The Shadow Man (20 page)

The thudding of running horses entered the woods. Petra knew she had only seconds in which to hide.

The noise of the other horses on her right ceased as the men halted to listen for her. She hastily reined in the mare. When the men moved again, she sent her mount on at a soft walk.

* * *

In some ancient time a rock ledge on the side of the juniper hill had broken loose and come rumbling down. The jumble of rocks, some twice as large as a wagon, leaned at a precarious, hazardous angle on the base of the hill. As a child, Petra had discovered the great mound of collapsed rock stretching a hundred feet. Unknowing of the tenuous, unstable hold each rock had upon another, she had explored the jumble of rocks, crawling into the narrow passageways with their abrupt, twisting turns, but only for a short ways.

She had fled to those underground corridors for safety many years later when the Navajos raided the rancho and she had been cut off from the hacienda. Wounded in the face and terribly frightened, she'd hidden for hours among the rocks. She had not emerged until the voice of her searching father had reached her through the crevices between the boulders and coaxed her back into the world of sunlight.

The monstrous pile of angular boulders lay just ahead of Petra. She dreaded returning to the cold tomb within them. The horrible memories of lying injured there welled up in her mind with fearful clarity. But there was no other place she could go that the raiders would not eventually find her.

She halted the mare and painfully climbed down. The horse was sent away on a path among the trees that ran along the foot of the hill. Pressing her arm tightly against her wounded ribs, she took a circuitous route to the rock pile, carefully stepping on stones to hide her passage.

She squeezed through an opening and crawled deeply into the hard, unyielding embrace of the mound of huge boulders.

Petra came to the end of a twisting path that had plunged and climbed through the disjointed chaos of the rock. She lay upon a slanting slab and tried to rest. But she could find no position that eased the pain of her wound. Gradually the bleeding from the gunshot ceased.

In the pitch blackness the passing of time could not be measured. Now and then she dragged herself cautiously to a hole and peered out. Twice there was daylight. Then once, darkness.

She thought again and again of her family. Had they survived?
Madre de Dios,
let them live. Do not allow Jacob to ride into a trap and be killed.

A troubled, pain-filled sleep finally overtook Petra. When she awoke, she was shivering with cold among the rocks, and her thirst was awful. Water had to be found soon.

Petra rested a while longer, the hard rock gouging her flesh in many places. Finally, unable to endure the need for water any longer, she made her way to the entrance. The juniper woods lay silent and full of long shadows from a low, westerly sun.

On tottering legs, poor wounded creature that she was, she moved among the trees. The ground was wet from a recent rain. But none of the moisture had reached Petra buried in the pile of stones. She thought of the cold water of the spring. But that water source was inside the courtyard. The
banditos
would capture and kill her should they still be there. She must circle around the hacienda and find the water that came under the courtyard wall.

She reached the border of the woods and stopped. When it grew dark, she would go on.

Two pistol shots rang out ahead of Petra. She flinched, expecting to feel the sudden hurt of another bullet. Then she realized the gunfire had been inside the compound.

She crouched behind the bole of a thick juniper and peered at the hacienda. Who had been injured or killed with those shots? Please, oh, please, not Jacob.

The growing shadows merged into dusk. Still Petra waited. She dared not go farther until full darkness arrived.

A man on a galloping horse broke from the gate of the compound. Petra recognized the familiar figure of Jacob. She straightened and staggered from the woods.

“Jacob!” she cried. “Jacob, wait! I am here!” The rider didn't slow. He disappeared over the lip of the bluff.

Conrado Solis was exhilarated by the thought of battle with the Americans. Those damnable men, with their crude and insulting manners, were always crowding into Mexico. Already they owned most of the important businesses in Santa Fe. Now they planned to conquer the entire country. It was time to give them a beating and take Santa Fe back for the citizens. If it wasn't for Jacob, Conrado could say he hated every gringo.

Conrado glanced to the side at Roberto Bautista. He had stopped at the Bautista rancho and found Roberto and his vaqueros preparing to ride to Santa Fe in response to Governor Armijo's request for volunteers to join the local militia. The two bands of men had agreed to travel together and fight side by side in the battle with the Americans.

Roberto Bautista's face held a slight smile, and his eyes shone with excitement as he caught Conrado looking at him. He winked in good humor. “Soon, soon,” Roberto said.

Conrado nodded his understanding of his friend's comment. The conflict would soon begin. However, the Americans were savage fighters. The battle would not be easily won.

He glanced to the rear. Ten mounted men rode directly behind. With their bearded faces, pistols in their belts and rifles in scabbards, they looked very fierce.

A wagon pulled by two teams of trotting horses came last. The war could last for many days. With the governor's treasury always empty of funds to make purchases of supplies, Conrado and Roberto had brought their own foodstuff, ammunition, and bedding.

To Conrado's unbelieving eyes, the left lead horse of the team hitched to the wagon stumbled and fell. In slow motion, the animal slid for two or three yards, propelled by its own momentum and the pull of the other horses on its breast chain. Then the weight of the fallen beast yanked its mate down. The second team tripped on the dragging bodies and toppled to the ground in a jumble of kicking, thrashing legs.

The wagon slithered sideways. The long wooden tongue of the vehicle, chained to the horses, began to bend under the thrust of the onrushing wagon. The strong length of wood broke with a loud splintering sound. The wagon careened to one side and rolled.

The crash of the heavily charged rifle that had slain the first horse registered on Conrado's startled senses. He jerked his pistol and yelled a warning to Roberto.

A blizzard of bullets struck the Mexicans. Conrado fired at men, only half seen in the brush near the road. Roberto's pistol was booming beside him. On Conrado's right, a man was knocked from his saddle.

Roberto cried out. Conrado whirled to look at his friend. A lead ball had hit Roberto in the side of the head, tearing away a corner of his skull. He flung wide his arms, dropping his revolver, and tumbled from his mount.

Cursing wildly, Conrado cocked his gun and fired again and again at the attackers. Bullets flew around him, buzzing and snarling like small, deadly animals, plucking at his clothes, burning his skin.

His pistol snapped on an empty chamber. He slung a look around.

Many horses and all his comrades lay in crumpled mounds on the ground. Two mounts were storming off with reins dragging and stirrups flapping. One of his vaqueros started to rise. A bullet slammed him down.

In shocked surprise, Conrado realized he was the only man still uninjured. Somehow God had kept the bullets from striking him.

He couldn't beat the large number of gunmen alone. He raked the ribs of his horse with the sharp rowels of his spurs. The big brute darted away along the road.

A hurtling chunk of metal nicked Conrado's ear. He shook his head in wonder. So close and yet never seriously wounding him.

A hundred yards, then two hundred separated Conrado from the murderous rifles of the attackers. The horse ran free and strong, swiftly carrying him from the killing ground. The gunfire at his rear stopped. He was safe.

He looked ahead. In front of him on the right in the waist-high brush beside the road, a white man stood up abruptly. Then another and another, until there were six of them. Men had been stationed farther along the road to kill anybody that might escape the main assault. They wore unmatched clothes, not the uniforms of soldiers—
banditos
. Petra had been right. The greatest danger to the people of the Pecos ranchos was outlaws such as these. Forgive me, Sister. I have killed myself. I fear that I have done the same to you and the others.

Bullets pierced Conrado. His world exploded into total darkness.

* * *

The broken-edged moon cast a thin silver light down on the Gallinas River. In the brush beside its banks, the band of Texans stole toward the Bautista hacienda.

Kirker grinned inside his shaggy beard as his men moved with him in a ragged line. This fight with a few sleeping Mexicans should be easy.

The thicket fell away behind, and the men entered a zone that had been cleared of brush and weeds near a stone-and-adobe wall. Kirker felt his breath quicken as he stretched to his full height and looked over the wall at the dark gun ports of the house. How many sharpshooting Mexicans were awake and waiting with guns cocked?

Kirker went swiftly, cat-footing the remaining distance to the wall. His men came hurrying behind him up to the obstacle. Kirker's grin broadened to a wolfish smile. Everything was happening according to plan. He checked the eastern horizon. The black night was graying into morning. The attack must be made quickly.

“Custus, over the wall you go,” Kirker whispered to a tall, skinny man near him. Let someone else take the first bullet if a trap was waiting to be sprung.

Custus grabbed the top of the wall, hoisted himself up, and dropped inside. His feet grated noisily on gravel when he landed.

The gang of men tensed in silence and waited. But there was no sound of alarm, and the only thing that moved was the moon slipping across the brightening sky.

“Everybody over,” Kirker ordered.

There was a short scuffle of boots and muffled grunts as the men swarmed over the wall. Here and there moonlight glinted in silver sparks off the iron barrels of their rifles. A man fell with a muttered curse.

A large, long-haired dog raced into the moonlight at a corner of the hacienda. He slowed for half a second, his head coming up, questioning. His keen hunting nose caught the alien scent of the invaders. He roared a deep-chested bellow that changed to a savage growl. He launched himself across the courtyard at the nearest intruder.

Custus, in the lead, jerked his rifle to his shoulder. He fired, the rifle booming like a cannon in the confined space of the compound. The dog swerved aside, whining in agony from his wound. Then its savage animal instinct for battle brought it back to its original course. It leapt at Custus's throat. Man and dog went down in a struggling tangle.

One of the men close to Custus ran forward. He shoved the barrel of his rifle against the ribs of the dog and pulled the trigger. The snarling creature was blown away to roll in the dirt. The dog tried to rise, its head lifting and its lips pulled back tightly as it snarled again. Its eyes glared yellow hate at its many enemies, and its paws scratched at the dirt as it tried to crawl forward. The dog's life drained away in a red tide through the cave-like hole in its chest. The shining eyes went black with death.

Two dogs, seemingly replicas of the first, tore in the direction of the Texans. The men shot both growling beasts before they could cross half the courtyard.

“Spread out!” shouted Kirker. “Some go left! Some right! Cover all the doors and windows.” The damn dogs had ruined his surprise. The smile in his beard was gone.

“Shoot everything that's alive,” Kirker called to the charging Texans. He raced with a group to the front of the hacienda.

The men with Kirker ripped the hitch rail loose from its moorings and began to pound the front entry with it. The thick timbers of the door held firm against the onslaught. Then all at once it gave way and slammed back against the inside wall.

The men dropped the battering ram and sprang to shelter on each side of the opening. They snatched up their rifles from where they'd been leaned against the wall. Nervously they looked at each other and at the open doorway, faintly framed by candlelight. So temptingly silent.

“Hell, we can't stand here all morning,” said one of the men. He took a quick look inside and ducked back. “Empty, by Gawd,” he said.

“Then let's get this over with,” Kirker called, and lunged into the doorway. He raced along the shadowy hall.

An old, white-haired man moving with a hobbling limp came from a side hall. He thrust a short-barreled rifle at Kirker and started to take aim.

The Texan chief shot the man through the chest. He sprang over the body, rushed farther along the hallway and turned around a corner.

A young woman held a double-barreled shotgun pointed straight along the hallway. She fired both barrels. The recoil kicked her back a step.

Kirker had seen the danger and was already throwing himself to the floor. He heard the lead shots tearing past. His hat was knocked from his head.

To his rear he heard moans and cries. A man cursed and a rifle roared. An invisible wind seemed to whip the dress of the woman. A stunned expression froze her pretty face. She fell backward and lay there quietly.

A half-grown boy stepped partway from a door of a room to face the Texans. A large revolver bucked in his hands. He forced it down and started to pry back the hammer again.

In surprise, Kirker heard the bullet go into the ceiling above his head. The youth was so rattled, he hadn't aimed. Kirker shot him.

The boy stumbled into the hall. Slowly, as if very tired, he sat down on the floor. Using both thumbs, he vainly tried to cock the gun again. His strength wasn't enough. He glared at the man who had mortally wounded him.

Kirker saw the same indomitable spirit in the boy's eyes that had been in the dog's. He shot the boy in the face, snapping his head cruelly back.