Texas Angel, 2-in-1 (56 page)

“Looks that way,” Tom said noncommittally.

“Besides that, this here fella fits the description—yellow hair, baby face.”

“Whadd’ya got to say to that?” Tom asked, an inscrutable expression on his grizzled face.

“Nothing,” Micah said, trying to affect his own inscrutable look.

“I reckon I’m gonna have to take you in,” Fife said.

“Guess you gotta do what you feel is right.”

Fife shook his head slowly and, Micah thought, rather regretfully. Micah felt confident that at least he’d have the benefit of a trial before they hanged him.

CHAPTER

6

M
ICAH LAY ON A COT
in a San Antonio jail cell, his eyes scanning the ceiling for the hundredth time. He was coming to know intimately all the cracks and holes where the adobe had chipped away completely, revealing the rough, crumbling insides of the bricks. Old as this place was, he had no doubt it was solid. The oak door of the cell was several inches thick.

Escape was out of the question. He’d already tried it once on the trail when the rangers were taking him in and had received a lead ball in the thigh for his efforts. Well, it had only grazed his leg, but it hurt like the dickens. Tom, who had fired the shot, had been mighty sorry about it and hoped Micah understood he’d had no choice.

Micah rubbed the place on his leg now covered with a thick bandage. He couldn’t figure out Tom Fife. Everything about the man indicated he didn’t like having to arrest Micah, yet he seemed in no way disposed to looking the other way for a few moments in order to give him a bit of a break. Guess the man had indeed grown hard-nosed, taking his job as a ranger a bit too seriously.

At least he had gotten help for Jed, though it had been a grueling three-day ride to San Antonio and Jed had suffered mightily. Micah still had no idea if the doctor had been able to help the kid. He’d been in jail two days now, and there’d been no word about anything. It seemed that Fife had dumped him in jail, then forgotten about him.

Micah’s gaze was diverted to the far side of his cell where a cockroach the size of a walnut was making its way across the soiled wall. Micah took off his boot and gave it a hard toss.
Thwack!
The critter fell to the floor, either stunned or dead, but it didn’t move. This had been Micah’s chief amusement the last couple of days. The floor was littered with carcasses of dead varmints. This complemented his mood perfectly.

Since coming to jail he’d been having frequent nightmares. He was almost afraid to sleep anymore. He was starting to wonder if all this was his comeuppance for an evil life. After six years he still could not shake all that religious prattle from his mind. He’d always sensed God was an angry God with an appetite for retribution. Well, now He would get His full measure.

Maybe I deserve it, Micah thought.

At twenty, Micah had already seen and spilled so much blood that he felt certain he deserved the nightmares as well. He thought he had lived through hell but wondered if surviving was something to brag about. He certainly had not escaped without scars and soul-deep wounds that still were not healed.

After a few early skirmishes in the war, Micah and his Uncle Haden
had been sent to the presidio of La Bahia near Goliad to join General Fannin,
who was rebuilding the fortress that he had renamed Fort Defiance.
Eventually four hundred twenty men gathered at the fort.

Fourteen-year-old Micah had observed this fighting force with skepticism.
“Uncle Haden, some of them men don’t even have guns.”

“Or shoes either,” Haden replied. “And I hear Fannin is low on supplies
himself.”

Micah wanted to leave. This motley group did not represent glorious
warfare as he’d imagined it. But Haden said they were bound to get in
some fighting soon. Rumor had it that a call for reinforcements had come
from Travis at the Alamo. Haden promised Micah that they would be the
45
first to join up with these reinforcements. But Fannin would not release
any troops to aid Travis. Some said he couldn’t make up his mind what
to do, others said what passed for a revolutionary government in Texas
was sending Fannin a stream of contradictory orders. At any rate, Fannin's
army lolled away at the fort in frustration and boredom while a war
passed them by.

Finally Fannin organized a relief force, but en route supply wagons
kept breaking down, delaying the army. Then news came that the Mexican
General Urrea was closing in on Goliad. Fannin ordered the ill-fated
force back to the fortress. Not long after, word came that the Alamo had
fallen. In response to this defeat, Houston ordered Fannin to blow up the
fort and retreat.

“Ain’t we ever gonna fight, Uncle Haden?” Micah had complained.
He hadn’t gotten to shoot anyone yet and was growing bored with this
whole idea of war.

At last, however, they met the enemy in battle, if the minor skirmish
outside La Bahia counted as such. Fifteen hundred Mexican troops against
Fannin’s paltry force. Micah was in the rear and didn’t get a chance to
fight. But his efforts would have hardly mattered. With nine dead, sixty
wounded, and overwhelming odds, Fannin surrendered, and his army
was led back, captive, to the fortress. The prisoners were told they would
be paroled to New Orleans. They wanted to believe that more than the
rumors of vast executions of Texans by the Mexican army. When a week
later they were told they would be marched out the next day and taken to
ships bound for New Orleans, Micah figured his fighting days were over
before they had really begun.

That last night in the fortress the men were in good spirits. Some had
heard the Mexicans would allow them to stop on the way to the sea to
say farewells to their families. And New Orleans wasn’t such a bad place.
Eventually they would make it back to Texas, hopefully before the war
ended.

Micah lay back on the bare ground, using his blanket as a pillow,
and gazed up at the stars. Uncle Haden was sitting beside him smoking a
cheroot. They had become quite close in the last months. Though neither
talked about it much, they both shared the deep pain of the loss of Micah’s
mother. Haden understood Micah as his father never had.

“Uncle Haden, you ever been to New Orleans?”

“Yes, a time or two. It’s a beautiful city.”

“I was there once on my way to Texas.” Micah didn’t like to think of
those dreary times, but for some reason he had an urge to speak of them
now. “We didn’t really go into the city. Pa called it an especially godless
place, the Devil’s playground. So we mostly kept to the harbor some miles
south.”

“I forget you’ve done some traveling yourself, Micah. You’re getting
to be quite a worldly fellow.” Haden smiled that grin of his that made his
eyes twinkle and made anyone who saw it want to grin in return.

“Guess I got my pa to thank for that,” Micah said dryly.

Haden laughed heartily. “He was good for something, then, I
reckon.”

Micah only replied with a loud “Harrumph!”

“Too bad you couldn’t have known your pa when he and I were
younger,” Haden said. “He was quite a rascal, that one.”

“My pa?”

“He ever tell you about the time we set the parson’s barn on fire?” When
Micah shook his head, Haden added ruefully, “Oh no, he wouldn’t. Well,
we didn’t mean to do it. We had hid in the barn during a picnic in order to
smoke a couple of Wilfred Miller’s big stogies we had found—actually, we
had found them in the pocket of the man’s coat, which he had laid over a
chair while he played horseshoes. Anyway, our pa came in the barn looking
for us, and we knew we’d catch it if we were caught. Ben grabbed both
stogies and stuck them in a pile of hay. Not too smart, your pa!” Haden
laughed, not in a derogatory way, but rather as if at a pleasant memory.
“You can guess what happened after that. We were lucky the house and
the entire town didn’t go up in flames. Our pa blistered our bottoms so
bad we couldn’t sit for a week.” Haden sighed, then crushed out the stub
of his smoke. “Religion spoiled your pa.”

“That’s why I’m gonna stay as far away from it as I can,” Micah said
firmly.

“Can’t say as I blame you, boy. But I wish . . .” Pausing, Haden glanced
over at Micah, sadness replacing his earlier humor. “Your pa ain’t all bad.
Fact is, I heard he’d changed since Rebekah’s death. Fella told me he’d
come before his parishioners recently real humbled and talked about how
he’d been wrong in some of his notions about God. I saw something, too,
Micah, when he came after you last month. Maybe . . . maybe he ought
to get another chance.”

“Not after what he did to Ma.” Micah’s tone deepened to that of a
steely man, not a boy. “He don’t deserve to wreck everyone’s lives, then say
he’s changed and expect to be forgiven.”

“Maybe not.”

“Would you, Uncle Haden? Would you forgive him?”

Haden drew up his knees, rested his folded arms on them, and was
silent for a long while before answering. “I ain’t quite ready to forgive him
either, but if I live through this war, I might go and talk to him at least.”

But Haden did not live past the next day. In the morning the prisoners
were marched out of the fortress in four separate groups, each heading in
slightly different directions. When they were halted a half mile from the
fort, some began to realize what was going to happen, but it was too late
for anything but a defiant shout.

“Hurrah for Texas!” the doomed men cried.

Within seconds the shooting began. Micah saw his uncle gunned down
before he obeyed the man’s order—or was it a plea?—to run. The sight of
the massacre of Haden and the others would be etched in Micah’s mind
forever, both waking and sleeping. Only a handful of the four hundred and
twenty men, Micah among them, escaped.

Wounded, weaponless, and starving, Micah had spent a harrowing
five days on the run before he caught up with Houston’s army. Lying in
the brush with nothing but a growling stomach for company, Micah had
thought only of avenging his uncle and the others. When one of Houston’s
men gave him a rifle, his fingers had truly itched to use it. It had been
hard not to shoot at some of the Mexicans fighting with the Texans. There
was a distinction in Texas, and always would be, between good Mexicans
and bad Mexicans—meaning those who fought with Texas and those who
didn’t. Fourteen-year-old Micah found that distinction extremely hard
to fathom. He still did.

Adding to his frustration was the fact that Houston kept retreating
from the Mexicans. They called the retreat of the army and the settlers
from the path of Santa Anna the “runaway scrape,” and it was quickly
causing Houston to lose face with his army. Hundreds deserted, mostly
to aid their families, who had become refugees in the face of the enemy’s
advance. But in the end Houston led the army to San Jacinto.

In all the time of the retreating, Micah’s bloodthirst had not abated.
He fought bravely, if savagely, on the battlefield of San Jacinto. He only
vaguely remembered the first man he ever killed, a Mexican private. It
had happened quickly, and the heat of battle did not allow him to think
much about it, especially as many more fell by his hand after that. But
Micah remembered too clearly the last man he had killed in the war. He
still had nightmares about it.

The battle was mostly over. Victory belonged to the Texans. The Mexicans
had dropped their weapons in surrender, and that’s when Micah
realized he was not the only one still longing for vengeance.

A yell ripped through the battlefield. “Take prisoners like the Mexicans
do!”

Even Houston could not stay the hand of slaughter. The Texans fell on
their prisoners, stabbing, slashing, and clubbing them mercilessly.

Cries of “Remember the Alamo!” “Remember Goliad!” mingled with
the screams of the victims.

Those screams would sear Micah’s memory, but he had joined in
the slaughter. For once Scripture stood him well. “An eye for an eye, and
a tooth for a tooth.” But instead of the killing quenching his thirst for
revenge, it only seemed to whet it more. Near the end, he chased a Mexican
soldier, pinning him up against the bank of the bayou. The man fell
on his knees before Micah, hands clasped beseechingly, tears oozing down
his battle-stained face.

“Have mercy, por favor!” the man begged.

Micah stared into those pleading eyes, leveled his pistol, and fired.

Holy retribution? Yes, Micah had no doubt he was in for a strong dose of it. He could almost hear his father’s voice quivering with fer-vent zeal.

“ ‘And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.’ ”

Micah smiled as he realized he himself had spoken the oft-heard words out loud. For good measure, like a sword thrust, he added, “Matthew chapter three, verse ten.”

How Micah hated that he knew all this. But it had nearly been rammed down his throat. He’d been forced to memorize half the Bible!