by Lyn Cote
In the front line, the sunlight gleamed on the Mexican lancers, with their silvered domed feathered hats, blue-and-white uniforms, and their lances polished to shed human blood. Their green-and-white flag fluttered over them.
For a few moments, there was silence as each soldier on both sides faced the enemy. Faced the moment of decision. Faced coming death.
At a shouted command, the Mexican infantry in the cornfields raised their muskets and opened fire. The brightly colored lancers spurred their horses to a gallop. The high battery on Independence Hill roared down, promising death.
McCulloch shouted. Carson and Emilio charged forward with all the other Rangers. The lancers surged toward them, wielding their long metal-tipped wooden lances, aiming to spear human flesh. Carson rifle-shot the nearest lancer, the sound lost in the din. Then he drew his bow and sent arrow after arrow into the oncoming lancers.
From behind, the U.S. cannon barked, answering the Mexicans’ above. The noise shook its way through Carson. The lancers and Rangers slammed into each other—two twelve-point bucks ramming heads.
A melee crowded around Carson on the road. Fully engaged, he gripped a Colt and his knife, one in each hand. Emilio was slashing with his long dagger. Carson shot and hacked at any body that came within reach.
Something seared his forehead, and warm blood drooled into his right eye. He wiped it with his sleeve and, with his Colt, brought down another Mexican. He glimpsed the handsome lancer officer, still shouting orders, encouragement, going down under the onslaught. American infantry poured into the gap the Rangers had hewn. Suddenly, Carson found himself with other Rangers in the midst of the Mexicans, cut off from the U.S. line.
Carson slashed, sliced with his knife. Sliding the spent Colt into his belt, he slipped the fresh one into his ready hand. He heeled his horse around, still firing, and charged back to the U.S line. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emilio slide off his horse, sucked into the surging current of men. Carson attempted to turn back, but the other horses were tight around him. No room! No room to maneuver! Emilio!
Mariel heard the distant cannon and gunfire. She had never heard cannon before, yet the devastating, vibrating noise could be nothing else. Sugar gasped, a little moan escaping before she clamped her mouth shut. Mariel grasped Sugar’s cold hands in hers. For a moment, all halted and turned toward the sounds of battle.
“It’s started,” one of the soldiers growled. “And we’re stuck back here with women.”
The soldier beside him cuffed him. “Be polite. We’re needed here. Wouldn’t you want to know your wife was safe?”
The first soldier bowed his head. “Sorry.”
Mariel could only stare at the man. This was not how Carson thought of war. He hated it. He would be with me if he could and take me home, far from here.
One of the other wives began praying aloud. The party started forward again. Mariel recognized some of the woman’s phrases from the Bible. The words seemed to wrap all the women together in their common misery and uncertainty. The bright sunlight crackled with silent prayers. Her mind had gone strangely numb. She could only hear the sounds of distant battle, and her own unspoken prayer repeated and repeated like a pale blue ribbon in her mind. Let them live. Let Emilio, let Carson live.
At high noon, with the sun blazing down on his head and shoulders, Carson stood beside his horse in this battle lull, looking up the steep rise to Fort Soledado. The slopes were covered with thick and thorny chaparral. Cannons from the hilltop fort were pointed down at them. The image of Emilio sliding from his horse taunted Carson, who—with the battle still on—could not look for him. He thought fleetingly, too, of Niven and Remy. He’d lost track of them today.
General Worth rode up and pointed his sword toward the heights. “Men, you are to take that hill! I know you will do it!”
The troops around shouted, “We will!” Carson said nothing; he merely checked his reloaded Colts and rifle and refilled his quiver with arrows from a saddlebag. His goal was to stay alive and find Emilio.
“Rangers, dismount and leave your horses!” ordered McCulloch, who was standing beside Worth. Carson took his canteen, hung it around his neck, and slapped his horse’s haunch. The animal took off back down the Saltillo Road. He was as practiced as Carson in battle and would return when he heard Carson’s whistle.
Still in the forefront, Carson and the Rangers led the infantry. They left the road and began marching through corn and sugarcane fields, which provided their only cover from the enemy’s cannon sights aimed down at them. But the quivering of the tall green and gold stalks must have given them away.
The Mexican artillery opened fire, pouring down grapeshot—hundreds of small, hot balls like deadly grapes—onto the ranks, enveloping the crown of the hill with smoke. Fire as garish as the noonday sun flashed in the midst of the smoke. The man behind Carson shrieked and fell hard to the ground. Carson didn’t look back. Without any cover, he rushed toward the stream they had to cross.
He hoisted his rifle and two Colts overhead. He plunged into the cool current. Copper, iron balls hissed around him, hot metal hitting water, stirring up foam. Keep moving. Stay alive. Keep moving. Soldiers churned through the sweeping current under a shower of more grapeshot. Carson clambered up the rocky slope on the other side. Safe. He dragged in great gulps of air. The murderous artillery didn’t pause. In spite of danger, the Texans and Americans all halted among the riverside shrubbery, letting the water drain from their clothing and boots.
Then they rushed to the base of the hill for cover. There they would be out of reach of the high cannon, too close, too low to be hit. Grabbing hold of the chaparral, Carson, the Rangers, and the infantry began to climb hand over hand, gaining rocky cliff after rocky cliff. They aimed and fired toward the fort on the hill. With deadly accuracy. Higher. Closer. Higher.
Carson scaled the final rise and fired straight into the opening around the cannon. The Mexicans shouted, “Diablos! Tejanos!” They panicked and ran, leaving behind their cannon. The Rangers approached a loaded and primed nine-pounder. A Louisiana infantryman pulled out a piece of chalk and wrote on the cannon TEXAS RANGERS AND THE 5TH INFANTRY. They turned it onto the nearby Bishop’s Palace, achieving their immediate goal: These guns would no longer be aimed at them.
The U.S. soldiers around him relaxed; a few smiled. “Carson and Tunney,” McCulloch ordered, “go back and find our wounded Rangers. The hospital tents will be set up now farther down the Saltillo Road. Take our wounded there.”
Released dread and worry rushed, pumping hot blood through Carson. He began heading down the slope before McCulloch’s order was finished. He heard Tunney sliding down the slope behind him. They made good time and soon were rustling through the corn and sugarcane. The ground was strewn with blankets, muskets, pistols, and more that men in their haste had tossed aside before plunging into the river. Carson moved without pause toward the road where Emilio had fallen. Only the battle had forced him to delay this search. Emilio. Be alive.
Day was fading fast, and roiling dark clouds lowered over the mountains and valley. For hours, Carson and Tunney had been searching for Emilio and other fallen Rangers. At the same time, Mexican and U.S. soldiers had been roaming, seeking their wounded. This was the informal truce to find wounded that always came after a battle. Carson had stopped many times to pour water from his canteen into the mouth of a wounded comrade. The ache to see Emilio’s face and feel his heart beating strongly under his hand had kept Carson moving, moving. As they’d searched, he and Tunney had used their horses to ferry each fallen Ranger back to the hospital in the battle camp at the rear.
Finally, when Carson had about given up hope, he heard his name, Emilio’s voice. He rushed through the shadows and found his brother-in-law lying hidden in the cornfield. He had come close to this place several times, but perhaps Emilio had been unconscious and had not heard Carson calling his name. Cold relief sluicing through him, Carson clasped Emilio’s hand. “Where are you wound
ed?” he cried, and in the same instant he saw that someone had tied a tourniquet around Emilio’s calf.
“I couldn’t…get up. My leg.” Using Carson’s hand, Emilio pulled himself up to a sitting position. He gritted his teeth against the pain.
“I’ll get you to the hospital.” Carson helped Emilio up and slid his arm around him to support him. They began hobbling toward the road, Carson whistling for his horse. The sudden relief he’d felt earlier had made him feel the minor scrapes, bruises, and deep fatigue that had been nagging him all day. He breathed, and it sounded ragged to his own ears. He couldn’t stop now, even though his own knees wanted to buckle.
The storm broke just then as night fell. Unable to take another step, Carson stood in the open, letting the cooling rain soak him, drag him into semiconsciousness. The hospital camp was still far away. He whistled and whistled, but his mount didn’t return to him. The animal might have been commandeered by the hospital staff for another patient. Or stolen. Or shot by accident. And where had Tunney gone?
In the rain and gloom, a door miraculously opened ahead, and faint light glowed forth. Rain poured down Carson’s face, and Emilio shivered against Carson. “Ayúdame,” Carson called, but only a sad croaking sound came from his lips. “Help me!”
Then a Mexican, a farmer dressed in loose cotton, was there beside him, helping him and Emilio stagger into the jacal. The farmer and his wife quickly helped Carson lay Emilio by the fire. Shivering with the wet chill, Carson knelt beside his friend. He was about to ask for help with treating Emilio’s wounds, but the wife, young and pretty, was already heating water over the hearth and opening a wooden box, which looked very much like his own mother’s chest of remedies.
The Mexican husband put a pottery mug into Carson’s hand. Carson mumbled, “Gracias.” He downed the home-brewed ale in one swallow, then moved away from Emilio to collapse onto the earthen floor, leaning with his back against the mesquite wall. Even with overwhelming thunder overhead, he fell instantly to sleep. His last thought was that he was glad that on this day, he’d faced only the cannons of men, not God’s thunder. God’s thunder—like a thousand cannons pounded, vibrating through his very flesh.
At the next day’s humid dawning, Mariel followed Sugar as they both staggered out of the hospital tent, where they had spent most of the night working. Dawn’s light was sickly, pale, and wanting—just how Mariel felt in her every bone. Everything outside was drenched from last night’s downpour. Mariel recognized a familiar Ranger asleep under the nearest wagon. She hurried toward him, bending down to shake him. “Tunney! Tunney!”
The Ranger moaned and tried to shrug off her touch. She increased her efforts. Finally, he rolled toward her, blinking. “You’re Carson’s woman.” He got to his feet and rubbed his eyes with his hands. “How goes the battle?”
“All’s quiet for now.” Sugar had hurried to join Mariel. “Where are my brother and my husband?”
Tunney blinked some more and yawned largely. “I was with Carson looking for wounded Rangers. For hours. We brought back about a dozen to the hospital here. Then Carson’s horse came up lame. I tied him up and went back to find Carson. But the storm came. Couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Or hear my own voice. I come back and got under the wagon. I was done in. Sorry.”
Mariel wanted to rail at him for not finding Carson and Emilio. But he was just a man. And a man with silver in his mane of hair who’d fought a battle and then spent hours bringing the injured in for treatment. Mariel held back sharp words and chewed on them.
“Where was the last place you saw Carson and Emilio?” Sugar asked.
“We had worked our way along the Saltillo Road where Emilio was wounded—”
“My husband was wounded!” Sugar interrupted, gripping Tunney’s sleeve. “You didn’t say that—wounded!”
Mariel threw an arm around Sugar’s shoulders as tears dripped down Sugar’s face. Horror rendered Mariel dumb. She looked down at her bloodstained dress. She had helped clean wounds all night, preparing men for surgery or stitching them up. She had been left with gory images she doubted she’d ever erase from her memory. And now Emilio…
Sugar wiped her tears away with the hem of her skirt. “We have to go find them. I’ll get my nursing chest.”
“You two women can’t go runnin’ off. Monterrey hasn’t been taken yet,” Tunney objected. “You could run into Mexican soldiers—”
Sugar marched away without even replying. Mariel hurried after her, her heart beating in her ears. Emilio hurt. Where is Carson?
Soon Sugar and Mariel were striding down the Saltillo Road. General Worth’s troops, still sitting and lying beside the road in the corn and sugarcane fields, watched them pass by. Many looked startled, but none tried to stop them.
Tunney rode up behind them and dismounted, falling into step beside them. “We’ll need my horse when we find them,” he said.
Mariel clung to his words—“when we find them.”
Soon after they set out, the sound of battle started once more. Tunney trudged beside them, as agitated as a tethered dog that hears his master’s call. He wanted to be back in the thick of the fight.
Mariel turned away from him, constantly scanning the horizon, watching the sun rise higher and higher. But vultures circling high above the Saltillo Road nearly broke her concentration, tried to make her captive to all her fears. Emilio is alive. Carson is alive. They are alive. If only her thoughts could make it so.
Finally, Tunney pulled up and stopped. “This looks like the place.” He turned on the spot, considering and remembering. “Follow me.” He left the road and worked his way through the cornfields, leading his horse. Mariel and Sugar followed him, swiping away the dried leaves of the tall corn. Tunney came to an abrupt halt. “Carson! Ramirez!”
Sugar and Mariel began calling the names too. And within minutes, a Mexican woman peered out between two corn rows. “¿Están buscando a Emilio Ramirez?”
“Yes!” Sugar shouted. “Sí, I’m looking for him! He’s my husband. Mi esposo!”
The woman motioned for them to come with her. Tunney balked. “It could be a trick.”
Mariel paid Tunney no attention, following Sugar and the stranger. Grumbling, Tunney trailed after them. Soon, at the woman’s invitation, they entered a jacal. Mariel heard Sugar cry out and then saw her drop to her knees. Mariel glimpsed Emilio lying on the earthen floor in front of a low fire. Mariel hovered by the door while Sugar talked rapidly in Spanish to the woman and Emilio.
Fear kept Mariel from asking what, and how serious, Emilio’s injuries were. Finally, Sugar turned and asked, “Is Tunney outside?”
Mariel nodded.
“Please ask him to come to the door so I can speak to him,” Sugar said, still kneeling beside Emilio.
Mariel complied, and soon Tunney stood at the door, saying, “Yes, Mrs. Ramirez?”
“Emilio was wounded in his calf. The shot broke his leg. He can’t walk. Juanita here has treated his leg well. Neither of us thinks he should be moved until his fever breaks.” Sugar looked to Mariel. “Will you stay with me?”
“Ja,” Mariel murmured, looking around for Carson.
Sugar went on, “We will stay here, then, till Emilio can be moved. Tunney, where do you think Carson is now?”
The man shrugged. “We all heard the shooting start again. I would think that he’s gone off to fight again.”
Numbness leaked through Mariel. Carson wasn’t here; he had already gone back into the fight. He was still in danger.
Sugar sighed and shook her head. “That is what Juanita thinks too. You will have to go too, right?”
“I was just waiting to see if you needed me to help you get Emilio back to the camp and the surgeons. Don’t you think he’d get better care with the U.S. surgeons?” Tunney asked.
“No, I don’t.” Sugar’s voice was firm, inflexible. “They are only good at digging out shot and cutting off limbs. Juanita has already taken out the lead shot and is certain
, as I am, that with careful nursing and fomenting the wound, Emilio won’t lose his leg.”
Tunney frowned, and Mariel could tell from his twisted expression that he didn’t agree. But in the distance, cannons began barking destruction once more. “I got to go. If I find Carson, I’ll tell him you’re here.” Then he was hurrying back through the cornfields, taking his horse with him.
Mariel and Sugar looked into each other’s eyes and shared the same silent questions.
Fifteen
Another tense day and night had passed. Deafened by gunfire and choking on black smoke from gunpowder, Carson crouched beside McCulloch behind a corner of a stone building in Monterrey. Trapped. Thwarted. Taut.
Carson had hoped to return to the little jacal where Emilio lay. But the battle for Monterrey had him in its claws. He had been forced to entrust Emilio to the kindness of the Mexican couple.
He edged out, peering. Sniper fire pelted down, chipping the edge of the stone building. Carson pulled back, gasping. No food all day and no water left in his canteen. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself not to give in to the desire to rush out of cover, firing his Colts. Ending this.
For two days, the Rangers—still at the forefront of the U.S. Army—had moved forward. Inch by inch, painstakingly overtaking each of the four forts on the western peaks protecting the city. Now, after piercing Monterrey’s defenses, the Rangers and U.S. infantry were fighting hand to hand, flesh to flesh. Street by street.
A few Mexican snipers had taken positions at high windows in the stone haciendas and buildings. Carson and McCulloch had been pinned down by a particularly accurate sharpshooter for nearly an hour. McCulloch cursed under his breath. “We need to get that one out.”
Carson nodded, breathing fast in spite of the enforced immobility. He had been trying to think of a way to do just that for several minutes now. His hands were sticky with blood. The air was packed with the cloying odors of gunpowder, blood, and sweat. Leaning against the stone wall, he ached all over. All he wanted to do was go to Emilio.