"Like the lady said," Kendrick cut him off, "that's done and past. You're a young man of quick, deep passions. You just need to get a little better control over 'em, that's all. Like, for instance, aimin' 'em at the little matter of this other fight we got comin' up."
"Si, senor," Bernardo said earnestly. "I fully intend to do that."
Kendrick had nodded. "I believe you." Then he grinned. "And if you throw yourself at the Rurales as hard as you tore into me … well, I'll be damned glad you're on our side."
Following that exchange, Kendrick and Estraleta had continued on their way. Before they'd gone very far, Estraleta said, "I was aware of Bernardo's feelings for me, but I never did anything to encourage him or give him false hope."
"You don't owe me any explanations, either way," Kendrick told her. Glancing over, however, he'd seen that her head was turned and her gaze was following Bernardo as he drifted off in the opposite direction.
Now, in the wake of their lovemaking that had been frenzied yet at certain moments had seemed remote and mechanical on Estraleta's part, especially compared to her previous displays of passion, Kendrick couldn't help but wonder about that look on her face when she'd been gazing after Bernardo. It had been a look of sadness, to be sure. And, unless he was badly mistaken, it had also contained a hint of longing.
With Estraleta still nestled against him, the lightning outside causing the exciting hills and valleys of her nude form to be illuminated in tantalizing silver bursts, Kendrick pondered exactly what that look had meant.
And then, even though he knew it was a lie, that eventually he would be riding away … unless tomorrow's battle ended up planting him in the ground here … Kendrick for some reason felt the need to assure Estraleta softly, "Don't worry, gal. I don't plan on goin' nowhere."
Chapter Twenty-Five
With rain coming down in sheets and streaks of lightning cutting back and forth across the sky so frequently and brilliantly that it was at times almost blinding, they headed out a handful of minutes past midnight.
Bradley led the way, his face drawn and hollow-eyed to the point of appearing almost skeletal in the alternating casts of brilliance and shadow.
Behind him came the Gatling gun, mounted on a horse-drawn cart that had been specially modified with armor-like sheets of horsehide bound around flat stone slabs and propped upright to shield the gun operator—Estraleta. For the descent into the valley, she rode on a separate horse (not Remoza's silver stallion, which would have stood out too much, even in the storm swept darkness) directly behind the cart. Next to her rode Jorge, who would once again serve as her ammo feeder, the way he'd done in the church tower at Ocochillo. The rest of the invaders were strung out after that, seventy grim-faced, determined, heavily-armed men plodding resolutely through the muck and rivulets of rainwater that swirled around their horses' feet, making the primitive mountain trail at times treacherously slippery.
Seventy going in against an estimated force of eighty, recently whittled down from well over one hundred. Whittled down, demoralized … and wholly unsuspecting of what was advancing upon them.
Kendrick and Doc brought up the rear of the column. Later on, they would be splitting up. But, for now, they were riding together once again.
"Well, I hope you're happy," Kendrick called to Doc through the storm. "You're gettin' your big chance to charge into battle."
"If you say so," Doc called back. "But, from where I'm sitting right now, it sure looks like I'm still at the rear."
"Things go accordin' to Bradley's plan," Kendrick reminded him, "you're soon enough gonna have a front row seat to your share of the action."
It took more than two hours to work their way down through the foothills and onto the valley floor. There was no need to try and push recklessly beyond what conditions permitted. Bradley had allowed plenty of time for them to get into position.
As they moved across the low flats and drew closer to the town, the rain diminished to a steady, straight-down drizzle. The lightning lessened considerably, too, going from brilliant forks splitting apart the sky to softer, sporadic flashes that gave stark definition to high, tumbling black clouds. Thunder grumbled low and deep.
Bradley's plan called for the main body of his force to work their way in and strike from the south. There, the tidy adobe houses and sturdy business structures that surrounded the central plaza and made up the brunt of the Bordados, gave way to the shacks and barns and pens of the goat herders and other poorer elements of the village. The streets there were poorly defined and the erratic placement of the ramshackle huts and buildings would provide good cover for cautiously penetrating a good distance into the town's perimeter before the full-blown attack was signaled.
Doc Turpin, in the meantime, was assigned to take a party of twenty men and split away from the main force for the purpose of moving into position as close as possible on the north end. Once the fight-ing broke out to the south, they would execute a mounted charge into the heart of the plaza, aiming to catch the Rurales in a pincer-like tactic.
Kendrick liked the plan. He'd put his hide on the line when things were stacked up a hell of a lot worse. As long as the rain held and the Rurale patrols scouring close to the village could be avoided, he figured they had a good chance to pull this off.
When it came right down to it, the thing that bothered him the most was the part about making sure Bradley went out in a blaze of glory. Given Doc's long-standing respect and admiration for the man, Kendrick doubted he could ever pull the trigger himself, no matter how much Bradley wanted it. That meant, barring a problem-solving Rurale bullet, it would fall to Kendrick …
* * * * *
At the first hint of murky pre-dawn, they struck.
By that point, the pair of two-man Rurale patrols sluggishly circling the town had been pinpointed and were being tightly, silently shadowed. And the lookout posted in the church's bell tower was locked squarely in Kendrick's rifle sights.
When Bradley gave him the shoulder-tap signal, Kendrick set the ball rolling. His finger stroked the Yellowboy's trigger. The shot cracked through the steady, quiet hiss of the rain and the lookout jerked once before crumpling out of sight.
The report of Kendrick's shot was what the stalkers out in the dark, wet underbrush had been waiting to hear. They sprang instantly into action and in a burst of gunfire blew the Rurale patrollers out of their saddles before they ever knew what was happening. Yelling triumphantly, the stalkers then broke immediately into a hard run toward the village, eager to join the greater fight that was erupting there.
"Follow me, boys! Give 'em hell!" Hunt Bradley shouted as he led the charge into the plaza. All around him, men came boiling out of the shadows from behind barns and shacks and goat pens. Their own voices swelled into a sustained cacophony of yells and yips that easily drowned out the few grumbles of thunder still rolling around in the sky.
Caught in the heart of this charge rolled the wagon-mounted Gatling gun. The horse that had pulled it down from the mountains had been unhitched and now the wagon was being propelled by men racing alongside, tugging and pushing to get it into position so its death-dealing cargo could begin sweeping the plaza as soon as the Rurales emerged to do battle. With Jorge kneeling beside her, Estraleta was standing in a half-crouch on the bouncing wagon bed, gripping the big gun to help maintain her balance. The drenching rain had plastered her long hair to the sides of her face and soaked her blouse so that it clung like a gauzy film over her boldly thrusting breasts.
Running beside the wagon, helping to move it along, Kendrick glanced up at her and marveled at the impact of Estraleta's savage beauty even in the midst of so much chaos and soon-to-be carnage. Like a warrior goddess of olden times, he thought.
As the wagon reached the edge of the plaza, it was halted and its wheels quickly locked and blocked so it was fixed in place. While this was being done, Kendrick dropped to one knee and raised his Yellowboy, getting set for the first of the Rurales to appear. As his eyes swept
the temporarily empty plaza, an echo of Bradley's earlier comment about the Bordados valley becoming Rio Matanza—a river of bloodshed—raced through his mind. No, maybe not the whole valley, he thought grimly to himself now, but that's sure as hell what this plaza is going to turn into real soon.
While a line formed to either side of the Gatling, men poised for action in the same manner as Kendrick, a dozen or more other rebels fanned out to either side of the plaza and began moving toward specific buildings identified by advance scouts as locations where Rurales were housed. Leading this flanking maneuver on the east side was Bradley himself. Kendrick had kept a close eye on the colonel over the past couple hours, amazed that he was able to stay on his feet and keep pushing on. He looked like warmed over death pulled from a sewer, coughing and shivering and rain-drenched, yet he remained mentally alert and sharp with his commands. The building Bradley was headed for, Kendrick knew, was the one where Colonel Guerrero was reported to be staying.
Suddenly, streams of Rurales began pouring into the plaza. Apparently they had first taken time to appraise the situation from windows and doorways because when they revealed themselves it was with weapons blazing. The rebels returned fire immediately but their over-eagerness and lack of training produced an initial volley of wild shots. Rurale bullets, meanwhile, riddled the line of invaders with savage accuracy. The Gatling wagon received a particularly heavy concentration of hits but fortunately the horsehide shielding held up under the barrage.
Kendrick fired repeatedly into the mass of soldiers, as fast as he could lever in fresh rounds, and each time had the satisfaction of seeing a tan-coated figure pitch to the dirt. Tossing a glance up at Estraleta, he shouted, "Now! Open up on 'em!"
Having been told earlier to hold her fire until the plaza had filled with a sufficient number of targets, Estraleta was primed for the command and cut loose without hesitation. Chackata-chackata-chackata! The revolving muzzles of the Gatling began spitting flame and hot lead and death.
The sound of the Gatling gun opening up was the signal for Doc and his horsemen to charge in from the north. And charge they did. Led by Doc, issuing the heart-chilling Rebel Yell that had too long lay dormant inside him, the twenty riders sank spur and surged forward as one.
* * * * *
On the east edge of the plaza, Bradley and his men reached their target house and shot their way inside. Two guards formerly occupying a room off to one side of an ornate open stairway were gunned down instantly. Two more guards appeared at the top of the stairs and managed only to get off a shot apiece before they, too, did spinning dances of death to the tune of the bullets hammering into them.
Pounding up the steps with pistol in hand, Hunt Bradley stepped over the sprawled bodies and swept the second floor hallway with a menacing glare. There were doorways accessing two rooms. The door on his right stood slightly ajar, indicating it was from there that the second set of guards had hastily emerged. Without hesitation, Bradley strode to the opposite door and—despite a plea for caution from one of the men backing him—shouldered it open. A shot rang out from inside the room and a bullet splintered the doorframe next to the colonel's head. Dropping into a slight crouch, pistol extended out ahead of him, Bradley sprang forward and pumped three quick rounds into the pale, fat, near-naked form of Anselmo Guerrero crabbing backward on a huge, rumpled bed. The Rurale leader shrieked shrilly as the bullets sizzled around and into him. The engraved silver revolver he'd shot at Bradley with slipped from his grasp and thumped to the floor.
Stepping further into the room, Bradley spotted the slender, trembling form of a young woman huddled in a far corner, clutching a thin blanket to hide her nudity. Hunt motioned with his gun and, speaking over his shoulder to the others crowding in behind him, said, "Get her out of here."
As the girl was being taken away, Bradley went to stand over Guerrero. He'd taken hits low in the abdomen and high in his left thigh, but was still alive. He was mewling in pain and his hands were frantically trying to stop the flow of blood from his wounds.
"Mercy! … I b-beg of you."
Bradley glared down. "How much mercy did my wife and daughter get?"
"I was not responsible for that terrible thing! You hunted down and killed the men who went to your ranch that day … I had nothing to do with it!"
Bradley shook his head. "You corrupt pig, you had everything to do with the filth and violence that infested this valley. That means I didn't catch up with all of the men at blame for what happened to my wife and child—until now!" Hunt leveled his pistol and, in the same instant he spoke that final word, planted a bullet deep between Guerrero's eyes.
* * * * *
Outside, Doc's charge had swept into the plaza and caught the Rurales fighting out in the open by complete surprise. Slammed by a crossfire from the charge and the Gatling gun, tan-uniformed bodies were mowed down like so many stalks of wheat until only those with their arms raised in surrender were left standing.
The fighting now shifted to the rest of the houses and buildings that bordered the plaza. Small groups of Rurales—and, in the upstairs rooms over one of the cantinas, a handful of leftover American desperadoes—fell back to take up defensive positions inside of hastily barricaded rooms. The relentlessly pursuing rebels went in after them, rooting out these pockets of resistance one by one. The in-close, hand-to-hand combat was intense and bloody. This last phase of the fighting would continue for several minutes but, for all intent and purpose, the battle had been won.
Doc reined up in front of Kendrick and Estraleta, still positioned at the now-silent Gatling gun. The faces of all three were smeared with sweat and grime. Only Turpin's was split by a wide grin.
Looking up at him, Kendrick said, "Well? You got that whole chargin'-into-battle thing out of your system now?"
His grin taking a wry twist, Doc replied, "I don't know. I might be worse off—I might be addicted."
Kendrick's gaze drifted past Doc and slowly swept the gunsmoke-shrouded plaza, its sandy floor strewn with bodies, stained by streaks of gore, dotted with standing puddles of blood. Kendrick wagged his head and said in a low voice, "No, Doc. Ain't nothing here anybody'd want regular doses of."
In the buildings around them, especially to the west, shouted commands and responsive curses could still be heard, along with the intermittent bark of gunfire. Hunt Bradley emerged from the Guerrero house and began walking in their direction. His gait was decidedly weary but there was a strange look of contentment showing on his face that seemed to soften some of the haggard lines etched so deeply there.
At the same time, Bernardo came into sight on the western side of the plaza and also moved in their direction. Only in his case at an urgent trot. His left arm hung loosely at his side and the crown of his shoulder was smeared bright crimson.
"Bernardo, you are hurt!" Estraleta wailed as he reached them.
He waved her off. "It is nothing. What is more important is that all of you need to fall back, take better cover somewhere. The Rurales are fighting their way to the top floors of these buildings." He waved his good arm to indicate. "We are pursuing them. But if they make it onto the rooftops, you standing out here in the open is not a good idea. You will be very tempting targets.”
His eyes sought the remaining men who'd made up the line flanking the Gatling gun. Several of their number had been cut down, many of those still standing were also wounded. "Any of you with fight still left," Bernardo addressed them, "we could use your help in flushing the last of those Rurale dogs. I've already lost a third of my men and the fighting will only get more desperate before it—"
At that moment, from atop one of the taller nearby buildings, an object sailed out and thumped to the ground just ahead of Bernardo's feet and directly in front of the Gatling wagon. It was a cast iron ball, egg-shaped, with what appeared to be stiffened quills thrusting out from one end.
Both Kendrick and Doc recognized it at once. It was a Ketchum hand grenade, an explosive device used by the Union Army dur
ing the Civil War. Unpredictable as hell, but also devastating as hell when detonated.
A third person who instantly recognized the device was Bradley, who had reached the others only seconds before the Ketchum landed. Without hesitation, before anyone else could make a move, the colonel shouted "Down!" and threw himself full onto the grenade.
The explosion came one heartbeat later, shaking the ground, hurling clumps of dirt and clouds of dust … and ripping Hunt Bradley into a half dozen lifeless pieces.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A week had passed since the successful battle to reclaim Bordados.
Hunt Bradley was buried in the private cemetery out at his ranch, next to the graves of his beloved wife and daughter. Mourners came from miles around, including a large number of people from the nearby village of Lagrarocoso and several former citizens of Bordados who had previously fled to the countryside.
The priest from Lagrarocoso performed the service for Bradley, as well as for the twenty-seven other rebels who lost their lives in the battle. The latter were buried in a small cemetery on the outskirts of the village.
The nineteen surviving Rurales who had surrendered were allowed to bury their fallen comrades in a field east of town. Identifying markers—except for the leftover handful of Anglo outlaws whom no one really knew—were put up for the sake of family members or loved ones who might eventually come seeking the remains for re-burial. While the ground went unconsecrated, the priest nevertheless said some words over these men, too … even the much-hated Guerrero.
The doctor from Lagrarocoso arrived to care for the wounded. Doc Turpin, once again breaking his vow, lent a hand.
By week's end, things had more or less settled down and a sense of near-normalcy seemed to be slowly returning to the little village. The ominous cloud hanging over everything, however, remained how and when Mexico City would respond once word of what happened here was received. The surviving Rurales had been released to carry the notification.
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