The Arrow Keeper’s Song (28 page)

“Antonio is awake. I think he can handle the journey to Santiago,” Joanna said. She handed Tom the cup. Coffee sloshed onto his knuckles, and he quickly took a sip, taking care not to scald his tongue in the process. Joanna had added a healthy dollop of rum to the coffeepot, and its effect was instantaneous. Tom immediately straightened up and gave her a sharp look.

“Something to get the blood going,” she said, grinning.

Tom gasped as the jack iron went coursing down his gullet. “Yes, ma'am,” he gasped. “The very thing to wake the others.” For a moment he was at ease, and the images of yesterday laid to rest.

She relaxed against the corral gate and took a moment to enjoy the peace of the morning in Tom's company. The woman from New Orleans could not say she had been happy hiding there in Rosarita. There were too many memories of those who had ridden out never to return. But the mountains were lovely and deep, rugged bastions that had protected Celestial and his rebels for many a month. This was an old land, upthrust from the sea in aeons past, a place whose pockets of stillness were seldom intruded upon. She regretted none of the decisions she had made. And yet, standing there in the gray dawn, she began to sense a wind of change, that the path of her life was about to branch and take her elsewhere.

She glanced aside at her companion, a man she hardly knew, yet had come to respect and sympathize with. He seemed so lost.…

The humor drained from Tom's expression, and he straightened and tossed the contents of the cup aside, then strode purposely toward the plaza, his jaw set firm, his mouth a grim slash in a face filled with purpose. His whole body seemed poised, coiled tight, ready to explode. Joanna heard nothing but the silence, saw nothing but the same looming hills of the day before. Yet Tom appeared suddenly tense with expectation.

His flesh tingled, muscles tightened, and the sound of his own breath was a roar. He saw flashes of fire. He felt pain. He heard the sound of screaming men, and there was blood on the moon. And when he turned, his eyes blazed with intensity. He saw Joanna take a step back, unnerved by his behavior.

“We must leave. Now.” He glanced at the casita and the men who had yet to awaken, as if the village itself had placed them under some sort of spell. “Now!” And his voice cracked like a rifle shot and shattered the peace.

Half an hour later the team of geldings had been harnessed to the single tree, and Philo, grumbling and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, drove the wagon around in front of the casita. The patrol had been awakened by Tom's outburst and galvanized into action by his relentless energy. Horses were saddled and cups of steaming black coffee gulped down with total disregard for the cost to mouths and throats. To their eyes Tom Sandcrane was a man possessed whom no one wanted to cross, though Enos Stump Horn came the closest. He did not take well to being ordered about, a quality that had already landed him in trouble since enlisting in the Indian Brigade. As Tully Crow and Willem Tangle Hair proceeded to carry Celestial outside, Enos blocked their path.

“Sandcrane has lost his senses. I doubt there's another living soul between us and Santiago,” Enos said, glowering. He held a bottle of run, which he tilted to his lips. He drained the contents, then tossed it aside, where it shattered against the wall of the casita.

“Liquor talk will get you into trouble, Enos. It always has. Now, stand aside.”

Enos wagged his head no. Willem sighed and nodded to Tully, and the two men lowered the cot.

“In my opinion the sergeant's caution is justified. Perhaps we ought to heed his urgency,” Celestial said from the doorway. He had insisted on walking to the wagon, as a matter of pride.

“This is none of your goddamn concern,” Enos gruffly remarked, dismissing the Cuban outright.

“Ah, but you are in my country, friend. And everything here is my concern,” Celestial said.

“The horses need rest. We all do. The valley has water and good grass … we're safe here.” Enos once again addressed the men with the cot.

“Why don't you stay then, if this place appeals to you so?” Tully said. “Look. Maybe Tom's acting a mite peculiar. But he's wearing the stripes. Hell, I never met a young fella I'd sooner follow, so get out of the way.”

Enos and Tully Crow seemed about to come to blows. Willem figured it was up to him to defuse the situation, as nothing would be gained by fighting each other.

“You heard him,” Willem added.

“You siding with Sandcrane and these others?” Enos asked in disbelief. “I figured I could count on you, Tangle Hair.”

Willem shook his head, then clapped his companion on the shoulder. “Let's just say I'm
not
siding with you. Tom Sandcrane isn't the man I remember. Maybe he's changed. Or maybe I'm just learning to see him better.” The half-breed Cheyenne stooped over and picked up his side of the cot. Tully followed suit, and the two men brushed Enos aside, then continued over to the freight wagon while Stump Horn grudgingly climbed astride his mount. The man perched unsteadily in the saddle and Willem, taking notice, only added to the Cheyenne's embarrassment with an offhand remark.

“Bets you keep out of the rum, Enos. We've got some thirsty miles ahead.”

Celestial, following close behind his cot, tried to hoist himself up over the wagon side. Just as he was about to fall backward, Willem and Tully caught him by the arms. The Cuban's features were drawn tight in a mask of pain as he was lifted into the wagon bed, deposited in a corner, and propped against a sack of provisions, his legs splayed out before him, a line of perspiration forming at his hairline.

“Just rest easy. Prop your feet on the dynamite if you've a mind to,” Philo jovially called back to his passenger. Underhill peered over his shoulder and grinned at Celestial's alarmed expression.

Joanna appeared in the doorway, medical bag in hand. She hurried to the wagon and stood alongside the rebel leader. “Just a few days of this and we'll be in Santiago.”

“In time to see the Spaniards driven into the sea, I hope,” Celestial replied. He noted the woman seemed to be looking past him and, turning in the direction of her stare, saw Tom astride his gelding in the center of the plaza. What was he watching for? What did he know that escaped the rest of them?

“A most peculiar man,” Celestial observed.

“The others are beginning to think him a trifle mad,” Joanna said.

“And you?”

“Perhaps he is. Perhaps we all are.”

“Sight beyond seeing …”

“What?” Joanna frowned, perplexed by his choice of words. Years of violence had taken their toll. There was a time when the gentleness in him had been difficult to find; once a man of letters and an intellectual, revolution had transformed him into a killer. But months of discomfort, incapacitated as he was by his injured back, had allowed Celestial to become more introspective and to recover some of the attributes of his former life.

“I have seen it before among my own people. There are among us ones who have sight beyond seeing. Some call it a gift from God, a blessing—a curse, others might say.”

“And you, Antonio?”

“Ah. What do I know of God …?” The Cuban sighed, dismissing his own explanation with a shrug. But Joanna wasn't so easily fooled. She refused to believe the rebel had allowed his heart to become so hardened.

“Now what's gotten into Tom?” Philo muttered. Joanna looked up and saw the statuelike figure in the center of the village had come to life and left the plaza to ride off toward the valley's western entrance.

“I tell you, the man is
masanee
!” Enos growled, and with a savage tug on the reins of his gelding, rode off after Sandcrane. Joanna glanced at Willem for a translation, and the red-haired Cheyenne tapped his finger to his temple, a gesture the doctor immediately understood.

Tom halted about fifty yards from where the woods played out in a scattering of logwood trees that cast welcome patches of shade upon the tall grass and reeds. In the trees near the base of a humpbacked ridge, a meandering trickle of water bled into the meadow and softened the ground underfoot. He could smell the spring, the sodden, rotting blades of grass beneath the sorrel's hooves, tree bark drying in the sun, the oiled walnut rifle stock in his hand.

And he listened as a hunter listens, searching, straining to identify each and every sound borne on the breeze. The rustling leaves, the clatter of branches rubbing together, bird cry and whirring bee, something scurrying through the under-brush. And something more … horses?

“Sandcrane!” Enos bellowed from back down the trail. The name reverberated from the walls.

Much to Tom's chagrin, Stump Horn reined in his mount alongside the sorrel. Tom glared angrily at the man and motioned for him to be still. Behind them the sun topped the hills and poured its molten gold light across the valley floor. For a few moments, in the light of a new day, the deserted village called Rosarita positively glowed. The tableau was a thing of beauty, radiant and not the least bit threatening.

“We need to rest the horses, or they'll never last till Santiago. I'm not about to be stranded afoot in these damn mountains just because you panicked,” Enos complained.

The distinct odor of rum assailed Tom's nostrils. Obviously, the man had downed more than one cup of Joanna's coffee. Perhaps he had gone straight to the source, Tom thought, and taken his spirits full-strength. The alcohol was already beginning to take effect, but then, Enos, for all his size, had never been one to hold his liquor.

“Shut up, you fool!” Tom hissed. He had heard … something … other than Stump Horn's gelding. A trick of the wind or loose rocks clattering down the nearby bluffs? Or horses?

But Enos was on the prod. Half an hour ago he had emptied the last of the rum down his gullet. That was plenty of time for the alcohol to take effect. And things were only going to get worse. On a drunk, Enos was a storm that had to play itself out, a gale full of bite and bluster looking for something to flatten. It might take a good hour or two for a man to sober up, Tom ruefully considered. However, this time fate itself lent a hand.

“Look, you!” Enos exclaimed in a booming voice. “The sun's barely topped the hills, and you've got us running from shadows and—”

A rifle cracked. Enos's head jerked back suddenly, and he dropped from horseback in a spray of blood as his gelding pawed and bucked, then broke toward town.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

T
OM
S
ANDCRANE FOUGHT THE SORREL AND WITH A SAVAGE
pull on the reins brought the animal under control as a second rifle shot rang out and something hot and deadly fanned the Cheyenne's cheek. He brought the Krag to bear on a solitary figure, a Spaniard dressed in a tan uniform with a black bandolier full of cartridges for the Mauser whose bolt action had momentarily jammed. The man looked up in alarm, his sunburned features a patch of brown in Tom's sights.

Squeeze the trigger, you damn fool
, Tom inwardly cursed himself. And yet it is not an easy thing to take a life. There had been confrontations in the past when he had brandished a gun; he had bluffed Jerel Tall Bull in the shadow of Panther Hall, but the incident had been resolved peacefully. Suddenly Tom was confronted with the reality of this war he had so cavalierly joined. And in that moment of truth he hesitated, despite the risk to himself.

The Spaniard could not believe his good fortune and called over his shoulder for his unseen companions to join him. The man pried the errant shell from the chamber of his Mauser, slid the bolt home, and slapped the rifle to his shoulder. The Krag roared before the Spaniard could settle his sights, and a seven-millimeter round ripped through his chest. The slug's impact caused the Spaniard to fire wild. He twisted and slid out of the saddle but managed to land on his feet. Releasing his hold on the Mauser, he clawed at the reins with his numb fingers, then sank to his knees and bowed forward until his forehead touched the earth. He took his last breath in this attitude of supplication.

Tom chambered another shell and studied the woods, prepared to answer any other attempts on his life. His heart hammered in his chest, his breath coming in short, hurried gasps.

“C'mon, damn you,” he muttered. “I'm ready for you.”

Before long his request was answered. Five Spaniards, then seven, then a dozen and more came charging out of the woods, their rifles spewing flame and gun smoke. Dirt geysers erupted all around the Cheyenne.

“The hell with this!” Tom muttered, his defiance wilting before the Spaniard's onslaught. “I'm no Dog Soldier.” He wheeled about on the sorrel and pointed the gelding toward Rosarita. In the distance Stump Horn's mount, galloping full out, had already reached the plaza. Tom leaped Enos's crumpled form and drove his heels into the gelding's sides, urging the animal to even greater speed. But he hadn't gone far when Tom heard his name ring out above the rifle fire.

“Sandcrane!”

Oh, damn
. Tom glanced back and saw Enos stagger to his feet, blood pouring from a gash along the side of his head and staining the man's tunic crimson. Tom brought the sorrel about and galloped back to Enos as bullets continued to fill the air like so many angry wasps. Stump Horn seemed surprised that Tom should risk his life to aid him. But the big man didn't bother to question Tom's motives or voice his thanks. Enos leaped up behind Tom, who lost no time in turning the sorrel toward the deserted village. Sandcrane's gelding was a sturdy, long-legged animal with a fluid stride that, despite the extra burden of another rider, increased the distance between Tom and his pursuers. But it was an agonizingly slow process, for the Spaniards were much closer now, charging headlong, determined to apprehend their blue-coated prey or shoot him down. For all its speed, the gelding couldn't outrun a bullet.

Staring into the glare of the sun, Tom could barely make out the freight wagon and the rest of the patrol in the village as they pulled away from the casita. Galvanized into action by the gunfire at the western entrance, Joanna, Willem, and the Creek half-breeds raced across the meadow, following a weed-overgrown path toward the crumbling walls of the half-finished church on the edge of the village. The church was the only choice. The slow-moving freight wagon with the injured Cuban riding in the rear stood no chance of reaching the hidden gorge before the Spaniards overtook them. The church was their only chance.
The house of God will be our mighty fortress
, Tom thought, amused by his own cleverness. Now all he had to do was reach it alive.