The Red Ripper (27 page)
Authors: Kerry Newcomb
“THE BIBLE IS FOR SEÃORA SALDEVAR.”
Papa, look at me. This is no work for a lady,” Isabel Zavala complained, holding out her soot-stained hands. Ashes had worked their way under her fingernails, much to her horror. Living in a tent and trailing along with Gen. Sam Houston didn't have to stop a girl from looking nice.
“What lady?” Jesus Zavala asked, wildly looking about. “Where is the grand lady?” He stared down at the coals. “Pump the bellows for your father.”
“Why can't Roberto do it?”
“Because he must scout for General Houston.”
“I could scout.”
“You'd get lost.” Jesus lifted the horseshoe out of its bed of coals. It still needed heating. “Now work.”
Valentina emerged from their house and hurried across the alley to the blacksmith shop where her husband had plied his trade for more years than she cared to count. She had matured into a round, pleasant woman whose bubbly personality reflected her zest for life. She had packed a substantial basket with cold chicken, tortillas, strips of peppered beef, and a jar of salsa spicy enough to make the devil sweat.
“Mama, tell Father I shouldn't be doing such work,” Isabel complained. “What if my friends should see me?”
“What friends? We are the last people in San Felipe,”
Valentina observed. Most of the inhabitants had brought their families into Houston's encampment farther down the Brazos. There was word that Comanche raiding parties were using the current conflict to raid settlements whose able-bodied men had joined the militia to fight Santa Anna. To that end, by the tenth of March San Felipe had been reduced to a ghost town. At the last minute of their departure, one of Zavala's horses had thrown a shoe. The blacksmith had unhitched one of the geldings from his wagon and brought the animal into the front of the shop.
Valentina observed. Most of the inhabitants had brought their families into Houston's encampment farther down the Brazos. There was word that Comanche raiding parties were using the current conflict to raid settlements whose able-bodied men had joined the militia to fight Santa Anna. To that end, by the tenth of March San Felipe had been reduced to a ghost town. At the last minute of their departure, one of Zavala's horses had thrown a shoe. The blacksmith had unhitched one of the geldings from his wagon and brought the animal into the front of the shop.
Isabel continued to complain as she pumped the bellows to stoke the fire in the coals. When the iron was glowing red-hot, Jesus removed it from the coals and placed it on an anvil and began to hammer the metal into shape. “Go on then; off with you,” Zavala told his daughter. “But don't wander far. I will be finished here in a few minutes.”
Isabel squealed in relief and raced off into the cool exterior of the street, where there was a breeze and no bank of coals in forge. Valentina was content to watch her husband ply his trade. She enjoyed the skill he used in tempering iron and bending it to his will. There was music in the iron as it rang out with each strike of the mallet.
“Our daughter is growing up,” she said.
“Too quickly. Woman, where does the time go?”
“I don't know,” Valentina said, bemused. “I thought you were counting.” She sighed. “First our son and now our daughter. She will be bringing home a young man before long.”
“And I will take my hammer and temper the resolve of each young man who presents himself.”
Jesus dunked the glowing red horseshoe into a bucket of water. Steam exploded in his face while the surface of the water bubbled for a few seconds until the metal
cooled. He brought the iron shoe over to the gelding and began to shoe the animal while he enjoyed a bait of oats. A few minutes later Jesus had finished the task, smoothing the edges of the horseshoe with a metal file, and returned his tools to the box beneath the bench seat in the freight wagon.
cooled. He brought the iron shoe over to the gelding and began to shoe the animal while he enjoyed a bait of oats. A few minutes later Jesus had finished the task, smoothing the edges of the horseshoe with a metal file, and returned his tools to the box beneath the bench seat in the freight wagon.
“You know, I have piled a nice bed of hay in the back stall. We could go back there and pretend we are sneaking off at night under the nose of your father.” He reached down and patted his wife's ample derriere. Valentina laughed and slapped his hand away. He reached for the other cheek, and she danced out of his grasp, but not too far.
“Now see here. What if Isabel should come in?” his wife protested. But he could tell her resolve was weakening. Jesus persisted, confident he would wear her down. It was a beautiful day in March, the birds were singing, trees were budding out, and the first green shoots of new grass were forcing their way up through the sandy soil.
“She won't set foot in here again for fear I might put her to work,” Jesus said. They laughed together, and for a few brief moments the tension of the past week drained away. Flirting with his wife, teasing her, helped to maintain the blacksmith's sanity in this time of trial and sacrifice.
Zavala lifted his wife in his arms.
“Be careful, you silly man, or you will hurt your back and you will not be able to parade back and forth for General Houston.”
“More's the pity,” said Zavala. “All the more reason I should ravish you upon the straw. Oh ⦠. oh.” A catch at the small of his back warned him to put her down. He obeyed the pain but continued to embrace her.
Valentina glanced toward the front door, then nodded and led her husband toward the rear of the stable. She
liked him like this, smelling of ash and iron, his muscles swollen and glistening, like some animal, her animal. But their foreplay had not gone much beyond an initial caress when they heard Isabel scream.
liked him like this, smelling of ash and iron, his muscles swollen and glistening, like some animal, her animal. But their foreplay had not gone much beyond an initial caress when they heard Isabel scream.
Zavala was out of the stall and charging up the aisle. He paused long enough to grab his rifle, powder, and shot, then plunged forward into the street. Valentina wasn't far behind, moving with surprising quickness, her lustful thoughts replaced with images of howling Comanche chasing her daughter down the deserted streets of the town.
“Papa! Mama! Come quickly!”
Jesus Zavala charged into the plaza, rifle ready, his temper as hot as his forge. Anyone attempting to harm his daughter was going to have a hard death. The blacksmith rounded the corner of the street and bolted past the abandoned stalls, finding his daughter standing in front of a worn-out nag, a hulking, corpselike figure slumped forward in the saddle. Jesus knew his horses. He knew the mustang, though the poor beast had been ridden nearly to death. And he knew the rider; at least he thought he did.
Behind the blacksmith, Valentina gasped and blessed herself. “Madre de Dios,” she whispered. “Can it be him?”
“I think so,” Jesus replied.
“Papa ⦔
“Yes, daughter, I am here,” Jesus said, walking across the plaza to stand alongside the unnerved young girl. Then he discovered why she had reacted with such alarm. The man on horseback was covered with blood; the flanks of the mustang were stained with crimson patches. The serape the man wore was torn and bullet-riddled. There was a hole in his thigh. The wound looked burned and black and ugly.
Jesus gingerly drew closer to the mustang. The horse
was too weary to shy away. Jesus craned his head down to peer beneath the sombrero. “Señor Wallace, is that you? Are you alive?”
was too weary to shy away. Jesus craned his head down to peer beneath the sombrero. “Señor Wallace, is that you? Are you alive?”
The man stirred, tilted his head; the sombrero fell away. Isabel stifled a scream at the sight. The man's face was a red mask. Blood was caked around a puckered scalp wound where a pistol ball had glanced off his skull and left a tattered furrow of flesh from his temple to well above his right ear.
Jesus marveled at how the man even managed to sit a horse, then noticed that Wallace had lashed himself to the saddle, tying his left hand to the pommel and passing the rope around his legs and waist and the mustang's neck.
William fumbled inside his shirt and removed the oilskin packet containing Don Murillo's Bible and the letter Col. Bill Travis had written to a world beyond the beleaguered walls of the Alamo.
“For General Houston,” the big man said in a rasping barely audible voice. “The Bible is for Senora Saldevar.”
“Yes, my friend,” Jesus replied taking them out of Wallace's hand.
William looked around and saw that Valentina and Isabel were weeping, but he couldn't spare the time to worry about it. He needed to get back to the Alamo. But maybe ⦠just maybe ⦠he ought to rest, for a minute or two. The ropes no longer held him; they snapped beneath his weight. Zavala rushed to support him. He lowered Wallace to the ground.
Â
“
Samuel, am I dead?
”
Samuel, am I dead?
”
His brother's ghost shrugged. “Maybe. Wait and see.”
“ ⦠YOU ARE GOING TO LIVE.”
Dreams and dying and rising to life again. Wallace burns and Isabel places a cool compress on his forehead. He thrashes about in his delirium and Mad Jack is there with a calming word, and when that doesn't work, Roberto and Jesus restrain him. He hears Mad Jack say, “It's for your own good, lad. You're among friends now.” â¦
Valentina spoon-feeds him, sometimes Henneke, who regales him with one bawdy tale after another. But Mad Jack and Roberto Zavala are never far. They talk to him as if he is still among the living. Once Houston comes by, big and rangy, but he looks tired and he bears bad news.
“Folks have been drifting in from San Antonio. The Alamo has fallen. Travis, Bowie, Señor Saldevar, they're all dead. All hundred and eighty. They died to a man. The general went and burned the bodies and scattered the bones. Reckon he's trying to scare us. Heal up, Will. I need you. Texas needs you.”
Wallace starts to correct him. But he cannot speak; the words won't come. He sleeps and wakes or thinks he does and finds Samuel standing next to his bed, but the ghost has always been with him. Who is that behind you? Faint shimmering shifting shapes. Is it Don Mu
rillo,
Chuy Montoya, Bill Travis, Bowie? ⦠I should have been with you.
rillo,
Chuy Montoya, Bill Travis, Bowie? ⦠I should have been with you.
“Have you come for me?” Wallace says.
My God, is that my voice?
My God, is that my voice?
Then Samuel and the faces behind him drift apart like bayou mist at sunup. There is a roaring in his ears, the light fails, and he drifts upon a dark and troubled sea. He hears moaning, the siren call of dying men. He is caught in the rush of a violent whirlpool from which he cannot struggle free. Thunder resonates like an artillery barrage; lightning crashes; the dead and the dying call him by name.
“William Wallace, we own you now.”
He cries out and a slender coppery hand reaches down through the shadow of death and catches hold of him.
“William Wallace, we own you now.”
He cries out and a slender coppery hand reaches down through the shadow of death and catches hold of him.
He hears his name, whispered, holding him fast against the maelstrom, refusing to let him be swept away. Esperanza? Is he dead at last and creating his own heaven? Her touch soothes him, eases his fears. He sleeps and wakes and she is there. He closes his eyes, waits, then opens them again.
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Esperanza was there, bathed in the sunlight that streamed in through an opening in the tent, the luster of her raven black tresses muted by a veil of black lace. She leaned forward and placed her hand on his forehead, looked him squarely in the eye, and told him, “William Wallace, you are going to live.”
And so he did.
“BURN EVERYTHING!”
San Felipe was burning. Black smoke rose upward into the April sky. On the first of the month the market should have been crowded with townspeople and farmers in for supplies or the plain socializing aspect of a trip into town.
Mamacitas
would be keeping a watch over their ripe and willing daughters while the young men from town and the vaqueros from the ranches vied with one another hoping to catch the attention of the prettiest señorita. On another day,
haciendados
and hardscrabble farmers might have met to exchange news about crops; wives would have gathered for quilting and gossip. The first week of April had always brought a spring fandango. The hotels should have been crowded with guests, folks gathered for a town meeting. Not this year and, perhaps, never again.
Mamacitas
would be keeping a watch over their ripe and willing daughters while the young men from town and the vaqueros from the ranches vied with one another hoping to catch the attention of the prettiest señorita. On another day,
haciendados
and hardscrabble farmers might have met to exchange news about crops; wives would have gathered for quilting and gossip. The first week of April had always brought a spring fandango. The hotels should have been crowded with guests, folks gathered for a town meeting. Not this year and, perhaps, never again.
“I built that shop with my own two hands,” said Jesus Zavala, sitting astride his horse on a wooded knoll overlooking the town. Flames devoured- the wooden shingle roof of the livery stable, feasted on the blacksmith shop, and gorged themselves on the interior of his hacienda. The adobe walls might remain, but they would house nothing but charred memories.
“There goes the Flying Jib,” said Austin. He had ridden up from the coast to ascertain the condition of the army in the wake of the Alamo's destruction, but he
stayed to scout the vicinity, ignoring every word of caution. He had wanted to see for himself, but he wasn't expecting such a show. Half a dozen other riders waited, downcast, frustrated by the fact that they were too few in number to rush to the town's defense. The tension of the past weeks was plainly evident in their hardened features. Their rage continued to build, souring their dispositions, leaving them on edge while at the same time despondent. Everything they had worked for was up in smoke.
stayed to scout the vicinity, ignoring every word of caution. He had wanted to see for himself, but he wasn't expecting such a show. Half a dozen other riders waited, downcast, frustrated by the fact that they were too few in number to rush to the town's defense. The tension of the past weeks was plainly evident in their hardened features. Their rage continued to build, souring their dispositions, leaving them on edge while at the same time despondent. Everything they had worked for was up in smoke.
“We can build again,” Jesus said. “Santa Anna hasn't won yet.”
“If men like Bowie and Crockett couldn't stop them, what chance do we have?”
“What are you saying?” growled the blacksmith. “Madre de Dios. They made the sacrifice and now we must crawl to Santa Anna on our hands and knees and beg forgiveness. Not I. Not while I can walk and speak and fight.”
“Talk like that and you'll make a good governor,” Austin said.
“I am a blacksmith. It is all I want to be. No, one thing more. I want to be free. And if some of you won't fight, then get on down there and ask Colonel Guadiz for mercy. He will show you salvation at the point of a lance.”
“I didn't say I wouldn't fight,” one of the other Texicans muttered. He was a thickset man of average height and a plodding demeanor.
“I've seen enough;” Austin remarked. “We had better warn Houston.”
“So he can tell us to retreat again,” another of the group grumbled
“Santa Anna couldn't kill Big Foot Wallace,” Jesus said. He was proud to have been the one to have brought the big Texican into camp.
“Thank God,” Austin said. It had been touch-and-go for a while. But Esperanza along with Dorotea had nursed him back to health. He had a notion Texas was going to need all the legends it could get.
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Juan Diego galloped his horse down the Calle Nicholas Bravo, through the center of town until he came to Commerce Square, the central plaza and heart of the settlement. Flames leaped from every building. The heat was near unbearable. Before the end of the day San Felipe would be reduced to cinders. It would be no more than a blackened memory among the piney woods.
Cayetano Obregon galloped up to the Whiteside Hotel and hurled a firebrand through the front window and tossed another onto the porch. The sergeant was never any happier than when he could be involved in a bit of mayhem.
Paloma seemed to materialize out of the smoke and rode up alongside her brother. She kept her nose and mouth covered with a bandanna, to filter out some of the smoke and help her breathe.
“This is a bad move!” she complained, shouting to be heard above the roar of the flames. “I fear this will work against us.” The roof of the hotel collapsed and sent a column of sparks jetting toward the sky. “I don't think this will frighten the Texicans. I think it will make them furious.”
“It will break their spirits; you'll see,” said Juan Diego.
Another building burst into flames, the meetinghouse across from the plaza. It was fitting that it should succumb to the fire, Guadiz thought. The seeds of insurrection had been sown within those walls. “Let these flames scour the last vestiges of rebellion from the land,” said Juan Diego. Were they being watched? He hoped so. “You will all perish!” he shouted, walking his mount out
of the smoke and into full view of the surrounding trees. “There is nowhere you can hide we cannot find you.
Norte americanos,
go back where you came from! This is our land. All we will give you is enough to bury you in.” Juan Diego liked the way he sounded. Santa Anna was already hinting there would be a new governor of Texas. Why not a man like Juan Diego Guadiz?
of the smoke and into full view of the surrounding trees. “There is nowhere you can hide we cannot find you.
Norte americanos,
go back where you came from! This is our land. All we will give you is enough to bury you in.” Juan Diego liked the way he sounded. Santa Anna was already hinting there would be a new governor of Texas. Why not a man like Juan Diego Guadiz?
“When do we stop, Colonel?” A lancer rode up. His cheeks were blackened, but his eyes were game.
“Burn everything!”
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“Retreat?” Wallace said, hobbling over toward Sam Houston. “After what Guadiz has done to San Felipe? You cannot be serious, General.” The big man looked more like a casualty then a willing soldier. His skull was bandaged; another held a compress to his side. He needed a crutch to walk while the bullet wound in his thigh healed. But he was alive and growing stronger by the day. The soldiers and their families in camp watched him regain his strength and took heart. “Give me a horse and a dozen men. I'll drive him out.”
“This army is more important than a town,” Houston replied, glowering down from horseback. Saracen, his white stallion, pawed the ground. “Buildings can be rebuilt. I cannot afford to lose a man. Caution is the better part of valor.”
“Stephen, are you gonna abide by this?” As Houston departed, Wallace turned toward the only other man who might outrank the Tennessean.
Austin shrugged. “He's the general. Trust him, William.” Austin stepped around his own gelding and placed his hand on Wallace's shoulder. The two men stood on the edge of the encampment, a half-day march from Santa Anna's columns. More than a thousand men had heeded Houston's call. Many of the volunteers brought their families, a wise move judging by the fate of San
Felipe. The Texicans were anxious to take on the general despite his overwhelming numbers. Maybe Houston was right. The longer he held his men back, the angrier and downright meaner they became. He might just be delaying to even the odds. When the battle came; it was going to be no picnic.
Felipe. The Texicans were anxious to take on the general despite his overwhelming numbers. Maybe Houston was right. The longer he held his men back, the angrier and downright meaner they became. He might just be delaying to even the odds. When the battle came; it was going to be no picnic.
Santa Anna was pursuing a scorched earth policy even as he attempted to close in and engage Houston's army. And there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.
“Keep healing, Will. Sam will need a good scout. And give him your trust. He may be a bit of a blowhard when it comes to speeches, but he's a good man.” Austin climbed into the saddle.
“Why don't you come with us?” Wallace said.
“No, old friend. It is back to the coast for me. The representatives are still attempting to draft a constitution. I need to be there.” Austin placed a hand on the saddle horn and then looked around the clearing at the colonists and volunteers who had all come together to fight for liberty. “I never meant for this to happen, for the Alamo, all those deaths. And look at you.”
“What the devil's the matter with me?” Wallace said, peering out from his bandaged skull. “Just a few nicks and bruises.”
“Hardly even scratches,” Austin replied with a grin. He indicated the colonists. “They believe in you, like it or not. Let them see you, my friend. Houston may be leading them, but they'll find their courage in you. You're Big Foot Wallace. There isn't a man who wouldn't follow you.” Austin shook his hand. “Good luck. To all of us.”
William watched his friend ride off along the south road. He did not envy Austin's task, putting the dream and aspirations into a foundation of words to build a republic upon. He hobbled back the way he had come,
pausing by Mad Jack's camp to see how the freebooter was holding up. The pirate was inconsolable over the loss of the Flying Jib. All that wonderful whiskey and tequila, not to mention kegs of his home brew.
pausing by Mad Jack's camp to see how the freebooter was holding up. The pirate was inconsolable over the loss of the Flying Jib. All that wonderful whiskey and tequila, not to mention kegs of his home brew.
William decided to continue on through the camp, determined to walk the stiffness out of his leg. The blow to his skull had not impaired any of his faculties save that he had no memory of the nights and days when he hovered between life and death. But he could vividly recall seeing Esperanza and feeling her healing touch and the way she admonished him to live. He glanced over at her campsite and was tempted to approach her. But the time wasn't right. The death of Don Murillo poisoned the air between them. He wondered if it would always be that way:
His leg started to ache, but he forced himself to keep moving, to walk through the pain. He had to heal. Another battle was taking shape and he wasn't about to miss it, no sir, not this time. William hated being unable to ride to the sound of the guns. But here was at least some small part he could play, to make the bitter pill of another retreat easier to stomach. If his presence offered encouragement, then he'd walk till he dropped.
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