“What’d he say! What’d he say!” Purcell demanded with a shriek.
“They want us to drop our guns,” Bass translated.
“We’re rawhide if we do,” Corn grumbled from the corner of his mouth.
“These greasers damn sure gonna hang us later,” Scratch said boldly. “Or we can die here and now like men.”
Kersey said, “You heard ’im, fellas—”
One of the soldiers interrupted with a shrill shout: demanding the Americans drop their weapons.
“On three, fellas,” Bass ordered in a calm voice that would give no warning to the soldiers, “we’ll make our play. One. Two … three!”
Up came all their weapons as the trappers ducked aside. The Mexicans had an advantage in the brief standoff: their muskets were already aimed at the Americans. Like parched corn rattling in a frying pan, the guns popped on all four sides of them—the trappers’ weapons booming as Bass watched smoke and flame and shredded patches jet from the muzzles of the enemies’ smoothbores. The horses cried out, lead landing among them— wheeling, rearing, shoving against another.
One of the men in front of Titus grunted; the breath was driven from the lungs of another. They still had an advantage, he told himself as he slapped the rifle into his left hand and the horse started backing up, bumping into another. He and his friends were loaded for bear. While the soldiers only carried those muskets, the trappers all had more than one weapon.
Pistols came out of belts and sashes, held at the end of their arms as those soldiers still alive disappeared back into darkened doorways. All of them yelling at one another. The sentry on the banquette and the guard at the gate did not fare so well.
“We’ll have to hunt ’em down one at a time!” Corn cried out.
Whirling in the saddle, Scratch aimed his pistol at the sentry and fired. As the ball struck him, the soldier was slammed back against the adobe wall, then bounced forward, pitching off the low banquette to strike the ground flat, unmoving.
Purcell was hit, clutching his side as he slumped against the withers of his horse. Adair was sprawled on the ground, the fingers of both hands interlaced over a nasty wound in his thigh.
“Don’t give ’em time to reload!” Titus warned, sprinting for one of the doors.
Instinct told him and the others that they needn’t race for those doorways where a soldier lay blocking the entrance, or sat crumpled against the doorjamb. The empty doorways meant the trappers would have to go in after the others.
In the lamp-lit, shadowy interiors, a fleeting drama was played out as metal and wood collided, men grunted in exertion, groaned in pain, boots and moccasins scuffing the hard-packed clay floors.
Mule-eyed, the soldier caught reloading in the corner of the room looked up as Bass rushed him, raising up his musket to parry the long skinning knife Scratch waved in front of him. The musket knocked the knife hand aside and the ball of a fist slammed low into the trapper’s gut.
More than mere pain, the fist drove the air out of his lungs. Gasping, Scratch stumbled back two steps, blinking against the flash of shooting stars. He saw the soldier turn and pitch the musket aside, scrambling for the wall where a long scabbard hung from a peg. The saber grated free of its sheath at the moment Bass lunged forward, arm high overhead, bringing the skinning knife down in a blur.
The blade caught the Mexican in the top of the shoulder. He buried it to the hilt as the soldier struggled to get the other arm raised, to bring the saber into action. Just when the saber reached chest level, Titus seized the man’s wrist in his left hand.
Using the buried knife for leverage, Scratch drove his left knee into the enemy’s groin. As the Mexican stumbled back a step, whimpering in pain, Scratch shoved the enemy’s arm up, up with that saber until it lay across the soldier’s neck.
Then brutally ripped it sideways.
Hot blood splattered over them both as the air in the man’s lungs wheezed from the gaping, bubbling wound.
Letting go of the soldier, he watched the Mexican fall, the eyes growing glassy and lifeless. Bass placed his foot on the man’s shoulder and pulled his knife free. Wiped it on the soldier’s jacket, turned, and crouched at the doorway, peering into the afternoon sunlight.
With the next heartbeat he was astonished to see a shabby, disheveled woman appear at a nearby doorway.
“Celita!” cried Frederico.
The woman took one step, then a second into the courtyard, wearing a loose-fitting, smudged, sooty dress that many times had been ripped and torn.
With that second step she suddenly stopped and peered over her shoulder furtively. Out of the shadowy rectangle behind her emerged Celita’s sister.
“Mayanez!” the Indian sobbed and started toward the two women. Then immediately halted in his tracks.
Right behind the small female stood a large, bare-chested man, his muscular arm locked around Mayanez’s throat. In that hand pressed against her ear he clutched a knife, while at the end of the other outstretched arm, he held a pistol pointed at the back of Celita’s head.
Frederico growled something in Spanish as he rocked onto the balls of his feet, both hands flexing into fists and claws, fists and claws.
“What’d he say?” Kersey demanded.
“The Injun says that’s the blacksmith,” Bass translated.
Corn demanded,“How’s he know that?”
“When Frederico come here a while back,” Scratch declared, “that bastard was dragging one of the sisters off by herself for a little fun.”
13
“This big son of a bitch figgered to dip his stinger in one’r both of these gals while them soldiers was away chasing horse stealers?” Kersey asked as he inched closer to Bass.
“Easy to see he’s a hard user, Elias,” Bass sighed, his mind working, squeezing down on their predicament with the two women.
Corn started, “This messes things up real good—”
But Frederico interrupted, sputtering something in his worked-up, incomplete Spanish.
Nonetheless, Titus caught enough words. In his own halting Spanish, he told the Indian, “Stay put now.”
“This
“Si, he does—”
“Like you, gringo,” the Mexican said.
“You’re a horse stealer,” said the blacksmith. “A low form of life, horse stealer.”
“Better than a big-talking man who hides behind women.”
The big Mexican grinned. “You want these women, eh?”
“Yes, we came for the women.”
The blacksmith’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Aren’t there enough Indian women where you come from, gringo? Can’t you get some for your own fun?”
For an agonizing few moments Bass translated that in his mind, turning it over and over to make sure he got it right. Then he said, “We came to take the women away with us—”
“Get your own women,
“No,” Bass shot back, twisting the knife in his right hand. “We come to take these two women back to their
