And with the next gust of breeze, the quiet was gone. More of the Mexicans were strutting down the slope toward the battleground now, yelling and screaming of a sudden. A few of them loped through the pack on horseback, carrying their own spears. These riders roamed the ground like a pack of dogs, searching out any of the enemy still alive. Once found, a wounded Comanche was pierced with two, three, or four of the Mexicans’ spears while those on foot rejoiced and shouted, rushing in to hack at the body until it was dismembered, even before the enemy’s heart had beaten its last.
Going to his knees, Scratch scooted close to the woman, then laid an arm across her shoulders. She raised her head, looked into his face, then nestled her cheek against the hollow of his neck and began to quake. Some forty yards away Isaac Simms had wrapped a large horse blanket around a small woman, and Kinkead was talking with the third captive in her native tongue as he clutched a large Mexican blanket around her trembling shoulders.
Suddenly the small woman with Simms turned, crying out in anguished Spanish, causing the woman Bass was comforting to lift her face, holding out her arms and screeching for the small woman who was rushing her way.
Bass helped her stand, then steadied the woman as she hobbled forward on bare, frozen feet. Closer and closer sprinted the small woman, closer still until Scratch could plainly see she was not a woman at all, but a young girl barely on the threshold of her teen years.
Kinkead and some of the others stepped over dead bodies of Indians and a soldier, following the girl and the other woman toward the oldest of the three, who continued to clutch Bass.
“Mi Jacova!” she shouted at the girl.
“Mama! Mama! Mama!”
How they embraced, forgetting their wounds. They kissed and kissed again, hugging and squeezing their arms around one another as the trappers came up.
“That’s the gov’nor’s wife,” Kinkead said. “Her name’s Manuela.”
“And that’s her girl?”
“Yes, Scratch,” Matthew replied. “Her name’s Jacova. For all her papa’s treasures, she’s his prize. He’ll be some punkins to see they both come back alive.”
At that moment Bass felt a tug to turn, finding Hatcher at his elbow. He pointed.
Rowland lay across the body of his dead wife, wailing.
“Get me a blanket,” Jack told Isaac.
Simms understood and nodded, turning away toward the battlefield, where he knelt beside a dead Comanche wearing a bloodstained blanket tied around his waist. With it Isaac met Bass at Rowland’s side.
Hatcher helped Bass lift the grieving husband off the woman so Simms could spread the blanket over the naked body. Then Scratch slowly turned the woman over, dragging the blanket up to cover her face.
“Isaac, get her ready to travel,” Hatcher requested in a whisper. “Pull some rope off one of them dead horses.”
As Rowland sat sobbing between Bass and Hatcher, Simms prepared the body for their journey back to Taos. Lashing the rope around and around the blanket-wrapped shroud, Isaac tied his last knot just as one of the soldiers strode up to Kinkead. The Mexican spoke in the clipped tones of a man who clearly thought he was talking to someone occupying a lower station in life.
Caleb hobbled up, a leg bleeding, to ask, “Who the shit is this nigger?”
“Sergeant of this here outfit,” Kinkead grumbled. “Name of Ramirez. Sergeant Jorge Ramirez.”
“What’s he saying to you, Matthew?”
“Says it’s time for him to take the women and the girl back to the gov’nor in Taos.”
“Take ’em back?” Elbridge Gray echoed. “Why, them damned soldados didn’t do nothing to save ’em!”
Hatcher nodded, giving his order: “Tell him that, Matthew.”
Behind the sergeant, what others weren’t tending to their own wounded or their dead continued to mutilate and dismember the enemy dead. Matthew brought himself up to his full height, casting a shadow over Ramirez as he repeated the declaration.
Then Kinkead told the other Americans, “Says he demands the women—’specially the woman and her daughter—so he can turn ’em over to the gov’nor when they get back to Taos.”
Hatcher stood. “Didn’t ye tell him we figger these soldiers didn’t save the womenfolk, so we don’t figger they got any right takin’ the womenfolk back?”
“Just what I told him.”
“Tell the sumbitch again,” Jack growled. “Then tell him we’re taking the women back on our own. They can come along, or they can stay here and tear these here bodies apart like they was the ones what won the fight.”
When Matthew’s words struck the Mexican’s ears, more of the soldiers stopped their butchery and moved over to join the sergeant arguing with Kinkead.
“He says they have more guns than we do.”
“This bastard brung it right down to the nut-cutting, didn’t he, boys?” Jack snorted. “Awright, Matthew, tell him he sure ’nough does have him more guns right now … but we got more balls, and these yellow-backed greasers ain’t going to back down no American!”
With that answer to his bold demands, the sergeant’s eyes darkened in fury. Suddenly he shouted at the other Mexicans—silencing their angry murmurs. In the uneasy quiet Ramirez glared at Kinkead as he spoke.
“This one says he’s asking us one last time to turn over the women afore he orders the men to kill … kill us all.”
At that challenge several of the Americans pulled back the hammers on their firearms as they stepped backward around Rowland and his wife, slowly ringing the three freed captives. Those who did not have loaded weapons pulled knives or reached down and scooped a tomahawk or club from the ground. In a moment all eight had their backs together, the women and Rowland at the center of that tiny circle.
Close to shaking with rage, Hatcher growled, “Matthew, ye tell this sick-dog, sad-assed, whimpering greaser that I wanna know what right they got to take the women back for themselves … when these here yellow-livered cowards wasn’t even brave enough to jump footfirst into the fight to save these here women!”
As Kinkead translated, the eyes of nearly all the Mexicans glowed with even more hatred—but not a one of them dared initiate an assault on the trappers. Their spokesman trembled with rage as he spat out his words.
Matthew said, “He says they’re not cowards—”
“Like hell they ain’t!” Bass interrupted with a snort of derision.
Sputtering in anger one moment, Ramirez fell to wheedling the next, attempting to explain the lack of action and courage of his men during the fight.
Kinkead translated, “Says he wasn’t able to get the rest to keep fighting after Guerrero was killed. The rest were … were—but I don’t think he can find a nice word for them being scared.”
Hatcher shook his head in disgust. “Then tell that sumbitch to have his men either start this fight right now—or get back outta our way, and make it quick!”
With that said to the Mexican, he waved his men back a few yards, then turned once more to growl at Kinkead.
“Just who the hell is this greaser to take on these high airs?” Bass inquired.
Matthew explained, “Now that Guerrero’s dead—this one takes over, I s’pose.”
Watching the soldiers inch back a short distance, Hatcher repeated, “That give this Ramirez nigger the due to rub up against us the way he is?”
As the soldiers closed in around their leader once more, Matthew said, “They don’t figger these here women any safer with us than they was with the Comanche.”
Most of the Americans laughed at that declaration, a few even jabbing one another with elbows, some wagging their heads in amused disbelief.
But while the others guffawed, Caleb Wood stepped up to demand, “Merciful heavens! Why the hell aren’t these here women safe with the men who saved ’em?”