Destiny - The Callahans #1 (32 page)

Teresa’s breathing grew more shallow during
the pre-dawn hours, and finally, as it began to grow light, the
exhausted woman surrendered her spirit. But before succumbing to
her injuries and the strain of childbirth, Teresa Cardenas
Stromberg whispered a single request and received a promise from
Katrina.

Coming out of hiding after sunrise, two men
from the Mormon colony found Katrina and Teresa’s baby in the
gully. The mob of angry villagers was gone, their bloody work
done.

“Sister Stromberg?” one of the men asked,
climbing out of the wagon bed where he had been riding and
approaching the scene.

“Yes,” Katrina answered. “I have a baby here,
too,” she said.

“You’d better come with us, Sister Stromberg.
We must get away from this place before the Mexicans come
back.”

“Where’s Harold?” she asked.

Ignoring the question, the man took the baby
from Katrina and handed it to the wife of the driver of the wagon.
Then he helped Katrina to her feet. “We can’t leave Teresa,” she
said.

The man looked at Teresa, lying crumpled and
silent in the brush. “She’s with God now, Sister Stromberg. We
can’t help her.”

Moving quickly, he helped Katrina into the
back of his wagon then scrambled in himself as the wagon moved
ahead. He took the baby from the woman on the seat of the buckboard
and handed it back to Katrina, who sat numbly, holding the crying
baby and staring to the rear, watching as the site where Teresa’s
broken body lay, receded into the distance. In a few minutes the
wagon moved over the hill and out of site of the grisly scene.

“Harold?” she asked again.

“I’m sorry, Sister Stromberg, Harold’s dead.
And so is his father. Eight of our men are dead, and two
sisters.”

Without a word, Katrina faced backward,
jolting along in the wagon bed, too numb and exhausted to cry,
watching the smoke from the ruins of New Hope rising through the
early morning mist. As the wagon slowly creaked its way north, away
from the massacre in and around the village, Katrina dozed, and the
baby slept too, oblivious to the carnage that had surrounded his
entrance into the world.

The sight of a small group of Mexican
horsemen riding toward the wagon late that afternoon, filled their
hearts with dread. Surrounding the wagon, the riders roughly
dragged the two Mormon men to the ground and at gun point took them
off into the scrub brush. In a moment, two shots rang out and the
woman in the front of the buggy emitted a scream.

One of the Mexican riders spurred his horse
toward the back of the wagon where Katrina sat, holding the baby
tightly against her chest, her head lowered in fear. The man sat
his horse in silence, looking down into the wagon, waiting until
Katrina finally looked up at him. With the sun behind him, she saw
him in silhouette, his face only a shadow under his sombrero.
Without sound or apparent compassion, he gestured for her to get
out of the wagon. Holding the baby and climbing down, she looked up
fearfully at the man and saw the stern and angry face of Miguel
Antonio Cardenas. When the two other Mexican riders emerged from
the bushes, Miguel motioned for one of them to climb up and drive
the wagon with the remaining Mormon woman.

“Mount the horse,” he said to Katrina as the
wagon drove off with the second Mexican rider following.

With great difficulty, holding the baby in
the crook of her arm, Katrina mounted the horse left by the Mexican
rider. Miguel rode slowly in the opposite direction of the wagon,
clearly expecting Katrina to follow.

“Where are we going?” Katrina called after
him.

“To hell,” Miguel responded . . .

. . . continue the saga of the Callahans in
Book Two, Conflict