Scorpion (13 page)

“You could hide a small army among the trees on this here hillside. Anybody caught in that open ground would be cut to ribbons,” Buckhart dryly interjected.

“They were,” Cavasos said in English.

Gandy flashed a look of disbelief at the old man.
So
he could speak English after all. “Lieutenant Ben McQueen was no pup,” he said in his own language. “He’d have checked the trail before leading his men up it, and that’s for damn sure.”

“I watched from the hilltop,” the goatherd said. “The gringo officer sent two scouts ahead … two
Rangers,
” he pointedly added. “They rode up ahead of the column.”

“And failed to see this Najera and his men?” Buckhart asked.

The Rangers accompanied the goatherd up the hilltop.

“This is where they saw them,” Cavasos said, pointing down the slope. “Then the two Rangers waved the others forward and got out of the way. General Najera and his men handled the rest.” He closed his eyes and cupped his hands over his ears. “The noise. So many guns. They frightened my goats.”

The slope was crisscrossed by a swell of land, an irregular series of outcroppings that blocked a view of the entire slope from below. Gandy’s instincts told him he could trust the goatherd. He looked at the snowy-headed old-timer and knew the answers lay farther up the hillside, beyond nature’s barrier of rocks and the curve of the slope. He took up the reins and began to lead his horse up the bill.

“You want us to come along, Snake-Eye?” asked another of the Rangers, a boyish, good-natured man in his mid-twenties. Leon Pettibone was handy with both pistol and tomahawk, but preferred the Colt Revolving rifle cradled in the crook of his arm. He mopped his round face with a bandanna and gazed suspiciously at the woods bordering the cleared swath of hillside. Gandy waved his men forward.

“You’re coming with us,” Buckhart muttered to the goatherd, and waved his drawn Patterson Colt in Gandy’s direction. “I still don’t trust you. Just follow Snake-Eye.”

The old man shrugged his shoulders and obeyed. He never argued with guns or nature. It was his way to bend with the storm and to survive.

Fifteen minutes later they found what the scavengers had left. Several of the corpses had been picked clean. The rest had been worked over by vultures, wolves, and coyotes. What flesh remained had already begun to decompose. The stench had lessened, thanks to the carrion birds, but the sight, especially the seven headless bodies of the dead Rangers that had accompanied the Army detail, caused several of the men behind Gandy to double over and retch.

A hot wind tugged at Gandy’s topknot and moaned as it fanned the hillside with its hot breath. The Ranger sergeant closely observed the lay of the men and the skeletons of the horses that had been killed, and reconstructed what had happened. Trusting in the honesty of his scouts, Ben McQueen would have hurried his men up the slope in an attempt to cross the hill and pick up the Linares road on the other side of the slide. Najera’s men must have had him in a cross fire. The first volley must have toppled half his command. The rest would have fallen in the confusion as they tried to make a stand. The entire melee could not have lasted more than a few minutes. Then silence.

Gandy could tell by the tattered remnants of their blue uniforms which of the dead were Ben’s dragoons. Judging from their buckskins, the seven mutilated remains were indeed Rangers. That left two Rangers unaccounted for. Cavasos had spoken the truth. The traitors … but which ones? Gandy mentally reviewed the roster that had accompanied Lieutenant Ben McQueen into Mexico. He smiled sadly, remembering how Ben had insisted General Taylor allow him to bring a half dozen or so Rangers along with his dragoons, despite the Texans’ reputation as troublemakers. Ben had openly expressed his admiration for the Rangers. He had spent so much time riding with Gandy and his men prior to the outbreak of hostilities that the Rangers considered McQueen one of their own. Gandy had taken young Ben McQueen under his wing and had developed an almost paternal fondness for the young officer who had the heart of a Ranger despite his brass buttons and Army uniform.

Snake-Eye Gandy surveyed the scene of battle and prowled through the carnage searching for some indication that Ben was among the fallen. His boots crunching gravel and bone made a sickening sound. Gandy shuddered. Inured as he was to horror, this was something special, and it was all he could do to remain a part of this grisly scene. Blank eye sockets seemed to stare as if with round black orbs. Silent accusations rose from the dead. Was that the wind, or ghostly voices moaning betrayal? Gandy reached the edge of the killing ground and stared down at the broken, scattered remains of McQueen’s command, sprawled in death and bleached by the sun.

“You Mex bastard!” Cletus Buckhart growled in a venomous voice, and thumbed the hammer back on his Patterson Colt. Old Cavasos retreated as the gun swung in his direction. Something in Buckhart had momentarily snapped; the butchery … the indelible memory of his own family’s fate …

“No, Cletus!” Pettibone shouted. He made a grab for Buckhart’s hand, but the angry nineteen-year-old slapped his friend aside and leveled the revolver. Cavasos stood his ground, too old to run, and too proud. Snake-Eye Gandy bounded down the slope and batted the Ranger’s gun hand aside just as the barrel blossomed flame. A chunk of limestone exploded, and the bullet ricocheted off toward the trees, causing every man on the slope to duck.

Buckhart brought the gun to bear yet again. This time Gandy was in reach. He caught Buckhart by the left shoulder, swung the man around and snatched the revolver from his grasp. The young Ranger’s hand dropped to the Colt holstered on his left. Gandy stiff-armed him in the chest and knocked him off his feet.

“Damn it, Snake-Eye,” Buckhart groaned, struggling to catch his breath. “Are you blind? Don’t you see what they done?”

“I can see,” Gandy replied. “One-eyed I may be, but I damn sure see clearer than you.”

“Goddamn Najera anyway,” said another Ranger; a stubbled, hell-for-leather rider named Blue Napier. Approximately the same age as Gandy, he had ridden the border for as many years as the sergeant. He tilted his sombrero back off his forehead. His salt and pepper hair glistened with sweat. “What kind of man would do such a thing?”

“Najera seeks to put fear in your hearts,” Cavasos said. “Fear and hatred make a man do foolish things.” The goatherd nodded his thanks to Gandy. He owed this man with the devil’s eye his life, and the hermit of the hills decided to repay the debt.

“Besides the two scouts, there was another survivor. The officer also escaped,” Cavasos said. His words had the desired effect on Gandy, whose whole body seemed to coil like a spring. “He reached the creek below and hid among the broken trees. After the general departed, I climbed down, but when I reached the creekbed, the norteamericano was gone. Who can say what became of him?” The goat keeper turned and started walking across the hillside, picking his way among the bones and heading for the trees.

“Hey, just where do you think you’re going?” Buckhart managed to yell despite his lack of wind.

“I am going home. Shoot me if you must,” Cavasos said over his shoulder.

“Where can I find General Najera?” Gandy called out. His gravely voice reverberated across the barren ground.

“Saltillo. With his army of almost a thousand men … or so a little bird told me. Go with God, gringo. And I don’t envy God.” The shadows beneath the trees seemed to reach out and swallow up the old hermit, receiving him into the heart of the wild and the free.

“Maybe Cletus is right,” Pettibone said, rubbing his bruised biceps where his friend had struck him with the Patterson Colt, “and we shouldn’t have let the old bastard leave.”

“There was a day when that old-timer was much man, mark my words,” Gandy said, staring at the woods. “I’d have hated to brace him in his prime.” He touched the brim of his sombrero as if saluting the goatherd. Then Gandy sighed, returned the gun he had taken from Buckhart, and studied the faces of the men around him.

“Reckon I’ll take me a little ride over to Saltillo and pay this General Najera a visit.” Snake-Eye Gandy remounted, his trouser leg slapping leather as he settled in the saddle. “I might even keep a lookout for Ben McQueen. Maybe even the turncoats who betrayed these men.” Small and wiry and every inch of him fire and brimstone, pure poison with gun or knife, Gandy checked his guns, then pointed his horse south. Dodging patrols and maybe traveling at night, Gandy figured he just might make it. Behind the sergeant, every Ranger appeared to have the same idea. As far as they were concerned, Najera had not left a warning, but an invitation.

It was Cletus Buckhart who voiced their thoughts. “A thousand to our twenty-five,” he drawled. “Seems just about a fair fight.”

No one heard any arguments. Out of the valley rode twenty-five men, sobered by what they had seen, grieving for the slain and riding for vengeance.

B
EN WOKE SCREAMING. ZION
, shaving three day’s growth of beard at a water bucket over by the tack room, jumped and nearly slit his own throat with the straight razor. He hadn’t noticed Ben asleep in the stall, otherwise he might have been prepared for some kind of outburst. The man called Alacron rarely slept without being besieged by horrifying nightmares that often left him shaken and depressed.

Josefina, her features pale and filled with concern, appeared in the barn doorway. She wore a bonnet and carried a basket of jicama roots she had just gathered from the meadow surrounding the hacienda. A few briars clung to her apron, and her blouse was matted with perspiration and molded to her bosom. She made no effort to hide her concern for the tall, rangy americano who sheepishly muttered an apology to both parties.

A couple of days had passed since Ben and Zion had returned to Ventana with the horses. After long hours in the saddle, scouring the brush country and driving the scattered cattle down out of the hills and onto the valley floor, they were ready for a home-cooked meal. They’d worked from “can see to can’t” and risked life and limb chasing strays out of lechugilla thickets and down steep-sided arroyos.

General Najera had only confiscated the livestock that could be easily driven back to Saltillo. Riding the chaparral country was much more difficult and Najera had been loath to spare the men or waste any more of his valuable time. Besides, he had the bulk of the Quintero herd, and that was all he needed.

Ben sat upright and cradled his face in his hands. Each nightmare took a greater toll but brought him closer to the truth than the one before. His breathing, labored at first, became normal. The images that flooded his mind parted like torn silk, yet vestiges remained, a “patch” of dying men, a “tendril” of gunfire and death, a “thread” of two men, Tolliver and Dobbs, astride their horses. Tolliver raised his arms and gestured for Ben to join them. Then confused images, dust and heat and powder smoke. Screams of the dying … the sound welled in him and demanded to be heard.

“Damn, I wish you’d give me some kind of warning before you haul off and cut loose,” Zion growled.

“Sorry,” Ben said, standing. He walked out of the stall where he’d been dozing on a bed of straw and headed for the sunlight. Emerging from the shadowy interior of the barn, he encountered Josefina, who handed him the basket of freshly dug roots.

“Carry these to the house for me?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ben said, and took the basket from her hands. Elena would cut them into chunks and put them in her stew. The jicama, once peeled, had much the same color and crispness as a raw potato and could be eaten raw, mashed, or boiled in soups and stews. Ben was surprised when Josefina fell in step alongside him. He glanced aside and met her warm, friendly gaze.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You men,” she said, and shook her head. “You’d rather wrestle a steer than a handful of words.”

“All right.” Ben grinned. “What will Elena think … you walking with one of the hired hands?”

“First of all, I am walking with a friend,” Josefina corrected. She lifted her hem over a prickly pear cactus.

“You don’t even know my name.”

“I know all I need to. I have seen you fierce, dangerous, driven. I have seen you frightened and lost like me. I think we have much in common, Señor Alacron. But you are more than a scorpion, for there is gentleness in you. I sense this. The gentle … and the deadly.”

Ben studied the woman, marveling at the change a couple of days had made. She seemed clearheaded now, and he suspected she was no longer depending on the narcotic he had once spied her taking on the journey to Saltillo. The proximity of the pretty widow got the better of him, and for a moment Ben lowered his eyes to the woman’s sweat-soaked blouse and the rise and fall of her chest with every breath. He caught himself and shifted his appraisal to the widow’s high cheekbones. She was a rare beauty. He found himself envying the late Don Sebastien. Ben was about to speak that very thought when he spied a plume of dust trailing in the air. Someone was approaching from the direction of the town. He froze for a moment, and Josefina, seeing his reaction, turned to see the telltale brown smear against the pristine horizon.

“I think we are about to entertain guests,” Josefina remarked. “I’ll have Elena set the dining room table with coffee and some of her honey cakes.”

Ben returned her basket. That much dust indicated several riders were on the way. He guessed General Najera must be coming to pay his respects. “Perhaps I ought to make myself scarce.”

Josefina understood. She took the basket but allowed her hand to close over Ben’s scarred knuckles. “I am glad you remained with us, my nameless friend. We have much in common.” She read the confusion in his eyes. “Our loneliness.”

Before Ben could reply, the woman left his side and hurried on to the house, leaving him with yet another question for which he had no answer.

A dozen riders watered their mounts and lounged around the well in the center of the ranchyard while Elena moved among them bearing a tray of corn tortillas wrapped around shredded pork, and refritos seasoned with chili peppers. Najera’s soldiers were hungry and eagerly helped themselves to the contents of the tray.