Chapter 8

Summer was coming to a close.

Along the Guadalupe, wild sunflowers were in full bloom, their yellow petals attracting birds and other wildlife. Persimmons were ripe and the walnuts, hickory-nuts, and pecans would soon be dropping. Seemed like every day somebody came in with wild fruits or nuts and maybe a comb of honey from a bee tree they’d raided, wanting me to take it in trade for fixing up an old gun. Most of them I would have either left lay where they were found or maybe hung up on deer antlers as decorations, but if they wanted them fixed I said I would as soon as I got time.

Not all were that bad; two converted percussion rifles came in, one with a cracked stock, the other with a badly shattered fore-end. I looked at Dave, who owned the rifle, and he looked ashamed but finally explained. “I shot a deer and he looked plumb dead until I was ready to field-dress him. I had my knife in my right hand and my rifle in my left, not wishing to leave it more than a step away while I was working. More than one hombre has lost his hair by doing that, y’know!

“Anyway, I was about to lay my rifle against a beech tree when that deer woke up. Danged if he didn’t look right unhappy with me, and since he had a full rack of antlers and I had no wish to face them with a knife, I dropped it and whacked him across the head with my rifle. I only needed one lick, which I reckon was just as well. You reckon you can fix it?”

“Nope. But I can carve you out a new stock at least as good as that one. What happened to the deer?”

“I fetched him, of course,” Dave said. “Want one of the backstraps? Mighty tasty they are!”

I shared the backstrap with Jean-Louis, who’d come to town to hear voices that weren’t the same ones he heard every day. After we ate, we headed over to the saloon, which wasn’t all that refined, but did have cool beer for them that wanted it and coffee for the ones that didn’t. The barkeep had whiskey too, or said that’s what it was. But one man claimed he’d seen him throw a rattlesnake in the barrel to give his whiskey more kick. The barkeep didn’t actually deny it, but said that the only rattler he’d seen recently had been small.

We were standing at the bar and drinking our beers, catching up on what we’d been doing since Jean-Louis’ last visit, when John Moore walked in. He headed straight for us and Jean-Louis looked a trifle concerned for a moment, but I said howdy to John and offered to buy him a beer if he wished to join us. “I’d like to, Jake,” he said, “but I’ve got no time right now. Looks like the whole Mexican Army is here!”

I blinked at that and looked at Jean-Louis, who shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t notice a dust cloud when I came in to town. Can’t be very many of them,” he said.

“Old Laban might have fudged the numbers a mite,” John allowed, “but they’re soldiers, right enough. The good thing is that they’re on the other side of the Guadalupe, and they’ll not be able to cross until the water level goes down. I reckon that will be about a week from now, unless it rains more between now and then.”

“You want us to join you?” I asked. “I ‘spect I could shoot across the river and do for one or two before they could find a tree to hide behind.”

“Not right now,” John said. “I’ve already got eighteen volunteers keeping an eye on them. Not enough to stop them from crossing, mind you, at least not yet. But I’ve sent riders to notify other militia companies and if they get here before the river goes down, I’ll have enough to chase that bunch back to Mexico with their tails between their legs! Some of the volunteers are poorly armed, and when I found that out I thought of you. Do you have rifles, or at least muskets, that we could borrow? They’d have to be usable, you understand.”

“I’ve got some,” I acknowledged, “but they don’t belong to me. I don’t know as how I ought to just hand them over without talking to their owners.”

“What if I guaranteed that you’ll get them back, or if they’re lost I’ll make it right with the owners myself? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need them,” John said.

You trust a man, or you don’t, and as far as I knowed John had never lied to me. “Let’s go,” I said. We drank down the last of our beer, Jean-Louis and me, and headed for the shop. I had a few rifles there that I had been working on, and two old muskets I thought were safe enough if not overcharged with powder. Several other men came in right behind us and John saw to them passing the rifles out. The muskets he refused, and I can’t say I blamed him.

“What about those two?” He pointed to the two on pegs behind my bench, waiting for me to carve new stocks to replace the broken ones. I explained that one was cracked behind the lock, where the stock is smaller, and the other was the one that had killed a deer by clubbing. I didn’t explain how it happened, because I had my doubts. Buck fever, with maybe a cargo of whiskey on board to make that deer look like a giant with a bigger rack than a longhorn steer? He wouldn’t be the first to remember things a mite bigger than they’d been, after that deer was down!

He examined the two. “They’ll do. You’ve got rawhide, I’m sure. Use it.” I understood what he wanted right away, and nodded. Not a permanent fix, but it would serve for one fight at least.

“How are you fixed for horses?” Jean-Louis asked.

“Not nearly as many as I’d like,” John said. “The Mexicans are dragoons; they usually travel on horseback, dismount after they arrive, and then fight as infantry, but if they stay mounted I don’t have enough horses for my volunteers to chase them off.”

“I’ve got about twenty I can loan you, if your men are good riders,” Jean-Louis offered. “They’re apt to buck a bit of a morning, especially if the night was cold, but they settle down after that.”

“I’ll take them,” John said, “and you have my gratitude for offering. Shall I count on you two to stand with us when the fighting commences?”

We agreed that we would, and after shaking our hands, John went off to see to other tasks. Jean-Louis headed for the ranch to round up the horses and I set to work cutting the rawhide thongs I would soak and wrap around the broken stocks. They would shrink as they dried, and with a coating of beeswax to keep out the damp, they would do well as temporary fixes. I’d seen a number with such wraps, some that looked to be several years old, so maybe ‘temporary’ wasn’t the right description. John hadn’t mentioned it, but our untried militia had up to now done no more than frighten off Indian boys intending to steal horses. Could they stand up to professional Mexican soldiers?

They would try, meaning there would be spare weapons aplenty after the fighting ended. If the men who needed them were still in condition to fight.

I acquitted myself well the next morning, despite not having done much riding in recent months. I stayed on the horse, despite his objections, and there were some who got to practice mounting several times before we were ready to head out. But nothing much happened during that day, other than men trickling in from other settlements. Our numbers swelled until I estimated that along with our visitors, who soon outnumbered the locals, we had more men under arms than that Mexican lieutenant did.