Sword of Vengeance (5 page)

“It is her brother, Esteban. She fears for his safety.” The priest reported worriedly. He glared up at the patch of blue sky. “
Madre de Dios
,” he muttered. “Esteban has been watching and waiting for you and Señor Tibbs to leave your hut. He told Maria he intended to help himself to one of your yellow metal bracelets.”

“He better hope Bill Tibbs doesn’t discover him,” Kit said. His friend hadn’t been the same since Derna. And the disastrous shipwreck, with the loss of so much of their treasure, certainly hadn’t helped. Perhaps when they were safely out of Florida and strolling the streets of Charleston, Tibbs would see things in a more favorable light. Part of a treasure was better than none at all.

“Come, my young friend,” Father Ramon said. “Perhaps we will be in time to stop trouble before it begins.”

By the time the priest and Kit reached the clearing and the circle of huts that made up the Creek village, things had already gone from bad to worse. The men of the village, those who were not down by the beach tending their nets, were gathered outside the hut where Kit and Tibbs had recuperated. The men and several of the women clustered by the door of the hut were visibly angry. The men were armed with wicked-looking war clubs inlaid with jagged pieces of shell.

Word spread among the villagers that Father Ramon had returned. The priest and Kit quickly became the center of attention. Father Ramon stopped to talk to the first men he met in order to find out for himself what had happened. Kit continued through the crowd, which grudgingly parted before him, until he was almost to the hut.

Then a broad-shouldered Creek warrior blocked the white man’s path. The man looked to be several years older than Kit. He wore a headdress of shells and plumage woven together. His war club sported not only a ragged line of razor-sharp shells but a wicked row of shark’s teeth inlaid in the wood where it curved to form a wicked crook.

Kit was unarmed save for the knife in his boot sheath, but he wasn’t about to back away. Any sign of weakness on his part might bring him a crushed skull. He met the warrior’s stare and waited for the man to make his move. To his surprise and relief the warrior stepped aside. Kit moved past the man and halted a couple of yards from the door.

“Come ahead, Kit,” Tibbs shouted from within. “I found our guns in the padre’s hut. I’ve got them loaded and primed.”

The shadows had begun to steal across the land as the sun sank beyond the trees and disappeared into a pool of incandescent orange and vermilion clouds.

“Bill, come out here!”

“Like hell.”

“Come out and tell me what happened.”

Movement in the doorway, a shift of shadows, then Tibbs materialized in the doorway, guns dangling at the ends of his long arms. Another brace of pistols was tucked in his belt. His dark eyes surveyed the crowd. His nostrils flared as he readied himself to fight. “You satisfied? I searched the priest’s quarters and found our guns. When I arrived back here I caught one of these little heathens trying to rob us. I gave him the back of my hand and chased him out. The next thing I know, the whole damn village is standing outside the door shouting for my head. I showed them my guns, though, and none of them wanted to be the first to taste lead.”

Kit closed his eyes a moment and shook his lowered head. Tibbs was going to get them both killed. Somehow he had to defuse the situation.

“The man who blocked your path is Esteban’s father,” Father Ramon said, moving up on Kit’s left. The Franciscan priest folded his arms across his chest. “It is an unheard-of thing for an adult to strike a child among these people.” The padre began to stroke his whiskers. “Unheard of,” he repeated absently. “Now Esteban has run off, and I don’t—”

But Kit had already headed straight for the hut and forced Tibbs to retreat as he entered. Tibbs misread his intentions, thinking his friend had come to help in the defense of the hut.

“Good,” Tibbs said. “If we charge them together they’ll probably give way.” He tried to pass a pair of the flintlocks to Kit.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Kit untied the leather pouch on the table and dug into its contents. Gold bracelets and jeweled necklaces clinked and rattled off one another.

“What are you doing?” Tibbs asked, a scowl on his face. His features began to pale. “Oh, no—”

“Saving our lives,” Kit replied. He selected a broad band of pounded gold and retraced his steps outside before Tibbs could even sputter a protest. Kit headed straight for the man with whom he had almost come to blows. The warrior kept a tight grip on his war club. He suspected the white man of treachery despite the fact that Father Ramon spoke soothingly in the man’s ear, keeping his voice soft as he asked the warrior to give Kit a chance to prove himself.

Kit stopped directly in front of the warrior. He glanced at the padre. “What is his name?”

“He is called Isaiah. That is his Christian name.”

“Tell Isaiah that my friend is not well. That his hurt inside caused him to harm the boy. Say that we wish to offer Isaiah a gift to honor him and his family.” Kit waited for the priest to translate, then held out the gold bracelet. It gleamed in the light of the setting sun. The band of precious metal was etched with winged serpentlike creatures of myth.

The warrior accepted the golden band and reverently slipped it onto his wrist. Then he held up his right arm so that all the men and women around him might see. Everyone was suitably impressed. The warrior turned back to Kit. He nodded and placed the war club at Kit’s feet. Kit, relying on instinct, picked the war club off the ground and returned the weapon to the warrior. Isaiah grunted his approval, then swung around and started back through the crowd, which had already begun to disperse.

Father Ramon remained behind. “You did well, my son.” He looked past Kit to Tibbs, who remained in the doorway, glowering. “I will find Esteban. Then I will see to food and water for your journey. Rest now. You will need your strength tomorrow.” The old priest turned and joined those he called his “savage children” as cook fires were lit and life in the village returned to normal.

Kit started back toward the hut, where Tibbs waited, speechless and flushed with anger. Before Tibbs could vent his rage, Kit went after him.

“Let it be, Bill. Just let it be. This gold means as much to me as it does to you. But one trinket isn’t worth our lives.” Kit crossed to the table and poured himself a drink from the water jug that had been left for them along with a platter of smoked bluefish and fry bread. “You’ve changed, my friend. For the worse. It will bring you ruin.”

Kit sat on the edge of his cot and waited for the inevitable outburst. To his surprise, it never came. Instead, Tibbs slumped on the cot across from him and leaned forward on his elbows.

“Hell, you’re right, Kit.” Tibbs wiped a hand across his face, breathed in deep, and exhaled slow and easy. “I’m sorry.” His handsome face suddenly split with a grin. “Maybe it’s because I had so many dreams, and now we’re back where we started, after almost two years, with nothing to show for it.”

“Nothing?” Kit stood, walked over to the table, and held up the jeweled scimitar that had once belonged to Alexander the Great. A golden shaft of sunlight poured into the hut as the setting sun seemed to hang suspended between a gap in the trees. A beam of light washed over Tibbs and made it seem as if he were afire, as if he had become one with the precious wealth he had hungered for and would kill to protect.

“Like I said, Kit. You’re right.” Tibbs held out his hand. “Friends?”

McQueen clasped the offered hand. “We’ve never been anything else, you hardheaded, quick-tempered bastard,” he said with a grin. The sunlight had faded. Darkness crept into the room.

S
ERGEANT PABLO MORALES HAD
spent the entire night scouring the forests below St. Augustine for some sign of the Yankee stragglers attempting to make their way home after trying to foment a revolution in this Spanish colony. For weeks now, rumors had run rampant throughout the settlement concerning the remnants of such an expedition, one that had marched out of the north to free Florida from Spanish control. First, word came of a sizable Yankee army loose in the interior and marching on St. Augustine. But what gossip and hearsay had called an army became a desperate, hungry band of ragtag militia whose only interest now was scurrying to the safety of the country that had sent them … and left them unsupported to do or die in the swamps and forests of Florida.

However, even this rumored collection of fugitives proved as intangible as a will-o’-the-wisp. Sergeant Morales had spent most of the night laying traps for
Inglés
stragglers who apparently never even existed.

Morales eased his wide girth out of the saddle before a darkened tavern in the center of the settlement. The twelve bone-weary dragoons under his command arranged their horses to his left, dismounted, and tethered their horses. Morales was a large man with a belly that hung over his belt like a bay window His shoulders were sloping and heavyset; his torso was thickly padded with watery rolls of fat. His jowls were dark with a three-day-old stubble of beard. Sweat glistened in the gritty folds of his bull neck. His fists were huge and covered with coarse, black hair as he hammered on the door.

“Open up, you son of a worm,” Morales shouted. “Valdez! You trickle down your father’s leg, open this door. My men and I are tired and thirsty and have little patience. Open the door, or we will kick it in!”

A lamplight glimmered in the room above the cantina. A muffled voice could be heard through the shuttered window muttering curses to whatever deity might listen. Morales continued to hammer on the door. It didn’t matter to him in the slightest that it was an hour before sunrise, when all decent souls were catching the last few precious minutes of sleep, living the last of their dreams before waking to the harsh realities of survival. Morales did not care who heard him or whose sleep he disturbed. After all, he had exhausted himself supposedly protecting these very same people whose peace he shattered.

The door creaked open on its iron hinges, and a slight-built, balding man, middle-aged and wearing a mask of long suffering, moved aside as the sergeant swept past him and into the cool confines of the cantina.

The cantina held no more than six tables that the owner had built from driftwood. The building itself, like most of the others in St. Augustine, was built of a mixture of mud and coquina shells, which when dried turned hard as stone and able to withstand the forces of nature.

However, it seemed that no home, business, or place of worship was safe from the likes of Sergeant Morales. He went where he pleased and did as he pleased. The inhabitants of the settlement tolerated him; they had no choice in the matter. To give him his due, the sergeant was a fighter to be reckoned with, ruthless and cruel and giving no quarter. He had fought Indians and the French and now the
Inglés
invaders from the north. And if he acted like a bastard once in a while, at least he was their bastard. Aside from his occasional outbursts of bad temper and drunken forays, he was the settlement’s protector, and St. Augustine’s inhabitants for the most part felt better for his presence.

Tomas Valdez, the owner of the cantina, waved in the dozen soldiers who followed the sergeant out of the warm, muggy air. They were a weary, mud-spattered lot and wanted nothing more than to slump into the closest chair and wash the swampwater taste from their mouths with the cantina’s sangria.

“Welcome, my good friend,” Valdez said with false cheer. “All my good friends.” He closed the door and hurried to light a few more lanterns. Soon the net-strewn walls were bathed in an amber glow.

Morales strode across to one of the interior walls. He unfastened his sword belt, coat, and shirt and pressed his naked, round belly and hairy chest against the earthen wall. His face, too, switching from cheek to cheek, he cooled against the hard-packed surface.

“Too damn hot,” the sergeant muttered. “And the mosquitoes, the size of black-backed gulls, I tell you. And they came in swarms and damn near carried me off.”

“I doubt that,” Valdez muttered, eyeing the sergeant’s protruding gut. Valdez padded across the room in his nightshirt and bare feet.

“What was that? Eh?” Morales said, glancing at the cantina owner, who was hurrying to provide clay cups and bottles of sangria to the dragoons sprawled about his tables. The soldiers were drooping from exhaustion, their limbs too sore to even think about. Morales continued to press himself against the wall, enjoying the packed earth’s cooling touch.

“Nothing. Nothing,” the little cantina owner replied quickly, threading his way among the tables.

The arrival of the wine brought some life back to the dragoons. They helped themselves to the bottles, carelessly filled their cups, and didn’t care a whit if they sloshed some of the blood-red liquid onto their already muddy white uniforms.

The soldiers’ tall, green, leather hats that made such men look so formidable on parade had been carelessly tossed into a corner. High, stiff collars were quickly unfastened, although not one of these younger men attempted to make himself as comfortable as the sergeant. Such disregard for uniform was permitted only to a man of rank. And Morales, what with the lack of any real officer in the settlement, held all the rank he needed to justify his actions.

“Drink!” he called, and stretched out a hand that Valdez immediately filled with a bottle of wine. The sergeant turned and leaned his back against the wall, tilted the bottle to his lips, and drank deeply. His capacity for both food and drink were the stuff of legend.

Valdez only hoped that this morning’s early visit would prove perhaps a trifle less legendary than others he had known. Morales had been in a foul mood for days now. Just recently, word had come that a new
comandante
was on his way to St. Augustine to replace Captain Gonzalez, who had died of a fever and left Sergeant Morales in charge of the settlement’s troops these many weeks. Morales had grown to love the feeling of power that came with the duties of command. He’d reveled in his newly gained authority. But now a new officer was to be stationed in the mission, and Morales would return to being a subordinate.