Tworivers
Copyright© 2025 by Harry Carton
Chapter 5: Spanish Steel
Thomas dismounted near a Crow warrior sprawled facedown, the stench of gunpowder clinging to his buckskins. He rolled the body with his boot – a ragged hole gaped where the spine met the skull. Close-range execution. Beside him, Dawson knelt, wiping soot from a dead child’s cheek. “Not arquebuses,” he muttered in English, lifting a deformed lead ball from the dirt. “Smoothbore muskets. Spanish pattern.” His finger traced the shallow rifling marks. “Garrison troops.”
Winona approached, her face ash-gray. She nudged a shattered clay pot with her foot – inside, half-charred corn kernels swam in congealed blood. “Why slaughter the food stores?” Her voice trembled. “Even Comancheros leave grain for...” She froze, staring at a trampled patch of earth. Three sets of hoofprints gouged deep, deliberate circles around a spiked wooden post. Frayed ropes dangled from its top.
Tall Pine materialized beside them, his war-painted face rigid. He snapped one rope taut. “They tied prisoners here.” His gaze swept the carnage. “Made them watch.” Suddenly, he kicked a smoldering hide – revealing a Spanish morion helmet crushed beneath it.
Thomas’s gut clenched. Conquistadors.
Sky Eagle spat beside her, nudging a spent paper cartridge with his bow tip – Spanish markings visible on the damp paper. Dawson snatched it, sniffing the residue. “Corrupt powder. Military issue.” His eyes met Thomas’s. “This wasn’t conquest. It was cleanup.”
Tall Pine’s knuckles whitened on his spear. “The Crow betrayed their Spanish masters.” He kicked the morion helmet, its steel ringing hollowly. “They paid for that betrayal with fire.”
Thomas crouched beside Dawson, examining the tracks. Heavy-shod horses – Spanish mounts – mixed with lighter Crow ponies. “They rode southwest,” he murmured, tracing a deep gouge.
Winona knelt nearby, her fingers brushing strange symbols carved into the post—a crude sun crossed by a dagger. “This is not Crow,” she whispered. “It is ... Spanish magic?”
Dawson shook his head grimly. “Not magic. Garrison markings. Means ‘no prisoners.’” He pointed to a cluster of smaller prints leading toward the river. “Survivors. Children. Five, maybe six.” The tracks vanished at the water’s edge.
Thomas’s wristwatch ticked in the suffocating silence. 14:37. Less than five hours of daylight. He scanned the trampled reeds downstream – a single moccasin floated near an overturned canoe. “They crossed here. The Spanish pushed them into the current.” His sniper instincts mapped the kill zone: elevated bluffs overlooking the ford, perfect for ambush.
Dawson examined a musket ball embedded in a cottonwood trunk. “Smoothbores, but disciplined volleys. Cavalry lancers rode with them – see the lance gouges?” He traced three parallel slashes in the mud. “Spanish regulars hunting Crow turncoats. We’re walking into a war.”
Thomas scanned the bluffs. His sniper’s eye noted disturbed soil where boot heels had dug in – overwatch positions. Below, the river’s current dragged at the abandoned canoe. “They’re still close,” he murmured. “The Spanish won’t risk Crow survivors reaching other tribes with tales of betrayal.” He touched Winona’s arm. “The children’s tracks – did they reach the far bank?”
Winona crouched, fingers tracing faint scrapes in the mud. “They crawled. Three made it.” She pointed to snapped reeds upstream. “But the Spanish horses followed.” Her voice hardened. “They hunt children like rabbits.”
Thomas felt the old sniper’s calm descend – cold, precise. He scanned the bluffs. Two overwatch positions, likely musketeers covering the ford. The river’s roar masked sound, but wind carried the metallic tang of blood and gun oil. His nostrils flared. Close. Very close. He gestured Dawson toward a cluster of boulders downstream. “Flank them through the water. I’ll draw fire.”
Dawson nodded, slipping into the current like an otter, his blonde hair vanishing beneath the churn. Thomas turned to Tall Pine, signing rapidly: Warriors spread thin, hiding out of sight. Wait for my signal. The Kiowa chief’s eyes burned, but he raised a clenched fist to his warriors. More than one hundred twenty-five Apache fighters melted into the sagebrush, bows taut.
Thomas moved upstream, deliberately snapping a dry branch. Instantly, a musket roared from the western bluff, kicking dirt near his boots. Amateur. Bad guns. He dove behind a cottonwood trunk as a second shot whined overhead—confirming both positions. Below, Dawson surfaced silently behind the boulders, water sluicing off his holstered pistol.