The Arrow Keeper’s Song (32 page)

A war had broken out in the deserted streets of Rosarita. Gunfire filled the night air. Flames shot up from dynamited shacks. The screams of the wounded and the dying mingled with the furious exchange of gunfire while the horses in the corral began to circle and paw the earth, neighing loudly. Iron-shod hooves struck the gate and railings as the unnerved animals tested their confines; they were eager to bolt through the first opening they could find.

And for the first time Diego Zuloaga began to entertain doubts about his own judgment, his overconfidence and disregard for the enemy.

Perhaps the execution of Mateo had been … ill conceived.

Tom Sandcrane stumbled through a nightmare of burned and blasted bodies, his boot sinking inches deep in a pool of blood. He continued past a jacal as flames devoured the structure, turning it into a burial pyre. A terrible shriek sounded to his right, and a Spaniard bolted from another flame-swept hut. The man's clothes were afire as he howled in agony. The trooper glanced off one wall, waving his arms and batting at himself as the flames reached his face and burned out his eyes. Tom ended the man's agony with a bullet, then tried to get his bearings.

He had lost his companions and stood alone in the fire-light, revolver in his right hand, his left arm dangling at his side. He was all too conscious of the blood seeping from his arm and side, soaking his trouser leg. He took a hesitant step, then another, drawn to the sound of gunshots and a series of explosions.

All sense of time was lost. He walked as if in a dream. Movement alerted him and he snapped off a couple of shots. Someone returned fire, then broke and ran, possibly wounded. The search continued, firing at shadows and cracking timbers. Tom didn't like the looks of the mud-walled shack before him. He tucked the Colt into his belt, took up a stick of dynamite, and touched the fuse to the glowing tip of his cigar, then tossed the explosive through the night-shrouded entrance. There was a flash of light followed by a muffled blast, which blew out the windows and destroyed part of a back wall. Satisfied, Tom left the hut behind and cautiously approached another pair of fire-gutted hovels and an alley littered with the dead and dying. Three Spaniards were sprawled in death. From the burning buildings came the sickening aroma of burning flesh. How many dead lay among the flames was any mans guess. Tom followed a trail of blood out of the alley. Someone had managed to crawl away from the pack. A couple of minutes later Tom discovered Enos Stump Horn propped against a chicken coop, revolver in one hand and tomahawk in the other. Enos's chest rose and fell in shallow gasps, and he looked up as Tom approached.

“Nahaoone
. I'm thirsty,” Enos said. He lowered his gaze to stare at the puckered bullet holes in his naked chest and belly. He couldn't remember where he had lost his rifle. Gun smoke curled from the barrel of his Colt. But he lifted his tomahawk and held up the iron blade. “My 'hawk has not been blooded.” To him it was as important as counting coup.

“It will be,” Tom said, and drawing close, he set aside the Colt revolver on a nearby post and took the tomahawk from the dying man's grasp. Enos nodded, satisfied. He stared at Tom, and the wounded man's features were suddenly full of wonderment. “Who are the others?” he asked.

Tom glanced to right and left and saw nothing but shadows, yet Enos seemed to be in a state of awe.

“They know you. They call you by name,” the mortally wounded man said, coughing pink froth from his lips.

“I see no one,” Tom whispered.

“You will,” Enos managed to reply, his voice little more than a gasp. “I place my foot upon the path of the dead.” He sighed and slowly exhaled, a sibilant sound; then his head bobbed forward, chin touching chest, arms lowered as his legs relaxed.

Tom slipped the shaft of the tomahawk through his belt at the small of his back. He heard footsteps directly behind him and, grabbing his Colt from the post, turned and drew deadly aim at Philo Underhill. The Creek held up his hands.

“It's me, Tom.” He glanced past Sandcrane and spied Enos. “So now we are two.” He wiped blood from his cheek. Underhill's speech was somewhat muffled, and Tom had to struggle to understand him. A bullet had gashed his cheek and another had punctured his thigh, but he had stopped the loss of blood with a hastily fashioned tourniquet consisting of a bandanna tightened with a bayonet lifted from a dead Spaniard.

“We got them on the run, Tom. I blew my share to hell. But a bunch just took off for the corral, I think. I'm clean out of dynamite or I'd have—”

“Take mine,” Tom interrupted. “I can't use it anyway.”

“You hurt bad.”

“Not bad enough,” he said.

Philo grinned despite his ruined features and helped himself to the four sticks of dynamite left in Tom's belt while the Cheyenne clumsily reloaded the revolver he had taken off Tully. Tom had to grip the gun barrel with his knees and feed shells into the cylinder. At last he accomplished his task and straightened. Darkness appeared on the periphery of his vision, but Tom forced it to recede by the strength of his own indomitable will.
No. Not yet. It is not finished
.

Then both men quickly, quietly started out of the alley together. Smoke billowed around them, shrouding the men in its choking embrace as they made their way unchallenged among the flame-swept ruins of the village. Fire spread to the eastern meadow, the dry grass set ablaze by wind-borne embers, and threatened to reach the south wall of the valley. Against this backdrop Tom and Philo were hardly a threatening sight. Sweat streaked Tom's war paint, and each step seemed to thrust a dagger of fire into his side. But he rode the waves of pain and burned his own agony for fuel, one step after another, through a world that reeked of death.

Zuloaga overheard the commotion by the corral and Chenez on the roof called out to his companions to wait and leave the horses alone, and immediately the captain understood what was going on. He bolted out the side door, revolver in hand, and confronted the five troopers who had survived the explosions and the havoc in the village. The men were convinced that an overwhelming force of American soldiers had launched an offensive against their sparsely fortified positions. The captain was taken aback by their report and for a moment considered the possibility that another detachment of Americans had entered the valley through a passage unknown to him. By this time Chenez had climbed down from the roof. Ramirez, who was less anxious for a fight than any of them, worked his way into the corral and surreptitiously began to saddle his horse.

Zuloaga considered ordering them to stand, when a leather box of ammunition in one of the burning houses caught fire and exploded with the fury of a Gatling gun. To the men by the corral it sounded as if an entire detachment had opened fire on them. The already panicked troopers hurried to their horses, and this time Zuloaga was with them. It only made sense to assess the situation from a distance, out of harm's way. Two minutes later the horses were saddled and the Lion Brigade trotted their mounts out into the plaza. Fate again played its hand, as Zuloaga glanced toward the section of town still ablaze from the attack and spied two men standing in front of the well in the center of the plaza. The last of the exploding rounds sounded in the distance. The captain checked the perimeter of the marketplace for the rest of the Americans and halted his brigade when he realized the men by the well were alone.

Alone.

“Two! You run from two such as these!” Zuloaga twisted in the saddle. The troopers behind him looked away, fearing to unleash the harnessed fury in those eyes. “They have killed your
compadres
and turned you into cowards. Ride them down, I say. Kill them!”

Zuloaga drove his boot heels into the flanks of his gelding, and the animal bolted forward in response to its rider's punishing blows. With a cry of rage the men of the Lion Brigade regained their courage and urged their mounts into a gallop, fanning out across the plaza in a headlong charge, Mausers blazing, hunters to their prey.

Tom braced himself against the stone wall. His strength had taken him this far out of the choking clouds of smoke but no farther. It didn't matter; the Spaniards were coming to them.

“Poor bastards. They don't know we got them licked,” Philo chuckled. He puffed on the cigar stub to keep the tip aglow. An inch of ash landed on the ground at his feet. “How do you want to take them, head-on?”

“Is there any other way?” Tom said as he thumbed the hammer back on his revolver. His features were a garish mask of streaked soot and clay where he had sweated through the war paint. Yet in a way it made his visage seem all the more fierce. In what he suspected were the final moments of his life, his senses seemed amplified. He could hear the hooves of the approaching horses, the gunfire before him, the crackle of flames in the fire-gutted ruins to his left. The air smelled smoky and rife with the stench of sweat and blood and charred bodies. Bullets kicked up geysers of dirt a few yards from the well. Others whined past, harmlessly at first, then closer as the Spaniards bore down on the men by the well.

Suddenly, from off to the side, bursting through a curtain of smoke, the freight wagon careened into the plaza and passed directly behind the battered remnants of the Lion Brigade. Joanna Cooper was at the reins, which accounted for the fact that the team of horses was not under complete control. Willem Tangle Hair and Antonio Celestial, the latter braced upright and levering shots from his Winchester, blasted away at the brigade. Zuloaga's men were caught completely by surprise and tried to alter their attack to meet this new threat.

Tom and Philo staggered out into the plaza, forcing their wounded bodies to make one last Herculean effort. Tom emptied the revolver in his hand as Philo tossed one stick of dynamite after the other among the bewildered Spaniards.

One—two—three—four explosions knocked horses to the ground and deafened the troopers. Caught in a vicious cross fire, their newfound determination proved brittle and shattered as saddles began to empty. Diego Zuloaga leaped from the saddle as the earth beneath him exploded in a shower of rocks and dirt. He rolled and staggered to his feet, blood streaming from a dozen cuts, his coat split down the back and his trouser legs in tatters. The heel of one boot had been blown away. Zuloaga looked about and called to his men. Chenez saw him and attempted to reach his side.

Tom Sandcrane tossed the empty revolver aside and drew his holstered Colt. Through blurred vision he managed to recognize Zuloaga and saw the trooper racing to the officers rescue. Tom squeezed off a shot and missed, fired again, and then again, the Colt bucking in his fist with each report. The Spaniard on horseback doubled forward, clawing at a mortal wound to his vitals, and slid headfirst out of the saddle as Tom sank to his knees, his limbs trembling.

Zuloaga made a desperate grab for the animals reins as Tom fired the last three rounds from his Colt in rapid succession, missing Zuloaga but twice wounding the startled gelding that Chenez had ridden. The animal tore loose from the officers grasp and bolted toward freedom.

Zuloaga, seeing the remainder of his command break from the plaza and race toward the woods, cursed and shouted for his men to come to his aid. But all that remained of the Lion Brigade—Ramirez, the cook, and three other wounded soldiers—ignored the captain's orders. Only the cook looked over his shoulder in the direction of the plaza. But Alfonso Ramirez had made good his escape, and there was no going back.

“On to Santiago,” he muttered, and followed his
compadres
into the sheltering embrace of the trees.

Zuloaga snarled in disgust, all his hatred focused now on the man who had denied his escape. He spied the Le Mat lying in the dirt where he had dropped it and lunged for the weapon, palming the gun and spinning around to put a bullet in Sandcrane. Philo snapped off a shot from his Colt and leaped in front of Tom as the Spaniard fired. The Creek breed shuddered and then sagged against his friend.

Antonio Celestial fired from the wagon bed as Joanna hauled back on the reins and applied the brakes. The slug from the Winchester knocked Zuloaga off his feet.

Tom tried to bear Philo's weight but could not keep him from slipping to the trampled earth. The wounded man grimaced. Blood spurted from a horrid wound in his neck. Tom cradled the man and tried to stanch the flow, but there was too much of it. Philo shook his head, as if to tell him not to try. He knew his time was near. Something struck Philo as ridiculous, because he began to laugh, a horrible, choking laugh, which only made matters worse. Then his brows furrowed as he tried to focus on the stars, but the haze from the burning buildings was too thick and dark. He frowned and shook his head. Another few seconds passed, and Philo Underhill no longer cared about anything.

“Madre,”
Zuloaga groaned, and crawled to his knees, staring down in disbelief at the wound in his side.

Tom heard the officer and looked up from his dead friend to Zuloaga struggling to stand. The officer still held his revolver. Tom couldn't have cared less. He was a ghost. No bullet could stop him. The Cheyenne rose from the valley floor and reached behind his back to draw the iron-bladed tomahawk from his belt. The cry that spilled from his lips no longer sounded human. He had seen too much, been pushed too far; there was nothing in him but rage. He heard the drums now, the war cries of his people down the corridors of time when they had ridden into battle against their enemies. Howling, war-painted wraiths surrounded him and carried him forward as Zuloaga fired and missed. The captain tried again, but his hand was quivering and he wasted the shot, then tossed the gun aside in surrender. It was a useless gesture. He begged for his life and lifted his hands to ward off the blow as Tom stood over him, tomahawk raised aloft. The blade swept downward in a brutal slash that nearly severed the Spaniard's arm. He screamed.

Tom struck him again, this time in the skull. The blade methodically rose and fell, with sickening effect. Zuloaga's screams became cries of agony, then whimpers, then faded until there was nothing but the 'hawk, the whisper of the blade as it sliced the air, the crunch of flesh and bone.