafe realized Hays's plan. Their only hope of escape was to ride back toward their camp, hoping to encounter the tardy militia. About a mile downstream the brushy thickets along the riverbank sprang to life with Texian riflemen, who set up a murderous fire against the Mexican cavalry. Colonel Carrasco' s men quickly gave up the chase and retreated to take cover on the boulder-strewn ridge to the east of Caldwell's militiamen.
A withering fight ensued with the outnumbered Texians exacting fierce casualties from the Mexican cavalry, who possessed poorer arms and decidedly poorer marksmanship.
“We got them pinned down, Capt'n,” Jinx said as he crawled up to where Hays and Fleming had taken cover.
‘‘Don't be too sure who's got who pinned down,” Hays said.
Grunting in agreement, Rafe swore. “Why the hell weren't those men ready by the ford? This is a piss poor place to fight. If Woll brings up his infantry and cannon, we're sitting ducks.”
Jinx replied, “I palavered with one o' Ole Paint's men a minit ago. Seems a couple o' fellers wanted ta wait 'n th' volunteers had ta take a vote on backin' ya.”
Rafe swore. “We took a vote on this plan last night, for Christ's sake!”
Hays only shrugged, used to the splintered loyalties and uncertain temperaments of Texian militia. “What we need to know now is just where the general is and what he's doing. Still got that Comanche instinct for slipping in and out of tight spots, Fleming?”
“Find Woll and check his strength,” Rafe replied, anticipating Hays's orders. With panther like grace, he vanished into the willows. He retrieved Bostonian from the shelter where he was hidden and led him silently away from the shooting. Within an hour he had returned, reporting to Hays that Woll had just left the city with over two hundred infantry and two cannons.
“They should be here in a couple of hours,” he finished.
Hays grunted, picking up a stick Rafe had used to draw a crude map in the dirt. ‘‘Never count on Woll taking that long. He marched with no roads and made it to San Antonio weeks sooner than we thought he could.” He looked over to Matt Caldwell, who was present at the quick strategy session held during desultory firing.
Caldwell, thickset and stiff from multiple woun
ds accumulated in his years as an Indian fighter on the Texas frontier, sat back and rubbed his bristly mustache. “I expect he'll be along right soon. If the guns these boys got are any sample, we can take out a lot of them.”
“Trick is avoiding the cannons while we're doing it,” Hays added sourly.
“They know they outnumber us. Maybe if we fall back just as the general gets here, we can make him charge down that hill into a little crossfire,” Rafe said. “Before he gets his artillery pieces sighted in.”
“No, we'd have to move before that,” Hays replied, turning an idea over in his mind.
By the time they heard the infantry rounding the curve of the ravine, the Texians' plans were in place. At the first sight of the Mexican column, the Texian officers began to yell in confusion, urging their men to retreat, leaving a handful of Hays's rangers in the willow thickets around the stream.
Holding his men in good order, Woll sounded the bugle and ordered a charge after firing several quick rounds from one of the cannons. The grapeshot missed its mark; but when the Mexican soldiers charged, the Texian long rifles did not miss theirs. The ground was quickly littered with Mexican dead and wounded as the Texian militia circled back and opened a killing fire.
Rafe had used his Hawken rifle several times but preferred his wicked Bowie knife in hand-to-hand fighting. At the right flank of the Texian lines, a small group of Mexicans had made an incursion. Rafe and a small number of other seasoned frontiersmen drove them back. All the while he fought, Rafe searched for Flores. Only let me kill that murdering bastard so Deborah is safe.
Just when he despaired of finding his prey, Rafe caught sight of him, mounted on a superb black stallion. He crawled onto a rocky ledge above the unsuspecting officer who was temporarily separated from his men in the rough, brushy terrain.