Day of Independence (23 page)

To Ephraim Slough the dust cloud looked like an approaching fog bank drifting across a yellow and tan sea. He blinked, looked again, but the dust remained, rising thick into the blue denim sky like smoke from a fire.

Slough told himself that he'd never before seen the like, but he had. He'd seen such on the Grand Banks off the Newfoundland coast when the fog rolled in like thunder and chilled many a poor mariner to the marrow of his bones.

Now a similar sight scared Ephraim Slough.

It looked like the whole population of Mexico was on the move, marching on Last Chance and its golden fields and orchards.

He swung his tired mare around and kicked her ribs, urging her into a canter. But all Sophie would do that day was walk, and kicks be damned.

Slough cursed the mare, cursed himself for leaving the Rio Grande, and cursed his lack of whiskey.

His best curses, in several different languages, he reserved for the latter.

Hank Cannan caught a flash of sunlight on metal. He stared harder, longer, eyes burning.

There it was again.

But not metal. Glass. The dazzling sun blading off the lens of a telescope.

The Ranger said nothing to Rule and waited for the spy to ride closer.

The glass made a man long-sighted and he might well stay far back. But he did not. The horseman came on at a trot, covered several hundred yards, then drew rein again.

“Simon,” Cannan said. “Get to the water's edge and gather pretty pebbles.”

“Huh?” Rule said.

“Then bring the pebbles over to me and let me examine them one by one.”

“Ranger Cannan, have you gone tetched in the head?” Rule said.

“Do it, Simon. Do it now,” Cannan said. “There's not a moment to be lost.”

“Whatever you say, Ranger, pretty rocks it is. But in my opinion, you sure ain't playing with a full deck.” The blacksmith stepped to the water's edge and gathered pebbles, taking little time to see if they were pretty or not.

“Bring them here, Simon,” Cannan said. “Show them to me. And grin as wide as a wave in a slop bucket.”

Rule's dramatic sigh was worthy of the great Edwin Booth himself.

When the blacksmith returned and revealed the rocks in his hand, Cannan said, “We're under observation—no, don't look—and we need to appear as harmless as possible.”

“Damn it all, Ranger, shouldn't we show our strength?”

“No, Simon. I want to reveal only weakness and lack of preparation.” He chose a pebble from Rule's hand and studied it closely. “When the spy reports back to Perez he'll tell him that the rubes are collecting seashells.”

“There ain't any seashells in the Rio Grande,” Rule said.

“Well, rocks then. Just so long as the bandit thinks we're fiddling while Rome burns.”

Rule looked puzzled. “I don't get it.”

“So he thinks we're sitting on our asses while Perez gets ready to attack.”

“Now I get it,” Rule said. “Is he still there?”

Cannan angled his head slightly, gave a sidelong look, and scanned the far side of the river. “I think he's gone,” he said. “Seen enough, I reckon.”

Rule straightened and did his own looking.

He watched a thin pillar of dust rise above the desert floor and said, “He's on his way back to the bandits to tell them how weak we are.”

Cannan smiled. “Then we're going to surprise them, ain't we?”

 

 

The last thing Ephraim Slough wanted was to get into a shooting scrape with a Mexican bandit... the one he watched in the middle distance.

Slough dismounted, stood beside Sophie's head, and tried to make himself invisible. He saw no future in trading shots with a pistolero. Since the old mariner knew he'd be the one to die, gunplay wasn't even a consideration.

But as it happened, Slough and the little mare were invisible, at least to the casual observer. A layer of yellow, windblown sand covered both horse and rider and made them look like a badly painted child's toy, unseen against the desert floor.

And to Slough's relief, the Mexican rode on. Apparently he'd more important business on hand than to gun an old codger with a wooden leg and a fifty-dollar mare.

“We need to make our report, Sophie,” he told the bay. Slough clambered into the saddle and kicked with his good leg. “Sophie, run like the wind,” he yelled.

The mare plodded forward and all Slough's kicking and hollering couldn't induce her to walk any faster.

Mickey Pauleen and Sancho Perez listened as the scout made his report. It was short and to the point.

“The gringos gather things at the riverbank.”

“What kinds of things?” Perez said.

“I do not know,
patrón
,” the young bandit said. “Little fishes, maybe so.”

Perez turned to Pauleen and his eyes asked a question.

The gunman shook his head.

“Damned if I know why. Is it possible they don't expect an attack? Or has the Ranger cooked up some kind of trap?”

“Two men, one of them crippled, are not a trap, Mickey,” Perez said.

“I don't know, Sancho, there's something strange about the whole beach business.”

He stared hard at the young bandit. “You're sure they were catching fish?”

“Gathering something,” the man said. “Fishes, rocks maybe.”

“Mickey, my fren', it is simple,” Perez said. “The gringos will throw little stones or little fishes at us. This makes Sancho laugh. It is ver' funny.”

Pauleen was silent for a spell, thinking. Then he said, “Sancho, send the peons across the river ahead of your men. Let them take the first fire from any defenders. So we lose a couple of hundred, the rubes will use up most of their ammunition shooting people that don't matter.”

Perez asked a question of the young scout, a man with a tough face and coal black eyes. “What do you think of my fren' Mickey's plan, Roberto?”

“
Patrón
, I beg the honor of taking the town of Last Chance. Such glory is for caballeros, not dung-covered peasants.”

“And it will be so, Roberto. I will lead the charge myself,” Perez said.

The young man grinned. “
Viva Perez!
” he shouted. And those bandits close enough to hear took up the cry.

“
Viva Perez! Viva Perez!
”

The bandit chief smiled and bowed his head, but Pauleen felt sick to his stomach.

The Ranger planned something unpleasant. Of that, he was sure.

 

 

“Rider coming,” Simon Rule said. “It's the damned spy again.”

Hank Cannan's gaze reached out and lingered on the rider for a long while. “No, it's Ephraim Slough,” he said finally. “Nobody else but him sits a horse like a ruptured sailor.”

“Is he sober?” the blacksmith said.

“He's upright, more or less,” Cannan said.

Baptiste Dupoix would have said the Ranger looked as irritated as a stick-poked walrus.

 

 

Slough began waving and yelling when he was still a ways off, and Sophie, realizing she was headed for the barn, broke into a shambling trot.

The old sailor urged the mare into the river. Halfway across he yelled, “They're a-comin'.”

“How far?” Cannan yelled.

“An hour. Maybe less.” Slough rode onto the bank and rolled off the horse, his usual dismount.

“Here,” Rule said, “have you been drinking?”

“Not a drop,” Slough said. He held out a hand. “Lookee, steady as a rock.”

“Did you see one of the bandits? A scout?” Cannan said.

“I surely did.”

“Did you engage him?”

“Hell no.”

“Good. His report to Perez will do more harm than good.”

“We hope,” Rule said. Then, “Why did you desert your post, Ephraim?”

“I figgered I'd see better if'n I was closer. Beggin' your pardon, Ranger Cannan.”

“No harm done. In fact, you've bought us time,” Cannan said.

“That there's a big dust,” Slough said. “A lot of people and horses moving.”

Rule said, “Should I go ring the church bell?”

“No, not yet,” Cannan said. “I don't want the men stuck in the trenches for too long before the action starts. They might start considering stuff.”

“Like bullet wounds an' sich,” Slough said, looking wise.

“Yeah, and widowed women and orphaned children,” Cannan said.

“I catch your drift,” Rule said. “All of a sudden I'm studying on the same things my ownself.”

Ranger Hank Cannan first saw the oncoming dust cloud at two forty in the afternoon of Independence Day.

By then, the Butterfield stage was almost two hours late.

And there was no sign of Baptiste Dupoix and the ranchers.

Both these things were uppermost in Cannan's mind as he stared at the rapidly advancing dust like a man mesmerized by a hooded cobra.

“Ring the bell?” Simon Rule said.

Cannan said nothing. He stared into the searing desert.

“Ranger,” Ephraim Slough said. “Ring the bell?”

Cannan turned bleak eyes to the man. “It begins, Ephraim, huh?” he said.

“Seems like, Ranger.”

“A Texas Ranger never turns his back to the enemy and runs,” Cannan said. “That's always been how it is, I reckon.”

Slough's voice was quiet. “So I've heard.”

Cannan smiled. “Then I'm in a hell of a fix.”

“We're all in a hell of a fix, Ranger,” Slough said.

“There's only us,” Rule said. “I mean the citizens of the town of Last Chance. With or without you, we got it to do.”

“Citizens of the United States of America, you mean,” Cannan said.

“That goes without saying, Ranger Cannan,” Slough said. Then, “You scared?”

“Of course I am.”

“Then that makes two of us,” Slough said.

“Three of us,” Rule said.

“Rangers are not supposed to get scared,” Cannan said. “I bet that's written down in a rule book someplace.”

“A Ranger can get as scared as any other man,” Rule said.

Cannan smiled and his long, sad face brightened. “I guess I'm proof of that.” He looked at Rule. “Go ring the bell, Simon, and don't forget what I told you about the old men and boys. Ephraim, get your rifle from the saddle and send the mare back to the barn. I want you here.”

Cannan drew his Colt, loaded the empty chamber under the hammer, then laid his Winchester across the arms of the wheelchair.

He was as ready as he was ever going to be.

 

 

As the church bell clanged in Last Chance, the Mexican peons across the river smelled water. They smelled food, and they sensed an end to their terrible misery and deprivation. There was no longer any need for Sancho Perez to whip them forward.

Like a great uncoiling snake they broke ranks and staggered in the direction of the river, young, old, babes in arms in headlong flight for the shores of the Promised Land.

Perez waited until the last of the donkey carts passed, then ordered his men forward to take the point.

“Sancho, damn it, man, I'm begging you, let the peons take the first volleys,” Pauleen said. “Hell, then you can charge over their dead bodies right into Last Chance.”

“Mickey, my fren', Sancho is dressed for war and he will lead the charge. The Madonna of Guadalupe came to me in the night and she smiled at me and said, ‘Onward, Sancho, onward to victory.' She is a very powerful Madonna and this makes Sancho ver' glad.”

Pauleen, dealing with arrogance and superstition, realized this was an argument he couldn't win.

“Come, Mickey, why so glum?” Perez said. “You will ride at Sancho's side and have your pick of the women, huh?”

“There's only one woman I want,” Pauleen said.

“Ah
sí,
the señorita named Nora. Then soon she will be in your arms, my fren'. This is a mighty promise from Sancho.” He kneed his horse forward.

“Come, let us join our
compañeros
!”

 

 

The desert wind shook Abe Hacker's canopy and drove fine sand over him that sifted into his eyes and every fold of flesh in his huge body, gritty, irritating, maddening.

The Mexicans had vanished to the north, into the distant heat shimmer, and he was alone under the inverted blue bowl of the sky, marooned like a castaway surrounded by a burning sea of sand. Hacker's bottom lip trembled. “Come for me soon, Sancho,” he said aloud, talking into a great silence. “Don't leave me in this dreadful place.”

Forty-seven riflemen filed into the trench dug along the bank of the Rio Grande. Good men as far as Hank Cannan could tell. But silent. Stonily silent.

Whether that was a good thing or bad, the Ranger couldn't tell.

Cannan had Rule push him along the trench, and he repeated constantly, “When they get within seeing distance, down to the bottom of the hole and stay there until I holler, NOW!”

The mayor broke the townsmen's silence.

“We got you, Ranger.” Then, “Take care of yourself.”

“You too, Frank,” Cannan said. “And that goes for all of you.”

Solemn faces turned in the Ranger's direction, but the men remained silent. One checked his revolver and another had red rosary beads that looked like drops of blood wrapped around his shooting hand.

Cannan swallowed hard and tried his best to keep his face empty.

My God, when the shooting starts will they stand? Will I stand?

He had no answers, none at all.

The dust cloud drew closer as the afternoon sun dropped and shadows lengthened. On Cannan's orders, the pianos still played in the saloons and as many people as possible, most of them women, crowded the street.

Roxie Miller, no longer dressed in blue silk, took Daphne Curtis's place on the beach. “Mrs. Curtis has had nursing experience, Ranger Cannan,” she said. “She's more valuable where she is.” Roxie wore a split canvas riding skirt, a shirt, a man's battered hat, and French perfume. She carried a Winchester.

Cannan wanted to tell her that she was too beautiful to risk her life, but he realized how silly that would sound and kept silent.

 

 

Ominous as a twister, the dust was now so close Cannan could see people move within its folds like gray ghosts. He estimated the Mexicans would arrive on the far bank in thirty minutes, maybe less.

Ephraim Slough walked along the trench as confidently as he'd once paced a gun deck. “Easy, lads,” he said. “Easy now. Stand to your guns. Easy, lads...”

After a few minutes of this, Cannan's heart soared when a man called out, “Ephraim! You say ‘Easy, lads' one more time and I'll put a bullet in you.”

The Ranger smiled.

That was not the voice of a frightened man.

“Getting close,” Simon Rule said.

“Seems like,” Cannan said.

“I think I see horseman out front. Do you see that?”

“Yeah, I do,” Cannan said. “I'm not a praying man, but I hope to God that Perez attacks ahead of the people he's forcing into us.”

“Not much chance of that,” Rule said. “He'll swamp us with his peasants and then attack. We'd never be able to kill enough of them. They'll keep coming and coming.”

“Will our men fire into starving women and children?” Cannan said.

“I don't know, but I wouldn't count on it,” Rule said. “What do you think?”

Silence is sometimes the best answer and the Ranger said nothing.

 

 

Ten minutes passed... then fifteen... watching... waiting.

The sun dropped lower, the shadows lengthened.

A saloon piano played “Oh, Mildred, Leave Me Not” and the women of Last Chance no longer moved around but stood in the street together and watched the river.

The horsemen moved out, deployed into line, and came on at a trot.

Cannan counted fifty, more than he'd bargained for, and the mass of humanity behind them was beyond counting.

“Down, boys!” Cannan yelled. “Don't let them see you.”

Slough and Rule relayed the order and within seconds along the riverbank not a head was to be seen.

The Ranger rubbed dry lips with the back of his hand. He'd been scared before, like when the bushwhacker shot him, but never like this. He was not only afraid for himself, but for a whole town.

“Ranger, I'm pulling you back,” Rule said. “You're a sitting duck in the wheelchair.”

“No, leave me right here,” Cannan said. “Perez has to see a man in an invalid chair.”

“The bandits will target you,” the blacksmith said. “You're right out front, for God's sake.”

“It's about time I earned my Ranger salary,” Cannan said.

He looked along the bank. Himself, a few old men and boys, Rule with his hammer, and Ephraim Slough showing his wooden leg to good effect.

And Roxie.

Her glossy hair cascaded from under her hat over her shoulders, and the proud sight of her in that moment was one Cannan would treasure for the rest of his life.

Cannan levered a round into the chamber of his rifle.

As he'd planned, Last Chance wasn't showing Perez much. But would the bandit take the bait?