his enemy to take it.
That made the Delaware hate him all the more. With the muzzle of his pistol, Big Nigger knocked the hand and that crumpled paper aside.
It seemed that tiny act of violence on his part spurred three of the Indians to shove their way past Big Nigger and rush to the hole in the wall. They seized Bent from the arms of the woman and dragged the American back into the hallway. One of them held Bent up by his leather braces, then flung the governor against the wall, where he collapsed onto the clay floor.
As that lone woman disappeared into the darkness on the far side of the wall, one of the Pueblos unstrung his bow and hurled the bow aside as he crouched over the American. Bent was groggy, mumbling nonsense as the Indian positioned the governor’s head just so—as only a warrior could do—then deftly used his narrow, twisted rawhide bowstring to slash the scalp from the white man’s head.
Watching the horrid scene were those children hiding in the folds of the women’s dresses. One of them was shrieking, her whole body shaking as she collapsed to her knees. Arms held out, she was begging. That much was clear to Big Nigger. She was pleading for Bent’s life, for their lives.
“You fools!” he thundered at the Indians suddenly.
The three of them atop Bent immediately froze, gazing up at their leader in confusion and utter fear.
“Don’t you see, you senseless fools?” he roared as he lunged over the scalper and slapped the man hard enough that he collided with the far wall when he flew off the American’s body.
“What are you doing?” one of the trio demanded.
Big Nigger swung his torch inches from the man’s nose, making the Indian shrink in terror, the sleeve on his greasy wool coat brushed with embers he frantically patted until they were smothered.
“You’ve killed him now,” Big Nigger snarled. “We should have kept him alive.”
“Alive?” one of the Mexicans demanded.
Big Nigger recognized the man—a surly one. He was one of the head priest’s lieutenants. One of the handful of Mexican couriers who was often seen riding back and forth between the pueblo and Padre Martinez’s church in this last two weeks, carrying plans and instructions. Big Nigger shook his torch at the Mexican.
The man leaped back a step, his face registering sudden fear.
The Delaware shook the torch at the Mexican again, backing him farther still until the man was forced to stop against the crowd packed into the hallway.
“Alive is what I said,” the Delaware repeated. “We’ll ’kill him when I say we kill him. We could have kept him as a valuable hostage until it was time for him to take his last breath.”
Turning to look over his shoulder, Big Nigger saw that Bent’s chest moved only with shallow respirations. Good thing too. After all, the Delaware wanted to be the one to kill the governor himself.
So now his gaze moved to the women and children cowering at the end of the hall.
“Put them all in a room that has no wall to the outside,” he ordered.
Some of his trusted comrades crowded past him in the narrow corridor and seized their captives, dragging them into one of the small bedchambers as the women wailed and the children screeched. The door was closed on them.
“Two of you, stay right here,” Big Nigger ordered, glancing at the hole at the bottom of the wall. “See they don’t escape.”
“Why let them live?” a voice asked.
He stopped, standing right over the governor’s body, and told that mob packed in the hall, “We could have kept him from dying until I was ready to kill him. He would have been some use to us. Now we have to keep the others alive until we know if it is better for us that they live, or that they die.”
He knelt by the governor, noticed how Bent’s hand twitched. The bastard somehow clung to life. These stupid Pueblos had ruined his plans, Big Nigger thought, when he had wanted to keep the head of the family alive. But now Bent was anything but head of his family—
That was it!
“Bring him and follow me!” Big Nigger roared at the swarms of men who stood sweating in bloodlust, packed elbow to elbow in that crowded hall. He shoved back through them to reach the front parlor.
On his heels came the scalper. Once into that front room, the Indian found a small board and some brass tacks. As they waited for the governor’s body, Big Nigger watched the bowman stretch the American’s pliable, bloody scalp on that board, tacking it down in place as a battle trophy.
Though it was a struggle, a pair of the Pueblos finally dragged the heavy American out of the crowded hall and over to their leader. The others inched back to give Big Nigger room as the pair dropped the wounded white man onto his face at the Delaware’s moccasins. Someone edged out of the crowd and grabbed Bent’s ear, yanking on it to expose the fleshy neck. Such a pretty, white neck.
“We must cut the head off this American beast!” Big Nigger shouted at them in their Pueblo tongue. Some translated it into Spanish for the enraged Mexicans among them.
“With the head cut from it—a body will wither and die!” the Delaware exhorted them. “You cut the head?” someone yelled.
They had blood in their eye, and the taste of it already sweet on their tongues. Their knives were ready. He could see they would mutilate this American beyond recognition within a matter of heartbeats … just as soon as he gave them permission.
“Yes! Cut it!” the crowd bellowed. “Cut the head from this beast!”
Handing the torch to one of the Mexicans, Big Nigger took a huge knife from the man. Then knelt and seized a handful of what stark, white hair remained at the back of Bent’s neck. Pulling the head to the side, he gazed at the flabby white skin on the neck.
Bent’s eyes fluttered. The lips moved slightly in the flickering torchlight.
But not one sound of protest came from them as the Delaware began to slice, inch by inch, all the way through the neck until the body dropped away and he was left holding the head at the end of his arm.
“Go! Find the others!” he shrieked at them, shaking the American’s head at them, splattering blood and gore on those closest to the scene.
The first of the mob turned for the open doorway as he roared his commands one last time.
“No man. No woman. And no child,” he growled like a beast with the scent of a kill strong in its nostrils. “Leave not one of them alive!”
32
There was no doubt in Scratch’s mind that his children weren’t suffering much at all as they crouched among the pinon and sage at the bottom of this narrow cleft in the valley floor several miles north of San Fernandez de Taos. But he did worry about Josiah’s offspring.
While Magpie, Flea, and even Jackrabbit had grown up enduring weather far, far colder than this—and knew how to keep themselves warm out in the open—Titus wasn’t sure if Paddock’s town-raised young’uns could last out a subfreezing night. If it indeed took them all this night to creep and stop, creep and stop, until they reached Simeon Turley’s whiskey mill at Arroyo Hondo. Once they could reach the sanctuary of those stone buildings, Bass felt confident they could hold out until soldiers marched up from Santa Fe … or enough iron-forged mountain men came riding south from the Arkansas to drive back the brownskins who had let the wolf out to howl.
But there was little chance in hell of either, he realized as the hours dragged past. Slim chance of someone sneaking out of Taos to gallop south to reach the dragoons in the territorial capital. Even less of a chance that a lone man might brave those hundreds of miles of frozen winter wilderness between this Taos valley and those faraway American settlements on the Arkansas. And if by some miraculous turn of fate some brave soul managed to do the unthinkable, just how many Americans could he round up for the ride back to Taos? Nowhere near enough to even up the odds when it came down to wading into those hundreds of Pueblos and
