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Chapter 41

Jerry Bailey hissed between gritted teeth. A little over two weeks back. the soft-spoken guard hadn't so much as twitched when Hulbert, Carmichael and Keehn used him as bait when they were hunting. But today, looking across the open area toward the pre-Mound Indian village, his face was pale and he'd broken into a sweat. The village was less than a hundred yards from where he and Rod lay hidden. And even though things were quieter now, the screams of the children and the sobs of the women could be heard too well.

The Spaniards had beaten them to the village.

Hulbert didn't bother answering or use the binoculars tucked into a leather case attached to his belt. They were close enough he could see every gory detail of what was happening. The smell of burned flesh was heavy in the air, mixed with the stink of whatever the Indians had used to make their huts instead of grass. Two of the huts were burning fiercely. De Soto's men must have tossed the bodies into the huts and set them aflame, as a quick and simple way to get rid of them. Knowing the bastards, Rod was sure they hadn't bothered to make sure everyone they tossed in was dead already.

Now, the same bastards were busy ensuring the people they had captured would remain docile slaves. They'd only kept alive the younger adults and the children, to begin with. Old slaves—even middle-aged ones—were of no interest to them. It looked as though they'd beaten all four of the males with whips, and at least one of the women. The six women had been separated out from the rest of the captives, who were all tied together with ropes around their necks. They'd be providing entertainment for the conquistadores that evening, presumably.

"We need to move, Rod," Bailey said. "Now. Those people can't take any more."

The lieutenant shook his head. "No. We wait for the signal. They've stopped whatever killings and atrocities they were carrying out because they're getting ready to leave. But it'll be at least twenty minutes before the Spaniards start moving out."

Andy Blacklock had divided his forces in half and placed one group—they were calling them platoons for lack of a better term—under Rod's command. Hulbert and his platoon had been ordered to stay in place, just out of sight behind the screen of trees surrounding the clearing where the village was located. They were to hold their fire until the captain signaled.

Privately, Rod thought Andy was being too cautious, but he hadn't put up an argument. Right or not, the man was the boss, and these were battlefield conditions. Still, he thought his own platoon could have handled the situation by themselves. They had modern repeating rifles and Rod knew from personal experience just how slow and clumsy matchlocks were.

Besides, leaving aside the weaponry, the more Rod saw of these famous conquistadores, the lower became his opinion of them—militarily, not simply morally. They might be tough as nails individually, sure, but they seemed no more disciplined than a street gang. And even less well organized. The one group of Spaniards milling around closest to Rod numbered about sixty or seventy men. They seemed to be under the command—if you could use the term at all—of a committee of four or five sergeants. And the sergeants seemed to spend most of their time arguing with each other.

Arguing about what, it was hard to know, given the crude nature of the operation. Probably arguing about whether to rape the women now or wait until nightfall.

Hulbert, realizing he was holding his breath out of sheer anger, forced himself to resume his normal slow, easy breathing.

Andy, where the hell is that signal?

Blacklock had gone one way, off to Hulbert's left, and Watkins and his Cherokees and the U.S. soldiers off to the right. The two leaders were working partway around the big clearing, far enough to encircle it as much as possible without running the risk of getting into a crossfire.

The plan was simple enough. Andy figured—with Watkins' smile confirming his guess—that the Cherokees could get in position faster than his own people. So, once Andy was ready, he'd give the signal.

The signal would be as simple as the plan. Blacklock and his platoon would just start shooting.

No warning, nothing. Whatever lingering thoughts any of them might have had about negotiating with the conquistadores went up with the flaming huts. Even Andy, with his incredible self-control, had reached the limit.

"I want all of them dead," he'd said quietly. As even-tempered as the man was—he was something of a legend, that way, among the prison guards—there was no mistaking the fury lurking beneath the words. "As many as we can manage, anyway. And we're not taking any prisoners, either. We never did get anything worth getting out of that one shithead we caught."

Rod had spotted Watkins' expression, when Andy said that. The Cherokee chief seemed to be suppressing a smile.

Ross didn't have any trouble figuring out the reason. Not knowing what else to do, Andy had decided to leave the prisoner in the town when the expedition set off.

Stephen McQuade was still back there too. The man's wounds were healing, well enough, but he wasn't in good enough shape yet to participate in any battles. On the other hand, he wouldn't have any trouble using a knife.

For that matter, neither would Susan Fisher, on a trussed-up prisoner. Between the two of them, had Rod been in that Spaniard's boots, he'd have much rather faced McQuade. There was something implacable about the little Cherokee medicine woman.

By the time they got back, McQuade and Fisher would have discovered whatever it was that Spaniard knew. Their notions of suitable interrogation methods were decidedly nineteenth-century frontier. Rod was quite sure of that.

He was just as sure that the man would be dead. He'd come to like the Cherokees, as he'd gotten to know them. But he didn't much doubt that under that sophisticated surface, at least when it got provoked, there was a spirit just about a savage as any Apache's or Comanche's.

A fusillade erupted, coming from the area where Blacklock had taken his people. An instant later, the gunshots sounding much deeper, came a fusillade from the Cherokees and Sergeant Kershner's men.

"Fire!" Bailey shouted.

Rod had told Jerry to give the signal. He didn't want to be distracted from his own immediate task.

Moscoso was there. Rod had spotted him almost at once. Not hard to do, since he was one of the arguing sergeants.

Hulbert had never stopped tracking him with his rifle since.

He was tempted to gut-shoot the bastard, as angry as he was. But he didn't break training and habit. The sniper's triangle was his target.

The shot took Moscoso right above the breastbone, rupturing the aorta. Blood spouted everywhere as he went down.

He was still tempted to gut-shoot the bastard. But that was pointless. Moscoso was dead and they didn't have ammunition to spare.

In the distance, maybe a hundred yards from the village and over two hundred yards from Hulbert's position, there was a man on horseback surrounded by several other horsemen. That might be de Soto himself. It was worth hoping for, anyway. Rod had kept him under surveillance also.

He went down. Then, the horseman next to him. Then, the one on his other side. Shooting from a prone position with a rifle at this range—about two hundred and twenty yards—Rod Hulbert might as well have been called the Grim Reaper.

He took down two more of the horsemen in that center group before the rest scattered. Thereafter, it was slower work.

Hulbert concentrated on the horsemen he could see at a distance, ignoring the bulk of the Spanish troops milling around outside the village. The closest of those soldiers weren't more than a hundred yards away, and the farthest not more than two hundred. Any guard could hit that target, especially as bunched up as they were.

Hulbert did take a moment to survey the battle, to see how it was going.

"Battle, my ass," he muttered. "This is a turkey shoot. I knew we could have handled it on our own."

"Quit bragging," said Bailey. He aimed and fired again. "Even if you're right."

Rod estimated there were somewhere between four and five hundred Spaniards in the little army they were facing. That meant the numerical odds were worse than two to one, abstractly. But that was reckoning "numbers" by a crude head count. Once you factored in the force multiplier that the repeating rifles gave the prison guards, the odds switched drastically. In the same time it took a conquistador to fire and reload one of their matchlocks, a guard could go through a ten-round magazine—aiming every shot, not just blasting away. Measuring by firepower instead of men, the advantage was actually five to one in favor of the prison guards. That wasn't even counting the Cherokees and the U.S. soldiers, who were also firing.

Much better than five-to-one, actually, since you also had to factor in the much greater accuracy of the modern rifles. A sixteenth-century matchlock wasn't accurate beyond fifty yards, if that far. A number of shots had been fired by the Spaniards since the fighting started, but Rod was sure that if anyone on his side had been hit, it was pure bad luck. They were all sheltered behind trees and logs, and the Spaniards were out in the open.

At least one person in charge over there seemed to have finally realized it, too. Out of the swirling chaos of hundreds of conquistadores caught completely by surprise, somebody was managing to bring some order and discipline to a group of about thirty of them. And then—ruthless bastard, but smart—he was moving the group behind the tied-up villagers, using them for a shield.

Several of the guards were now yelling at the captives to lie down, but those poor people were even more frightened and confused than the Spaniards. Most of them were children. Besides, throwing yourself to the ground when you were tied to the person next to you by a rope around the neck was a good way to get strangled unless everybody did it in unison.

"Fuck," Rod hissed.

Bailey was looking off to the right, where Watkins and the Cherokees had taken position. "What the hell . . . Rod, what are they doing?"

Hulbert looked over. Sergeant Kershner and his squad had moved out into the open area surrounding the village, and were forming up into a line. Then, at a shouted command from Kershner, they started marching around to the side.

"They're going to get behind the Spaniards, so they can't use the villagers for a shield. Jesus. Talk about raw guts."

Seven men against perhaps thirty—and Kershner's men were armed with muzzle-loading muskets, not semiautomatic rifles. As firearms, shot for shot, their Harpers Ferry Model 1816 flintlocks were considerably superior to the Spaniards' matchlocks. But they couldn't be reloaded all that much more quickly. Once those U.S. soldiers fired a volley, they'd be dead meat if the Spaniards charged. All they'd have to counter the Spanish halberds and swords would be nineteen-inch bayonets. Rod's low opinion of the conquistadores as a military force did not extend to sneering at their ability to use edged weapons at close range. In that situation, they'd be murderous.

"Come on," he said. He rose and waved his hand at the rest of his platoon. "Follow me!"

He started trotting. Not directly toward the looming confrontation between Kershner's men and that one group of Spaniards, but in a looping route that took him around the still-milling mass outside the village. He thought he and his men could get there before the Spaniards charged Kershner after that first volley was fired.

But it soon became clear his crude flanking maneuver wasn't going to work. The problem wasn't any shrewd countermove on the part of the enemy, it was just the sheer chaos of the situation. Ragged groups of conquistadores were peeling away from the big mob in the center—that was just a killing zone by now—and heading toward the shelter of the trees. Some of them were confused enough to run toward Rod and his men instead of away from them.

"Oh, fuck." Rod stopped and gestured for his platoon to come to a halt. They were going to have to fire what amounted to their own volleys just to clear a path.

 

Kevin Griffin gave Geoffrey Watkins a sly little smile.

"I told you he'd be strong-headed."

Watkins didn't respond. He was chewing on his lower lip, trying to decide what to do.

On the one hand, he didn't have that many more men than the Spanish group Kershner was going at. And the muskets they had weren't much better.

On the other hand . . . 

"Let's go," he growled. "I don't want to have to listen to my niece yelling at me for the next year or two."

Griffin chuckled. "She yells pretty good." He stood up and waved the Cherokees forward.

 

Andy Blacklock was trying to decide what to do also. His battle plan had worked just about the way he'd hoped it would, until those Spaniards started using the villagers for a shield. Now, what had been a completely one-sided fight—not even a battle, so much as huge firing squad in action—was likely to become a hand-to-hand melee. Up close, he was quite sure the Spaniards would be a far deadlier opponent.

But he didn't see where he really had much choice.

So, he too rose and waved his people forward. Then, when they were more or less lined up, they advanced on the enemy in a formation that wasn't much better organized than the shattered Spanish army. The training that prison guards got did not include battlefield tactics. It sure as hell didn't include precision marching.

"Go, Salukis!" Brian Carmichael shouted. Within two or three seconds, more than half the guards in Andy's platoon were shouting the same slogan. Then many of the guards in Hulbert's platoon started doing the same. Just before they stopped, more or less lined up, and started firing into the mob of Spaniards at close range. And most of them kept shouting the slogan as they fired.

"This is nuts," Andy muttered to himself. But the shouting was contagious, and it impelled everyone forward at a much quicker pace.

"Go, Salukis!" he shouted. "Go right at 'em!"

Whether it was the strange slogan—which couldn't have made any sense at all to de Soto's men—or simply the sight of dozens of guards in blue uniforms charging at them after they'd already seen half of their own forces gunned down, or whether it was Hulbert's platoon's deadly close-range fire coming from another angle, Andy would never know.

Nor care. All that mattered was that the Spaniards broke. Not more than a dozen shots were fired from their matchlocks, and they were off and running. A goodly number of them threw their heavy guns away as they ran.

"Halt! Halt!" he shouted. "Goddamittohell, come to a screeching fucking STOP! Right now!"

After a second or two, his people obeyed him. Andy pointed at the fleeing Spaniards. "Shoot them. Now. While they're still in range."

That was just murder, really. Andy had read a little military history and knew that what he was doing came under the euphemism of "pursuit," even if his people were standing still and just shooting. But what the term really meant was kick 'em when they're down and keep kicking until they're meatpaste.

It didn't occur to him, until the shooting had almost stopped because there weren't any enemies still in sight, to wonder what had happened to Kershner and his squad.

 

"I knew they'd break," Kershner told Watkins calmly. "These men might have been soldiers once, but they're nothing but killers now. One good volley taking down three or four of them, and they ran."

Geoffrey still thought the youngster was probably a lunatic. But . . . 

The Spaniards had broken. By the time Watkins and Griffin and the Cherokees arrived to save Kershner and his men, they didn't need saving. They'd just been reloading their muskets.

He looked at the villagers. By now, they'd managed to get themselves all on the ground, out of the line of fire. So far as he could tell, not one of them had been shot. That was a minor miracle, in itself.

"Cut them loose, Kevin."

Griffin nodded and trotted over to the villagers. They flinched, when they saw him pull out his knife, but relaxed once they realized he was just cutting the ropes away.

"Now what?" asked Kershner.

Watkins surveyed the scene. The open area around the village was piled with bodies. Piled high, in some places. You could literally walk across it stepping only on Spaniards, except for a few clear patches here and there.

This had just been butchery—and it wasn't over yet.

"Captain Blacklock said he doesn't want any prisoners. But I don't think he's really got the stomach for it. Do you?"

Kershner's blue eyes scanned the field. "I'm Swabian, you know. Wasn't born there, but I know all the stories. For centuries, men just like these slaughtered and murdered and pillaged and raped back and forth across my people's lands. Any time some villagers got their hands on some of them, they didn't take any prisoners either. So, yes, I've got the stomach for it."

He turned to his men. "You heard him, boys. This is what bayonets are for."

 

Watkins had always thought those bayonets were a little silly-looking. After watching for a couple of minutes, he changed his mind.

 

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