Mention of Teresa Cavan brought her picture back to Kelly—red-headed, green-eyed, soft as a cat, with claws to match. Thought of her had been with him constantly since leaving Taos.
It was black night by the time they reached camp. On a high meadow carpeted with browning grama grass a trio of half-faced shelters had been set up. Rawhide ropes had been stretched between young pines to form a corral for the horses, and rocks lay in a pair of blackened fire circles before the shelters.
The first man they saw as they rode in was Turkey Thompson. He stood at the edge of the meadow, completely naked, his stringy body white as the underside of a fish in the reflected light of the campfires. His clothes lay on an anthill a few feet away and he was complacently watching the ants carry the lice off the garments. After the introductions, he said, “When them damn vermin git to bitin’ harder than me, I figger it’s time to delouse.”
Cimarron Saunders had gotten back to camp before Kelly. He was crouched over the carcass of a fresh-killed deer, cutting steaks. The riders checked their horses beside him and Kelly performed introductions again. Saunders grinned slyly up at Jares. He scratched at his matted red beard and licked his lips.
“Vic Jares,” he said. “Name’s familiar.”
They spitted haunches over the fire and fried steaks and roasted the head whole in a pit filled with hot ashes. They gorged themselves and sat around too full to move, swapping windies and yarning. Saunders cleaned his saca tripas on his pants, then turned the blade over in his hands.
“Ever see a knife like that?” he asked Jares. “Gets-the-guts, they call it. Got it off a Mex in Chihuahua. Got these verses etched in the blade. Bravos, they call ‘em. One fer each man it’d killed, he claimed. With this you tickle a man’s ribs a long time before he laughs.” Saunders chuckled. “Whaddaya think o’ that?”
Jares’s bright eyes darted about the clearing. “I’m a Green River man, muhself.”
“Tripe is sweet but bowels are better.” Saunders threw back his head to emit his booming laugh. “Great scabby booshways, if that don’t take the gristle off a painter’s tail—”
He broke off as a blade flashed through the air. It struck the trunk of a pine, twenty feet away, quivering there. It was a Bowie knife.
All of them looked at Kelly. His hand was still in midair. He put it in his lap, belching.
“I been listenin’ to you brag for ten weeks. Let’s see you make it good.”
The blood flooded Saunders’s coarse-featured face, filling his eyes till a network of little red veins tinged the corners. He looked around the circle, hefted the knife, then tossed it.
The curved blade sang past the tree, inches off its mark. Saunders let his breath out in an angry gust. The one-armed Hollister patted his bulging belly, chuckling softly.
“The bowels were full enough, brother, but the tripe was evidently not to its liking.”
Saunders’s thick lips twisted. “Maybe you could do better.”
Somehow it took all their eyes to the tomahawk, slung so handily at Hollister’s side. The man’s unctuous smile caused his twinkling little eyes to disappear in their pink pouches of fat.
“It is a Delaware weapon, brother, and they too have a saying. Never put your blade to flight, unless it comes back with a scalp.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Saunders emitted a disgusted curse and rose to go after his knife. He came back without bringing Kelly’s Bowie. Kelly rose and walked to the tree. Thompson picked up a bullhide bucket, as if going after water. He stopped beside the tree.
“Whaddaya think?”
“I don’t like it,” Kelly said. “They was heading north, yet they said they’d come from Colter’s Hell.”
“If they was in Colter’s Hell, how could they hear about what happened in Santa Fe before we did?” Thompson asked.
“We’ll stand watch tonight,” Kelly said. “I’ll take it till twelve.”
Near the fire were the racks made of willow withes to stretch the fresh beaver pelts and keep them from shrinking as they dried. There were a score of these pelts pegged to the racks, harvest of their last days in the fifth camp. Kelly took one off and placed it fur-side down on the graining block, a log peeled of its bark and rubbed smooth with sand. After scraping all the meat and fat from the hide, he dipped beaver brains from a trade kettle and patiently worked them into the pelt to keep it pliable. He stretched it up to dry again and took down another.
The camp grew silent, with the fire dying and the men falling asleep. After fleshing and stretching, Kelly pressed the pelts into a bale, lashing it, setting it under the buffalo robes covering the other bales. They had over five hundred pelts beneath those robes, worth six dollars apiece in Santa Fe. Turkey Thompson said that even counting out Ryker’s share, such a harvest would pay them much more than a company trapper made in a whole year.
Near midnight, Cimarron Saunders stirred in his blankets, threw them off, and rose. He shambled to Kelly, scratching his curly red beard. He glanced at the sleeping strangers, twenty feet away.
“Can’t sleep, them damn kyeshes on my mind,” he muttered. “You want I should take the dogwatch?”
“Suits me,” Kelly said.
He went to his bedding and rolled in. But he remembered Saunders’s first reaction to the strangers; something stuck in his craw and he couldn’t give himself up to sleep. He narrowed his eyes to mere slits and began breathing easily and deeply. After a while Saunders passed him, going over to check the corral.
He passed out of sight. Kelly heard the horses snort softly. Then he heard the soft tramp of Saunders’s feet, coming back. He kept on breathing evenly, like a man asleep. The padding of moccasined feet stopped, a foot from him.
Saunders was at his head, out of sight of his slitted eyes. If he opened them, the man would see. He remained still, breathing, listening.
Then he heard the rustle of clothes against a body violently put into motion.
He twisted over like a cat and saw Saunders dropping to one knee at his head, the saca tripas already descending. His twisting roll to one side took him out from underneath and the knife went hilt-deep into the earth where his chest had been an instant before.
Saunders pulled it out with a curse and wheeled toward him, lunging again. But Kelly already had his Bowie out, slashing at the man. His blade slit Saunders’s knife arm wrist to elbow as it whipped in. The man lunged backward with a howl of pain that woke the whole camp.
Lunging after Saunders, Kelly saw Turkey Thompson roll out of his blanket and come to his knees. Turkey blinked once and then scooped his loaded Jake Hawkins from beneath the blanket. Before he could draw a bead Wingy Hollister sat up in his robes twenty feet away and threw his tomahawk. The bright blade buried itself between Turkey’s shoulder blades and he squawked like a strangled chicken and fell face down across his rifle.
Rushing Saunders, Kelly blocked the man’s wild thrust and drove the Bowie for his belly. But Saunders caught his wrist and lunged against his body. Grappled for that instant, Kelly had a dim sense of both Jares and Quinn rushing him. Their rifles were unloaded and they had them clubbed over their heads.
Quinn was first and in the last moment Kelly tore free from Saunders and threw himself backward into the sloppy little Irishman. Quinn’s rifle descended in front of Kelly, missing him completely, and they both went down in a tangle.
Sprawled backward on the Irishman, Kelly had a glimpse of Jares, right on top of him, and of the man’s descending rifle. He rolled away from the blow but it caught him across the left shoulder, stunning him. Hollister was on his feet now, running in from the other side. Kelly was still rolling and it took his face right into Hollister’s kicking boot.
The world exploded. But with shocking pain came a roaring rage. It drove Kelly up, blinded, sobbing with agony, a giant rising up through the kicking, pound
ing mass of their bodies. He caught someone and grappled the man to him. Quinn pawed at his legs. Stamping the man back down, Kelly saw that he held Jares. The man swung a wild blow at his face. Kelly took it and wheeled him bodily around in a great arc and flung him like a sack of meal at Hollister.
Empty-handed, Kelly roared like a wild man and threw himself at Saunders’s knees. It knocked the man flat.
Saunders flopped over and came up on top of Kelly and drove the saca tripas at him. Kelly couldn’t block it and the blade slid between his ribs. In a spasm of pain and weakness he grabbed Saunders to him before the man could pull the blade out and their struggles flopped them over and over till they struck the steep dropoff behind the bales of pelts.
Like ten pins they rolled over and over down the rocky slope toward the stream bed below. Kelly’s wound robbed him of strength and he lost Saunders. Somewhere in the descent the knife pulled out of him. He came to a stop on the sandy beach, so sick and dazed he could not move for a moment. Above him he heard them shouting as they came down the bank.
Kelly’s outrage went through him like a fire, seeming to burn out pain and weakness for a moment. He rolled over and came to his hands and knees.
It was like new agony to face the fact that he was too weak to fight. He could hear them crashing through the underbrush above and sliding down the slick places and knew he had but a moment left.
If he stayed on the white sand they could trail him by his blood. He crawled toward the stream. He came across a body and felt the curly beard of Cimarron Saunders. The man must have hit his head on a rock rolling down the slope. He was out cold.
Kelly reached the stream and slid into the icy water. He turned downstream and crawled like a sick animal, wheezing and mewing in pain. Then he heard the first one reach the beach behind him, and he bit his lip to stifle the sound till tears came from his eyes. As from a great distance—though he knew it wasn’t far—came a shout. “Here’s Cimarron. He’s down flat.”
A man answered, farther away, and Kelly recognized Hollister’s voice. “Where is our fallen brother? I fain would put the quietus on him.”
Jares called, then, “Hollister, you trail upstream. Me’n Quinn’ll go down.”
He knew he had to get out of the water. The stream narrowed and he felt thickets clawing at him. If that brush grew far up the bank it would hide his blood, in this moonless blackness. He pawed his way through the thickets, crawling up the bank opposite to camp. He made noise at first, going as fast as he could, because he knew the sound of their running would cover it. Then he slowed down and lowered himself to his belly, moving like a snake through the bushes, biting his lip again to keep from giving voice to his pain.
He reached the top of the slope, fifty feet higher than the stream below, and lay on his belly in a carpet of pine needles. He was so dizzy he couldn’t think now. If they had guessed where he left the stream and were following him, he couldn’t do anything about it. He was weak as a newborn kitten. Then he heard Quinn shouting, way downstream.
“He ain’t here, Jares.”
“Keep on,” answered Jares. “He was bleeding like a stuck pig. He knows the only way he can hide his trail is in the water.”
It was like fresh agony to concentrate. Only the force of a terrible will could prevail over such pain, such weakness. He had to think about each movement a long time before he made it. For socks he wore wool wrappings. He took off his moccasins and unwrapped the strips and folded them into a compress, putting it beneath his bloody shirt and pressing it into the wound. Then, holding it there, he tried to rise.
He got only to his knees, and weakness swept him. He must have passed out as he fell. When he came to a few seconds later, he was flat on his face. He would crawl, then. He got to his hands and knees. With one hand holding the compress tight to the wound so there would be no dripping blood to leave a trail, he crawled. Like a three-legged dog, he crawled.
He crawled across a meadow littered with pine needles and into dense timber. He crawled until he found some granite outcroppings near a ridge that would leave no marks and he followed this down the ridge. Finally the croppings crossed the ridge and he followed them over and then found some more dense brush that led him down-slope. At the bottom he found another gurgling branch of the stream and crawled into it, moving toward headwaters.
The bastards wouldn’t find him now. He’d get away from ‘em if he had to crawl clear to Santa Fe, and then he’d turn right around and come back after ‘em, and he’d get ‘em, he’d get every God damned one of ‘em.
13
December in Santa Fe. Snow glittering like alabaster helmets on the domed peaks surrounding the town. The air so thin and brittle it almost hurt the lungs to breathe and the shadow of the sundial in the center of the plaza turning paler and paler under the waning winter sun as it marked off the endless hours for the somnolent old town.
These last months had seen a radical change in the Palace. With Amado as governor, the new regime was securely seated on the throne. Both Amado and Gomez realized they needed the Lower River if they were to survive. They had made their peace with Biscara accordingly, promising not to invoke the Expulsion Law if he would insure the support of his ricos of Rio Abajo. But Gomez had seen to it that the majority of seats in the Assembly were held by men from his Upper River, thus robbing Biscara’s party of its former power.
Teresa felt that her place was now secure. She knew that Don Biscara had put in a claim for her as his rightful property, and that Governor Amado had flatly refused it. Even though Teresa did little of the work around the Palace herself, she was busy from dawn till dusk managing the host of servants in the establishment.
Almost every morning, it was the shopping. Like a clucking hen with her brood, she led half a dozen servants from the main entrance about ten o’clock. The market hugged the protection of the Palace walls and ran westward for two blocks before it ended in the field where horse traders met. Squares of dirty canvas shaded the puestos—the stalls in which the wares were displayed. At this hour in the morning the whole market was filled with a cacophony of squealing pigs and gabbling turkeys and crying vendors.
“Jaboncillos, señorita, who will buy my soap? Pink like a rose, yellow for bleaching, rice powder for the shiny nose—”
“Tamales, man, smell my tamales, see my tamales, taste my tamales….”
Face half-hidden by her rebozo, Teresa haggled over neat piles of firewood, fingered the silver pyramids of onions and garlic, smelled the freckled beans. But somehow this morning she could not put her heart into the bargaining; there was a restlessness in her that had been growing for days. She was bored with the constant round of marketing, of jabbering at lazy servants, of overseeing the cooking and the cleaning and the serving and the seemingly endless details attendant to the management of the Palace. This was not what she had bargained for. She had taken it only as another step in her quest for freedom. But it had put her up against a wall. She didn’t quite know where to turn next. In seeking the safety of the Palace, she had trapped herself within its walls.
The plaza trembled beneath the tattoo of many hoofs and she turned to see a party of trappers coming in off the trail from Taos. There were four men, leading a score of pack horses, their apishamores sagging with baled beaver pelts. In the lead Teresa recognized Vic Jares, the trapper who had been with Ryker the night Villapando was killed. Behind him was a bald little Irishman and a huge, bland-faced man with a long tomahawk swinging from his shoulder belt. Bringing up the rear was Cimarron Saunders.
Despite herself, she felt a stirring of excitement. As they passed by, she stepped out and caught Saunders’s eyes. His broad grin suddenly brought his lips to light in the glowing brier of his hoary red beard, and he pulled his horse to a halt.
“Isn’t Kelly Morgan with you?” she asked.
The grin disappeared. Saunders ran scarred fingers ro
ughly through the curly mass of his beard, scratching his jaw. “Him and Turkey ran out on us somewhere north of the Picketwire. Said they was goin’ to Colter’s Hell. Never know where that hothead’ll jump next.”
Something poignant ran through her—a disappointment, a sense of loss so intangible she could not define it. Then her lips compressed. She was being a fool. Kelly had been nothing but a big, crude beast. If she got this sentimental over him it was better that he had not come back.
Saunders pulled his horse closer, eyes running insolently over her ripe figure. “You don’t wanta worry about him anyways, honey. Why don’t we slick up and tie on some fuforraw and traipse off to some fandango tonight?”
“Not till you wash off that beaver medicine.”
“Honey, it’ll take a month to git that smell out.”
“You learn quick, señor.”
Pulling her shawl over her bare shoulders, she turned and went back to the stalls. She heard Saunders’s booming laugh break out behind her. Then he put heels to his horse and galloped across the plaza, lifting a thin cloud of dust that made the shopping women cover their faces with shawls and the vendors curse him. She saw him join Jares and the others as they passed through the zaguán gate of the new trading post Ryker had opened on Palace Avenue, just off the plaza. Before they disappeared, a squad of lancers appeared, filing past the scrawny cottonwoods in the center of the square. Perea was in the lead, a proud and haughty figure in his handsome blue coat and glittering accouterments. He had been north on a scout and the strain and weariness of the long ride planted haggard shadows in his windburned face. He gave an order that sent the troop clattering on toward the Palace and drew his own horse to a halt before Teresa.
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