The Arrow Keeper’s Song (31 page)

“Which way are we going?” Tully asked, arms folded across his chest.

“I want you to break for the gorge. Willem, you've worked with dynamite before. A few well-placed charges ought to close off the pass and keep them from pursuing the wagon. The doctor or Celestial here will have to find you another way into Santiago. Might be longer, but there's nothing to be done.”

“What's to keep the Spaniards off our heels while we set the charges and blow the pass?” Willem asked.

“Zuloaga will be busy,” Tom said.

“Doing what?” Philo asked, his sleepy-eyed stare boring into Tom.

“Chasing me,” Tom replied.

“No,” Joanna blurted out, then settled back in embarrassed silence. Tom looked in her direction, surprised at her reaction.

“I'll take half the dynamite. Give me a short fuse and a lit cigar, and I'll even the odds. ‘Count to five,' the captain said. One, two, three, four, five. I might just teach Diego Zuloaga a thing or two about the price of arithmetic.”

Enos Stump Horn scratched his cheek, then slapped at a mosquito that had begun to probe the back of his neck. The Cheyenne nodded in approval. “I will go with Sandcrane. Two men will keep the Spaniards busier than one.”

“Three's a better number,” Philo retorted.

“And I reckon someone's gotta come along to pull your fat ass out of trouble,” Tully dejectedly remarked. “That makes it four.”

“Now, look here,” Tom began. “My orders …”

“Don't mean squat,” Philo said, interrupting the sergeant.

“If you think I'm going to be left behind …,” Willem began to protest.

“Enough!” Tom snapped. “Someone needs to help Celestial and the doctor escape. You're elected.”

“Suppose I refuse to leave,” Joanna defiantly added.

“You'll ride out of here if I have to tie you to your horse,” Tom replied.

“No. We must go together or not at all,” Celestial spoke up. “You are all brave men. Do not throw your lives away. There will be another day for Diego Zuloaga.”

“I have spoken,” Tom said, ignoring the rebel leader's protest.

“Why should I be the one to leave? Philo's been driving the wagon,” Willem continued to protest, but Tom had already started to leave. “Cross Timbers is a long way from here. Getting yourself killed isn't going to change things for our people. You don't have to prove anything to me.”

Tom spun on his heels, stormed back into the circle of light, and hauled Willem to his feet by the front of his khaki-colored coat. He brought his face close to Willem's and spoke in a low, soft tone whose authority could not be denied.

“Hear me. You will drive the wagon. You will blow the pass. And then see you bring the Cuban and the doctor to safety.” Was it the reflection of the nearby flames, or did his eyes blaze with supernatural fire? No matter. The voice must be obeyed.

“As you say,
nesene
, my friend,” Willem evenly replied.

Tom glanced around at the other three men. It had not been in him to order anyone to stay behind, outnumbered and willing to carry the battle to Zuloaga—but in truth he would be glad for their company. As for Willem Tangle Hair, yes, he had an ulterior motive for ordering the man to leave with Joanna and Celestial. The red-haired breed was a link to the past, and if Tom was to die here, perhaps Willem would bring Seth Sandcrane word of what had happened and how the Arrow Keepers son had met his fate.

Shadows danced in a circle about the campfire, mere reflections cast by the leaping flames to some; to others, though, these shadows were the Maiyun, the vision bringers, the secret ones who dwelled in the earth and in the trees and whispered in the wind. Tom no longer knew what he believed. But he knelt by the campfire and filled a tin cup with ashes, then added a trickle of water and a sprinkle of clay to form a paste.

The Cheyenne stripped off his coat and shirt and began to streak his forehead and daub his cheeks and torso with the mixture. Enos and the two Creek breeds realized what he was doing, and a murmur of excitement and pride swept through them. Zuloaga and his soldiers, the child killers, were about to get a nasty surprise.

As his father had done in the days of
esevone
, the buffalo, and his father's father when the Cheyenne were the undisputed masters of the plains, Tom Sandcrane was painting himself for war.

It took only a few minutes to prepare himself for battle. And when he had finished, Tom left the campfire, walked over to the crate of dynamite near the wagon, and began apportioning what he and the other men would need. Joanna joined him, seizing the opportunity to speak with him in private. She knelt by the wagon wheel as he began shoving sticks of explosives into his gunbelt. Behind the couple a moth drawn to the flames began to circle the campfire, risking its already brief existence to escape the gloomy clutches of night.

“You aren't going to say I'm sorry I got you into this,” Tom said, casting a wry glance in the woman's direction.

“The furthest thing from my mind,” Joanna replied. “You saddled your own horse and rode it here.”

“That I did,” Tom said.

“Zuloaga is no coward. Don't underestimate him. He is a formidable foe.”

“Nestama-xetsevatoe-shematse.”
The Cheyenne held up his fist, allowing a trickle of dirt to escape. “I will throw him down so hard, the dust will fly.”

“Stay alive, Tom Sandcrane,” the doctor said.

“Savaa-he
. A ghost cannot be killed.”

“I see a man of flesh and blood. A good man, I think.” Joanna sensed his embarrassment and changed the subject after a quick appraisal of his war-painted visage. “I read my share of penny dreadfuls as a girl; I thought Indians were superstitious and afraid to fight at night.”

“That's a little lie we told the white man so we could sneak up on him while he slept and lift his scalp and steal his horses,” Tom answered. “I've been told it worked every time.” He drew his revolver and checked the loads, then returned the Colt to its holster. It was almost time.

Philo Underhill and Tully Crow, each painted like Tom, began to hitch a pair of sturdy geldings to the wagon. Celestial shuffled forward and removed a couple of hand-wrapped cigars from his pocket. He broke each one in half and distributed them to Tom and the other three men. The cigars would burn slowly and keep the soldiers from having to strike a match each time they wanted to light a fuse. An hour crawled past and part of another. Tom suspected the Spaniards had pushed hard to reach the village, and wanted to allow them ample time to settle down for the night. Let weariness settle on them like a blanket. Give the sentries time to nod off, their eyes dry and burning from lack of sleep.

Near midnight Tom Sandcrane took up his rifle and turned to his companions. For a fleeting second he watched the campfire for some sign of the moth. Had it soared through the brightness unscathed, or sacrificed itself to the unattainable light?

“It is time.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

W
HEN
C
ORPORAL
E
NRICO
M
EDINA REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS
, he almost cried out for fear he had gone blind. Craning his head around in this moment of despair, he managed to look up as his vision cleared, allowing a patch of stars to shimmer into focus through a break in a cloud bank.
Of course, you idiot, it is night
, he scolded himself. Relieved, the Spaniard forced himself to breathe slowly and gather his strength for the task of returning to the village and his
compadres
. Alfonso the cook would patch him up good as new.

The pain had returned but was bearable now. The front of his shirt was stuck to the ground where the blood had dried. Medina shoved upward with his strong arms and drew up his knees, working himself loose with a sickening sucking sound. Something like a knife twisted in his lower abdomen, and he bit his lower lip to keep from screaming.

In that moment of private agony, Medina heard footsteps coming from the direction of the church. It sounded as if someone stumbled, and he heard a muffled curse in English and a second whispered admonition to be quiet. The Spaniard's hand darted out and, after a few seconds of frantic pawing, came to rest on the Mauser. The weapon gave him courage. The Americans were going to pay for crossing the path of Enrico Medina. Had they somehow seen him move and come to finish him off? Could they be attempting to escape or—worse—raid his unsuspecting
compadres
in the village?

He became a rock, a motionless patch of darkness. Medina even kept his face lowered and concealed in the crook of his arm. He risked one peek and counted four men, crouched low and walking abreast of one another as they passed within arm's reach of the wounded Spaniard. He caught a glimmer of light, the glowing red tips of four cigar stubs shielded in their cupped hands. Medina frowned, puzzled by the cigars, then dismissed their significance as he waited for the Americans to pass by, waited until he was well behind them. A coward would lie still and nurture his wounds. But there had never been a coward in the Lion Brigade, and Enrico Medina was not going to be the first. His finger sought and found the Mauser's trigger; then, summoning all his strength and steeling himself against the pain, he rose on his knees, leveled his rifle at one of the four soldiers, and fired.

Tom Sandcrane felt something slap him in the back. He twisted around and nearly fell as a nine-millimeter slug ripped through muscle and flesh on the underside of his arm and opened a gash along his side. Tully, Philo, and Enos all did an about-face and loosed a volley from their Krag rifles at the assailant to their rear.

Alerted by the gunshots, Lieutenant Emilio Garza, in the broken walled remains of the casita thirty yards ahead, roused the other five men under his immediate command and ordered them to repel the unseen attackers. In a matter of seconds the Spanish guns opened up and muzzle blasts lit the night. Enos and Philo flung themselves to the ground and returned fire.

Tom Sandcrane, reeling from the impact of Medina's bullet, glimpsed his assailant through a veil of white-hot pain and moonlight as the Spaniard squeezed off another round. Tom fired his rifle one-handed, forced to grip it like a pistol as his left arm hung useless. The hand refused to obey his commands as he tried to work the Krag's bolt action. Fortunately, the Cheyenne did not need a second round, for the Mauser slipped from Medina's grasp and the Spaniard rolled onto his side, clutching his chest and gasping his last breath.

“Tully!” Philo shouted, alerting the Cheyenne to some new danger.

Tom Sandcrane dropped his own rifle; the Krag was worthless to him now. He found his cigar stub on the ground where it had fallen from his now useless left hand. Retrieving the cigar, he clamped it between his teeth, then drew his revolver and turned back toward the village in time to see Tully Crow, dynamite in hand, charge through a hail of gunfire. The wiry breed seemed impervious to the Spanish rifles as he darted and dodged, howling mad, wild with the battle lust that had come upon him.

No … he stumbled … somehow kept his balance. Another bullet found its mark. He was staggering now, obviously hurt and yet refusing to fall.

“Tully!” Philo roared again. He emptied his rifle at the muzzle blasts of the Spanish troopers' guns and began to furiously reload.

A shower of sparks cut an arc through the air as Tully hurled a fistful of explosives over the walls of the roofless casita. The ragged volley from the Mauser rifles that flung him to earth like a discarded toy was followed by a roar and a lurid orange flash as the casita itself disappeared in a shower of mud and rocks and the human debris of its former defenders.

Tom willed himself forward, knowing his own time was running out. His wound was serious, he was losing a lot of blood, and the pain was terrible, but it propelled him onward. Philo and Enos rose, loosed their war cries, and dashed toward town, each man wanting to avenge their fallen companion. Tom struggled to keep pace but fell irrevocably behind. By the time he reached the remains of the casita, the other two men had entered the heart of the village and engaged the Lion Brigade. Tom paused by Tully's lifeless body and, kneeling, took the breed's revolver and tucked it into his belt. In the baleful illumination cast by the smoldering remains of the casita, Tully's shirt was black with blood and his eyes were open, unseeing, in death. Tom closed the man's eyelids. There was no time for words or grief.
Perhaps later
, Tom thought,
if any of us are alive
.

Zuloaga staggered from his bed, his coat unbuttoned, and struggled to pull on his boots. Alfonso Ramirez joined his commanding officer out near the plaza. Seeing
el jefe's
disarray, the portly cook immediately knelt before the man and helped him don his boots. Both men had heard the explosion, Diego Zuloaga dozing on the cot inside the humble dwelling that served as his headquarters when the distant blast in the direction of the church sent him reeling through the front door and out into the plaza. Ramirez had been preparing the captain's evening meal, beans and salt back and black coffee laced with brandy. By the time Zuloaga located the source of the explosion, and realized with dismay at first, and then cold fury, that Lieutenant Garza and his detachment of soldiers had been destroyed or driven off, a second and third blast occurred closer to home. The sound of gunfire rippled through the village as the men of the Lion Brigade spread out to stop this surprise attack in its tracks.

“Captain Zuloaga! What is happening?” Chenez shouted from the corral. The man who had been Mateo's captor and who had enjoyed bullying the thirteen-year-old was visibly shaken. It sounded as if they were under an artillery barrage by the American army.

“Stand with us,” Zuloaga ordered. “All will be revealed.” Ramirez ducked inside the casita and reappeared with the officer's gunbelt, which he promptly buckled around Zuloaga's waist. The captain checked the loads in his French-made revolver—a single-action Le Mat, a cap-and-ball weapon that had been converted to accept center-fire cartridges—then returned the weapon to its holster. Chenez and Ramirez armed themselves with their Mausers and, at the captain's command, began to fortify the casita. They moved quickly to secure the shutters on the windows. Zuloaga considered advancing into the village, but the officer was loath to stumble into an ambush. It was better to wait until word reached him of what was occurring; then he'd have some idea where to retaliate.