Moon Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (48 page)

      
Within a few hours, he had caught up with the main body of Texians and found that Hays and a few of his hand-picked men were reconnoitering Woll's position. They camped that night by the Medina and moved forward early the next morning. By midday, they had stopped to await Hays and his men. As soon as he recognized Hays's big bay, Rafe quickly sought out his friend. Hays's men had brought in four prisoners, whom they were interrogating as he approached.

      
“What the hell are you doing here, Rafe? Doc said you were confined to the wounded tent for at least a week.” Jack Hays's attention shifted immediately from the Mexican soldiers to the tall, menacing gunman approaching him.

      
“Flores took my wife, Jack,” was all he said before he squatted down in front of a badly frightened corporal. Questioning him rapidly in Spanish, Rafe described Deborah, and asked if she was with Flores.

      
The man denied knowing anything about the captain or seeing a blond woman among the civilians. But when Rafe threatened him with his bowie knife, the soldier implored him, “Please, mister, I saw no Anglo woman, but I have seen Captain Flores. He travels with several large baggage carts. Perhaps she's hidden in one of them; who knows?”

      
“That makes sense, Rafe,” Jack Hays interjected. “He's right. Woll'd bust him for taking an Anglo female. He must have her hidden.”

      
Sheathing his big knife, Rafe skewered the corporal with cold black eyes. “You better pray your guess is right.”

      
A council of war was held among the militia leaders. Given Hays's report on the location and direction of Woll's forces, they decided to move up close to Woll's encampment across the Medina, position themselves strategically, and attack at dawn. As they left the meeting, Hays looked at Rafe's set face.

      
“I know you're crazy worried over her, but you can't get in to rescue her single-handed.”

      
“I can't just wait another night, dammit! You can't imagine the things a man like Flores is capable of, what he can do to her while the others sleep.”

      
Levelly Hays said, “After four years fighting Comanche, I have a fair idea, my friend. Getting yourself killed won't help your wife. But it will decrease our chances to surprise them at dawn.”

      
Unwilling to wait with the slower-moving army, Rafe joined Hays and several of his men who scouted ahead through the night. “Those campfires seem awfully dim and far apart, Jack. I have a gut feeling I don't like,” Rafe said as they lay in the soaking wet grass on a rise high above Woll's campsite.

      
“Let's take a closer look,” was Hays's terse reply.

      
With utmost stealth they made their way toward the most outlying of the scattered fires. Rafe's oaths split the still night air. “Deserted! A goddamn decoy! The son of a bitch is probably miles from here!”

      
“Easy—remember, as long as they're on the march, Flores won't have time to hurt Deborah. With all this mud they've left a clear trail. We'll catch them,” Hays placated.

      
They met Caldwell's main force just before daybreak. By midday they had caught up to the rear guard of Woll's lines.

      
Some of the Texians blundered on the Mexicans and exchanged shots with them, much to the ire of Hays and Fleming, who wanted to surprise them. While the desultory exchange of fire between pursued and pursuers continued for several hours, the rangers scouted ahead and to the sides of Woll's lines, searching for a likely place to ambush them.

      
“If we don't stop them, I'm going in tonight—alone, Jack,” Rafe said grimly as his younger companion surveyed a narrow twisting canyon called the Arroyo Hondo or Dry Creek.

      
“I think I see our opening, Rafe.” Hays motioned for Jinx to come up, then spoke to him. “Tell Caldwell to get his men up to the opening of that arroyo—fast. Once Woll's lines go in, they're narrowed down and over-extended. We can pick them off like lice on a bald dog.”

      
“Caldwell hasn't got much time before Woll gets to that gulch, Jack,” Rafe said, eyes narrowing as he considered the possibilities.

      
Hays gave one of his rare grins. “Hell, pilgrim, I guess we'll just have to start the party without him, then. I figure fifty mounted rangers are worth three or four hundred of Santa Anna's finest. What do you think?”

      
Rafe smiled like a shark and nodded silently.

      
When they put their plan of attack into action, Caldwell and his men were nowhere in sight. Dusk was thickening and so was the mud as the Mexicans dropped down onto lower ground to enter the serpentine gulch.

      
Hays's rangers galloped toward the retreating column in a sudden noisy rush, yelling, shooting, and swearing, taking the Mexicans totally by surprise. The artillerymen fired only once, overshooting as Hays had guessed they would. Then, they were all killed. Rafe was in the forefront, shooting and reloading from Bostonian's careening back, oblivious to the searing pain in his injured head. Several rangers caught up to him and engaged the Mexicans in hand-to-hand fighting up and down the canyon. A few, with Hays in the lead, pulled to the head of the Mexican column and picked off many of the disorganized troops.

      
Rafe fought his way through the melee, watching for Flores but heading toward the larger baggage wagons. Only a couple were big enough to conceal a woman.

      
Deborah could hear the firing. She was still and cold in her cramped position. For two days she had been bounced and tossed about beneath the heavy canvas cover of the wagon where Flores had hidden her. Only two of his trusted henchmen knew of her captivity, taking her out at night to feed her and allow her to relieve herself. Several times she had heard the report of guns and prayed for deliverance.

      
But Rafael isn't coming. He's dead.
The thought tortured her exhausted mind, even as the cruel ropes and gag tortured her exhausted body. Now once more, she was shaken into alertness by the loud report of rifle fire. Confined for nearly three days, Deborah had lost all sense of day or night in the dark wagon surrounded by barrels and boxes.

      
Suddenly, she ceased her frustrated thrashing as the sharp hiss of a knife rending canvas sounded above her. Frozen, she looked up and blinked in disbelief, then tried to cry out his name through the thick wadding of the gag. Rafael! Alive!

      
At once he vaulted inside the wagon and untied the gag, then gently cut the ropes from her wrists and ankles as she sobbed his name over and over. Once free, she flung herself against him. “Oh, Rafael, he said you were dead—that his men had killed you! My darling, my love,” she gasped out in tight little gulps, fighting the dry thickness of her tongue.

      
Rafe held her tightly, burying his hands in her tangled silvery hair. “Shh, it's all right. Flores should know by now how hard I am to kill.”

      
“Yes, always it seems I underestimate you, Creole.” Enrique Flores sat poised on horseback alongside the wagon, his pistol aimed at Rafe's chest, his eyes cold.

      
Nervous from all the pandemonium around him, Flores's horse shied, causing his shot to go wild. In a lightning motion Rafe pushed Deborah down and leapt at Enrique, catapulting them both to the ground.

      
They rolled over, away from the thrashing hooves of the horse, then separated and reached for their weapons. Slowly, both men stood up, measuring each other. Flores's eyes were fired with an eerie glow. Rafe's shuttered face revealed little of the hate that had consumed him for six years.

      
Flores's white teeth flashed as he displayed a large, heavy knife. “After our last encounter, I am prepared, Creole.” He spat the name like an epithet as he moved around Rafe.

      
Rafe stood still, waiting for Flores to make the first move, holding his burning rage in check. “I should’ve taken my chances and killed you in San Antonio, Enrique.”

      
“Ah, but then I wouldn't have had the time alone with your woman. She can be very, er, diverting.” As he sensed Rafe stiffen, he lunged with his knife, narrowly missing Rafe's midsection.

      
With catlike agility, Rafe sidestepped the slice and arced his own blade upward, furrowing a bloody slash across Flores's right arm. The two antagonists thrust and parried, high, low, then high again, moving in a deadly ballet, oblivious to all the shooting and chaos going on around them.

      
Deborah could feel the naked hate exuding from both men. She stared at the fiercely scarred barbarian who was her husband, transfixed in horror at the cold, lethal way he handled his big, evil knife. It was as if she had been transported back through time to the Dueling Oaks in New Orleans where she had watched Rafael Flamenco kill another opponent with cool, calculated precision.

      
But this was different. For all his graceful and deadly moves as he nicked Flores's tunic, arm, and neck, Rafael was infinitely more brutal, as if some primeval instincts held in check by Creole society had been unleashed on the Texas plains. She had once thought him a throwback to a Spanish conquistador. Now, he seemed even more brutal, more primitive, like a savage Comanche.

      
As if echoing her thoughts, Flores said, “I see you've learned a few things while you were a guest of my red brothers.”

      
“You sold me as a slave. You knew what they planned with those glowing hot tongs and knives, you butchering bastard,” Rafe gritted out in a low, even voice.

      
“Too bad Iron Hand changed his mind. I planned to ask for your balls as a trophy since I captured you for him.”

      
Deborah's gasp of horror was audible even above the din of battle, but neither man broke his concentration.

      
“I don't ask other men to do my dirty work for me, Enrique. I'll cut your balls off myself.” As Rafe spoke he feinted past Flores's knife and left a long slash down the inside of the Mexican's thigh. Immediately, it oozed red through the dark trousers.

      
Flores flinched but pressed the attack back to his opponent, opening a cut across his chest. Rafe could see the Mexican was tiring, weakened by blood loss from the deep leg slash as well as half a dozen other cuts. He, too, was slowing down, fighting the pounding ache behind his eyes. He wanted Flores to die slowly but knew he must finish him and get Deborah to safety. He focused on Flores’s white smile in the dim twilight. “Time to die, comanchero. You'll never touch another woman again.”

      
“But I touched yours, Creole. Remember that as I send you to hell—” Enrique's sudden sweeping lunge for Rafe's throat was cut short by a scream. Paling, he dropped his knife and staggered back, eyes glazed over in agony. Rafe had slipped under Flores's lunge, coming in beneath the comanchero's blade to stab into his abdomen, ripping down to slash into his genitals.

      
“Like I said, not another woman—this or the other side of hell,” Rafe breathed, as he sheathed his knife. Hearing a horse bearing down on him, he vaulted into the wagon with Deborah, pulling her shock-frozen body down beneath him.

      
It was Jinx, leading Bostonian. “Thought you might cud use this,” he sang out, spitting a lob of tobacco onto Flores's blood-soaked body as he tossed Rafe a pistol and handed him the reins.

      
“Thanks! I owe you,” Rafe called back as he leapt onto Bostonian and then bent over the sundered canvas to pull Deborah out.

      
She felt the jarring of the big stallion as he took off. Rafe shielded her with his own body, dodging Mexican soldiers, kicking them away from his mount, shooting several as he broke free and headed down the gulch with the rest of the retreating rangers. Clinging to her blood-soaked savage rescuer, Deborah was torn between elation that he was alive and horror at the grisly mutilation she had just watched him perform. To what kind of man had she and Adam consigned their future?

Chapter Twenty Six

      
When they arrived in camp that night, Rafe was greeted with hearty congratulations by all the Texians and Deborah was treated with courtly solicitude. After three days of being trussed up like a sheep readied for sacrifice, she was still uncertain of her footing. Even her hands were numb as Rafe carefully lifted her from Bostonian. His gentleness with her was an unsettling contrast to his brutality with Flores.

      
“Are you able to stand alone? I'll get something for those abrasions,” he said examining the rope burns on her wrists.

      
“Yes, I'm all right. Just some water, please. That gag, my mouth,” she said in a raspy, breathless voice.

      
Rafe seated her by a crackling fire, then reached across the coals as a burly Texian handed him a canteen. “Drink slowly, Moon Flower,” he crooned, supporting her back as she tilted the canteen up and took a swallow. “We'll rest here tonight and head for San Antonio at daybreak, if you're able to ride...” His words trailed off uncertainly as he held her and stroked her hair.

      
“He didn't touch me, Rafael,” she said levelly, intuiting his thoughts. “He came that first night, with two men to hold me down; but a messenger from the general arrived before he could do anything. After that, he wasn't able to get away, I guess. The two soldiers he had watching me were too afraid of him to touch me.”

      
Breathing a shaky sigh of relief, he stroked her hair and kissed her temple and neck softly, more in comfort than passion. “It's all right. Don't talk about it now. We'll put it all behind us,
Cherie
. I'm only thankful you're not hurt.”