Only the Gallant (27 page)

“Imbecil! Idiota!”
Anabel was furious. He had cost her precious moments.

“You’ve got one hell of a way of thanking a man who has just saved you from a broken neck. A runaway horse on a road like this—”

“Not runaway. Running away!” She pointed back along the road toward the rise she had just crossed. “From them!” In an example of perfect timing, the war party swept over the rise and, without breaking stride, loosed a volley at the couple on the incline ahead.

Ben McQueen had envisioned himself the gallant rescuer. Indeed he’d been enjoying the role of hero, especially after the señorita proved to be as pretty as a summer sunrise. Alas, with the arrival of the Comanches, his fall from grace was brutal and complete. Hero one moment,
idiota
the next. Ben’s sun-bronzed features paled and his green eyes grew round and wide.

A bullet nicked the leather frame of the carriage; feathered arrows sprouted from the rubble underfoot. Ben slapped his cap across the gelding’s rump and the horse bolted forward. “I’ll lead them away,” he shouted. “They won’t catch me!” His words were no sooner spoken than his brown mare staggered and swung halfway around as a lead slug plowed into the animal’s side and punctured a lung. Ben kicked free and slid from the saddle as the mare went down. The soldier looked over his shoulder and saw that the señorita had once more halted the carriage. Ben turned toward the howling Comanches. Well, he could stay and die or run like hell. A whirling arrow missed him by inches. Another buried itself in the road at his feet. Ben was armed with an army-issue carbine, a saber, and a pair of .36-caliber single-shot percussion pistols. He ought to be able to make a heroic stand lasting all of thirty seconds. The hell with it! Ben turned and dodged another volley of flint-tipped arrows all the way to the carriage.

Anabel used her whip on the gelding as Ben crowded onto the seat. The gelding responded, sprang into action, and climbed the rise ahead, while back along the road Spotted Calf led his braves across the dry wash and started up after his quarry. Once again the carriage momentarily disappeared from view. Spotted Calf raised his war lance over his head and called to his braves to double their efforts. His surefooted stallion climbed the last few yards. The carriage was just ahead. He had closed the gap. He didn’t know who the white man was or where he had come from, but it had been plain to see the man was alone. And that made him fair game for a Comanche lance.

The carriage churned a thick cloud of dust in its wake. Spotted Calf and his warriors ignored the grit, which stung their eyes and burned their lungs. It was time for the kill, before the carriage cleared the foothills and reached the grazing lands along the San Antonio River. This was the moment; now was the time. Thirty yards became twenty, then ten, as the Quahadi war party closed in for the kill. Muskets were loaded by braves who rode at a gallop. Arrows were notched and loosed with such velocity they pierced the carriage’s folding cover. Muskets blasted holes in the back and sides. Spotted Calf rode up alongside the carriage and jabbed his spear in a killing thrust that sawed at the empty air above the riderless seat. The rest of the war party swarmed over the carriage and brought the gelding to a halt.

Little Coyote had his arrow ready to make a kill. He eased the sinew string and stared at the carriage. Sees the Turtle spat a rifle ball down the barrel of his musket and tamped it in place by striking the gun butt against his thigh. Spotted Calf raged and shoved his war lance into the leather walls, hacking through the sides and back in a series of savage attacks until the folding cover lay broken and shredded in the road.

“What trickery is this?” asked Little Coyote. “What spirit has carried them off?”

“This is a bad thing,” one of the wounded braves said. Spotted Calf studied the winding road as a sudden gust of wind swept away the settling dust revealing the hill behind them, fringed with post oaks and cedar. The war chief ignored the superstitious complaints of the braves around him. His attention remained riveted on the wooded slope. The war party fell silent. Even Sees the Turtle ceased his complaining. He waited like the others and watched the hills.

“I think we’ve lost them,” Ben said, peering over the jumble of limestone rocks and cacti that formed a natural barricade among the deep green scattering of cedars halfway up the slope.

“You don’t know Comanches,” the young woman beside him coldly remarked.

“No, I don’t,” he admitted. “Lieutenant Ben McQueen, at your service.” He touched the leather brim of his cap and smiled, hoping to thaw her chilled reserve.

“I don’t want you at my service.”

“So I noticed. You just about took my ear off with that buggy whip.”

Anabel sighed, unable to cling to anger. She did not trust these Anglos. Yet this man had placed himself in harm’s way for her sake. And his idea of abandoning the carriage once out of sight of the Comanches had bought them a little extra time. She softened, and with guarded emotions introduced herself.

“I am Anabel… Obregon.” No one in San Antonio, save her brother and Carmelita, knew her real identity, knew that Anabel was the daughter of Don Luis Cordero de Tosta, the tiger of Coahuila, whose death cried vengeance from the grave.

“Pleased to meet you,” Ben said. He removed his cap and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He thick red mane was plastered to his skull. His blue flannel uniform was unbearably hot, and the spiny thickets that dotted every hillside and choked the gulleys had played havoc with his trouser legs.

Ben McQueen scrunched his big-boned, six-foot-four-inch frame down behind the rocks and tried to take stock of the situation. He knew Choctaw, Cherokee, and Creek, the legacy of a youth spent in the Indian territory. But of the Comanches he had only heard rumor and tall tales since disembarking in Galveston. The squat, leathery warriors gathered in the road below were providing his first encounter. If only the soldiers he had left to escort retired Gen. Matthew Abbot into San Antonio were here… No, of what use was blame? Flights of fantasy weren’t going to see him through this. It would take powder and shot and cold steel, not to mention nerve and a wagonload of luck. He felt a hollow pit form in his stomach and struggled to ignore the sensation. He concentrated on seeing that his weapons were loaded and primed. He couldn’t help but notice the practiced ease with which Anabel bit open the paper cartridges and loaded the twin barrels of her shotgun. She sensed his interest and shifted her dark-eyed gaze.

“What is it?”

Ben’s square-jawed features split with a grin. He wiped a hand across his stubbled jaw and with a wry look told her.

“There’s some ladies in Philadelphia that would be most impressed by your talents.”

“A woman must be able to do more than braid her hair and wear silk dresses to live here,” Anabel remarked with disdain. She worked a metal ramrod down each barrel, tamping the loads in place. Her riding skirt was torn at the hem and her black boots were scuffed. The boulder felt warm against her back. The hill rose gradually for another twenty-five feet before playing out beneath a sheer wall of limestone too steep to climb. To reach the crest they’d have to follow the contour of the hill around to where the cliff had eroded and broken off into rubble. The hill was slowly being reclaimed by mesquite trees, whose twisted roots and branches seemed able to thrive in even the most arid of soils and most precipitous conditions. Unfortunately, any attempt to climb the remaining slope would require crossing open ground.

Ben removed his blue cap and slowly eased himself onto his knees. He set aside his saber and carbine and edged around the barricade that nature had provided for them and, once in place, studied the war party. The warriors in the distance were framed by the spiny pads of a prickly pear cactus. The Comanches had started to backtrack, but had yet to pick up any sign of their prey. The ground was so hard-packed and broken, Ben doubted he and the señorita had left any tracks for the war party to follow. His hopes began to rise. He crawled back behind the rocks and crouched alongside Anabel.

“I think we’re safe here,” he whispered with confidence.

Then he saw the rattler.

It was a big diamondback, six feet of coldblooded nightmare thick as Ben’s forearm, and devil-nasty. The rattlesnake had been sunning itself on a ledge above them. Something had disturbed the reptile and caused it to retreat downhill. Ben didn’t care about the creature’s reasons, only its immediacy. The rattlesnake noticed the two intruders blocking its path and coiled itself within striking distance. Charcoal-gray and black, with black and white bands at its buzzing tail, the rattler continued to warn the humans in an attempt to drive them away. The rattler’s mouth opened once to reveal a pair of poison-drenched fangs as Ben tossed a handful of pebbles in its direction, hoping to force it to retreat.

“Don’t move,” Anabel whispered. “Maybe it will go away.”

“Good Christ, señorita,” Ben hoarsely replied. The rattler looked like it had no intention whatsoever of going away. Ben eased his hand toward the hilt of his saber. A gunshot would alert the war party below, but Ben figured if he could just free his sword, silent steel might save the day. He gripped the scabbard in his left hand and, with his right hand curled around the hilt, began to slowly slide the blade out to where it would do some good. Sweat beaded on Ben’s forehead and rolled down into his eyes, with stinging effect. The buzzing of the rattles seemed deafening in the confines between the jumble of rocks and underbrush and the base of the limestone cliff. Anabel started to caution the lieutenant, then reconsidered; she did not want to run the risk of distracting him. The rattler’s head wavered between the man and woman as if uncertain which to kill first. Then it struck.

Even expecting the attack, the savage swiftness with which it came so startled Ben that he leaped to his feet. He parried those gaping fangs with the length of his scabbard and struck with the saber, slashing again and again at the writhing creature. The tip of the sword shattered against stone. Ben didn’t care. He continued to hack at the rattler until it lay dead upon the blood-smeared rocks. Then, with the adrenaline still pumping through his veins, he slowly turned. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. He was standing completely in the open! He looked downslope and found himself staring into the upturned faces of the Comanches, who had seen the flash of his saber as sunlight glinted off the blade.

Spotted Calf raised his war lance and loosed a savage cry. “See, my brothers? The All-Father has shown us our enemies!” Then he charged the hiding place along with the war party, who sensed an easy kill. Ben kicked the rattler’s carcass downhill in disgust and tossed his saber on the ground. He took up his carbine, cocked it, and looked at Anabel.

“Work your way around to the top. Find another place to hole up. I’ll hold them as long as I can,” Ben said.

“No,” Anabel flatly replied, cradling the shotgun in the crook of her arm. “The daughter of Don…” She caught herself in mid-sentence, shrugged, and lamely said, “I will not run.”

Ben stared down at the Comanches as they swept across the broken terrain at a dead run. He had never seen finer horsemen; however, two of the braves were having trouble keeping up and appeared to be wounded. Ben took stock of his own weapons, the two single-shot pistols in his belt and a muzzle-loading carbine. He and the señorita would have to make every shot count. He caught Anabel staring at him.

“You are from Philadelphia?” she asked.

“Well, yes—sort of.” There wasn’t time to give an account of his past.

Anabel sighed. Philadelphia? She did not expect much help from the easterner.

Ben stiffened as the war cries filled the air. The braves were almost in range, coming full on in a ragged frontal attack. Ben shouldered the carbine and sighted on the brave in the lead, the one holding the feathered lance. Ben swallowed. His mouth was dry. He did not think of dying. The words of his father, Kit McQueen, sounded in his mind: “Pick your target. Let your air out. Squeeze gentle.” Ben concentrated on the Comanche in his sights, exhaled slowly as the brave started up the slope. Ben curled his finger around the trigger.

A gun boomed, and Spotted Calf clutched at his shoulder and tumbled from horseback. Ben McQueen blinked and stared in disbelief at the carbine in his hands. The barrel was still cold, its load unfired. Gunshots filled the air, fired methodically and with deadly accuracy. Ben whirled and looked up to see a buckskin-clad Texas Ranger. Black smoke curled from the twelve-inch gun barrels of his Patterson Colt revolvers. He raised and fired with his left hand, then his right.

“C’mon, my heathen brothers. You ain’t forgot ol’ Snake Eye Gandy, have you now?” Ben stood motionless, mouth agape. Anabel, too, seemed spellbound by the man’s sudden and miraculous appearance on the hilltop.

“Watch your fool head, pilgrim,” Gandy shouted.

Ben instinctively ducked. He caught a blurred glimpse of an arrow flash between him and Anabel and glance off the limestone cliff. Ben swung around with his carbine, but once again the man on the cliff beat him to the punch. The. Patterson Colts continued to blast away. A Comanche brave, thrice wounded, dropped his bow and rolled down the hillside. Blood smeared his shattered bone and shell breastplate. Another of the attackers clutched at his belly and doubled over but managed to cling to his stallion’s mane as he rode clear of the fight. The two remaining braves had lost their taste for battle and retreated out of range of the white man’s guns. In a few minutes all that remained of the war party was a trail of dust dissipating against the distant hills.

Ben ruefully lowered his eyes to the carbine in his hands. Color crept into his cheeks. The fighting was over and he hadn’t even fired a shot.

I
N ALL HIS TWENTY-FOUR
years, Ben McQueen had never met a man quite like Snake Eye Gandy. He cut an imposing figure, despite the fact that the bandy-legged Ranger stood half a foot shorter than McQueen. Gandy’s arms were unusually long and ended in large, strong hands that had a grip like a vise. His shoulders were corded with muscle. He seemed older than thirty. His hair was already streaked with silver and his ugly, wrinkled features were as weathered as the Texas hills. Years ago, Gandy had survived a scalping, one of the few men to ever do so. Gandy had killed his attacker and salvaged what he could of his scalp. And area the size of a man’s fist had been peeled back from his forehead. It had healed into a livid patch of scar tissue. Gandy had braided the scalp and wore it like a Mongol’s topknot, long enough to dangle down the side of his face to his neck.