Warriors of the Night (24 page)

Ben’s horse slammed into a club-wielding warrior and the man went down with a muffled scream of agony as the horse caved in his ribs. The animal lost its footing and stumbled forward. Ben brought the animal’s head up and saved himself not only a fall, but certain death.

The attackers had fallen back in disarray from the onslaught of mounted riders and the deep-sided freight wagon, which was afire with the rattle of guns. Anabel tried to pick her targets and carefully squeezed off round after round, but the wagon had too uneven a ride and it was all she could do to stay erect, grip the sides of the wagon, and space her shots as best she could.

Peter Abbot managed to prop himself up and blasted away at the enemy. Matt Abbot knelt by his son, fired a shot, fell, hauled himself upright, and fired again. “Damn it, Gandy,” he shouted as the wagon jolted and bounded.

“Look out!” Gandy shouted back, sliding off the seat and scrunching down into the wagon box. Another flurry of obsidian-tipped spears battered the wagon. Guns blazed. Anabel saw a warrior spin and fall. Another attempted to leap into the wagon. Peter rose up and shot the man. The brave screamed and fell backward and disappeared beneath the wheels. Miguel, alongside Anabel, emptied one revolver and grabbed another from his coat. Chico crouched at the end of the wagon and struggled to unjam the cylinder on his Patterson Colt. A cap had fallen off the nipple and lodged in the hammer mechanism. A spear caught him between the shoulder blades. He straightened, dropped his gun, and tried to claw at the shaft jutting from his back, then sank forward onto the wagon bed. Miguel turned and tugged on the spear. Chico screamed as the obsidian blade broke off in his back. Miguel tossed the spear shaft over the side of the wagon. Chico looked up and Anabel scrambled to his side to cradle his head.

He was trying to speak. His lips moved, formed words, but the thunder of guns and clatter of the wagon drowned out his voice.

“What?” Anabel said. “I can’t hear you. I can’t hear!” He sagged in her arms and his head rested against her breast. She shook him. His eyes continued to stare blankly into space. Matt Abbot clapped a hand on her shoulder, turned her around, and shoved a loaded revolver in her hands.

“He’s dead. You can’t do any more for him. Here, help yourself.” Anabel took the gun and crawled back to her place near the wagon seat.

Gandy clambered up onto the bench seat. “We’re clear,” he shouted. The ground sped past. The warriors surrounding the hacienda gave chase, but afoot could not hope to catch the horses. “Nothing but open road,” the one-eyed Ranger shouted. “By jingo, we’re free!”

Almost. Then the gelding collapsed, a broken spear shaft protruding from the animal’s side. When the animal died, the singletree and hitching post twisted, the wagon lurched violently to the left, and the harness buckled and broke. The wagon’s momentum carried it over the gelding’s carcass.

“Jump for it!” Gandy shouted, releasing the reins.

The others didn’t have a choice. With a resounding crash, the freight wagon flipped over. One moment, Anabel was clinging to the side, the next she was briefly airborne, and then she was tumbling into the dirt.

Ben heard the crash and swung around as the freight wagon flipped and rolled completely over. When it came to rest its spinning wheels were like the appendages of some sort of insect lying on its back, dying, and clawing at the air. The Warriors of the Night abandoned the hacienda and swarmed toward the overturned wagon. In a manner of minutes they’d reach Anabel and the others.

Jorge galloped past Ben and raced off to rescue the señorita he devotedly served. But the only thing that would really help any of them was to end the fighting. And Ben knew the only way to accomplish that. “Jorge, no!” Too late. Ben turned his mount. Forty yards away, Fire Giver watched them from his fiery vantage point. The shaman’s voice ebbed and swelled in a frightening chant.

“Well, Lieutenant, what’ll she be?” Clay Poole hollered. Blood seeped from a gash on his cheek.

“Ha-yah-hey. Let it be said we walked the path,” Spotted Calf called out. “Bitter Creek—is it not time to fight or die?”

Action spoke louder than words. Ben’s horse reared and pawed the air and charged past the Comanche and Clay Poole. But both men quickly followed Ben’s lead. They rode straight for the shaman. Whatever else happened, the god must die, or all was lost.

Miguel staggered out of the night and hurried toward the Appaloosa where it stood trapped in its leather traces, unable to break free of the harness post and the dead gelding. Both of the animal’s forelegs were battered and bruised, but the stallion seemed sound enough. Miguel Ybarbo wasn’t about to be picky. The Appaloosa was his escape from the canyon, and nothing else mattered. He pulled a knife from his boot and proceeded to feverishly slice the tangled leather harness. Sweat and blood mingled on his forehead where he had raked himself across ocotillo cacti when the wagon flipped. It hurt like hell, but not as much as having your heart torn out. Miguel was not about to share the fate of his brother.

“Leave the horse. Come back to the wagon. We need every gun.”

Miguel froze at the sound of Anabel’s voice and the click of a gun hammer being thumbed back. “I no longer follow you,” he replied without turning around. “I ride for myself.”

“Get back to the wagon,” Anabel repeated. “We will need the horse for the wounded.”

“You mean the damn gringos,” Miguel snapped. He cut through the last couple of harness straps.

“I mean the wounded,” Anabel repeated.

Miguel stared past the Appaloosa to the nightmarish figure of the shaman wreathed in flames atop the mound of boulders. No, Miguel wasn’t staying just so he could be another sacrificial victim for the shaman’s dark god. He gathered up the reins with his left hand and with his right returned the knife to his boot sheath, then straightened and reached inside his torn jacket. His hand closed round the wooden grip of a short-barreled, single-shot percussion pistol. As he made no move toward the holstered Colt revolver on his hip, Anabel suspected no treachery from the desperate young vaquero.

Suddenly he spun around, his right hand snaked out, and the short-barreled belly gun spat flame. Anabel fired at the same instant. Then there was silence.

Snake Eye reached down and dragged Peter to the safety of the overturned wagon. Matt scrambled up alongside his son. All three men hurriedly reloaded. Peter had a clumsy time of it. His fall had opened his shoulder wound, and it needed rebandaging. Gandy peered over the edge of the wagon, his ugly features framed by the spokes of a wagon wheel.

“They’re coming. Reckon they smell the blood,” he said.

“Look there.” Peter Abbot had his back to the wagon and pointed toward the shaman in his circle of fire and the three horsemen bearing down on the boulder-strewn rubble.

“There you go, Brass Buttons,” the Ranger muttered. “Aim steady and watch your backside.” Snake Eye hunkered down and finished reloading his guns. Like his two companions, he was preparing to sell his life for as high a price as possible.

Ben leaped down from his horse and ran toward the rocks, with Clay Poole and Spotted Calf at his side. The mound of boulders loomed dark and forbidding, and from his fire-lit dais the shaman taunted them in a language the three men could not understand. But his gestures and tone were unmistakable. From out of the darkness, warriors dislodged from beneath ledges and behind boulders. In a matter of seconds Ben McQueen was fighting for his life. A man leaped out and swung a war club that opened a gash across Ben’s chest. The warrior darted closer and slashed at the big man. Ben parried the blow with his strong left arm and shot the man in the chest. The warrior flopped against a boulder and slid down with his legs outsplayed. A second warrior landed on Ben’s shoulders and knocked him to the ground. The warrior tried to knife his fallen foe, but Ben twisted away, forced an arm free, fired up into the man’s masked features, and tossed the lifeless corpse aside.

Clay Poole emptied his revolver into the throng. He dropped a man with a bullet to the shoulder, gut-shot a second. He split a skull, eagle headdress and all, with his iron-bladed tomahawk. He drove forward, firing and slashing and leaving a trail of dead and dying, until a spear caught him high in the chest and a second one low in the abdomen. He staggered backward, toppled over a boulder, and dropped to the floor of the canyon.

Ben emptied one revolver, then drew his second and charged up the same trail Poole had tried. Warriors rose up to kill him, but he shot them as they came. Spotted Calf appeared at his side as the warriors, determined to protect their high priest, attacked like a pack of wild beasts. But the warriors were not the only men driven to blood fury this night. Ben and Spotted Calf stood back to back among the rocks just a few feet below the burning underbrush illuminating Fire Giver in his circle of power. Revolvers thundered, each shot seeming to claim a victim, and when the guns were empty, Ben drew the double-edged Arkansas toothpick. The Comanche swung his rifle like a club. He crushed the skull of one man, broke the neck of another. Ben parried and slashed. The heavy, razor-sharp blade sliced flesh, shattered bone, and became crimson to the hilt.

Fire Giver looked down in dismay as his warriors died. Taking his great axe, he swung it overhead and hurled it at the men below. The chiseled obsidian blade struck Spotted Calf between his neck and collarbone. The Comanche stumbled, sank to his knees, and fell face forward, dead before he struck dirt. Ben buried his knife up to the hilt in a short, powerfully built warrior with a split lip and breath that smelled of dried blood. He lost his hold on the knife as the warrior fell away. Then turning Ben saw the Comanche lying dead.

“No!” he roared out, and battering free of the last of the shaman’s defenders, he scrambled up the remaining few yards and leaped the fiery barrier to stand upon the table rock opposite Fire Giver.

The shaman had blackened himself with a paste of ashes and blood. His eyes burned with divine rage as he drew the
tecpatl
, the sacred knife, from beneath his cloak. His waist-length hair was matted with dried blood. He was strong and lithe, like his totem animal, the jaguar. He prepared to strike, to fight viciously to the death.

Ben stripped away the remnants of his shirt. His powerful physique was crisscrossed with gashes. The pain only fueled his fury. The savage in his blood had come to the fore. And it had come to kill.

Fire Giver lunged. Ben tried to leap out of harm’s way but lost a strip of flesh in the process. The ceremonial knife had tasted blood. Fire Giver danced back and circled the larger man. He touched the knife to his lips and smeared his mouth with Ben’s blood. The two men continued to stalk one another, to feint and dart back, looking for an opening, a weakness.

“Come on,” Ben said, waving the shaman forward. “Come on, you bastard. Here I am. You have the knife. But it won’t save you. Not this day!”

Fire Giver halted. He raised the sacrificial knife overhead and began to softly chant. It was an unnerving display. The man was drawing the power of his dark god down upon him. He touched the knife to his heart and then pointed it directly at Ben.

The moment of truth, Ben cautioned himself. Live or die, here and now. The medal on his naked chest caught the firelight and seemed to glow with a life all its own. Ben closed his hand around the talisman, the legacy of the McQueens. The pain from his wounds lessened as renewed strength flowed into his limbs. Though some might call it madness, Ben knew the medal itself and the legacy of courage it represented were the source of his rejuvenation.

Fire Giver attacked, seeking a quick thrust to disembowel his enemy. The shaman was a panther. He was a blur of quickness and skill. But for all the shaman’s savage swiftness, Ben was faster. He caught the shaman’s outstretched arm, turned and twisted and snapped Fire Giver’s wrist. The knife clattered to the stone. The shaman howled in pain. Ben caught him by the throat, first gripping him with one hand and then with both, and raised the man aloft. Fire Giver managed a feeble shriek as Ben’s fingers dug into his flesh and closed off his windpipe. The shaman kicked Ben until his sides were purple with bruises. Ben would not let go. The shaman rained blow after blow upon Ben’s shoulders and head. Ben would not let go. The shaman’s fingernails, like talons, raked the arms that held him until the limbs ran red with blood. And still Ben would not loose his hold.

“Damn you,” said Ben through clenched teeth.
Enough killing. Enough! The slaughter must stop.
“Die! Die! Die!” He lost all sense of time. He only knew that he must not ease up. Muscles corded the length of his biceps, back, forearms, and belly.

Wreathed in flames for all to see, the Fire Giver’s struggles grew feeble. Patterns of light danced before his eyes. He saw the face of a leering human.
Impossible.
His legs dangled loose now. His arms slowly sank to his sides and hung lifelessly.

Five minutes, or was it ten? Time had no meaning. On the canyon floor the gunfire ceased. Ben took no notice, but stood as one transfixed staring into the bulging eyes of a dead man. He could not look away. His fingers felt leaden, his back muscles ached horribly, and still he would not release his hold. He did not even notice how still the canyon had become. He paid no mind to the warriors who had abandoned their assault and who now filed past the mound of boulders and the two men in the firelight, the shaman and his destroyer.

Young Serpent led his remaining clansmen out of the canyon. The night of blood was ended. The shaman’s own death had been the looked-for sign. The blood-eating god had claimed his own and was appeased. Young Serpent was certain. It was time to begin the journey home. The curse had been lifted by quest and sacrifice. In a matter of minutes the Warriors of the Night had left the canyon, slipping away like shadows, like the vestiges of some terrible dream.

“Son.” It was Gandy’s voice. He had climbed the rock slide and kicked a path through the burning underbrush. “Son. Put him down now. It’s over.”

Ben blinked. His body shuddered as if he were coming out of a trance. Fire Giver’s corpse slumped to the table rock, a lifeless husk of a man, dead at McQueen’s feet. Ben stumbled forward. His voice was hoarse and tinged with sadness. His movements were clumsy now, the result of his spent rage.