Warriors of the Night (7 page)

The two warriors forced the Comanche over on his back and stretched him across the smoothest slab of rock they could find. Striker and Young Serpent immediately stepped forward and grabbed their victim’s arms, while the other two men held his legs. The remaining warriors began to drum their clubs and axes upon feather-decorated wicker shields covered with toughened hide. Striker and the other three soldiers bent their victim backward, bowing his chest outward from the pressure. His eyes wide with terror, the hapless brave watched as Fire Giver drew the tecpatl from his corded belt. This was the sacrificial knife. Its blade was eight inches of serrated obsidian, the hilt inlaid with gold in the form of a warrior with shield, atlatl, and spears. The warrior’s features were an animalistic caricature peering through the jaws of his jaguar headdress.

It was the arch sorcerer, the shaper of the world, the god of darkness. Fire Giver placed the tip of the blade over the chest of the Comanche and, with a strength and skill born of gruesome practice, hammered the blade downward and ripped open the chest cavity. He reached in and plucked out the still-beating heart of the dying man and held it aloft as an offering to the savage deity of this ancient race.

Then the drumming ceased.

The ground beneath the makeshift altar was dark with blood.

It was only the beginning.

B
EN MCQUEEN WOKE THAT
same morning haunted by dream images that clung to him like the webs of a spider. Entangled and yet defiant, he fought his way out of the nightmare and sat upright. Sweat was streaming from his face and body and soaking the cotton sheet beneath him. He sat on the edge of the bed, put his bare feet on the tile floor, cradled his head in his hands, and began to breathe slowly and deeply. He hadn’t had the dream since leaving his father’s farm in the Indian Territory. Why now? Perhaps it was the devil’s way of plaguing him, of ruining whatever happiness he had begun to feel. He was attracted to Señorita Obregon, the first woman he had noticed since the annullment of his marriage eight months ago.

Anabel Obregon was charming and fiery and even intriguing. What harm was there in enjoying her company during his brief stay in San Antonio?
None at all,
his father would say. Ben had to smile at the thought of Kit McQueen. “Never had any use for guilt,” his father had told him. “At least not for very long. Comes a time man has to quit watching the ghosts behind him and get on with life.” It was advice Ben had tried to take to heart.

So the tall, rangy young lieutenant lingered on the bed and gathered his thoughts and allowed the aftereffects of a troubled rest to slowly subside. He reached for a boot and started to pull it on.

“Wouldn’t do that if’n I were you,” Toby said, craning his neck to clear the bedroom door he had eased open. His bright black features radiated good cheer. He pointed at the boots. “Best you knock ’em out first.”

Ben tilted his boots sole up and whacked them together. A wriggling brown scorpion dropped to the floor and scuttled toward the far wall, its curved, venomous tail poised in the air, ready to strike. Ben nodded his thanks to the boy.

“Appears I had a visitor last night,” he observed. He glanced toward the shuttered window. Sunlight poured through the slats and dust motes danced through patterns of golden light and sandy shadow.

“Ma fixed eggs this morning. You best hurry if’n you want your share,” Toby said.

“I appreciate the concern.”

“Oh it ain’t nothin’.” Toby flashed a grin. “You only been here a half a day and things already got plumb exciting. No telling what trouble you gonna step into today.” He ducked behind the doorway and hurried toward the rear of the house.

“Always glad to be of service,” Ben muttered. He pulled on his trousers and boots and took a moment to survey his surroundings. General Abbot had a room to himself, but Ben and the general’s son were to share a room. Ben looked across the bare tile floor at the bed opposite his. It was obvious Peter Abbot had spent the night elsewhere, no doubt in the arms of a beautiful woman. Ben sighed and shook his head, then straightened. A look of alarm crossed his features. Anabel? No… impossible. Then he remembered the girl on the balcony of the Alameda Hotel. She was a surer bet. Now if only she wasn’t somebody’s wife.

The bedroom, like much of the house, had been stripped of any finery it might have enjoyed in an earlier era. Two beds and a trunk that was set on its side and held a washbasin and earthenware pitcher were the only articles of furniture in the room.

Ben quickly dressed, pausing once as he began to fasten the brass buttons of his blue tunic. Gandy was certainly right about one thing. The uniform was out of place here and ill-suited to this crazy, semiarid, violent land. And he wondered if the same were true of the man who wore it.

Captain Pepper had already eaten, but was having a second cup of coffee. Prom the look of the empty cups and plates Stacia was clearing away, the captain hadn’t eaten alone. Pepper was busily entering some names in a ledger. He glanced up as Ben entered from the hall.

“Morning, Ben. C’mon in and help yourself. I just sent out a couple of men to see if they can cut the trail of the Quahadi village, seeing as they’re on the move.” He finished making his notations and closed the book. “Seems kinda simple, but this way I know where my men are. And so will the next captain should anything happen to me.” He eased back in his chair and wiped the drops of coffee from his mustache with the back of his hand. “Of course, I don’t foresee biting the dust anytime soon. Spotted Calf’s in the calaboose. And that bandit Cordero hasn’t been seen or heard from since our last run-in.” Stacia appeared in the doorway carrying a platter of eggs,
chorizo
(spicy sausage), and tortillas to the table. She left as quietly as she came.

“Cordero?” Ben repeated. The captain was an easy man to talk to. He briefly recounted the notorious career of El Tigre de Coahuila while the lieutenant poured a cup for himself and topped off the captain’s. He spooned a helping of eggs and chorizo onto a tortilla, rolled it up, and, pinching one end shut, prepared to eat.

“We ambushed Cordero’s men a couple of weeks back. Caught him and his bunch in an arroyo and put them under. A few of his vaqueros escaped. But we emptied the saddles that day. Gandy said he dusted Cordero twice, but we never found the body.”

“Gandy again,” Ben grumbled. “Always there when you need him.” He took a bite of the tortilla. His cheeks turned red and his eyes began to water.

“Well, you don’t need to worry about him, Lieutenant. I sent Snake Eye on an errand out of town. He won’t be back until tomorrow at the earliest… Chorizo’s a might on the spicy side.” A glimmer of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. “I heard about your run-in with Snake Eye yesterday afternoon. There aren’t many men who’d face him down, but I figured the son of Kit McQueen would be one of the few.”

“You know my father?”

“Only by reputation. Fought the Creeks and the British back in the last war. Married a Choctaw medicine woman, so the story goes.”

“My mother, Raven O’Keefe McQueen,” Ben said after drowning the fire in his mouth with a gulp of black coffee. “She’s half Irish, but it only shows when she’s angry.”

“I had a notion there was more to you than Eastern gewgaws and polite society.”

“I was raised among the Choctaws,” Ben admitted. “But I’ve got an Aunt Esther that’s never been west of Pennsylvania, and she can outshoot most men. Told me she wanted to be ready in case the British tried one last time to take back the colonies.”

Captain Pepper chuckled. He pursed his lips a moment and rubbed at his jaw. “I’ll make you a deal—I won’t judge your Yankee cousins if you’ll keep an open mind about Gandy.”

“That will be a challenge.”

“But worth the effort. He’s a good man,” Pepper said. “With just a bit of bark still on.”

“Hell, Captain, he’s wearing the whole damn tree.”

Pepper stared down at the grounds sloshing at the bottom of his coffee, then set the cup aside.

“Ben, if you and the general want to understand us, I can tell you where to start.”

“I’m listening,” the lieutenant said.

“Go to the place all good Texicans hold dear. Kind of a holy ground.”

“A church?”

“A shrine,” the Ranger replied. “On the northeast side of town; follow the Calle de Mission. You’ll find where Texas was born, where a hundred and eighty brave, glorious Texican fools made a stand against Santa Anna’s whole blame army, five thousand strong. Travis, Bowie, Crockett, Dickinson, and all the rest, they died to a man and took half the Mexican army with ’em… at San Antonio de Valero.” Capt. Amadeus T. Pepper, whose father had been one of those gallant defenders, looked up from his folded hands. “Most folks just call it the Alamo.”

Silence filled the room, a warm and lazy quiet. Captain Pepper had momentarily run out of steam. In fact, he almost seemed in pain. A man’s life was like a river, and memories the mud at the bottom that were scooped up from time to time and clouded the waters, for better or ill.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Retired Gen. Matt Abbot said as he filled the doorway with his short, stocky physique. He wore a black frock coat and trousers, a gray vest, and a ruffled white shirt, and looked for all the world like a bantam cock preened and ready to fight. Indeed, Abbot had never run from a battle.

But his arrival jarred Ben into remembering the unslept-in bed and Peter’s absence.

“You are a late riser, Ben,” Abbot said, clapping him on the shoulder. “It’s probably just as well—you might have protested my actions. However, it’s too late now.”

“Sir?” Ben was puzzled and a little alarmed. Matthew Abbot was by nature wholly unpredictable.

“Captain Pepper has informed me that Sam Houston will be attending the fiesta and is due in any day now. And after the festivities we can return to the capital with Houston and a guard of Texas Rangers. Makes for good politics.” Matt Abbot swelled with pride at his own brilliance. “There should have been a Texas escort all along.”

“What of my men?” Ben asked.

“I sent them back to Galveston under the command of Sergeant Hezekiah Palmer.”

“Sir…” Ben went from puzzled to speechless. “You had no authority…”

“Oh, hell, Lieutenant. I was commanding men while you were still in knee pants,” the former general replied.

“Not these men,” Ben said, taken completely off guard. “Your welfare is my responsibility.”

“And I appreciate your efforts,” Abbot replied in his most conciliatory tone. “But Captain Pepper has graciously offered to assign a few of his Rangers to us. They will be under your command, of course.”

Captain Pepper nodded in accord with the former officer. “My men will have no problem with following your orders. I’ll personally see to it.”

Ben rose from the table and crossed around to the window that looked out on the few rows of corn Stacia had managed to coax from the arid ground behind the barracks.

It was plain to see what Abbot had in mind: to placate the Texans’ injured pride by having the Republic’s own military act as his honor guard. The plan made sense. And from what he had seen of Snake Eye Gandy, these Rangers were more than capable of insuring Matthew Abbot’s safety. Still, it galled him the way the ex-general had exceeded his authority. Well, if it smoothed some ruffled feathers in the Texas legislature, Ben decided he’d put up with it. And as his men had already left, what other choice was there?

“Whatever you say,” Ben at last conceded. “But your words better carry some weight around here, Captain. I’d have an easier time commanding a troop of Comanches than the likes of Snake Eye Gandy.”

Father Esteban emerged from the sanctuary and carried the two-foot-tall solid gold crucifix to the altar, where he placed it alongside the tabernacle. He lit a votive candle housed in a red glass holder and placed it at the foot of the crucifix, which reflected the flickering candle flame along the burnished metal legs of a suffering Christ. Father Esteban Cordero de Tosta, who longed for peace and prayed every day that his true identity would remain undiscovered, ran a velvet cloth over the base of the crucifix and wiped it clean of fingerprints. He had noticed the peon kneeling before the statue of the Virgin in the alcove set in the south wall of the church. This was the church of the common people; the poor were always welcome here. From another pew, two girls in faded white dresses approached with their mother, who was dressed in homespun clothes, a coarse woven shawl covering her head. Though the woman had been kneeling at prayer, she had other motives for being in church today.

“Padre, we come to see you,” one of the girls said, dark eyes warm with affection. Esteban hugged them both. He knew the family’s situation. The woman’s husband sold firewood and frequently squandered his meager earnings in the cantinas surrounding the Main Plaza, east of the church.

“Ah, my dear Señora Flores. It is good you come to visit our Lord today, for our Saviour has recently blessed me with an abundance of fat, noisy chickens. You must stop by and see Carmelita and tell her to choose a couple for you.”

“You are very good to us,” Señora Flores replied, bowing to kiss his hand. Esteban embraced her. “I wish that I could repay your kindness.” The woman lifted her narrow, tear-streaked face.

“Repay God, dear woman. Be generous with prayer, eh? God uses me. The glory is His.”

“Still, yours is a kind heart.”

“Go on now.” Esteban shushed her along. “I think Carmelita may even have some
pan dulce
for the children.”

The little girls clapped their hands and hurried back down the aisle of the church to the front doors, their footsteps clattering on the tile. When they and the señora were gone, the peon kneeling before the statue of the Virgin stood and faced the priest.

“Such a good and gentle man to be the son of a bloodthirsty bandit like the tiger of Coahuila.”

The voice was hoarse and strikingly familiar. Father Esteban gasped and spun around, half expecting to see his father standing in the shadows. Indeed the man in the shadows even looked like Don Luis. He had roughly the same build—tough, solid, thick-waisted, with short, well-muscled arms. His black hair was streaked with silver. In his forty-ninth year, the man’s features were crinkled and leathery from a life spent chasing Comanches and raiding the homesteads and settlements of families both light-skinned and dark who dared to call themselves Texans.