Only the Gallant (26 page)

For Patty, Amy Rose, P.J., and now Emily

T
HE SCENT OF BLOOD
drew the big cat to the sunbaked ridge overlooking the Rio Grande. The mountain lion moved with swift, sure grace, a fleeting, tawny shadow among the stark, upthrust layers of volcanic rock. With a body as long as a man was tall and armed with fang and claw and powerful muscles capable of ripping an enemy to shreds, the panther of the Big Bend country had never known fear—until now.

The mountain lion leaped from boulder to boulder and alighted atop a ledge of compressed ash. With calm, patient resolve, the predator waited. His keen eyes surveyed the dry wash where, in the past, flash floods had scrubbed the smooth-worn limestone walls of the arroyo and littered the floor with palm-sized pebbles in a variety of earthen colors, dark shades of red and gray, white, brown, and black. There had not been a spring shower in the past week, so the arroyo should have been bone dry. But today, in the mid-morning heat, a rivulet of blood traced a crimson path along the watercourse. The “headwaters” of this grisly stream were the mutilated remains of a mestizo goatherd and his son. Man and boy lay stretched across a flat outcropping of table rock, their chest cavities slit open and their hearts ripped out.

The stench in the watercourse was no stranger to the lion; nor were the buzzing flies and the shadows that swept across the corpses and the spattered rocks as the vultures located the kill and began to circle in ever-tightening spirals against the hard blue dome of sky.

In another time or place, the lion might have hurried to the feast. But something old and dark and terrible had passed this way and left a trail of death that even a prince of predators was loath to follow. As if warned by some deep-rooted instinct against an evil as ancient as these weathered hills and wind-sculpted peaks, the big cat did not enter the arroyo, but turned its back upon this place and crept away.

A gust of wind sighed among the desert mountains, like some final, faint, agonizing cry, stirred the dust, and then, like the panther, departed in silence.

Three hundred miles away, Doña Anabel Cordero de Tosta had problems of her own. She was a slim, dark-eyed young woman with raven hair pinned back; she wore a flat-brimmed sombrero. Anabel was dusty and tired and certainly not looking for trouble. But trouble she’d found. Or rather, it had found her, in the menacing form of a Quahadi Comanche war party. Though the Comanches were an ever-present danger in the Chisos Mountains of the Big Bend, it was highly unusual for the braves to be raiding so close to San Antonio now that a company of Texas Rangers had set up quarters in town. But here they were, eight fierce-looking warriors, and Anabel in the thick of them.

Carmelita had warned her against going alone to visit the grave of her father. “At least if you will not wait for your vaqueros, take your brother,” she had said. Ah, but Anabel was impatient, and as for her brother Esteban, of what use a priest in her present situation? Beneath her lap blanket, her hand coupled around the trigger of a sawed-off shotgun that had belonged to Don Luis, her father, a stubborn, hard-bitten bandit who had fought the Anglos until his death a few weeks past. He had been laid to rest near the ruins of a mission ten miles north of San Antonio on land that had once belonged to the Corderos and was now considered part of the Texas Republic. Don Luis Cordero de Tosta had never recognized Texas’s independence, but considered the republic to be part of Mexico. From his lair in the Chisos Mountains, El Tigre—the tiger of Coahuila—had fought to the bitter end to drive these Anglo invaders from his country’s sacred soil. He had hoped to restore his family’s wealth and influence in the process. His dreams were worm food now, and he had left his unfinished business as a legacy for his daughter.

On this second day of May in 1845, Anabel was more concerned with living through the next five minutes than with the weight of her inherited responsibilities. She had gone to her father’s grave site searching for answers, a quest that might well, it seemed now, prove fatal. However, she wasn’t dead yet. There still might be a way out. Anabel knew the lead brave, Spotted Calf. During a visit last year to her father’s retreat in the desert mountains, she had watched Don Luis conduct trade with the Comanches. If the chief remembered her, Anabel might be able to reason with him.

One of the Comanches struck the brown gelding hitched to her carriage with his war lance in an attempt to startle her horse. Several of the braves followed his example. They ringed the carriage, whooping and waving their weapons as Anabel fought to keep the gelding under control. Gripping the reins in her left hand, she refused to give in to panic. The shotgun beneath the blanket was some assurance, but she’d need more than buckshot to survive the day. Don Luis Cordero, her father, had established a formidable reputation among the Quahadi Comanches in the mountain country. They had respected his strength. Don Luis had many vaqueros riding for him, men skilled with the gun and knife, each man an experienced Indian fighter. Unfortunately those vaqueros were miles away.

Outnumbered by a contingent of Texas Rangers, Don Luis’s men had scattered after the running fight that had claimed the life of El Tigre himself. Anabel knew they’d find some way to return to San Antonio and contact her. For a fleeting second she even entertained the hope that they might come riding down out of the hills, guns blazing as they charged past thickets of mesquite and mountain cedar. But the howling savages surrounding her knew she was alone.

The Comanches, eight lean and wiry warriors, were painted for war. Their coppery features were hidden behind masks of red and yellow war paint. The rumps of their sturdy mountain-bred ponies bore the mark of the snake, the sign of the Comanche.

Spotted Calf led them, but there was little in the way of attire to indicate his leadership, save for three turkey feathers fastened to a topknot of shiny black hair.

He wore a brown brocaded vest, no doubt the prize of some raid, that hung open to reveal his naked chest. A blue breechclout and long-fringed buckskin leggings covered his lower limbs. His calf-high moccasins were decorated with tiny glass beads and elk’s teeth.

Some of the warriors were armed with muskets, some with war lances. All of them carried the short, highly lethal orangewood bow prized by every Comanche. The war party continued to circle the carriage. Men rode up and counted coup, striking the frightened gelding with their bows. And still Anabel kept the horse under control.

Impressed, Spotted Calf broke from the ranks of the taunting braves and walked his mount up to the carriage to confront what he believed to be a helpless young woman.

“The daughter of my enemy is foolish to come alone among these hills,” said Spotted Calf. He was close enough now for Anabel to see the bear-claw necklace the brave wore around his neck and to smell the dried bear grease on his buckskin leggings.

“Enemy?” The woman made a show of her surprise. “The Quahadi have always traded in peace with Don Luis Cordero.” If the Comanche didn’t know of her father’s death, the señorita wasn’t about to tell him.

“In the time of the new calf moon, your father came with many men and stole my horses,” Spotted Calf told her. “And killed Whistler, the dream walker.”

Anabel refused to be cowed by the warrior. She remembered the incident well. “El Tigre de Coahuila only took back the horses your braves stole from him.”

The brave ignored her reply. He would not hear the truth in her words.

“It was a bad thing, to kill the dream walker. Only Whistler could see beyond seeing. His magic was strong. But now his voice is silent. His songs no longer hold back the dark spirits of the old ones.” Spotted Calf turned to the braves surrounding the carriage and raised the rifle gripped in his strong right hand. At his signal his followers quieted and ceased their failed efforts to spook the señorita’s horse. Then the war chief leaned forward and peered into the carriage.

“I will take you with us.”

“My father is close by. He will bring his vaqueros and hunt you down and kill you,” Anabel warned.

“I do not think so.” Spotted Calf seemed wholly unconcerned. “Because then I will kill his daughter. No. I think you will be worth many horses and guns.” Spotted Calf reached for the reins she held. The time for talking was finished. Anabel steadied herself, and with a quick flick of her wrist, tossed her lap blanket over Spotted Calf’s head, then struck him square in the face with the twin-barreled shotgun.

The Comanche howled in pain and lashed out at the blanket covering his head. His horse reared, and the war chief lost his purchase and landed on his backside in a thicket of prickly pear. Anabel slapped the rump of her horse with the reins as the braves in front of her tried to block her path and bring their muskets to bear. Other warriors notched arrows to their bowstrings. All of them were unprepared for what happened next. The shotgun roared and buckshot toppled from horseback the three braves blocking her path. The shotgun’s recoil knocked Anabel back against the leather walls of the carriage. The gelding bolted forward, carrying the woman through the powder smoke and racing away from the startled Comanches. A couple of shots rang out. An arrow glanced off one wheel as the carriage rolled up and over a rise and dipped out of sight. In its wake, one brave lay dead on the side of the road. Two others sporting flesh wounds struggled to bring their skittish ponies under control and to remount. Spotted Calf, his broken nose a gory fountain of crimson, exhorted his warriors to pursue the carriage as it disappeared from view, leaving a trail of white dust to settle on the wheel-rutted road. The braves responded slowly. The momentary loss of their chief and the death of one of their number had left them benumbed. Spotted Calf regaled his companions with every insult he could think of, calling them helpless women and the offspring of camp dogs. He caught up the reins of his horse from Little Coyote, who had kept the animal from running off. Spotted Calf leaped astride the animal. Then he winced and, reaching beneath himself, plucked nettles from his buttocks.

“Dancing Horse is dead,” said Sees the Turtle, the stern-featured older brother of Little Coyote. Spotted Calf listened as he probed his nose. Pain seemed about to split his head in two. He sucked air through his mouth and struggled to will the pain into submission. The death of his companion, Dancing Horse, only added to the anger he was feeling. Spotted Calf wrapped a strip of buckskin around his face and covered his nose in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. Once that was accomplished he grabbed a war lance from Sees the Turtle. The weapon, fashioned of bois d’arc wood, was seven feet in length, tipped with an iron lance head bound to the shaft with sinew. A half dozen turkey feathers were attached near the butt of the lance.

“I will have her scalp,” said Spotted Calf.

“We are too close to the village of the white eyes,” Sees the Turtle cautioned. “The Rangers are camped there.”

“My vision has led us,” Spotted Calf replied. “Our band has been driven from the mountains by the dark ones. Now we tremble before these Rangers? Have we become old women afraid to leave our lodges?” The war chief glanced past Sees the Turtle and addressed himself to the other dispirited braves.

“Are there no men to follow me?”

“I will follow,” Little Coyote spoke up. He was bold and brash and eager to fight. He met his brother’s disapproving gaze and refused to be swayed. Full of a young man’s pride, Little Coyote wanted to prove himself the equal of those he rode with. The remainder of the war party raised their weapons and shouted war cries. Spotted Calf grinned and looked at Sees the Turtle, who shrugged and nodded his willingness to continue the pursuit.

“Our horses are swift. She will not escape us,” Spotted Calf reassured his rival. The blood had ceased to flow from his flattened nose, but he left the makeshift compress in place just to be safe. “She will not escape…
me.”
He struck his horse with the butt of the lance; the animal lunged forward and in a matter of seconds was galloping full out. Galvanized once more, and despite the bad omen of their initial loss, Sees the Turtle, Little Coyote, and the rest of the war party joined in the hunt. Like a pack of coppery-skinned wolves, they would not close the chase until they’d made their kill.

Minutes later and a mile and a half down the road, Anabel Cordero met Lt. Ben McQueen. It happened without warning, as is the way of that coyote trickster—fate—who turns a man’s or woman’s life inside out on a whim.

Every gulley she crossed, every hill she passed brought Anabel closer to San Antonio. The carriage lurched from side to side like a storm-tossed ship in the violent embrace of the sea. Her pursuers were slowly gaining on her. Once she cleared the hills, though, the Comanches might abandon the chase rather than risk a run-in with the well-armed Rangers. For once, Anabel was almost thankful for their presence in the town.

She clung to the carriage as the wheels jumped from rut to rock and somehow kept herself from being thrown from the seat. The gelding was galloping full out now. Anabel began to figure she had the edge when she dashed around a chalky white outcropping of stone, rode a precipitous incline across a dry creek bed, and began a climb between two scantily wooded knolls. Just then, a long-limbed, red-haired horseman in a dusty blue uniform dashed from a cedar break and in a matter of seconds brought his sleek brown mare up alongside the gelding.

The officer in blue leaned from the saddle and, with the practiced ease of a natural-born horseman, caught the gelding’s harness and forced the animal to a swift stop. The gelding stood with sides heaving, nostrils flared in the rising heat, as the sun continued to climb toward noon.

Ben McQueen turned and flashed a broad smile at the woman he thought he had rescued. “There you go, ma’am. I believe that’s got him under control. Snake spook your horse? I heard a gunshot and—”

Her buggy whip cut him short. He reacted with a hawklike quickness that was surprising in a large man and managed to shield his square-jawed features from the stinging kiss of the whip.