Chasing the Texas Wind Page 22

  “One thing at a time,” Ham gritted, urging the horse forward as the road became steeper and less of a road. “First we stop the procession, then we figure out how to get it going again. I’m hoping John finds Chaco, sees my signal, and brings him up here. We’ll get it one way or another. Matt, you all right?”

  “You told me .. not to talk,” Matt quipped. “All right. ... Rough ride.”

  The horse whinnied in protest. Ham whipped him on. The wheels slid in the gravelly path but the buggy finally reached the top of the ridge. Ham dropped off the seat and limped about, gathering sticks. Jesse hurried to help him.

  “Ham, are you in pain?” she asked.

  “No, my new knee’s old joint’s just out of whack somehow,” Ham gritted. “Poor Obed. I ruined his masterpiece in less than a day. And I will be in pain if I have to keep walking like this. I had to catch a falling Maeve awhile back, wrenched the knee really good, and that got to be quite painful until it got fixed.”

  “Get the fire going,” Jesse ordered. “I’ll keep the wood coming. Sit here on this rock. Matt’s passed out, I think, but he’s breathing normally and I can’t find any new bleeding.”

  Ham sank down and got out his flint and pocket knife. He shaved thin slivers of wood into a little pile. The dry tinder flared quickly and he carefully piled sticks on top. Jesse brought more and the flames leaped higher.

  “That’s the ticket,” Ham encouraged. “All you can find, Jesse. I’ll help you as soon as I try to straighten this knee joint out.” He pushed the knee from side to side as Jesse ran back and forth with armloads of sticks. At last something clicked. He stood up and found it worked again.

  “Thank You, Lord,” he breathed. They stoked the fire for more than an hour. Jesse almost fell on the ground as she was bringing a load. Matt had awakened and insisted he felt better, so Jesse switched places with him to rest in the buggy and Matt limped around slowly, helping Ham gather wood.

  “Matt, take it easy, please,” Ham begged. “I certainly don’t recommend ignoring a leg wound. I’m living proof it can result in serious consequences.”

  “I know,” Matt grunted. “Just can’t believe we were so stupid, not realizing there’d be another password.” He sank down by the fire. “Okay, I’m all in. I’ll rest a few minutes and get back on it.”

  “Fine, Matt. Please, please, please, Lord, I need that password,” Ham prayed as he strayed farther to find wood. “Lord, bring it to me somehow.”

  Suddenly the buggy moved. Ham jerked his head up as the horse squealed as if it had been whipped and the whole thing turned sharply and started to move.

  “Jesse, what are you --” Ham broke off. Chaco came into view on the seat as the buggy swung around into the glare of the firelight. He was half-slumped over, bloody and hideous, one eye apparently gone, one arm useless.

  “Thanks, Gringo!” Chaco hissed. A knife streaked out of his good hand and buried itself to the hilt in Ham’s thigh. Ham fell flat on the ground and dark wetness seeped through the fabric of his trousers. Chaco urged the horse past him, trying to drive the cart down the hill. Ham jumped for the cart, wrestled desperately with Chaco and got a hand on his throat. He saw at once that Matt and John had done a good job weakening Chaco. He was near collapse, running on pure rage. Obviously he had been forced to try to steal the buggy just so he could keep moving, to try to undo all that had happened. The buggy reins went slack and the horse stopped moving. Ham put both hands to the task, bending Chaco back over the cart seat with his head almost hanging into the traces.

  “You’ll never make it out of here,” Ham growled. “Except when the coyotes carry you off. The password,” he growled. “Signal, code, however you tell Ampudia you’re you. Now.”

  Chaco gagged. Ham levered his leg out of reach so Chaco couldn’t try for the knife, which was still jammed in place. He tried not to think about how grotesque it looked. Ham let up the pressure on Chaco’s windpipe a tiny bit. “You already told us almost everything we needed to know. You told us about meeting General Pedro Ampudia on St. Matthew’s Day at Monterrey.”

  Chaco gaped at him. “Not lying, am I?” Ham sneered. “And I’ll tell you another thing, Chaco. I’m that crippled American who stole your gringo spy. You just jammed your knife into my brand new leather socket, not my leg. Thanks for digging out my knee joint and bringing it back to me.”

  Chaco shrieked in rage. “You are the idiot brother!” he howled. “It is impossible!”

  “You know what’s really incredible?” Ham sneered. You used our wagon to move your guns, and told us where you put them. You pumped Mia for information that we gave her, a lie that took you away from town for three days so we could get our friend out. You loaded our wagon with your guns again, came right along with our men, and got all your men killed. You gave us the guns, which we will now give to our people at Monterrey, so they can beat the Mexicans and bless you for helping us. Ampudia himself will believe you betrayed him and sold the guns to the Texans. You’ve got no way to redeem yourself, no way to win, nowhere to run.

  “You are going to die,” Ham said, very softly. “And I just want you to know before you do that your Vienta is now my wife now and I’m going home to sleep with her.”

  Chaco’s eyes bulged. “You lie!” he wheezed.

  “She has a scar you gave her when you beat her up and forced yourself on her. It’s right above --” Ham began. Chaco spewed curses in Spanish and struggled violently but Ham tightened the pressure on his windpipe again and his eyes rolled back. Ham let up again. Chaco’s injuries and Ham’s slow strangulation were telling strongly on him now. He barely seemed conscious. Ham slapped him, hard. Chaco jerked in his grasp and sobbed.

  “Tell me the password!” He snarled. “Tell me now!”

  “The password is – dia de San Mateo,” Chaco rasped, weeping raggedly, trying to breathe and somehow failing. Then, suddenly, the struggle ended. Chaco was dead. Ham heaved himself up, pushing Chaco off the seat onto the ground, but the bladder was broken in his leg socket and he couldn’t get it to bear his weight. He struggled to look into the back of the buggy. Matt staggered up by the almost-dead fire and threw on wood mechanically, not realizing anything had happened.

  “Jesse?” Ham cried. He turned the cart around and urged the horse toward the fire so the growing light shone in. The fire flared up. Then he saw the huddled shape lying in the farthest corner of the cart. “Oh, no,” he whispered. Jesse had been stabbed and Ham pressed frantically on the wound. She shuddered and opened her eyes.

  “Jesse,” he cried. “Dear God, no. Jesse!” Matt appeared behind him suddenly, staggering, groggy.

  “Zachary ...” Jesse said weakly.

  “No, Jess ... it’s Matt,” he said brokenly.

  “No ... Zachary Daniel,” she said, looking straight at Ham. “You and Maeve ... Take him ... Mammy’s done enough ... She needs a rest.”

  “Jesse, please,” Ham begged.

  “I missed Dan so much,” Jesse said with a smile. “And I finally got to help. Thank you, Ham.”

  “God welcome you ... my sister,” Matt said. “Say hello ... to Dan for us.” Jesse clutched for his hand, and her eyes closed. Matt let her hand go and patted Ham on the shoulder.

  “Come on,” he said. “The ... fire.”

  They threw wood on the fire for what seemed like hours, Ham tightening up the leg socket until he could at least hobble, Matt dragging himself back and forth. The fire blazed ten feet in the air. Finally John climbed over the edge of the ridge, with Rico following a moment later.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “Ham? Matt? Where’s Jesse? What’s the fire for?” Then he saw Chaco. “You found him.”

  “He ... found us. Jesse’s ... dead, John,” Matt groaned. “Chaco got ... to her first. Ham got Chaco ... to give up the code ... before he died.”

  “Dia de San Mateo,” Ham gasped, utterly exhausted. “The password. Chaco had a recognition sign for when the wagons pass the Mexican sentries. Tell them. H
urry.”

  “I can’t just leave you here,” John cried.

  “Leave Rico,” Ham said. “We’ll all rest up, sleep a couple of hours here, and we’ll get back. Go. It’ll be all right. We’ll take care of Jesse.”

  “I’ll send someone back from the convoy,” John said. He looked spent as well, scratched and bruised, but he turned and faded into the darkness. Ham shed his coat and wrapped Jesse as well as he could in it. Matt lowered himself down by the fire and Ham and Rico joined him, all of them sprawling on the sparse grass.

  “We ought to ... post a sentry ...” Ham said, and fell asleep.

  “Stevens is dead, boss,” Ross reported. “This folder he had, you think it’s important?”

  “Important?” Grover echoed. “It’s everything Hamilton Jessup’s been collecting about me for the last ten years. ‘Holes Where Pieces Should Be,’ indeed! I wonder if he has more?”

  “Jefe, I thought you need to know where these other spies are?” Olivera ventured. “That Jude Morrow hombre, where their base is. You couldn’t get it out of Stevens. From what you say about this Jessup guy, he plenty smart and he not gonna leave stuff around for you to find. Anyway, you got the folder. It don’t even mention your name, or anything anybody could recognize to connect this stuff to you.”

  “How does he know I was involved in these things?” Grover fretted. “I know I covered my tracks every time. He’s just guessing. Some of them I had nothing to do with, so he must be guessing. But if he has proof of any of this somewhere ... ? Maybe at Collinswood’s house? He might have information on Morrow and the others there too. Come on, Ross. They still haven’t shown up at the house, so we can search there.”

  Day Eight

  “What a beautiful thing to wake up to,” Ham smiled as Maeve bent over him and kissed him on the forehead. He lay in the bed that had been Jesse and Dan’s, sun flooding in the window. “How’s Matt?”

  “Mammy has him in bed, but I don’t know for how long,” Maeve replied. “He’s worried about you. I couldn’t convince him that knife sticking out of your leg hadn’t hurt you. Did you have to leave it like that?”

  “I didn’t have the strength to pull it out,” Ham groaned. “How is the poor leg? I hadn’t even christened it yet. Who brought us back? I was so beat I didn’t even know. I just remember somebody very big with a horse, who had to walk all the way because Matt got the horse and I drove Jesse in the buggy. But I was falling asleep over the reins, so he had to keep the buggy moving, too. And what about Rico? That boy deserves a medal. He had to walk too, didn’t he?”

  “Levi brought you back,” Maeve replied. “And he insisted Rico stay here, though he wanted to go right back and join the convoy. The boy was so dead tired, and his feet are blisters on blisters. Mammy’s nursing him, of course. Levi’s already gone back.”

  “Jesse?” Ham hated to ask, but he had to, of course.

  “Jesse is here,” Maeve answered softly. “She’s in her father’s room. We ... I’m sure we’ll have to bury her before everyone comes back. You need to go see Matt, if you can, Ham. He hasn’t slept at all, I don’t think. And he told me ... He told me what Jesse said about the baby.”

  “If you don’t feel like you can --” Ham began.

  “No, no, I want him,” Maeve said quickly. “Oh, so much. If it’s all right with you.”

  “Of course,” Ham said. “Of course it is, Maeve. Jesse was right. Mammy needs a rest.” He looked over at the windowseat and saw his leg lying there. “Where’s that wheelchair? I need to go see Matt.”

  Ham rolled himself into Matt’s room. The younger man lay staring at the ceiling, looking so much like Zachary just after they had rescued him, broken in spirit and body.

  “Matt,” Ham said. “Maeve said you couldn’t sleep.”

  “I was right there,” Matt said. “I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t see anything. I just let him stick a knife into her.”

  “Hey, none of that,” Ham snapped. “I was right there too. God brought Jesse there, and it was her time. Now she’s with Dan, and I think she’s better so, don’t you?”

  “She was such a rebel, for so long,” Matt marveled. “They say the boys are the ones who go bad. We came up like pine trees, straight for the sky. Jesse was like a thorn creeper. And then Dan straightened her out. It took some doing, but afterward she said it was like she’d been looking for him all her life.”

  “‘Like coming out of a storm into a peaceful harbor after you’ve fought against coming to shore with all your strength,’“ Ham quoted.

  “Exactly like that,” Matt nodded. “But when he disappeared, she was different. She said all the right things, she did all the right things, but she was like a sailing ship in a dead calm. Like she’d lost her rudder. We didn’t know how to help her. Even Mammy couldn’t fix what was ailing Jesse.”

  “It’s fixed now,” Ham said. Matt looked at him for the first time.

  “You’re right,” Matt said. “It is.”

  “Go to sleep,” Ham said. “When you get up, we’ll have a service for Jesse.”

  Ham returned to the bedroom, but Maeve wasn’t there. He took a chance and headed for the nursery. Maeve sat in Mammy’s chair, rocking Zachary Daniel Duvall and talking to him softly. Ham rolled up and put an arm around her. Maeve rested her head on his shoulder.

  “Our little man,” Ham murmured. “My little mother. You look like you just got the last thing you needed to make you happy enough to bust, my darling wife.”

  “Chaco is dead,” Maeve said. “The man who killed this baby’s father and mother and mocked me with my sin is gone. And he’s ours now. Yes, I am happy enough to bust. Now, if we can just see everyone else back safe ...”

  No one had the strength to move Jesse yet, much less lay her to rest, but they held a service for her in Jedediah’s bedroom. Ham had whittled himself a crutch and given Matt the wheelchair. Matt reminded everyone that they hadn’t had a memorial for Dan yet, and it seemed right to combine them. Ham urged everyone to say something about what the two had meant to them.

  Stoic and serene Mammy cried harder than anyone. “Mrs. Jesse, she was a lost lamb.” Mammy said. “But she found a man who led her to the Shepherd and made her keep by His side, even after he was gone. And now they’re together again. God knows best. God knows best. I’m just as glad not to have the raisin’ of one more child,” she added, looking at the baby asleep in Maeve’s arms. “So glad God brought you and your lady to us, Colonel Jessup. And Major Costain, it’s like he touched all these lives and brought all you together.”

  “In a way, he did,” Ham said wonderingly. “His letters brought me to Christ. His testimony softened Maeve’s heart and got her ready to believe. He helped prepare Zachary to be ready at the right time, in the right place to make Maeve move out of the place she was stuck in. Maeve found the courage to give Dan’s death a purpose, and I was ready to help her.”

  “We’d all got used to Jesse’s fits,” Matt said. “That anger she had, about being a woman, about being protected, I don’t know what all. Pa grieved over it so much. He couldn’t understand her. All she wanted was to help, but he put her down quick without ever listening. And she boiled over like a pot you couldn’t take off the stove. Dan gave her a job to do that she could be content with, if not all the way happy. Dan figured out ways to make us all part of his plans, give us all something to do.”

  “I didn’t know either of them very well,” Maeve said timidly, “but Daniel Costain was one of the first men who made me see I wasn’t a heroine, I was just a sinner. He made me afraid to die, more than Chaco ever did. And he made me understand what it was like to have a man want to help me and protect me, instead of me using him and him just using me. He also reminded me of Ham, and how he’d begun to change, unquestionably for my sake. I was so ready to fall into your arms when I got back home,” she said to Ham, “because Dan made me ready, and apparently he helped make you ready, too.

  “Jesse Costain was the perfect woman,
I thought, everything I wasn’t,” Maeve went on. “I’ve learned since that she wasn’t always that way, but she was the first godly woman I ever met and I’ll never forget her faith, her peace, her kindness.” She fingered Dan’s ring on Jesse’s hand. “God carried you up on His wings, didn’t He, both of you?”

  “And it’s all because of Dan that we’re going to win this battle with Mexico,” Ham put in.

  They ended the memorial service with that, and went to have lunch together. A messenger arrived.

  “That password was more important than we ever imagined,” Jude Morrow’s note said. “When we sang it out at the checkpoint the sentries asked if we were taking charge of the other weapons now too. Ham, these fellows are leading our men to every stockpile Chaco had. We’ll have all his ammunition and guns to fight Ampudia, not just those two wagonloads. We’re splitting up to get them now. Praise the Lord!”

  “Amen!” Ham breathed as he dismissed the messenger. “Well, I guess everything’s taken care of, now.”

  “It sure is a good thing Mrs. Jessup got in touch with you to get her work in Avecita going,” Matt grinned.

  Ham frowned at him. “Oh, dear,” he said. “I completely forgot that most of you don’t know about Maeve and I. I wasn’t the American intelligence contact. As a matter of fact, Maeve was told that I was an untrustworthy, bitter drunk and she shouldn’t let me in on anything. I was the fake husband she used as a cover in Rio Grande City. I knew nothing about her involvement in any of this until very recently.”

  “Wait a minute,” Matt protested. “Then who did you contact in Army Intelligence, Mrs. Jessup?”

  “His name is Nathaniel Grover,” Maeve replied. “Ham has since told me--”

  “Grover?” Matt all but exploded. “You’ve been telling everything about our operation to Nathaniel Grover?”

  “What do you know about Grover?” Ham asked sharply.

  “I know he’s buried every piece of intel we’ve tried to give him and stonewalled everything we’ve tried to find out through him,” Matt growled. “How much did you tell him about us?”