Warriors of the Night (19 page)

“Hold it there, Clay,” said Gandy.

“You seen what his kind done? A bullet’s too damn quick. But it’ll do. You been wanting to douse his lights yourself!” Clay blinked tears and tried for a clear shot at the Comanche, but Ben and Snake Eye refused to budge.

“Truer words were never spoke, Clay,” Snake Eye replied. “And I’d be standing at your side if this were the work of the Quahadi or any other stripe Comanche.” Gandy looked down at the mutilated corpse. “None of his kind had a hand in this. They don’t eat on their kill. Or open a man up like so.” Gandy rubbed a hand across his mouth and shook his head. “The poor sod’s had his heart yanked clean out, maybe while he was still alive, judging by the look on his face.” He pointed toward the carcass of Zavala’s horse. “They even slit the throat of his horse yonder. No Comanche I ever heard of would kill a fine animal like that.”

“Even the buzzards ain’t touched him,” Virge muttered, looking up at the deepening hue of the sky. Pastel yellow, vermilion, and lavender, the westering sun spilled its bouquet of color across heaven.

“Because the dark ones have been here,” Spotted Calf spoke up. His voice was thick with dread. “Even the scavengers will wait until the sun has passed across the body many times.” Spotted Calf glanced around, and there was fear in his eyes, something few men had glimpsed in a Comanche. “The spirit-takers have come as in the stories the Dream Walker used to tell us. And they have brought the blood-eating god with them.”

“I’ve heard enough, you crazy buck,” Snake Eye said.

Ben wasn’t sure what to believe. But suddenly the ancient mountains had taken on an air of menace, and he knew he would be glad when they had reached the hacienda and rescued Matt Abbot. Only after Clay holstered his gun did Ben relax his guard. He returned to his horse and tethered the animal to a tree upwind of the corpse. He returned to Zavala’s camp and began piling rocks around the dead man. Peter Abbot scrambled to his feet. He wiped a hand across his mouth and stumbled over to help Ben bury the man. Spotted Calf dismounted but continued to keep his distance. Clay kept a watchful eye on the brave, but Gandy and Virge helped gather stones. Though Zavala had been an enemy in life, his pursuers felt pity for him in the terrible manner of his dying. No man, they all believed, should have to meet his maker in such a way.

From a limestone rim overlooking the pass, Striker watched as the men below built the mound of stones over the body of the man he had killed. His two companions, Cut Lip and Gray Snake, wanted to wait until night and then attack these intruders. But there were too many. Striker was older by ten winters, and time had taught him the value of patience. Better to allow these white-skinned men to continue into the trap Fire Giver had prepared for them. It wouldn’t do to alarm them and cause them to scatter. No. Let the men come on. Come on to their deaths.

D
ARKNESS GREEDILY CONSUMED CORDERO
Canyon. Stygian shadows engulfed the settlement and obscured the nearby canyon walls. The vaqueros hurried about their chores. The horses were led to the corral outside the wall and a guard was posted to watch over the mounts. Hector pulled first duty. He didn’t mind. He was too worried about his wife and children to even think of resting. Lamps were lit and soon the front windows of the hacienda were filled with amber light. The smell of boiling coffee and frying meat helped to ease the gloom that had settled over the fortresslike hacienda.

Although the broad, spacious dining room was the center of activity where the men waited for Chico Raza to serve up his specialty, chili and tortillas, lamplight also filtered from a rear bedroom in the single-storied house. And while the men in the front cleaned their weapons and speculated as to the strange disappearance of the settlement’s inhabitants, the woman who had brought them here confronted her own private ghosts.

After issuing orders to her men, Anabel made her way down a brief, narrow hallway to her father’s bedroom. Summoning courage, she opened the door and stepped inside. Memories came rushing up to engulf her on wings of night, though there was little to remind her of the man who had lived in this room or slept in the ponderous bed. A nightstand and washbasin filled one corner. A coiled lariat hung from the wall. The room’s one article of luxury dominated the center of the room. Flanked by two ladder-backed chairs stood a small, square table topped by a parqueted chess board. Pawns and knights, bishops, queens, and all the rest were arranged just as she and her father had left them.

“What about the game, Papa?”

“Leave it. One day we will finish. Until then—”
He had hugged her. Anabel could still feel the pressure of his arms, the warmth of his embrace. If was the last time she saw him alive.

Anabel opened her eyes and looked down at the chess set. As an act of finality, she reached out and toppled the black king and lay the piece on its side.

“Checkmate,” Anabel whispered as the memory unraveled and returned her to the present. Jorge Tenorio stood in the doorway, hesitant. He did not wish to intrude. She sensed his presence and faced him. He held the shotgun out to her.

“I reloaded it for you, Señorita Cordero.”

“Gracias,”
she replied, taking the weapon from him and closing the bedroom door behind her as she joined him in the hall. “You think I am a foolish girl.”

“A woman with a shotgun always has my utmost respect,” Jorge told her and, with a gleam in his eye, added, “No matter how bad her aim.”

Anabel resisted the urge to smile. She led the way down the hall and into the dining room. Miguel was pacing the room. Chico Raza was in the kitchen stirring the contents of a cast-iron cook pot. Matt Abbot, unbound thanks to Jorge, sat slumped across the table. He looked up as Anabel and her
segundo
entered the room.

“The horses are in the corral?” she asked.

“We will take them to pasture tomorrow morning,” Jorge said.

“My dear young woman, you have no idea the enormity of your actions,” Matt said. “Is there no way that I can reach you, to make you understand what you have done?”

“I have kidnapped a general of the United States. Now there will be no peaceful settlement between my country and yours,” Anabel said, beaming. “I will ransom you for much money.” She sat across from him. “Then I will buy guns and raise an army for Santa Anna when he is restored to power.”

Matt shook his head, astounded at her naiveté. “My dear misguided young lady. Money for my return, indeed. You’ll not see much for me. Why, I daresay there are some in President Polk’s circle that would pay you to keep me here.” Abbot laughed ruefully. He folded his hands beneath his chin to prop his head up.

“We don’t believe you,” Miguel sneered, pacing like a caged mountain cat.

“Then you are all damned by your own foolishness,” Matt replied.

“I’ll show you who is the fool, old man,” Miguel said, kicking a stool aside. He slipped a pearl-inlaid dagger from his boot top and advanced on the prisoner.

“No,” Anabel said. “Go outside, Miguel. Wait for me there.”

Miguel glanced from Matt to the woman and then to the dagger, whose double-edged blade glittered in the lamplight. At last he returned the blade to his boot sheath and stalked from the room.

“A proud young man, Señor Abbot,” Jorge said. “It would not do to provoke him.”

“He provokes himself,” Matt replied.

Chico entered and set a black pot and a stack of tortillas in the center of the table. He left the room and returned with bowls and spoons from the kitchen.

“You think Tomas will stay the entire week in Blanco Pass?” Chico asked.

Jorge shrugged and softly chuckled. “That one follows orders worse than any of you. No, he’ll stay until the tequila runs out. Then I wouldn’t be surprised to see him come trailing in.”

“And he will be shocked by what he finds,” Anabel added. She looked at her
segundo
. Jorge had survived all these years living by his wits, a fast horse, and a gun. She trusted his instincts and, like her father, was unafraid to ask for his help. She gazed down and saw her reflection on the surface of the black ring.

“Tell me, Jorge. What do you think has happened here? Where are our people?” she asked in Spanish, not wanting to include her prisoner in the discussion.

“Who can tell? I have found no blood. No sign of a struggle in the
jacales
down in the canyon. If the Comanches had come, there would be bodies. The settlement and this hacienda would have been burned.” Jorge scratched his head, then rubbed his grizzled chin. His eyes were red and tired-looking. “Something bad has happened. But I don’t know what.”

“You talk like a frightened old woman,” Chico interjected. “Maybe our people are hiding back in the hills, waiting for us to return. And when they see smoke coming from the chimney and the lanterns in the windows of the hacienda, they will come down from their hiding places.” He dug into his chili, spooning the thick red chunks of meat and beans into his mouth.

Anabel shoved clear of the table. She had no appetite for dinner. Matt Abbot wrinkled his nose as he sniffed the spicy stew Chico placed before him. The prisoner chanced a mouthful. His features reddened from his forehead to his throat.

“More pepper, señor?” Chico grinned.

“No. I think you’ve just about got the right mixture,” Matt said. He refused to let his captors see him squirm. He watched Anabel leave the room, then turned toward Jorge.

“All right, you old cutthroat, what the hell is going on?” Matt’s gaze narrowed. “I’ve been a soldier long enough to know when there’s a fly in the buttermilk.”

Jorge leaned forward over his meal and began to eat. “You will know when I do, Señor Abbot,” he muttered.

Matt stared at his meal. Somehow he wasn’t reassured.

Anabel paused on the porch to allow her eyes to adjust to the night. Miguel was standing by the barracks near a wall that Don Luis’s vaqueros had dug into the hard floor of the canyon.

She waved to Hector on the wall. When he returned the greeting, she started over to join Miguel. The darkly handsome young man straightened as she approached. He turned and climbed the stone steps to the roof of the bunkhouse. Anabel considered following him, then changed her mind. Sometimes Miguel Ybarbo could be as petulant as a young girl. Anabel walked up to the front gate. The metal bolt grudgingly, slowly slid back. She pulled the heavy door open and stood beneath the arched entranceway. She no longer could make out the settlement, for the moon was hidden behind a cloud. She stepped a couple of yards outside the wall. The enormity of night threatened to overpower her slender form. Youthful fears assailed her. She was grateful for the shotgun cradled in her arms.

Was that a noise? No. Only her imagination. Her father had never shown fear, and neither would she. Anabel refused to retreat, not until she had proven to herself and to the night that she was master of her own fate.

But the night had no heart and she had only her courage. Everything was reduced to simplicity. Anabel had to prove something; to her father’s ghost, to herself, and to what lurked on the borderline between the shadow and the light.

She waited.

She watched.

Then a patch of darkness took on substance. And another. And another. The blood in her veins turned to ice. Like beasts, like men, they charged her at a dead run. Anabel thought at first she was hallucinating, for the beast-men made no sound. Seconds passed, and now she could identify shields and clubs and obsidian axes and heard the pad of bare feet upon the dirt. She broke free of the spell that night had cast upon her and turned to run inside the gate. She stopped in her tracks as a warrior in eagle headdress materialized out of thin air to block her escape. The warrior raised a war club in his right hand.

Anabel reacted purely on instinct. She brought the shotgun to bear and loosed both barrels. The shotgun muzzle spewed flame that lapped at the warrior’s feathered coat. The brave flew backward, cut nearly in half by buckshot, and landed on his shoulders in the courtyard. The gate was clear. Anabel rushed through and pulled the door shut behind her and rammed the bolt home. She heard the horses in the corral neigh and shriek in terror. Hector and Miguel opened fire from the wall as Anabel hurried to join them. Jorge ran out of the hacienda and met the woman at the stairway. Chico appeared on the roof of the hacienda, ready to fight.

By the time Anabel and Jorge reached the wall overlooking the corral, the fight had ended. The soldiers of Tezcatlipoca had withdrawn into darkness, leaving Miguel and Hector to feverishly reload.

Anabel sagged against the wall and looked down at the carnage below. “Oh, mother of God,” she whispered. Her breath came in ragged gasps as she struggled to comprehend what had happened. Not one horse in the corral had been left standing. Some were dead; the others lay bleeding to death from half a dozen wounds.

“No!” she screamed. And the word reverberated and returned to taunt her—“No! No! No!”—while the poor creatures in the corral shuddered and died. One, by one, by one.

Ben McQueen, his rifle at his side, knelt alongside Spotted Calf as the Comanche drew on the dirt floor of Blanco Pass. Snake Eye Gandy wandered over at Ben’s request and looked on as Spotted Calf completed a crude drawing of Cordero Canyon. He indicated the placement of the settlement and the hacienda at the west end of the canyon and gave an indication of the terrain to either side of the hacienda.

“There is a creek south of Cordero Canyon, on the other side of the ridge,” Ben said.

“If he ain’t lying,” Gandy muttered.

“I speak straight,” the Comanche replied, turning to look over his shoulder at the Ranger. “Do not be afraid.”

“The only thing I’m afeared of is that you’ll skedaddle before I can put a bullet in your worthless hide,” Gandy retorted.

“You are a worthy enemy, Snake Eye,” said Spotted Calf. “It will be an honor to kill you.”

“That’s enough out of both of you,” Ben growled. “We’ve got trouble aplenty without you two trying to lift each other’s scalps.” Ben glared at them both until they quieted and grudgingly set aside their differences. Ben took a twig and pointed to the south ridge. “Snake Eye, if you follow south creek here, reckon you could work your way across the ridge after nightfall and enter the canyon from the blind side?”