McAllen nodded, climbed into the saddle on the gray hunter, and with a wave to Bessie and Roman, who stood on the porch, rode down the lane with Joshua following. Jeb joined the others on the porch and read them the letter.
"Lawdy, lawdy," moaned Bessie. "Dat mean he don't think he be comin' home."
"He'll come home," said old Roman, and settled resolutely into a rocking chair. "And I'm gwine sit right here till he do."
"You a crazy old man. You gwine sit dere, day and night, for who knows how long? Bessie shook her head. "Leastways, I won't have to worry 'bout you killin' yourself by workin' in dat garden all day."
Rocking back and forth, Roman didn't say anything, his eyes glued to the lane that led down to the river road.
"Ol' fool," muttered Bessie, and turned to go inside. She paused at the door and glanced back. The fondness in her eyes as she gazed at the old man belied her words. She knew he would do it. He was stubborn enough, and devoted enough to Marse John, to see it through. And tonight she would come out after he was asleep and put a blanket around him and touch his weathered face and say a little prayer.
Chapter Thirty-two
The caverns had been formed millions of years ago in an uplift of limestone. Water had done the work, leaking through cracks and crevices, dissolving the limestone; the flooding which followed heavy rains roared through these passages, widening them. Dripping water formed stalagmites, stalactites, columns, and flowstone. Blind albino fish swam in underground streams. Some of the main openings into the underground labyrinth were sinkholes ranging in size from ten to hundreds of feet across.
The Indians of the region had always known about the caves but seldom used them, believing they were inhabited by spirits and were a gateway to the realm of the dead. Located two or three days' ride northwest of Austin, they had sometimes been used by outlaws who sought to be beyond the reach of the law but didn't care to venture too deeply into Comancheria.
McAllen didn't have to ask anyone where to find the caves. He had come across them two years earlier, during a pursuit of Penateka raiders who had stolen some horses and burned a few cabins in the Brazos River country. He and Joshua arrived a few days early for the rendezvous with Antonio Caldero. He hadn't expected Caldero to be waiting for him—the Mexican bandit couldn't risk lingering in any one place too long, especially north of the Nueces. No, the waiting was McAllen's job. And it was a hard one.
In one of the larger sinkholes they found a game trail, a route taken by deer and other creatures to reach the bottom, where a pool of cold springwater was available year-round. McAllen and Joshua led their horses down this steep trail and camped at one of the many entrances to the caverns. There was plenty of firewood from cedar and scrub oak trees that had been uprooted at the rim of the sinkhole and washed down to the bottom by floodwaters. A damp, cool draft wafting up from the black depths of the caves would have been a pleasant respite from summer heat, but a cold front, the first of the year, blasted through on the day of their arrival, bringing rain and chilling gusts of wind with it. All McAllen and Joshua could do was huddle in the mouth of the cave with blankets draped over their shoulders and watch the rain fall from a low gray sky.
Exactly fourteen days from the delivery of the note to Grand Cane plantation, Caldero appeared. He was not alone. In fact, the first McAllen knew of his arrival was the sudden appearance of five bandoleros at the rim of the sinkhole.
Caldero came down the game trail alone, on foot. McAllen went out to meet him. The bandoleros watched him like hawks, while from the mouth of the cave Joshua kept a close eye on the Mexicans, his rifle ready. McAllen had explained the situation to the half-breed, but he didn't expect Joshua to let his guard down; regardless of the circumstances, these men were still bandits, and they hated Texans. One wrong move on anyone's part and all hell would break loose.
"Con permiso, señor," said Caldero, pausing two-thirds of the way down the game trail, and McAllen gestured for him to come the rest of the way.
"You've found her?"
Caldero nodded. "She is with the Quohadis, in the Canyon of the Palo Duro. Do you know of this place?"
McAllen shook his head.
"Not many white men do—and live to tell of it. The place is very far from here."
"How far?"
Caldero shrugged. "Ten days. Maybe more."
"You mean you've never been there?"
"Once. Many years ago."
"Then how do you know that Emily is there?"
"My friends, the Comancheros, tell me."
McAllen grimaced. He did not consider Comancheros to be very reliable sources. "How can you be sure it is her?"
"I know the Quohadis took her—it was a Quohadi arrow which you showed me. I know the Quohadis have only three white captives: a young woman, a little boy, and a little girl. She is the one. But if you do not want to go and see for yourself. . ." Again Caldero shrugged.
"I'll go. Just tell me how to get there."
"Señor, I could have told you that in my letter. No, I am going with you."
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Because you would not get into the canyon alive."
"But why? Why are you doing this, Caldero? We are enemies, you and I. So why are you helping me?"
Caldero strolled past McAllen, scanning the sinkhole, looking at Joshua, at the horses over by the spring, at his men on the rimrock above, silhouetted against the sky. Finally he turned, his expression grave.
"I will tell you. Thanks to you, Sam Houston will become president of Texas, and that is a good thing for my friends, the Comanches. It is good, too, for Mexico. It means there will be no war—at least for the time being."
"I didn't realize you were such a peace-loving man."
"I know there will be a war. I know that eventually the Comanches will be destroyed, and your land will spread like a plague to the west. You will even try to take Mexico. But now that Lamar is out, this will not happen right away. I will have time to prepare for the war that is coming, because, my friend, you will build your towns on the banks of the Rio del Norte over my dead body. And the Comanches, too, will have time to prepare. In a few years they will have rifles with which to fight you. They have learned a lesson, you see. And the Comancheros will sell them the rifles. Time is what your enemies need, Captain, and thanks to you they will have it." Caldero smiled at the look on McAllen's face. "You haven't thought about what you have done in that light, have you?"
"No."
"Well, es verdad. It is true. So you have done me a great favor, and I will repay it by helping you find the woman you love. And there is one other reason I help you. I am a romantic at heart, as Houston said. You would die for this woman, wouldn't you?"
"I'd rather live."
"But you would give up your life to bring her home, and I admire that. So we go now, eh?"
"The sooner the better," said McAllen, and headed for the mouth of the cave, where his gear was located.
McAllen wasn't sure how far he could trust Antonio Caldero. If you did not believe a man's motive, then you could not believe in the man. Was Caldero telling him the whole truth? Not that it really made much difference in the final analysis. McAllen wasn't about to turn down Caldero's help.