Scratch shook his head. “I thought you fellas told me the leaders of their little rebellion awready skeedaddled off to Mexico.”
“They did,” Paddock answered, glum.
Bass looked at him. “Then they sneaked back to the Pueblo?”
“No,” Lee said. “Word I got is some new leaders gonna lead the attack.”
“Attack?” Bass echoed. “Attack what? March down to Santa Fee and have ’em a fight with those dragoons?”
“These are bad Mexicans and even badder Pueblos,” Josiah admitted sourly. “But they’re savvy enough not to do something stupid, Scratch. This bunch ain’t about to march down to Santa Fe and tangle with Colonel Price’s soldiers.”
For a long, still moment, Titus looked at Paddock, then Lee, then back to Paddock again. “So, if these niggers gonna attack … what they fixin’ to attack?”
“Taos,” Lee confessed.
Bass snorted, “But there ain’t no army here for ’em to fight. What the hell these niggers thinking of …” And his heart skipped a beat as it struck him cold in the pit of his belly. “Oh, shit.”
Josiah could tell that it had suddenly registered on the old trapper’s face. “This bunch of butchers aren’t the sort to wanna have nothing like a fair, stand-up fight of it.”
Lee agreed, “These Mex and Pueblos are nothing more’n dirty fighters. Downright backstabbers. I figure they’re planning to make it a massacre.”
“When the bastards come after Americans,” Titus declared, “we’ll be ready for ’em.”
“With your own eyes, Scratch,” Josiah argued, “you’ve seen there ain’t but a few of us Americans in Taos.”
“Those niggers gonna butcher anyone who ain’t Mexican or Injun,” Lee snarled. “What I hear says they even got their blood up to kill half-breeds: Mex or Injun, don’t make ’em any difference.”
Titus looked long and steady at Paddock. Then he said, “Bein’ half-breed don’t count for nothing with ’em, eh?”
Paddock wagged his head. “We seen this coming for some time now, ol’ friend. So trust me when we’re telling you, these murderers gonna butcher my half-breed children right after they slit my throat.”
Scratch could feel the bitter gall rising at the back of his throat, turning his heart sour and mean. “Any nigger makes war on women and children—they’re no better’n animals.” He turned to Lee and asked, “So, Sheriff, you here to spread the word to Americans?”
“Came here to talk with Josiah. I want his help figuring out how not to alert the bastards that we know what’s coming, or when,” Lee responded.
“When?” Paddock asked.
“Tonight,” the sheriff disclosed with foreboding. “Tomorrow morning by the latest. They was just waiting for Bent to get in from Santa Fe.”
Josiah asked in a whisper, “Charles back? In all this snow?”
“Got home near noon,” Lee explained. “Took ’im four days up from Santa Fe, deep as it is out there.”
“You tell the governor, Stephen?” Josiah demanded.
“Tried to. You know how Charles is. He says he’s married to a good Mexican family. Says his children are part Mexican. And when he’s done saying all that— Charles tells me he’s always been good to folks in these parts —”
“In other words, the governor doesn’t believe there’s any real danger to him or his family,” Paddock interrupted him.
With a doleful wag of his head, Lee said, “He didn’t figure there was anything to worry about since he scared off the other ringleaders last month. Says all that’s going on now is a lot of loud and angry talk.”
“So what you figger us to do?” Titus asked, his wary senses tingling.
“I think it best we get on through this day till sundown when we close up shop, real normal,” Josiah explained. “We try to light out before, any time in the day, we’re bound to attract attention.”
“They’ll know where you’re going,” Lee added. “So they’ll come track you down.”
“I’ll give ’em a chance to track
“Don’t you see?” Paddock asked, seizing Bass’s forearm in his hand. “There’s hundreds of ’em all together. It won’t be nothing like a fair fight, Scratch. Like nothing you and me ever fought our way out of.”
“By the stars, there’s more’n a thousand souls living in that Injun Pueblo a couple miles from here,” Lee stated. “A thousand of the niggers!”
Titus swallowed. “So sneaking off is our only hope?”
Paddock looked at Lee. “You think folks oughtta head north?”
The sheriff nodded. “Maybe hole up at Turley’s till someone can get word down to Santa Fe and Price can march his dragoons up here.”
“Even then, them soldiers still gonna be outnumbered ten to one,” Josiah groaned.
“Maybe the most we can hope is they’ll scare the shit outta the bastards,” the sheriff said.
Paddock quickly stepped to the low, narrow, back door that opened onto an alleyway. He cracked it slightly, peered out for a moment, then shut it again quietly. “Don’t have long till sundown, fellas. I think we better start working on getting things ready to head out come dark. Where do you want us to meet up with you, Stephen?”
Lee wagged his head stoically. “I ain’t going with you, Josiah.”
“I know Maria ain’t in no danger,” Paddock begged, “but what about li’l John?”
Titus agreed, “He’s a half-breed.”
“So he’s marked for death,” Josiah argued. “If your wife doesn’t wanna come, then at least get the boy to safety.”
“He won’t go without his mama. So I’ll bring the two of ’em over to your place just after dark,” Lee promised as he stepped to the back door.
“And you?” Josiah prodded. “What you aim to do, one man against a bloodthirsty mob?”
“I’m gonna make sure every American, parley-voo, and foreign-born gets word that they better make tracks outta town tonight … or they won’t see another sunrise,” the sheriff declared solemnly.
“Spread the word. You’ll still have time to come leave with us,” Paddock begged.
Lee stared at the ground a long moment, then his eyes leveled on Josiah’s when he said, “I figure if there’s gonna be trouble in my town, I oughtta be here to do all I can to put out the fire.”
“But it doesn’t make sense for you to stick your neck out if you don’t have to—”
Stephen Louis Lee interrupted his friend with a gesture of futility while he said, “That’s what a sheriff does, Josiah. He’s s’posed to protect others.”
Their courtship had been nothing less than a whirlwind romance. She, a beautiful young widow related to several prominent, well-established families in the Taos valley. And he the eldest of two American brothers who had carved out a financial empire for themselves here in the Southwest.
Maria Ignacia Jamarilla Bent smiled as their three children embraced their father and kissed his cheek before they retired that evening of January 19, 1847. Her life with Charles—her sweet Carlos—was idyllic. The only thing that could possibly have been better was if he hadn’t been appointed governor of New Mexico by the American general who had marched through Taos and Santa Fe last August on his way to conquer California for the Americans. Over the last few months, her husband’s work kept him in Santa Fe for extended periods. So these visits to Taos were a rare treat—even more unusual that her husband had surprised her by returning home that afternoon, a Tuesday.
“I finished what had to be done,” Charles had explained when he came bolting through the door at the noon hour, “and I set the rest of it aside, Ignacia.”
It’s what he called her—not by her first name but by the one he believed was most different, a name all the more beautiful for it.
“Four days to get here,” he had gasped at the door, forty-seven years old, so still somewhat breathless as he dragged his long wool coat off his arms and shook the ice frozen to it. “Four days instead of two—the snow was so deep, so deep.”
Ignacia stared at him in sympathy, seeing how he was soaked through, clear to the waist. His hair had gone
