Crack in the Sky (29 page)

Going to his knees, Scratch scooted close to the woman, then laid an arm across her shoulders. She raised her head, looked into his face, then nestled her cheek against the hollow of his neck and began to quake. Some forty yards away Isaac Simms had wrapped a large horse blanket around a small woman, and Kinkead was talking with the third captive in her native tongue as he clutched a large Mexican blanket around her trembling shoulders.

Suddenly the small woman with Simms turned, crying out in anguished Spanish, causing the woman Bass was comforting to lift her face, holding out her arms and screeching for the small woman who was rushing her way.

Bass helped her stand, then steadied the woman as she hobbled forward on bare, frozen feet. Closer and closer sprinted the small woman, closer still until Scratch could plainly see she was not a woman at all, but a young girl barely on the threshold of her teen years.

Kinkead and some of the others stepped over dead bodies of Indians and a soldier, following the girl and the other woman toward the oldest of the three, who continued to clutch Bass.

“Mi Jacova!”
she shouted at the girl.

“Mama! Mama! Mama!”

How they embraced, forgetting their wounds. They kissed and kissed again, hugging and squeezing their arms around one another as the trappers came up.

“That’s the gov’nor’s wife,” Kinkead said. “Her name’s Manuela.”

“And that’s her girl?”

“Yes, Scratch,” Matthew replied. “Her name’s Jacova. For all her papa’s treasures, she’s his prize. He’ll be some punkins to see they both come back alive.”

At that moment Bass felt a tug to turn, finding Hatcher at his elbow. He pointed.

Rowland lay across the body of his dead wife, wailing.

“Get me a blanket,” Jack told Isaac.

Simms understood and nodded, turning away toward the battlefield, where he knelt beside a dead Comanche wearing a bloodstained blanket tied around his waist. With it Isaac met Bass at Rowland’s side.

Hatcher helped Bass lift the grieving husband off the woman so Simms could spread the blanket over the naked body. Then Scratch slowly turned the woman over, dragging the blanket up to cover her face.

“Isaac, get her ready to travel,” Hatcher requested in a whisper. “Pull some rope off one of them dead horses.”

As Rowland sat sobbing between Bass and Hatcher, Simms prepared the body for their journey back to Taos. Lashing the rope around and around the blanket-wrapped shroud, Isaac tied his last knot just as one of the soldiers strode up to Kinkead. The Mexican spoke in the clipped tones of a man who clearly thought he was talking to someone occupying a lower station in life.

Caleb hobbled up, a leg bleeding, to ask, “Who the shit is this nigger?”

“Sergeant of this here outfit,” Kinkead grumbled. “Name of Ramirez. Sergeant Jorge Ramirez.”

“What’s he saying to you, Matthew?”

“Says it’s time for him to take the women and the girl back to the gov’nor in Taos.”

“Take ’em back?” Elbridge Gray echoed. “Why, them damned
soldados
didn’t do nothing to save ’em!”

Hatcher nodded, giving his order: “Tell him that, Matthew.”

Behind the sergeant, what others weren’t tending to their own wounded or their dead continued to mutilate and dismember the enemy dead. Matthew brought himself up to his full height, casting a shadow over Ramirez as he repeated the declaration.

Then Kinkead told the other Americans, “Says he demands the women—’specially the woman and her daughter—so
he can turn ’em over to the gov’nor when they get back to Taos.”

Hatcher stood. “Didn’t ye tell him we figger these soldiers didn’t save the womenfolk, so we don’t figger they got any right takin’ the womenfolk back?”

“Just what I told him.”

“Tell the sumbitch again,” Jack growled. “Then tell him we’re taking the women back on our own. They can come along, or they can stay here and tear these here bodies apart like they was the ones what won the fight.”

When Matthew’s words struck the Mexican’s ears, more of the soldiers stopped their butchery and moved over to join the sergeant arguing with Kinkead.

“He says they have more guns than we do.”

“This bastard brung it right down to the nut-cutting, didn’t he, boys?” Jack snorted. “Awright, Matthew, tell him he sure ’nough does have him more guns right now … but we got more balls, and these yellow-backed greasers ain’t going to back down no American!”

With that answer to his bold demands, the sergeant’s eyes darkened in fury. Suddenly he shouted at the other Mexicans—silencing their angry murmurs. In the uneasy quiet Ramirez glared at Kinkead as he spoke.

“This one says he’s asking us one last time to turn over the women afore he orders the men to kill … kill us all.”

At that challenge several of the Americans pulled back the hammers on their firearms as they stepped backward around Rowland and his wife, slowly ringing the three freed captives. Those who did not have loaded weapons pulled knives or reached down and scooped a tomahawk or club from the ground. In a moment all eight had their backs together, the women and Rowland at the center of that tiny circle.

Close to shaking with rage, Hatcher growled, “Matthew, ye tell this sick-dog, sad-assed, whimpering greaser that I wanna know what right they got to take the women back for themselves … when these here yellow-livered cowards wasn’t even brave enough to jump footfirst into the fight to save these here women!”

As Kinkead translated, the eyes of nearly all the Mexicans glowed with even more hatred—but not a one of them dared initiate an assault on the trappers. Their spokesman trembled with rage as he spat out his words.

Matthew said, “He says they’re not cowards—”

“Like hell they ain’t!” Bass interrupted with a snort of derision.

Sputtering in anger one moment, Ramirez fell to wheedling the next, attempting to explain the lack of action and courage of his men during the fight.

Kinkead translated, “Says he wasn’t able to get the rest to keep fighting after Guerrero was killed. The rest were … were—but I don’t think he can find a nice word for them being scared.”

Hatcher shook his head in disgust. “Then tell that sumbitch to have his men either start this fight right now—or get back outta our way, and make it quick!”

With that said to the Mexican, he waved his men back a few yards, then turned once more to growl at Kinkead.

“Just who the hell is this greaser to take on these high airs?” Bass inquired.

Matthew explained, “Now that Guerrero’s dead—this one takes over, I s’pose.”

Watching the soldiers inch back a short distance, Hatcher repeated, “That give this Ramirez nigger the due to rub up against us the way he is?”

As the soldiers closed in around their leader once more, Matthew said, “They don’t figger these here women any safer with us than they was with the Comanche.”

Most of the Americans laughed at that declaration, a few even jabbing one another with elbows, some wagging their heads in amused disbelief.

But while the others guffawed, Caleb Wood stepped up to demand, “Merciful heavens! Why the hell aren’t these here women safe with the men who saved ’em?”

“Because he don’t figger us for Christians,” Kinkead said. “Leastwise, none of the rest of you.”

“How you so special?” Simms grumbled, pulling at a blond ringlet in his beard with a grubby finger.

“Remember how I got myself baptized in the Mexican church some time back,” Kinkead explained.

“Don’t mean to stomp on yer Rosa’s church, Matthew,” Hatcher began, “but the way we see it, ye tell this son of a lily-livered bitch that I don’t give a damn if he’s Christian or not…. Tell him his bunch wasn’t in this fight enough for me to call ’em brave men.”

When Kinkead turned back to Hatcher after delivering those inflammatory words, he said, “Seems you’re dishonoring not just him but the other soldiers who died here this morning if you don’t let ’em take the prisoners back to their families in Taos.”

“Eegod! Honor? That what this is all about?” Hatcher spat. “How the hell can this here greaser talk to me about honor when he and his men didn’t have the honor to fight like men? To fight like their dead leader fought? Maybeso to die like a man, instead of standing right here in front of real men and whining like alley cats about their goddamned honor!”

It was plain to see how those words slapped the sergeant across the face like a sudden, unexpected challenge. His eyes glared like black coals; his lips curled, stretching taut over his front teeth as he struggled for words.

“When we get back to Taos, he says he’ll let you tell the gov’nor what all we done to help his men in this fight.”

Jack whirled on Kinkead in utter disbelief. “That what he said, Matthew? That we … only
helped
in this fight?”

“Yep—says we just helped his men.”

Flecks of spittle crusted the corners of Hatcher’s lips as he sputtered, “Tell that sumbitch Ramirez to step out of my way or I’m going to cut him up into pieces small enough that the jays can eat what’s left of ’im!”

“Jack,” Kinkead said with a soothing tone, his words almost whispered. “Maybe you ought’n figger us a way to do this ’thout anyone else getting killed. They got us near surrounded now.”

“I’ll gut my share of ’em afore—”

“Lookee there, Jack,” Caleb interrupted Hatcher as
his eyes flicked about of a sudden. “The greasers sure as Katie do got us circled.”

“Goddamned Mex,” Isaac growled. “Only time they figger to fight is when they got the enemy outnumbered.”

Scratch added, “And when they got the drop on us!”

“Listen up,” Jack told them. “What say we leave it up to the women here?”

“You mean let the women decide who they ride back to Taos with?” Elbridge asked.

“That’s right,” Jack replied. “Matthew, tell this greaser we’re going to let the women decide.”

After a minute of coaxing from Kinkead, the sergeant nodded in agreement, a smug look of victory already apparent on his face.

“He says he’ll let the women decide.”

“I’ll wager he thinks the womens will pick him,” Jack declared.

“He’s probably right,” Kinkead replied. “After all, the womens are Mexican like these here soldiers.”

“So ask ’em, Matthew,” Hatcher ordered. “Ask ’em who they’re riding back home with.”

Scratch watched Kinkead pose that question. Instead of answering immediately, the daughter clutched her mother, burying her face against Bass’s coat. And the younger woman looked at the governor’s wife a moment, then stared at the ground before she muttered something. Finally the older woman held her chin high and in a soft voice gave her answer. Her words visibly caused a dark cloud to cross the soldier’s face.

“What’d she say?” Hatcher demanded in a harsh whisper.

Kinkead cleared his throat and said, “Says she’s been listening in on ever’thing we been saying, Jack.”

“So what’s her answer?”

“She’s telling Ramirez that they all three agreed the same together,” Matthew began. “Says they are going to ride back to their homes with the men who had risked their lives to save ’em—the Americans.”

“I’ll be go to hell,” Rufus whispered in shock.

“Then maybe we better get the bodies of these here
other women wrapped up and ready to ride back,” Jack said as he turned away from the sergeant.

Ramirez held out his beefy hands, saying something quietly to the women, his tone imploring, but instantly the oldest woman snapped at him angrily, one of her brown arms poking from the capote sleeve, pointing at the bodies of the other captives lying across the battlefield—both women and children. Hostages and prisoners dragged from their homes only to be brutally murdered in this attempt to save them all.

“She just told him that she had her no doubt he and his soldiers wouldn’t never come along on this ride if it wasn’t for the Americans leading the bunch,” Matthew translated as the soldiers turned away, shamed by the woman’s strong words. “Said she’s sure there wasn’t no chance for any of them to come out alive if only the soldiers come along … because the coward soldiers likely wouldn’t come to rescue them at all.”

As he and the others watched the haughty Mexicans shambling away, grumbling among themselves as they caught up their horses and shouted orders among their numbers to mount their wounded and load up their dead, Scratch asked, “That what finally made them soldiers back off from us?”

“No,” Matthew answered quietly. “It’s what she told ’em there at the last.”

“What was that?” Hatcher asked.

Kinkead said, “The woman told ’em she figgered it would be far better for any woman to live the rest of her life being a slave to the Comanche … better that than to live as the wife to a coward dog what wasn’t ready to fight and die to save his woman.”

   It took the rest of that day and on through the long, cold night, when they camped on their way back over the mountains and down to the Taos valley, for Bass to begin to forget that pitiful, solitary wail that escaped from John Rowland at the moment Kinkead translated the Mexican woman’s declaration: how a courageous man would fight and die to rescue his wife.

Better to live as a slave to the savage, heathen Comanche than to live ashamed and married to a coward who wasn’t prepared to give his life to save his own woman.

That afternoon as they recrossed the divide and began their descent toward the valley, storm clouds clotted along the western horizon. Thick as a blood soup, they made for an early sunset as the procession continued east, clouds drawing closer with every hour, dragging down the temperature, giving the wind a cruel bite. Both Rufus Graham and Solomon Fish each managed to kill an elk close to twilight. Food for them all, and in as good a place as any to hunker down for the rest of that night they would have to endure.

As darkness sank around them, Hatcher had Kinkead instruct the sergeant that his men must put out a night guard not only around their camp but around the horse herd too. While the Comanche might be too wary to attack the trappers and Mexicans in the dark, they wouldn’t be at all skittish about rushing in and riding off with some or all of the enemy’s horses. There were four fires that night, three of them placed close together where the Mexican soldiers gathered to fight off the cold and gloom. And the fourth fire where the nine Americans huddled with the three Taos captives. Clear enough was it that the line had been drawn. Just as clear enough that were it not for the wife and daughter of the governor, Ramirez’s soldiers might well have tried to wipe out the upstart trappers.