Crack in the Sky

screaming at him, the governor shoved Jacova behind him and continued yelling into the pandemonium.

Suddenly Mirabal drew his own pistol from the wide red sash there beneath the short-waisted chaqueta.

At that instant the screaming women were falling back toward the walls, leaving the two rings of antagonists alone in the middle of the long sala: that small knot of outnumbered Americans at the center, a thick ring of Mexican rivals surrounding them.

Firing his weapon into one of the thick wooden beams above their heads, Mirabal instantly silenced the entire room. The soldiers spun with a jerk. And the trappers looked up in alarm.

Bass wondered, Was this the signal for the killing to begin?

When he had their attention, the governor began to speak again in his loud, certain voice.

“He just ordered them soldados to put their pistols away,” Kinkead translated breathlessly.

For a moment no one moved; then the first of the soldiers began to comply … as if they had weighed the odds of disobeying not only their governor but their gracious host. The haughty Mexicans stuffed their pistols back into the colorful sashes tied around their waists, still brandishing their knives and short swords with unmasked glee.

“If one of us falls,” Hatcher growled, “the rest get round him—don’t let them greasers drag him off.”

“How many you figger we can take on?” Caleb asked.

Elbridge was the first to answer. “Many as they wanna throw agin’ us!”

Just as the soldiers took another cautious step toward their rivals, Mirabal hollered again.

Jack demanded, “What’s he saying?”

“Something about the knives,” Kinkead declared. “He don’t want no killing here.”

The governor hollered to some older men at the foot of the platform. Reluctantly two of them handed up their pistols to Mirabal. He immediately held them right over the heads of those standing below him on the clay floor, pointing the weapons directly at Ramirez.

Matthew swallowed hard, saying, “Mirabal just told ’im he’d be the first to die. If there’s gonna be blood, then Ramirez’s blood’s gonna be the first on this floor.”

“He—he’s really pulling them soldiers back?” Fish asked in that hushed room.

Kinkead nodded. “Says he won’t let the lieutenant and his men dishonor him twice.”

It was plain as sun how the governor’s words slapped the officer and his men every bit as hard as if he would strike them across the cheek.

“Says them soldiers dishonored him when they didn’t fight hard enough to save all the prisoners,” Matthew explained to his stunned companions.

“Weren’t their fault the bastards was yeller polecats,” Isaac grumbled.

Continuing, Kinkead declared, “He won’t stand for the soldiers dishonoring him again by killing in his … in his house …”

Bass listened to the way Kinkead’s voice dropped off. “What … what is it, Matthew?”

“He said there won’t be no killing in his house, ’specially no killing the men what brung his wife and daughter back to him safe.”

The lieutenant whirled on the governor, red-faced as he spat out his words, gripping the huge butt of that pistol stuffed into his sash. The officer’s whole body trembled with rage.

“He says that’s twice Mirabal’s shamed him and his men,” Matthew warned gravely. “Says they’re due the right to wipe off that shame, or there is no honor in this house.”

Slowly the governor lowered one of the pistols, pointing the other directly at the lieutenant’s head.

“If there’s gonna be killing, that Ramirez gonna be the first to die here. Mirabal ain’t gonna let them soldiers disobey him.”

Even though the room was as quiet as a convent at dusk, the governor bellowed like a bull, flushed with anger from the neck up.

“Told ’em to put away ever’thing,” Kinkead translated. “Knives too.”

“Why?” Hatcher asked.

Pausing before he answered, Matthew eventually explained, “Told Ramirez if they wanted to show they was honorable men, then they could fight like real men—’thout no guns or no knives.”

“No knives?” Simms repeated.

For a long time no one moved.

Then suddenly the lieutenant turned away from his men and stepped right to the foot of the platform, where he passed both his pistol and his long stiletto to Jacova. The governor’s daughter took the weapons as the rest of the Mexican males reluctantly handed over their weapons to women lining the adobe walls where candles flickered in the still air.

Mirabal hurled his voice over the heads of the others, speaking to the trappers.

Matthew translated, “Says it’s our turn to put our guns away—”

“Cache our guns?” Hatcher replied in disbelief. “Ain’t no way in hell I’m letting go of this pistol of mine—not when these sumbitches got us outnumbered the way they do.”

Silence fell heavy about them once more. And finally Mirabal spoke, filled with apparent regret.

“Governor says we ain’t the honorable men he thought we was when we brung his family back … not if we don’t put our guns and knives away like his soldiers done.”

“If we do,” Wood demanded, “then what?”

Matthew drew himself up hugely, “Then we’ll have us our fight.”

“Us agin’ alla them?” Isaac inquired.

“Just our fists, boys!” Kinkead cheered as he turned and passed his weapons to Rosa.

“Who’s gonna hold the rest what we got?” Hatcher demanded.

Graham said, “Yeah—I ain’t trusting no one with my gun and my knife!”

“Lay ’em on that table by you,” a voice cried out in plain English from somewhere beyond the thick ring of Mexicans. “They be safe right there.”

“Damn,” Bass muttered as the slight figure poked his way through the last layer of soldiers and stepped into the open between the two groups of rivals.

“Johnny!” Hatcher bellowed with glee. “Come to fandango with yer friends?”

Rowland’s eyes bounced over the crowd a moment before he answered. “I s’pose you might say I come to fandango, Jack.”

“We was ’bout to have us a do-si-do with these here greasers,” Caleb explained.

“That’s what I was tol’t,” John replied. “My Maria’s mama—she come to get me over to Matthew’s place.”

“She come for ye?”

With a nod Rowland answered bravely, “Tol’t me there was trouble aplenty ’tween the soldiers and my companyeros. Said I should come help my friends—since they was such good boys to go help me get my Maria back from the Comanch’. M-my Maria.”

At Rowland’s pained words a flame burned gently in Scratch’s chest, a sharp warmth lodged just behind his breastbone. He felt the salty sting at his eyes.

“You gonna fight with us?” Elbridge asked, tugging manfully at his leather britches.

“I didn’t come to dance with the likes of you, you ugly nigger!”

Then Rowland moved past the trappers, laying his two pistols on the long table. He didn’t turn until he had taken his knife from its scabbard and propped it between the two pistols shoved in among the clay jugs of lightning and crystal bowls of sweet brandy.

Johnny turned back to the Americans, his eyes damp. “Yeah, boys—I come to fight ’longside my friends.”

Hatcher suddenly raised his chin and let loose a shrill wolf howl. The rest instantly followed suit, clearly unnerving the soldiers as John Rowland stepped up and squeezed in between Hatcher and Kinkead, both men making room for him in their tight circle.

Matthew ordered, “Rest of you—put your guns and knives away, fellers … just like Johnny done. Because—by God—we’re gonna give these here greasers the thrubbin’ they been needing ever since’t we come back from