“Aye, Captain Cayce, though I’ll warn you: it’s a bit less restful than your soldiers are used to.”
“I know,” Lewis snapped with fatigue-induced annoyance before he could catch himself. “That’s why I asked you to do it. I want half the men up at all times, on guard or working.” He sighed and drew on his cigar again. “My apologies, sir, but we have much to do, and none of us will get as much rest as we’d like, no matter how much we need it.”
The dragoon private named Buisine had trotted up, waiting to be noticed, clutching his saber beside him so it wouldn’t drag or trip him. His other hand kept the Hall carbine, suspended from its strap and hook, from doing the same. If Buisine was any indication, keeping himself armed with everything but his pistols, the men were still on edge.
“What is it, Private?” Burton asked as the other officers began to disperse.
“It’s the horses, sir, actin’ mighty antsy. Sergeant Hayne sent me to tell you.”
Now that it was brought to his attention, Lewis—and Anson as well—realized the trooper was right. The horses had all been picketed along the curve of the dead ship’s frames, leaving only a gap for those still hauling crates and barrels from the hull. Lewis’s Arete was nearby, still fairly placid, but the horses closest to the bow—closest to where they’d ultimately heaped the dead ones—were growing increasingly alarmed.
“I told him it was probably scavengers, out at the dead pile,” Buisine suggested helpfully. “All them nasty, damned birds flocked over there once we cleaned up the camp.”
“That’s most likely true,” Lewis agreed, hooking the buff saber belt around his waist and tossing the pommel holsters over his shoulder like Anson always carried his, “but we’ll have a look. Sergeant McNabb,” he called into the hull. “You stationed a gun near the bow?”
“Aye, sir,” came the muffled response. “My very favorite one, she was. Survived the wreck without the slightest scratch. Loaded proper with canister too, like you said, as soon as we put her in place.”
“Crawl up out of there and come along. Bring a reliable gun crew—I assume you’ve identified one by now?—and fetch those lanterns along as well.” Lewis turned to Anson as the whole group of officers and artillerymen Lewis summoned made their way toward the section of the palisade behind which the horses were growing very upset. “In your travels, did you acquaint yourself with the predators we might expect hereabouts?”
Anson hesitated, then murmured, “Let’s ask . . . my son. Leon is his name,” he stressed, beginning to talk faster, displaying a diffidence Lewis had never seen in him. “He don’t say much, bein’ a little self-conscious about a voice that won’t break, but he ain’t shy in a fight,” he stated firmly. “He’s had his growth as well; is near as tall as me. Just hasn’t filled out yet. Private Anson,” he called loudly, but his “aide” was practically beside him, as always, a challenging, dark-eyed gaze fixed on Lewis. “You have an eye for beasts, an’ you rode the back country when we were . . . near here,” he said. “Did you hear Captain Cayce’s question?”
“We’ve never been here before, Father. Not even close,” said “Leon” with total conviction. Despite what Captain Anson said, the voice was a little husky and could’ve easily been a boy’s. Lewis was even more certain it wasn’t. “Either way, the only critter I can think of that might scare the horses is a jaguar.” She paused. “You know what a jaguar is, Captain Cayce?”
“It’s something like a puma, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, only bigger.”
The horses were squealing in terror now, pulling hard against the ribs of the ship where they were secured, kicking violently at each other and nothing at all. A couple of dragoons were moving to calm them, but Sergeant Hayne roared, “Get back from there, you fools! They’ll kick your little brains out!”
“What have you seen, Sergeant?” Lewis demanded as they joined him. He hadn’t been worried about a puma or jaguar. A shot in the night should see it off. He’d been most concerned that enemies might be sneaking up. But the horses were going berserk. They’d never do that because of people.
“Nothin’, sir. Can’t see nothin’ out there. The moon’s bright enough, but there’s too many trees between us an’ the dead pile.”
“I seen somethin’, Sergeant!” cried one of the men by the palisade, carbine at the ready.
“Private Priddy thought he seen somethin’,” Hayne said, rolling his eyes, “big as a horse itself.”
“It was!”
Lewis peered into the darkness. The sergeant was right; the trees were in the way and there was too much noise to hear anything. “We’ll just have to take a look, won’t we? Bring those lanterns closer. Lieutenant Olayne, send for more of your men with muskets and post this gun crew.” He removed his pistols and a small priming flask from the pommel holsters, double-checking each weapon with the ingenious swiveling ramrod under the barrel to ensure it was loaded. Finally, he dusted the priming pans with a small measure of fine-grained gunpowder from the flask before thrusting one into his belt. “I hope the damp didn’t get to them. It seems not. I keep them loaded, but not primed,” he explained, draping the holsters on the palisade.
Anson patted the holsters still on his shoulder. “These’re always loaded and primed.”
“Lieutenant Burton,” Lewis said louder. “Half a dozen dragoons, if you please, but you remain with Olayne. I want steady officers behind me who won’t let their men shoot at shadows.”
“You’re going out there yourself, sir?” Lieutenant Swain asked.
“I am.”
“Then I’d like to come.” Swain’s few riflemen were scattered along the palisade.
“Very well.”
Anson said nothing, but moved to stand by Lewis as the rest of their party formed. Lewis had expected as much. They weren’t friends, but they knew and trusted each other. Besides, if something happened to Lewis, Anson would be back where he was that morning: burdened with the highest rank but unwilling to command. Lewis considered him the best (and most ruthless) irregular cavalry leader any commander—who could control him—could want. That’s why he put him in charge of all the mounted troops. But Anson had no idea how to employ a mixed force like they had. Lewis was sure if they confronted a serious threat, Anson would protect him better than all the dragoons. “Let’s go,” he said, climbing over the shattered timbers. “Spread out once you’re across, a lantern for every other man.”
“Be careful, sir,” Coryon Burton urged.
Lewis glanced back and smiled, surprisingly moved, as he motioned the detachment forward. He was disapprovingly unsurprised to see “Leon” Anson beside her father. He wouldn’t make an issue of it. Not now. He needed Anson’s support and didn’t want an argument. Anything that undermined the fragile unity they’d achieved was foolish. Besides, he already felt foolish enough, advancing in the dark with lanterns lighting them up while largely ruining their ability to see what they were looking for. He didn’t think human enemies were frightening the horses, however, and expected whatever it was would flee as they approached.
“Probably more of those dreadful birds,” Swain almost whispered. “Some were the size of turkey vultures, but very strangely shaped and colored. The horses can’t see them in the dark, but they hear them—and smell all the blood from the dead horses they’ve torn open.” Lewis suspected Swain was right.
The shrieking and neighing of frightened horses still echoed in the woods, but as they moved away, they heard other things ahead. There was an intense, urgent grunting, growling, and crunching, mixed with an outraged or protesting cluckering sound, like packs of hogs, dogs, and chickens all contending over the same slops in some macabre farmyard.
“Lord, what a ruckus,” a dragoon murmured nervously, hoisting his lantern higher.
“Yes,” Lewis agreed, “but I believe we can rest assured they are animals, after all.”
There were ten of them, half with lanterns and pistols, the other half with Hall carbines at the ready, or in Swain’s case, an 1817 rifle. Like Lewis, “Leon” carried a lantern, but also one of the ingenious Colt’s revolvers. In addition to their five-shot capacity, Lewis admired the long-barreled but otherwise compact weapons for their remarkable accuracy. And if the .36 caliber balls they spat only rarely quickly killed a man, they’d take him out of the fight as efficiently as larger projectiles. Captain Anson had possessed a pair openly holstered on his belt for as long as Lewis had known him. Apparently, his three other Rangers were similarly armed. It made Lewis briefly wonder what Anson carried so protectively in the pommel holsters over his shoulder.
Now, as they crept carefully closer and the dark mound of carcasses began to take shape, so did the shadowy forms and light-reflecting eyes of unknown creatures feasting on it. Instead of running from the light, the forms only gorged more desperately, the revolting sounds growing more hurried and distinct. An unearthly screech erupted from the mound, and Swain exclaimed, “My God, one of those horses is still alive!”
“That was no horse, boy,” Captain Anson countered darkly, teeth clenched. Lewis knew him well enough to recognize his tension, and that the “boy” crack wasn’t deliberate. “That was a challenge.”
“From what?” hissed another dragoon.
“Let’s find out,” Lewis told them all. “Be ready. If our presence alone doesn’t frighten them away, we’ll fire into them. That should do it. One quick volley on my command, mind you,” he cautioned. “I want no drawn-out shooting to help an enemy pinpoint our position.”
A shadow that had remained still until now suddenly shifted, and Lewis realized—as dragoon Private Priddy claimed—it was as big as a horse. Bigger, actually, rising from its meal to stand half again taller. Other creatures with impossible, nightmare shapes bolted, but they weren’t running from Lewis and his little squad. They fled from the giant beast suddenly aroused in their midst. Snarling fiercely, it lunged at the interlopers across the heap of mangled flesh.
Lewis had never seen anything like it, never heard of a creature outside of myth even remotely resembling this monstrosity. It leaped into the lantern light as lightly as a crow over a stone, pausing only to gather itself. Great, bloody, dagger-toothed jaws gaped wide, and it roared a thunderous warning at things it probably supposed were here to snatch its feast. For perhaps a second—the longest, most vivid second Lewis ever experienced—he saw the monster plainly. Its bearing was more like the swift, snake- and lizard-eating ground birds he’d seen in Texas and Northern Mexico than any crow, and it stood ten feet tall, from its clawed, three-toed feet to the top of its horrifying, bristly crested head. Large, luminous orange eyes glared directly forward at them down the long, arched, but concave-sided snout. Powerful arms and hands, each with two clawed fingers and presumably a thumb of sorts, still effortlessly grasped the gnawed foreleg and shoulder of a horse. The whole thing was so splashed with drying, darkening blood that the true color of its matted, somewhat feathery fur was impossible to distinguish in the lantern light.
That was the only insight Lewis gathered before, without his command, virtually everyone fired at it. The smoky flash and boom of several carbines and a couple of pistols made the thing blink and recoil slightly, but even if every shot hit, Lewis doubted they’d seriously injured it. He’d avidly read the journals of the “Corps of Discovery” sent up the Missouri to explore the Louisiana Purchase and vividly recalled accounts of how many desperate shots it often required to dispatch “White” or “Grizzled” bears. Not only was this monster four or five times more massive than any bear; they weren’t sufficiently armed. Pistols would probably only anger it, and the breechloading Hall carbines, while quick to load, leaked a lot of the force of their charge and were notoriously underpowered.
The monster bellowed, perhaps in some pain but certainly indignation, and lunged forward again. “Back to the palisade!” Lewis cried, dropping his lantern and uselessly drawing his saber. Both his pistols were still loaded, but they were equally useless. Everyone already had run, except Anson, “Leon,” and Swain. The two Rangers fired their revolvers, the noise and sting of hot little balls perhaps enough to give the thing slight pause, and Swain was aiming his 1817 rifle. It would do better than a Hall, but not enough. “Now!” Lewis roared. Together, they turned and fled.
The monster stomped the lantern Lewis dropped, the candle still fluttering until it was crushed. “Leon” had set hers on the ground, and the creature attacked it next, snapping jaws crumpling tin and shattering glass. The candle died, but molten wax splashed across a sensitive tongue. The thing squealed in pain and surprise, but its vision adapted quickly enough to see the figures sprinting for the palisade. With a steam whistle screech, it galloped in pursuit.
The dragoons were already hopping over the barricade, one still carrying his lantern. All were shouting for men to shoot toward the dead pile. Burton, Olayne, and a growing number of NCOs were bellowing terrible threats of what would happen to them if they did. Men started shouting encouragement when they saw Lewis and his companions, but their cries took on a note of terror when they saw the thing chasing them. Over the rasping gurgle of their quickly closing pursuer, Lewis heard a thump and a high-pitched “Arph!” He spun to see “Leon” had tripped over a shattered tree trunk and sprawled on the ground. Anson turned as well, but Lewis grabbed an upflung arm and started dragging. Girl or not, “Leon” was tall and well muscled and certainly no feather. The going got easier when Anson grabbed his daughter’s other arm despite her angry demand that they “Let go! I’ll carry myself, damn you!” Whether she could’ve regained her feet and escaped on her own at first was immaterial. She couldn’t possibly do so now. Lewis and Anson raced the rest of the way like that, dragging their sputtering burden.
Still, the terrible beast would’ve caught all three if not for Lieutenant Swain—a very different Clifford Swain than had been so fearful in the face of disaster aboard Mary Riggs. Seeing what happened and how close the monster was, he stepped between them without a thought and raised his rifle again. His gasping breath affected his aim, but the target was very large and close. With a bright orange flash and distinctive crack! his ball hit the thing in the snout and caromed down its concave surface to blow its left eye out in a viscous spray of gore. The monster screeched and whirled as if attacked from its blinded side, but its great long tail, like a whip the size of Mary Riggs’s main yard, slammed into Swain with a sickening, crunching thwap, batting him thirty yards through the air. Regardless how insignificant, the monster felt the strike and whirled back the other way, snapping at air.
In the meantime, Lewis and Anson had thrown “Leon” over the breastworks. Even as they climbed over themselves, Lewis roared, “Open fire!” A ragged volley of carbine and musket fire slashed at the thing, and it screeched again, rounding on this new irritation. Back with their comrades, even the dragoons who’d run stood their ground, shooting and reloading twice as fast as the men with muskets. And the volume of fire was telling. The thing was furious and in agony, but now also afraid. It finally tried to get away from the crackling, flaring, painful thing it chased and whirled to run—just as Olayne shouted, “Fire!” Sergeant McNabb yanked his lanyard, and the hammer on the Hidden’s lock clapped down on the cap, priming his “favorite” 6pdr. The field piece stabbed the night with an eight-foot jet of flame and an earth-shaking blast as it leaped back, sending its load of canister—forty-eight 1.15” balls weighing almost a quarter pound apiece—at the monster. Less than thirty yards away, all of them hit in a very tight pattern across its back and churned a three-foot section of spine into a bloody, salt-like gruel before most of the projectiles came to rest in its vitals. As if it had only been some kind of hellish marionette and a vengeful, thunderous god snipped its strings, the monster crashed to the ground. One hind leg stretched rigidly out and quivered for a moment before it dropped and the thing lay still.
A few more musket balls, fired as much by fear as gunpowder, slapped into the motionless corpse while Lewis shouted to cease fire. Stunned NCOs took up his cry. Leaning back against the barricade, gasping from exertion, Lewis appreciatively accepted one of the several canteens offered to him and took a long gulp. He watched Anson try to help his daughter up, but she angrily shook off his hand and stalked away toward the horses, now quickly calming down. Compared to the scent and sound of monsters, gunsmoke and even cannon fire almost seemed to have soothed them. Perhaps it had. I hope it had the same effect on the men, Lewis thought. But frightened voices were rising again as the imperative of action faded and shock set in. Lewis heard the word “dragon” several times. No one ever heard there were dragons in Yucatán. “Lieutenant Burton, get these men silenced and organized at once. Form details to get some fires lit as well. Large ones. Ensure the ground is sufficiently cleared around them, of course, and detail men with shovels to watch them closely.”
“But the enemy . . .”
“I’m more concerned about big, furry lizards than Mexicans and forest fires at the moment,” Lewis countered, then raised his voice to carry. “Fires will keep them away, or make them fine targets.”
“Aye, an’ they’ll see what we done t’th’other,” rejoined a satisfied voice. Others growled agreement. It was better than nothing. “Reload that gun, Sergeant McNabb!” Lewis continued. “Lieutenant Olayne, I think now would be a good time to confirm the crews manning the other guns are as ready as this one was.”
“Yes sir,” Olayne replied after a short hesitation, then trotted down the line. Lewis’s apparent confidence and barrage of orders seemed to have suppressed the growing unease, and the rising shouts of NCOs helped even more. Lewis turned to look out at the dead monster as Anson, then Captain Holland, stepped up beside him. Instead of acknowledging them, he called to Sergeant Hayne. “Take some men to get Lieutenant Swain.” His tone left no room for debate. “I’m sure he’s dead,” he said lowly, dismally, aside to Anson and Holland. “I heard every bone in his body break.”
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