Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

Not the final for-real cover, but a place-holder for now

Yes, in between Christmas shopping, Thanksgiving and various other events, I have finally pounded out another chapter of The Golden Road – the adventures of wide-eyed young Fredi Steinmetz in the California gold fields. Only he and his slippery Irish comrade, Polidore Aloysius O’Malley have been delayed for some months working in the only saloon in the dusty frontier town of San Bernardino – run by the Bean brothers; the upright Col. Joshua Bean and his scapegrace, card-playing horn-dog of a younger brother Fauntleroy. Enjoy. And yes, Fauntleroy Bean was also known as Phantly Roy, and long decades later as just plain Roy, the only justice of the peace and upholder of the law west of the Pecos…

Chapter 9 – El Camino Real

            “They think it was one of Murrieta’s old gang,” O’Malley explained, with a somber face. “The Colonel had words with a Mexican last night, threw him out of the place. This morning, they had words again when the man came to complain …. The man went away, but waited and shot him down like a dog not half an hour ago in the street – he escaped, although those who saw it raised the hue and cry. They were looking all over for the pair of ye – where have ye been, all this time?”

“I had an errand, and asked Freddy to come with me,” Fauntleroy answered, on the instant, as if he did not even pause to consider a lie. “Where is my brother now?”

“In his own room, sor,” O’Malley looked so very grave and sympathetic. “I fear that it will not be long now for your brother. But he is not suffering.”

“That’s good,” Fauntleroy answered. He seemed dazed, uncomprehending; likely for the second time in a single day. Fredi wondered who would run the Headquarters now … Fauntleroy enjoyed looking like a big man, behind the bar, but had no relish for the work involved – and that had been obvious within days, even to Fredi. “I suppose that we shall open tonight – just for friends of Josh’s. No piano – we’ll keep it quiet from respect.”

“It’s all happened so sudden-like,” Fredi said, later that afternoon to O’Malley. They sat on a bench in the veranda of the Headquarters, with Nipper at their feet. The late afternoon sunshine blazed on the plastered walls of the mud-brick, a welcome counter to the cool breeze wandering from the east, seemingly chilled by the snow lingering on the tallest mountain peaks.  “No warning – and in the space of an hour, everything is turned upside down.”

“It’s like that, Fredi-boyo,” O’Malley meditated on the smoke from his pipe, rising into the air. Fredi had already told him of the mornings’ escapade with the duel, Dona Inés and the almost-hanging. “Sometimes ye can see the bad fortune coming – see it for miles – and then sometimes not. I think should leave here soon, as we had planned. The doctor does not think that the Colonel will last the night. Young Fauntly attracts misfortune to him, and I do not like the thought of standing next to him when the next parcel of it arrives.”

“For loyalty to the Colonel, should we not stay a while?” Fredi asked, for the Colonel had been quite decent to them both, if sometimes blunt-speaking.

O’Malley shook his head. “’Til he has been put into the ground and the words read by the priest; not a moment longer, boyo. We take the pay that is owed and we go north.”

Colonel Josh Bean died very quietly, just before dawn the next morning. Fauntleroy, very pale, and with his shirt collar buttoned high and cravat tied likewise to hide the marks on his neck told a small handful of friends the next morning.

“I suppose since I am his brother and he owned the Headquarters free and clear in his name, that it is mine now, to order and run as I see fit,” he added, in closing. The various friends looked sideways at each other; their opinions of Fauntleroy Bean likely being similar to O’Malley and Fredi’s – but it was the only saloon in San Bernardino.

“I daresay ye will close the Headquarters until the burying,” O’Malley suggested in a gentle voice. “‘T would be suitable.”

But Fauntleroy shook his head. “My brother had many friends and much respect among the citizens of this place – if they come to pay their respects, I may as well open the bar.”

There was an uneasy silence, in which Fredi cleared his throat. “We are owed our wages for this last week, Fauntly – for working in the back, and O’Malley with the piano.”

“How can you bring up money, at a time like this?” Fauntleroy had every appearance of being in grief and wounded to the quick. “I’ll … look at my brothers’ account books, and see what I can do for you boys.”

“I’d be grateful, Fauntly.” Fredi was reassured on that score – but only for a day. Fauntleroy emerged from the office at mid-morning with an opened account book in his hand, just as Fredi went past with a tray of clean glasses and tankards, saying, “I’ve been going over Josh’s accounts – and there’s nothing to pay you boys with, what with the costs of burying Josh, and the loss of business on account of closing to the general public over the last five days …”

Fredi regarded Fauntleroy with stone-faced disgust; the Headquarters Saloon – never mind who was in charge of it now – owed O’Malley for a week of pounding the piano keys, and himself for the same week, running errands, sweeping up the floor and washing tankards and cups. This was no better than being treated as a Negro slave – and Fauntleroy owed his freedom and his life twice over to O’Malley and Fredi. This was galling – and all the more galling, since there was damn little they could do about it now, dependent upon Fauntleroy’s willow-the-wisp good will. At that moment, Fredi realized that he had enough of this kind of smiling-faced treachery. He and O’Malley were cheated of their wages, and that was an end to it. He dropped the tray onto the tile floor, hearing the tray hit with a clatter and the glassware with a satisfactory smash.  “We’re gone north to the gold mines, then. Look to some other poor fool to clean that up for you – or do it yourself. ” He turned on his heel, and walked away, leaving Fauntleroy no doubt staring at the mess in dismay. For himself, Fredi no longer cared; he went to the tiny room in the back of the place where he and O’Malley had been quartered. O’Malley was there, sitting by the small window where the light was best, mending the hem of his overcoat with needle and thread. Fredi rolled up the pallet and blankets that he had slept on and under since leaving Texas.

“We’re going, O’Malley,” he said, over his shoulder. “Fauntly says that he cannot pay us our due – so I have quit, and told him we are for the gold mines.”

“Indade,” O’Malley observed – sounding not all that distressed about it, or even very much surprised. “The open road calls to us, then. And we have many hours of daylight left to us if we leave at once.” He made a knot in the thread and snapped it short, shaking out the overcoat as if to admire his own handiwork. “A pity about the piano, though …‘Tis a bonny and tuneful thing, abandoned in this place!”

“If at all possible,” Fredi said through his teeth, as he bundled the last of his meagre possessions into a carpet-bag and shrugged his own jacket over his shoulders, “We’ll find work for you – playing another. Gather your own trash and traps, O’Malley – let us be done with this place at once.”

“Before Fauntly gathers his wits and cozens us to remain, pleading with sweet words and promises?” O’Malley nodded agreement. He whistled to Nipper, who came awake in an instant, and bounded from where he had been curled up in a tight brindle ball at the foot of O’Malley’s pallet, resting his paws on O’Malley’s knees.

“’Tis on the road we are, little fellow!” O’Malley said to his dog. Nipper seemed agreeable enough, and much more philosophical about it than Fredi felt. They gathered their small baggage and went out to harness the mules. Nipper bounding ahead of them all the way, looking over his flank at them, and hopping up to assume his usual seat in the wagon as O’Malley whistled to the mules in the small corral at the back of the Headquarters. The corral and the stableyard were deep in trampled mud after a week of on and off rain, and also the droppings of many animals, and the pans of dirty dishwater thrown out from the back steps of the Headquarters.  O’Malley threw his many-caped overcoat into the wagon-bed, and Nipper burrowed into it at once, for the morning again was chill and the promise of more rain, if the grey clouds gathered like a cloak about the peaks of the mountains were any indication..

They set to the business of harnessing the mules, two and two, to the wagon, a task at which they – and the mules – were so accustomed that it was accomplished in relative silence and a few minutes by time. When they were nearly done, Fauntleroy Bean appeared in the kitchen doorway, his cravat already undone and shirt collar unbuttoned, revealing the livid marks about his neck still remaining from his near-hanging. O’Malley was already in the wagon, the reins in his hands.

“Fellows … Fred, Aloysius, you should reconsider …” he began, his countenance set in an earnest and tragic expression. “It’s just that there isn’t any money for wages at present, after the expenses are considered …My word on it. The Headquarters is in a bad way, with my brother dead – and a worse, if you are gone…”

“Not our concern, “Fredi snapped, still furious almost to the point of reverting into his first language. He felt again that unreasoning red mist of anger about to descend on him, that mindless and heedless fury that had led him into pounding Zeke Satterwaite into a bloody pulp. If Fauntleroy Bean laid a hand on him, Fredi knew without a doubt – that particular battle-fury, as O’Malley had called it – would descend again. He was that angry over the lost wages, over the way that Fauntleroy seemed determined to treat them both as he did his various lovers. “Your word … it is a worthless thing. Not like your brother. He was honest and fair to us. We are on our way. You cannot cozen us into remaining…” He turned away from Fauntleroy, who started forward, looking as if he was about to stay them with a hand outreached, even as Fredi mounted up onto the wagon-seat.

“Freddy … Aloysius,” Fauntleroy pleaded – as if he was an honest man unfairly reproved – which infuriated Fredi even more. He kicked out, his contempt unrivaled – and his toe caught Fauntleroy Bean fair in the chest, with sufficient force to topple the man backwards with a satisfactory splash, down into the pool of muddy dishwater and accumulated cow, mule and horse-pats at the bottom of the step into the kitchen.

“Well-done, Freddy-boyo,” O’Malley observed with satisfaction, slapping the reins over the backs of the mules.  Fauntleroy, stunned for once into speechlessness, levered himself with one elbow into a sitting position, mouth open with shock as the wagon rolled out of the yard and into the street.

“We tell everyone we meet what you have done,” Fredi shouted, over his shoulder as they rounded the corner, not caring that he was shouting in an incoherent mixture of German and English. “That you are a cheat, a liar and a fornicator … see how many customers come to the Headquarters now, eh!”

O’Malley chirruped to the mules, and grinned at Fredi. “Well, boyo – so now ye see? There’s many of his like in the world, I’m afraid, and Fauntleroy Bean is far and away not the worst of them.”

“I’ll take very good care not to take wages from any of them!” Fredi’s anger still burned hot, and O’Malley looked at the road unrolling ahead of them, the dusty road which led north, towards Los Angeles.

“’Tis a luxury, having such a choice, boyo.” The Irishman sounded as if he were admonishing. “But aye, I am thinking that no’ so many will work for a promise of wages now. In good time, Fauntleroy Bean will have the reputation which he deserves. We still have a foine stake for setting up a claim. It’s only a week or so that he cheated us of – no so much, considered against what we have already.  As for us now … the snows still lock the high mountains in winter for another few months. ‘Tis too early to commence our journey to the diggings; what say you to San Francisco, and searching for work there? The biggest city in the land likely will offer us any number of opportunities.”

“Even for playing the piano?” Fredi, good humor restored by the thought of as large a city as any that he had ever seen in this country – bigger than Galveston even – was not above teasing his business partner a little, and O’Malley laughed. The freshening breeze tugged at their caps, and at the overlapping capes of O’Malley’s overcoat.

“Aye, boyo –and it pays well!  When the diggings open, we can load up the wagon and haul supplies into whatever mine-camp seems to be most promising. They say that rich strikes are happening every week, from Mont-Ophir in the south to Rich Bar in the north – but that the men getting richest of all are those who mine the miners – selling supplies, whores and the mail from home.”

“But why shouldn’t we be among those striking it rich?” Fredi ruminated over all the stories he had heard – pebbles of pure gold, the size of a man’s thumbnail, scattered among the gravel at the river’s edge. That was a picture more alluring than laboring away, hauling freight and driving cattle – or washing glasses and bottles in a saloon. He could hardly wait – and relished once again and imagining of returning to Texas, richer than one of the Firsts, and repaying his brother-in-law every penny of the money lost to robbery on the road to Indianola.

That seemed now to have happened a long time ago, although in truth it was barely eight months. Fredi thought smugly that he had become very wise in that time; he and O’Malley’s stake was secreted in several places; a small portion carried on his own person and on O’Malley’s, but the largest part in a small sack concealed in a cask of cornmeal in the back of the wagon. No one would think to look for money in the meal cask, O’Malley had said, quite early on, and Fredi agreed.

They had gotten to a point halfway between San Bernardino and Los Angeles when disaster struck. It was a particularly deserted stretch of road, not a lonely house or a tiny settlement in sight. The sun, sliding down the western sky was still gilding the hilltops, and tinting the snow on the distant mountaintops in hues of rose and gold, but the valley bottoms were already abandoned to shadow. Fredi had already suggested that they make a wilderness camp of it for the night, picket the mules to graze, and sleep under the wagon, but O’Malley hankered to spend the night under a roof, and held out for traveling another mile or so, in hopes of encountering a dwelling-place, a town … anything. Shadows filled the valley, deep and darkening, even as O’Malley looked wistfully ahead for a lantern-lit window. Just as Fredi was about to say that there was no such thing in sight, and they should make camp while they still had light enough to unharness the mules and ensure that they were not bedding down on top of an ant-hill or a nest of rattlesnakes, a male voice called to them in Spanish, from the deeper shadow beside thicket of bare sage.

“Hola, my friends … it’s late to be on the road – may I ask where you are going?”

“To Los Angeles,” Fredi answered, having no suspicion in the least – until the metallic click of a pistol cocking alerted him – too late. Even as O’Malley made as if to send the mules hurtling forward, another man-shaped shadow emerged, deftly catching the lead mule’s headstall. Fredi – too late alarmed – leaned down, reaching for the shot-gun which O’Malley kept within reach, under the wagon seat. The man with the pistol stepped out of the shadows, the last of the twilight etching a pale line down the barrel. That pistol pointed straight at Fredi’s stomach, from hardly an arm-length away, and there was another pistol aimed at O’Malley; at least three men that Fredi could see, and at least two more that he could not, but sensed their presence anyway.

“Not tonight, I think,” said the first man, suave and confident. Now Fredi could see that he had a dark kerchief over his face, and his heart sank. This did not look good. There had been many a tale of Murietta and his bandit gang told in the Headquarters Saloon; not everyone in San Bernardino was convinced that Murietta and his chief henchman, Three-Finger Jack Garcia, had been killed by Captain Love’s Ranger company a year or two before although many had said they recognized the bandits’ pickled head when it was shown around the gold camps afterwards.  “Alas, we are poor men and you are rich – and is it not said that those who have must share with the poor and hungry?”

“And we are very hungry,” commented the man holding the mule’s headstall. The wagon rocked slightly on its springs, as if someone were climbing over the tail-gate. Nipper growled, from his nest at their feet in O’Malley’s folded overcoat, and O’Malley twisted around to look back into the wagon bed, bidding Nipper to be still. Fredi could hear O’Malley whispering to himself, very low in English which sounded like prayers.

“We’re being held up by road-agents,” Fredi said, keeping his voice level with an effort. Everything they owned between them was in the wagon – the cargo it carried, the mules which pulled it, and most especially – their stake in coins and notes, secreted in the cornmeal. “We are not rich,” he protested. “But honest and hard-working men! We are heading for the gold mines – not away from them; why should you steal what we have from us?”

“You have more than we,” the bandit leader replied, in an irritatingly reasonable manner. “And we have nothing – so you are rich indeed, by comparison. Come down from the wagon, my friends – slowly and keep your hands clear where we may see them.”

“He’s telling us to get down,” Fredi translated for O’Malley. “And to be slow and careful – there are at least three guns trained on us.”

“I’ll not die like a dog in the road,” O’Malley said through his teeth. “Give them what they ask for, boyo – do just as they say. Nip – to me. Tell them I’m wrapping Nipper in my coat. He’s just a poor little doggie, but he is loyal above all.”

“Your valuables, my friends,” ordered the bandit leader, once they had obeyed. “Go on – keep nothing back, not a single centavo, for Jesu Cristo rewards in heaven those who are generous to the poor.” Fredi and O’Malley stood with their backs to the wagon-wheel, Fredi with his hands raised, and O’Malley holding Nipper, tightly wrapped in his overcoat under his arm. Inside the wagon they could hear one of the bandits ransacking what it held, while Nipper whined in distress, but O’Malley held him fast, swathed in the overcoat’s folds. With one hand the bandit leader held out a coarse sack which might once have held sugar or salt – brandishing in the other an old-fashioned dragoon pistol. It only held a single shot, but at that range, a man couldn’t miss – and close as they were, Fredi could see the hilts of three or four more, tucked into the leader’s belt and the front of his short Mexican jacket. Another bandit, similarly masked and armed, stood by and holding a small pierced-tin lantern aloft, so that there was light enough to see by it, as darkness closed down over the valley like a pot-lid. Who knew how many other guns were trained on them, held steadily by how many bandits? He thought that he could hear horses close by, whickering to each other, and their bridle-bits jingling. There was no advantage to himself and O’Malley in this, Fredi acknowledged bleakly. Not even Carl Becker could have overcome this many … and in any case, his wood-wise brother-in-law likely would not have fallen into an ambush like this in the first place.

With an insouciance remarkable to Fredi, O’Malley surrendered his pocket-watch; a cheap and battered thing of tin, and twisted off the tiny jet signet ring from his finger. With a sigh, he added his purse, containing his small share of their stake, which he carried for such small expenses as they had, in order that the avaricious might not observe the larger store of money. Fredi, the bag and the dragoon pistol put before him, added his own small share, and the patent Colt revolver which he had bought from Gil Fabreaux’s brother, all these months ago.

The two bandits regarded them in reproach in the speckled lantern-light, obviously disappointed over the meagre takings.

Stung, Fredi protested, “I told you that we were plain working men – who other than such would be on the road at this time and season?”

At his side, O’Malley groaned faintly. “Boyo, have a care. We give them what they want, that we may go in peace…” he crossed himself in the way of Catholics in the old church with his free hand, murmuring, “…pray for us now, and in the hour of our death…”

Seeing an advantage or sorts – did this bandit understand English after all? – Fredi said, “He is one of your old church, as devout as a man can be said to be in this wilderness. We have given to you what we can…”

“Not all!” the bandit leader sounded as if he leered triumphantly under the kerchief over his face, as one of his gang came over the wagon seat, with a dusty sack in his hand. Fredi’s heart sank, all the way into his boots. Their stake! All the money they had in the world, their wages from six hard months on the cattle trail, and what they had earned since! The sale of Paint lay in that bag, that and the price of his and O’Malley’s long hours of work, pounding piano keys and laboring over the wash-pan in Colonel Bean’s saloon.

The man with the corn-meal dusty bag emptied it into the larger one, the coins and notes jingling and rustling as they fell. Fredi and O’Malley watched, helpless and impotent – and to add insult to injury on top of robbery, the bandit chief looked at them both in reproach.

“My friends – you are certainly very poor rich men, if this is all you have! Little notes, small coins of less value…”

“We were cheated of our wages,” Fredi replied, indignant, as that particular injustice still stung. “We worked for Colonel Bean, at the saloon in San Bernardino; all these weeks … and his brother did not pay us, saying there was nothing from the profits…”

“Los Frijoles?” the other bandit murmured – not wholly sympathetic, but appearing to flirt with the notion. O’Malley’s gaze went back and forth between Fredi and the two outlaws, but the Irishman sensibly appeared to think better of speaking. Fredi wondered briefly again, if the bandit understood English. Bundled in the overcoat, Nipper whined again, distressed – but not as much as he hand been, when the bandit first began searching the wagon.

“Yes – the Beans. We worked without pause or rest for … many weeks. And at the end of it, Senor Leroy refused us our wages.”

“And what did you do … for los Frijoles?” the bandit leader asked again, seeming interested.

“I washed in the kitchen,” Fredi answered. “And we hauled a piano from Los Angeles. Senor O’Malley played upon it nightly for many hours, which brought many customers into los Frijoles’ establishment and enriched them mightily. We were promised a generous wage of five dollars for each night that he played – but that bastard Senor Leroy cheated us in the end. So we left.”

“Aye-yi-yi,” the bandit leader whistled in sympathy, as an interested murmur of Spanish rippled among the others of his gang. “You were cheated … such is not an unknown occurrence, but usually not inflicted upon those of their own kind. But I am a gentleman and a merciful one – unlike those gringos …” he reached into the large bag which held everything that his men had looted from O’Malley and Fredi, and scattered a random handful of coins at their feet. “Thus, I return to you a portion. Alas, we are poor men ourselves, and cheated of our rights on every hand, or else I would return even more. We will leave you with your wagon and the mules. Count yourself fortunate, my friends, that we have no use for them. But we do languish for music and amusement …”

“Oh?” Fredi regarded the bandit chief with wary courtesy. “We don’t have a piano – or anything but a penny-whistle. What would you have us do?”

“If your Senor O’Malley would come with us, for a few hours,” the bandit leader replied. “There is a rancho … some little distance from here, where there is a piano, but no one there alive to play it.”

“They want you to come with them, to play the piano,” Fredi relayed to O’Malley, who nodded briskly, and seemed to fear no peril. Fredi wondered exactly how often O’Malley had been in tight, dangerous situations; he certainly seemed cool enough.

He handed the bundled overcoat with Nipper in it over to Fredi, saying, “Keep the little doggie safe with you – for he may try to run after me and become lost.” He looked as if he were about to say more, but thought better of it.

“Fetch him a mule,” the bandit leader jerked a thumb at the nearest of his men. In a few moments they had unharnessed the four mules, scattering three of them into the darkness with shouts. O’Malley mounted the fourth, while Nipper whined in Fredi’s grip.

“Mind the wagon,” he said only. “The mules won’t go far – but take care of Nipper,” he added over his shoulder, as the bandits let him away.

Gone out of sight in an instant, out of hearing in another, muffled hoof-beats falling soft on the dust of the road – and Fredi was alone, save for Nipper. At least the dog was not struggling to get free any more, but burrowed deeper into O’Malley’s coat. Fredi put him back into the wagon, and getting down on his hands and knees, felt in the darkness near to the wagon wheel for the coins scattered at their feet by the bandit leader.

He much regretted the loss of his revolver – but at least the bandits missed the shotgun under the wagon seat. Fredi sat back on his heels, struck by a little niggling thought, a sense of something not quite right. He could have sworn that there had been more in the bag containing their stake. The bandit leader had been disappointed with what was found in the wagon … surely there had been gold coins in their stake. Yes, he was certain of that; he had the price for Paint in gold eagles, and O’Malley was paid the same for his piano-playing. He reviewed the brief moment when the dusty bag was emptied into the larger; had he seen anything like the bright glint of gold? And when the bandit leader threw down a fistful of money at random, surely there would have been at least one gold half or quarter-eagle among them…

But there was not – only copper pennies, with a few silver three-cent pieces and half-dimes. Fredi retrieved a tin lantern from the wagon, lit the candle within and searched the ground on hands and knees for any coins he might have missed. Nothing … and he wondered just what  O’Malley had been about to say to him, before the bandits vanished into the night with him.

Not the final for-real cover, but a place-holder for now

A chapter from the next book – The Golden Road, wherein young Fredi Steinmetz follows the gold rush trail to California from Texas, in the year 1855. Arrived in California, they have made friends with the disreputable youngest son of an otherwise respectable family, one Fauntleroy Bean. A fugitive from the authorities in San Diego, Fauntleroy has talked Fredi and his friend and business partner Polidore O’Malley (an eccentric Irishman with a mysterious background, who has never told the story of it in the same way twice) to the dusty city of San Bernardino, where Fauntleroy’s brother runs a prosperous establishment, the Headquarters Saloon.

On their return to San Bernardino, any number of willing volunteers assisted with moving the precious crate from wagon-tail to saloon, with Colonel Bean and O’Malley hovering, watchful and protective.
“Gently, go gently with it now,” Colonel Beam commanded. “I paid top dollar for it, all the way from New York.”
“Sure now, don’t open the crate as if you are cracking a nutshell,” O’Malley crooned – he had a long iron crow in hand, and as soon as the crate was positioned next to where Colonel Bean had indicated where the piano should go, O’Malley deftly inserted the point of it into the right places, directing the interested to pull away the planks which made up the crate top and sides as he loosened them. In a few moments the piano stood revealed in all of its varnished and ivory-keyed glory, the protective layers of excelsior and canvas stripped away.
“Careful, boys – careful!” O’Malley urged four men – including Fredi – as they bent their backs and lifted the piano up from its discarded chrysalis of wood, excelsior and canvas and shifted it just a little way, to place it against the rough-plastered wall of the Headquarters. Buried deep in the mound of excelsior tucked into the recess underneath the keyboard was a smaller and barrel-sized bundle which proved – once removed from that smaller wrapping – to be a small stool with what looked to be one seat mounted over another on a large threaded screw. It was of the same wood and styling – or close to it – as the piano. O’Malley divested it of the last of that packing material and set it before the keyboard with an expression once ecstatic and nostalgic.
“’Tis made to compensate for the height of the performer,” he said. “A clever device – this one from the Parker Company of Connecticut … but nay, boys – I will not play a note, until I have seen to the proper tuning of this lovely and long-journeyed lady. Shoo, then – take all this clutter away with ye.”
“Yes – do as he says,” Colonel Bean encouraged them, and then turned his regard on O’Malley, who was caressing the ivory keys – without any pressure upon them to bring forth a note or two – and lifting the hinged lid to peer within, shaking his head as he did so. “You tell me that you can tune and play it? Well, that’s a fortunate occurrence …”
“For which he will expect to be paid, accordingly,” Fredi spoke up – and both the older men looked on him with expressions of mixed dismay and calculation. No matter; Fredi looked straight at the Colonel and said, “For fetching this from Los Angeles, we were paid well. Fitting it to be played and playing upon it is more skilled work. If there is another such in San Bernardino…”
“Freddy, boyo…” O’Malley sounded distressed, and the Colonel looked positively thunderous, but Fredi continued, undismayed.
“Then send for them, if they can offer a better rate. $25 dollars for properly tuning the piano, and $5 an evening for playing it – that’s our offer, for the rest of the winter, until we head north to the gold-fields. What’s yours?”

Colonel Bean appeared to chew on his mustaches for a long moment, while Fredi held his own firm countenance and O’Malley looked from one to the other with increasing dismay. Finally, the Colonel replied, in tones which seemed as if they had been squeezed reluctantly from him, “Yes on the piano tuning – although I doubt anyone in this dusty hell-hole could tell the difference. For an evening, $3 – but he can keep all the tips.”
“Done and agreed,” Fredi said, before O’Malley could demur. He was breathless with this achievement; quite better than he had hoped for, all things considered. “For as long as we stay in San Bernardino – until the snows melt in the Sierras in the spring and we head north to the gold-fields. Shake on it, sir?”
“Agreed and done,” Colonel Bean shook hands with the both of them, and it seemed to Fredi that Josiah Bean regarded him with newly-fresh respect. “You drive a hard bargain, boy.”
“I’m not a greenhorn, fresh off the boat,” Fredi replied. “Though I might sound when I speak English as if I am – a foreigner, newly come.”
“Aye well, perhaps a little,” Colonel Bean admitted. Fredi only smiled, thinking of how this would fatten their stake.

It took O’Malley some days to properly tune the new piano; it seemed to be tedious work, involving incessant fiddling with a peculiar little tool, tightening or loosening the metal pegs that secured the metal wires inside, while O’Malley whistled tunelessly to himself. He seemed happy enough at the task. Fredi became quite bored of watching him after a day or so; no, tuning a piano was not a skill that he could ever acquire, not when he couldn’t hear any significant difference at all between notes. And it turned out that Fauntleroy Bean had been giving scant time to his duties as a bottle washer.
“He’s running after some pretty Mex girl again, I swear.” His brother growled, upon discovering two full baskets of unwashed tumblers, tin cups and beer-mugs. “Damn him, I wish he wasn’t so well-grown, I’d tan his ass with a willow-switch until he couldn’t sit down for a week.”
Fredi, seeing his duty plain, rolled up his shirt-sleeves and volunteered to work his way through the detritus of the previous night’s drinking – not forgetting to set a price on his labors over the dish-tub. Late in the afternoon, while throwing the last pan of dirty water out into the stable-yard, he spotted Fauntleroy strolling in from the direction of the San Gabriel church, swaggering like a tom-cat. Fauntleroy had not seen Fredi, who waited until Fauntleroy had tiptoed into the back room – rather obviously hoping not to be seen.
“The Colonel’s mighty angry with you,” Fredi said, from beyond the doorway into the saloon, and Fauntleroy jumped.
“Sweet Jesus, I didn’t see you, Freddy – aww, Josh is always angry with me. It’s in his nature, I guess. What’s he mad about this time?”
“About the usual – sparking pretty women and not doing your job here.” Fredi added, since he was curious, “Are you courting a girl, Fauntly? Is she pretty?”
“The prettiest,” Fauntleroy’s handsome countenance wore an expression of smug assurance. “And she’s aflame with love for me … can’t keep her hands off. It’s like wrestling with an octopus. And the things she can do with her … lips. You’d be on fire, Freddy. Dona Inés is kin to the Ortegas – big landowning family in these parts. She’s supposed to marry some distant cousin of theirs, but what do you know? She might marry me instead.”
“The Colonel won’t like that,” Fredi could feel his heart sinking. Fauntleroy Bean could not go two weeks without getting into trouble – gambling trouble, woman trouble or fighting trouble. No wonder the Colonel looked so much older than his brother; being responsible for Fauntleroy Bean would tend to age a man considerable. “It’ll make trouble for him.”
“Ol’ Josh can take care of himself…” Fauntleroy assured him, as the sound of gentle piano notes floated into the back room.
“He’s done with tuning the piano,” Fredi exclaimed with much delight, immediately loosing interest in Fauntleroy’s current light of love, and in twitting Fauntleroy about it. Also, he was nearly done with the work of washing-up from the night before.

In the near-empty saloon, O’Malley sat before the piano, his eyes half-closed as his hands wandered purposefully over the keyboard. The music was slow and stately, with a touch of melancholy, enough to bring tears to the eyes of the sentimental; loss and longing and regret all mixed together. Fredi stole closer – the tune was halfway familiar. Perhaps he had heard it at one of the Sunday recitals back in Fredericksburg, when Captain Nimitz opened up the casino-ballroom in his hotel for a concert or some such.
“From an opera by Handel, boyo – one of your countrymen,” O’Malley answered, his eyes half-closed as he played; no music on the stand before him, he was playing from memory. Fredi was immediately awed by the magic of it – such a complicated piece, with so many notes! “A concert-master to kings and princes, and a favorite of the Earl of Cork, no less.”
“No – from Halle in Prussia,” Fredi objected. “We were from near Ulm in Bavaria…”
“No matter …” O’Malley played on, singing half-under his breath to the notes that he played. “… Where’er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade … Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade … Trees where you sit shall crowd into shade! Where’er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise … And all things flourish …”
“Sounds like a funeral,” Fauntleroy said, disparagingly. “Christ almighty, don’t play anything like that for the house tonight, O’Malley. Play something cheerful; get the boys into a drinking mood.”
O’Malley clashed his hands onto the keys in one discordant rush – the melancholy mood instantly shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. “How about this, Fauntly – for a good drinking mood?”
He launched into another tune, in brisk waltz-time, which sounded partly familiar to Fredi; he rather thought it was one that the older Fabreaux brothers were wont to whistle when the mood took them – a rather lewd and suggestive ditty when it came right down to it.
“Will you come to the bow’r I have shaded for you? I have decked it with roses, all spangled with dew…”
“Just the ticket, O’Malley,” Fauntleroy said, with a broad and appreciative grin, just as Colonel Bean came out of his office and passed close by his brother.
“Oh, it’s you – finally,” he said, and sniffed. “I know where you have been all afternoon – you have the stink of a woman all over you.”
“Jealous, Josh?” Fauntleroy’s grin widened, and his brother snapped, “I swear, Fauntly, if you have loosed your Nebuchadnezzar to romp with the wife or daughter of a jealous man and it brings down ill-fortune on the Headquarters, I will cast you off entirely. I mean it – use some discretion, for the love of your life! Try a whore now and again – at least, such will go away once paid!”
“But’s so much fun, this way,” Fauntleroy Bean replied, unrepentant.
“Get ready to open the bar,” Colonel Bean snapped, and Fauntleroy looked as if he were about to make a reply, but thought better of it. O’Malley was still playing, to the world oblivious of all save music, but as Fredi hovered uncertainly, O’Malley murmured,
“Boyo, has the good Colonel paid us yet for the work?”
“He will, as soon as I remind him that the piano is now playable … why?”
“I sense choppy waters ahead, Fredi-boyo.” O’Malley looked at the ivory keys, responsive to his hands. “We may have to leave in a hurry.”

(At long last, the final part of the Jim and Toby adventure – wherein Jim Reade and Toby Shaw make a long journey to an abandoned Spanish presidio, in search of a fortune in silver which may be buried within it’s walls. But their friend Albert Biddle has made an unsettling discovery – previous chapters of the story here, here, here and here.)

No matter that twilight had already fallen, the sun gone down behind purple clouds fringed with a nimbus of fading gold – that peculiar piece of news required investigation on the spot.
“The Castle of Otranto has nothing on this place,” Albert Biddle observed, as unflappable as ever. “Buried treasure, dead monks … I expect to see a villainous nobleman at any moment … and if a pure and lovely maiden fond of wildflowers faints into my arms, I shall drop her at once.”
“You’d better,” Jim answered, twisting a mass of sage branches from the earth, winding them into a tight knot around a substantial stick of firewood to make a torch. He held it into the new fire until it was well alight. “You’re a happily married man, after all. Lead us to your dead monk, Albert. No wonder that the Comanche don’t want to set foot in this place.”
“They told many stories,” Toby nodded agreement. “None of which agreed with the others; powerful spirits, the ghosts of fierce warriors, lights floating across the ground … and Old Owl, he looked very solemn, as if he knew more than the others. He said it was a white man’s place, so what bad medicine that the others feared, would not harm you.”
“But aren’t you worried for yourself?” Albert Biddle ventured. Toby snorted, indignant at the very suggestion.
“My people are not wild Indians, like the Comanche,” he answered. “We are the True People; not to be frightened by tales told to bad children.”

“I thought that parts of this place looked as if someone had kept it in repair,” Jim remarked, some minutes later, when he and Toby had followed Albert Biddle to the inner room which must have been the presidio commander’s quarters and now was a tomb. They looked into it from the doorway … most remarkably, a doorway with a wooden door in it still. There was a fresh half-circular scoring on the dirt floor, where the door had been pushed open by Albert Biddle. “You didn’t move anything other than the door, did you?”
“No … I came in just far enough to see that the monk was dead,” Albert Biddle answered. “And that whoever he was, he’d been dead a long time.”
“But I doubt that he closed the door by himself,” Jim observed, holding up the torch. In the dark room, eldritch shadows and light flickered … all that was required to make a ghastly scene in one of Albert Biddle’s novels was a thunderstorm brewing overhead, Jim thought.
The room was a windowless one, as bare as a jail cell, although there was a space where a window once had been, now filled with stones roughly cemented in and the the roof over it being in good repair. A low bed, of unworked lengths of branch and rawhide held the body of the monk – or rather his bones, neatly laid with the bones of his hands crossed on the breast of the coarse brown wool robe and wound around with the beads of his rosary. The flesh of his face, hands and feet had desiccated to the same color as the rawhide, but there was no indication of a violent end that Jim could see … and he had seen many violent ends, in his time as one of Jack Hay’s stiletto men.
A plain wooden crucifix hung on one wall, a simple prie-dieux beneath it, of the same crude manufacture as the cot. There was only one other piece of furniture in the room; a small wooden chest, almost entirely covered – sides and corners by metal strap work, much blackened by tarnish – which sat against the wall close to the shallow fireplace, Jim raised his makeshift torch a little higher … yes, there was a dip in the floor, an arms-length from the fireplace. In the light of Jim’s fading torch, he could see the considering expression on Albert Biddle’s face – the expression of a man rapidly doing up long sums. Out in the pasture of the old parade ground one of the horses whinnied nervously – an unaccustomed noise in this silent place.
Jim’s eyes met those of Albert Biddle. “I wonder if the monk has not already saved us the trouble of digging up the treasure … that looks like a chest I would use to bury a fortune in silver.”
From the doorway, Toby said, “James … I think the horses are restless. There is something out there …”
“A wild-cat, likely,” Jim answered, as Albert Biddle gestured Jim to hold the torch closer to the chest. Toby’s eyes gleamed briefly; he had come no farther than the doorway, by which Jim guessed that for all of Toby’s brave words, he was shared the same superstitious of the Comanche regarding this place. With a whisper of his moccasins against the dirt, Toby was gone from the doorway, likely to see what had unsettled the horses.
“It has the arms of the king of Spain engraved on it, unless I am very much mistaken. But what would a simple Franciscan have to do with the lost silver of San Saba? And what brought him out here all alone?” Albert tested the latch of the chest – there were loops of iron where a lock would have been, and others through which chains might have once been drawn and triply-secured the contents. He lifted latch, and then lid, which opened with a metallic screech of protest, the two bent closer to see inside.
“It’s empty,” Jim exclaimed, crushing disappointment mixed with a certain degree of relief. He did not relish remaining here any longer, especially with the body of the mysterious Franciscan monk, hundreds of miles alone in the Comanche-haunted plains of the llano.
Albert Biddle reached in, feeling with wary care along the bottom of the chest. “Not quite,” he said, drawing out a small object held between thumb and finger. “There’s this – it was wedged in the corner. It might be silver – I’ll have to see it in good light to be certain.”
The object was about the size and shape of a sliver of apple cut from the core – thin at one edge, and about the thickness of Jim’s little finger on the outer. Jim took it from Albert, weighing it in his hand – it felt heavier than it looked, and he thought that he could feel something embossed into the blackened surface. “I hate to think that we came all this way and risked so much for just this,” he observed. He cast a disparaging eye on the body of the monk, whose empty eye-holes appeared to serenely contemplate the crucifix hanging on the wall. “I wonder if he found it – and if so, what he spent it all on?”
“Likely not what Bob Neighbors or any other Texian would have chosen,” Albert Biddle replied, and Jim was moved enough by that acid observation to laugh.
“Full to the brim with silver would have exhausted the capacity of …” Jim began to say, before the small metallic click of a pistol being cocked interrupted him – as loud as a shout in the silence, and suddenly the room was full of other men, and Bernard Vibart-Jones’s eyes glittering at them over the barrel.
“I most respectfully request that you hand over the silver, gentlemen,” the Englishman said, the smooth actor’s voice at odds with the expression of villainous satisfaction on his face.
“You!” Jim exclaimed; he had been so certain that they had ventured alone into the old fortress. He had not really expected the English agent to appear, risking the wrath of the Comanche, not with a band of bravos at his back, a solid phalanx of armed men, filling up the doorway
“Just like a bad counterfeit coin,” Albert Biddle remarked, conversationally as he handed the slip of tarnished silver to Vibart-Jones. “Just when you think you’ve seen the last of it, there it turns up again.”
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, Jonathan,” Vibart-Jones growled, the smoothness curdled into menace. “And give me the rest.”
“That’s all that was left,” Albert Biddle replied. “Look for yourself.”
“Insolence,” Vibart-Jones remarked, and swung the hand with the pistol in it – a blow on the side of Albert Buddle’s face which landed with a crunch snapped the Yankee’s head back. “I warned you about that, didn’t I, Jonathon?”
At that, Jim sprang forward, thrusting his sputtering torch towards the Englishman’s face; Vibart-Jones bellowed, falling back towards the doorway, and the room went pitch dark – a darkness broken by a violent scuffle in that part of it where Jim thought the doorway was, and vigorous curses in two languages. He was briefly torn – rush the doorway in all the confusion? But what of Albert Biddle, and where was Toby? Jim leapt towards the doorway – or where he thought it was, hoping to push past the human obstacles under cover of darkness, but two things happened almost at once: someone fired a shotgun, the flash of which nearly blinded him – and a heavy body plowed into his mid-section, knocking him flat, as shards of tile and wood fell from above. The ground rose up and smacked the back of his head, and a constellation of stars burst before his eyes. When he could see straight again, he lay with his arms bound tightly behind him, his legs tied as well, half-propped against a stone wall. He had no notion of how much time had passed, but it must have been more than a few minutes.
His head cleared – yes, that was Vibart-Jones, looming overhead, saying to the man at his side, “… them in here with the boy …guard on the door for tonight.”
The door shut, although he could see a dim glow – lamplight? – shining through the gaps between the planks. It was not as dark as all that, or else his eyes were becoming used to the darkness. From some distance, he could hear men’s voices, arguing vociferously; now and again the voice of the actor, but not the words being said.
That shotgun must have blasted a hole in the tiles above, for he could see a faint twinkle of starlight. He lay in the room with the skeletal monk – likely because it was the only one with a door solid enough to serve as a prison cell.
“Albert? You there?” He asked, tentatively, rewarded by a groan and a reply.
“Yes … damn him for a treacherous bloody-back bastard. I was certain that we’d thrown him off our trail in Bexar.”
“So did I,” Jim admitted. “I thought certain we were the only white men with the friendship of Mopechucope, and let down my guard. I even left my pistols with my saddle. Sorry, Albert.”
“Apologize when we get back to Bexar,” Albert Biddle answered. “I guess they’ve shut us in the commander’s parlor for now. I’m tied, hands and feet, so I guess that you are, too. Is Mr. Shaw with us? He’s awful quiet.”
“Like always,” Jim said, and raised his voice. “Toby – brother – are you here? He was going to see to the horses, he might have gotten away.”
A faint scuffling sound came from the other corner by way of reply, but it was not Toby’s voice which answered – but a boy speaking Spanish, and tremulous – as if he were scared out of his wits.
“He says that his name is Diego,” Albert Biddle said, softly – and the boy spoke again. He sounded very young, although it might have been from fear. “That he and his older brother were the servants of Fray Bernardo. That is the name of the monk, it seems. Fray Bernardo, of the missionary friars of St. Francis.”
“How did he come to be the servant of a holy friar?” Jim whispered. “I thought they were supposed to be vowed to poverty – and he does know this Fray Bernardo is dead … and where is this brother of his!”
Albert relayed Jim’s questions – but Jim understood Spanish well enough to make sense of the reply. The boy Diego had not been tied up as had Jim and Albert Biddle – only his hands were bound in front of him. He came, crawling on hands and knees, huddling against the wall next to where Albert Biddle lay, and as the moon rose outside, a little of that illumination seeped through the broken tiles.
Diego and his brother were the sons of a poor farmer in the borderlands; some years ago they had been taken captive by Comanche raiders … and Fray Bernardo had ransomed them.
“He was an old man, senor, even then … but a good man, a holy man. He ministered to los Indios … and they treated him as a holy man. He wandered everywhere, without fear … he had the power of healing, and he knew many languages.”
“How did he come here, to this place, Diego?” Jim asked, and the answer came haltingly, in fits and starts. Jim and Albert Biddle listened patiently – it was not as if they had anything else to do.
“He was often here, senor … he was a student in his youth of Padre Alonso, who died for the Faith when the mission of Santa Cruz was destroyed by the Comanche. Fray Bernardo came to say prayers for the souls of the departed, every year until his own death. And to take from the chest of silver treasure …”
“The Comanche allowed this?” Jim asked with considerable astonishment, just as Albert Biddle exclaimed, “So he did spend it … every single piece but one ingot … the cunning old …” Albert swallowed the last word, as Diego said, in deep reproof.
“Fray Bernardo was a very good man, senor – you should not say things like that about him. He may even be a saint, some day, I think. He took the silver coins, the cast ingots and he used them for good in little ways. A gift to a poor family, a little church … to an orphanage … but never so much that anyone would notice. Most often, he would send my brother or I, telling us to say that a rich man had made a gift to him. He was an old man when he died – two years ago. My brother and I did as he bid us … to say a prayer and leave him in this place, just as you see him now. There were only a handful of silver coins left in the chest. Fray Bernardo told us to take it as his gift to us for our faithful service. So we went home to our village. We said nothing to anyone about the silver – what Fray Bernardo had given us, or about that which he had given away! I swear to you, senor, not a word! But…”
“What happened, Diego – did someone threaten you? Someone who knew about Fray Bernardo, or the silver?”
“Yes, senor,” Diego replied, almost before the questions were out of Albert Biddle’s mouth. In the dark, Diego sounded very young, hardly older than little James Albert Toby. “These six men … with the foreigner, they came to our house. They broke in after dark … and they beat my brother to make us tell them about the silver. I think they knew about Fray Bernardo, but I don’t know how they could have known. And then … they killed my brother and made me go with them, so that I could show them where the silver was hidden. I said to them many times, even when they struck me and said that I lied … that it was all gone. Fray Bernardo had made good use of it, but they did not believe me. They are very angry now. I am afraid they will kill us.”
“There must have been some record left in Monclova,” Albert comforted the boy. “It was not your fault – anyone who knew of the silver left here, and also knew that your Fray Bernardo often traveled this way… it was a puzzle easily put together.”
“No, lad,” Jim said, at least as much to reassure Diego as himself. “I don’t think they will kill us. They might want to… but there is not another living man in this room with us, is there? My Indian brother – he came here with us, but I think he escaped in the confusion. So we have one ally at large. And … then, there is another Indian friend, watching from the hill above. That friend said that if we did not go out into the middle of the presidio after dawn tomorrow and every day and wave a red cloth, that he would go to his people for help. Diego – to you know of Old Owl, Mopechucope of the Penateka? He is our friend also. We came here by his leave and with his permission. I do not believe that our friends will allow us to be slaughtered out of hand. Tell him this, Albert.”
“So say us all,” Albert Biddle murmured. “Diego – your hands are tied in front of you?” He added what Jim had said in Spanish, and when Diego answered in the affirmative, Albert Biddle continued. “Well, I have a pen-knife in my front left waistcoat pocket. If you can find it and open it … well, then cut our bonds … softy, softly, lad – then at least we can sleep well, not bound up like beasts for the slaughter. When they come for us … whenever they do – hold the lengths of rope behind your back, as if still bound; we’ll catch them by surprise … I hope. Right, Diego – can you find my knife and open it? Good lad.”
There was a scuffling sound, as Diego fumbled with his bound hands to find Albert Biddle’s pen-knife. “I have it, senor!”
“Don’t drop it,” Albert Biddle admonished, as Jim asked, in tones of deliberately casual interest. “Ask him about those men who came with the foreigner and murdered his brother. Ask him about them, Albert. Does he have any sense of who they are and what they are after?”
“They are for the silver, senor!” Diego replied, instantly. “And peninsulares …of the upper class, senor – of Spain, or perhaps criollo… they are of the ruling class … else how could they behave as they did? There is no justice in the world for such as we, such as my brother! They murdered him, senors!”
“There will be justice, Diego – no fear for that.” Jim assured him, while Albert Biddle, his hands freed, leaned forward and sawed apart the ropes binding his legs.
“It sounds as if they are angry,” Albert Biddle observed. He fumbled with his knife in the darkness, and Jim felt the ropes around his wrists loosen and fall away.
“Can you make out what they are saying?” Jim asked, with a groan. His hands were numbed, and clumsy in unraveling the knots at his feet.
“It sounds as if they are arguing about searching, still.” Albert Biddle answered, after listening in silence for a long moment. The angry voices had grown louder as tempers rose. “Some of the men believe the chest we found is not the one – that the silver must still be hidden somewhere in this room, maybe elsewhere in the fortress. Others are certain the treasure is gone, and wish to leave at dawn, before the Comanche find them. It sounds as if they are divided evenly.”
“As long as they are in disagreement,” Jim pointed out. “The better for us.”
“Agreed,” Albert Biddle mused. “So – do we jump the first one of them who comes through that door?”
“If it looks like we can take them by surprise,” Jim agreed. “Still – I hope that Toby is lurking close and with a plan of his own.”
“It’s still three of us and Diego against seven of them,” Albert Biddle observed. He did not sound as if he relished those odds. “Ah, well – wait until morning, and we rush the door … unless there is a plan?”
“It will do for now.” Jim said, still hopeful that Toby was at liberty and close by.

* * *

As a plan, it might have worked – but for the short-barreled scattergun in the hands of Vibart-Jones. He might have been an actor – among other things – but he handled the weapon with the confidence of a master, as one of his co-conspirators unbarred the door and let it swing open. Daylight spilled into the room, dazzling eyes which had become accustomed to dimness.
“Come out, gentlemen,” Vibart-Jones invited them, suave and cordial as if it were a social occasion. “I see that you have freed yourself from the ropes … about what I would have expected from men of your skills and sagacity. A pointless exercise on the part of my friends, but they insisted. Their quaint native methods, you see – I thought best to indulge them.”
“So who has won the argument over the silver being still here or not?” Jim thought it best to take an aggressive tack, and Vibart-Jones smiled, mirthlessly.
“How kind of you to take an interest … Mr. Reade, is it? It will be of interest to you and your friend – you’ll be digging, of course – while my friends have a little chat with young Diego here.”
“You dare …” Albert Biddle hissed, through clenched teeth – sounding angrier than Jim had ever heard from him. Broad daylight hurt their eyes, but even blinking, Jim could see that Diego – now revealed in the light as a mestizo lad of twelve or thirteen years – was terrified. And no wonder. What had been the campfire that he had started the night before was blazing away – and there was no mistaking the purpose behind the ends of several ramrods resting their ends on the hottest coals. Albert Biddle saw it also – and he put an arm around Diego’s shoulders by way of comforting the boy.
“Of course I dare,” Vibart-Jones drawled, impatiently. “Just as you have done, gentlemen – for a fortune in silver coin and bullion? No, we are convinced that the old priest couldn’t possibly have given it all secretly. The boy knows where it is … and he shall tell us. If not now, then eventually.”
“No, he won’t,” Jim said, feeling suddenly very, very tired, or maybe it was just relief that turned his bones to jelly. “Because it’s gone. And there is one more thing.”
“And what is that, Mr. Reade?” Vibart-Jones managed to sound irritatingly confident. He made a commanding gesture towards the two of his comrades tending the fire. One of them jerked Diego roughly by the arm, pulling him away from Albert Biddle, just as Jim answered,
“The Comanche are here.”
He pointed at the hillside across the narrow river, now alive with horses, and the red blankets that the Comanche favored flashing in between the trees like a cardinal’s brilliant wings. The horsemen advanced down the slope, and the man holding Diego by a grip on the boy’s narrow shoulder let go with a shocked oath on his lips. The sudden naked terror on the faces of Vibart-Jones and his companions was almost enough to make him laugh, as they scattered like doves flushed from a thicket – snatching up saddles and weapons and flinging themselves on their horses – who of course had caught the contagion of fear and were not submitting readily to being bridled and saddled.
“Dios mio! El Comanche – a los caballos – ahora! Rapido!”
Now the Comanche were close enough that Jim could recognize individuals – Lions, old Mopechucope, and Bob Neighbors riding among them, his elbows out and his oversized coat flapping on him like a scarecrow’s. And there was Toby, as he preferred to be on foot, loping through the shallow river, swinging his old-fashioned war club and grinning from ear to ear.
“Brother!” Toby shouted, hurtling over a low-crumbled stretch of wall, even as Vibart Jones and the others gained their horses, departing in a rush of hoof-beats that pounded like a cavalry charge, out through the old gateway. Even as they did, the first Comanche warriors poured over the low outer walls, some on foot but others mounted, neck or nothing in their pursuit. It sounded as if the largest part of the Comanche warriors were in hot pursuit of the raiders from Mexico – much good it would do them, Jim thought; their horses were very fine, and they did have a bit of a head start. Toby laughed breathlessly as he came to where Albert and Jim stood by the still-blazing fire, and balanced the heavy club on his shoulder. “You survived the night, I see.”
“So did you,” Jim answered, and began to laugh, laugh so hard that he couldn’t speak. . Finally, Albert Biddle demanded,
“What in tarnation is so funny?”
Jim recovered himself with an effort. “This,” he gasped, “may be the very first time in the history books … that Texians are damned glad to see a Comanche war party, coming to the rescue!”