Only the Gallant (28 page)

Gandy’s glass left eye completed his grim visage. In place of pupil and cornea, Gandy had paid some craftsman to paint a coiled rattlesnake on the orb’s surface. The effect was disconcerting, to say the least. Ben doubted there was a man alive who could stare Gandy down.

“Lieutenant, eh?” Gandy said after introductions had been made on the hillside. The Ranger gave McQueen a swift appraisal. “You must be one of those soldier boys escorting that general fella around the Republic.” Gandy reloaded his Colts as he spoke. He wore his guns waist-high. A bowie knife was sheathed beneath his left arm, bone handle jutting forward. “Looks as though you bluecoats are gonna need looking after while you’re busy protecting the general. That is, unless you learn to shoot a little faster.” He dropped his gaze to the unfired carbine.

“It’s
retired
General Matthew Abbott,” Ben corrected. “We were clear of the hills when we heard a gunshot. He asked me to investigate while he continued on to San Antonio with the escort.” Ben looked at Anabel. “I intercepted the señorita’s carriage. The war party was something of a surprise.”

Snake Eye Gandy finished loading his revolvers, holstered one, and turned his attention to the woman standing close by.

“Afternoon, Señorita Obregon. Funny thing, a woman riding out here by her lonesome. Wonder what brings a woman to do such a fool thing.”

“I was visiting a family for my brother,” Anabel lied smoothly. Her eyes never wavered as she told a story of how her brother, Father Esteban, had been unable to leave San Antonio to visit a farmer in the hills whose wife was ill. Like a good Christian sister, Anabel had agreed to go and care for the woman in her brother’s stead. “Of course, I would never have made the trip alone had I known the Comanches were raiding so close to town.”

Gandy nodded. “We heard rumors that Comanches had been seen crossing upriver. Captain Pepper sent me to track ’em.”

“One man?” Ben asked.

It was plain the Ranger had little regard for the lieutenant, but the one-eyed rascal sure held himself in high esteem. “There was only one war party,” Gandy replied.

He snapped up the .36-caliber Patterson Colt in his right hand, thumbed back the hammer, and fired. Anabel and Ben both jumped, startled by the Ranger’s sudden action.

A geyser of dirt exploded six inches from the head of one of the corpses downslope. Gandy cocked the pistol and centered the octagonal barrel directly on his target.

“Spotted Calf. You speak English as good as any white man, so I know you understand. I aim to part your war feathers with my next shot, less you stand up and show me the palms of your hands.”

Ben had to give Snake Eye Gandy his due. One of the “corpses” stirred, then rose from the ground, reincarnated by the Ranger’s threat.

Spotted Calf held out his hands to demonstrate that he held no weapon. Blood seeped from a flesh wound in his right arm. His nose was broken and obviously hurt like hell, but defeat was the worst calamity that had befallen the brave. Spotted Calf noticed the bullet-riddled body of Sees the Turtle where he had fallen alongside his rival and friend. The warrior had died fighting. Spotted Calf was envious of his companion’s fate. Better to die in battle than suffer the humiliation of capture and the white man’s justice. He turned and glared at the Texas Ranger.

“Here I am, Snake Eye. Here is my heart. Kill me while you can or I will yet wear your hair on my belt!”

Gandy chuckled at the threat and glanced around at Ben. The Ranger tugged the topknot braided in his hair. “Spotted Calf and I go way back. I managed to kill his brother when the red devil took a trade knife to my scalp. This here Comanch has been looking to finish the job ever since.”

He shrugged, placed two fingers in his mouth, and gave a shrill whistle that echoed across the hills. A couple of minutes passed, then a nimble-footed buckskin Appaloosa mare came trotting from behind the hill. The animal neighed and tossed its head and proceeded up to Gandy’s outstretched hand. The Ranger actually exhibited a moment of tenderness as he scratched beneath the mare’s jaw.

“If you think you can manage to keep Spotted Calf from lighting a shuck and skedaddling, I’ll fetch the carriage,” Gandy said, looking over his shoulder.

“I’ll do my best,” Ben said in mock earnestness. He was beginning to seriously dislike Mister Snake Eye Gandy, even if the Ranger had made a timely entrance.

Gandy seemed to take no notice of the younger man’s tone of voice. He swung up astride his horse and rode on down the hill. Once the Ranger was safely out of earshot, Anabel removed a scarf from around her neck and started over to the wounded brave.

“Hey…?” Ben raised the carbine and followed her. He kept the Comanche covered while Anabel proceeded to bandage the warrior’s arm wound. The brave glared sullenly at McQueen and then spoke in his native tongue to the woman ministering to him.

“Help me to escape these white eyes or I will tell the Ranger that you are the daughter of Don Luis,” Spotted Calf looked after the figure on horseback heading down the road to the carriage. “I do not think you wish the Rangers to know such a thing.”

“If I help you, then there must be peace between us,” Anabel said, stalling for time. She had begun to formulate her own plans upon hearing that Ben McQueen was part of the American general’s entourage. If Spotted Calf revealed her identity, it would spoil everything. She had to keep him quiet, at least for a few days.

“There will be peace,” Spotted Calf said.

“I will help you,” she told him. “But not now. Let Gandy take you to San Antonio. I will come with my father’s vaqueros and set you free, and together we will kill many Rangers.”

“You speak for the tiger of Coahuila, your father?”

“I speak for him,” Anabel replied flatly.

“You two are carrying on like old friends,” Ben interrupted. He could speak Choctaw and Cherokee and a smattering of Creek, but the quick, clipped phrases of Comanche were just so much gibberish.

“I am merely assuring him that I mean him no harm, that I intend to bind his wound and nothing more,” Anabel said.

“Well, he meant us plenty harm a few minutes ago, señorita, or have you forgotten?”

“It is not Christian to dwell on the sins of the past. I wish to demonstrate the mercy of our heavenly father to this poor savage.”

“Fine,” Ben said. “But don’t get in my line of fire, because if he so much as breathes wrong I’ll douse his lights, as sure as I am standing here.”

Anabel sighed. “Now you sound like that awful one-eyed man. I liked you better as the gallant young lieutenant who saved my life.”

“You did—I did—uh—you do?” Ben stammered, caught off guard by her remarks. Her tone of voice was downright inviting.

He had heard that Mexican women were passionate and volatile by nature. He could add mercurial as well.

She had finished bandaging the Comanche’s arm by the time Gandy arrived back with the carriage. He had managed to round up one of the horses the war party had left behind. Spotted Calf recognized the stallion that had belonged to Sees the Turtle. He walked over to the animal and, with pained effort, climbed astride the animal’s back. To the warrior’s horror, Gandy dropped a loop over Spotted Calf’s head and tightened it around his neck.

“You get any fancy notions on our way into town and I’ll drag you through the cactus by your neck. Savvy?” The brave’s features were etched in stone, but he nodded.

“Is that necessary?” Ben asked. The Comanche was his enemy, but he didn’t see any need to be cruel. “I can keep my carbine trained on him all the way into town.”

“A Comanche ain’t afraid of dying,” the Ranger explained. “It’s how he goes about it that’s important. If he took a notion, he’d take your bullet and slit your throat as he dies. But hanging or being choked by a rope keeps his soul from reaching the happy hereafter.” Gandy jiggled the horsehair rope. “This lariat will keep him honest. I make straight talk, don’t I, Spotted Calf?”

The Comanche warrior stared impassively at the road ahead. The Ranger chuckled. “Get to your carriage, Brass Buttons, and ol’ Snake Eye Gandy will see you get safely home.”

“I am an officer in the army of the United States. And as this Republic is seeking annexation and hopes to become the twenty-eighth state, you’d do well to show some respect for this uniform, its rank, and the nation it represents.” Ben drew himself up and with all the dignity he could muster started down the hill to the señorita’s carriage. He took one step and heard his trouser leg tear as the spiny branch of an ocotillo seemed to clutch at him with a life of its own.

“Mighty fine speechifying, Brass Buttons. But it takes more than fancy talk to walk this land.” Gandy folded his rough hands on the pommel of his saddle, winked, and turned his horse back toward the road. Spotted Calf obediently fell in behind the Ranger.

Ben managed to extricate himself from the cactus, but left a patch of blue on the thorns. Texas had the last word after all.

“F
ASTEST-GROWING TOWN IN
Texas,” Gandy bragged, looking back at Ben in the señorita’s carriage. “No place finer. Can’t see how them folks in Houston stand it. They got skeeters in swarms so thick a man has to take an axe and hack his way from street to street.”

Ben grinned at the Ranger’s tall story. He’d heard plenty of similar ones since disembarking in Galveston. But he could see that Gandy spoke the truth about San Antonio. Over a century ago, the town had sprung up around a horseshoe bend in the San Antonio River. On the edge of the Texas frontier, its population had swelled to more than five thousand, who were attracted to the area by its arid climate and the rich beauty of the surrounding countryside. Wild figs and pomegranates grew here, as well as sugarcane and corn. There was grazing for cattle. Missionaries had seen to the construction of aqueducts that carried water to every major section of town. To the northwest, groves of ash and elm, oak and cottonwood hid springs of cold, clear water from hillside seeps to shaded pools frequented by deer, coyote, bobcat, and other creatures of the wild, including man.

Civilization had come to the San Antonio River, but it had yet to cross over, at least to any degree.

“You have chosen a good time to visit San Antonio,” Anabel said. “In three days we will have fiesta. It is a time of much celebration.”

Ben nodded as they turned onto the Calle de Soledad, the Street of Solitude. Or loneliness. Ben had known both over the past months.

The town itself, for the most part, was an orderly arranged collection of flat-roofed, one-story houses, thick-walled and constructed of mortar, stone, or adobe brick. The riverbanks were lined with lofty cottonwoods and elms and formed a border on three sides of the town, whose expansion had sprawled westward.

“That is my brother’s church, San Fernando,” Anabel said. Ben glanced down a side street and noted a whitewashed adobe bell tower rising above the row of shops and homes. “It lies between the Plaza de los Islos and the Plaza de Aroros—Military Plaza, as you would call it. The plazas are the heartbeat of my town. There the children play, there young lovers may meet and walk together, and the old may sit, dreaming and remembering sunlit days and nights of fire.”

Ben had started to comment that the woman beside him had the heart of a poet, when she turned toward the plazas and headed west along the Calle Dolorosa, the Street of Sorrow. By now the entourage had picked up quite a following. Children had become distracted from their play by the strange procession and now scampered along, peeking into the carriage at the blue-clad officer, then hurrying up ahead to pelt the captured Comanche with pebbles. Spotted Calf rode stiffly erect and would not deign to even so much as flinch at the abuse. Snake Eye managed to at last drive them off with a few well-placed slaps of his quirt upon the posteriors of the troublemakers. The children fell back to a respectful distance. But the townspeople continued to gawk as the Ranger, his prisoner, and the carriage rolled past.

The storefronts and walkways, roof lines and walls surrounding the plazas were in the process of being decorated, and when Ben inquired, Anabel told him about the fiesta coming up on the fifth of May. The whole town would be one big carnival. Everyone was excited and looking forward to the event. Farmers from the outlying area and people from the smaller settlements to the north and south would be coming to San Antonio to take part in the celebration.

“There will be much music, much dancing, much laughter, and the food…” Anabel closed her eyes a moment and then smiled. “Breathe in.”

The air was already heavy with the scent of baking bread and pies, spice cakes, and sugary preserves. As the day drew closer, nearly every street would be filled with mouth-watering aromas.

“Perhaps I might see you at the fiesta,” Ben suggested.

“Or sooner,” Anabel replied.

Before Ben could further pursue the topic, the carriage turned yet again and followed Snake Eye Gandy and his prisoner along the western edge of Military Plaza. They followed the street up to an impressive-looking rock house that had once served as the governor’s palace, before Texas became a republic. The single-story sandstone building housed the Ranger headquarters, as well as providing room for visiting dignitaries like Matthew Abbot.

Ben immediately recognized the retired general and Abbot’s son, Peter, standing with a lean, tough-looking individual whom Anabel identified as Capt. Amadeus T. Pepper, the commandant of San Antonio’s Texas Rangers. Ben noticed with some amusement how the half dozen blue-coated soldiers acting as Abbot’s personal guard stood opposite a few of Pepper’s Rangers. Each faction eyed the other with suspicion and cool disregard in the heat of the afternoon sun. To the soldiers under Ben’s command, these Rangers appeared to be no more than rabble. They were dressed like Indians, and smelled like them too. Of course, from the viewpoint of Pepper’s men, these bluecoats were about as fierce as puppies. The Rangers doubted there was one among the soldiers who could acquit himself in a running battle with war-painted hostiles.

A long, wide veranda, covered by a low roof of cane and dry grass, ran the length of the governor’s palace. Two
ollas,
clay cisterns containing cool water, were suspended from the roof poles in netting of braided hemp. A dipper had been hung by each of them. Honeybees and mud daubers were drawn to the puddles that collected on the sandstone flooring below each cistern.