The Gila Wars (20 page)

CHAPTER 36

Juan Carlos grimaced, pushing away a look of surprise as
the deckhand yanked the knife out of his chest.

Josiah's eyes blurred. The world went quiet for a breath. His finger trembled against the warm metal trigger, but compression came naturally, a reflex out of shock and other emotions that would not be revealed until later—if ever. He was reacting now without concern for what was right or wrong. Survival mattered, nothing else. If there were any implications to his actions, or mistakes to grieve over, then that would have to come later. All that mattered now was pulling the trigger—and making sure the deckhand was deader than dead, unable to hurt anyone ever again.

A crack came from behind Josiah. An expected snap of thunder, followed by another gunshot, and then another and another.

As Juan Carlos fell to the ground, knees first, the first bullet tore into the deckhand's face. It was hard to tell which reached him first, Josiah's or Scrap's shot. It didn't matter. The right half of the man's face exploded instantly. There was no reading his expression, no need to. Surely, he had expected to meet his death. Escaping was out of the question, out of the realm of possibility. Whether he was surprised or not would never be known. It was a desperate move, stabbing Juan Carlos. There was no way out, no way to survive. That wasn't the plan. It couldn't have been.

Josiah couldn't resist his rage as he saw Juan Carlos fall facedown into the sand—he fanned the Peacemaker, cocking it with his palm as quick as he could pull the trigger, never missing his target, never looking away from the pain and destruction he was inflicting. It was an action he rarely allowed himself to perform. Fanning was showy, immature, not worthy of a Ranger or a man of shooting stature. But righteousness and maturity were lost in the moment. He could not comprehend what he was seeing. Juan Carlos had been shot before and survived, but it had weakened him, hobbled him in a noticeable way. Being stabbed with such precision would, most likely, be fatal.

Scrap kept shooting, too, emptying every cartridge the Spencer could hold, blasting away at the deckhand. His head first. Then his chest. Then his gut. There wasn't a bit of exposed skin left on the man that wasn't covered in blood. His clothes, too, were soaked red. He looked like a papist cardinal, minus the grace, following an avenue into heaven—if such a place existed.

The spray of blood looked like someone was throwing paint into the ocean. The constant shots were raining sinew, muscle, and shattered bone directly into the water.

A school of starving bait fish relished their good fortune and exposed themselves, some of them squiggling along the shore, driving themselves into a frenzy, nearly pushing out of the water, to gobble at the bounty as it fell from the sky.

The deckhand collapsed in a bloody mess about five feet back from Juan Carlos. The knife slid out of his hand and lodged directly into the ground, the hilt sticking up like Excalibur, waiting to be discovered by its true owner. He was dead before he hit the ground, before he knew what hit him or had the chance to recant, change his mind, and give himself over as a prisoner to the Texas Rangers.

The air smelled of revenge and decay, riled by a rising wind, and an out-of-control steamer that was being pushed and pulled by the current.

Smoke vanished, and the reports of the Rangers' gunshots echoed away, riding the wind like a bad omen that had come true.

The boat groaned and creaked, offering notice to Josiah that it still existed, that there very well might be more armed men stowed away, waiting for a moment of surprise of their own, attempting to save themselves and redeem anything they could out of the mission set on them by Juan Cortina.

Josiah blinked and saw that Juan Carlos was not moving. There was no desperate heave of his chest, no sound of life or motion at all. He lay on the beach, facedown in the sand, blood draining out of him, surrounding him in a pool, leaving his body limp, like a sinking island in an unknown sea.

A rushing noise caused Josiah to look away, to glance over his shoulder and see that Scrap was heading in his direction, leaving his post on the ridge. The boy still held the Spencer, ready to shoot at anything that moved.

Scrap's presence gave Josiah a moment of confidence, a moment of clarity. He was no doctor, but he had battlefield skills. If Juan Carlos could be saved, if he was not dead already, then it would come from Josiah's hands—but first, he had to make sure that he himself would survive the moment to help.

To save Juan Carlos, he had to save himself.

Josiah jumped down off Clipper and scanned the ground quickly. It didn't take long for him to find what he was looking for: several small, fist-sized rocks. He grabbed up a couple, realizing that every second counted, his attention flitting to the deck of the steamer every few seconds, looking for any sign of movement or unnatural shadow.

Scrap and Missy approached quickly.

The boy stopped a few yards from Josiah, jumped off his horse, and ran straight for Juan Carlos. “Wolfe, what the hell are you doing?” he shouted, as he leaned down to the Mexican, checking for a pulse.

Josiah ignored Scrap. He hurried back to Clipper and tore open his saddlebag. The horse stood still, ignoring the steamer and anything that was going on around it.

It only took a second for Josiah to find what he was looking for. A small bottle with coal oil in it and several matches bound together with a small bit of twine.

“He's still alive, Wolfe,” Scrap yelled out.

“Try and stop the bleeding,” Josiah answered back.

“Don't know if I can. What the hell are you
doing
?”

“Never you mind. Just tend to Juan Carlos the best you can and keep an eye on that steamer. I don't believe a word that man said. Could be more men on it, just waiting their turn at us.”

Scrap nodded, and Josiah turned back to the task at hand.

What he had planned was a long shot, but it was all he could think to do, other than sending Scrap alone onto the steamer to face whatever might wait there. He wasn't doing that. He'd already lost Juan Carlos, seen him injured at the very least, killed at the very worst, with the decisions he'd already made.

Seconds seemed like hours as Josiah rummaged through his saddlebag. Finally, he found what he was looking for—three soiled bandanas. He quickly wrapped one around a rock, knotted it, doused it with coal oil, lit it on fire, and flung it as hard as he could onto the deck of the steamer.

He did the same thing with the other two rags, only he was more cautious with his toss. The first one shattered through what remained of the glass in the captain's tower, and the other landed next to the starboard-side smokestack.

The air smelled of coal oil and smoke, and all Josiah could do was hope that the fire would catch, ending any speculation at all whether there were still any men left on board the boat.

CHAPTER 37

Scrap had rolled Juan Carlos onto his back and was putting pressure on the knife wound. The flow of blood
looked to have slowed, but there was a healthy red puddle growing underneath the old Mexican. Scrap's hands were soaked with blood, but he didn't seem to notice or care. The look on his face was grim, ashen. He seemed genuinely concerned about Juan Carlos even though they'd had their fair share of differences in the past, and Scrap wasn't too fond of any Mexican—especially, at times, Juan Carlos.

Juan Carlos was staring straight up at the cloudless sky. He turned and focused his eyes on Josiah as he leaned down next to him. “I was foolish, señor. I could feel it in my bones not to trust him, that he was a threat to our safety. Now I have paid the price of my arrogance and ignorance. I thought we had won the day.”

“Let me have a look,” Josiah said. He made eye contact with Scrap. The boy's face remained expressionless as he tried to shake his head no as subtly as he could.

“No, there will be no need,” Juan Carlos choked to say. “The wound is deep, and I have not fully recovered from the gunshot I took on our adventure to Durango. We tried to stop Cortina then as now. The results are the same. I have learned my lesson.”

“We have to get some help for you,” Josiah demanded. “I'm not going to just stand here and do nothing.”

“There is no time, señor.” The words were almost a whisper and came with a gasp at the end. “Moving me would be too painful. I can feel the weakness rising up from deep inside. If I move, I will only bleed more. You have seen this before, in the time of the war. You know what I say is the truth.”

“You will die here.” Josiah sighed, resigned to the surety of what his eyes saw. Battlefield memories flittered in the periphery of his mind like bats swarming in the graying of night.

“
Sí
, death is just waiting its turn at victory. I do not fear it. I have tricked it many times, but just as I felt the man's lie, I feel the truth of my impending death now. It will wait for me no longer. I am out of luck and favor.”

Josiah exhaled deeply and lowered his head. “I'm sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry about. I have had a long, happy life. What more can a man ask?”

“You do not deserve this. I could have prevented this.”

“I believe in very few things, señor, but I believe in fate. I have never been one to acknowledge a God or the presence of another life after this one. The mission bells did not draw me in but sent me running from their condemnation and judgment. Perhaps, I should have listened to the
padres
when I was young, but I was stubborn as a
buey
. Like you, unmoving like an ox. But it would have made this time easier, I think, believing in something other than the darkness that surely awaits me.”

Josiah looked away. “I have no words of comfort for you.”

Scrap cleared his throat but offered nothing.

“I know,” Juan Carlos said.

“You deserve better.” Josiah couldn't let go of the idea that the entire incident was his fault.

“Deserve? How many men have lived the life I have and how many have lived only half the time? I am
mucha suerte
. Very lucky, Señor Josiah, to have lived the life I have lived.” Juan Carlos coughed painfully and turned his head so that he was looking away from Josiah, down the beach, into the distance. “When I was young, all I wanted to be was a fisherman. A simple fisherman like my
tío
, my uncle. He wasn't really my uncle, just a man that my mother kept in her house. He was a good man. I called him Luca, and longed for him to be my real
papá
, but he was not, could not be. My father was Anglo, and it was difficult for him to see me, so he did not ever come around. I only knew his eyes. The ones that looked back at me in the mirror, and my mother's that bore nothing but bitterness at her choice whenever she looked at me on sad days. It was Luca who taught me how to catch my bait with a net, like I showed you. He taught me the most important things that I would ever need to know. Like when to run, when to stand your ground, and when the end is the end—like now.”

“I remember fishing with you,” Josiah said. He tried to push away all of the rising emotion he could and looked up at the steamer.

One of the flaming rocks had taken seed. Fire was starting to climb up the outside of the smokestack. He could smell the smoke, and it made him happy. Revenge always tasted like acid in reality. Sweetness was just a child's game.

The memory of standing in the ocean, fishing with Juan Carlos, was sharp as the knife that had been thrust into the old man's chest. It was a good memory, a fine, perfect day, when all Josiah had hoped for was going home to Austin with Juan Carlos's blessing and permission to court Pearl. Now all that he had gained that day was nearly gone, nothing more than a dream that had slipped woefully into a nightmare.

“It is fitting,” Juan Carlos said, “that I die on the edge of the sea. Luca would see the irony in it. I feel the comfort of it.”

Josiah was still staring at the growing fire. Black smoke was spiraling out of the captain's tower, too. It wouldn't be long before the entire steamer was ablaze. “Keep an eye out,” he said to Scrap. “If there are any men left on the boat, the fire will flush them like the rats they are.”

“Dead rats,” Scrap said. His Spencer rifle was only a few inches from his reach. He still had his hand on Juan Carlos's chest, putting pressure on the wound, but there was no mistaking his readiness. “They ain't gonna be nothin' but dead rats.”

“Those were fine days,” Juan Carlos said. “But my best days were spent on a horse, riding next to my
hermano
.”

Josiah knew
hermano
meant brother. Juan Carlos had used the word several times in the past when he spoke of the dead captain. “Yes, those were good days, all of us together with Captain Fikes. I still have a hard time believing that he will not ride up and save the day one last time. I look for him out of the corner of my eye when we are riding, but all I see are shadows.”

“Those days are gone, lost in the river of time,” Juan Carlos said.

Josiah nodded. The battle in the distance had fallen silent. There had not been a gunshot in several minutes, not since before the deckhand stabbed Juan Carlos. He wondered if the fighting was over. “At least we have stopped Cortina.”

“Only on this day. He will scurry into the light again. Now he hides like the
cucaracha
that he really is.” Juan Carlos licked his lips and drew in a deep breath. His chest rattled louder than McNelly's.

“I will hunt Cortina down if it is the last thing I do, and make him pay for what he has done.”

“Be careful of such oaths made in anger, señor. Cortina is more powerful than you think. He has many arms and many eyes. You are already his enemy. Your rage makes you weak, not strong. Look at me, lying here in my blood, twice wounded by my desire to stop him.”

“You have served proudly.”

“Not as proudly as you think.”

The words drifted off on the wind and mixed with the smoke. A flame jumped the length of the smokestack, flaring bright orange as the flames spread across the roof of the tower. It was like the sun had crashed to earth.

A wave of heat rushed over Josiah and Juan Carlos, gobbling at all the oxygen it could consume. An eruption of showering sparks followed. One hit Josiah's neck, and it was like being stung by a giant, angry wasp. He slapped it away, knowing there would be more.

“We need to move you,” Josiah said.

Juan Carlos shook his head no, then stared at Josiah, his chest heavy, clanging with death, and filling with fluid. “I will ride at the side of
el capitán
once again. Tell Pearl not to be
triste
.”

Josiah didn't know what the word meant, but he could feel its intent: pure, unadulterated sadness. Air caught in his own throat as he fought to breathe. His effort to push away any emotion was failing. His heart was racing. His mind screamed from deep inside him that there was something he should be doing to try and save his friend. But there was nothing he could do, and he knew it. A tear welled up in his eye, then slipped from the rim and trailed down his cheek. He sobbed then, like a boy. A flood of rage, uncertainty, and grief released like a pent-up dam, disabled with fissures and scars of time, finally weak enough to just . . . give.

The world had vanished. Every image was blurred. Every memory of death and loss, close to the surface. Lily slipping away in his arms, broken, but still harboring life in her swollen belly. Lowering his father's coffin into the grave. The aftermath of Chickamauga. Smoke rising. The air filled with the smell of blood and defeat. The ground hallowed, to be forever haunted by innocent men, just following orders to serve a cause. Just like Juan Carlos.

When Josiah could finally get ahold of himself, he cleared his tears away and watched as the old Mexican arched his back, smiled, and took his last breath with as much confidence and bravery as he could muster.