Warriors of the Night (18 page)

Zavala rinsed out his coffeepot, cleaned his plate, and sauntered back to camp. He set aside the coffeepot and plate and added a couple of stout branches to the flames. Kneeling by the fire, Zavala uncorked his bottle of tequila and emptied a quarter of its contents down his gullet. Then he drew one of his Colt revolvers and set the bottle aside.

Now here was a weapon. Five shots as fast as he could cock the hammer and pull the trigger. He pitied the Comanche raiding party that ever came to steal the horses of Cordero. As for the Rangers, well, one day the riders of Cordero would head north and settle with those Texans who had ambushed and destroyed El Tigre and his followers.

“The daughter of Don Luis shall lead us,” Zavala said aloud. The creek bubbled merrily behind him. The new logs sizzled and snapped in the fire. The vaquero’s voice was the only other noise.

The revolver clicked, being cocked; then Zavala eased the hammer down, between cylinders. He stared into the flames of the campfire and imagined himself riding at the head of a heavily armed column of men who looked to him for guidance and followed his lead. He saw himself charging into battle, his Colts blazing, his enemies fleeing before his wrath.

A shadow detached itself from the underbrush. Then another. And another. They made no sound. One shadow took shape, became a man whose fierce eyes peered from his eagle helmet. It was Striker. He raised his obsidian-encrusted war club and came on at a run.

Zavala, in his reverie, could almost hear the jingle-jangle of gold coins pouring into his saddlebags. He softly laughed. The tequila warming his gut merely fueled his fantasies.

Images of a rosy future layered one atop the other, each sequence better than the one before, until they all came crashing down and splintered apart like fragments of shattered glass, in jolting pain. Zavala never heard the rush of the blow that filled him and left him sprawled alongside the camp-fire. What dream was this? Hands quickly turned him over on his back. Through veils of his own blood he saw three demons with eagle heads and knives of serrated black stone. Zavala screamed. It didn’t do him any good. Then the demons with the knives went to work on him.

And his dreams became nightmares.

“W
HERE THE HELL IS
everybody?” Jorge Tenorio said as he sat astride his weary mount in the middle of Cordero Canyon. A solitary afternoon breeze stirred the woven-reed flaps covering the windows of the houses. Anabel, at his side, ordered Chico Raza and Hector Ybarbo to fan out through the settlement. They were only too happy to comply. Both of them had taken wives, and Ybarbo had two children who should have been running out to greet their father as the men of Cordero returned home.

“Ramona,” Hector called out. “Children, why do you hide from your father?” The question reverberated through the canyon and returned unanswered.

“Natividad?” cried Chico, with the same results as his friend.

“No parade to greet you?” Matt Abbot asked, taking a moment to rub his aching back. The grueling pace had left him drawn and pale. He moved stiffly. His thick neck was sunburned and peeling. But his posterior and spine were the major sources of his discomfort.

Miguel reached out and jabbed his rifle into the retired general’s shoulder. “Keep quiet, you!” Abbot groaned, and Anabel, seeing what had happened, turned and rode back to Miguel and grabbed the rifle from his hand. She was tired and her patience with his bullying ways had worn thin.

“Leave the
norteamericano
alone! He will not be harmed. You understand me?”

Miguel did not like being taken to task in front of the prisoner. He muttered an unintelligible reply and stared at the ground. Anabel did not have the time to prolong the reprimand. She was more concerned with the whereabouts of the families. The settlement appeared totally deserted.

“Do not try to antagonize my men, Señor Abbot. You can only suffer for it.
Sí?”
She rode back to Jorge and followed him to the edge of the settlement. About a hundred and fifty yards up the canyon, at the west end, Don Luis had built his hacienda to face the sunrise. However, what looked to be a solid cliff behind the house was actually an illusion, for the ridge took a dogleg turn to the north just beyond the hacienda. This cul de sac, flanked by volcanic ridges, concealed a bubbling pool of spring water, oak trees, and a carpet of nourishing chino grass.

“What was that?” Hector Ybarbo shouted. “I saw something.” He pointed to a jumbled pile of rocks on the south side of the canyon near the settlement. The boulders were the result of an earlier rock slide. One section in particular, a broad, flat chunk of table rock about ten feet in diameter, had come to rest atop the rubble, which itself was almost thirty feet in height. The table rock provided a perfect vantage point for a sentry to keep watch over the entrance to the canyon. One of the three men Don Luis had left behind to protect the families should have been on guard. Hector rode over to the slide area and studied the precipitous mound of jagged limestone debris. At last he turned to the others and shrugged. He had found nothing out of the ordinary. Jorge suggested to Anabel that perhaps the hacienda itself might hold a clue to the disappearance of the canyon’s former inhabitants. She called out for the others to follow her and raced off toward the hacienda. Her tired gelding covered the distance with a determination born of its mountain breeding. The horses of Don Luis Cordero would run till they dropped.

Tenorio managed to catch and pass the woman and was the first to ride beneath the arched gateway in the east wall of the hacienda. Adobe walls, ten feet tall, formed three sides of a rectangle—north, east and south. The house itself completed the rectangle and sealed off a center courtyard a hundred and thirty feet across and ninety deep. A corral was attached to the outside of the south wall. And on the far side of the corral, an open-sided shed sheltered a blacksmith’s forge.

Anabel was perturbed that Tenorio had been the first to enter the courtyard. No doubt he was still trying to protect her, but he would have to learn that she could take care of herself. Behind Jorge and Anabel, the other vaqueros and their prisoner crowded through the arched entrance in the stone wall. Only Hector had remained in the settlement. He had dismounted and was searching each adobe cabin.

Anabel dismounted and slid her father’s sawed-off shotgun from its saddle scabbard and started toward the front door. From the courtyard, the place seemed deserted. The only residents were a pair of Mexican jays that had perched on a hitching rail in front of a low-roofed barrack built against the north wall.

“It’s a curse. We should have freed Spotted Calf from the Rangers,” Chico bemoaned, and blessed himself.

“Idiot,” Jorge replied. Despite being the oldest of the lot, the long journey back to El Tigre’s lair seemed to have affected him the least. He tilted his sombrero back on his forehead and wiped a hand across his mouth. “Some promises cannot be kept. The Comanche was no friend. And the Rangers would not have handed him over for the asking. Was he worth your life? Or mine?”

“Silence,” Anabel replied. This time she led the way to the heavy door of paneled oak. She grabbed the iron latch and pulled. The door creaked open and a flurry of crows burst through the open doorway right in her face. She gasped and raised a hand to ward off the attack. The shotgun roared and the last of the crows vanished in a blizzard of black feathers. Buckshot blew a chunk out of the doorsill and peppered the back wall of the living room. Miguel and Matt Abbot had to fight to keep from being dislodged from their mounts as the startled horses bucked and tossed their manes and pawed at the air.

Anabel turned red with embarrassment. Furious at herself, she drew her Colt revolver and stalked through the door. Sunlight streaming through unshuttered windows illuminated the interior. The hacienda was much the same as she remembered. Save for some Indian blankets hung from the walls, there was little in the way of decoration. The house reflected the builder, her father. It was sparsely furnished with thick, solid, hand-hewn furniture, protected by laboriously constructed adobe walls. The hacienda bespoke strength and permanence. And like the settlement in the lower end of the canyon, it was chillingly devoid of life.

Ben McQueen took stock of Blanco Pass and the lengthening shadows of late afternoon and suggested his party make camp. A shallow cave carved out of the walls of the pass offered protection from the elements. Snake Eye gave the suggestion his blessing after scrutinizing the surrounding walls of the pass. He preferred the open range and didn’t like feeling hemmed in. Here in the Sierra Madre, darkness came early as the sun dipped past the broken-backed ridges of the western skyline.

Clay Poole trotted his skittish bay up to the mouth of the cave and peered into the depression that time and flash floods had scooped out of the base of the cliff. He took his time and proceeded with caution. Such natural shelters were generally already occupied by a variety of creatures, spiked and fanged or with flashing claws.

“Careful now,” Virge called out as Clay gingerly entered the cave. “Watch out for rattlers.”

“She ain’t deep,” Clay said. “I can already see the back wall. Appears to be purty clear.”

Virge walked his mount up to the cave and fished a six-inch-long dried rattler’s tail from his saddlebag. He gave the rattles a violent shake. The telltale warning had an instantaneous effect on Poole’s horse as it stood just inside the cave.

“Whoa—whoa—shiiit!” Clay landed flat on his back in the sand and his horse, a broom-tail bay, scampered out of the cave and into the fading light. Virge roared with laughter and slapped his thigh and held up the rattlesnake tail as Clay Poole emerged from under the limestone ledge. It didn’t take Clay long to realize he had been tricked. He saw Ben McQueen cut off his escaping horse and waved his thanks. Clay grabbed his battered hat and threw it on the ground. The fringe of brown hair around the sides of his head stuck straight out from his skull. He brushed sand from the beard that hung down his chest.

“Virge Washburn! You’ve gone too far. Climb off that nag o’ yours and I’ll part your hair proper.” He hauled the tomahawk from his belt. “God, you know I hate them rattlers.” He advanced on Washburn, who good-naturedly held up his hands in a mock surrender.

“By heaven, take you on the Mescan side of the Rio Grande and you get plumb touchy,” Virge replied.

“I’ll touch you right enough!” Clay retorted, waving the tomahawk under his compadre’s nose. Snake Eye Gandy rode between them and defused the quarrel before it turned serious.

“Virge. Since you’re so full of piss and vinegar, ride on up the valley aways and make sure we aren’t in anybody’s backyard.” Gandy glanced over his shoulder at Ben. Even though the Rangers were ostensibly under the lieutenant’s command, Snake Eye Gandy had a habit of issuing orders and checking with McQueen as an afterthought.

Virge shrugged and rode off without waiting for Ben to give his approval.

“Dumb bastard,” Clay muttered. “He couldn’t even count to eleven with his pants open.” He started back to the cave as Ben and the others dismounted. Peter volunteered to take the horses down to the creek and the others quickly handed over the reins to him. The creek was a stone’s throw from the cave, and Peter had no trouble in leading the horses to water and making them drink.

The rest of the men set about gathering firewood, which was plentiful enough among the scrub oaks that formed a greenbelt through the pass. But they’d barely begun their labors when Virgil came riding back at a dead gallop.

“What the hell?” Snake Eye muttered.

Ben shifted his stance to check behind the oncoming Ranger. No one was chasing him. But that didn’t make Ben relax any, not the way Virge was riding.

“That bastard is trying it again,” Clay scowled. He was determined not to fall for another of his friend’s ruses.

Virge halted his mount with a savage tug on the reins. The animal skidded in the soft earth near the creek. The Ranger looked ghastly white as he waved his hat and motioned for the others to follow him.

“Saddle up, lads. By God, what I’ve found yonder no man should have rode up to on his lonesome.”

“Virge, we’ve had a bellyful of your shenanigans,” Snake Eye warned.

“If this is another trick…” Clay added.

“I wish to God it was,” Virge said in a shaken tone of voice. “God knows I do.” And with that he wheeled his horse about and rode up the pass toward a grove of scrub oaks that grew dense at the base of the north cliff. Behind him, his companions remounted in silence. Clay was the last to swing a leg over his saddle.

“If this is a trick…” he repeated.

It wasn’t.

Ben had to look away, though he recognized Zavala as one of Anabel’s men. Peter doubled over, sank to his knees, and retched. Clay Poole dismounted and walked over to the butchered remains of the vaquero. Zavala’s hands and feet had been severed to keep him from pursuing his attackers when they one day joined him in the world of the dead. His chest cavity had been ripped open and his heart torn out and tossed into the fire for a sacrifice, although it appeared some of the organ had been gnawed on. His features were frozen in a look of abject horror. The blow that caved in the back of his head evidently hadn’t killed him outright. How long the poor victim had suffered was anyone’s guess. Clay drew his Colt revolver and aimed it at Spotted Calf, who was keeping his distance from the grisly remains.

“You sonuvabitch. Murdering heathens! It ain’t enough you kill a man, but you got to butcher him like a fattened hog.” He thumbed the hammer back and fired as Ben lashed out and kicked the man’s arm upward. The gunshot reverberated the length and breadth of the pass.

“That’s enough,” Ben said, dismounting in front of the enraged man.

“The hell with you,” Clay roared, and tried for another shot. This time Ben batted the gun aside and leveled the burly Ranger with a solid right to the jaw. Clay slammed back against a tree, shook his head to clear his vision, and tried to resume his attack. This time he faced Snake Eye Gandy along with Ben.