“Because he don’t figger us for Christians,” Kinkead said. “Leastwise, none of the rest of you.”
“How you so special?” Simms grumbled, pulling at a blond ringlet in his beard with a grubby finger.
“Remember how I got myself baptized in the Mexican church some time back,” Kinkead explained.
“Don’t mean to stomp on yer Rosa’s church, Matthew,” Hatcher began, “but the way we see it, ye tell this son of a lily-livered bitch that I don’t give a damn if he’s Christian or not…. Tell him his bunch wasn’t in this fight enough for me to call ’em brave men.”
When Kinkead turned back to Hatcher after delivering those inflammatory words, he said, “Seems you’re dishonoring not just him but the other soldiers who died here this morning if you don’t let ’em take the prisoners back to their families in Taos.”
“Eegod! Honor? That what this is all about?” Hatcher spat. “How the hell can this here greaser talk to me about honor when he and his men didn’t have the honor to fight like men? To fight like their dead leader fought? Maybeso to die like a man, instead of standing right here in front of real men and whining like alley cats about their goddamned honor!”
It was plain to see how those words slapped the sergeant across the face like a sudden, unexpected challenge. His eyes glared like black coals; his lips curled, stretching taut over his front teeth as he struggled for words.
“When we get back to Taos, he says he’ll let you tell the gov’nor what all we done to help his men in this fight.”
Jack whirled on Kinkead in utter disbelief. “That what he said, Matthew? That we … only helped in this fight?”
“Yep—says we just helped his men.”
Flecks of spittle crusted the corners of Hatcher’s lips as he sputtered, “Tell that sumbitch Ramirez to step out of my way or I’m going to cut him up into pieces small enough that the jays can eat what’s left of ’im!”
“Jack,” Kinkead said with a soothing tone, his words almost whispered. “Maybe you ought’n figger us a way to do this ’thout anyone else getting killed. They got us near surrounded now.”
“I’ll gut my share of ’em afore—”
“Lookee there, Jack,” Caleb interrupted Hatcher as his eyes flicked about of a sudden. “The greasers sure as Katie do got us circled.”
“Goddamned Mex,” Isaac growled. “Only time they figger to fight is when they got the enemy outnumbered.”
Scratch added, “And when they got the drop on us!”
“Listen up,” Jack told them. “What say we leave it up to the women here?”
“You mean let the women decide who they ride back to Taos with?” Elbridge asked.
“That’s right,” Jack replied. “Matthew, tell this greaser we’re going to let the women decide.”
After a minute of coaxing from Kinkead, the sergeant nodded in agreement, a smug look of victory already apparent on his face.
“He says he’ll let the women decide.”
“I’ll wager he thinks the womens will pick him,” Jack declared.
“He’s probably right,” Kinkead replied. “After all, the womens are Mexican like these here soldiers.”
“So ask ’em, Matthew,” Hatcher ordered. “Ask ’em who they’re riding back home with.”
Scratch watched Kinkead pose that question. Instead of answering immediately, the daughter clutched her mother, burying her face against Bass’s coat. And the younger woman looked at the governor’s wife a moment, then stared at the ground before she muttered something. Finally the older woman held her chin high and in a soft voice gave her answer. Her words visibly caused a dark cloud to cross the soldier’s face.
“What’d she say?” Hatcher demanded in a harsh whisper.
Kinkead cleared his throat and said, “Says she’s been listening in on ever’thing we been saying, Jack.”
“So what’s her answer?”
“She’s telling Ramirez that they all three agreed the same together,” Matthew began. “Says they are going to ride back to their homes with the men who had risked their lives to save ’em—the Americans.”
“I’ll be go to hell,” Rufus whispered in shock.
“Then maybe we better get the bodies of these here other women wrapped up and ready to ride back,” Jack said as he turned away from the sergeant.
Ramirez held out his beefy hands, saying something quietly to the women, his tone imploring, but instantly the oldest woman snapped at him angrily, one of her brown arms poking from the capote sleeve, pointing at the bodies of the other captives lying across the battlefield—both women and children. Hostages and prisoners dragged from their homes only to be brutally murdered in this attempt to save them all.
“She just told him that she had her no doubt he and his soldiers wouldn’t never come along on this ride if it wasn’t for the Americans leading the bunch,” Matthew translated as the soldiers turned away, shamed by the woman’s strong words. “Said she’s sure there wasn’t no chance for any of them to come out alive if only the soldiers come along … because the coward soldiers likely wouldn’t come to rescue them at all.”
As he and the others watched the haughty Mexicans shambling away, grumbling among themselves as they caught up their horses and shouted orders among their numbers to mount their wounded and load up their dead, Scratch asked, “That what finally made them soldiers back off from us?”
“No,” Matthew answered quietly. “It’s what she told ’em there at the last.”
“What was that?” Hatcher asked.
Kinkead said, “The woman told ’em she figgered it would be far better for any woman to live the rest of her life being a slave to the Comanche … better that than to live as the wife to a coward dog what wasn’t ready to fight and die to save his woman.”
It took the rest of that day and on through the long, cold night, when they camped on their way back over the mountains and down to the Taos valley, for Bass to begin to forget that pitiful, solitary wail that escaped from John Rowland at the moment Kinkead translated the Mexican woman’s declaration: how a courageous man would fight and die to rescue his wife.
Better to live as a slave to the savage, heathen Comanche than to live ashamed and married to a coward who wasn’t prepared to give his life to save his own woman.
That afternoon as they recrossed the divide and began their descent toward the valley, storm clouds clotted along the western horizon. Thick as a blood soup, they made for an early sunset as the procession continued east, clouds drawing closer with every hour, dragging down the temperature, giving the wind a cruel bite. Both Rufus Graham and Solomon Fish each managed to kill an elk close to twilight. Food for them all, and in as good a place as any to hunker down for the rest of that night they would have to endure.
As darkness sank around them, Hatcher had Kinkead instruct the sergeant that his men must put out a night guard not only around their camp but around the horse herd too. While the Comanche might be too wary to attack the trappers and Mexicans in the dark, they wouldn’t be at all skittish about rushing in and riding off with some or all of the enemy’s horses. There were four fires that night, three of them placed close together where the Mexican soldiers gathered to fight off the cold and gloom. And the fourth fire where the nine Americans huddled with the three Taos captives. Clear enough was it that the line had been drawn. Just as clear enough that were it not for the wife and daughter of the governor, Ramirez’s soldiers might well have tried to wipe out the upstart trappers.
For the longest time that night as the cold deepened, young Jacova Mirabal kept her eyes fixed on the American who had rescued her mother, watching Bass move from place to place as he brought in wood, or stirred up the fire, or cut and cooked slices of the meat for the women, or even helped them with the cold, damp horse blankets—all that the Americans had to offer as protection from the terrible temperatures as dawn approached.