Scorpion (19 page)

Anxious to continue the conversation begun the previous night, Zion was displeased when Ben refused to join him for breakfast. With a strange, almost haunted expression on his face, “Scorpion” quietly but firmly stated he had more important business, saddled a horse and rode off toward the north ridge overlooking the hacienda. Zion’s fervent objections went ignored, a fact that mightily displeased him. He mentioned as much to Elena when he arrived for breakfast and took his usual seat at the table in the summer kitchen. Elena lent him a sympathetic ear as she poured him a cup of coffee.

“Señor Alacron is a strange one. None of his conduct surprises me,” said the tall, thin woman whose severe countenance hid the real affection she held for the segundo. She shrugged then poured a cup of coffee for herself. There always seemed to be a pleasant breeze here in the shade of the covered walkway that joined the kitchen to the rear of the hacienda. The peace was abruptly shattered by a quarrelsome pair. Pedro Gallegos ambled around the corner of the kitchen, leading Niño at the end of a rope. The scruffy-looking hound fought the ranchero every step of the way, growling and snapping while Pedro harangued him with a litany of epithets.

“C’mon, you blasted thief, you flea-ridden son of a sow-bellied alley slut, you worthless bag of skin and bones,” Pedro cursed in rapid-fire Spanish that Zion had trouble completely understanding. However, Pedro’s temperament presented a clear translation.

“Mind your tongue, husband!” Elena ordered. She struck an imposing figure with her silver-streaked black hair, and massive hands folded on the tabletop.

“I caught Niño in the smokehouse again!” For the past few months Pedro and the mongrel hound had engaged in a running battle for ownership of the smokehouse. Niño considered the delectable array of smoked meats his personal larder.

“Then make a bigger latch or replace the bricks the dog has dug through, but I will not have you use such language with a child in the house.” Elena glared at the dog and the animal fell silent.

“Wife, this is a ranch, not Father Rudolfo’s church.” Pedro proceeded to secure the dog to a round wooden beam six inches in diameter that supported the walkway’s brush roof. “And besides, Isabella left half an hour ago.”

“Isabella … gone?” Josefina interjected from the shadowy interior of the house. She appeared in the rear doorway wearing a dressing gown, a robe, and slippers of brushed buckskin that one of Father Rudolfo’s mission Indians, old Esteban, had presented to her as a gift of thanks for nursing one of his daughters through a fever. “Where?”

Pedro shrugged. “I cannot say for certain, señora, but I got the impression she was tagging after the americano.” He pointed to the pine oak forest lining the north ridge.

Zion sensed Josefina’s discomfort when the talk turned to Señor Alacron. His own expression grew serious. “You want me to go after them, Miss Josefina?” he asked.

Josefina shook her head and took a seat on the bench across from the segundo. “She will be all right. I’m just a little anxious after all that has happened.” She nodded her thanks when Elena brought her a cup of strong black coffee.

“You have a right to be. No telling what Valentin Najera is apt to try next,” Zion said. “Sure as God made green apples, I swear that man is more crooked than a wagonload of rattlesnakes.”

“Then you know what happened at Turtle Creek?” Josefina asked, hoping he didn’t know everything.

Zion nodded. “Perez may have needed killing, but that won’t matter to the general.”

“Perhaps if we went to the authorities,” Josefina suggested.

“Madre de Dios,” Elena said. “Valentin Najera
is
the authorities!” She sighed. “Poor Mexico. What terrible times are yours.” She rose from the table and returned to the kitchen hearth. She gingerly raised the lid on a black iron pot and checked on the pinto beans she was cooking for dinner.

“If Najera wants trouble, let him come, we will be ready,” Pedro said. He lifted his coat flap and patted the butt of a small caliber pepperbox that jutted from his leather belt. Niño resumed barking, alerted by Pedro’s movement. The dog snapped at the ranchero as he limped past the hound.

Elena promptly walked up to the dog, untied the animal and led it off toward the front of the hacienda. “I will put the dog in the barn. See that the smokehouse is repaired.” She sounded exasperated, as if both Pedro and Isabella’s dog had conspired to ruin her morning. They left Josefina and Zion in an uncomfortable silence.

Josefina took a sip of coffee and hesitantly inquired, “Did he … say anything else? I mean, do you, uh …”

“About the gold? Yes, ma’am.” Zion studied her as he would tracks left by an unknown intruder. His was a shrewd, perceptive stare. “I’m right glad for you. But sorry for the trouble it might bring. Is there something else I ought to know about?”

Josefina allowed her gaze to wander to the sun-washed crest of the north ridge. A banner of smoke drifted up above a flat precipice jutting out from the trees like the bow of a ship. He was there, this man with no name. And he was in her heart. Zion was waiting for an answer.

“No,” she said, watching the gossamer wisp climb toward the sun. “Nothing.”

Isabella dismounted well back from the naked precipice upon which the man called Alacron had built his fire. The girl crept quietly through the woods, taking care to avoid the wayward brittle branch and patch of dry sotel sprouting from the crevices among the rocks. She heard his voice. He seemed to be singing or at least chanting like some Comanche. Curiosity overwhelmed her, and she continued to maneuver through the pines and stunted oaks that topped the ridge. She crawled forward to a lightning-split oak, which allowed her to watch the americano from a distance of about twenty feet. The chanting man had stripped off his shirt and sat on his heels by the campfire. Now this was most peculiar behavior. She hunkered down and waited, silent as a shadow. What followed left her puzzled and even a little frightened.

The flames lapped greedily at the dry branches. The tall stranger added more kindling. Wood sizzled and popped. Soon smoke trailed skyward, on which his prayers would ride to the All-Father, as his mother had shown him.

The precipice overlooking the rancho seemed an appropriate place. He could see both horizons. The world lay before him as if newly created, reborn from the storms. So it would be with him. And now the words, the chant, spilled from his lips, as natural as breathing. He stared into the heart of his spirit fire and repeated the prayer song.

“All-Father, the wind is your voice,

the thunder is your heart,

the silence is your truth.

Find me as I walk the Great Circle.

Guide my steps. Trace the Sacred Path before me,

behind me, under my feet.

Let my name be on your breath.

And I will hear.”

These were the words his mother, Raven, taught him long ago. In his mind’s eye she was standing before him, lithe and beautiful, a Choctaw medicine woman with long black hair. And there was his father, Kit, a compact, solid-looking man beside her, a wry grin on his face and thick, curly red hair. The courage of the Scottish chiefs was his lineage. He saw two children, boys, one six and the other three. His children! Jesse Redbow, the eldest, and Daniel Pacer Wolf, for whom the day was never long enough.

The words of the chant flowed around him, echoed by voices not his own. A woman’s voice was singing with him. And staring into the prayer smoke he saw a speck of black he thought was an ash increase in size, take shape, become a bird on the wing, a raven. And the voice in his head sang louder and the words of the prayer song reverberated in his soul and filled him with sight beyond seeing. Minutes passed, then an hour. He lost all track of time, but when his vision cleared, the man by the fire realized he was holding the “medal,” the crown sterling bearing the initials of George Washington, in front of him at eye level. Passed from one generation to the next, this was the legacy of his family.

The flames had vanished, leaving a pile of smoldering embers in their wake. He checked the sky and was surprised to find the sun directly overhead. It had to be near noon. The entire morning had passed.

He stood, but not without effort and a wince of pain. His legs were stiff, and the lack of circulation made him clumsy as he crushed the last of the embers and pulled his shirt on over his sweat-streaked torso. Down below, the cattle called to one another as the small herd moved aimlessly across the meadow.

He could hear the approaching wind, like a train from far off, rush toward him, tug at his clothing and hair, then race onward along the ridge. He turned and spied a dab of color out of the corner of his eye, and frowning with suspicion, left his vantage point and moved swiftly, with fists clenched, toward the shattered remains of an oak tree not twenty feet away. Someone was spying on him. That someone would pay. Yet when his shadow fell across the sleeping form of the intruder, his hard gaze softened and he knelt and scooped the ten-year-old girl up in his arms. Isabella Quintero rubbed her eyes and awakened, momentarily disoriented. Then she smiled.

“Señor Alacron …?”

“No,” he said. Were his eyes red-rimmed and teary from the smoke or was there something more? “Ben. My name is Ben McQueen.”

“
LIEUTENANT BEN MCQUEEN, IS
it?” Zion said, working the name until it rolled off the tongue as easily as Alacron. He tilted his ladder-backed chair against the bunkhouse wall. The two men were seated in the shade of the long porch of the bunkhouse. Ben helped himself to a third dipper of water from the olla and returned to the chair next to Zion, who looked out across Ventana, searching for the right words to say. He’d kind of gotten used to this man from the north. “Well, you’ll be a dead Ben McQueen if you return to Saltillo without a disguise. Let Tolliver and Dobbs go. Why get yourself killed? Men the likes of them usually dig their own graves.”

“I can’t,” Ben said. A whorl of vultures in the distance caught his attention. Something was dead out there on the northern edge of the meadow. The sky had been dark with vultures after General Valentin Najera’s butchery. Ben couldn’t get the faces of the dead and dying out of his mind. And then there was Ned Tolliver and Lucker Dobbs.

At least Najera, for all his cruelty, had acted as a soldier at war. But not the two turncoats who had sold out their companions. How much had they been paid for their treachery? What was the price of their honor? Blind luck had brought Ben down the hill alive. He had tumbled and rolled part of the way and must have appeared dead. But the creek water had revived him long enough for the young officer to crawl beneath the slide’s debris and lie there wounded but concealed, and waiting for the opportunity to escape.

“I can feel the hate in you, lad. It’s familiar to me. I carried plenty of it in my time. I crossed the Río Grande full of hate. All I could think of was one day getting back at them who robbed me of my freedom and kept their damn boots on the back of my neck and never let me up. Never!” The intensity in Zion’s voice caused Ben to glance aside at him. The former slave was still leaning back against the wall, but his ebony features glistened with sweat, his lips were dry, and fire burned in his eyes. His hands were trembling. “Yes … I know hate.” Then he slowly exhaled and the fire dimmed and his eyes were those of a man at peace with what he had made of his life. “Hate’s a knife without a handle. The more you cut with it, the more you get cut.”

Ben nodded. He understood. “I’ll take whatever I have to, but I’m bringing Tolliver and Dobbs back to Texas.”

“So be it, amigo. But I reckon I’ll tag along to keep you out of trouble.”

“This doesn’t concern you,” Ben said.

“Still … seeing as I’m sort of responsible for you even being here …”

“Sort of? You’re wholly responsible!”

“I didn’t think you’d hold a grudge,” Zion said with a laconic shrug and a show of wounded pride.

“It’s a matter of pride with us McQueens.”

“I like you better as Scorpion.”

Both men grinned, sharing a moment of camaraderie. Then Ben nailed home his argument, pointing to Josefina and Isabella. “Your place is here, segundo. Not in Saltillo with me, and you know it.”

The widow had just emerged from the house with her stepdaughter. Isabella, hearing Niño’s plaintive howls coming from the barn, ran off to investigate. No doubt, in minutes Pedro’s smokehouse would be under attack again.

Zion watched Don Sebastien’s widow and daughter with renewed interest. Even with the gold, they needed him to make the rancho work. Oh, Josefina would learn, he was sure. But right now she needed him. And the girl. Who would protect her from the likes of Najera? The segundo shrugged and nodded. “You got a memory and a damn clever brain all at once, Ben McQueen. Reckon you win. I just hope you haven’t lost your head in the process.”

“Me too, segundo.” He stood and stepped down from the porch as Josefina started across the yard to him. He intercepted her midway by the well. They walked together, in silence and without any conscious direction. Ironically, their steps brought them to the Quintero family plot with its garden of markers sprouting from the earth.

“Isabella is the last of her family,” Josefina said, at last breaking the tension.

“She’s lucky to have you, Josefina.”

“Benjamin Bittercreek McQueen,” Josefina continued. Isabella had revealed Ben’s full name to her the minute she and Ben had returned to the ranch from the north ridge. She could not wait to inform the entire household that the man called Alacron was no more.

“The middle name was my mother’s idea. I’m part Choctaw.”

“And you have children … two boys?”

“Yes. They live with my parents on a ranch in the Indian Territory north of the Red River.” He sensed where her questions were leading. “My wife died some time ago. I am a widower.”

“Oh … I’m sorry.” Josefina glanced at her husband’s marker. “Then we have much in common.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She noticed the formality and for a brief moment took affront, after what they had shared. Then she realized why Ben had assumed such an attitude. “You’re leaving.” It was a simple statement of fact.