Tworivers
Copyright© 2025 by Harry Carton
Chapter 8: Sunrise in the West
The stink of damp stone and gunpowder residue clung thick in Crooked Oak’s runoff tunnel as Thomas crawled forward, elbows scraping against jagged rock. Above, Spanish laughter drifted faintly – drunken soldiers celebrating the end of their watch. Cold creek water soaked his legs up to the thighs, numbing sensation but sharpening focus. Winona was right behind him, also soaked to the waist. He emerged inside the palisade, pressed flat against the shadowed canyon wall. Ahead, torchlight flickered near the powder magazines: stacked oak kegs under a limestone overhang. Two guards slumped by a brazier, passing a wineskin. Thomas counted heartbeats. Fifty kegs. Enough to level this canyon.
Outside, as the sundown watch changed, Dawson clicked a button on his watch. He stilled Great Buffalo. It wasn’t needed. Great Buffalo pressed into the rock below him, and he was a rock himself. There were four arrows on the ground nearby – ready. Minutes turned into a quarter hour, and then into a half hour. The smaller guard contingent was settling into positions and passing a wineskin between them. There were only two guards, and they didn’t look particularly alert.
On the half hour mark, Dawson signaled Great Buffalo to move one hundred yards closer. Dawson thought he was stealthy, but he couldn’t believe how stealthy the Apache hunter moved – a prairie dog silent through prairie grass. It was three quarters of an hour before they were done moving.
Inside, Winona slid next to Wind Rider, a bow around her shoulder. She had the obsidian knife in hand. There was no sign of guards in the powder room.
He checked his watch, ten minutes to go. He signaled to Winona. He’d removed his moccasins before he’d entered the water. Now his wet footprints entered the room with so many kegs. He lifted the lid on the first one he came to. Sulfur stinging his nostrils, and laid a trail of black powder toward the bridge supports. Every sense screamed: the grit under his palms, the metallic taste of adrenaline, the distant screech of a night-hawk. His hands stayed steady. Just like Kandahar. Plant the charge, fade away.
He led the powder fuse to Winona’s feet. It should take at least two minutes to burn back to the keg’s location. He laid another run of powder on top of the previous run, as he placed the keg on its side back in its original spot. He opened another keg, spilled some black powder on the floor and laid the second keg on its side.
He looked at his watch. A full hour since sundown. He signaled to Winona to light the fuse. She looked at him, holding his Zippo in her hand. “Light the damn powder and run to get out!” He whispered loudly, stridently. Then he took off at a run toward the flooded exit.
When he started to run, she finally lit the chain of black powder. She was struck dumb for a moment, then ran toward the river. She held her breath, reached for the other side, and hauled herself out. Thomas was right behind her, “MOVE IT! Run to get out. We have one minute forty-four seconds to get clear.” They found their horses and mounted in ten seconds. They kicked the horses into a gallop and headed east.
Outside, Dawson watched the time tick down to the one-hour mark. Great Buffalo saw the time tick down, and reached for his bow. Dawson reached out and stilled the Apache. “Wait. The guards are still not moving. One minute later, he motioned to Great Buffalo. “It’s time to go.” He backed out of his hide quietly but quickly. The two overwatchers found their horses, mounted and headed for the rendezvous point, at maximum speed.
Dawson – Yellow Hair, he might as well get used to it – and Great Buffalo got there first, but could see Wind Rider and Winona charging full speed. They were about five hundred yards from the powder store when the explosion came. And the ball of the flame lit up the sky, like the sun rose in the west, over Santa Fe.
Thomas reined Midnight in sharply, the stallion’s hooves skidding on loose shale as the horizon erupted. Not one explosion – a chain reaction ripping through the canyon like dragon-fire. A fist of concussion slammed his chest, followed by a furnace-blast of heat that would have singed his eyebrows if they’d been much closer. Above the powder mill, the cliffs disintegrated in slow motion, boulders shearing off in eerie silence before crashing down amid secondary detonations. Dust plumed outward, swallowing stars. The parapets atop the adobe walls sliding down taking musketeers to their deaths.
Beside him, Winona shielded her face, knuckles white on her reins. “The gorge – collapsed?” Her voice was raw, swallowed by the roar echoing off distant mountains.
Wind Rider nodded grimly, ash settling like snow on Midnight’s mane. “No one followed us.” The canyon was now a tomb sealed beneath thousands of tons of rock. Santa Fe’s teeth had been pulled – no powder for muskets or cannons, no munitions to crush rebellions.
Dawson rode up, binoculars trained westward. “Secondary collapse buried the barracks. No survivors I can see.” Beside him, Great Buffalo signed vengeance with trembling hands—not for the Spanish, but for the Crow slaves consumed in the inferno.
Thomas dismounted, boots crunching on freshly fallen ash. Winona joined him, her obsidian knife tracing nervous patterns in the silt. “They’ll know it was Apache,” she murmured. “The governor saw us leave Santa Fe.”
“Let him know,” Thomas said flatly, staring at the smoldering horizon where Santa Fe lay beyond distant ridges. The sulfur stench clung to his clothes, a grim souvenir. “They’ll spend months digging rubble instead of mounting campaigns.” Crooked Oak’s powder-stained hands flashed in his memory – the bitter etch of slavery erased in that fireball. A necessary brutality.
Winona tugged her buffalo robe tighter. “He saw our faces. Vargas knows.” Her obsidian knife tapped rhythmically against her thigh – threat, threat, threat.
Dawson spat near Midnight’s hooves. “They’ve got no powder, no cannon fodder. Just rage.” He scanned eastward where dawn bled crimson over the Sangre de Cristos. “Rage makes mistakes.”
Thomas crouched, sifting ash between his fingers. It clung like guilt. The memory of Crooked Oak’s scars – the Spanish whip, the powder burns – flared hot. Necessary. Not clean, but necessary.
Winona’s knife stilled. Her gaze locked on the smoke column coiling skyward. “Vargas will send word to Mexico City. Cavalry. More muskets.”
Wind Rider nodded slowly. “Yes, we will have to tell Nantan and Tall Pine when we get back to the camp. And we will have to warn the Chiricahua as well. I don’t think the Spanish will care which tribe of Apaches they will want to attack ... Come, let us go back home. Standing in this pile of ash will get us nowhere.”
The group rode hard all day toward the Apache village. Near sundown, Winona spotted them first—dust plumes rising from the western plains. Not Spanish cavalry. Apache scouts galloping at full tilt, their arm-signals frantic: Attack imminent. Village threatened.
That was faster than Thomas thought. “He’s sending his remaining troops. We’ll have a day to prepare. They can’t be moving as fast as we are. The scouts will warn Nantan.” He slapped Midnight’s flank, urging him to move faster.
The village defenses flared to life before their arrival – warriors scrambling up newly reinforced palisades, women bundling children toward hidden ravines. Nantan stood atop the council lodge, face grim as Thomas dismounted. “Spanish?”
“Cavalry scouts,” Thomas confirmed, handing Midnight’s reins to Winona. “Two days behind us. Vargas is throwing everything he has left. It can’t be more than one hundred. They’ll have muskets and arquebuses. We should wear all the breastplates we have. Set a marker 150 paces in front of our palisades. That will be our marker to fire. The Spanish aren’t accurate at that distance. Keep the warriors out of sight until they are ready to fire.” He nodded to Winona. “Make sure the women who can handle a bow are armed. Put them just out of sight -- a pace behind the men wearing armor.”
Sky Eagle came up, thumping his new iron breastplate. “Let them come. Great Buffalo told me that the sunrise to the west was a great victory for all Apache.”
Nantan’s eyes hardened. “They come for blood.” Beside him, Tall Pine gripped his spear, knuckles white. “After the canyon – they seek vengeance.”
Thomas surveyed the hastily dug trenches beyond the palisade – shallow but lined with sharpened stakes. “We funnel them here,” he pointed to the narrowest approach, where Dawson was already positioning braves with Spanish muskets taken weeks before. “Hold fire until they cross that marker stone.” A pale quartz boulder gleamed 150 paces out. “Muskets first – one volley to panic their horses. Then arrows.”
Winona moved among the women, her voice low and urgent as she distributed quivers of aluminum-tipped arrows. “Aim for the gaps in their armor – throats, underarms.” Her fingers brushed a young mother’s trembling hand. “Your children hide in the rocks. Fight for them.” The woman nodded, jaw set.
Tall Pine said, “With all our warriors and women we should outnumber them. The Spanish are fools to attack us. Our defense is strong.”
Thomas knew numbers meant nothing against disciplined volleys. “Dawson,” he barked, “position our musketeers in staggered rows behind the palisade—first line kneels, second stands. Reload drills, now!” Like the British in the movie Zulu. Only they had flintlocks and we have these fuckin’ arquebuses, he thought.
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