Warriors of the Night (5 page)

“But you must return,” Anabel said. “Join us for dinner tomorrow. At sunset. Yes, that will do. Allow us to give you and the good general a proper welcome. Carmelita and I will prepare a magnificent meal.” She ignored her brother’s look of alarm. “It is the least we can do to honor the American general and his son. And Señor McQueen, you risked your life for me today. I insist you allow me to show my gratitude.”

“I couldn’t impose…” Ben said.

“But I could,” Peter Abbot interrupted. He swept his hat before him as he bowed and kissed the señorita’s hand. He had already decided to avoid mentioning the invitation to his father. Ben McQueen saw through his friend’s plan.

“We accept your kind offer. I am sure the general will be delighted,” Ben pointedly interjected. He took pleasure in seeing Peter Abbot’s crestfallen features. Abbot grumbled and started back toward the street, his romantic ambitions momentarily thwarted.

“Until tomorrow.” Ben nodded farewell to the padre and Carmelita, then turned to Anabel. The dark-eyed beauty extended a graceful hand, which he took and kissed as he bowed. Was that interest in her guarded gaze? Ben scolded himself for being a fool. Months ago, he had welcomed the chance to come to Texas, in hopes of escaping the painful memories of one he had loved well but not wisely. Now here he was, like some giddy youth, diving blindly into the fray once again. This was crazy.

Oh hell, this was Texas.

He’d fought Comanches and rescued a beautiful woman and kissed her hand and been invited to her house. Who could ask for a better day? Maybe he had yet to see a fiesta, but Ben McQueen already felt like celebrating.

F
ATHER ESTEBAN SHOOK HIS
head in exasperation and slumped into the chair nearest the fireplace in the sitting room. The hacienda was large enough to hold three bedrooms, the sitting room, and a kitchen, all of which opened onto the shaded confines of the cactus garden where Anabel, Carmelita, and the priest had just bid farewell to Ben McQueen and Peter Abbot.

Anabel weathered her older brother’s displeasure, accustomed as she was to such reactions. She’d spent a childhood chasing trouble, then watching as her older brother hurried to the rescue, complaining every step of the way. But he always came.

“Are you mad, inviting a general of the American army into this house?” Father Esteban asked.

“What are you afraid of?” Anabel replied. She hugged Carmelita, then removed her hat and gloves as the housekeeper hurried off to the kitchen to bring the young woman a cup of hot tea. “There is no one to tell them our name is Cordero and that
El Tigre de Coahuila
was our father. Don’t worry, Esteban, you are safe in your pulpit.”

“Maybe there is someone else the priest fears will be discovered,” said a voice from the kitchen doorway. A handsome young vaquero with dark skin, flashing eyes, and black hair shiny as a pelt stepped into the room. Miguel Ybarbo had a temper as short as a two-inch fuse, and it didn’t take much for one to strike a match to it. He wore brown canvas trousers and knee-high boots, a ruffled shirt, and a short brown jacket trimmed with wine-colored stitching. A twin-barreled percussion pistol was tucked in the broad leather belt circling his waist. A dagger jutted from the top of each boot. Pearl-inlaid hilts flashed in the firelight as he swaggered into the room.

Anabel cast a furtive glance toward the shuttered windows. She hadn’t expected to discover one of Don Luis’s vaqueros in San Antonio. “You should not have come here.”

“Tell me, do you worry for me or for yourself?” Miguel said. He reached out and, with his fingertips beneath her chin, tilted her head until he could look into her eyes. His own features smouldered with jealous desire. “I see the gringo kiss your hand. I see you smile at this soldier and laugh and I hear you invite him to your house, your father’s killers.”

“Enough,” Anabel retorted. “He did not kill my father.” She did not like being scolded, especially by Miguel Ybarbo. “You presume too much. I will not be spoken to in such a manner.” She turned to her brother. “I have my reasons for inviting the general. Are you not here to serve all the people of San Antonio?”

“Of course I am,” Esteban replied.

“Good,” Anabel said. “Then you can ‘serve’ them supper.” She grinned and patted his shoulder, then headed into the kitchen, where Carmelita had already filled two stoneware cups with hot tea. She’d added a few drops of brandy to each cup to give it substance. She noticed Anabel and patted the space beside her on the bench seat.

“Come sit.” Carmelita placed a platter of
pan dulce
within easy reach and helped herself to one of the crusty bread rolls she had glazed with honey and dusted with cinnamon. “Naughty child. You must have left at first light.”

“Before you had awakened, else you would have tried to stop me,” Anabel said, sitting beside the woman who had been her housekeeper, nurse, confidante, and friend since Anabel’s earliest recollections. “Carmelita, I had to visit Papa one last time. Alone. With no one to tell me what I must feel or do from now on. I needed to be able to listen.”

“To who, child?”

“Papa,” Anabel replied. Carmelita blessed herself. Don Luis Cordero de Tosta speaking from the grave—that was all she needed to hear.

“Am I so foolish, mamacita, for I did hear him,” Anabel said. She touched a fingertip to her forehead. “Here.” She placed the palm of her hand over her heart. “And here.”

Carmelita watched her. The old woman’s mind wandered in memories of a winsome, dark-haired child, a baby she had nursed, a child with whom she had watched the seasons change, a child to be nurtured along the winding path of time. In her mind’s eye, Carmelita relived a moment stolen from the stream of passing years—a child cups a small scarlet-winged bird and holds the fragile, captured creature up to the sky and releases that fluttering miracle, returning the gift of life to a barren blue heaven.

The child had become a woman. Perhaps her wings were stronger than Carmelita knew. The older woman could no longer shelter one who was determined to stand—or fly—alone.

“Foolish? No, my dear one,” Carmelita said. “You are your father’s daughter.” The buxom housekeeper stood and walked over to a bin of dried corn. She lifted the lid and thrust her hand down into the cool, dry kernels. When she straightened, she was holding a ring that Anabel immediately recognized. It consisted of a smooth, irregularly shaped chunk of obsidian roughly an inch and a half in diameter and set in gold. It had belonged to Anabel’s father, something he wore as a symbol of his authority. He had never revealed how he came by the ring, saying only that he had found it in the mountains many years ago.

Carmelita placed the ring on the table before Anabel. “Don Luis asked me to keep this. For you. Don Luis told me that you must choose for yourself whether or not to wear it.” Carmelita looked down at the glassy, black surface.

Anabel stared down into the smoky facets of the hand-chiseled stone.
Madre de Dios
. Was that the image of her father, etched upon the eerie surface, staring back at her from the stone’s black heart? She reached out and caught up the ring. She shuddered and slid the ring over the middle finger of her right hand. Anabel gasped as fire coursed through her limbs and played along her spine. Then the sensation subsided, her muscles relaxed. She had made her choice.

“No!” Miguel said from the doorway. He hurried into the kitchen, brushed against a string of dried chilies, and sent them clattering to the floor. “The ring should be mine. Your father wanted us to be together. He told me so the day he died at the hands of the Rangers.”

“I was not there to hear his words,” Anabel replied. Miguel Ybarbo was handsome and dashing and no woman was completely immune to his charms, least of all Anabel. But there was more on her mind now than Miguel’s jealous fancies.

He reached to snatch the ring from her finger. Anabel caught up a carving knife from the table and turned on the vaquero with such ferocity that he stopped in his tracks and retreated against the adobe wall that Carmelita had hung with iron cookpots. He struck a shelf lined with neatly arranged clay jars of spices and honey and salt. An orange-colored jar crashed to the stone floor, raising a small cloud of cinnamon-scented dust. Miguel studied the woman, his eyes wide with alarm. When she refrained from attacking him, his cheeks reddened with embarrassment. A log in the fireplace popped and splintered in half in a shower of sparks. The sound startled Anabel, but she kept her fingers tightly clenched around the hilt of the carving knife. The black ring reflected the dancing flames upon its somber surface and leeched the warmth from the captured firelight.

“My father is dead,” the daughter of Don Luis Cordero said in a quiet voice. “But the tiger of Coahuila remains.” Anabel tilted her hand and peered into the ring’s smoky depths, and this time she saw herself.

Ben McQueen’s thoughts lingered on the pretty señorita he’d left at Father Esteban’s house as the lieutenant crossed Military Plaza.

“You weren’t much help to me,” Peter Abbot scowled, walking alongside his lucky friend in blue.

“I didn’t plan to be,” Ben replied with a grin.

“We’ll see who has the last laugh,” Peter retorted. “What’s this?” Abbot found himself distracted by a comely young woman in a swirling green skirt and cotton blouse who waved to him from the balcony above the Alameda Hotel’s front entrance. The hotel was located on the south side of the plaza and frequently housed San Antonio’s more illustrious guests. Matt Abbot had insisted on staying at the Ranger barracks.

“You go on and look after my father,” Peter said. “I’ll look after me.” He headed for the cantina, ignoring Ben’s warning. The lieutenant continued on to the governor’s palace. General Abbot and Captain Pepper had disappeared inside, while the remainder of the general’s escort left to unload their bedrolls in the barracks, a long, wide, adobe structure furnished with elmwood cots and straw-filled mattresses, along with a scattering of tables and ladder-backed chairs. The soldiers had seen better, but they’d seen worse too. They had been given leave to explore the town and were anxious to begin. Ben McQueen saw no point in delaying them and ordered his sergeant, stern old Hezekiah Palmer, to keep an eye on the command.

The governor’s palace made an impressive sight, with its nearly three-feet-thick stone walls and massive double doors of carved walnut. The palace itself had seen its moments of glory come and go with the Spanish rulers and Mexican commandants who had housed themselves within these walls. The Texas rebellion had brought war to San Antonio and looters to the palace. With many of its rooms stripped of finery, the ballroom and living room, which dominated the center of the hacienda, were used for storage. Where ladies in silk finery had waltzed across tile-inlaid floors, rifles and grain, sacks of shot and barrels of salt pork, dried beans, flour and apples were now stored.

Ben continued down the hall, passing a chapel on his right and a dining room where the general and Captain Pepper were trading lies over a freshly uncorked bottle of Irish whisky Abbot had retrieved from his belongings.

“There you are, Lieutenant. Come and join us, that’s a god lad,” the blustery, good-natured general exclaimed. “I trust you escorted that pretty little girl home without incident.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said, remaining in the doorway. “She invited us to dine with her tomorrow night. I took the liberty of accepting.”

“Excellent,” Matt replied. He cocked an eyebrow and glanced at the Ranger captain. “That’s the ticket. Win over the locals to our side.”

“Our side, sir?” Ben asked.

A.T. Pepper nodded. “A rider came in yesterday and brought word from President Jones in Austin that the Mexican government has offered to recognize the sovereignty of the Texas Republic. They’ll sign a treaty to that effect, recognizing the Rio Grande as the boundary, giving us everything we ever wanted from them just so long as Texas doesn’t decide to join the United States. I was just telling Matt that folks hereabouts figure such a treaty is mighty tempting.” Pepper helped himself to the general’s whisky.

“A decision to remain a republic would be certain folly,” Abbot dryly observed. He was not about to allow the Ranger to bait him into an argument. The news had unsettled him and made his mission as an ambassador of goodwill as important as his assessment of the quality of the Republic’s military capabilities.

“Join us in a libation, Ben,” the captain said. “You’ll find we don’t stand on ceremony here in Texas. Or for that matter, rank—leastways most of the time.”

Ben noted that Gandy wasn’t in the room and he began to hazard a guess that the man was up to no good. “Perhaps later, Captain Pepper. I thought I might try and find a horse for myself, as the Comanches killed mine.”

“We keep our mounts in the corral just beyond the courtyard. The barn and the calaboose are back there as well.” Pepper gulped his drink, sucked in a lungful of air, and nodded his appreciation to the general. “When you’re fixing to leave, just help yourself.”

“I’ll look over the stock, just the same,” Ben said, and after saluting both men he continued down the hall to the kitchen. A middle-aged black woman glanced up as Ben entered. A boy who looked to be about nine or ten years old sat near the woman, his skin darkly similar to hers, as was the set of his eyes and the broad, flat shape of his nose. He was grinding chili peppers in an earthenware bowl while the woman kneaded dough, a sheen of flour dust upon her ebony hands.

“Pardon me. Just passing through, ma’am.”

The boy looked up at Ben. “Ma don’t talk. She did afore the Comanches took her. Not anymore.” The boy shrugged. “My name’s Toby. My ma’s name is Stacia.” The boy scratched the tip of his nose with his forearm.

“Pleased to meet you, Toby. I’m Ben McQueen.”

“You a Ranger, too?”

“No,” Ben grinned.

“I’m gonna be a Ranger when I git growed.” The boy spoke with the conviction of youth as he crushed chili peppers in the warm interior of the kitchen. Charcoal pulsed with orange-red heat in an open stove brazier against the wall. Coals in the hearth supplied heat to an oven set outside the kitchen door. Ben continued on through the kitchen and out into the courtyard. The Negro cook watched him every step of the way. Toby followed the lieutenant and stood in the doorway.