Paxton Pride (44 page)

“Vance.…” Her voice, thick with worry, faltered as she spoke.

He reached out to grip her arms. “If anything happens, stay here with Maruja and do what she tells you.”

“What's happening?”

“Don't know yet. Maybe nothing. Ted has a feeling.” Vance looked at Marcelina, who struggled to keep her face free of guilt. “You saw nothing on the trail?” he asked.

Marcelina shrugged noncommittally. “The night sometimes plays tricks,” she answered. “But I saw nothing, heard nothing I have not seen or heard before.”

Across the room True shrugged on a warm coat, buttoned it to the chin and tied a scarf around his ears. “There's a wind up,” Vance remarked.

“So?”

“So your leg will stiffen if you get out there too much.”

“So?” came the cantankerous reply.

“You'd best stay inside.”

“Like hell!” The old man's eyes blazed “You just try and keep me here.”

“But your leg.…” Vance protested.

“If there's trouble I'm gonna be shootin', not runnin'. Over thirty-seven years here—which is more than you are old—says so. So hesh up an' tell your wife the meal she cooked up by herself an' that you ain't gonna get to eat at least smells mighty good.” The old man peered keenly at Marcelina. “You may be havin' to run to the walls. You up to it girl?”

“Yes,” Marcelina muttered, shivering with fright and secret knowledge.

Maruja opened a box of cartridges. Checking the action of the first rifle, she began to load the dozen or so lying on the table. True stepped up behind her, gently touched her on the arm. “You keep 'em loaded an' dry?”

Maruja's brown eyes turned soft and she paused, gazing closely at the old man. “I always have,
Señor
,” she said in a voice traced with memory.

“Yes,” True answered. “You have.” His face was a reflection of hers. Then he was gone from the room.

Karen followed Vance to the front door. He smiled and started to kiss her cheek but she threw her arms about him and held him close. “What is it?” he asked.

“Be careful,” was all she allowed herself to say. Her eyes lingered on his earthy handsomeness, examined the fabric of the man she loved and never completely knew, grew moist despite every effort to avoid such a display.
His face is made for smiling, for bearing the easy burden of the smile
. And she had seen him smile so seldom. Close now, his lean rangy frame kindled desire in her flesh, a passion that, strangely heightened by the aura of impending disaster, refused to fade even in this, her eighth month.

He reached out to touch her abdomen, his hand resting lightly on the swell of life within life, the fruit of love. “In a month, Mrs. Paxton, we shall have a son.”

Karen smiled despite a premonition lurking beyond the closed door, brought by the north wind. “Yes. A son.” She paused, searching his eyes. “Are you so sure?”

“I know,” Vance said, “because a wise old Indian told me.” He opened the door and the wind forcibly gusted into the house, knifing through Karen and filling the house with the sharp odor of night and cold and.…

“Coffee strong enough to float a horseshoe,” she called cheerfully, choking back as yet unknown fears. He waved back to her and, ducking his head into the wind, headed toward the wall.

The main gate was open and men were bringing the horses through, tethering them to a line strung along the base of the wall. The animals reared and tugged at the ropes pulling them, whinnying with fright, calling to each other. The palpable fear they exuded stretched through the dark and the wind to the door itself and the girl standing there. Quickly she shut the door against the milling pandemonium, leaned back against the planks and faced the empty room. The wind outside increased, beat at the door behind her. Darkness … the lamps had been extinguished to lessen the risk of fire. Only the flames in the fireplace kept the dark dread brought by the storm from engulfing the entire room. Shadows, serpentine as the uneasiness choking her thoughts, danced and flitted along the walls. She hurried to escape them, anxious for the usually cheerful warmth of the kitchen. But even there the dark threat had entered.

“Shall I help?” Karen asked, anxious for any task to wrench her from the labyrinth of fear in which she found herself.

“You had best help me with these,
Señora,
” Maruja instructed.

“But I … I doa't know how.”

Maruja held out a Winchester rifle. “I will show you. It is time for you to learn.” Karen numbly accepted the heavy weapon and, under Maruja's tutelage, checked the action and began to feed it a leaden meal of death.

Marcelina stepped outside, her mother's voice still faintly audible through the thick walls. She hesitated, reluctant to leave the shelter of the patio. What would Maruja say when she learned her daughter was a traitor? What would she think?
Mama
…
No …!
Shuddering, she wrapped herself tightly against the cutting edge of wind. The storm had come sooner man expected, growing in violence even as she walked across the open courtyard. Supposing he did not come, she thought. No, that was foolish. He would come. His hatred burned deep, keeping him safe from the fierce kiss of the north wind.
But not from my kisses
.… She laughed to herself. She no longer cared about this family of
gringos
for whom she and her mother had sweated and worked so many hours, and for nothing more than food and a bed.
Señor
Vance had scorned her, forsaken her for an undeserving, haughty pale bride. Hal She drew the warm
serape
close about her shoulders and braced herself against the chill, remembering the warmth of Jaco's caresses, still lingering on her breasts and between her thighs, and the bandit's smouldering form enwrapped in hers, lost to the inexorable rites of love. She was a woman, no longer a child, a subservient daughter to be ignored or ordered about like a common servant. Maruja would understand, and if she did not, that was just too bad. She shoved away from the woodpile and headed toward the rear escape door, well concealed in the hidden northeast corner of the wall, each step carrying her closer and closer to a future to be born in blood.

Brazos watched the last of the horses disappear into me protected courtyard from the corral. He grinned as Vance and Ted approached. “This Injun sure takes the fun out of a night. Nigh worked myself to death bringin' them durned steers up from the creek, an' now I gotta roust these here broncs in the middle of a norther.”

Ted, concealing his good nature behind a stolid Indian countenance, replied sternly. “Brazos, you never ‘nigh worked yourself to death' in your life.” Brazos, visibly stung by the words, feigned indignation and strode away from them toward the corral, grumbling about unappreciative bosses and smart aleck Comanches who saw visions in the wind.

Vance smiled as the cowhand left, but his smile faded as he noted the worry creeping back into the Comanche's features. Ted was staring into the darkness down the valley. Without warning the rain began, thick, icy droplets, born as a plague from the north. The two friends—more like brothers—stood side by side in the face of the storm's opening salvo. “How many?” Vance asked.

“More than we are, I think,” Ted answered.

Vance hunched his shoulders against the cold, tugged his moustache. “It is the wrong time of year. I ask myself, ‘who?' and ‘why?'.”

“It does not matter. They come.”

“I hope you are wrong, my friend.”

Ted nodded in agreement. “The storm …” his face rose to the sky and the driving rain. “… will bring more than snow or rain. Listen to the voice of the wind. Once long ago, among my people, there was such a storm. That night many people die. Some go mad, kill their families and even themselves. When the morning came my father gathered the people together and we leave that valley. To this day no red man sets foot there. Vance Paxton, my friend, this night the coyote wind howls down from the hills as it did long ago.”

“There is a difference,” Vance replied firmly. “In the morning we shall still be here. I will not be driven from this valley, neither by men nor spirits.” He studied the bunkhouse for a moment then started toward it, thinking to place three of his men in the structure along with Hogan, already stationed on the roof. He glanced upward, barely able to make out the ranch hand atop the building, called for him to come down and get inside, then shouted for Brazos to bring two more and join him.

The wind increased to a baleful roar, whipped Ted Morning Sky's coat about his legs and blew away his hat. His long hair, unbraided, streamed past his cheeks as he faced the south. A smooth hand reached up to touch his cheek and the Indian half of him becried the lack of paint. A brave should go into battle wearing paint, for it made the enemy fearful and satisfied the Great Spirit. No longer listening, no longer searching the now screaming darkness, he stood like a statue before the storm, a man carved from virgin rock, motionless, enduring, at one.…

And then he knew. A cry cut through the raging elements: the warrior cry of the Comanche. He whirled and fired at the man who rose to stand on the roof of the bunkhouse. The man who was not Hogan. In the kitchen Maruja paused. Karen started sharply at the sound. “It has begun,” the Mexican woman said calmly. Karen stared with unseeing eyes at a hanging gourd, clenched her bloodless hands together to keep them from trembling.

Ted swerved his rifle and fired at the gathered patch of darkness lodged against the bunkhouse wall, darkness that was not a cluster of trapped tumbleweed. Caught in the open, Vance instinctively drew his gun and leaped the few remaining yards to the bunkhouse wall. A bullet whistled through the empty air where he had stood by a second earlier. The man on the roof tumbled to the ground, his bandit's face staring into the rain. Gunfire sounded at the corral and flames darted from the corner of the bunkhouse as the surprised Mexican renegades recovered from the unforeseen onslaught and returned the Comanche's fire. Bullets chewed the mud brick wall, spattering Vance with jagged fragments. Crouching low, he ran the few steps to the front door and bolted through the opening. A flash of movement to his left sent him diving to the floor as four rapid shots thundered in the confines of the room. Slugs thudded into the bunk he heaved over on its side for protection. The wind ripped the open rear door back on its hinges, slamming it against the adobe. A figure lunged to his right. Vance fired, rose firing again. Someone screamed. Muzzles belched fire and lead, the roaring explosions followed by the careening whine of ricocheting bullets clanging against the stove, shattering wood and glancing off stone and leather. A dimly-lit coal oil lantern dropped from its hook, burst into flames and starkly illuminated the men in the bunkhouse. Vance shoved cartridges into his revolver, rolled onto his stomach and fired from beneath the shattered frame of a bunk bed at two bandits rushing him. One of them spun and fell back against a table on which another lantern rested. Table and renegade collapsed to the floor where a tongue of coal oil spread to the flames and burst into life of its own, swiftly carrying the flames back to the broken table and wounded bandit. The second outlaw's gun snapped. Empty. He threw it at Vance and leaped back through the flames. A gun fired. A man screamed and fell. There was a muffled curse of surprise. The greedy flames began to devour the wood furnishings, to grope for the plank roof with fiery fingers. Obscured by the crimson and orange curtain, Vance grabbed a third lantern. It was useless to try to save the place. Cursing, he hurled it at the far end of the room, heard with satisfaction the sound of exploding glass and roaring flames and one drawn-out wail of pain and terror before he covered his face and leaped a rapidly diminishing clear space near the wall, fell through the open door and into the freezing night.

The storm lashed the valley with incredible abandon, rivaling the unleashed struggle of men with a violence of its own. Ted Morning Sky and Brazos were backing away from the corral, firing steadily as they withdrew. Beneath the fury of the wind Vance could hear the drumming of hoofbeats. The barn was ablaze and, outlined against the flames, a half dozen riders swept down on them. He grabbed a rifle from the ground, checked the action as he ran to Brazos and Ted. “Get to the compound!” he shouted hoarsely, gesturing to the riders.

Figures darted toward them from the corral, catching the three in a crossfire. Ted fired twice then grabbed Brazos by the shoulder. “Let's go!” he screamed, striving to be heard above the fury of the storm.

Brazos started to follow, then stopped in his tracks. “Damn!” he exclaimed. He toppled forward, a neatly-rounded hole between his now sightless eyes.

A rider charged. Vance and Ted fired simultaneously. Vance grabbed the bridle, hauled down the plunging, panic-stricken animal, leaped into the empty saddle and grabbed Ted's arm as the horse bolted forward again. Ted jumped up behind Vance and the pair headed for the main gate. Bullets whirred angrily about them as they ran a corridor of screeching death, a gauntlet of gunfire from the bandits to their rear and the men on the compound walls. Thirty feet from safety the horse crumpled, its skull shattered, sending the two men tumbling onto the frozen earth. The bandits charging down on them met a withering fusillade from the men on the walls who ripped the darkness with searching shots. José, the burly brigand, Jaco's lieutenant, appeared out of nowhere, looming out of the dark. He held two revolvers and fired them as one at Vance. The Comanche ran between them just as the outlaw loosed his shots. Ripped by the slugs, he stiffened and fell before Vance could catch and support him. Vance rushed back to his friend, dropping to the ground by him as José fired again and missed, then staggered back as if kicked, hit by a bullet from the wall. Vance, enraged, emptied his revolver at the bandit who twisted away from the terrible punishment and was lost in the swirling, driving sleet. Vance hauled Ted to his feet, slung him over his shoulder and ran crablegged toward the gate, the icy air searing his lungs with terrible cold. The open maw in the wall was too far away … the sleet blinded him … pain in his leg—had he been shot—but he must run … the cacophony of screaming horses and men, gunfire, the shrieking of the coyote wind.