“My God,” murmured her father, “real armadillos, but two tons of ’em, apiece! They must use ’em like oxen!”
“So it would seem,” Lara whispered back.
After a moment or two in which Leonor was sure her companions were considering the implications of that as well, she turned her attention to the human inhabitants. There weren’t as many as she’d expected, and most were dark-skinned, almost naked women, going about evidently daily chores of trimming scraps of fat and flesh from absolutely enormous hides draped between huge tree trunks left standing for that purpose. Others, with children, crawled and scraped like ants on more large hides staked to the ground where midday sunlight would fill the clearing.
“They look like Injins,” whispered one of the riflemen, glancing at Lara. “Wild Injins, I mean.”
“He’s right,” Lara confirmed. “There should be Indios here, constituting the bulk of the Yucatán population. But ‘wild’ tribes like this . . . They’re usually smaller and keep themselves remote.” He nodded ironically toward the giant armadillos. “And they don’t keep those.”
“Yeah,” Anson agreed. “Well, when you told us about ’em, I wondered how folks could just live in a place like this. I guess the stockade keeps big critters away.” He frowned. “But smaller things could still get in. How do they deal with them?”
“Especially with so few menfolk around,” the rifleman pointed out.
Leonor felt a touch of resentment, but realized he was right.
“I noticed that too,” Anson said. There seemed to be only a handful of fighting-age men from both parts of the village combined, all gathered around a cluster of reassuringly normal-looking horses near the entrance to the largest hide-covered structure: a garishly painted dome within the closer, eastern stockade, about thirty yards across and ten high. Sulfurous yellow smoke wafted out a hole in the top. The men were clearly warriors, bodies painted all over in red with swirling designs highlighted in black or white. All carried bows longer than they were tall and rigid tube quivers of some kind of furry hide filled with long, large-diameter arrows with fluffy red, white, or black fletching. The effect of the cloud of fletching up behind their heads was interesting since each man had shaped his hair into a kind of high cockerel’s crest, painted the same color as the fletching he used.
“Maybe they’re all out huntin’,” the rifleman suggested hopefully. “The critters we’ve seen . . . it’d be like goin’ to war to kill ’em.”
“Maybe,” Anson allowed. Leonor didn’t believe that any more than he did. “You’re sure no one saw you when you passed by here?” Anson asked Lara.
“I can’t know for certain. I didn’t think so at the time.” He was obviously growing concerned as well.
An entrance flap was whipped aside on the dome, and a large man, painted all in red with no other decoration, stepped into the late-afternoon sunlight. Only his crested hair, breechclout, and feather fletching were black. The men with similar fletching gathered around him with frighteningly excited yipping sounds, which all the others joined. Immediately after him, three other men emerged from the structure, and Anson’s party was astounded to see that, though dark-skinned as well, they wore very European-style uniforms of a decidedly outdated fashion. The coats and breeches were bright yellow except for black facings and cuffs on the coats, set off by shiny silver buttons. One man, taller and broader than the others, wore his coat open (cuffs and facings covered with silver lace), exposing a stark white waistcoat. All wore black boots or leggings (it was impossible to tell at this distance), extending up past their knees, and placed large black tricorn hats on their heads as they moved to join the red-painted giant. Finally, the apparent officer’s companions both carried muskets of some sort.
“Who the hell are they?” demanded Anson.
“I’ve no idea,” Lara confessed. “Perhaps . . . Spanish lancers?” he speculated doubtfully. “But why would they be here?”
“I don’t think that’s what they are,” Anson said, beginning to ease back a bit and motioning the others to follow, “but whoever they are, they’re ‘somebody’ down there, and I don’t think the warriors have gone huntin’. Not for animals. We better get back.”
A rifle cracked loudly down in the woods behind them and lizardbirds exploded from the trees with rasping cries. The warriors and strangely uniformed soldiers stood rooted for an instant before bursting into motion as well, flowing toward an open gate in the stockade or mounting their horses.
“That’s done it,” Anson snapped, sliding quickly back and rising to his feet before bolting back the way they came, a revolver in his hand. The others followed, with Leonor bringing up the rear, also armed. There came another rifle shot and the thump of one of Lara’s men’s musketoons just before Anson burst in among the squealing horses and their holders.
“They just come on us!” one of the riflemen cried, almost hysterical. “We was talkin’, quiet-like, us an’ the Mex’kins, an’ the first thing we seen was poor Doonie standin’ there with a goddamn spear through his chest!” The other rifleman lay dead on the ground with one of the big, red-fletched arrows run completely through him. The black obsidian point was covered with blood and snapped in half. “I got the bastard who done it,” the rifleman continued, pointing at a body with his rifle, “but there was more. My horse got stuck bad, an’ maybe some o’ the others. I took Doonie’s rifle an’ killed another one o’ the devils. Jaime got one too, before one o’ those arrow spears went through his arm!”
Men were quickly checking their horses and mounting up. Leonor reflected on the fact that the US and Mexican horse holders had learned each other’s names and suspected that very fraternization was the reason they’d been surprised. Lara’s sergeant—Espinoza—swiftly wrapped the shocking wound in the moaning “Jaime’s” arm while Leonor grabbed the dropped rifle. “Let’s go!” her father commanded. “At least one got away. Not that it matters,” he added warningly. The unearthly yipping and shrieking of the unknown warriors was drawing closer. All were mounted now, and Leonor was grateful Arete hadn’t been hurt—though she’d pried one of the huge arrows from the cantle of the Ringgold saddle.
“What about Doonie?” complained the rifleman who’d climbed on the dead man’s horse as his own groaned loudly and fell to the forest floor, blood pulsing from around the heavy shaft in its side.
“Leave him,” Anson snapped, “an’ thank God you’ve got his horse or we’d be leavin’ you too!” Spurring his animal forward, he galloped back the way they came, followed by the others. He didn’t need Lara to show the way again.
“Even on foot they’ll reach the road where we left it before we do,” Leonor called ahead.
“I know,” her father answered, “but we have to have the road. There ain’t time to pick our way through the woods.”
“We could go farther around before we strike the road,” Lara suggested breathlessly, urging his horse closer to Anson’s.
“An’ they’ll have time to catch us there. Won’t work.” He took several deep breaths while his horse went around a large tree and Lara caught back up. “Besides,” he continued, “if they’re doin’ what I think, it might be nothin’ll work, an’ we’ll have to run a gauntlet all the way back to the ship. Think about the road.”
Lara was perplexed. “There was no fresh sign.” He paused, considering. “For longer than we’ve been here.”
“Right. Big as that village was, ain’t that strange? A fine road nobody uses? Why? There’s somebody at the other end they don’t like.”
“That makes sense,” Lara conceded, then frowned. “How did you and”—he hesitated—“your son learn to think like this? To notice things so quickly and choose a course of action?”
“What? Oh.” Anson shrugged. “Comanches taught us. If you ain’t on your toes around them, you’ll wind up slowly an’ painfully dead.” He jerked his thumb behind them. “I get the s
ame feelin’ from those guys.”
“What does this ‘feeling’ tell you?”
Leonor had flashed through the trees to catch up, exhorting the rifleman who’d fired his weapon to reload and for the rest to see to their priming. Now she rode by her father, ready to add the rapid firepower of her revolvers to his. He glanced at her and nodded before replying to Lara. “I figure all their warriors but the bigwigs an’ whoever those yellow fellas were—call ’em ‘Yellows’ for now—are already fightin’ somebody else past our people, or were on their way to do it, usin’ the woods to move so as not to alarm their enemy—or maybe walk into a trap. Who knows. Either way, with a gust of wind and a bolt of lightnin’, here we are in the middle.”
“And whoever they are angry at, they are angrier now at us. They might even think we came to side with their enemies,” Lara guessed.
“Could be, knowin’ our luck of late, an’ . . . damn, I’m told it’s sinful to be a pessimist, but there they are!”
Fifteen or twenty warriors were already lingering where they’d left the road, along with the three strange men in yellow uniforms. All were looking in their direction. “Spread out, an’ at ’em!” Anson roared, spurring his horse to a gallop. Leonor had anticipated him and stayed glued to his side. The others missed a beat but thundered along as well. Surprised by their appearance or not, the Indians on the road were thrown into confusion by the boldness of the charge and furious fusillade of shots. Leonor and her father quickly expended all five chambers in their first pistols, miraculously even hitting a few men as they closed the distance. Both were better-than-average marksmen, but deliberately striking a specific target from the back of a lunging horse requires more divine intervention than skill. By the time they drew their second revolvers, however, they were shooting men they could almost touch as they smashed directly into them. Some scattered, but most tried to fight.
Leonor shot one painted man drawing his bow, then quickly shot another who tried to grab her horse right in the top of the head. An arrow whipped past her face, and she twisted in the saddle toward the source, only to see one of Lara’s men blow the archer down with his musketoon—just before an arrow took him in the back. Screaming, he fell to the ground, and painted warriors converged on him with triumphant shrieks and bronze-bladed bolo-like knives. Leonor spurred Arete again, and the mare raced through a swarm of whistling arrows and unhesitatingly trampled the cluster of men who sent them. They were almost through, and there remained only the apparent war chief and his guards, as well as the men in yellow uniforms. All were mounted. More arrows flew from the guards while the war chief raised a heavy spiked club that might’ve been the tail of an adolescent specimen of the “horned turtle” they’d seen. The two apparently enlisted “Yellows” brought their muskets up.
Leonor’s father had emptied both his Patersons, but instead of taking time to draw his more prized weapons from the ever-present pommel holsters, he brought his rifle to bear and killed one of the Yellows just as both of them fired. Both balls went wild, though one vrooped disconcertingly close past Leonor’s ear before slapping into someone behind her with a dull whap! Anson charged right at the chief, whose red-painted face was hard to read, but seemed to reflect a mixture of apprehension and triumph as he urged his horse forward to meet Leonor’s father, spiky club whirling over his head.
Anson’s gelding was named Colonel Fannin for a reason. He was moody, often recalcitrant, and sometimes infuriatingly slow to get moving. But Anson prized him because he’d learned the horse’s spirit didn’t reflect his namesake at all. When the fight was on, he was all in. Now, instead of whipping past and presenting the chief with a target for a sweeping blow with his club—as he’d clearly expected—Anson directed Colonel Fannin to perform a maneuver they’d honed to perfection: swerving in to ram the other horse in the shoulder. It was really only a glancing blow, but the chief’s horse staggered to the side and nearly fell. Unfortunately for the chief, Anson’s real target was the man’s near-side leg, which was crushed under Colonel Fannin’s powerfully churning shoulder muscles. He screeched and dropped his club, and Anson pounded the side of his head with a brutal stoke of his rifle butt. The screech abruptly ceased, and the man toppled bonelessly to the ground.
Leonor was next, passing close to the Yellow officer. He still held an empty, smoking pistol, but had drawn a long narrow sword. Almost contemptuously, Leonor fired her last pistol ball and saw the look of astonishment cross the man’s face when the bright yellow uniform exploded redly in the vicinity of his right collarbone. The sword twirled from his hand. Kicking Arete again, she thundered after her father.
More enemies were ahead, strung out along the road, and the closest started shooting arrows almost immediately. Leonor heard a cry behind her and turned to see one of the riflemen slump over in his saddle, a long, bloody point protruding from his back. “Get his rifle!” she cried to the Mexican behind him, who snatched the sling off the dead man’s shoulder as he fell in the road. Her backward glimpse revealed chaos in their wake, but also that they hadn’t all made it. There were only six of them now, and the fight wasn’t over. Worse, she assumed all their guns but her rifle were empty.
Except for her father’s other two pistols, of course. A rapid series of sharp, barking booms, far louder than a Paterson, proved that her father hadn’t forgotten them either.
Ahead, through the fire and smoke Captain Anson spat from the monstrous revolver in his hand, Leonor saw painted warriors shouting in surprised terror and scrambling into the woods. The reaction was much like she’d seen the first time they unleashed repeating pistols on Comanches. Back home, the terror hadn’t lasted once the Comanches realized Patersons weren’t particularly lethal, but they did wound, and wounds were prone to fester, so they continued to respect them. The new Colt pistols her father so cherished were altogether different. Sent to him by an old friend and comrade named Samuel Walker, who’d helped Colt develop them, they were .44 caliber six-shooters instead of .36s. Equally important, each conical bullet was loaded atop up to four times as much powder, and the improved loading levers under the barrels made them easier to load. By any estimation, they were the most lethal handguns in the world, and Leonor’s father now used his to clear the way as they galloped east.
The arrows stopped, and for critical moments, Anson, Leonor, Lara, Sergeant Espinoza, one rifleman, and one more of Lara’s troopers—Espinoza had seen the wounded Jaime pulled down—were able to slow their blowing animals and reload their weapons. Anson’s massive Walker Colts were back in the pommel holsters. The sun was getting low, and they were still a couple of miles from the American camp around the wreck of Commissary.
“Escucha!” Lara urged. Over the sound of the wind and nearby surf came the strident rumble of drums that American infantry still used to call its men to arms, continuing even as the first unmistakable crackle of muskets began. In mere moments, the crackle became an unbroken roar, punctuated by the rolling poom! of a howitzer.
“The camp’s under attack!” Anson growled.
“A big attack,” Leonor agreed darkly.
“It’ll be the very devil gettin’ to it now!” exclaimed the surviving rifleman.
“Dios nos ayudara,” Sergeant Espinoza said flatly, and the trooper glared at him. “What’s that mean?”
“He said ‘God will help us,’ Private,” Anson said distractedly, still listening to the distant fight.
The rifleman blinked. “Oh. Well, I sure hope so.”
More firing erupted to the right in the woods, much closer, and it began to seem all the land around them must be boiling with enemies—far more than could’ve come from one village.
“Did anyone see firearms in use by the men we fought?” Lara demanded.
“Just the Yellows,” Leonor said.
“Then those must be my men out there, also under attack!” Lara started to urge his horse off the road toward the shooting, but
Sergeant Espinoza blocked him, and Anson growled, “What’s the matter with you? Are your men fools? They’ll make for the ship, same as us.”
“Tiene razon, Alferez Lara,” Espinoza told him. “Nosotros debemos ir con los Americanos.”
Reluctantly, Lara jerked a frustrated nod, and they continued on, gradually increasing their pace. They’d gone half a mile when another flurry of gunfire came from the woods and twelve riders abruptly galloped out on the road ahead of them, pushing a swarm of fluttering lizardbirds and other strange creatures on foot. They’d started spurring their horses into a sprint to the east when someone looked back and saw the party galloping up behind. He shouted, and the Mexicans held up. “Let us through, into the lead. We’re all going to defend the ship,” Lara called to them in Spanish, before glancing defiantly at Anson.
Anson shrugged as they passed to the front of the ragged, frightened column. Several men were wounded, and if this was all that remained, Lara’s detachment had lost heavily that day. “I guess there’s nothin’ for it, Alferez Lara. Unarmed prisoners ain’t any use in a fight, an’ we’ve found a bigger one than we know, against monsters an’ savages that shouldn’t exist, in a hellish place nobody’s ever seen.” He frowned and glanced at Espinoza before looking back at Lara. “Maybe it is ‘purgatorio,’ like our friend Sal said, an’ this is how it is for fightin’ men. But whatever the hell’s goin’ on, we’re all on the same side in this ‘pesadilla,’ an’ I’ll tell De Russy so.” The firing was intensifying up ahead. “If he’s still alive.”
They fought off a small attack from the woods after another of Lara’s men was wounded by a rushed flurry of arrows, but they could tell by the calls and shouting in the forest that there were a lot of men in those trees. The next attack would have more weight. “Time to take to the beach,” Anson grudgingly decided, and the mixed force followed him through a cut leading out on the sandy shore. The sun was down, leaving only gold-streaked clouds to the west and just enough light to see, for the first time, the results of the fighting they’d been hearing all the way back. Commissary looked much as she had, lying bleak and broken and deeper in the water as the tide came in, but though Tiger was still at anchor offshore, Isidra had stood away until she was only an indistinct shape on the darkening sea. Leonor couldn’t understand that at all.
Purgatory's Shore Page 12