Chapter Twenty
“Hell, Jake,” Samuel O’Brien said, “how do we play this?”
“We shoot our way up the side of the mesa and free Pat before it’s too late for him . . . and for us.”
Samuel shook his head. “Thin. Damn, it’s thin.”
“Any ideas? I mean the kind that come to you real fast?”
“Not a one.”
“Then we shoot our way up the mesa like I said.”
“Wait!” Lorena yelled. She rushed from the front of the house to where Jacob and Samuel sat their horses. “Look behind you.”
Four men rode from the direction of the barn, all carrying rifles except for old Amos the butler who toted a massive scattergun.
Jacob swung his horse around. “You boys know what you’re getting yourselves in for? Those Mexicans are playing for keeps.”
“I reckon,” Vasily Petrov, the huge Russian blacksmith, said. “That is Patrick up there, Mr. O’Brien.”
The colonel called the two other men with Petrov and Amos footmen. But they did odd jobs around Dromore—waiting at table, opening doors, and assisting the gentlemen to dress. Chosen for their height, rather than ability, they looked so alike that Shawn had named them the Dromore Bookends.
“We’re going up the mesa shooting,” Jacob said. “And the Mexicans will shoot back.”
“We’ll stick, is that not so, Mr. Brownlee?” one footman said to the other.
“Most assuredly, Mr. Godfrey,” the second replied. “I’d say we are prepared for any desperate encounter.”
Jacob slid his Winchester from the boot under his knee. “All right, then, “let’s get ’er done.”
Lorena watched the men leave, led by Jacob who understood the ways of the gun and the manner of gunfighters better than her husband ever would. Red-eyed, lean as a wolf but infinitely more dangerous, Jacob had been shot, knifed, and hammered, but never beaten. A black depression on his soul, he rode in a hellish gloom and Lorena felt a shiver of fear . . . for him . . . for her husband . . . and for the Mexicans.
Jacob led the way to the base of the mesa, swung out of the saddle, and ordered the others to dismount. “I’m going up. Sam, anybody you see on the rim, shoot them off me.”
“Jake, you can’t go up there by yourself,” Samuel said.
But Jacob was already climbing, taking the narrow switchback trail the brothers O’Brien had cut when they were boys. He climbed steadily. Samuel’s gaze moved constantly from him to Patrick, who was bloodstained enough to attract the attention of crows that cawed and fluttered around his head.
Every minute of delay as Jacob climbed was a minute closer to Patrick’s death. The sun blazed, there was no breeze, and Samuel knew it would be brutally hot on the mesa. Heat waves shimmered off the stunted junipers at the crest. Patrick must be suffering the agonies of the damned.
Then his brother lifted his face to the sky and, shocked, Samuel saw that Castillo had fooled them. The man on the cross was not Patrick.
With that realization came the first shot from the rim as a rifleman cut loose at Jacob.
Samuel threw his Winchester to his shoulder and fired. Beside him, his men were also firing. Shooting uphill was uncertain, but somebody scored a hit because the Mexican rose up on his toes, toppled forward, and screamed all the way down until he hit the flat.
Jacob was maybe fifty feet from the rim, still climbing. He battled brush and cactus that had invaded the eyebrow of trail since it was last used years before and that slowed him.
Several Mexicans ran to the mesa rim, rifles in hand. Steady firing from the Dromore men drove them back.
Samuel heard the distant pop-pop-pop of Jacob’s Colt as he fired at someone on the mesa’s edge. Never great shakes with a long gun, Jacob preferred to use his revolver whenever he could.
“Fire at the crest,” Samuel yelled to his men. “Keep their heads down.”
“But Patrick—” Petrov began.
“It’s not him. Damned Mexican fooled us.”
All four Dromore men kept up a steady fire on the mesa and no more bandits appeared.
Samuel watched Jacob scramble onto the crest, then clamber to his feet. Bent low, gun in hand, he stepped to within a few feet of the crucified man, then stopped. He lifted the crucified man’s head and Samuel was sure he heard Jacob cuss all the way from the mesa rim.
After a few moments, Jacob headed across the mesa and vanished from sight.
“They headed across the Pecos and then I lost sight of them in the aspen,” Jacob said. “Patrick was with them.”
“Are you sure it was him?” Samuel asked.
“It was him. He was wearing long johns and boots and nothing else and they’d made him carry his butterfly net.”
Samuel frowned. “Hell, what do we do now?”
The sun had dropped lower, but the west side of Glorieta Mesa was still bathed in bright light. Jacob removed his hat and wiped his sweating brow with the back of his hand. “I’m going after them. It may take me a couple of days, but I’ll find them.”
“Then I’m going with you,” Samuel said.
“No, Sam. You stay at Dromore and keep guard on the house. Castillo already fooled us once, and there’s always the chance he’ll double back and I’ll miss him.”
“Jake, we killed one man. Castillo still has sixteen, maybe even eighteen riders. You can’t buck those kinds of odds.”
“I’m sure going to try, Sam.”
“Then Petrov goes with you,” the Russian blacksmith said.
The man was well over six foot tall and thick muscle roped his shoulders and arms under his plaid shirt. His left cheek bore a terrible scar from his eye to the corner of his mouth, a reminder of the Cossack saber that laid his face open when he tried to save a Jewish servant girl during a pogrom in his village. Petrov had killed the Cossack and then fled his village and later his country.
“We need you at Dromore, Vasily,” Jacob said. “You’re the best blacksmith in the territory.”
“I go. Save Mr. Patrick.” Petrov stood as immovable as a pillar of roughhewn rock.
Samuel said, “You going to argue with him, Jake?”
Jacob smiled slightly. “No, I guess not.”
“Me Rooshian man,” Petrov said. “I learned from a boy how to shoot rifle worth a goddamn.”
“Then mount up, let’s go,” Jacob said. “And keep that rifle handy.”
“Wait, Mr. O’Brien.” One of the Bookends untied a sack from his saddle horn. “Mr. Godfrey and I packed some food. We thought the gentlemen might feel hungry from their exertions, but now it will sustain you on your quest. Is that not so, Mr. Godfrey?”
“Indeed it is, Mr. Brownlee. We do not wish to see our gentlemen go hungry under any circumstances.”
Jacob took the sack and nodded his thanks. Then he and Petrov mounted.
“Take care, Jake,” Samuel said. “You’re bucking some mighty long odds.”
“Keep a lookout for the colonel and Luther,” Jacob said. “Right now they’re bucking odds of their own.”
Aware of his brother’s Irish gift, Samuel felt a sharp pang of anxiety. “Do you feel something, Jake? See something?”
Jacob smiled. “So long, Sam.”
Samuel watched the two men ride away, the huge blacksmith and his ragged, moody brother who sat his horse like a sack of grain. A stab of fear dried his mouth and hollowed his belly and he wondered if he too shared the Irish gift.
Or was it the Irish curse?