The Arrow Keeper’s Song (20 page)

“Oh?” Tom replied. The lingering horror of the nightmarish vision he had experienced marked him far deeper than any bruise. “Do you?” He stepped close and put his face in Willem's. He could smell the rum on the half-breed's lips.

Willem blinked, tried to steady himself, then retreated a few steps. He had been as close a friend as a man could have: The two had hunted together, ridden the same hills together, fought the same battles side by side. But the tormented expression on Tom's face and the hardness in his eyes gave the half-breed cause to wonder. He stood aside as Tom brushed past him and started up the shore to the palm grove.

“I know you!” Willem repeated. But his shout was lost to the tides and the rustling palms and the starry vastness overhead.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
NTONIO
C
ELESTIAL AWOKE WITH A CRY AND
,
GRABBING THE
Colt revolver he kept beside his cot, fired two rounds through the rag-covered window of the mud-brick ca-sita in which he lay. He screamed as his lower back brutally reminded him of the error of his ways. His outburst became a moan. The gunshots ringing in his ears, he eased back on the worn, faded blankets covering the cot's woven rope frame. “Mother of God,” he moaned. Supplications and curses spilled from his lips with indifference these days. One served as good as the other. Whenever he attempted to stand and move about, his injured vertebrae ground together against the inflamed nerve endings; the result was excruciating pain.

For two years he had played a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Spanish, harassing them at every turn. He struck without warning and rode through gauntlets of gun-fire, always to emerge unscathed. “And now to be felled by some clumsy sailor with a club,” he muttered through clenched teeth while reflecting on his predicament.

He was virtually helpless, too incapacitated by the pain to be able to defend himself worth a damn. Glaring at the bullet-riddled remains of the rag curtains, which the breeze had stirred, Celestial noticed the husklike remains of a beetle wrapped in the silken strands of a spider's web. The injured man felt an unsettling kinship with the lifeless insect, which must have struggled in vain while awaiting the inevitable.

The nightmare that had roused Celestial from his uneasy rest had seen him dancing a gallows jig before Captain Zuloaga and the whole Spanish army. To his rum-blurred vision it appeared as if some unseen hand were brushing aside the makeshift curtains. A well-honed instinct for self-preservation had caused the startled rebel to reach for his gun and blast away at the threat.

Gun smoke banded gray and gold as it writhed through fractured sunlight. The casita's roof was pockmarked with gaping holes where the beams had rotted. Brightly plumaged birds nested in the rafters while field mice and lizards took up tenancy in the casita's kitchen and other bedroom. A ten-inch-long iguana clung to the back of a ladder-back chair a few feet from the cot. The reptile stared at the injured human with primitive indifference.

The rest of the mud-brick casitas and cruder-built jacals that surrounded the plaza suffered from similar neglect. Not even Celestial knew the village's history. Defying the pain, the rebel leader forced his protesting body to sit upright. Sweat beaded his brow, and his hands trembled as he put the gun aside and reached for the bottle of rum Joanna had left him to help control the pain. Now, there was a woman who undersood the proper medicinal benefits of “jack iron.” He uncorked the clay bottle and took several swallows before setting the jug aside. He wiped a forearm across his stubbled jaw and dry, cracked lips and stared at his shadow on the wall. He rested his elbows on his knees and returned his attention to the iguana, whose bedside manner left a lot to be desired.

“Many years ago I stumbled upon the canyon and the remains of the village quite by accident.” He spoke as if he were addressing an old friend. The iguana continued to watch him without care. Celestial blinked and wiped a forearm across his eyes. The pain eased if he remained motionless.

He had been a simple teacher then, enjoying a solitary sojourn into the Sierra Maestra to study and collect the wide variety of insects to be found among the towering ridges and in the darkened pockets of its canyons and arroyos. “I found this place just like it is right now, abandoned and still as death. I named the village for my mother, Rosarita. Now it has become my sanctuary. I, a madman conversing with lizards and mice.”

Celestial ruefully chuckled and set the jug aside, then slowly methodically reached for the revolver. He swung open the cylinder and ejected the spent shells onto the floor. At the clatter of the brass casings the iguana leaped from the chair and scampered across the floor, vanishing into the kitchen. Celestial managed to stand, again defying the pain, and walk to the doorway, where he leaned against the sill and surveyed the weathered remains of the village and the steep, forested ridges hemming in the sky. The former occupants of the valley had started a church on the outskirts of the village, about eighty yards from the plaza, a proper distance for a procession. The mud-bricked outer walls of the structure were all that existed, and these were pockmarked and worn like the faith of those Rosarita had sheltered.

The western entrance to the canyon was a trail through a dense stand of oak and mahogany with a sprinkling of pine that stretched from cliff to cliff. The woods began to thin and eventually played out within a stone's throw of the outermost jacal. East of the village a trail began in a grassy meadow about seventy yards wide and a quarter of a mile in length, then drastically narrowed to a defile cutting through a bluff that towered a thousand feet above the deserted village. The pass was a dogleg and almost invisible until glimpsed from close-up. On approach the bluff revealed itself as two separate ridges, which seemed to swing ajar like monumental gates, revealing an escape route from what appeared to be, at first glance, a box canyon.

Celestial watched his horse circle the confines of its corral, a hastily constructed fence between two casitas. The gelding was as much a prisoner as he. The rebel leader studied the patterns of the clouds drifting across the floor of the canyon. He looked longingly at the horse and for a moment even fooled himself into thinking he could sit astride the animal and escape Rosarita. But, in truth, it was an effort even to stand there propped in the doorway. He turned his back on the sunlight, staggered to his cot, and with a groan took his seat once more. He glanced at the rum, then looked away. No. Enough. No more jack iron. He must endure the pain, for Captain Zuloaga rode those mountains, searching, ever searching. Better to meet the devil cold sober and gun in hand.

Antonio Celestial stretched out on the cot and, with one arm behind his head, stared at the rafters and the patch of sky. He winced, the pain like a knife shoved clear through his spine. Perhaps the Americans hadn't landed at Daiquirí. Rumors had proved false before. Joanna might find nothing more than an empty beach. He forced the speculation from his mind. What was the point of worrying now? Today and tomorrow were in the hands of God. He stared down at the gun in his hand and became filled with grim resolve. The Spaniards might take him … but by heaven, they would not take him lightly.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“M
Y
G
OD
,
YOU LOOK TERRIBLE
,” J
OANNA BLURTED OUT
. T
OM
Sandcrane, bathing his battered torso in the aquamarine sea for the second time that morning, sloshed his way back to shore and stood, dripping, his trousers plastered to his limbs and salt water streaming from his naked chest and discolored features. Behind him, billowing clouds like some vast herd of white stallions swept up from the horizon of ships and sea and sky to trample the sapphire meadows of heaven. “What happened?”

Tom shrugged. “I had a difference of opinion with some friends. It was nothing.”

“Then I'd hate to see
something,”
Joanna retorted. “Come along with me this instant.” She had no ranking, but the tone of her voice caused Tom to obey without thinking. He grabbed up his shirt, donned his hat, and fell in step alongside her. It struck him as odd that she should have wandered out of the medical compound and found him by accident. He had the feeling she had come seeking him. If that was indeed the case, then for what purpose? He was intrigued. Their boots dug into the sand as the sergeant and the woman doctor retraced the tracks she had left. Seagulls and terns filled the sky, attracted by the ships and men and opportunity for plunder among the debris left by such a mighty host. Long boats bobbed on the surface of the bay bearing a cargo of men and mules, and it was a toss-up between the two as to who exactly was the more nervous.

The aroma of coffee and flapjacks drifted from the central cook fire around which the medical personnel took their breakfast. The dining area was convenient to both the hospital tents and the private quarters of physicians and aides. A cheer had already gone up for Doctor Bernard Marmillon, who had substituted his own private stores of sugar-cured bacon for the foul-smelling tinned beef that was the staple food-stuff among the enlisted men.

With his name ringing in the air, Marmillon's look of pleasure at Joanna's return to the circle of hospital tents quickly changed to dismay when he recognized the soldier accompanying her. He did not like to think of himself as a prejudiced man, but Bernard was unable to free himself from the stirring of displeasure over the familiar way the Cheyenne sergeant had of addressing Joanna. After all, she came from an exceptional family who wielded a great deal of power in the lower Mississippi valley. The men of the Indian Brigade seemed to have very little regard for authority or for one's station in life. Still, he warmed to Joanna's return, and he hoped she might join him.

But the woman had other things on her mind than break-fast. She waved to Bernard and continued on to the nearest medical tent, an airy, three-sided canvas tent housing a couple of tables and an assortment of cabinets, trunks, and stools. The soldiers with superficial injuries often came no farther into the compound. Shirkers were immediately sent packing with a severe reprimand ringing in their ears. But Tom's bruises and cuts were genuine, though hardly fatal. Perched on the edge of a table, Tom played the part of the cooperative patient with a slightly bemused expression on his face, enduring what he considered to be the woman's unnecessary fuss.

“That laceration over your eye might need a few stitches,” she mentioned.

“Is it bleeding?”

“Well, no, but it
is
pretty deep,” Joanna said.

“It will be all right. I have a poultice of mud and spiderwebs and some herbs tucked in my saddlebags.”

“An Indian remedy … you Cheyenne don't trust doctors?”

“We never had one on the reservation, except for a drunk old army physician. I wouldn't have trusted him with a stray dog.” Tom winced as she probed his side. “In Oklahoma Territory most folks don't rightly give a damn whether the Southern Cheyenne live or die.” In the distance horns blared from the ships in the harbor as more troops prepared to come ashore.
The sooner off this cursed shore, the better
, Tom thought. “Ow.”

Her fingers had found a sore spot.

“Your ribs and diaphragm will be tender for a few days,” Joanna dryly observed. She stepped back, searched a nearby tray, and came away with a vial of iodine and a cotton swab, with which she painted his cuts. She glanced once at his mouth. “Looks like you have a discrepancy on the distal intermediate cusp of one of your upper molars.” Joanna noticed he was staring at her as if she were a madwoman uttering gibberish. “A chipped tooth,” she explained. “Sorry. It's a way of being taken seriously. A woman doctor has to find ways to prove herself.”

She put the antiseptic aside, washed her hands in a basin of water, looked around the tent for a towel, and then, as a last resort, dried them on her trousers.

“Now perhaps you'll tell me why you came looking for me,” Tom said. The cut beneath his lip hurt like hell from the tincture she had applied. So did the one over his eye. The poultice tucked in his saddlebags would have felt cool and soothing and healed him just fine, but, as the woman said, she was the doctor. Joanna calmly appraised Sandcrane, renewed respect in her brown eyes for this sergeant from Oklahoma. She reached in her hip pocket and handed over the document authorizing her to secure volunteers to bring Antonio Celestial out of the mountains to safety. “I'd like you to take a ride.”

Tom read the authorization as she explained Celestial's predicament. There were no surprises in the hastily scribbled note Joanna handed him nor in the woman's story itself, for he already knew much of her situation from having overheard her meeting with Colonel Roosevelt and the rest of the officers. No. For Tom Sandcrane the surprise came when he so readily agreed to go.

The 180 rough riders of the First Volunteers were spread along a fifty-yard stretch of palm grove on the northern perimeter of the encampment. That's where Tom had left his rifle and belongings, under the safeguard of the two mixed-blood Creek who had become his partners in uniform. Of course, he had ulterior motives, other man retrieving his rifle, for returning to the First Volunteers. Tom couldn't singlehandedly transport Celestial and fight off whatever Spanish patrols he might encounter. He needed men to back him, men who had eaten their fill of the dust of Daiquirí and would prefer the danger of the mountains to another day on these congested shores. He needed to look no farther than the woven thatch hut where he'd left his pack and bedroll under the watchful eyes of the two Creek who had been his saddlemates since Tulsa.

Tully Crow was seated in the shade of the
bohío
, smoke trailing from the campfire he had just coaxed from embers to a friendly blaze beneath a blue enameled coffeepot. Sweat beaded his angular features, and a bead of moisture hung precipitously from his large nose as he plucked a burning stick from the fire and lit the blackened stub of a cigar clamped between his teeth.