The Red Ripper (29 page)

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Authors: Kerry Newcomb

BOOK: The Red Ripper
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“WHO ARE YOU?”
It was late morning, the twenty-first day of April. The sun traced its hazy lazy arc across the sky, bathed the land in a golden glow that the moist grasses captured and sent deep into the nourishing earth. There was a feeling in the air, a promise of a warm spring day when trees bud and flowers bloom and the great green fuse of rebirth ripples through the land. It would have been a day to celebrate life, except for William Wallace, standing tall and proud and quite alone in the field between two armies, his knives drawn, his whole being focused on the task before him.
Word spread quickly through the camp, passed along by runners from cookfire to tent, and soon it seemed every man, woman, and child crowded the breastworks to watch the strange sight of that solitary figure standing alone in the meadow, about thirty feet beyond the Texican lines, in full view of the Mexican encampment. But no one across the way had yet to raise an alarm. The sentries, exhausted from their efforts the day before, were asleep at their posts.
The crowd of Texicans parted for Sam Houston, who stared dumbfounded at the frontiersman. “What in heaven's name?” He turned, spied Mad Jack and Roberto, and asked them to bring Wallace back to the encampment. Esperanza arrived at the makeshift fortifications
and gasped in horror at the sight of William standing within range of the Mexican sharpshooters. She caught Flambeau by the arm.
“What's the matter with him? How long has he been standing there?”
“I left him sharpening his knives. Last night,” Mad Jack said. “I guess he got a good edge on them and needed something else to do.” He followed Roberto over the mounded dirt and trotted across the long grass to stand at Wallace's side.
It was quiet out here in the field. The birds had ceased their chirping. Even the insects seemed to be avoiding the clearing. This was old country, Wallace reflected, and treacherous, but with a primal beauty all of its own. Of course, standing here in plain sight of Santa Anna's guns was hardly the way to appreciate the season. “Amigo?” Roberto Zavala said, cautiously drawing near. “What are you doing? Santa Anna has enough marksmen to fill you full of lead.”
“Reckon they're asleep. The whole camp hasn't stirred.” Wallace carried no rifle or pistol. But the short sword, Bonechucker, gleamed in his right hand, and in his left Old Butch, slender and deadly. The blades were thirsty. And Wallace was through running. It was time.
He untied the scarf about his neck; the breeze carried it back toward the Texican camp. His left leg was throbbing, the legacy of the wound he had suffered a month earlier. But the pain would leave as soon as he started to move. “I think I'll take me a walk over there,” he said, with a look in Mad Jack's direction. “What do you say, old man? Have you got one more broadside in you?”
The buccaneer nodded and began to prime the flintlock pistols dangling from a belt he wore draped across his shoulder. “I should like my coat,” the freebooter said. He preferred to be completely dressed for battle. His
ruffled black shirt smelled of Henneke's rosewater. Well, at least he'd die fragrant.
“You both are loco,” Roberto said. Then he shrugged. “I guess I am crazy, too.” Roberto ran back to the fortifications and told one of the men to hand him a rifle, powder, and shot.
Sam Houston was becoming more flustered with every passing minute. He shoved his way along the earthenworks. “Zavala? I wanted you to bring him in.”
“No offense, General Sam, but señor Wallace has other ideas. And I'm not about to try and stop him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean William Wallace ain't running anymore. He's taking a walk over yonder. And I'm going with him. Mad Jack, too.”
“And me!” Jesus Zavala called out, joining his son. He scrambled over the fortification.
“I'll come along,” Robert Kania spoke up. He had a father to avenge. Now was as good a day as any.
Wallace remained, sunlight warming his face—the beauty of the world transfixed him; ghosts whispered in his mind. He closed his eyes and relived a moment on the Mexican coast, below Veracruz, after the storm and the shipwreck, when he stood with Samuel and for one brief moment the two brothers gloried in being alive with the sea at their backs and all their dreams before them. Juan Diego Guadiz had ended all that. It was time to set the matter straight. For Samuel, for Don Murillo, and for all the rest.
A breeze ruffled Wallace's open shirt, dried the moisture on his sculpted chest, tugged at his long red hair that looked like a crown of fire. He glanced over his shoulder and was startled to see he was no longer alone in the meadow. William had been joined by nearly a thousand men who had formed a few paces behind him and arranged themselves along the front of the earthenworks.
He spied Esperanza; the woman had climbed a wagon so that he might see her. She had retrieved his scarf and held it over her head like a banner, raised aloft as if to salute him. Behind the lines, Sam Houston had ordered his white charger saddled and brought forward.
Wallace didn't feel like waiting. “Remember the Alamo,” he said. And started forward.
The phrase was passed from man to man, echoed like a somber benediction repeated again and again, up and down the line, growing in strength and intensity and volume. Rage was their fuel. It welled in their breasts, put steel in their backbones, billowed over in a rising tide of hatred as the Mexican lines drew closer and closer. Wallace led the Texicans over the makeshift breastworks and awakened the dozing guards just long enough to kill them.
“Remember the Alamo!”
And now the weary Mexicans struggled out of their tents and stumbled toward their stacked muskets only to be cut down in a withering volley from the Texicans' rifles. Dragoons and lancers staggered into the sunlight and tried to chase down their horses, then abandoned the effort in an attempt to repel the attack and fight on foot. More than a hundred men tried to form a skirmish line. Jesus Zavala and the townspeople of San Felipe smashed into them, firing at point-blank range, shattering their ranks, clubbing, clawing, hacking with tomahawks and hunting knives. Pistols at close range took their toll. The attackers fired and reloaded on the run. There was no stopping them. By the time Sam Houston astride Saracen galloped into the Mexican camp the issue had already been decided.
“Remember the Alamo!” rang out above the din, a terrible battle cry that meant no quarter. Rage unleashed. Men were driven berserk, their full fury at last unleashed.
And none was more deadly than the redheaded demon in their midst.
Wallace darted and slashed and lunged and stabbed. Men died before him. They never had a chance. He was like some force of nature, unstoppable, immune to the efforts of mere mortals. Musket balls thick as hornets nipped at his clothing; bayonets and lances sought him out. But his blades of steel carved a bloody path through the camp.
“Guadiz!” he cried out. “Guadiz!” his voice boomed. A familiar face flashed before him, the brute ugly Sergeant Obregon. “I see you still wear my brand!” Wallace shouted.
Cayetano Obregon touched the red streak of scar tissue disfiguring his cheek. The man was shirtless, his chest, gut, and shoulders black with matted hair. Recognizing Wallace, Obregon could no longer contain himself. He grabbed a ten-foot lance from the ground, trained the broad iron point at Wallace, and charged forward. William chopped the weapon in half with a single swipe of Bonechucker's heavy blade. Obregon could not reverse his course. He swung the shaft at the knife fighter. Wallace closed in and stabbed left—right—left— right in rapid succession, driving Obregon backward with each thrust of those terrible weapons. Obregon's eyes widened, his chest red from shoulder to waist. He stumbled back, slipped in the mud, and collapsed in a patch of spike moss. A Texican ran past, caved in the sergeant's skull with the butt of his rifle, and charged off after another victim.
Obregon was never far from Guadiz. An inner voice told Wallace to look to the right. He obeyed his instinct and came face-to-face with Juan Diego. The mortal enemies spied each other through the drifting haze of powder smoke.
Guadiz raised his pistol and snapped off a shot. A
colonist bolted in front of William and unwittingly saved the big man's life at the expense of his own. The wounded man staggered, clutched his side, cried out his mother's name, and sank to the ground.
Juan Diego cursed and tossed the pistol aside and drew his saber.
Wallace charged him. But it wasn't going to be that easy. At a signal from Guadiz half a dozen men rushed forward to intercept the big man. Wallace slashed the first soldier who came within striking distance, then caught his opponent by the front of his uniform and used him for a shield as two other soldiers lunged forward, thrusting their bayonets into their hapless
compadre.
With their muskets caught in the dead man's chest, Wallace leaped on his victims and slammed their skulls together, staggering the men. He whirled and dived to the ground as the remaining three dragoons fired a volley into their companions. The men drew their pistols and tried to bring them into play when a scarred old blue heeler leaped out of the acrid pall drifting over the meadow. The hound clamped his jaws around the first calf muscle he came to. Wallace leaped to his feet and was on them like a great cat. Old Butch and Bonechucker were his claws and fangs. He cut and jabbed. One man stumbled away, cradling his useless arm, blood pouring down his side, Lucky nipping at his heels. The other two died hard. They grabbed knives from their belts and attacked together. Wallace threw his dirk underhanded and skewered one man.
“Come on!” Wallace roared. The last soldier was too proud to run. No matter. Wallace would have caught him from behind. He grabbed the soldier by the throat and flung him to the ground and pinned him there, driving the short sword deep into his chest. When the man quit wriggling, Wallace withdrew the blade, retrieved the dirk, and started off after Juan Diego.
He spied the colonel making a dash for the trees. Guadiz had joined a rout that was already under way. Wallace's gaze swept the camp. Mexican soldiers were scattering in every direction, hounded by wild-eyed Texicans hell-bent on revenge. The slaughter was terrible. He noticed Sam Houston being helped down from horseback. The general was favoring his right ankle. A swirl of powder smoke obscured Wallace's vision. No matter. He had business elsewhere. He couldn't let Guadiz escape yet again.
As Wallace took off in pursuit of Juan Diego, his sister rose from the ground where she had been pretending to be dead. Paloma was dressed as a soldier, her hair bound beneath her cap, pistol and saber slung from her waist. She raised the pistol and drew a bead on Wallace's back. At this range she wasn't about to miss.
“With this I put an end to your torments,
mi hermano
,” she muttered and squeezed the trigger. A cutlass blade batted the gun upward, and she fired harmlessly into the air. Paloma cursed and swung around to find herself face-to-face with Mad Jack Flambeau. The pirate looked possessed. His lips curled back and in that moment he was riding the seas once more, the scourge of the Caribbean, in a time when the decks ran red with blood and there was no mercy beneath the black flag.
Paloma did not like what she saw in the old man's expression. She retreated a step, swept the cap from her head to reveal her long hair. “Wait. I am a woman.” Paloma never expected to die. No one ever does.
“I don't care,” said the Butcher of Barbados and ran her through. He never gave the dying woman another thought but stepped over her body and looked for someone else to kill. He spied Roberto emerging from a tent, dragging a docile-looking peon who had probably been some officer's servant. Mad Jack thought the man looked familiar and hurried over to Zavala's side.
“Back off, Mad Jack. This man has surrendered. Besides, he is just a servant. He can do no one any harm. Let him get back home as best he can.” Roberto motioned for the man to go.
Flambeau blocked the prisoner's path. He jabbed the cutlass against the peon's chest and forced the innocent-looking servant to stand back.
“Not him. You might want to escort him over to Houston.”
“Why?” Roberto looked puzzled.
“Because, my lad, you have just captured
el presidente.”
 
Guadiz slogged through the swamp until he reached the San Jacinto, where he saw a number of the lancers he had commanded attempting to ford the river. He almost called out, but a commotion in the woods caused him to duck out of sight. Moments later an armed mob of Texicans came barreling out of the underbrush and arranged themselves along the riverbank.
They opened fire on the fleeing lancers. Juan Diego watched in horror as the soldiers pleaded for mercy only to be shot down in cold blood by men who had been pushed too far and couldn't stop the killing. Santa Anna's army had slaughtered their loved ones, burned their homes and villages. Now the chickens had come home to roost. It was the time for vengeance, and there would be no stopping the carnage until the last man had paid the price. So the soldiers died in the shallows, died wading in the channel, died crawling up the opposite bank, their bodies sliding down the muddy embankment.

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