EPISODE 2
A Gang of Mongrels
The others were waiting in a tree-shaded gully below. A half hundred men and half again as many mounts. They were coarse men, wild men. They resembled a pack of wolves more than a gang of outlaws. More a gang of mongrels. There were white men, Mexicans, Kiowa and Neches, and mixes of all or some of those breeds. There were even a few blacks, runaways from the fields around Austin. Any man who could ride, shoot and live rough was welcome. Any man who couldn’t cut it was left behind.
Indian ponies snuffled and huffed as the men stirred. They sensed the tension in the men and joined them in their mood of hushed anticipation.
“What is it, Temple? What did you see?” Muñoz called, stepping from the shadows of a pine.
Muñoz claimed to have Castilian blood from Old Spain. To Joe he looked like any other Mex peon—only crossed with a scorpion. He wore filthy white peon sackcloth cinched tight with a frayed gun belt from which a long-barreled Colt hung over his crotch. On his feet were tooled leather riding boots with silver spurs. He claimed he took them from the feet of the don that owned the rancho where Muñoz was once a serf.
“A fat train of teamster wagons moving west and north along the creek bed trail. Heading up to the territories is what I reckon,” Ben said, walking to his own mount, a pinto mare with black mane and tail.
“How fat?” This from Ryderdale, a Texican who still wore the jacket of the American army company he’d deserted a year earlier.
“Ten wagons. Twelve dray mules each. Loaded down with goods,” Ben said, checking the saddle cinch. Sliding his Enfield rifle back into its scabbard. Patting the pony’s neck.
“Hay mujeres?” Muñoz called out.
“No women, you rutting buck,” Ben said with a smile. The Mexican cursed a streak in gutter Spanish. Some of the men laughed.
“And riders. Men with guns,” Joe piped up. Ben shot him a look. Joe lowered his eyes to the pine needles beneath his moccasins.
“Army riders?” Muñoz said. The men in the gloom of the trees muttered to one another.
“Hired men. Pistoleros. I counted twenty. With the drivers and wagon guards that makes forty,” Ben said, eyeing the men gathering around him.
“You have an idea of how to take them or do we let them ride on?” Ryderdale said.
“The hell we let them ride on!” Muñoz barked. Some of the others, Mexes mostly, nodded agreement.
“We dog them. They have to camp somewhere come dark. If the ground is right, we take those goods off their hands,” Ben said, and mounted his pinto.
Muñoz let out a yip that was echoed among the other Mexes and bucks.
Young Joe was on the back of his roan and followed close behind Ben Temple as they trotted beneath the trees, turning north to where the high ground sloped down to meet the valley floor. Ben took lead and set the pace for the rest. They rode at a walk, allowing the horses to pick their way over the stubble and rocks. Given their head, the men would have raced after the wagons, eager to be at the loads they held in their beds. Only that would have risked the wrath of their chief and they knew the outcome of doing that. Ben Temple was not a man to cross. Not even once.
Joe had seen the carcasses of many men who either defied, challenged or disobeyed Ben Temple’s will. The back trail as far as the Brazos was littered with men who had done so. They lay unmourned where they fell, stripped of their valuables and left for the coyotes and buzzards. His law was their only law, and that law was backed by his gun and the guns of Muñoz and Ryderdale, his lieutenants.
So, they moved together down the wooded defile, not like the pack of mongrel dogs they were but more like a pride of tigres stalking their prey, silent and sure in the midday gloom of the forest.
