what figgers he can lead this bunch better’n Peg-Leg and me … let that man step right up.”
Most of the men twisted this way and that, glancing quickly at one another to spot any movement. But no one stepped forward.
“Looks like it’s just you an’ me gonna booshway this bunch, Bill,” Smith said.
Williams pointed down the slope. “Yonder I see a meadow where two of them li’l cricks run through. Plenty water, and there’s more’n ’nuff timber down there too. Good grass for the horses while they fatten up again.”
“Let’s go make camp, boys,” Smith suggested. “We’ll stay put till we put some meat back on our own bones, an’ it comes time for us to shine on them Mex ranchos.”
Across the next eight days the horses grazed, sticking close to those eight wet mares the trappers kept picketed close at hand. After only five days of rest, Frederico argued with Smith that he wanted to move on—if not with the white men, then by himself. Smith protested that such an unwise move would put the guide in danger, might well get him caught by the soldiers and put to death by the priests … then where would the horse raiders be?
Without their damn-fool guide, that’s where!
Ultimately, Peg-Leg convinced the Indian that he was better off not going anywhere near the mission or the soldier fort either because of the chance of getting caught. The bitter truth of it, he explained to Frederico, was that should the Indian be seized by the Mexicans, then there was nothing stopping the white men from going right on with their plans to steal horses and mules. Without Frederico, there was no reason for the Americans to go through with their plan to rescue his sisters. The two of them would remain prisoner concubines of the
The Indian’s only chance to free his sisters lay in doing exactly as the Americans told him.
Behind them stretched hundreds of miles of desert wilderness, a land with little to offer beyond waste and want. But below their mountainside camp lay rolling green plains, cold streams tumbling toward the valley, slopes dotted with more vegetation than they had seen since abandoning the Rockies: willow bordering the creekbanks, shady groves of sycamore and elder dotting the hillside.
On that eighth night of recouping their horses and their strength in the hills, Williams announced, “Be ready to ride at sunup.”
That momentous morning they kept the broodmares on short tethers as they rode into the dimly lit dawn emerging over California. The men closely ringed the rest of the horses, with riders hugging both flanks, their best horsemen riding drag to keep the stragglers caught up now that they were dropping into the unknown—a foreign country where most of these invaders had, until eight days before, never watched a single sunrise. A land where these
The twenty-four were trespassers in this green, fertile land captured between that low range of mountains the Americans were putting at their backs and the coast where the great salt ocean began. Strangers. Interlopers. Trespassers. And thieves.
Down they curved through the pass that took them on a southern route, down the timbered slopes into the foothills where the native grasses grew even taller still, nourished by the moist breezes and what rain the mountains trapped. As much as he strained and squinted into the west as the sun came over the range at their backs, lighting up everything before them, Bass could still not see anything blue in the distance. When, he wondered, would they lay eyes on the ocean?
They camped that night in the foothills and moved on at first light, following their Indian guide as he swept them around to the west once they left the rolling hills and emerged into an endless, grassy valley broken only by the myriad of narrow streams tumbling off the slopes, each one lined with an emerald border as it hurried to the seacoast. This valley was nowhere near as lush and green as his home in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains—its rounded, carpeted hills covered with little more than grass. Only the deep clefts between the knolls where the waters gurgled possessed any brush and trees. Mostly … grass.
But—he realized—that was exactly what nourished the horses of these
Even though it was no later than midafternoon, Smith and Williams pulled them up behind a pair of low hills and gave orders to make camp for the night.
“The Injun—he say we’re close to his mission?” Philip Thompson asked Smith eagerly, rubbing his hands together.
“Not far,” Peg-Leg responded. “We don’t want none of them soldiers spotting our smoke so keep the fires small, back under the trees.”
Williams walked over, dragging a bundle he had just taken from the back of his pack animal. As the others leaned in to watch, the old trapper tore at the knots in the rope, then flung back the oiled canvas to expose some well-weathered Navajo blankets, their colors faded from seasons of use. He stood with two of them hung over his arms.
“Here,” Williams said, tossing the first to Frank Curnutt, one of Thompson’s allies. “You look dark enough to be a Mex, Frank.” Then he pitched the second to Bass. “An’ I damn well know you ’member some of the Mex tongue, Scratch. Want you come along with me and the Injun.”
“How come he’s going and I ain’t?” Thompson bawled. “I been here before!”
“But you damn well don’t speak no Mex,” Smith challenged. “If’n any of ’em get spotted, they’re gonna have to talk Mex.”
“Bass don’t need to go,” Thompson argued with a sly grin. “You talk better’n most Mexicans I know, Peg- Leg.”
“I ain’t going,” Smith admitted. “I’m staying here with you, if’n any bunch of
By this time Williams had knelt and picked up his last two heavy Navajo blankets. “Felix—how ’bout you coming too?”
Warren caught the blanket and smiled at his friend Thompson. “Me and Frank keep a eye on Bass for you, Phil.”
Unfurling the last blanket for himself, Williams removed his hat with one hand and located the slit at the center of its fold with the other. After pulling the blanket over his head he replaced his floppy hat and held out his arms expressively. “What you think, boys?”
“Look the Mex to me,” Silas Adair said with approval.
“C’mon, Frederico,” Williams commanded as he turned back to his saddle horse. “Let’s go have us a look at where them padres sent off your sisters to live with them
Hanging in the lee of the hills, the five horsemen picked their way northwest along the rim of the valley. Every now and then Bill would signal for them to dismount and leave their horses behind. Then the quartet would follow the Indian up the back slope of a knoll where they dropped to their bellies to break the skyline. From each prominence the trappers gazed across a new stretch of the valley, wary of any vaqueros tending their great herds of horses, mentally plotting the location of the few ranch buildings they came across.
On the last of those stops, the sun was about to drop below the brims of their hats as they peered down upon a cluster of adobe structures behind a mud wall. Frederico tapped Williams on the arm.
“Can’t make out all he’s saying,” Bill grumbled disgustedly. “Goddamn red nigger with his Mex talk—”
“Something about the soldiers,” Bass broke in.
“I damn well know that,” Williams snapped.
“His sisters,” Titus explained. “He says that’s where they are.”
That bit of news quieted Ol’ Bill’s muttering like a slap of thunder.
Clearly the Indian had become excited, pointing out the adobe buildings ringed by a high wall of mud and wattle.
In the late-afternoon light he studied the big compound, those backlit buildings erected inside the low wall. Although there were no tall parapets, there was no mistaking this for a fortress of sorts. Nothing remained outside. Even the stables ran along the full length of one wall. Some of the Mexicans had their horses out in a corner of the
