Scorpion (6 page)

Ben warned the pair to stop, but his tone lacked conviction. Their hands dropped to the Colts each man carried. Ben clawed at his own empty holster. He was unarmed and powerless to stop his own execution. The guns came up, the men grinned, the pistols spewed tongues of orange flame and roared like cannons …

Bolting awake, Ben sat upright and gasped as the thunder reverberated in the cave. He glanced around, wild-eyed, slow to get his bearings. Isabella, seated at the back of the cave, peered past Zion, who appeared to be asleep.

“Don’t worry, Señor Alacron, it was just a dream. Now you are awake and it’s over. You’re safe. It was just a dream.” Isabella settled down in her blankets and flashed him a smile.

Ben dropped his gaze to his imprisoned wrists. The faces, the vision, what was the meaning of it all? Somewhere, hidden in the nightmare, was the key to his identity. He had to find it. Ben settled back on his bedroll, and extending his arms before him, stared at the links of chain. Plunged deeper into Mexico against his will, a prisoner in a land at war, without an inkling of who he was, he knew nothing. No, that was no longer true. The nightmare had given him a piece of the puzzle. At least two men wanted him dead.

“It’s just a dream,” Isabella said. “You’re safe.”

And the man without a memory softly repeated the girl’s words of comfort, his whisper thick with irony. “Safe.”

G
ENERAL VALENTIN NAJERA FOUND
Saltillo much the same as when he left it. The neat cluster of whitewashed adobe houses, shops, hotels, and cantinas seemed radiant in the sunlight, and he could almost taste the baked chicken and black bean sauce that was the specialty of Casa del Noche, the hotel the general used as his headquarters. The general enjoyed town life, the proximity of friends and the frequent social gatherings, and spent as little time on his ranch as possible.

Saltillo had no fortress, but the cluster of buildings around Market Square allowed him to station over a hundred men in the center of town alone. The remainder of his force, another couple of hundred lancers, were quartered throughout the city, and if need be were only twenty minutes from the hotel. The bulk of his command, almost eight hundred soldiers consisting primarily of infantry, were encamped in the hills outside of town. A brisk march of thirty minutes could bring them into the city.

General Najera had not needed a thousand men for this latest victory. Riding at the head of a column of fifty handpicked lancers, each man a veteran of campaigns against the Apaches and the banditos who plagued the roads to the south, Valentin Najera had trapped and destroyed a matching force of United States Dragoons and Texas Rangers scouting the road to Linares, north of Monterrey.

The general’s lancers had suffered only two casualties, while the gringo soldiers had died to a man, leaving Najera to confiscate the U.S. Army-issue weapons and the horses. Najera had even taken a few grisly trophies to commemorate his victory and instill fear in the hearts of the norteamericanos.

The general was by nature a showman, and had sent riders ahead to announce his latest triumph. When he entered Saltillo, the populace turned out to greet him like the conquering Caesar he envisioned himself to be. Indeed, Valentin Najera looked the part. He was a diminutive man, blessed with a booming voice and an aura of command that instilled in his devoted lancers a determination to follow wherever he might lead. Najera was handsome, with a Roman nose, coppery flesh, and jutting jaw. He wore his silver hair brushed forward to mask a receding hairline. He was elegantly attired in black cloth coat and trousers. The coat was embroidered with scarlet and gold thread at the wrists and at the wide lapels that covered his chest. He wore a lancer’s metal helmet topped by a brass mortarboard and scarlet plume. At forty-three, Valentin Najera was a vain and forceful individual who recognized that his time was running out and he must seize the day and make his move to garner greatness. Although the don of an estate second only to Ventana, Najera had squandered much of his family fortune outfitting his army. A politically ambitious man, the general had cast his lot with Santa Anna, seeing in the controversial ruler of Mexico, the self-styled Napoleon of the West, an opportunity for personal gain. Power was the prize Najera sought, and he would settle for nothing less than the governorship of Coahuila once the invaders from the north were expelled from Mexican territory and driven back beyond the Nueces Strip.

The citizens of Saltillo lined the tree-shaded streets and hailed the conquering hero. The peasants and townspeople waved hats and scarves, and a sweet-faced little girl bounded barefoot across the street to present the general with a bouquet of wildflowers, which Najera accepted with the appropriate show of humility and surprise. No one was fooled, but the citizens of Saltillo appreciated the performance. As for the girl, General Najera seemed to notice a vague similarity between the child and himself, and wondered if he might not be the little one’s father. It was a distinct possibility. After all, he had bedded most of the available young women in the town.

The church bells in the tower of Santa Maria Magdalene began to peal at the edge of town, signaling the general’s arrival. Najera was not moved. He knew Father Rudolfo was welcoming home the soldiers from Saltillo. There was no love lost between the general and the padre, who despised Najera’s penchant for cruelty and lust for power. However, the two men had arrived at an uneasy truce. The padre emerged from the church and, despite his immense girth, moved quickly across the courtyard to stand at the aqueduct wall that carried water from the creek to a circular stone cistern in the courtyard. Father Rudolfo took note of each of the returning riders. General Najera had conscripted just about every available man in Saltillo as well as from the outlying farms and ranchos to serve in his militia. The padre knew every man who had ridden out more than a week ago, and as the column filed past, he counted two empty saddles, but the dead men were some of Najera’s handpicked ruffians, and though he deplored any death, Father Rudolfo was grateful that those who had gone to meet their maker were none of his own. As the last of the riders trotted past, the padre mopped the sweat from his bald head and returned to the church, where he intended to light a candle and offer prayers for the living and the dead.

General Najera continued another three blocks and arrived in Market Square, the
mercado,
and headed straight for a two-story adobe structure whose six-inch-thick walls and roof battlements befitted a small fortress. The hand-lettered wooden sign swinging in the breeze in the cooling shade of the porch read
CASA DEL NOCHE
, and the general sighed and muttered, “Home.”

Najera dismounted as the dust of his arrival began to settle. He waved to his men to scatter throughout the
mercado,
where a number of low-roofed, mud-bricked cantinas and brothels offered the promise of a warm fire, a hot meal, and the possibility of a woman’s companionship at least for a few brief, heated moments. About half of the riders had families in town, and these men hurried off to be reunited with their loved ones. For them the war was a brutal disruption of their lives, and they were anxious for the hostilities to end as quickly as possible, hopefully with the Mexican Army victorious over the invading forces from north of the border.

Raúl Salcedo emerged from the cantina that adjoined the foyer of the hotel, and with a sweep of his sombrero, bowed to the general. “Welcome,
fefe.
I preceded you by a day.”

Valentin Najera clasped the young man’s hand and clapped him on the shoulder. “I trust your undertaking had a successful conclusion.”

“Partly, mi general,” Raúl admitted.

Najera frowned. The gunman’s reply smacked of failure. Still, he was willing to give Salcedo the benefit of the doubt. “We will talk later, eh,” the general said, and hurried inside, anxious for brandy, a bath, and a shave.

A pair of vaqueros rode up, dismounted in front of the hotel and called out to Salcedo, who recognized Angel Perez and Mariano Rincón, the only men the young gunman considered his friends. Raúl, Mariano the mestizo, and Angel had ridden the outlaw trail together before joining Najera’s legion. Mariano Rincón, in his mid-twenties, was a potbellied, balding half-breed, dark-skinned and stubbornly devoted to Salcedo. Angel Perez was only a year older than Raúl, a lean and hungry young man. His black hair was plastered with sweat, and a scraggly fringe of new beard sprouted along his jawline. Both men wore broadcloth trousers tucked into dust-caked brown boots and homespun cotton shirts. Rincón sported a silver-trimmed leather vest. Angel favored a serape that the proprietress of the Casa del Noche had made for him. Serena Montenez was old enough to be Angel’s mother. A comely woman in her early forties, she had never married and for now was enjoying the lusty infatuations of her latest paramour.

“What do you think, Raúl?” Angel grinned and ran his fingers over his new growth of beard, relishing the fact that Salcedo’s attempts were poor in comparison.

“You call that a beard?” Raúl sneered. “I got prettier hair growing in the crack of my ass.”

“I told him he better watch himself,” Rincón interjected with a wink in Raúl’s direction. “That stubble is apt to make him look too old for the likes of Señora Montenez.” Salcedo and Rincón chuckled as Angel scowled at them both.

“Laugh while you can, amigos, but tonight when the desert chill settles on your bones and you huddle close to your fires, think of me, warm between my señora’s thighs, eh?” Angel hitched his gun belt and tilted his sombrero back off his coppery forehead. He tugged a pouch from his belt and removed a cigarillo, black and dry and knobby as a twig, but he rummaged in vain for a match.

“Here, Mex,” a gravely voice called out as another pair of riders dismounted in front of the hotel. Unlike the other men who had ridden in with General Najera, these two were norteamericanos, men who had chosen to ride for Najera and the money he paid. The man who had just offered the match was a hard-looking pistoleer of average height, with shoulder-length blond hair. His nose had been split by a Mexican bayonet during the battle of San Jacinto back in ’36, and bore a white ridge of scar tissue from where his wire-rimmed spectacles rested to the tip between his nostrils. His name was Ned Tolliver, and when he held out a packet of matches, his eyes, behind his round lenses, locked with Raúl Salcedo’s steely stare. It was plain that neither man had any use for the other. Angel sensed the animosity and tried to defuse the situation. After all, the majority of Najera’s personal guard were aware that if it had not been for Tolliver, the Mexican casualties would probably have been much higher.

Angel ignored Raúl’s look of displeasure, accepted the matches, and then enjoyed a smoke. “Ah, you should have seen it, Raúl. Señor Tolliver led the americanos and their Ranger escort right into our trap. We waited until they were under our guns, and then”—he clapped his hands together for effect—“we let them have it!” He shook his head, and his face all but beamed when he spoke of the slaughter. “We cut them down. Within minutes it was finished and they were all dead. No prisoners.” He glanced at Mariano Rincón for substantiation. The mestizo shrugged and glanced at Salcedo.

“We killed them all,” he concurred.

Tolliver’s partner, Lucker Dobbs, looped the reins of his mount over the rail. Dobbs, at forty-one, was a steady hand in a fight. He’d spent a lifetime hitting and getting hit. It showed in his battered, ugly features and in his sloped shoulders and shuffling gait, which made his six-foot frame appear smaller. Lucker had a fondness for whiskey and women and other men’s gold. A seasoned Indian fighter, he had chased Comanches from the Big Bend to the Staked Plains and was wholly fearless. He was older than Tolliver by more than a decade, but frequently followed Tolliver’s lead. Both men had joined the Rangers less than a year ago, and in that time had come within a hair’s breadth of being expelled for their lack of basic virtues—honesty, integrity, and devotion to duty. However, the war had a use for such men of violence, and when the Rangers headed south with General Zachary Taylor’s army, Lucker Dobbs and Ned Tolliver tagged along.

Dobbs’s cheek was usually swollen by a plug of tobacco that he continually chewed, and he often punctuated his brief remarks by spewing a brown stream of tobacco juice into the nearest spittoon whenever one was handy. The ground, the base of a hitching post, or the nearest anthill also served as targets for his foul habit from time to time. The big man’s beard was stained dark from his spittle.

Dobbs dismounted and sauntered up to stand alongside Ned Tolliver. Each of the two gringos was armed with a pair of Patterson Colts, and each had a bowie knife tucked in a belly sheath at his midsection. Thanks to their perfidy, General Najera and several of his men were similarly armed, though they had acquired their weapons from the bodies of the deserters’ slain comrades.

“Well, it looks like this here place is home,” Dobbs said, eyeing the word “cantina” at the corner of the building. He appeared unaware of Salcedo’s distrust and immune to the young gunman’s dislike. Lucker Dobbs was thirsty, and that occupied his attention.

“It’s where the money is,” Tolliver added, noting that Najera had disappeared within the doors of the hotel. He gestured to a tousle-haired boy standing off to the side, a dark-featured youth not yet in his teens. “Take these two horses to the stables, boy. See they’re watered, fed, and brushed down.” He thumbed a silver coin toward the boy, who caught the money in mid-flight and hurried to take the reins of the two horses.

“Come, señors, I will buy the first drink in honor of our friendship,” Angel said, and led the way into the Casa del Noche.

Raúl shook his head in disgust as the trio disappeared into the hotel’s cool interior. Mariano Rincón scratched his belly and then patted the walnut grip of the Colt he had taken off a Ranger’s corpse. He was delighted with the weapon and wore it tucked in his belt in cross-draw fashion, butt forward on his left thigh.